Terrible Warriors

Our next Session Zero takes us across the Known Universe to seek out a home among the countless worlds of the Imperium so that we may create a noble house worthy of claiming the planet Arrakis, also known as Dune.

Yup, we’re examining Modiphius’ Dune: Adventures in the Imperium!

Next week we’ll be back for Part Two of our Dune Session Zero where Brendan, Sean, and Justin will finally create their characters in Dune: Adventures in the Imperium. The sleeper will awaken!

Special thanks to Modiphius for sending us a copy of Dune: Adventures in the Imperium. You can find more information at Modiphius.com or on their DriveThruRPG listing.

Today's Terrible Warriors were Justin Ecock, Sean Horbatiuk, and Brendan Frye Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where patreon supporters will receive copies of the character sheets created in this session!

Justin reconnects with Matthew Orr from Wet Ink Games as well as his business partner, and brother-in-law, Brandon Aten to learn more about Never Going Home, the amazing year they’ve had since GenCon2019, and the release of their new Campaign Dossiers.

For everything Never Going Home and other games by Wet Ink Games visit wetinkgames.com

You can also find their entire collection by visiting DriveThruRPG at: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/9148/Wet-Ink-Games Or at Indie Press Revolution at: https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Never-Going-Home-Print-PDF.html

Get connected with Wet Ink Games on Facebook at: facebook.com/WetInkGames

And Matthew and Brandon invite you to join their discord channel by using this invitation: https://discord.gg/k3khpvb43Z

Into the Wyrd and Wild: Second Edition is currently on Kickstarter and you can find out more by visiting: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jiangshi/into-the-wyrd-and-wild-revised-and-reprinted

Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors

Justin connects with Mattias Lilja, co-creator and writer with Symbaroum to discuss bringing their award winning setting to 5e.

New Rules, Same World

Free League Games has just launched Symbaroum for 5e on kickstarter and have set to translate their work of the dark forest into the more familiar mainstream ruleset. In our discussion we talk about Mattias’ history with playing Dungeons & Dragons to forming a publishing company to make games of his own. We later go over the intricate challenges of converting such a fully formed and robust game into the 5e ruleset, and what changes needed to be done to the game while preserving the core intentions. We also use this conversation to open up about the importance of having a discussion with your players about the settings you play in and the intentions you have with your games.

Check Out Symabroum 5e

The Kickstarter is almost over but you can check out The Ruins of Symbaroum by visiting their kickstarter page at kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/ruins-of-symbaroum-for-5e

Check out Symbaroum at symbaroum.com and visit Free League Games to find more about all the products they offer at freeleaguepublishing.com

If you want to dive deeper into the Symbaroum community, Mattias invites you to visit their reddit page at r/Symbaroum and on facebook at facebook.com/FreeLeaguePublishing or facebook.com/groups/symbaroum.english

You can follow Free League Games on twitter @FreeLeaguePub

You should also listen to our previous conversation with the other Mattias who co-created Symbaroum here: https://www.terriblewarriors.com/episodes/symbaroum

And we checked out Symbaroum in a previous episode of Session Zero which you can listen to here: https://www.terriblewarriors.com/episode/session-zero-symbaroum

Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors

There’s wolves in them there woods but it’s those very same woods you have to get through to reach the next town over if you want to try their new brew, but you better pay off your chicken race debts before you leave!

Under Hill By Water, by Josh McCrowell, is a game all about playing halflings in a small village who just want to live their lives in quiet and peace. Well… not too much quiet. They’re peaceful but that doesn’t mean they’re boring.

In our second episode we help Lana pay off her chicken race debts by helping Bodo with his howling wolves problem by helping Hugo spread ghost rumours in order to scare the local tax collectors guild so that the group can join Nibs on his visit to the neighbouring town to try a rival tavern’s new brew to confirm the rumours that they have a better drink than the local Dog & Pool are as reliable as the rumours that Hob Libgin found himself an honest job! Life in Under-Moot is many things, but it’s never boring.

Check Out Under Hill, By Water

If this game sounds like your cup of tea be sure to check out the itch.io page at riseupcomus.itch.io/under-hill-by-water

Special thanks to Sean Horbatiuk, Velvet Duke, and Jo Drummond for joining Justin at the virtual table to explore this strangely endearing game.

Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound

Keep an eye out on our Patreon Page at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where supporters will be getting a copy of the three character sheets we made and a detailed list of the 20 locations of Under-Moot.

If you end up trying Under Hill, By Water with your group let us know by mentioning our twitter account @dicewarriors!

For our first actual play adventure in over a year we've settled on playing a game that's all about having no adventures, thank you very much.

Under Hill By Water, by Josh McCrowell, is a game all about playing halflings in a small village who just want to live their lives in quiet and peace.

In our first episode we find out who our halfling characters will be, name the village and it's tavern, and populate the map with all manner of NPCs, meeting halls, and a guild. Welcome to Under-Moot.

Check Out Under Hill, By Water

If this game sounds like your cup of tea be sure to check out the itch.io page at riseupcomus.itch.io/under-hill-by-water

Special thanks to Sean Horbatiuk, Velvet Duke, and Jo Drummond for joining Justin at the virtual table to explore this strangely endearing game.

Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound

Keep an eye out on our Patreon Page at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where supporters will be getting a copy of the three character sheets we made and a detailed list of the 20 locations of Under-Moot.

If you end up trying Under Hill, By Water with your group let us know by mentioning our twitter account @dicewarriors!

Welcome to our first attempt at going Behind the Screen, a more one-on-one conversation where Justin shares some tips and stories from his years running tabletop games. In our inaugural Behind the Screen, Justin shares the background story to his Sweetwater Bank campaign he created for 5th Edition D&D while he was hired to run games at Toronto’s Storm Crow Manor.

The Challenge

Justin had several challenges going into making this campaign. Primarily it needed to be able to pick-up-and-go with zero prep time and little chance to meet the players before their game. And since this game was designed for the DM&Dine Program it needed to be friendly to brand-new players as well as engaging for those who had been playing for years. The set up needed to be quick and it needed to be completed within four hours exactly, every time it was played. Finally Justin wanted to subvert some of the default assumptions of D&D and use this limited time to showcase all the different and varied ways a simple story like Sweetwater could play, this also meant that he wanted to create a story that could absolutely be completed with zero combat while also being open to the players who wanted to roll dice and cast epic spells to destroy their enemies.

The Set Up

The story of Sweetwater Bank is pretty simple. A tavern, run by a dwarf named Tarry, has recently gotten a reputation for an incredibly popular and possibly addictive mead. Those who try it swear it’s the best thing they’ve ever had and can’t wait to get back. In fact, many people who try it never leave and so a small village has built itself around Tarry’s Tavern solely for the purpose of being close to the mead so they can keep drinking it.

However the players are hooked into the mystery, when they arrive they’ll encounter a Hill Giant that has stormed it’s way into town and collapsed into Tarry’s storehouse where all his mead is being kept. But not everything about this encounter, nor this village, is as it seems. Over the next four hours the players will be tasked with unravelling the mystery of Sweetwater Bank, foiling a plot to steal Tarry’s secrets, and deciding for themselves the fate of the town and it’s residents.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Sean Horbatiuk for joining us so that Justin could bounce his rambling ideas off of him.

Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound

Keep an eye out on our Patreon Page at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where supporters will be getting a copy this month of Justin’s Sweetwater campaign. It will be rules-agnostic and can serve as a framework for a story set in the game of your choice. If you do decide to play Sweetwater with your group let us know by mentioning our twitter account @dicewarriors!

Session Zero returns as we journey into the Dark Forest of Davokar and are introduced to the world of Symbaroum.

“Twilight Falls, Davokar Darkens”

Symbaroum is a game that has been on my short list since I came into contact with it at GenCon 2019. I had seen it being offered by Free League and new that it had origins originally as a game only available in Swedish but I foolishly set it aside at the time as yet-another-sword-and-sorcery-rpg.

Then I got to meet Mattias Johnsson Haake, who I got to finally interview last month, and through him learned all about the long journey that Symbaroum and Mattias have taken together. I also looked a little closer at the game itself and what I found was an evocative world with incredibly immersive artwork, a long thought out and lived in history, and game mechanics that didn’t get in the way of it’s rich story about corruption, power, and nature.

Three Corrupted Explorers

To help guide us into Symbaroum we used their recently released Starter Kit to help describe the setting and then quickly opened up the main core book to create our own characters. Character creation was simple, for the most part, and all three of the characters presented in this Session Zero would make for a terrific long form campaign. This trio was hard to leave behind and I hope this isn’t the last time we visit this setting with them.

You’ll meet Sean’s Farsig Unthist, a goblin with a thirst for magic, Velvet’s Gerundin, an elven changeling challenging their destiny, and Justin’s Daramei, a human noble who will compromise everything to gain the power he thinks he deserves. Together they’re all playing with the fires of corruption in their own way as they set foot into the Dark Forest, will they be able to save themselves or will they each drag the other into the darkness with them?

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Free League Games for sending us a copy of the new Symbaroum Starter Kit as well as the three book collection of the Core Rulebook, The Advanced Players Guide, and the Game Master’s Guide. Check them all out at their website as well as on Drivethru RPG.

Shortly after we recorded this episode Free League announced that Symbaroum is getting a D&D 5e book made! Titled “The Ruins of Symbaroum” the kickstarter begins on April 13th and you can set a reminder by visiting their kickstarter page right now Today's Terrible Warriors were Justin Ecock, Sean Horbatiuk, and Velvet Duke Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where patreon supporters will receive copies of the character sheets created in today’s episode

Justin connects with Daniel Kwan from the ENnie award winning Asians Represent! to talk about his actual play, Dungeons & Da Asians, and his recent writing work for Candlekeep Mysteries

Teacher

Daniel started off using Dungeons & Dragons as a teaching tool a The ROM, a museum in Toronto, where he used the game as a platform to energize kids imaginations to educate them on the different subjects available at the museum. From there he was invited to conventions like Breakout, where he participated in his first panel, and then to Fan Expo where he came into contact with the larger tabletop community. Not long after that he was preparing to co-create the Asians Represent podcast, which at the time would be just a monthly podcast about elevating Asian representation in tabletop gaming.

Presenter

As the podcast grew so did their scope and eventually they launched Dungeons & Da Asians, an actual play podcast-within-a-podcast which would explore Asian characters and settings with a cast of Asian players. The community was growing and they’d clearly tapped into something. Then in 2020 they won the Gold ENnie for Best Podcast. Since then they’ve launched Asians Read, where they give critical readings of published games that use Asian themes, tropes, and stereotypes.

Creator

Meanwhile, along with the podcasting, Daniel is also the co-founder of Dundas West Games where you may be familiar with Ross Rifles, which we got to play here on Terrible Warriors back during their Kickstarter campaign. It has also been announced that Daniel is part of the writing team for Magpie Games’ Avatar: The Last Airbender RPG and just this week saw the release of Candlekeep Mysteries which includes an adventure written by Daniel himself, “The Book of Inner Alchemy”.

Links

The best way to stay up to date with everything Daniel Kwan is to follow him on twitter @danielhkwan And Daniel also has a linktree where you can find links to all his kickass projects.

You should also follow Asians Represent on twitter @aznsrepresent Music in this episode is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors

Production Note: We ran into technical difficulties with the record of Justin’s voice and were only able to recover a backup recording of his voice taken from a different microphone. Thanks for understanding and we’ll return to sounding like polished gems next week. We take a departure from meeting those who make our games to those who make our gaming tools. Justin connects with Anthony Sabatino the co-creator and composer behind the immersive tabletop music app, Tabletop Tunes. Music For Your Games

Anthony Sabatino is a graduate of the Berkeley School of Music and a lover of film and videogame scores. When he wanted to find a way to integrate music more fully into his tabletop games he found the tools available online to be lacking. Nothing really did all of the things he wanted and none of the music sounds the way he imagined they should. So he teamed up with his friend Jacob Johnson who could program the code he needed to make an app that can play immersive music creative specifically for tabletop games in an easy interface that helps and not interferes with the GM’s responsibilities while running a game. Inspired by composers like Joe Hisaishi (Princess Mononoke) and Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings) and games like The Witcher III, Skyrim, and Legend of Zelda, Anthony set out to make a collection of tabletop tunes that are all connected by a central theme of adventure and discovery and can help guide players through their stories without overpowering the experience at the table.

Immersive and Evocative

The way it works is simple, you pick your setting (Cave, Forest, Town, Dungeon, etc) and choose from the available tracks. The tracks are composed to loop indefinitely and have been loudness corrected so that they don’t jump out, startle, or get in the way of the your game. Background music to slip in behind your storytelling. When combat begins you chose the intensity of the battle (Mild, Tense, Epic, or Boss) and during the combat there is a simple slider you can move up and down which will increase voices and complexity of the song so you can ramp tension up and down during the scene.

The plan is to release the app with an initial selection of free music and, rather than incorporate ads or other freemium strategies, offer up additional music tracks as packs which can be ordered through the app as needed or desired. Further down the road keep a look out for other settings and genres taking you beyond the fantasy games and into more modern and sci-fi settings as well!

Check Out Tabletop Tunes

Check out Tabletop Tunes at tabletoptunes.com and follow them closely to learn when the app is available for download (at the time of this posting it’s currently under review by the Apple Review Board so they are hoping it will be available any day now!)

If you want to follow Anthony you can find out more about at anthonysabatinomusic.com

Music samples in this episode are created by Anthony Sabatino used by permission Intro and Extro music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors

Today in a special feature of Meet The Makers, Justin connects with Mattias Johnsson Haake, the the project manager, editor, and co-writer behind the critically acclaimed Symbaroum. We talk about this intriguing setting where nature fights back and the lines of good and evil are blurred into shades of grey. We also talk about the strange and wonderful journey that brought Mattias and his creation from a defunct publishing company to merging with Free League Games.

Running The Marathon

When Mattias founded the Swedish game studio Järnringen in the early 2000’s I don’t think he could ever have expected the journey he and his company would take. They were behind the first iterations of what would one day become Mutant: Year Zero and the creators of Coriolis, but when the company was closed they had to liquidate their properties and sell them off. Coriolis would be sold to a videogame developer who would later license it to Tomas Härenstam at then new and upstart publishing company called Fria Ligan. Fria Ligan, or Free League Games as we know them know, would go on to release Mutant: Year Zero and create the Year Zero engine which would power Forbidden Lands, Tales from the Loop, and Alien The RPG.

Meanwhile, after years of being on the outside of the tabletop industry Mattias and two of his business partners made a plan to create a new game, in a new setting, that would launch them back into tabletop and if they were successful the plan was always to merge with Fria Ligan and combine their forces. That new game would become Symbaroum. Teaming with the talented artistry of Martin Grip (Coriolis, The One Ring Second Edition) and rules designed by Mattias Lilja, the three of them created a game that captured the attention of anyone fortunate enough to pick up the book.

Merging Järnringen and Fria Ligan into Free League Games would also have another fortunate outcome. The property of Coriolis, once liquidated when Järnringen was shut down, had been purchased by Fria Ligan which meant that after the merger Mattias was once again the owner of one of the first games he had created. Honestly, I can’t wait for the documentary!

Game of Thrones Meets Princess Mononoke

But what about the game? Mattias describes Symbaroum as a dark and deadly fantasy world where nature fights back and factions vie for control. Themes of colonialism and environmentalism are paramount and while you can certainly play Symbaroum like a traditional hack and slasher the hope is that players will be asked to pause and reflect on their actions. Who are the bad guys in this story? Is a good vs evil binary even appropriate when the invaders are also refugees? The game mechanics have crunch if you want crunch but have also been compared to more story focused playstyles like Power by the Apocalypse games, you won’t get bogged down in hours of combat rolls but be tasked with finding the answers to the mysteries of the world around you. With the rules facing the players, not the GM, the onus is on them to explore the world around and discover the hidden truths of the Forest of Davokar.

Getting Started

Free League Games has just launched the Starter Set for Symbaroum which will set you and your table up with all you need to do to become explorers and treasure hunters on the edge of the Forest of Davokar. While the full scope of the game’s setting can be found in the core rulebook, Mattias is quick to point out that the Starter Kit is designed to be more than just a sample adventure or a demo. It comes equipped with tables and rules to help you generate your own campaigns using only the Starter Kit, and while the rules are more streamlined for ease of play it will give you more than enough to play with to decide if you want to take a deeper dive into the wilder Symbaroum setting. And what about that wider setting? Mattias is currently working on book 5 of 6 of an ongoing chronicle beginning with The Throne of Thorns: Thistle Hold and he promises that as you progress through these stories that answers to his mysteries will be revealed as well as answers to questions you didn’t even know you had!

Check Out Symabroum

Check out Symbaroum at symbaroum.com and visit Free League Games to find more about all the products they offer at freeleaguepublishing.com

If you want to dive deeper into the Symbaroum community, Mattias invites you to visit their reddit page at r/Symbaroum and on facebook at facebook.com/FreeLeaguePublishing or facebook.com/groups/symbaroum.english

You can follow Free League Games on twitter @FreeLeaguePub

We also mention Tomas Härenstam a few times during our conversation and you can listen back to our interview with him here: https://www.terriblewarriors.com/episodes/meet-tomas Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors