#184 – A Palladium Retrospective Part 9: Nightbane & Dead Reign (w/ Kevin)

Breakfast puppies?

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Hi, I'm Kevin Sembita of Palladium Books, and you're listening to The Glitter Boys. All right.

My SD card is clean. I got 40 more hours of space here. Let's go. We got Kevin with us again. Welcome back, Kevin.

Hey, good to be back.

Good to have you back.

As always, I'm Matt Buckley and I'm filling in for the other Matts. And we always will have a Matt at the table.

Apparently it is a contractual obligation.

Contractually.

You know, I don't think of it as you filling in for the other Matt. I think that we just have a, we have a space in our heart for all Matts. All Matts. And you are simply representing the Matt faction.

Well, it's a Matt-spaced hole in your heart.

It's the Bring Your Own Matt podcast.

You have to understand, Buckley, this is an important matter to us.

Oh, oh, oh.

Just walk all over me.

Yeah.

Oh, nice pun there. I like it. Approve. Yep. So welcome back, Kevin. It's good to have you back.

Good to be back.

I understand it's been a busy few months dealing with, you know, all of the big talk that everyone is excited to see.

Yeah, it's been crazy, crazy busy. Happily, we've gotten the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness Redux Edition and all the Kickstarter exclusives done into the printer. So that's great. But it was a journey, gentlemen.

Well, you know, speaking of journeys, dot dot dot dot. Okay, let's take a few steps back and pick up where we left off in our saga of the story of Palladium Books' various game properties. Y'all ready for Nightbane? Because I'm ready to talk about some Nightbane.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, amongst us here at the table, I know you have an undying love for it. I love it a lot. I believe Buckley is at least passingly familiar with it.

I, I've never played it as the core world. Um, I've had several people bring Nightspawn, as I still— it hurts me to call it Nightbane, um, but I understand why. And I've had them bring it to— bring them to my table at, at Rifts games. And that's the common way that I was like, wait, what are you gonna do? What are you—

First off, I'm glad you said that, Buckley, because you made it so that I didn't have to do the joke, which is me going back and editing in a censored beep over your words. Okay.

No, no. Um, when certain organizations led by certain individuals come to you and say, change your name. I understand why other organizations go, okay, we could win, but no.

Well, you know, I mean, yeah, you know, they had certain concerns that, you know, like Spawn and Spawn the comic book and the character, there could be confusion, which, you know, we didn't really agree with, but, you know, it, it, what the heck. And I think, I think like Bane, I kind of liked the name. I, over the years I've really grown to really like the name. It kind of fits better.

Agreed.

Than Nightspawn.

It's unique.

So I like the idea that you're playing characters who are the bane of the night and specifically the Night Lords. So, uh, yeah, I think ultimately it was for the better.

Yeah.

Well, Kevin, how did Nightbane come to be?

So, you know, at the time we had, uh, uh, CJ Carella working for us. And he was a big fan of shows like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Hunter and the books by Clive Barker.

Yeah.

And Nightbreed. And he came to me with this idea for— in fact, it was interesting because he didn't have a title for it. And he came to me with this idea for a book, and I really liked it. I thought it was kind of a unique spin on the horror genre. I felt it was sort of like part X-Men, part horror. And I really liked that. And I said, yeah, go ahead and run with it. And I think he was originally calling them the Nightborn. And I said, hey, I've got this name I've been saving for decades from a fanzine I did in the 1970s called Nightspawn. Let's call them Nightspawn. And then, you know, as we just discussed, we had to change the name later, but you know, it really feels like it's a good name.

Agreed. It's unique. It has come to stand on its own as a very individually inspired name. Rarely do you see the term Bane in gaming outside of like Dragonbane. I am the Dragonbane or something, or Demonsbane. But the concept of being the bane of the night, I think it has carried the game further than something a little more expected like Spawn would have.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. So, you know, sometimes things happen for a reason.

Yeah.

And I think that was the case here. I'm just surprised how many people, you know, remember stuff like, oh, this used to be called that, or, you know, it's just It's, it's, it's 20-plus years ago.

Yeah, but it's right here on my book.

I was gonna say, some of us have 2 or 3 copies on our shelf that say that.

Yeah.

Yeah, so when this came out, I was a teenager. Let's see, how old was I? I was 15. At the age of 15, this was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life. However, only a few months before that was the previous coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life, which was Clive Barker's movie Nightbreed. And then just the timing of me having seen that when I did and this coming out, it's like, oh my God, I'm here. This is me. And that Brahm cover, like, what is going on with this guy's face? It's wonderful. Everything. Just, you pick this book up on the shelf, you know, you're 15 years old. You walk into your comic slash game store and you see this thing on your shelf, a Brahm cover, sweet masks, some nice breasts, and that face and the word Nightspawn. You have to buy it. Like, there goes your allowance for the week. You have this book and you are hooked for the next 30 plus years of your life.

Yeah, I agree that that cover is astonishing. I, I, why I didn't buy it. I have no frickin' idea because it's, it's just awesome and I love it and I wish I owned it and it was hanging in my house. Yeah, but it, it, I don't. And, uh, oh well.

I wish I owned it and it was hanging in my house, so I'm with you.

Who owns it? Uh, where their house is and what's the address? I'm sure we could— I mean, what, uh, when I was looking at this for the first time I was so deep into Rifts, I made the mistake of going, well, how do I put this into Rifts? And then I realized this is— this doesn't— it doesn't necessarily fit in Rifts.

It's its own full world.

It is complete. And it's— at the time, I was not really into urban horror, urban fantasy. I've never been a horror fan, but the more and more I looked at the book, at some point I'll have to run this game. But I've stolen bits and pieces for other urban fantasy and other urban horror rules and things that I've run.

Mm-hmm.

And it gets, it's pretty dark. And it's, it's so dark that you're like, oh, these are the good guys? You know, these are, these are the good guys.

Okay.

All right.

They're going to terrify everybody. Like, it's like, uh, you know, the X-Men all went through a blender and, you know, bark and they came out the other side and you're like, okay, here's your heroes.

Uh, oh crap.

We can't, these aren't, these aren't appropriate for children. No, they're not. They're not.

The number one recurring background fiction hero in the story is named Burger Face.

Right.

Like, wow.

It's like, what?

That's— yeah. I'll tell you that that's one of the things I really loved about it was the fact that your heroes, the player characters, are monsters fighting monsters. And I just kind of love that juxtaposition. of the classic hero. And, uh, you're right. It's one of the darkest. It's probably the darkest game that we have. I mean, obviously Dead Reign, the zombie apocalypse, but you know, zombies are zombies and the Nightbane and everything they go through. And the fact that there's like this parallel earth in the Nightlands, and there's just so much. It's like dark conspiracy mixed with horror mixed with superhero. I used to call it. superhero horror before urban fantasy became a thing.

Yes.

And then I realized, oh shucks, this is, this is urban fantasy.

So I do have one question, given you are such a comics fan. Over the years, I've picked up a lot of the feel of Marvel's Morlocks from the mutant series of Marvel within Nightbane. And was that ever like, I don't mean conscious ripping them off, but more of a nod, but more of a nod and a feel that like outcasts and rebels from the, from society aspect?

I mean, not directly. I just think it was, you know, we share common themes.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, again, like we've talked about a couple times in these conversations, there's things in the zeitgeist that bubble to the surface. And yeah, it's— I've seen similarities there in between, and it's one of those things that I always kind of appreciate whenever I see something that looks like possibly a tiny nod.

I remember at the same time in my youth, in my gaming history, a lot of the people in my circles were flocking to Vampire: The Masquerade.

Yeah.

And I personally bounced hard off of that game because I remember when I read the first edition of it, I thought, okay, this is kind of cool. Yeah, you get to be the monster and all of this art shows some pretty cool monster shit. And then you read all the, the actual text of the book and it's like, this is a game about moping.

It was—

where's the monster?

Yeah, it was all political intrigue. It was all political intrigue and stabbing. your fellow players in the back.

And then Nightbane comes out and I'm like, there it is. Exactly. Horror superheroes. That is it. You're right. That is the perfect term. It hit me. I needed that at that time.

My take has always been that the White Wolf lines backed into being superhero monsters. Whereas Nightbane was like, we're here Right now.

Uh, the one that I look at, like DC, uh, DC Comics, DC Dark, uh, Justice League Dark, basically all the magic and stuff that would come in. And these, like, those characters, I was like, had I seen those at the same time, I would have understood Nightbane way better. Yeah. And at the time I just wasn't there. Um, and that, like you said, I played some Vampire and it's like, but we're all in different— we all hate each other. Why would we— like, that broke the dynamic of an RPG for me. is that you're— we're actually very adversarial. And I like RPGs where the players are actually a cohesive team, or at least not trying to kill each other. And with Nightbane, yeah, you're monsters and you're the heroes and everyone hates you because you look terrifying. You're— I mean, you're legitimately terrifying looking, which is part of the charm there.

Yeah, they don't necessarily hate you, but they certainly fear you because, yeah, you're some Hideous or freakish thing, you know. And then it becomes a question of how do you find fellow Nightbane, and do you team up? Can you trust each other? Uh, because not all Nightbane are in the same path, uh, or want to be heroes. And again, I loved all those elements because it's like most Nightbane are teenagers or early 20-something when you're going through the whole What's my place in life? Where am I going? What's my purpose? What am I going to do? I want to find love and romance and a cool job or go to school. And then you throw in on top all this, which is already kind of agonizing as you're going through it, you're a freaking monster.

Yeah.

And there are worse monsters out to either enlist you or destroy you. Because you're a threat to them. And it's just, I don't know, it's like just like epic. I really, CJ really nailed something there.

And that would be later reincorporated into a lot of the superhero RPG genre. I remember, let's take it back to White Wolf. They would later come out with Aberrant, their superhero game, and a core aspect of Aberrant was like the exact same damn thing that Nightbane was like. When you develop your character Nightbane, you need to come up with how did your becoming, I think as they call it, how did that affect your life? Because it's a traumatic thing. And then finally, you know, White Wolf brings that back into the superhero thing. Like, you know, your eruption, I think they call it.

Yep.

It is like, and again, I was 15 at the time, 15, still dealing with puberty. So this whole like transformation from one part of your life to another where everything is different, it was just the perfect timing for me.

Yeah, exactly. And I hope a lot of people had that, that experience, you know, positive experience.

I wanted to go to kind of a nuts and bolts. So it sounds like this was a pitch from CJ and it wasn't a fully fleshed idea. It was like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. And so you guys How did that process work?

Because, um, well, it kind of depends. Um, in the early days, yeah, a lot of people would submit completely finished books. Um, in, in the last 10 or 15 years, we've kind of moved away from that because it's kind of rough if someone, you know, spends 6 months or a year or more writing a game and then, you know, they turn it in and we're like, I'm sorry, we're not going to use this for whatever reason.

Oh.

And then it's like, oh, put It's just ached through my heart, you son of a— So now we have people kind of outline stuff and we suggest that they try their hand at writing by contributing to the Rifter first, so we can get an idea of what their writing is like and that kind of thing. But yeah, CJ pitched it, we kind of bounced ideas around, and at this point I had a lot of confidence in CJ already, so I said, hey, just Go ahead and run with it. You know, and I went in and tweaked some things and polished stuff up and added a little bit. But it's, you know, unlike some books where you see my name on the COVID along with someone else's, which means I rewrote half or more of it. You know, there's just CJ's name on the book because CJ Carella just he had this beautiful vision, and every time he'd like Kevin, I want to do this, and I want to include that, and I want to do this. I'm like, oh yeah, please. So, uh, yeah, yeah, I, I, for me, I think it's, it's really CJ's magnum opus.

Yeah. Um, I know this was around the time that CJ had done several books for the Rifts lines and it makes a lot of sense, um, not to go too far into CJ cause I, I'm a big CJ fan. So I think most of us are at this table are big CJ fans. So, um, uh, when we had the opportunity to talk with him, I was like, yeah, tell me more what you're doing now. When are you gonna do more gaming books? And it's like, no, I'm doing these writing thing. Oh, you're gonna be an author now?

Great.

Now I have to go more read author books. But, um, but yeah.

Well, I wanna say I'm a big fan of CJ too. He, he's just a good guy.

Yeah.

And he's got this great wry sense of humor and, uh, I just think he's a good, good human being.

And he said a lot of the same things about you.

Yeah.

Yes.

When we were interviewing him.

For, uh, drama's sake, we edited all those out. But, um, but, uh, no, he, he had nothing, nothing bad to say about you either. And, uh, I think you hit it right there is that this book really was, you want to know what he can do in one game? Here you go.

Yeah.

I mean, it may not have been his rule set per se, but the world, everything that's going on in there is, is CJ. Like you want to know what he does, how he writes everything in there. You open this up and you're like, wow, okay, this is crazy. And it's fully fleshed end to end.

So I got one question for you, Kevin. Because when that game came out, you know, I was not as hooked in as I am now to, you know, what's going on on the publishing side of the business. How, from your end of things, how did you perceive the game being perceived and received when it came out?

Uh, well, I mean, I thought it was gonna be popular. Um, we had had good success with, um, Beyond the Supernatural, and, and this was, uh, even more gritty and clearly defined world. Uh, I thought it would do well, and, and it did do well. I think we printed— I want to say we printed 10,000 copies initially, and that sold out in like, let's say, a year or so.

Hmm.

Um, you know, that, that's, that's good numbers, especially, uh, back then. And then, you know, we printed Actually, we might've printed 20,000. I don't remember now. It was 10,000 or 20,000 and it sold out pretty quick. And then we printed another, you know, 10,000 under Nightbane and that sold and it, you know, continues to sell. And obviously we came out with like, you know, 6 sourcebooks and we would like to do more, but it's one of those things that is a little bit of a tricky—

Yeah.

subject to write. You really need the right people. And, and, you know, a lot of freelancers, you know, they've got other work or other real jobs, and you can only get so much. But it's definitely a game line that we want to support in the future for sure.

When it comes to the content of the meat of the mechanics of the game, So listeners, and maybe even by now you, Kevin, know that I love random tables. It's one of my most favorite things in gaming is a random table as both a player to, you know, random spell effects. I remember my first exposure to those as a player was a wild magic table when I was like 13 or 14 in D&D. But then as a GM, I love like random encounter tables and so on.

Yeah.

Nightbane is just the king of these wonderful random tables. The whole concept of you sit down to play a character and, you know, in many RPGs, you roll your stats. You don't really know exactly what you're going to play, but you get an idea. You know, I'm going to roll my stats and I might be a fighter or I might be a thief. In this, you have no clue.

Yeah.

Until those dice hit the table, whether you're going to be some guy who kind of looks like maybe an elf or a crystalline 4-limbed bear centaur with chainsaw arms and a jetpack. You're like, wait, what? How did this, how did this happen? Like, was this, uh, was this an evolution of things that had been in the works, or did he just like Throw that out.

It was CJ's idea. He just kind of threw that out. And I love the fact that, yeah, when you go in— and so what we're talking about is your morphous. So for those who aren't familiar with Nightbane, you're an ordinary person. You've been living your life as, you know, Joe Blow, Jane Doe, ordinary person going to school and, you know, trying to figure out life. And Uh, one day you either wake up transformed or you go through this bizarre metamorphosis that maybe it was caused from some kind of anxiety or an attack or whatever, and you look in the mirror and you're this hideous thing. And in some cases you're just beautiful, although probably twisted thing, because you could be A handsome or beautiful character with maybe stigmata or some other weird feature. And I loved it when CJ set it up so that, like, here's 6 or 8 motor-type things. So in the case of a motor thing, maybe you're— in fact, I found it interesting when I think it was Progressive had the motorcycle centaurs. I'm like, someone read my game. And, you know, and that's, that's the cool thing is if you truly go random, you, you could be reptilian or, or insect-like or have machine parts or, or, you know, be ape-like or werewolf-like, or there's all these— CJ went through all these different categories of, of, uh, transformation. And, and the cool thing is It's all right there in that little block where it tells you, you know, this is what you are and these are some of your abilities and certainly your appearance. And it's like, and then, you know, you go on and pick out, you know, special powers and things down the road, but it's really great and it really captures that, oh my gosh, I just transformed into what kind of hideous bird thing? It's great. And in my mind, and we touch on it more in like Nightbane Survival Guide, Yeah. And, um, and I would love to touch on it some more in, in future sourcebooks. I would love to write a couple of Nightbane sourcebooks.

Do it.

Do it.

Um, but I, I, in my mind, whatever you look like in your, in your morphous— so you have your human facade and you can turn back and forth into that. You can go from facade to your Nightbane morphous. But, uh, in my mind, that Morpheus is a psychological reflection of either who you are, who you want to be, or who you're afraid you are, that kind of thing. And it's, uh, or maybe it represents your, your rage or your fears, or I don't know. I just, I just freaking love it. And CJ did a great job coming up with those. And then let's give kudos to, uh, R.K. Post. Yes, uh, R.K. Post and, um, Peterson and Ramon Perez. They just— the artwork they did for these books are just amazing.

And again, it's like the same time, that same era, World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade had all of this R.K. Post art that was creating that if you just look at the art in those books, you get the same feeling. Like, this is like a dark, I am the monster kind of game. The game didn't really reflect that. But here you have R.K. Post once again bringing this amazing collection of just dark— again, his various shades of black, as I like to say. It really hammers in that feeling. And then the game lets you do that. I like that there's no disconnect between the art and the text.

One of the things about this, about the character creation process, is there aren't many games where you go in going, well, you don't know what you're going to be when you're done to the character creation process. Not these days, right?

Yeah.

And this one is one of the few games where I would make my character first and then write the backstory. Because as you were just saying, Kevin, the morphous comes out and it's like, well, I turned into a motorcycle man pig. I wonder what motivation my subconscious had to make me a motorcycle man pig with a tank turret on my head. You know, like, and that could be a thing. And you're like, well, my dad was this and my mom was this and I was beaten by this guy. And now, okay, that's why this happened. And now you've, you've reversed your backstory, which is unique to any systems. Well, very few systems that I know of. And it's such a cool idea that like, I don't need to know anything. I'm just going to roll it all and then build the story on what happened.

Having played a professional therapist in a Nightbane game, I have to say that it is a Incredibly fun treasure trove.

Yeah.

And I will say that, uh, because I wasn't into it and I just put the timeline together, I was deep in college when this came out, which is probably why it didn't show up to me right away. Um, I was penniless and broke. Uh, so like I had the books that I went to college with and not many were added while I'm in college, but where I was going, I, the one thing I always kept getting was the Rifters. And every month or 2 months or 3 months, however often we got them, I was like, what are these damn Morphose tables? And there was always a set of like 4 pages or 5 pages of these things.

And I'm like, this is really neat, but what are they?

I kept— now it's coming. I'm getting flashbacks now of every Rifter that I'd open up and go, yeah, there's 7 pages wasted here. This could have been anything else because I just didn't know how cool this was and really what I was missing out on, to be honest.

Yeah. The Morphous tables, we found a lot of use for them, porting them into Heroes Unlimited. Not necessarily, you know, the roll through the whole thing, but you already have the alien tables in Heroes Unlimited, but sometimes you're like, okay, I really want to get hands-on with this whole crystalline thing or something. It's a good way to just kind of flesh that out a little further.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I agree. That's cool.

Nightbane comes out and is immediately followed by 2 more books, which in my opinion are 2 of the best books I've ever read in gaming. Between the Shadows introduces the astral plane and the dreamscape. They, they're amazing. It's not only a fantastic book for this product line, and again, another one of these Palladium things of making a fantastic first book and then immediately just following up with a kick-ass second book.

Yeah.

Between the Shadows was so good. That content is so portable to everything. Like, like the astral plane, the dream space, they are universal concepts that you, you don't need to do anything. You could just lift, drop, bam, done. You want to like elevate your Beyond the Supernatural game? Just drag this book over here, set it on that stack, and that's all you got to do.

I mean, you and I were talking when we reviewed Shadowlands about, and I've actually been working on bringing the Shadowlands into Palladium Fantasy.

Yeah. And just, yeah, Nightlands, the third, the world book too, the same damn thing. It's like, it brings this stuff that it's universal. You can, you can bring it anywhere. Well done. You know, just kudos. It's, it is a fantastic trilogy of books.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and personally, I think Through the Glass Darkly is also—

Oh yeah.

There's just, for some reason, I think maybe because the RPG Nightlands and Between the Shadows are so strong, so powerful, so evocative that, you know, people kind of get done with them and they're like, okay, my brain's numb. And actually, I feel like Like Through the Glass Darkly gets, gets missed a lot, and it's got some really awesome twisted, uh, magic and, uh, optional OCCs and villains in there that— yeah, it's, it's crazy stuff because it goes into the old sort of the mirror magic and flesh sculpting, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Mm-hmm.

And, but yeah, again, CJ and, uh, You know, I dived in, I think, on Nightlands— not Nightlands, but Between the Shadows— a little bit more to, uh, to make sure that the, uh, um, astral plane really worked. But yeah, CJ was just on fire with these books. He, he had his vision of what he wanted and he kicked ass.

Yeah, and I will, uh, I totally agree with you on Through the Glass Darkly. That book, I went from Nightbane to that book and that book, I was like, whoa, this is really, really fricking dark. Like what? Fleshcrafters. Yeah. I'm like, oh, okay. So they're going to, these are good guys. I don't think these are good guys. These can't be the good guys. Um, but like just the feel of that book, um, melded right in. To the darkness of the world. And really—

Oh, and that's the thing is we, we really— and I thought, all right, I've got the next guy to carry on this game line. And then he got some big-time work with, I think, uh, Lucasfilms and stuff. And he's like, I'm sorry, Kevin, I've got this. And I'm like, are you insane? Of course you've got this. No, go, go. You know, what an opportunity.

But— That's why I never saw his name again. That's—

and I, I had the same, I had the same question because it, Like, I noticed CJ's name wasn't on the book, but it felt like the same world. It didn't, it didn't have that kind of jarring, like, twist of someone putting their own stamp on it. It was, nope, I understand this world. I'm gonna write in this world. This is the material I'm writing. And I was like, wow, this is really—

Yeah, Kevin Hassell.

Yeah, Kevin Hassell.

Just a great writer. I mean, he sent me an outline, we talked about some stuff, and he just turned in Like, like a near-perfect book. And I'm like, oh yes. And then of course he's so good, other opportunities with a lot more, you know, cash reward, uh, you know, came into play. And so we, we lost him, but, you know, one great book from the guy. So that, that, that's cool.

And it's a property that, uh, Buckley, you were saying Rifter content, Rifter There's a lot of Nightbane stuff in there.

Huge amount.

And it's almost all good. I don't think I've had any complaints about any of the fan-submitted content in there. It felt like anybody who had the guts to write up and submit something for it came from a perspective of feeling confident with the material.

Yeah, I think a lot of them, like, Nightbane players are very passionate about it. So guys who turned in articles for the Rifter, you know, I think that that passion and joy for the game really came across.

One thing that I really love about Nightbane is, and Palladium has done this a few times with several of the product lines, like the indexes and such, is dark designs with the collected tables, putting all of those together with some new stuff too in one book.

Yep.

First off, it's, it's one of the few books that when someone comes to me and they're like, okay, I want to get into a Palladium product line. You're the guy I know who's most into this. Where should I start if I'm into this genre? And if Nightbane is ever selected, and they're always like, oh, and which books specifically should I get? I always say, you need to get the first book. You should probably get the 2nd and 3rd book, but you definitely need Dark Designs. Those tables are so useful.

I would agree. You know, that was Mark Oberle, a dear friend and one of our freelancers. And yeah, he just did a great job collecting the stuff up and putting them in a particular order and cleaning things up a little bit. And yeah, it's, it's rock solid. And yeah, you're looking to create You know, any, any type of Nightbane, because it collected a lot of the stuff, the good stuff from the Rifters, and, uh, as well as from the various sourcebooks, and put it all into one big thing. And he kind of, you know, just didn't just go, here you go, it's a hodgepodge of stuff. He, he, you know, wrote it in such a way that it, it, it all feels cohesive and coherent and Very clear. Dense, there's a lot of material there, but it's the kind of thing if you're creating a character, a Nightbane character, that you want. And then there's a whole bunch of more, you know, talents and that kind of thing. So—

When people come to me to play Nightbane, when we talk about all the content in the books and all the different character classes, it's like, okay, yes, you could be This guard, you could be a Lightbringer or a Guardian, or you could be a Flesh Sculptor. You could be any of this. But do you see what this book is called? This book is called Nightbane. We're gonna play Nightbane.

Yeah, I agree. Plus they're so cool. I mean, there's really no, especially now. Uh, and I mean, I guess World of Darkness is still kind of out there floating around. Um, but there's no other game like get that I'm aware of on, on the market where you can play characters like this with such depth and, and tragic heroes and, uh, you know, hunted heroes, monstrous heroes. I mean, it just, you know, it's awesome. And there's just really, it really is urban fantasy and there's no other games out there that really hit the nail on the head, I think, like Mike Meehan does.

So Dark Designs, I understand, recently had a big thing happen to it in the form of an audiobook?

Yeah, we, uh, someone had approached me years ago about the idea of doing our games and sourcebooks as audiobooks, and my knee-jerk reaction at the time was Really, who wants to hear, you know, a rulebook read? But our books have so much more than just rules, it makes it more, more fun and interesting, I think. And honestly, the more I thought about it, uh, as it percolated in the back of my head, I'm like, yeah, why the heck not audiobooks? So when, uh, Frank from Studio 2 said, Kevin, I've got this idea I want to pitch you. I hope you, I hope you like it. I, you know, a lot of people scratch their head and go, I don't know, Frank, but— and he pitches his idea to do audiobooks for role-playing games. And I'm like, I'm in, Frank. Because this is like 5 years later and I had time to think about it. I'm like, man, audiobooks would be really cool. So, uh, I don't know if I agree with him starting with sourcebooks.

Yeah.

I would think you should start with the core rulebook. But, you know, whatever his logic was on that. And, uh, I think part of it was just, you know, the, the core rulebook, like, like so many of our core rulebooks have a lot of pages and small type and it's, it's dense stuff. So as an audiobook, I think he was, cause I think they've been working on it. Um, and he's been lamenting that it's going to be like, like 30+ hours of Of audio, and that's a lot of book, a lot of audio. But I think it'll really come across, and I hope they use the guy who did Dark Designs because I thought he was awesome. I get the feeling Frank's kind of bouncing around with talent because I know he's doing some other audiobooks for Pinnacle and some other things.

Yeah.

But I thought that the guy who did Dark Designs, just his voice and his cadence was Was Nightbane.

Yeah. Um, as someone who consumes audiobooks way too often, way too fast, I actually did the, the Pinnacle one and I did Dark Designs. It's an interesting way for me. It's more of like, uh, listening to the Harbour Report from the British Broadcasting Company, and you can kind of go to sleep to it, but at the same time, you'll hear parts of the book you've never read because it's actually read straight through. Very few people, at least in my opinion, read a game book all the way through from page 1 to page whatever. It's always looking for things, right? And so you're like, oh, that's an interesting idea. I hadn't— what page is that on? And you go and reread it and you're like, one, I've been running that rule wrong the entire time, but that's okay. No one else will know. And 2, here's an idea that in the book I'd never seen.

Yes.

Why didn't I do this? You know, type thing. So it's a really interesting format and media for gaming books. I totally agree. It may not be for everybody.

I think hearing it. So one of the things that really blew me away is Frank had sent me like, I don't know, 2 hours worth of samples before he did his crowdfunder on BackerKit. And, uh, and personally, I think he should have more audio, longer audio samples when he does his crowdfunding. Because I'm listening to this thing and I'm like, like, like only 5 or 10 minutes in and I'm like, is this our book? Because this sounds so cool. I don't remember that. And I actually pulled the damn book out and I'm like, holy crap, our writing's really good. Because it just sounded really dramatic and really cool. And it's like, I want to play this game. Wait, I wrote— I helped write this game.

So you— You just said your writing's really good. And I will say that of all the gaming books and material that I've had, there's been more times that I've sat down and read a Palladium book and gone, oh my God, I not only get this world, but this little piece of fiction, this should win an award. Right. This is really, really well written. Um, my favorite one of this, and I know it didn't sell that well, Still one of my favorites is System Failure. You know, the Y2K bug comes in a 6-foot variety or a 9-foot variety. And the opening couple of vignettes in that book, I read in, I think it was '99, late '99. And I'm a tech dude and I'm on call, setting up my on-call schedule for the Y2K bug. And I'm like, I really hope this doesn't happen, but if it does, I understand what's going to happen. And there's like this whole chat room thing. And at the time I was doing a lot of IRC. and a lot of chat. And I was like, this is terrifying because I actually had to stop reading it because I was like, this is too— oh, this is messing with me. And that's not the first time that I've had that reading the fiction in the books and gone, I'm not going to play this ever, but I'm going to reread that because that's really good. I've always been so impressed by the writing of just not even the game stuff, just the stories of what's going on.

Thanks.

And what comes through with some of the stories and the personalities Proesk is an ass. Um, Erin Tarn is a little full of herself, you know, but you know, like you get those flavors for these people that are running around these worlds.

Well, I mean, we, we actually hear that a lot, that people, uh, love reading our books, even if they haven't played any games in years. A lot of them still follow our books because they want to see what's going on and, and, and see the new stuff and see what progression there might be, uh, in, in the storyline. So that, that, that's pretty awesome. And System Failure actually did quite well. It just, the problem is because it was very much presented as a Y2K thing, you know, we sold like, again, I think we printed 10,000 and it sold out in the first, you know, couple of years. And then we've reprinted it in small numbers here and there and it does all right. It's funny because Shawn and I were just talking, my business partner Shawn, Owen Robertson. We were just talking about System Trader the other day because he had never read it. It was one of the few games he had never read. And when he got here, he read it and he's like, like you, Matt. He's like, holy crap, this is really good.

Yeah.

I mean, this is, the setting is solid. The creatures that you're fighting are solid. The characters are fun. This is a great game. And I'm like, thanks. Yeah. I said, me and Bill Coffin were really, uh, Had a lot of fun with it and we're on fire with it. Uh, and he's like, Kev, we just need to take out the Y2K part and repackage it.

So yes.

So essentially, no, it's basically Tremors. It is Tremors the role-playing game.

But the thing is, is that for me, it's an alternate Earth setting.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's an alternate Earth setting. And the Y2K part, for those of us that had to, had, you know, 3 or 4 24-hour call on call shifts, it was kind of important. Um, but Uh, it was, it was like rednecks versus aliens.

Rednecks versus aliens.

That's exactly, exactly. And I actually ran a game that was based in the Portland area where we were the survivors and we were fighting back against them. And so it became very real and visceral to all these people. And we played it in like 2001. Right. So it was like, oh my God, this could have happened. No, no, not really. But you know, it's cool to feel. Yeah. Anyway, but I'd love to see more for it.

I know this gets off topic of Nightbane.

Absolutely, but that's okay.

But since we're talking about System of a Down a little bit, we actually had sort of a bizarre real-life incident with that where some young man and 2 teenagers in Canada—

Yep, I read this article.

Were playing the game and they were playing it over the phone. And somehow someone overheard stuff. Anyways, it was Y2K was about to happen and these guys had a plan. Their characters had a plan to ride across the— along the border, hitting banks and various military bases to get weapons and stuff and money and supplies.

Oh no.

The Canadian police thought it was for real and that these guys were plotting and planning a, basically a robbery spree. And, you know, in the context of the game, it's like, yeah, we'll just kill whoever's in our way. And it was like bad news.

I remember reading the article. I think it was, they were sitting at a Tim Hortons and they were setting the campaign down.

Yeah.

Or a Denny's, but I think it was Tim Hortons 'cause it was Canada. And, and they were overheard by the waitstaff and they got called in. And I'm like, wow, what good but horrible PR, you know, free publicity, you know, at the same time, not the greatest.

Well, we were pretty shook because we felt bad that these, especially, well, all of them, the kids and the older guy who was a game master, you know, I mean, they're being accused of, of terrorism. Terrorism was kind of a new thing back then. And it's like, you know, Whenever time period, people take terrorism very seriously, as they should. And I just felt bad that these poor kids and this guy were caught up in this colossal misunderstanding. And yeah, we were contacted and it's like, could this be a role-playing game? And I'm like, it is a role-playing game. So I'm glad it all worked out. No one did time. But it had to scare the dickens out of these poor 3 people. Yikes.

I had a slightly similar thing happen to me in real life. Much less dramatic though. Me and some friends were playing Shadowrun at the time and I was the game master, but we were sitting at a, at a Waffle House in Mobile, Alabama. And we're like teenagers sitting at a Waffle House at like 2 AM drinking coffee, talking about Shadowrun and they're talking about We're talking about what's going to happen in the next game session. And they're like, okay, we're going to do this. We're going to go in. They're basically robbing a bank. And the waitress overhears us, but doesn't— isn't a nerd. She doesn't quite understand. But at some point she sits down. She's like, whatever you guys are doing, I want in. And so we are nerds and we thought she was talking about joining us in the game.

Right, of course.

But then it turns out she was like, it's gonna rob a bank? I want in. And we're like, oh no, we're not that cool. But she gave us all our copy for free, so whatever, it worked out.

But yeah, so wow, that, that is that weird snippet of the late '90s.

Yeah.

And So, coming from northern Minnesota, and given that the incident we were talking about that happened in Canada, one of their targets was in Thunder Bay, which was right across the border from northern Minnesota.

Right.

That, and a series of incidents due to misunderstandings due to people playing Nightbane in the local Perkins, which is a chain all over northern Minnesota, It led to the Perkins chain for a while enforcing a no role-playing at Perkins rule.

Oh, wow.

Our Denny's had a no gaming at Denny's rule after us. So yeah.

Yeah. That's funny.

Yeah.

Well, my, uh, the college town that I was in, there was only one restaurant that stayed open late and that was Denny's. Um, you could study, you could do, you could do whatever you wanted as long as you made friends with the one night waitress. And ordered food.

Yep.

She wouldn't care if you came in and said, we want a game in the corner.

Fool.

Great. You all have to order dinner first.

Yep.

And then you can stay as long as you want. And she was like, okay, cool. And she was the night manager, night waitress. And she was the only one. Her name was Colleen. My heart goes out to Colleen. She got me through many, many horrible chemistry classes and physics classes, late night cram sessions. And she'd make you order dinner. She'd keep your coffee filled. And you could do whatever you wanted as long as, you know, within reason. But yeah, uh, so I had much more positive experience at my Denny's.

Well, Wojciech and I, when we were developing various, uh, game rules and stuff, first for Palladium Fantasy, and then later when we were working on, on, uh, Recon, we're, we're, you know, we're talking— so with Fantasy, we're talking about alignments. And so this character would be diabolic, and we're talking about the code of the diabolic. And, you know, this would be aberrant with their own twisted code. And these women would be like, what? Because, you know, it's like moms and grandmas mostly at the time that we were, you know, in the laundromat. And then, you know, when we were talking explosives and, uh, weapons We realized suddenly that we've got this big wide berth around us where they just— you better not be too close to these guys.

Yeah, I, I don't want to know how many watch lists I'm on due to Recon, Delta Green, and several other games.

Well, if you keep on doing audiobooks, may I request Old Ones? I would love to listen to someone read out those city descriptions because there's so much imagination fodder in each one of those little descriptions. Even the shortest one could be 5 words about the tanners in this, you know, back alley of Timero. Just listening to someone read that would be, it would be magical.

Well, it's really up to Frank. You know, I think it depends on how well these things do. And what he considers well done, because he realized he's kind of forging a whole new market here.

Yeah.

And I hope, I hope he starts marketing it more to people outside of gaming, because I think that'll make a big difference. So when he asked what he should start with, we had suggested Nightbane because we thought it would be very popular.

Oh yeah.

you know, 6 books, so you get kind of self-contained. You could do all 6 books and have the complete series done, at least up to date. And because, you know, all the other lines tend to be— not all, but most of the other lines are much bigger. I mean, Rifts has got like 90 freaking titles, and Palladium's got like 20— Palladium Fantasy, that is. And, uh, but yeah, I would love to hear Palladium Fantasy read as audiobooks too.

just thinking about it. Oh man, that would be a wonderful Christmas present, Kevin. Just so, just so you know.

Well, I mean, we've talked about system failure here. And one of the other ones that I thought was going to be kind of in the category of system failures, like a one and done, was Dead Rain. And I was really pleasantly surprised that that was not the case. And when I got ahold of Dead Rain, I, I'd felt honestly that zombies had been just Way overdone. And then I took the Palladium case of it and I was like, whoa, this is a little more interesting. This is a little more like long campaign friendly. We could go somewhere with this. And immediately I do what I do occasionally. And I went to, um, my group at the time and I said, I have this idea for a zombie game. And they're like, really? I don't know if we want to do a zombie game.

No, no, no.

You're going to make characters of yourself, but with tweaks, and the zombie outbreak is going to happen and you're going to play yourself, but not quite. You know, don't make it too personal. And to this day, there's a group of people, if they drive down Interstate 84 and they go by a certain section of that road, they either speed up or make sure all the doors are locked. Because I scared them so badly in that section of 84. And we all lived in the area, and so we would drive by this area all the time. And they're like, to this day, I think zombie babies are coming after me when I'm on the freeway. And I'm like, okay, I've succeeded as a GM. That is fucking awesome. And it was Dead Rain. It was the way it happened. It was the way these monsters, these zombies, could really be portrayed. And not just your straight up, oh, it's a virus. No, no, there's something bigger and nastier controlling them, and there's more going on. And I got to see aspects from the players that are like— one of the people who was in the game, she was the mild-mannered wife of one of the players who had come just to chuckle at us and knit. And she played in this game, and she was the partially alcoholic demo specialist who blew up all the bridges so none of the zombies could come from Portland into their little town. And she did this on the side. And I'm like, what? I'm reading this note going, what? And I'm looking at her and going, oh, you're dark.

Okay.

You know, and, and it all came together because of this zombie game. And I was like, wow. And I just, I just loved the way it fit together and just the things that aspect, because it was, in my opinion, a very original take on the zombies. And I loved it.

Oh yeah, Dead Rain nailed so many things that makes zombies great. 100%. Zombies are less of a threat individually, but more a force of nature. Stories are more about the interplay of people put into crisis situations. The— if zombies happen, were to happen, You might nowadays assume a virus, etc., etc., but you wouldn't know. And the why is this happening factor is such a huge point of it. And the, the factionalization that happens when humanity is put against the wall of a crisis that naturally occurs, and we see time and time again, people rising to the challenge, falling to baser needs. It's like all there, all captured, all done well.

Yeah.

Um, and the tone is just spot on with that game.

Thank you.

Absolutely. It wasn't until I read, um, Max Brooks', uh, World War Z that I found a book or, or even zombie content that got to me like this book did. Yeah. And, and it, it was like, wow, this is really cool. And then they— and then he came out with more books.

Yeah.

And I was like, wow, there's more content here. This is awesome. I don't use it enough, but it's like, it was this great game. Like I really like sucked the marrow, so to speak, out of that entire book. And I was like, every time something in the Rift would show up, I go, oh, I can use this too. You know? And it just kind of piled on. The game ran for several months and the players, it was a short plot point. And I was like, oh, Geez, this was great. And sometime I'm going to go back to it and I'll try to— I won't try to relive that. I'll make something new with the newer content. But yeah. And the question I had, the nuts and bolts question, how did it actually sell? I know you have several books now, but at first, was it one that you were like, we think this will work, but it didn't sell right away?

Or—

It was sort of the opposite. I had no idea how well it would do. But, but I really loved the concept. So, so what happened was, due to 2 Palladium fans, Josh Hilden and Joshua Sanford, they came to me and said, hey, we, we, we love all things zombies. And they, they were into everything. And, uh, he says, I'm working on a zombie game. Would you be interested in doing it and publishing it? And I said, well, You know, obviously it would have to be all on speculation, but sure. And I had seen him play this game, uh, at conventions. And at one point we had him running demos at, uh, a Gen Con. And I think at Origins that year, and people were, were just loving it. And, um, I'm like, yeah, this will, this will be great. It was interesting because I think it's one of these things where, you know, when you design a role-playing game, well, any game, you really have to think about your audience and what you want to convey. And he had a lot of great ideas, like the zombie moan is his, and that they feed on PPE was his. And I loved a lot of the things he had.

Yeah.

And then it's one of those projects that he and his buddy worked on for, I want to say, 5 years. Maybe that's too long. Maybe that's accurate, but it was, it was a number of years. And I want to say it was like 5 or 6 years that they're working on this. And somewhere along the line, I think they kind of lost sight of what the game needed to be because they started talking about how, you know, it's all Brulex and it's all demons and When the manuscript finally came in, it felt more like Nightbane with zombies instead of like a zombie survival game. And it's the zombie survival game that the more— like a lot of Palladium books, we take like what you expect in a zombie game and then we kind of turn it on its head. So like I came up with all kinds of different zombies and stuff anyways. The manuscript comes in and it just was not the game I'd seen him play and run and people go nuts over. And I said, I told him that, and when he was making these changes and adding demons and stuff, I had asked him to write it in such a way that if we didn't like it, we could take it out. And long story short, I just did not care for the final manuscript.

So...

It was funny because I didn't think of myself as a zombie guy, certainly not compared to those 2 guys. He didn't want to rewrite it, so I paid them. And then I'm like, I need to write this, I need to do this, but I'm not a zombie guy. And I talked to a friend of mine who sort of was a zombie guy, and we bounced around a bunch of ideas. And in fact, it was his idea. To not have a defined cause for the zombie outbreak. And his point, which I loved, was, look, if zombie outbreak happened tomorrow and civilization collapses that quickly, none of us survivors would have any clue what happened, what caused it. There might be all kinds of speculation, but we don't know. And then I thought it would be, you know, a lot of times again, when you're presenting a game and presenting a game world, it's like, well, how do I do that? How do I present it?

Yeah.

And so I thought I'll present it as sort of a zombie survival guide and through the eyes of Brad Ashley, which is this kind of well-known survivor, mainly because he's taken all the things he's learned and put it into a photocopy. And maybe it's out there on a computer if you can find one that's working, but you know, on the internet, but he's pumped out the Survival Guide. And so it has sort of his voice, his tone, which I think is fun because he's very practical and kind of down to earth. And, you know, I'm not a pro, but, you know, this is what we've learned doing this, that, and other thing. And, uh, and I think it has a really great feel to it. And then I just kind of put together the game that I, I thought I had seen Josh run 100 times and built on beautiful concepts like the zombies feeding on PPE. And that's why they converge, because anyone who plays Rifts knows this, and Beyond the Supernatural, all of us have potential psychic energy, PPE. And most people don't have a whole lot, but when you die, at the moment of your death, your PPE Doubles. And I love the idea of the convergence because it— and I love the fact that they eat PPE because it explains why they converge. That's— I think that's one of the fun things with Dead Reign is we kind of explain a lot of the common tropes. And so even if one zombie kills you, your PPE goes out and any zombie in the immediate area Gets a piece of it. And they all, they're always hungry and they want, they want that, that, that energy. And so when one starts to moan, it's like a dinner bell. And any zombie within earshot of the moan or earshot of noise that they know comes from the living, you know, machines running, people hammering, you know, shouting, screaming, laughing, they start to head for it. And so they start to converge. And then as a game mechanic, I set it up so that it really creates this sense of urgency and drama because, all right, first there's only 2 zombies and you can handle those 2 zombies. Most groups, that's nothing. But now there's 4 more and it's like, yeah, 4 more, we can still deal with that. Well, wait, now there's 8, now there's 16. And every minute there's— it just—

Yeah.

The number of zombies, especially in an urban setting, increases geometrically. So before you know it, you've got 30, 60, 120 zombies, and now your shit's in the wind. You better be trying to get out of there and grab what you can and not get yourself trapped someplace where those zombies are going to hang around for days until you die.

Yeah.

of starvation or lack of water. And it's just great. And it was also cool. I happened to be in a situation where I was a guest at several small conventions while I was playtesting the Dead Range system. And, you know, everyone assumes that human beings would be just out for themselves. And, you know, the classic, you know, joke line of, I don't have to outrun the zombies. I just need to outrun you. Uh, because if the zombies get you, they're all gonna stop to rip you to shreds and devour your, in this case, your, your PPE. But that was not what happened in these playtests. And I'm playing with people who I don't know, they don't know each other. They're just people at a game convention playing in a short demo, like an hour-long demo. And so I ran a whole ton of them. So I must've run, I don't know, 150 people through through Dead Reign because I was mostly trying to test the mechanics and some of the different nuanced zombies that I had created. Because there's like, I want to say there's like 8 different types of zombies in the core book and more in other books. And it was amazing to me and heartlifting, honestly, because it'd be like people who don't even know each other and it's just a dumb game and they're like, Oh no, they've got Fred! I take my shotgun. You're out. Oh man, and there's still more coming. And he runs up, they're running up, butting them with the handle of the shotgun. And I'm like, well, there's more and more zombies. You guys could, if you hang around and try to save Fred, you're all going to die. And they're like, will we? They pull out a machete and they chop off the zombie's arm and pull Fred away. But now there's like 50 zombies and it was just amazing. And it happened over and over and over. And I'm like, this is fantastic. It was like, hey, we're survivors. We're the living. We have to help other living people from these horrible monsters. And it was awesome. And I think that's all part of the deliberate mechanics, but you know, you love it as a game designer when it really works. And just the setting makes sense and it feels good. And it's one of those things that everyone kind of understands that genre and the setting, you know, because it's our modern-day Earth. And I don't know, it just, it did. I didn't know how it would do. We printed 5,000 copies to see how it goes. And I thought, well, that's probably a 3-year supply. And it sold out pretty quick and we printed another 3 or 5 and that sold out pretty quick and it just keeps Keep selling. And it was funny because when I, when I felt like, oh man, I got to take over this book, what am I going to do? I'm not a zombie guy. It turns out, I guess I am a zombie guy.

Everybody's got a little zombie somewhere inside them. Kevin, I got a question for you.

Yeah.

The, the Brad Ashley character, is that a tribute to Nick and Amy?

It sure is. So, so Nick Bradshaw and Amy L. Ashbaugh were the 2 main artists in the book. And I just kind of mashed their, their names together as a sort of a little shout out to them.

I have a funny Amy, uh, story. Uh, I was at a Palladium open house and I said, hey, do you have any Warhammer 40K or Warhammer stuff? And I know I was at a Palladium convention, but a friend of mine's a Warhammer fan. And she goes, oh yeah, I have this orc. I'm like, cool. And can you tell me what book it's in? And it's like, oh, it's in this book. And I bought it from her there. 3 years later, 4 years later, I run into her at Gen Con and I walk up to her and I was like, hey, do you have any, you know, fantasy, you know, Palladium or Warhammer stuff? And I had bought, I bought some Palladium stuff too from her. She goes like, oh yeah, I have this orc. And I go, uh, are you sure? And she's like, yeah. And she goes through her whole library. Where the heck is this orc? I go, I bought it from you at an open house 3 years ago. And she's like, you're the one.

That's where.

And she had forgotten it was in her portfolio and she had forgotten she had sold it and she had been looking for it. Yeah. And it was really funny. And she's like, she's delightful to talk to. And like, her artwork is great. Anyway.

I actually, it's kind of funny because I was going to bring up Amy Ashbaugh because Dead Rain is where I first connected her art and her name. And she is now one of my favorite artists to the point where if I see her name associated with a project, I look at the project more closely. Because, yeah, she really seems to pull from tones in the project. And so, yeah, I mean, Amy is amazing. Her art in Dead Rain is so evocative. And yeah, I mean, it even made me— once I made that connection, I went back and gave a harder look at Riff's Triax just to pull out her art in it.

Uh, yeah, I'm sure it's been said, and I know it's been said actually, the art direction that you have in your books in general is spot on.

Yeah.

Um, I, it's the tone for each of the books, the art. I don't know if you, because I don't think you actually usually have an art director quote, or actually you do in some books, but, um, is that mostly you, Kevin? Uh, this is like not Dead Rend related, but, and I know your background with comic books and all that. So it's funny you say background, but How much of your career was comic books versus Palladium? And I'm sure at this point it's not like, it's like talking about your college days after a 40-year career, right?

Oh yeah, no, it is. It's, it's, it's minuscule. Well, I mean, it's my, my work in it in the comic book business is minuscule. My experience with it continues to this day because I just, you know, I'm a sucker for comic books. I still buy and read comic books and I had a collection of like 60,000 comic books. I just love them. I started reading the Marvel Comics in the '60s and '70s when they were at their zenith of the Stan Lee years, and I got to meet Stan Lee and other creators, and it was great. Detroit was sort of a hub in the '70s and early '80s. Detroit And to, I think, a somewhat lesser degree, Ohio, were like this hub of comic book conventions. And so, like, 80, 90% of the creators made their way through Detroit. So for example, Alex and I got to see Jim Starlin's portfolio that he was taking to Marvel.

Wow.

just to get work. And Jim Starlin's the guy who created Drax the Destroyer and most famously Thanos. And he was right out of the Army and he was in fatigues and he's like, hey guys, would you— he was kind of shy. He's like, would you mind looking at my portfolio and let me know what you think? And we looked at it and we're like, holy crap, this is amazing. You're going to get hired for sure. And we see him 6 months or a year later and we're like, So did you get hired by Marvel? We haven't seen your work yet. And he's like, no. And we're like, what? And he's like, well, they liked my art, but they wanted to see how I draw their characters. Because his portfolio was of characters like Drax the Destroyer and a bunch of his own creations that he would later kind of slip into comics, but he hadn't done—

Right.

Um, their actual characters. So he's like, so you guys looked at my portfolio before, right? I'm like, yeah. He goes, can you look at my new portfolio that I'm going to take them tomorrow to New York? And we're like, yeah, of course. And it's like Spider-Man and Captain America and all this stuff. We're like, this is great. They're gonna hire you for sure. And they did. But no, plenty. And in fact, it was funny for, for Probably 15 years into my running Palladium and doing role-playing games, people would ask me what I do for a living, and I would tell them, first of all, I'm an artist, and second of all, uh, that I'm doing role-playing now, but it's just temporary until I break into comics.

That's still the same thing you tell people though, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be great.

And then I realized at some point that Gee, I've got like a $2 million company and I love what I do and we really got something great going here. Um, maybe I'm not gonna do comics.

Well, don't, don't say that because I, I, you know, maybe I'll have a question for you a little bit later.

It would still be a— oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it would still be a fun joke to keep carrying forward though.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, this is my friend Kevin. Oh, hey Kevin, what are you into? Well, Right now I'm doing RPGs until I break into comics.

Yeah.

How long you been doing that? 40 years.

It could be a, it could be a eulogy item, you know, his comic book career that spanned a year and his RPGs, but he's really a comic book artist.

But what was awesome, I think, uh, I think comic books helped inform my approach to storytelling.

Yeah.

Um, but, but so did film and so did live theater and, and lots of things. I just like every form of story. And I had the pleasure of working with established comic book artists like, like Steve Bissette and Richard Corben and Jim Steranko. And then I, I, because my eye is just kind of drawn to that kind of style, I gave a number of guys who went on to become famous comic book guys their first job, like Ramon Perez and Freddie Williams, Tyler Walpole, you know, because I just saw their stuff and I'm like, wow, these guys are really good. They've got potential. And, you know, I hire them. Next thing I know, they're doing Spider-Man or the Ninja Turtles or, you know, becoming big-name guys. And I'm like, yay! So that was pretty cool. So comic books has always kind of been there in the background, um, in our games. And at one point, Eric Woodruff pointed out, you know, Kev, all your games are superheroes. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, your characters, they're all superheroes. I'm like, no, they're not. He's like, yeah, they got all the standard tropes. They're the outsider. They're this, they're that. They got special powers or—

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, they, they, they kind of are superheroes with, you know, sort of a different setting and a different appearance.

Well, I mean, uh, even though your classical dungeon crawling group are a bunch of superheroes.

Yeah.

Dungeon superheroes.

Yeah.

I mean, there's, we just don't call them superheroes. They're, you know, they're dungeon people or whatever. And you're like, adventurers equals superhero in a fantasy setting.

Yes.

I would make the point that the term superheroes as originally, you know, brought about when Superman first hit the Sunday funnies, Batman, etc., etc., has broadened so much that just about anything that under the sun these days can be tucked in some way, shape, or form under the superhero logo, which is kind of why that is the case. And so it makes it very hard to differentiate what is a superhero versus what is not a superhero. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, it does add that rise to the call aspect to so many other settings. And I think Kevin's done a great job over the years of really pulling that core ethos of what made superheroes superheroes. It is a person who goes outside the norms for the benefit of others. And so that's— we see it in Rifts, we see it in Heroes Unlimited. It, it's really, really there. And I think both Kevin and his— I, I think Eric was right on the money when he said that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it makes sense. And, you know, I just— it was funny when I was younger, uh, and even into college, my Aunt Irene was like, you're such a good artist, but all you do is superheroes, monsters, and aliens. I'm like, that's not true. I mean, it's— I do a lot of superheroes, monsters, and aliens, but— And just I just like the fantasy elements. I like the, we're more than human, and yet somehow we're even more human because of our super abilities. And whether it's psionics, whether it's magic, whether it's just you've got some arcane knowledge that helps you fight monsters and beyond the supernatural, You know, it's fun to play that person who is not Joe Average because we are Joe Average. So it's fun to play, you know, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and, you know, Luke and Han and, you know, Wolverine and Deadpool and, you know, whoever floats your boat. It's, it's fun. Because they are human, but they're much more than human. And I find it ironic and annoying at the same time that in film and television, especially these ordinary guys, like any of the characters from Mission: Impossible, but especially like Ethan Hunt or James Bond, and these guys are all super—

Yeah.

John Wick.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The movie character, not the game designer.

He's a superhero.

Absolutely.

Well, he's an, um, I was going to say like, uh, though, to bring it back to Dead Rain, you aren't superheroes. Not to start with. You have superhero attitudes, but you don't get, you can't cash the check.

Right.

And I think that, that draws players together more than in any other game because you have to make really hard decisions of the group. And sometimes it's like, we're all gonna die together, or we're all gonna get out together, you know, type thing. And you have to think more because you don't have any powers to back yourself up, which makes the survival horror aspect of it. System Failure was kind of the same way.

That's a great observation, Matt. I agree with you completely. And in fact, you know, there are some a bit more powered up OCC's character classes that you can play. But whenever I run it, I always have people roll up ordinary people.

Yeah.

And it's, it's great.

Yeah. It's, it's, um, because the superheroes are there. I mean, you're right. Um, even John McClane from Die Hard, you could almost say was a superhero. He's like, he's like a, he's a backstreet brawler superhero, but, you know, seen the dark streets of New York, but maybe some of that acid rain fell on him and gave him a little bit tougher feet, right? You know, as he's running around on glass, right?

Oh no, absolutely.

John Wick must have Wolverine's healing ability, healing factor times 5. I mean, he fell, what, 10 stories and bounced off an awning and dusted himself off. You know, it's like, I don't think so.

I never saw past the first one.

Oh yeah. Well, the second one's awesome.

Second one's actually really good. I don't think I've seen that. Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

But no. Yeah, no. Dead Rain is, you know, definitely has this and I'm not, Dead Rain made me a zombie fan, I'll be honest, because I wasn't really a zombie fan beforehand. And, uh, now that between Max Brooks, uh, World War Z and everything, I like— I, um, I never got it until I read Dead Rain.

Well, it's funny and ironic because one of my early inspirations to be a creator and entrepreneur was from George Romero. Because he was a guest at like a 1970 or '71 comic book convention, and I got to meet the man. And of course he speaks to the crowd and explains, you know, how he made the movie and on a shoestring, and it's become this cult classic.

Wow.

And he was youngish, you know. I mean, here I'm like 16, but, you know, he's like in his 30s, but I'm like If he can do it, I can do it. And I loved— I was a huge, huge fan of Night of the Living Dead.

Mm-hmm.

And of course followed his career after that. And, uh, so, you know, in my mind it was just kind of ironic and, you know, closing the circle. I mean, he was one of my early inspirations, and then I'm writing a zombie series, you know, it's like How cool is that?

And I, I just want to say that you and I are coming from a very same place. Uh, Romero was a very, very early inspiration of mine. I grew up with, you know, the Night of the Living Dead being regularly played on late-night television on Channel 10, ABC, WDIO. Um, And that style of storytelling was really resonated with me and is something I've by and large carried forward into my career basically as a game master. And when Dead Rain came out, it was like you said, this kind of full circle thing of getting back to that core aesthetic of what zombies were and how you— how a good way to tell a story is.

Well, and I think, you know, if you look at Dead Rain, I think you can see a lot of, uh, certainly inspiration from Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead. I mean, all those elements are, are there. Plus Walking Dead and other things, although I never read the comics. I only saw the TV series. And I think that was coming out around the same time that I was writing Dead Reign. It'd only been out a few seasons, I think. But I think they capture a lot of that old kind of Romero feeling with more You know, pathos to it.

Well, and I think you hit on when you're doing your playtesting, and some of the things that I've seen as well, is it's not as much about the zombies as it is the characters interacting with each other, right? It's them figuring out, how am I gonna survive? How are we gonna survive?

What—

which one's more important to me right now? You know, you made the joke, you know, yeah, well, I have to do— I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you. Well, if you're gone tomorrow, I can't move the water that I need to get up the tower to stay alive. Right? One of your resources is the people.

Yeah.

And I have a program management background. I hate it when people call resources and they mean people. I'm like, no, no, no, those are people. You need them. They're more than just one resource. They're the whole kit and caboodle. That becomes very interesting in survival aspects. Again, kind of goes against the grain. It's not a superheroes game. It's a people working with people to overcome this thing that you can't do by yourself.

Right.

So if you haven't, if you haven't read them, you need to check out Hell Followed and In the Face of Death for Dead Rain, because something I realized, because I hear a lot with people who They're like, well, I don't know, you can only play a zombie game for so long and then it's done. And I'm like, no, because I think they're kind of locked into those short story tropes that we see in film and television.

Right.

And I'm like, no. And that really came across to me in, well, in both of those books because one has, and I didn't write them, Taylor, Tyler, Taylor White, Tyler White, Taylor, Taylor White.

Taylor White.

And it's like, there's like 25 or 23, like little synopses that are beautiful and perfect for any setting for all kinds of disasters. Right. Uh, earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, which really fits into the whole survival thing, but has applications in all kinds of games, even Heroes Unlimited. Uh, let alone rifts and other stuff. And then when I was writing In the Face of Death, I realized that trying to go through, especially, I mean, houses to some degree, but office buildings, apartment buildings, it's basically a dungeon crawl.

Oh, absolutely.

Except you're going up. Well, in most cases going up. And there's just all kinds of new stories and elements and things that came to mind as I was writing this thing and I'm like, yeah, think of, think of the whole world more like, like, like a fantasy setting, like D&D, where you're wandering the wilderness and you don't know what's over the hill. And it could be this town that, that is being besieged by zombies or is under the influence of a death cult or some other crazy cult. And, or is maybe some last bastion of you know, human society, or is it? And what compromises have they made? And it just— it's just, you could be the knight errant, you know? It's just— there's all kinds of things you can do with it if you start thinking beyond a little bit beyond the normal things that you expect from a zombie game.

Yeah, that's the kind of— your hometown is really nice and peaceful and calm, Until 85, 90% of them are zombies, right? And they're sitting in their hometown houses waiting for you to show up. And you're like, wait, what? Yeah, yeah, the little old lady down the road who has the 20 cats. Well, she doesn't have the 20 cats anymore, but she's still waiting for you to come by, right? And it's a very creepy feeling when you start thinking that way, that the town you grew up in or the peaceful little suburb— well, the burbs have always just— there's no crime in the burbs. Well, no, there's not, but there's, you know, 50,000 zombies there sitting in their houses waiting for you to come say hello. You know, it gets much more creepy. That commute.

Oh, like they're waiting for you to say hello?

Yeah. The commute from Detroit to wherever is not so cool anymore. You know, when going to Detroit is better, but urban centers are terrifying too, right? Like it's, it's always very interesting. how that changes your whole dynamic of a game.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And that, that was the whole thing sort of behind In the Face of Death. It really focused on the big central urban areas, larger cities and skyscrapers and living on rooftops and that kind of thing.

Because they're super tempting from a story perspective. They're super tempting. All the resources you need are just sitting there At the super mall, just waiting for you to come get them. Come on down. They're waiting for you. It's like, no, it's a trap. Well, yeah, but you need it. You know, you need the meds, you need the stuff.

Yeah.

Well, and you keep mentioning how, you know, it's fun to play ordinary people, but I think the sense of humanity is something we try to capture in all of our games.

Agreed.

So I think that's important. And I think oddly enough, That, that kind of goes back to when I was reading really good horror novels and short stories and, um, the old EC comic books, uh, Tales from the Crypt and, you know, that kind of thing, Vault of Horror. One of the interesting things is all those stories, each issue of those old comics that came out in the '50s, 1950s, and I could track down at comic book conventions The interesting thing of all those stories is they're all typically like 8 or 10 pages long, and they almost always were like little morality plays. So they really focused on human foibles and virtues and vices. You know, the guy is a drunk or a wife beater, or, you know, is greedy or covets his boss's wife, or, you know, wants his boss's position, so he does some horrible thing or invokes some horrible—

Right.

you know, dark magic or, uh, you know, that kind of thing. I always loved movies like, uh, Pumpkinhead. You know, that's another one which I felt kind of had that, that old EC comic book kind of feel where— I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but you know, there's a couple of neat twists in, in, in that, uh, because at first blush it's like, oh yeah, it's your typical horror splatter film. And, and, you know, these, these teenagers or college-age students are, are all gonna die some horrible way. And there's some really fun, cool ideas and twists in there that make it just, just a great movie, in my opinion.

Well, it's a lot of horror is a morality tale, right? You've done something wrong and now the badness happens. Yeah. And so you have to learn that lesson. I mean, yeah, there's the Shock Jock and the, all that stuff, but especially like some of those Tales from the Crypt type stuff. And those, those were all just like, you know, Grimm's fairy tale re— repolished and made very scary. Well, some of Grimm's fairy tales originally were really scary and terrifying, but—

Oh yeah.

It's funny.

Like, like people are talking about the latest Disney Snow White movie. And one of the things I find funny is they keep referring to the, you know, the 1939 original Disney movie. And I'm like, but, but, but, but, but you do realize that this is a Grimm's fairy tale, right?

Right.

And this goes back like a few hundred years or a couple hundred years. I mean, it's like no one talks about the original Grimm fairy tale. And I'm like, all right, that's fine. I grew up on that stuff. Just like Little Mermaid ends horribly.

Oh, Little Mermaid is a horrible tale. Yeah.

Okay.

I do have a Dead Rain related question that expands into the further Palladium artverse. So there's a story here. I want to know the story. I'm looking at Dead Rain Book 1, Civilization Gone. And on page 21 is a picture of somebody with a mask who is bent over a body punching them in the face and that body's on the ground. Now, Kevin, I'm pretty sure you're familiar with this picture, or at least the pose, because I've seen this particular shot recreated. Oh, and I've lost count how many times I've seen this recreated. What, what is the story behind this gag?

Well, So one of the most famous Kevin Long illustrations from Riffs, and that I used in advertising, in fact, in Marvel comic ads. So people, millions of people are very familiar with the image.

Yeah, yeah.

It's, you know, the original image is a robot's head getting smashed in.

Yep.

Bradshaw redrew it as some tough guy smashing in a zombie's head. It's the same basic pose. We like to have fun with our stuff and throw in little homages. Just like Brad Ashley is a nod to Nick and Amy, this is Nick's little nod to Riffs and Kevin Long. Likewise, uh, you know, as far as little fun aspects, uh, you'll note that there's a, uh, a character that appears in almost all, if not all, of the Dead Rain books. Sort of a, a, uh, strong-looking guy in a gas mask and often has a shovel. That's, that's, that's Nick Bradshaw putting himself in the books. In the books.

Okay. Now I gotta be on the lookout for that guy. Yeah.

Dead Rain. I, I super, yeah, super happy about it. Like it was just like such a great, great book, great memories. Um, exactly what you probably want to hear as a, as a game developer and designer, right?

Absolutely. And, and, and, well, you know, it's a funny thing is, and I think why so many gamers enjoy our books is We're fans of this stuff ourselves. We're fans of the genres, we're fans of our work and what each other does, and we have fun with it. So yeah, it's awesome that people love it so much because when I took it over and started to write these books, I wasn't sure if people would like it. I wasn't sure I was a zombie guy. You know, I, uh, I was a little concerned with it, but I just dived in and had fun with it. And it's a thrill that people enjoy it so much. And it really does— it's funny, zombies in particular just have a certain appeal that I can't really explain. I mean, I've heard it a million times. Well, it's, it's like a parody, a paradox of, of our life and our civilization and the monsters inside and blah blah blah. And maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I had a guy, young guy, he played a little D&D 5e. He's a big board game guy and he's with Merrill Lynch. And he came by the office and he was like, what do you guys do here? And so I give him the tour and I explain what we do. And he's like, wow, I would really like to try one of your games. What would you recommend? And I recommended Dead Rain because it's a great introductory game. Oh yeah.

Or a commentary on consumer society gone wrong and he works for Merrill Lynch.

Hmm.

I'm just wondering.

Well, also to your credit there, there is a phenomenon that I've noticed with the Palladium fan base when I am interacting with people and talking about it and Oh yeah, I got into playing games recently. And typically, you know, you talk to the people who have been playing it for years, they're like, oh yeah, I got into it with Ninja Turtles or Robotech or sometimes Rift or something. Those, that's the usual story there. But lately, more often I've heard, I got into it with Dead Rain.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

And it is, it's a great, it's a great intro game. And basically I described the zombies and how the game is different from your typical zombie game because his initial reaction was like, yeah, it's zombies. I am kind of into them, but not really. And I explained how the zombies work and the setting. And so he bought the Dead Rain book, the core rulebook. I gave him one of the sourcebooks and he's been running a Dead Rain game.

Nice.

Oh, oh, he jumped right into a game master.

That is a brave individual.

That is a brave, brave individual.

And I always throw out the consumer things. And I'm like, zombies, like, I don't know if it's that. Like, that's one of the things I've read papers that people say, oh, it's based on consumerism and consuming everything. And I'm like, or it's just a deep-seated fear that's been around for thousands and thousands of years. And it's just kind of run amok and it's in the zeitgeist right now. Yeah. And it is a complete, very simple game at its face and you can just pick it up and run with it. So yeah, it's, I'm gonna have to buy a few more copies and stick them into something. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, definitely.

Well, so as a review, Palladium, I guess you got your horror start with Beyond the Supernatural, picked it back up with Nightbane, and now have been knocking it out of the park with Dead Rain. This is, I don't know, 3 for 3. This is— I wouldn't say any of these are misses. I think Palladium's got a damn solid horror lineup.

Thanks. I would too. And you're gonna see more. We're gonna do more with Beyond the Supernatural. We're gonna do more of Dead Rain. Hopefully we'll do more with Night Bean as well. And we want to do a lot more with Beyond the Supernatural.

Please, please, please, please.

Count on it.

Well, I have notes. I'll send them.

At the risk of— Trying to avoid putting you in a position to talk about books that may or may not be coming out, do you have anything that is solid that you can talk about right now that you want to promote on this session?

Um, yeah, I mean, uh, Rifts Bestiary Volume 2 is definitely coming out. We had, uh, Matthew Clements grab a bunch of my, uh, initial outlines and notes and, and the collected monsters we're gonna do and take a run at it. And he fell short a little bit. We sent it back. He's working on it right now. And then I'm definitely, you know, I need to finish up and it'll definitely come out this year is Neonsloth Expeditions, which is part 2 to Neonsloth Jungles.

Ooh.

Yeah.

So those 2 are for sure. And then one of our, one of my goals And I shouldn't just say mine because Sean's been pushing for this heavily as well. So you'll be happy to hear this, Jacob, is one of my goals. Now, will it happen this year? I freaking hope so. Is to come out with Beyond the Supernatural Arcanum and the first Tomes Grotesque book.

You have made me so happy. You have made me and a lot of diehard folks who have been carrying the Beyond the Supernatural Torch for a long time.

Very happy. Well, it'll probably be end of the year, so don't think it's coming out immediately. And Beyond the Supernatural is one of my favorite games. I know what people don't understand because they're like, oh, he just doesn't love it like we do. And he, you know, because they're not showing it any love. And it's like, I'm dealing with a thousand different things and we're trying to rebuild the company. We're doing Ninja Turtles, which was, you know, Very much a huge time sink. And, um, we're doing all this cool stuff. We're setting up stuff behind the scenes that will become apparent over the next couple of years, um, to rebuild the foundation and make us stronger than ever. And BTS is one of those sacrifices. And I just want to say that because I love that game. Like, like, when I do— when someone says, hey, could you just run something? it's usually Millennium Fantasy or Beyond the Supernatural or Dead Rain because they're quick, simple. I know them inside and out and I love them.

Yeah.

Uh, not that I don't love all the other stuff. Obviously I love Rifts. You know, there's a million books on them. I, I, I love Heroes Unlimited. Uh, you know, all the stuff we do is our passion projects, but, you know, BTS, Beyond the Supernatural, is one of the You know, one of my personal favorites, and I've been dying to write these books too. So, God willing.

Thank you, Kevin. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You you'll make a lot of people happy. I will say that by and large, the BTS community within the greater Palladium community, there are of course outspoken people at all times.

Always every every group though.

But within the BTS, we've already we've always known we're kind of like this. sub-niche within everything else, and everybody seems pretty cool with the understanding that when you're dealing with competing needs and such, that when you're a sub-niche, you kind of got to just wait your turn.

Well, the thing is, we— Sean and I both believe that BTS could be huge. It could be just as big as Call of Cthulhu if it's given the attention, you know.

And if you ever need an evangelist for it, I am ready and willing to serve, sir.

Well, I mean, Call of Cthulhu just has, you know, 100 more years. So, you know, in 100 years, it'll be— we'll be talking about BTS, not Cthulhu, right? That's the big thing.

Back to the books that you mentioned, Rift's Bestiary. Do you offhand know if there's going to— or what the alphabet range in this one's going to be?

Um, I'm not sure on that.

Does it go all the way to Z or are we going to be maybe thinking there could be a 3 somewhere in the future?

I'm not really sure.

Okay. Gotcha. Okay.

Heard.

Well, it looks like we have a lot of good stuff coming up. Also, this episode will be releasing soon. I'm going to be doing a good turnaround on the edits, which means it's going to be released with still a few, at least 2 weeks left, folks, before you can make your plans to head to WagonCon in The Dalles, Oregon. It is the first weekend in May. It is very Palladium relevant in that, well, we're all going to be there. But also I know from looking at the schedule, there's several Palladium games. I am in at least One Rifts game. And there is a guest, Matt Ballant, is going to be there running Valley of the Pharaohs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm, uh, we were super excited to get him to come down. Um, uh, bringing him out to run several and he, I think he might be doing a panel as well, just talking about some of the similar topics that we talk about here. Um, Kevin, with you about some of the old school stuff and, um, super excited to see him and, uh, And really he's, uh, for WagonCon, he'll probably be the biggest like name that we've had in some ways. I mean, we've had lots of other people, yourself included, Nathaniel, um, who've been published authors and game people. Um, well, actually Keith Baker, probably more people would know, but that's because of Eberron. Um, but, uh, we had him just show up randomly a couple of times, which was kind of cool.

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, we're super excited for him to come down. And yep.

And in— if you're interested in the early days of Palladium, I will be running a recon game there.

Oh yeah.

And at the time of the recording, there are still spots left at that table. So if you want to get your nom on, uh, take a look and come. Um, also, uh, I know I myself have already been contacted by several players to potentially run some side games.

So, all right.

Yeah. Drop a line if you're interested in something in particular. I mean, I mean, if enough interest is brought forward, perhaps a Beyond the Supernatural game could happen if enough people got together and wanted it.

And I, Kevin, I know you are not traveling to as many conventions right now, but, you know, if any time, you know, you want to come out, we could make that happen. I know I've emailed you and Sean about it. I will take this opportunity to pitch you. Um, it's, it's, this is our 8th year and we are a small con, like 150 people. Um, so it's a very small, intimate, uh, family-oriented convention. Um, and it's really a great time. And I've, uh, I've committed to 10 years of running this. COVID got us 2 extra. So, uh, I've run in year 10. Year 10 will be probably a really big thing. So in 2 years, think about that, Kevin, you know, fly you out, treat you awesome. Like a rock star, have you run some games.

All right. I'll think about it.

Well, thanks again for joining us, Kevin. This has been a blast.

My pleasure.

We've still got more to go.

Always.

Yeah.

Many, many more years.

And folks at home, thanks for listening. If you haven't already, please drop by our Discord and say hello, um, or, you know, leave us some kind words on, uh, your podcast aggregator review. System of choice. And of course, follow the links in all of our show notes back to the Palladium store or to Drive Thru where you can buy all of their stuff, sign up for their mailing list. Kevin emails like every damn day with new, new deals and sales and news that's coming out. And it's, it's one of the, one of the high points, I think, of being a Palladium fan is the newsletter.

And just a small Kyle out. While we would love you to stop by our Discord, do everything NPC just mentioned, take a minute and just send a kind, kind message to Palladium Books, the entire reason we're doing this.

Yep.

It's great to promote ourselves, but we, as always, want you to show the love to that which we love. So. Have a good night.

Thanks, guys. That's very nice of you. And let me just say, something big should be happening in June, so keep your eyes open for that.

Are you going to get in trouble for saying that?

No.

Okay.

Oh, good.

Because we like talking to you and we don't want Sean to cut that. The cease and desist letter shows up in the email from Sean. How dare you?

This is a big Sean project.

Okay.

And, um, I think we'll be doing, uh, it'll be a BackerKit thing.

Cool.

And it's, uh, something of a departure for us, but Sean's putting in a ton of work. We're working with some great people, and I think the advanced hype for it will start in May. Okay.

Awesome.

So keep your eyes peeled.

Will do. Noel, on that note, stop by our Discord and get the hype up, folks.

Yeah.

We'll see you next time, Kevin.

Adios.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades. By Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies. And I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies. And it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

Thank you.

Have a good one.

You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse, and all other such topics are the property This show is the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order directly at palladiumbooks.com, and their entire catalog is available digitally at DriveThruRPG as well. Our opening music is 8-Bit Bass and Lead by Furbyguy from freesound.org. This closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusiclibrary.org. archive.org. All sound effects used are self-made or acquired via Creative Commons Zero license. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as The Glitter Boys— that's B-O-Y-S— and check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com/glitterboys. And also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.com/discord. And if you want to help us out, please feel Spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time.

Bye.