Roll Play Grow: A TTRPG Business Podcast
Roll Play Grow is a TTRPG interview podcast for entrepreneurs, creators, and fans within the tabletop roleplay gaming space. We interview the faces behind the TTRPG brands in the community to learn how they turned their passion for the ttrpg industry into a career, and turn their advice into actionable tips.
Roll Play Grow: A TTRPG Business Podcast
096: Making a Map Puzzle Cube with Nathan of Attention Deficit & Dragons
In this episode, we sit down with Nathan Doyle, the game designer behind 'Attention Deficit and Dragons'. Nathan discusses his early gaming experiences, from playing Super Mario Bros. and Candyland to discovering tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. He shares his journey from being a player to a game designer, detailing his contributions to the DMs Guild and the evolution of his projects. We dive deep into his upcoming project, 'Laszlo's Cubed Crypt', a unique adventure featuring a puzzle cube, discussing its development process, challenges, and future plans. Nathan also highlights the joys and difficulties of working on collaborative projects in the RPG industry.
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Welcome back, friends! I am here with the game designer behind Attention Deficit and Dragons, Nathan Doyle. How's it going, Nathan? Amazing. We are also joined by some very pretty birds.
Nathan:They will make noises occasionally.
Courtney:Yes, I get to enjoy watching them in the background. I'm sorry to my listeners that you don't get to see them, but they're very pretty. So Nathan, to kick things off, I would like to know what is the very first game you remember playing?
Nathan:I think the very first game that I remember playing is probably Super Mario Bros. However, I'm pretty sure that I probably played Pac Man on an arcade console before that, but I don't remember it. But yeah, the original Super Mario Bros. I was bad at it, because I was 4.
Courtney:Yeah, I have never been able to be good at platformers, despite starting when I was like eight. Does not work for me. I am so bad at jumping and hitting the target. Mm
Nathan:Yeah, the first one wasn't as bad as the second one that never even came out in America until much, much later, Super Mario Bros., probably Duck Hunt also.
Courtney:Mm hmm.
Nathan:Had the classic zapper.
Courtney:I do remember Duck Hunt, yeah. What about board game?
Nathan:first board game I remember playing was Candyland. Not really much of a board game, but I mean it is. It's a board game for children, and that is exactly an apt description of it
Courtney:yeah, I think Candyland and Hi Ho Cheerio are the first ones I can remember.
Nathan:I remember having seen HiHo Cheerio, but I don't, I don't remember ever playing it, or knowing the rules to it. I remember there were a bunch of cherries, and like little barrels, and you, you put them in the barrels, or you took them out of the barrels. You had a tree?
Courtney:Yeah, yeah, I do remember like picking up the little cherries out of the tree, but that's kind of all I remember.
Nathan:Like I remember playing with the pieces to that game, but I don't think I ever played that game. As a kid, I, I, part of my attention deficit, I, I liked to play with the pieces of board games, and I didn't always put them back. I probably ruined several of my family members board games. I feel bad about that now, in hindsight, as an adult. I don't think that any of those board games had dice after I got through it.
Courtney:So you became a dice goblin very young is what I'm hearing.
Nathan:Oh no, I became a dice misplacer very young.
Courtney:Ah,
Nathan:I didn't keep the dice, I just lost them.
Courtney:awesome. Okay, so let's transition into tabletop RPGs. I'd love to hear about just your story and how it's evolved from playing them into designing them.
Nathan:2nd Edition when I was about 8 years old. My half brother, I don't know, I think he was like 15 or 16 at the time. He played a bunch of 1st edition when he lived up in Alaska with his friends. Then when he moved back here to Oregon that's right when 2nd edition came out, and he bought the 2nd edition books pretty much right when they came out. And then introduced me and my step brother to the game. And he's two years older than me. So it was just basically, it was the three of us. My half brother was the dungeon master. Me and my step brother, we played. I was a fighter. I don't remember my character's name, because that was a really long time ago. But I do remember that my character used a flail, because the previous year I went to Medieval Times. And the Green Knight, who was on my side, I was in his area, used a flail, and I thought that was really cool. And that's, that's how Dungeons Dragons works for kids. It's like, hey, this is cool, so that's what I'm gonna do. So I was a fighter with a flail. And then, kind of, didn't really play a whole lot after that until, like, I got to high school. And that was still second edition, because third edition didn't come out until, like, my senior year. But yeah, 3rd edition was basically when I started DMing.
Courtney:When did you start writing?
Nathan:Writing in general, like, I mean, aside from the stuff that we were always required to do in school, writing reports, writing this, writing that, I kind of always, like, enjoyed, like, I always enjoyed fantasy games, I enjoyed sci fi games, a lot of video games, and then stuff, and so, like, I kind of always wrote. I thankfully do not have copies of any of the stuff, but I, I know for a fact that when I was in middle and high school that I wrote several Star Wars fanfics that I am, I am thankful that there was no social media platforms at the time to remember that garbage for all time. Absolutely glad that that stuff is not preserved to come back and haunt me nowadays
Courtney:I mean, there definitely were forums. Are you saying you didn't post on any
Nathan:Oh, no, no I I did not know about if ao3 existed then did not know about it back then and I am glad think the closest thing that might randomly have some stuff if it still exists There was a website called polycarbon an artist by the name patrick shuttlesworth There were kind of very inspirational for me when I was in high school. They had forums. People did roleplays, people did other stuff there. There's, if that forum is archived somewhere, there might be something. Please don't go looking for it. You, you won't like what you find at all. You'll spend hours to find like Middling 3 out of 10 garbage. Not worth the effort.
Courtney:I remember elementary school, middle school, I was a horse girl, I actually like had a horse. And there was a forum for like, writing stories about horses, like, as the horses, and I could not tell you what the name of this forum was, and that's probably a good thing, because I know I contributed to it. And I'm just like I am literally remembering this for the first time in several years, so thank you for that. I am, cannot even imagine how god awful that was. The things that we do when we are young.
Nathan:I can imagine, trust me.
Courtney:Anyways so you started playing third edition in high school, I think you said.
Nathan:Yeah, the When 3rd edition came out, because that was right after Watsi purchased it and had been developing 3rd edition and they wanted people to like really get into it, and so like the first printings of the 3rd edition books were$20 each, and that was like nice. It was basically a college textbook size, manual, and they were 20 bucks each. And yeah, they came out like my, basically when I was my last year in high school. I was a senior in 2001. The real class of the new millennium. All those 2000s, that was the last year of the old millennium.
Courtney:Hmm.
Nathan:Yeah. Also as a random aside. 83 is when the Millennials start. 81s and 82s aren't Millennials. I don't care what anybody says. They were adults before the new Millennium started. Ergo, not Millennials.
Courtney:I'm like right smack dab in the middle of the millennial generation, regardless of what you want to call it. I feel like I got the end of pre internet, like I was old enough for that, but then also had my first cell phone by sophomore year of high school. Now like six year olds have cell phones, but whatever. It's fine.
Nathan:Yeah, no, I know. I remember a handful of kids in high school had those little Nokia flip phones. And some of them even had Snake on their phone.
Courtney:Ohhhhh
Nathan:Yeah, back then I was still lucky if I had my Tetris watch. Although, not gonna lie, the Tetris watch was pretty cool.
Courtney:I don't I think the Tetris Watch was before my time.
Nathan:Tiger Electronics had those little games where, like, they were really simple, and, and yeah, the Tetris one was actually pretty faithful to Tetris, but yeah, no, I had a Tetris watch at one point. I probably had to turn in, like, five box tops from Honey Nut Cheerios. Send 14. 95 or something to get it, because that was how things worked back in the day.
Courtney:Like, oh god, box tops? Like, do they do that anymore?
Nathan:Now there's box tops for education. If you bring in the box tops from like craft products, I believe, you get like a nickel for your school or something, because, you know, heaven forbid, craft just donate that money anyways. Let's make people do work, and then we'll be philanthropists.
Courtney:Huh.
Nathan:Yeah,
Courtney:Giving back the money that they already paid for it. Anyways!
Nathan:yeah
Courtney:so at what point did you start publishing?
Nathan:I think yeah 2019 was when I did the the storytellers collective which at the time was called the RPG Writer's Workshop. I, I signed up for their class, did the thing, got some free art for it, did their little classes, and then I published online my, my first Dungeons Dragons adventure for 5th edition. The Tower of the Elementalist. It had its own maps. I made them myself. In the style of Dyson Logos because I'm, I'm into that old school black and white look.
Courtney:Yeah. Looking at your name on DMs Guild, you have either contributed to or been the main designer behind looks like 35 items that are on DMs Guild.
Nathan:It's, it's technically a lower number than that because on the DMs Guild, the, there's There's a separate thing for an item and then the Fantasy Grounds version. So, So, anything that has a Fantasy Grounds version, those are the same item, but they're two separate entries. So it's probably closer to like two dozen or so.
Courtney:Yeah. Still, that's a lot. Especially if you didn't really start until 2019. I'd love to just dig in a little bit to kind of the evolution of the things that you've published and, you know, from like where you started and things that you learned along the way, how you adapted, how you work on your different projects.
Nathan:The first thing I did was an adventure. I learned after that and after like working on some of my other like Collaborations with people i've did collaborations with like subclasses items and whatnot all for fifth edition and that's kind of when I learned that adventures don't actually sell very well compared to other things because and like at the time I didn't really think about it, but like from a mathematical perspective If a game has four players and one Dungeon Master, the people buying the adventure is only 20 percent of the market. And while the Dungeon Master would have to approve any subclasses or magic items, players will buy the other books, will buy subclass stuff, and then show it to their DM and be like, Yeah, can I play this? Or like, they'll get a magic item book and they're like, I would like this, do you think it's balanced? And so like, there are certain things where more than 20 percent of the audience is buying them. And so, that's an inherent problem with adventures. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing them. I, I like writing the adventures. There's more of a story involved. Whereas a book of magic items, sure, the items can have a story behind the item, but like, at most, they're going to be a paragraph or five. Whereas the adventure can be a full story. And I like writing stories. I've, you know, considered trying to like, maybe write novels also, but finding the time to do even what I do is difficult. But yeah, that's pretty much the evolution. Products for more than one out of five people is good. And I know that, also from a certain standpoint, I shouldn't write products, write things for other people. That's kinda how you lose passion in it. You gotta write stuff for yourself. Which is why I still write adventures, because I like writing adventures. Even though only one person out of five at a table was buying them. And that's okay. I've come up with other ideas for things that, you know, would be able to involve other people. Some stuff I have no idea how to go about producing or releasing them. But, you know, there's a lot of stuff. A lot of ideas. I never stop thinking of things. It's actually my curse because sometimes I will think of something new before I've finished another idea and then I'll just add a half written document to the folder of 30 other half written documents. When I mentioned that the other day on the other Show I was on. They, they jokingly took it as a personal attack because I, I feel like they've done the same thing. I, I think a lot of us creatives have attention deficit disorder of some kind and do something similar.
Courtney:You know, it's always about like the new shiny thing over there
Nathan:Right?
Courtney:yeah,
Nathan:Do a shiny thing.
Courtney:it's so hard to focus.
Nathan:that makes that quasi energy drink. Five hour energy. It's like, when are they gonna make five hour motivation? Or five hour pay attention to one thing. Okay, that last one is Adderall, but still.
Courtney:That's fair. Like that one kind of exists, but motivation, five hour motivation, yeah, I could absolutely use that. Yeah.
Nathan:I think everybody probably could.
Courtney:Yeah. So I do think that that is. It's an interesting, I don't know, about the fact that while, yes, it's probably going to be more fun to write things that are targeted towards DMs. It's a lot harder to tell for them. Yeah. Like, I know the first thing that we published was an adventure and so, you know. Didn't really know much about DMs Guild, and it was kind of the same thing. And then it started to go into maps, which are still targeted towards DMs, but at least they're pretty.
Nathan:Well, the thing with maps everyone likes a good map, and I can say from like, I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm not discouraging people from buying maps. And I'm not discouraging people from buying map products. But I can definitely say that I have purchased more map products than I have ever used, and that I probably could ever use.
Courtney:Mm hmm.
Nathan:Like, I've got a bunch of those Lok, Lok or Loki, I don't know if the, the E is pronounced. Battle maps, big, big, big books that just are fold out, and then they're actual, you just have them on the table. I've got five decks of, like, Atmar's cartography collection cards, where you just pull all the cards out and then you just make a map on the fly, although they're not big enough to use as the actual dungeon map. I've got some wooden, actual uses battle map battle mat tile things maps that have a bunch of random stuff, but it also explicitly comes with all the pieces necessary to do the the starter kit adventure. The Lost Mine of Phandelver. So like, it has tiles to do that entire module, which is cool. And then it has other stuff, and then you can just mix and match for your other thing. I'm also a big fan of buying board games that effectively have those things. I have Descent I have the the Star Wars one, Imperial Assault, if I ever run a sci fi game. Or if I ever just run a Star Wars game, I have a whole bunch of Stormtroopers. I actually have two copies of that game because I put one in the closet and forgot that I had it and then bought another one. So now I have twice as many Stormtroopers.
Courtney:Yeah. I have definitely thought about that because we've got most of the WizKids games
Nathan:Oh yeah, no, those, those are great. Cause like, they're a board game on their own and you've got minis that you can use for the game. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the minis are the exact same ones that you get in the blind boxes.
Courtney:Yes, it's like you've got all of that and it's just like, oh, it's the same story. Just a board game. Sweet. Accessories.
Nathan:Yeah. Although, for some reason you have to pay more on the board games to get the painted minis. When I think most people would prefer to get the unpainted minis, what do I know? I know that at one point we definitely preferred the getting the painted, the pre painted minis, but now my wife has actually gotten into painting minis. So now we definitely don't want to get the pre painted minis.
Courtney:it's all just personal preference.
Nathan:Yeah, also we run into this new problem of that's the we still buy minis faster than my wife can paint them.
Courtney:Mm hmm. Funny how that happens.
Nathan:Yeah, I hear it happens to Warhammer players too.
Courtney:Oh, God. That is one hobby that I refuse to get into because I do not have the money for it.
Nathan:Well, I mean, some of the minis work great for Dungeons Dragons. There's a bunch of really good Lizardfolk minis. And, like, you know, if you want your skeletons or zombies to have, like, an Egyptian theme, there's, there's a faction for that. So, you don't have to get into Warhammer, but you can buy the minis.
Courtney:Stop. I don't have money. You don't need to be more tempted.
Nathan:Buy the minis.
Courtney:Back to D& D stuff.
Nathan:D& D stuff. Right, right.
Courtney:So I know that you have also got some collaborations with some different folks, and so I'd love to learn about, how you got connected in the space and like, different collaborations going.
Nathan:it, it, so the way that I got connected in the space and all the collaborations going was at one point in time, while trying to like promote my stuff on Twitter, back when it was still called that, back when it wasn't set on fire, and all the other things. I, I don't remember exactly what led into it, but the conversation came up about editors, and Basically, I, you know, someone had said like, oh, you should always have an editor. You should never edit your own stuff because you're Blind to your own mistakes and that's completely right I completely agree but like You know and then like I just threw in the question of like well What if you're just like some one person and you're just doing your stuff? How do you how do you find an editor? How do you afford an editor? And they mentioned that like well for people doing stuff on the dms guild like you had done There is a discord and there are People who are willing to do the editing for a royalty share instead of payment up front. And that's, that's pretty much how I got introduced to a lot of the people that I've wound up collaborating with because the server, the Discord server, has been pretty much a godsend. It's a little bit less active now than it used to be, but, you know, Wizards has tried to rescind the OGL and sent Pinkertons to people. Can't seem to go three or four months without doing some kind of a colossal PR nightmare for themselves. So there's that, but yeah. So I've met a lot of people and done a lot of collaborations with people who are willing to work for a royalty share instead of needing to be paid up front. Now a lot of times people will still want to be paid up front and that's completely valid. Or paid upon completion and will not want to do a royalty share for like really big projects because like, you know. It's one thing if you're doing like Royalty share on editing for an adventure that's maybe 20, 25 pages. But it's another thing to do a royalty share for a project. That's 350 pages, because then if that project doesn't do well, the person will have done 350 pages worth of editing work, maybe 20 bucks across the year in royalties, and that's not really worth everyone's time. So some stuff is more. Feasible for that kind of thing, and other things are not. And it's just kinda, sometimes you can find people who are willing to do it, especially people starting out. Like, you can probably find people who don't have a lot of experience, who are willing to work for RoyaltyShare to get the experience and get their name out there, and there's nothing wrong with that. Just, obviously you don't want to get a reputation for like, abusing those people. I've seen a couple of pretty bad faith things where like, you know, someone's like, Ah, paying two cents a word. And we'll own it in perpetuity. And it's like, how about no? But, so some people will do that, I don't. I try to, you know, If I'm, if I'm gonna own something in perpetuity that someone else wrote, I'm, I'm gonna try to make sure I offer them at least a quarter a word for the writing. Editing is a little bit of a different story but yeah. But there have been several projects where I've done stuff for royalty shares, and then other projects that I've led, and the people involved got royalty shares, and they've been pretty good. Sometimes more successful than others, sometimes very successful. One of the projects I was on, the Tasha's Cauldron of everything else. Not Cauldron, Crucible. We went with Crucible because the official one was Cauldron. And that's been a thing that they've done on the DM's Guild, was they'll do Name of person whose book just came out, different word, everything else, it's a theme, it works. And that, that one did pretty well. I wrote a bunch of the things in that, and then a bunch of the stuff that didn't get chosen in that, I got to just work with them and put them into other products. So, and that's, that's the other thing. If people, you know, if you write something for it and then you don't get chosen, you still have done that writing and you can still use that.
Courtney:I think that that's really good advice. Like I know I've, I've been in that discord server for a while, kind of lurking since my stuff is a little more uncommon, but I do think that there, it's been a really good way to make connections. Same with like the drive thru RPG one, if you're not wanting to be specifically on DMs Guild. Hey, entrepreneurs. I love introducing you to new creators every episode, but I could really use your support. I would love to invite you to join our Patreon page where you'll gain access to behind the scenes content. Add your questions to upcoming interviews, and you could even receive a shout out on our site in an upcoming episode. To learn more, go to lightheart adventures.com/rpg and now back to the show. I want to switch gears now and talk about the upcoming project, Laszlo's Cubed Crypt. So let's start by having you introduce what it is and then we'll kind of get into some more specifics.
Nathan:so, at its core, the baseline, Laszlo's Cubed Crypt is an adventure that I've written to go with a prop that I made. The prop is a puzzle cube. We all know what kind of a cube it is, but I have to be careful about saying that name because that name is trademarked and so I can't actually advertise it as that because legally and officially it's not that. It's a puzzle cube. But we all know what kind of a puzzle and what kind of a cube it is. So, the, the map that was chosen on it was, is designed to be on a cube. It's, it's, it cannot be mapped properly on a two dimensional plane, which has its own advantages if you force your players to draw their own maps, and don't actually show them the cube. That will basically create this weird headache for them, and something else for them to solve instead of solving the puzzle itself. But it basically, it just started, like I, I have one of my players He has several puzzle cubes and he really likes them. I don't know if he's good at solving them, but I know that he has like five or six of them and he likes them. He likes puzzles in general and has a bunch of other puzzle things including, but not limited to, the puzzle cube. So when I saw that I'm like, hey, I can print that map because the map was never meant to be on a puzzle cube. It was just meant to be a cube. It was one of Dyson Logos Like, free for commercial use maps, but like, because at the time, I was looking for a map, just, like, I was just looking around through it, and I thought, I'm like, oh, I can use this in my home game with my players, and so I did that, and I'm like, hey, I'll put this on a cube for that player, and then, after I made it, I'm like, hey, you know, Dyson Logos would probably want to see this, made a little video of it, posted it on Twitter, tagged him, and then he retweeted the post, So now everybody who follows him could see it, and then when I woke up the next day, I had like hundreds of Twitter posts of people saying, Oh that's cool, oh where can I get one, or the Futurama Fry meme, where it's the go ahead and take my money, and I'm just like, Oh, I guess I could do a thing with this, and there's at least a hundred people interested. And so, that's where it became a project, that's where it became a product. I very much like to distinguish that, like, when I make stuff, it's a product. It's not homebrew. I very much want to put my foot down that homebrew is something that you make for your own gain. And not necessarily for others. And that, if you're making it for others, then it becomes a product. Even if it's free, it's still a product. I, I don't make homebrew. I do make homebrew. But like, when I'm selling something, I'm not selling homebrew. I'm selling a product. And so like, there's kind of a little bit higher of a Standard. I can't just, you know, come up with whatever I want and sell it. I mean, I can, but that's not always good. But I thought I got off track. So, I started looking into stuff for making this into a product. And then this was right around the time that Wattsy tried to rescind the OGL. And so there was a brief period of time where I was worried that I would not be able to make a product of it. Because I predominantly write for 5th edition. Which required the use of the OGL and then, so, during the course of this, I basically, I got permission from Dyson Logos to just sell the Puzzle Cube by itself. If necessary, because normally his non commercial license rules say that you can't, you can't just put it on something and then just sell it. So, I mean, while people probably wouldn't want to just do a t shirt with one of his maps, you can't just do a t shirt with one of his maps. You can't just put his maps on a poster and then just sell those posters for people to use as battle maps. Because that's not, you're not doing anything with his art in a way that makes it your own. And so, by my understanding of those rules, the Puzzle Cube would also fit that, that being on a Puzzle Cube itself wasn't enough to make it my own thing. But, he gave me permission to sell just the cubes alone, so there will be an option in it to just get the cube if you don't want the adventure. But, the OGL has since been not rescinded, so there will be adventures, and so there will be a big full product.
Courtney:How did you go about getting it manufactured?
Nathan:Uh, the first one I typed into Google, custom Rubik's Cube. I mean, custom puzzle cube, I didn't, I didn't, I, I typed in the other word, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not advertising that. That's, that's not an advert. That's just what it is. And I found a place that did it, and it was a website that mostly does, like, custom mousepads, but they also had that as an option. Went through using their little, their web uploady thingy to upload all the images. It showed me a three dimensional preview. The preview looked great. I ordered two of them. You know, one for myself and one for the player. This was also before I had posted the thing online. And it came back botched. It was not printed right. It did not look like what the preview showed me. So I had to call them up and work with them again and talk to them. Sent them a new version and that set came through botched also. And so the third time when I, when I called them up, i, I basically said on the phone, I was like, before you guys like actually like make the item, look at whatever preview the computer system that you're going with has, and then ask one of your employees that plays Dungeons and Dragons to look at it first, and make sure it makes sense to them. And then go with it. I don't know if they actually did that but that set came through fine. So I have Four botched ones and then two good ones and then later once I eventually found the producer That's actually going to be doing it for the campaign I have another prototype so I have a third good one that i've jumbled up and I can't solve
Courtney:In what ways were they botched? Yeah,
Nathan:or on the wrong spot. And so the the The corridors that link up around the sides of it didn't match up. So, like, you look at it, and it looks like a map printed on a cube. But, like, when you look at it closely, it's just not right. It came pre jumbled up, but not in a way that would be good or solvable.
Courtney:So what is the adventure about that is paired with this
Nathan:So, the adventure that I wrote for it is about Laszlo the Lavish, or Laszlo the Lich, as he is known nowadays. He's been gone for an amount of time. I don't remember if I specified that it was hundreds of years or thousands of years or a non descript number of years. The location of his tomb has been found, and so adventurers are needed to go and put an end before he can come back and try to take over the world again. And basically the players, once they get in there, they'll find the puzzle cube jumbled up, and then once they solve it, then they're transported into the actual dungeon. And then they'll have to fight through the traps and all the stuff. Find the keys necessary to unlock the final gate and final door to then confront Lazlo and slay him. If the players are using the cube. I also wrote it in a manner that, cause not everyone's gonna be good at solving a puzzle cube like myself. So, that's where I had said that like, if you just have the players go through the dungeon. Without them knowing that there's a Puzzle Cube involved. If you, if you use it the old school style, where the players have to map out the dungeon themselves, you can basically, as they'll map it out, they will be able to go in circles in character, but on the map, it will not connect, and it might take them a while to figure that out. Which adds a different dynamic to running the adventure, which will still create a puzzle for the players, but it's not the Puzzle Cube. And so, yeah, there are two ways that you can run it, one with the cube, one without the cube, and the adventure itself won't change, it's just the nature of the puzzle is what will be different. Yeah, so, liches, they like undead, themselves undead, so there's a lot of undead. So, spoiler alert, if you're gonna play and you wind up playing in this, don't just create a party of paladins and clerics just to spite your DM. Ideally, they should just be plugging it into their game somewhere, not necessarily Warning people that it's there, so. But, you know, you never know. Sometimes, I mean, it could probably make a fine one shot for people who are into those. I, for one, have never actually played in a one shot, because every time we've said, Hey, let's do a one shot, it's turned into five or six, or an entire campaign. As it probably goes for everybody.
Courtney:I think the only one that I ever actually successfully did in one day wound up being a 12 hour day.
Nathan:that's
Courtney:was, I learned some lessons on that one, such as shorten it. Don't do everything that's written.
Nathan:I have not done a twelve hour D& D session since high school.
Courtney:That's, that's exhausting.
Nathan:The mind is willing, but the body is weak and fleshy and needs to take a nap. I,
Courtney:Yeah, for sure. I don't want to do it again.
Nathan:I have actually considered, like, I don't know if I can get my Players in my my weekly game if we can like all manage to take time off at the same time and maybe like just have Like a weekend D& D trip where we'll play for 12 hours a day and then do some stuff other than that Like we'll go rent a beach house or something. I figure that maybe like once a year I could probably handle that but yeah, 12 hour D& D sessions and all night land parties Those are those are not things I can handle anymore.
Courtney:Yeah, for sure. So, because I happen to know quite a bit about this project, what are some of the ideas behind some stretch goals, assuming that, you know, we fund and we keep funding because everybody wants a really cool puzzle cube?
Nathan:So the The main thing is that my adventure is written for level 12 characters, but not everybody's going to be at level 12 And so like I don't want to cut out the people who don't have a game that high level or won't have a game that Won't get to that high level. So instead of writing a bunch of adventures that are all like one contiguous story My idea was let's write a bunch of different adventures that all use the puzzle cues And so that way, if it funds and gets to the point where we unlock enough of those adventures, DMs will have a book that will have multiple adventures where they can use this prop. And so then if they run multiple games at different levels, they can use the prop in any of their games if they wish to, and they'll have a different level adventure for whenever they wish to use it. Additionally, because the map itself is system agnostic, there's nothing about the map that says you must play Dungeons Dragons at 5th edition only with it. So, some of the other proposed stretch goals is to get a Pathfinder 2nd edition conversion And then one of the other things is because one of the questions that people keep asking is can you mix up the cube and have a random dungeon every time and the answer to that question is not really, you could probably do something with that if you're willing to do like extra work but with the map when you mix it up the rooms don't connect and it's supposed to be a puzzle cube first and then Kind of the adventure second. Originally it was just the puzzle cube, but not the adventure itself. So one of the other proposed stretch goal ideas would be to get a puzzle cube made that was all geomorphs on it so that that way each face would be nine different geomorphs that would be a full dungeon and then you could mix it up and then get a random dungeon every time. We asked Google and A 3x3x3 puzzle cube where each face is a different thing would have 7. 4 quintillion different permutations. And so that's enough dungeons to dungeon probably forever. But even though they would technically be different, there's gonna be a level of saniness to it. Which, for an OSR game, that's exactly what people want. They want to delve into the dungeon, go from room to room, kick it in, kill the goblins. Or orcs, or whatever is there. Take the treasure, probably maybe still using gold as experience to level up. I don't know, I always thought that was kind of weird. It is what it is. And yeah, so, that is a thing. Now, for that particular one, because Dungeon Geomorphs would, like if they were all black and white, that would be a puzzle with no solved state. You would have no way to know what was the original positioning of everything. Unless we made the faces also color coded, which, is probably something I'm going to do so that it could be solved as a puzzle as well as being a geomorph randomizer. I've come up with a couple of other ideas of like, hey, what can we do with the idea of a puzzle cube and still have things?
Courtney:Yeah, I, I definitely feel like there are a lot of possibilities. It could use with the puzzle cube, for sure. And, I don't know, I just really hope that we get to have all of the adventures, because I think it would be really cool to have just a big old book packed full of adventures that are using this really fun cube map. So something that I like to do in every interview is focus a bit on the fact that, you know, we are Working in this industry because we love games and it's fun, but obviously there are challenges. So I would love to hear about just, you know, over the last few years where you've been publishing on DMs Guild and now like you've got this project and everything, what are some of the challenges that you have had to face and how have you overcome them?
Nathan:so the big challenge is because a lot of the collaboration is with people that are not In the same town and not meeting at the same building. Like, you know, obviously like if you worked for wizards, you'd go to their office building and you meet your coworkers every day and you work with them every day and stuff like that. So the big problem with online is that sometimes people have real life stuff happen and just disappear. Sometimes they haven't finished their projects and. That kind of puts a huge speed bump into things. So, miscommunications, lack of communications are the biggest problems that I've come up with. Sometimes, like, tone is hard to understand over text. So sometimes people can get offended by things when you're not actually speaking. And you can't hear what someone's saying or how someone's saying. You just read the text and it's It's rough dealing almost entirely online with people, and then yeah, it's like if somebody disappears, it's like, then it's like, are they okay? Did they get in a car accident? Did they die? Do they hate me? Did they just block me because they just can't stand looking at my bearded face? I don't know. You never know, because like, sometimes just communication breaks down and projects get lost and unfinished. I mean, there was one of those projects where that happened for like A year and a half. And I finally just got to the point where I, like, I managed to get a hold of the person who was the project lead for it. I'm just like, Hey, can I just take this project over and I'll get the stuff done? And they're like, yeah, that would be great. I'm not doing stuff much anymore. So I did manage to finally get that one released. I had some other ideas for it. And I just like, you know what, I'm going to scrap those ideas because if I keep working on this, this might happen again, let's push this product out and make sure of it. It can't be purchased. It is in a usable state. But I have other projects where that's just never happening. I've still just got stuff sitting around that I've written for a thing, and they just I'll find another spot for them somewhere. Maybe. Who knows.
Courtney:Yeah, that can be really tough to herd a bunch of freelancers around, and
Nathan:Sometimes they're on the opposite side of the world, which then creates its own problems where it's like, They're asleep when I'm awake, and stuff. So it's like, when you do want to try to talk to them, In a discord call or whatever it's like well, I go to bed at this time and that's 5 a. m for you. So we have to find a time before 5 a. m for you to talk and she's like Sometimes that's rough.
Courtney:Okay, well to flip it around, what are some of the best parts of working on all these projects?
Nathan:Not to try to like sound like some kind of money grubber But to a certain degree when I sell products and like I see the like account credit on Dms guild go up that always does make me feel good Because it's like, hey, people are interested enough that they're, they're paying me for these things. Like, I, I like the fact that people like my work enough to buy it. Like, I usually, I usually set the previews to be the preview of the entire thing, so people can look at the entire thing before they decide to buy it. The downside of this is they could look at the entire thing and then just have it, have the preview open from their computer and run an adventure without actually buying it. But, you know. I just figured, like, you know, when you go to a bookstore, you don't have to unwrap the books after you buy them. You can look at, you can hypothetically read an entire book at a bookstore and not purchase it. But, like, that's not why people go to bookstores. People go to bookstores to buy books. So I figured, you know, the one or two people that will run an adventure without buying it is nothing compared to, like, the 30 or 40 people who will buy it. And, you know, even 30 or 40 people, that's, you know, if I can help some, help 30 or 40 people make their games better. That's good. I like that.
Courtney:Mm hmm. So, obviously we've got Lazlo's Crypt. But are there any other projects that you're working on that are coming up sometime in the next year?
Nathan:So, I have a pirate thing coming up. And I wrote it for a different project back before 2019. So it's been modified and tweaked a little bit. I, I will admit that I, I wrote that before I knew about certain things. So, like I got a sensitivity consultant for it because, well, I didn't, I didn't even know that sensitivity consultants existed back then. so, you know, there's, there's some changes that have been made. You know, working on that, got a bunch of art for it. That adventure is also pretty much written. One of the things I had considered also for that was getting a puzzle cube that was just all ocean but then each, each face had little islands on it so you can randomize it and get your own custom island chain for people's own games because as it stands right now, that adventure does not have a world map. It just says that, hey, this thing is this many days away from the city. But like, the locations of these things is not. So, the Dungeon Master can like, come up with their own world map, put these cities wherever they need to. And then if they need to do more, further adventures later, have some stuff. That doesn't mean that there won't be a map for it in the future, it's just at the present, there isn't one. And yeah. It's a pirate thing, but the players aren't the pirates, the bad guys are pirates. Because, you know, while it's probably fun being a pirate in a D& D game, Generally speaking, pirates were bad people, they were stealing things. I know that probably some of them were in a desperate situation and, you know, life under the thumb of the British monarch was probably not good. A bunch of Americans decided that in 1776, so, you know, going against that kind of thing is fine. But in this, in Dungeons and Dragons, pirates are usually the bad guys, and that's how I've written the adventure.
Courtney:So if people want to find you, find these projects, find Laszlo's Cubed Crypt, where should they go?
Nathan:So I have a website. It's on card Uh, it's just deficitdragons.carrd.co Card, card has two R's in it. I'm on most social media platforms as DeficitDragons, so that's where people can find me. Going to the website, the card website will have links to all of the social media platforms to go to my profile so that you can then follow me on them. So like, if you want to follow me on everything, going to the card website is Probably the easiest way, instead of having to type in Deficit Dragons on like 30 different things. Plus it also has links that'll take you directly to the stores for several of my products. Some are in print, some are not in print. And yeah.
Courtney:Great, I will have links to all of that in the show notes. Nathan, thank you for joining me today.
Nathan:Yeah, no problem.
Courtney:been fun to chit chat about, your background. I learned things I didn't know. And then also the project that we've been working on together.
Nathan:Yes.
Courtney:So at this point, listeners, I am going to stop the official interview and. Then we will just go ahead right back into recording where we're going to have a fun little quick question blitz for patrons. So I'm going to be asking Nathan some more silly questions. Some are gaming related, some are not. And that'll be available to patrons at patreon.com/rollplaygrow. Thank you for listening and thanks again, Nathan.
Nathan:No problem.