Interview - Mark MacKinnon - Dyskami Publishing - Anime 5E

Today I talk with the Dyskami Publishing's Founder, Content Creator and anime lover - Mark MacKinnon.

We discuss the Anime 5E Kickstarter, BESM 4th Edition, Absolute Power and the future of Dyskami Publishing.

You can find Mark MacKinnon and all of Dyskami Publishing content via the links below.

Website: https://linktr.ee/dyskami

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dyskami/anime-5e-fifth-edition-fantasy-role-playing-reimagined?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=anime%205e

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dyskami

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Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Mark MacKinnon

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: Tim Cunningham - www.Wix.com

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Transcript

Snyders Return: 0:28

Hello and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing a podcast. If you ever wanted to take your d&d game super sane, have your character open the eight inner gates or channel magic like black clover. The My guest today can kickstart that into reality known for bringing big eyes and small mouths to the gaming table. It is a pleasure to welcome back the man of absolute power to discuss the anime 5g Kickstarter and future of discovery publishing is the wonderful Mark McKinnon. Mark, welcome back to the show.

Mark MacKinnon: 1:00

Thanks so much for having me back on. And I got to say I'm impressed with the number of puns you threw into that intro that was that was pretty good.

Snyders Return: 1:06

I'm still learning still trying. So some of the things that that I've touched on there. We will get into in a large way very shortly. But for those that haven't heard our previous interview, would you mind give us a quick precis of yourself and describe me as a publishing company please? Sure.

Mark MacKinnon: 1:24

As he said, my name is Mark McKinnon. I'm the president of discovery publishing company, also one of the lead designers for a lot of the games or do we're we're a very small micro company based in Canada and Ontario. And we've been known for we started out doing some board games. That's how the company got formed in 2013. And then we moved into doing some licencing with the Sailor Moon crystal licence. We did some tabletop games for that, and are still doing new games for that. And then we ended up going back into role playing so my my business my start in the industry was with big eyes, small mouth first edition back in 1997. So Bassam as it's since been known to to be titled, that was my first game. And I've really found that I enjoyed doing role playing design, or game design is also very interesting. But I think role playing is where some of my strengths are with my background in science and numbers. And so the big eyes, small mouth, eventually getting out of the industry and then coming back in in 2013. It just made sense at some point to get back into role playing so this got me licenced besam, from White Wolf, who owns a property now, and we licence it for them to do a new fourth edition and that kind of kick started so to speak the company back into doing role playing games and since then we've expanded the line. And right now we're running the Kickstarter for anime fivey.

Snyders Return: 2:47

And, you know, mentioned there in the title of the Kickstarter, anime seems to be a huge influence on this on the company and on the projects and games that you produce in pile taking, taking that influences and putting them on to this Kickstarter that you know, I'd love to hear you sort of take us through and and tell us more about how has that been drawing those influence those two? Almost, I won't say opposing but very different influences together. Yeah, well,

Mark MacKinnon: 3:21

I mean, certainly with with anime, I've had a longtime love with anime grew up with Astroboy and Battle of all planets, and all kind of the the standard ones when I was younger. And whenever I was looking at getting into role playing a little bit, it was based on the fact that I wanted to play Rondo, one half, I just love that show. And I thought, Oh, my I got to create a game. So I can play this with my gaming group friends, because it was a lot of fun, and certainly captured my attention. And then it expanded out from there. And I thought, well, you know, if I just make the rules a little more robust, and I have a few more options, suddenly it can incorporate so much more than just ROM it can be an anime role playing game, which, which, of course, on the surface level can be a little bit silly, because anime is is not a particular genre. It's not a show. It's, it's almost a medium. So it's like saying, well, you're going to do the movie role playing game or the television role playing game or the comic role playing game which, which on its surface does not make sense. But of course, there's certain tropes and commonalities that evoke anime feeling. And so when I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons as it is, I'm picturing that I'm in the Lord of the Rings movie. I mean, that's when I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons. It's high fantasy, epic fantasy. But when I'm playing besam or animate ffiv my mind I'm not seeing the Lord of the Rings movies, I'm seeing the famous anime shows. And so my perspective on what the role playing is from an anime point of view, if you can have rules and artwork and the kind of structure that evokes that feeling, even if it's not based on a specific enemy series, that I think that that's kind of what we're trying to go for. That's what we're trying to accomplish, and animate is Of course, hugely popular and it's very, very diverse. The difference between, you know, besom being a multi genre universal game and anime ffiv being specifically fifth edition fantasy anime, you know, there's quite a big difference on that. But they're both trying to evoke the feeling of anime into role playing. Although, as I've said, many times, any game can be an enemy role playing game, if you picture an enemy in your head when you're playing Call of Cthulhu. Or when you're playing starfinder or or vampire any of those games, you can make it an animate game by just pretending it's an animate setting and world. But I think the the feeling that we're going for is hopefully reinforced by the rules and the framework that we're presenting.

Snyders Return: 5:41

Absolutely. I've just had a flash of inspiration for blood, the last vampire, Vampire the Masquerade. But that's, that's well off topic from what we're here to discuss. And that is your hugely successful Kickstarter, I had an email update needs over 300,000. And I'm still claiming to be thrilled.

Mark MacKinnon: 6:02

But yeah, absolutely. I mean, when we were going to launch this, you know, we did big eyes, small mouth, bass on fourth edition, we did that one in 2019. And it was a great resurrection of the game 1700 people 440,000. And so there was clearly a demand for besam to come back, which is, which is excellent. Anime ffiv. I didn't know how it would be taken by the industry. I mean, if you look at Kickstarter, and there are seemingly an endless list of fifth edition type products, whether they're books on monsters books on strongholds and NPC books, and you know, some some actual role playing games as well, based on their fifth edition, open gaming licence. But it's never knowing what's going to strike and what isn't, when you look at the stats, you can get some that are over a million or hitting 2 million, I mean, that they're really really gigantic games. And then you have others that do a couple 1000 or reach a couple 100 people. And that's it. So given that, that we were primarily known as best and fourth edition, we are kind of, I'd say, independent third party publisher, we had not published anything for fifth edition before and so not knowing how it was going to be accepted. Now, what it turned out, was it's vastly popular, we have over 4100 backers, and as you mentioned over three and 1000 us right now. And there's still two weeks to go in the campaign. And when we were only eight days into the campaign, or nine days in, it's it's still more than halfway to go. And we have an incredible volume of people that have clearly told us that they've been waiting for anime Dungeons and Dragons, which of course is interesting because you could play none of the dragons is an anime game, as I already mentioned, but the specific combination of anime and dungeon dragons seem to be calling to people that we're waiting for that. And we're super excited to take not one of the dragons that is fifth edition. It's no it's not d&d, that as a separate game, but fifth edition as the core rule sets with an anime wrapping and an anime feel to it, and bring that out. And it sounds like there's people that have been waiting for that and where you hope that they're really going to get exactly what they want with enemy ffiv.

Snyders Return: 8:08

I mean, yeah, and and the rapping you've mentioned, I want to peel that back and I'm a bit a little bit you just on the the Kickstarter page, which has the wonderful trailer the artwork and has, you know, it mentions 14 races, 14 classes, there's there's attributes, defects and skill points and things like that, would you mind sort of just dipping into each of those, maybe highlighting one or two of each for us, just so people get that, that flavour of really what they can get when they back this? This project? Yeah, absolutely.

Mark MacKinnon: 8:44

So with enemy five, one of the important differentiations that I wanted to stress is that this is a fifth edition game, it's not dungeon dragons. And it's not an expansion to dungeon dragons. It is a standalone game that uses the fifth edition system with some rebalancing through a point based mechanism, or we call it like a reimagined system. And so we also very heavily go into effect space version of it. So if you're into RPG kind of game theory, between effect space versus power based, what we do is we provide the tools and the framework within the the features that the characters can do to have a particular f Something happened and effects for example, flight, I want to fly. So great, then you take the flight ability, but we're not telling you why you're flying, you decide that so it could be I have wings, or I'm using magic, or psyonix or anti gravity powers or some sort of technology of fantasy technology. We don't determine the parameters that's up for you to determine because we want to make sure that you can create the character that you want and a vision that he that you want from your race and class and whatnot, where we are focusing on what the effect is, and that's a little different than than say dungeon dragons with their You know, they will have a Magic Missile and a fireball and a lightning bolt. And they all kind of do a very similar thing they inflict damage upon an opponent. But there are three different abilities where we would have one ability, which would be a weapon, we call it the weapon and you can determine how that weapon manifests according to what you want it to do. So with the going into enemy ffiv with the first and foremost in mind, this is a fifth edition game. It's not Bassam, it's not done as dragons. It's a fifth edition anime game, then what we've tried to do is evoke that feeling through what we're presenting, but we don't want to hit the, I guess the over stereotyped anime. I mean, this is not sub dimensional hammers that you pull out of space and panty shots. And, and all the, the, there's so much that is very trope like an anime and we tried not to go overly far on that. So with the race selections, we do some races that are, you know, kind of a little original a little different than you when you might expect to see an all anime, but it presents a version of an anime racer you can have so one of the things for example, is we have the as right as right are kind of living angels. They're they're Sylvan. Like they're kind of Elvish like they come from, you know, the woodlands and they're very much in tune with nature, but they fly there, they're cute, and they're kind of delicate. So that's, that's a little different, that might not be as common anyway, but then we also have the slime and so you know, that is not been a long time and animate trope, but certainly recently with that time I got reincarnated as a slime as being a very popular anime show you the fact that you can play a slime is a little bit different from say, your your standard fighter or your your standard dwarf, elf, and Hobbit, for example. We also have stuff like you can play very large creatures. And that's something that goes against what a lot of fifth edition deals you can we have races that are very different sizes. So we have the archfiend, which is huge. We're talking 20 to 30 feet tall as a player character race. So you're probably not going to be sitting around in the end drinking beer with the rest of your party members, unless it's a very, very big in. So those are some of the races that we have in terms of classes. Again, we did hit some of the some of the more common anime tropes, we want to make sure that we represented that so not only just animate, but also I guess, maybe more Eastern, so we have like the Ninja and we have the samurai very standard fighting type. But we also have stuff like magical girls, which while usually an anime is done in a modern type settings, be it Sailor Moon or or cardcaptor Sakura. But in this case, you'd be the magical girl in a fantasy setting, which, which still works very well. And we also have something like pet monster trainer. So your standard Pokemon, for example, that you're actually going to be training your monsters, and maybe you're not great at fighting, but you have people are creatures that that come along with you that are going to pinions and these companions can help you do things, as well as some other that are a little bit a little bit off kilter, and something he will not see expect to see in a fifth edition, dungeon crawling type game. So we have something called a broker, which these would be your people that have their merchants, they have great networks of people, they're connected. I mean, if you want something, you're going to go to these people. If you have a party and you have ventures and you have to get equipped, like your your brokers, they can make sure that you have what you need to get going. And so a lot of their abilities are more social, less fighting, because while this is a fifth edition game, this is not a dungeon crawling game, we've tried to expand anime ffiv away from the mind frame, that role playing equals combat in a dungeon, you know, going in killing creatures and taking their stuff. That's fine, if that's what you want to play. There's nothing wrong with that, and certainly very common in a lot of anime as well. But that's not the focus that we're trying to give as a more narrative structure. It's like what about all the time you spend in the city in the village and the countryside and all of the social interactions that you're having that have nothing to do with fighting but there's such a rich tapestry of narrative stories that you can be telling through role playing, which is what it's kind of like our gaming philosophy and I'm trying to bring that to fifth edition and make it less dungeon crawly and more role playing. And so those are some of the the classes and the races that we have to evoke those that animate epic story feel through the anime setting, which is also going to be compatible with your standard fifth edition games should you want to go that route.

Snyders Return: 14:30

And so putting the 2d six to one side if you do play Bozeman and picking up the D 20 and playing one of these archfiend as you mentioned there or one of the others that are of varying size of you you've taken sizing and how that works within the frame of the 5g game. you've applied logic is that fair? You sort of played with the mechanic Should we say?

Mark MacKinnon: 15:00

Yeah, I think I think that's a that's a fair. I mean, I don't, I don't want to say that, you know, a different person's game design was illogical. But what what d&d, or standard fifth edition is evoking maybe a little different than what we were trying to do, because we were trying to represent things that may be a little more concrete or rational approach to doing things. As an example, I mean, a simple thing is size. And this is something that one of the biggest changes in our in our enemy five years probably how we handle size of creatures or characters, which is different than fifth edition. And if someone wants to use the standard fifth edition, we have doing size eight, that that's fine. But we presented the alternate way. And I always look at an example of say, halfling. And in standard fifth edition, so halfling is small. So we're talking about three feet tall, so human being six feet, halfling being three feet. So in standard fifth edition, a human moves at 30 feet per round we're having was 25 feet, so just slightly under. Now, if any of you have ever had kids, you know, certainly when my kids were very small, about three feet tall, there's no way that they could keep up anywhere near with the speed that I would walk, I mean, their little legs would have to be scurrying like crazy, like a little speedy Gonzalez from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. And that's something that we look and say, Well, if you're going to be half the size, your speed is going to be proportionally reduced as well, because your your legs are not going to have as big of a stride. And so a standard small sized player character or creature would have a speed half of 3030 being the base. So they'd be moving at 15 instead of say, 25. And then it's not just size, it's also everything is associated with with movement, we're getting into size, movement and ability in combat. And the example that we use in the book is if you were to stand at one end of the field, and fire a bowl, and you're trying to hit on the other end of the field, a penny, a human and a barn, you know, what could you hit more likely? Well, of course, the barn is much easier to hit because it's larger. So that in that implies that when you are trying to attack something that is large, you have a different chance. And if you're trying to attack something, get a small, I mean, the classic second edition, a d&d power of the dwarves have an advantage to fight against giants. And part of it was, you know, the racial hatred that might go on between them. But it's also I think, the the idea that a very small creature like a dwarf can kind of slide between the Giants legs, and it makes a giant difficult for a giant to hit something small. And we took the sizes, and we'd looked at and said, well, wouldn't it make sense, then, if attacking small things gave you a disadvantage and attacking big things gave you a bonus. And that plays into everything from armour class to damage resistance. So if you do manage to hit say, a ferry, like a couple of inches tall, if I managed to hit a ferry, I'm going to do significantly more damage than I would if I hit another human as an example. So my character and so you're gonna be doing more damage against smaller creatures than you or or less damage against larger creatures. And so our approach to size was I agree, kind of taking with the idea of being a more rational, reasonable approach. And looking at once a real world physics is that gets a little too technical, but something that scales up from a, a logical point of view that if I made a human right now, and I pick up a sword, and suddenly the sword and I grew to being 100 feet tall, or 30 feet tall, or 50 feet tall, that I would still be able to lift that sword if we proportionally increased in weight. Well, in standard fifth edition, I couldn't lift that sword anymore. Because your strength does not scale with your size, which would be you know, say a one eight multiplier because, you know, humans and creatures have length and height and depth to us. So we we are we scale based on eight times. And the system as it currently stands, the fifth edition doesn't really scale in the same way. So certainly, I'm glad you brought up size, because it is one of the biggest differences is probably going to be the one thing most players who were if they're hardcore fifth edition, players are going to say, this is totally different. And I don't like this because it's not what what fifth edition style of play is. But we think presenting something that's a little different and unique presentation allows us to create the game that we wanted to create.

Snyders Return: 19:13

Hmm, and you mentioned style there and and previously in this interview, that that sort of narrative style that flows through sort of really carries the stories beyond just the hack and slash XP gathering that potentially other fifth edition game sort of maybe focus on. So moving slightly away from the point I was trying to make because I lost my thread. If someone has has been listened to this and things know that that sounds like the kind of I want that narrative I want to play with with these new mechanics and see what it's like. And then we'll go to Kickstarter today. What would they get for forbear backing of the project,

Mark MacKinnon: 20:02

yeah, when we offered a number of different pledge tiers as most Kickstarters do, of course, according to what people are looking for. And so our base concept of courses is a printed core role playing game. It's 272, full colour pages, hardcover, I mean, think of as your standard game that you'd buy in a store. And so that's, that's a $50. You know, of course, prices are us. So $50 us is the standard pledge. But if you only wanted a PDF version, and not have to ship the physical product, maybe you just like PDFs more, then it would be half that. So you're looking at 25. And that's kind of the base model. But from there, we have a couple different options, and one of them would be we've produced a pocket edition. So what we did is we took the 272 pages full colour hardcover, shrunk it down to manga sized, made it softcover. And using the uncoated manga like stock, which is a less expensive, more ephemeral paper stock, I guess, it's not meant to have the same durability that a full glossy page does. And by doing that we've managed to do is keep the price down much lower, and the page count goes up. But of course, because it's it's smaller, and it's only softcover, and it's black and white, and the pages aren't glossy. Because of that, we managed to get the book itself as a pocket edition that we're calling it down to $25, or only 13 for the PDF version. So you can come in to enemy five, you can get the full experience at just 13, which will be the PDF in the pocket. Or you can go 25 for the Pocket Edition in print, or 25 for the PDF of the core book 50 for the full edition of the core book. And then beyond that we have expansion products that we that we threw in that some people might want, whether it's a deluxe limited edition signed and numbered with gilded edges and bookmarks and butcher dustjacket. Just a gorgeous addition. And this is something we're not offering to retail store so that you can add on. And we also have a game screen with adventure, we have a character folio. And so some of these other packages, whether they're 100, or 300, depending on kind of what you want to get. It does go above the $50 pledge, although certainly the most popular pledge that we have, is the standard $50 pledge that gives you that that hardcover book that people want, but then very close to it is going to be the the package of $100, which includes the book and the game screen and a pocket edition and a character folio. So it gives you everything you need to kind of get started right away.

Snyders Return: 22:26

Absolutely. And I've backed it for the Pocket Edition. softcover because that sounded too cool to turn down. Though it sounded brilliant to me anyway. And as with with other Kickstarters, do you have trouble the stretch goal was to unlock and things like that, or is that just tied into the tears of pledging?

Mark MacKinnon: 22:46

Yeah, no, we certainly do have stretch goals. The way we run Kickstarters is we come up with what we consider a fair kind of minimum pledge amount, then we thought, Well, if we can get $10,000 from our backers, then that will give us enough to do a moderate sized print, run and get the game out into market. And then we'd end up getting some additional sales when it gets into retail stores and PDF sales on Drive Thru RPG. So we thought 10,000 was was a minimum. And if we hit that, that's we could go ahead and produce the game. And hopefully there'll be enough people that would want that, of course, you always hope you're going to reach more audience just the way any manufacturer product, you're going to want to hopefully sell more. And so what we did is we came up with stretch goals so that if we receive more funds that exceeds what we consider our minimum, then we can give more back to the the pledges that the backers that supported us, we want to give back to that. And it was we started out, we thought Oh, this is great, we have a couple of stretch goals here and there. And then it really started taking off and going up from our minimum of 10,000 up to 300,000. Now, that was a huge number of stretch goals that we've have. So we have about 30 different stretch goals unlocked already. With more coming every time we meet a new stretch goal, we put a new one up, and our backers knock it down and reach that tier. And so we put up with another one and our backers reach that one as well. So we're offering a lot of additional content, whether it's digital, a lot of a lot of digital extra stuff we're going to be providing after the Kickstarter, there's been physical upgrades to the book, whether it's the you know, for some cover finishes, or some additional nice nice bookmarks that we're going to be attaching with bookmark ribbons to keep your place. So it's kind of a combination of physical upgrades as well as digital upgrades and additional content. And then you know, with two weeks left in the campaign, we're gonna be unlocking some really interesting things going forward. We have free product that people can can get that we pledge a certain levels entire other games, because it was unlocked at a certain level we're going to be looking at doing some some more innovative things come in the future be a poster that we shipped a printed bookmark. There's so many stretch goals because the community has rallied together to really support this and we want to make it as good as we can for everyone. is back the project?

Snyders Return: 25:01

Absolutely. And I'm looking forward to getting more emails and more updates and finding out as the campaign the project develops. And you mentioned there the future. So, clearly this anime ffiv project has really caught the imagination and sort of is, is progressing tremendously well. And being well supported. What does that mean for you currently she's like, as I'm 40, and other things should have coming in the future. Where Where are you as a company with those products?

Mark MacKinnon: 25:38

Yeah, and that's a great question. Because we we have a timeline, and we know release schedule and projects we've been working on for a while. So when someone sees something promoted, or put on Kickstarter, that's after, you know, months, years of development work that goes into those, of course, and we had the plan for 2021. And we have some of the outlines of plans for 2022, what we're trying to do when we're a small company, of course, there's not a lot of resources we had in terms of human capital, we use a lot of freelancers for doing writing, and artwork, and then I do a lot of design work as well. And so we had the plan. And of course, you know, with the success of the enemy 5g Kickstarter, we're going to have to revisit that plan and take a look like, Well, clearly, there's a desire for this product. So how do we support that going forward, as well as other plans. So just looking at the timeline that we have for 2021. Once Of course, this was the releasing at the Kickstarter in the spring, we're going to be sending out PDFs shortly after the Kickstarter ends. And then the idea of getting this printed, and it would be a fall release, that was kind of always the project for enemy ffiv. But during the summer, we actually are going to be doing a crowdfunding campaign for what we call tribes that micro games or mini games. So what we did is we took the tri stat system, which is the underlying system used in bessant fourth edition, that's kind of our game. It's not fifth edition, it's twice that system. And we came up with three different mini games surrounding those. So one of them is called Pixies where you're playing, you know, basically Pixies that live in a house and you know, you can think of the borrower's or era Yeti, it's along those lines, it's not not anime, this is just a tryst that system games where you're going to be paying playing we creatures living in a human world. That was one of them. The second we have is called worms. And what this is, is you're playing dragons, just giant dragons. And think of it we kind of elevator pitch it as kind of a Voltron Highlander cannibal dragons. It's a little complex, but you're going to be playing dragons that, you know, you and the other people in the party can combine into the giant worm, which is there's only a few of those in the world, and they are all trying to eliminate each other. And so it is a game that's going to involve a very different perspective, or you're playing a dragon. And that is what the game is all the player characters of dragons. And then the third of the first three of these mini games is called demon ecity. And this is where you're a group of human or human like people who are going in and you're trying to stop a demon invasion of a city. And so demon essity, you're going in there, you might have some demon like powers, and you're fighting against the coming evil darkness. And so those three games are each box sets, they each come with rule sets, and some scenarios, some player characters pre genitori rated already. And these are designed to kind of pick up and go with it right away. Unlike best and fourth edition, which is our current release of the most recent tristesse system, where that is a multi genre universal system that is designed to handle everything. And in any setting, these mini games are very specific to a very specific type of setting. So Pixies is all about being small. And living in a human world. I mean, that's a much more restricted setting. And so these minigames are a way for us to take the try stat system, as presented in Bassam and have a different expression of it, with some some new ways of looking at the rules and some new presentations. We think it's a very interesting line of doing it this way. And so those three are going to be crowdfunded in the summer, and that'll be sometimes released by the end of the year. And then moving forward. The other big project that we had for 2021 is absolute power. And this is our superhero role playing game that uses again, the underlying tri state system that's in best and fourth edition, but it takes it up, you know, turn it up to dial 11 effectively, because it is you know, superheroes are much bigger and grander than most anime characters. So that's not to say you can't have your Dragonball Z style, which are obviously hugely powerful. But when you're playing people on the Avengers level at the JLA level, you're playing superheroes. Third, they're going to be bigger and more powerful and grander than what's typical in most anime. And so what we're doing is when we We being the previous company that I was involved with. So we did Silverlight sentinels, which was a game that came out in 2001. This was a superhero game at the time, it used the tri state system, but I use an early earlier implementation of it. And it was a really great superhero game. Well, it's now 20 years later, and the world from silvery sentinels has progressed 20 years as well. And so the setting has advanced as I'm like best on, which doesn't really have like a concrete built in setting, the absolute power does have a setting and that is the the world of absolute power. And the reason why the name has changed, it's not silver, it's no second addition, it is absolute power, which kind of reflects during these 20 years of progress of the world, that the heroes are always pushed to grab just a little more power to keep people safe. And it's the comes from the the old expression about how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the heroes are under this constant pressure to be bigger and faster and more brutal, and to just grab more power so that they can defeat the the villains and the world, the world crushing threats that come up. And so this is a really good expansion on what were presented in Besant fourth edition, but it's just on a bigger and grander scale. So this is a game that we've been putting a lot of resources in over the past year to rewrite the the historical section as it moves forward over this 20 years where some of the characters have died. Some of them have, you know, changed sides. And it's a really great progression with with an excellent cast of NPCs built in. So that one we're looking at crowdfunding by the end of the year and that's probably going to be early ish 2022 release. So that was the that was the plan for this year. We also have a couple more things that I can't talk about. We have some licenced stuff licenced anime that we're probably gonna be working on. We're just finalising some details on some of those anime licences. So we had a number of products planned. And then of course, anime five he was originally like, Well, here's the core book. And here's the game screen, here's the folio. And that could be the entire line if it was not six overly successful on Kickstarter. Great, we produced a great game, and we're happy with it. But now of course, well how do we support the people that are going to want that built in support frenemy fivey the one advantage a really big advantage and a five he has is because it built on Fifth Edition. And because it integrates with all other fifth edition products, there is such a wealth of expansions and supplements and rules and settings that people wanted to get another monster for anime ffiv or they want to get a kingdom for anime ffiv. There's a wealth of information out there. And so we're really happy that we have a game that we've created that is already has that built in support. But of course, you know, yes, we believe that we can present it in a slightly different way by doing our own anime ffiv style expansions. And that's going to be something that we're retooling. And looking at how do we support all of our lines moving forward, given the capacity for our company, we're never going to be the size of wizard the coast or Fantasy Flight or, or whatever. It's not ever going to be a large company. That's not where we are. We are a small company, but we produce mighty stuff.

Snyders Return: 33:17

Absolutely. Not thrown another pun there unintentionally. And you've just mentioned that you're going from the very small Pixies to the molecule luminesce t, which is certainly one that caught my eye. I've written that down absolute power. Again, I'll be looking for that at the end of the year. But what about, what about besam itself? And recently came out is that is there anything on the horizon? To continue to support that core line?

Mark MacKinnon: 33:48

Yeah, it's actually a little embarrassing forgetting about pasand fourth edition, which is our flagship at this point. So yeah, let me let me talk a little bit that I appreciate the, the introduction. So when we released the first wave through the very first Kickstarter, it was it was six products that we have seven if you put the primer. And so that was a foundational, really strong launch that we're happy with. But we knew we had to follow it up with another core product. Think of it as an essential book of options, the essential being, you're going to want to get this but they're optional. You don't have to use everything in it. And that was called besam extras. And so when we did the most recent Kickstarter for best and fourth edition as an expansion package, that was back in November of 2020. And so what that was, was we had besam extras, which is a book of option roles. We had an NPC book, we had a dice tower, we had several different products and enemies, which are these flat mini miniatures, like cardboard standees. So we created a package of six expansion products for best and fourth edition. So within a very short period of time, Bassam in terms of what people can get in stores and get in their hands went from zero products for the past decade, to more than a dozen products. within a very short period of time, we want to do more and we have more planned. But we also thought, well now we have so much out there that we produce a really strong launch of the line. Let's take a step back to work on some of these other projects that we have. Knowing that we still need to do more work for Besson. But because of the ramp up of time that we needed, we wanted to make sure that we were doing it correctly and giving fans what they needed, and also not over committing resources in areas that weren't working. So the next big bestselling book is called the best of multiverse. And this is our setting book. So we go into the best of multiverse, overall framework and introduction to it in besam core book The fourth edition, but what we're going to do is do a separate standalone book about the multiverse which goes into each of the prime worlds and the and the the outer worlds, which is kind of like a concentric rings of different genres and worlds and all these different worlds not only are just a setting, but they also represent a genre as well. So basil Roth, for example, has a world this is your world of demons, but it also serves as a genre for anime, which is the horror genre, or we have Icarus, which is a high fantasy high magic sword and sorcery style setting, but it's also the fantasy setting book. And so what we're going to be doing is taking all of these and expanding out in the best of multiverse. But we're not coming out with that immediately because we first of all had some foundational things to lay for other games like anime ffiv, and the tristate games, but also wanted to make sure that we had the right people working on the project and we've since found those which is great. So we have people lined up to work on that and that's going to be more released in the best and fourth edition line coming out in 2022. We don't really have any larger projects for specifically for besam plan for 21. But these because it uses the try stat system the three different try stat mini games, and the worms and Pixies and demon essity. They are they can integrate very well with your fourth edition. And same with absolute power. Although it's at a higher power scale. The what we presenting in there also integrates with best and fourth edition and you know superheroes and anime go really well together in my Hero Academia for example. So the those all the tri stacking is the advantage of using a single system the same way that fifth edition works for all the things related to fifth edition. trice that system as a foundational system allows us to create new and interesting expansions in games that also serve as expansions for the existing best and fourth edition. And so while a specific besam book, a new print product might not be coming out in 2021. We have a lot of support product coming out with other TriState games. But I will say one thing that we've decided to do with Kickstarter when we released the six products in November is in retail stores, we decided not to flood six products in February all into the retail stores at once. So in terms of our retail exposure, we are of those six were releasing two in february two in April and then two in June. So kind of a bit of a staggered release to extend the life cycle in the retailer field taking those six products that we have and kind of stretching out a little bit so it's something that you know, if we had the capacity we could have been doing more for him of course, but I think that we are pivoting in a very interesting way to do better for the tri state system which ultimately I think will benefit the the best on fans as well.

Snyders Return: 38:29

Absolutely. And internet couple of times the company itself and and your releases. So something we haven't done in this interview is where can we find yourselves on social media and on the internet in general?

Mark MacKinnon: 38:43

Yeah, so we're discussing DYSK EMI is our name and actus gami is our kind of our default, whether it's a Twitter handle or Instagram, if you look up the scummy on Facebook, you'll see us discovery.ca we're Canadian companies and not.com but discovery.ca is our company website. And then we've also have some like anime ffiv calm that is a kind of a redirection and best some for best the number for besam for dot life. We thought Besson for life would be kind of a funny way of putting it but besam for life. So that is a redirect as well. So at this gamete we're certainly very common it's not a it's not a normal English usage name we know that it's discovered he has some foreign language interpretations of it from Polish I believe, but if you just look up disgusts me on any of the socials, we're active on Facebook, certainly active on Twitter, and Instagram. And also there is the although it's not done by us there is a very, very active try stat community for betsson community on Discord. So it's a try stat fan server and we link to it from our website, if anyone's curious about that. So yeah, there's there's lots of different resources where people can go and connect with other people in the community that are best and players or try stat players and give a lot of logic Vice it's such a great welcoming, welcoming and inclusive community that is so great to help each other. because really that's why we do all this is to make sure that that that community connection is so important for us and so we're we're just love to see it happening online in so many places.

Snyders Return: 40:16

Yeah, absolutely. And I for one, I'm a member of that discord community. So if you want to come and say hi to me, I'm there as well. Self pike. So having sort of gone through what makes up anime fivey, the Kickstarter and all this all good things and all the amazing things that you're doing with describe me and the production bring out what was been your, your favourite part of stick with? Stick with me? fivey? What has been your favourite part of that to develop? Or what would be a character, for instance, that you would create within the system? Yeah,

Mark MacKinnon: 40:54

that's a really good question. I mean, what I really liked about the the creation is it's not so much the specifics of the character because I mean, while I love many of the races and the classes, a lot of it just really comes down to the the point base integration of fifth edition and then deconstructing what fifth edition was down to its its fundamental pieces, and then building a whole game anime ffiv backup from those fundamentals from a balanced point based approach on it. And it was just fascinating when you start getting into it and digging into the details and the ramifications of you know, x plays with y, which plays with z. And here's how all these things interact with each other. It just creates a fascinating way to to create an RPG based on these balanced and internally consistent ways of looking at things. But if I was to choose, you know, one enemy ffiv race that I love, it has to be the slime and I'm a really big slime fan. And so I always thought that at playing something like an ESA k student who's a slime obviously, that's very much within the lines of the reincarnated anime, but there's so many different ways to take the races and the classes and putting them together in in fascinating place. But I'd say a slime pet pet monster trainer, and then the pet monsters would actually be humans, I think would be just an incredibly fun character to play. So So yeah, I think that's what I'd like to do.

Snyders Return: 42:16

Now that sounds sounds a lot of fun and brilliant. Mark, it's, it's been such a pleasure to have you back on the show. And I'd love to have you back on later in the year, perhaps, to discuss absolute power or the other mini TriStar games you've mentioned, if you'd be willing to come back again.

Mark MacKinnon: 42:35

Yeah, I have a great time every time I'm talking with you. And I really appreciate the invitation and chance to to reach out to your community of listeners about some of the stuff that we're doing. And we think we're worth keeping an eye on so so thanks. I love the idea to come back.

Snyders Return: 42:48

Yeah, no, definitely, definitely semi invitation out near the time. So it has been an absolute pleasure. So I look forward to the Kickstarter is successful completion and receiving my copy and get into play with my group. genuinely excited to see how this all plays out.

Mark MacKinnon: 43:08

Thank you. Thank you very much. And, you know, I hope everyone will will take a look at Anime ffiv.com

Snyders Return: 43:13

Thank you very much. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snow's return.squarespace.com Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter. At Return Snyder, you have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon. And we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you