[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.94 Jala Hello, world, and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her). And today, I'm joined in the workshop by George Francis Bickers (he/him), of Three Sails Studios. Three Sails is a tabletop RPG design studio preparing to launch their upcoming ecology and exploration game, Mappa Mundi, on Kickstarter. I came across them on BlueSky, was immediately intrigued, checked out the site, and said, I definitely need to have these folks on. So. 00:00:31.35 Jala How are you doing today, George? 00:00:33.31 George TSS I'm really well thanks Jaller thank you so much for having me um but for yeah as we're as established just before we started recording obviously I've just traveled back from a weekend spent in an 11th century Welsh castle for a wedding so i'm so I'm sufficiently historically inspired but a little bit tired but this is going to energize me up so I'm feeling good ready ready to go yeah 00:00:53.91 Jala Awesome, awesome. Yeah, we'll try to keep it as svelte as we can while still hitting all the information so you can go and get some rest after this. So, so yeah, I'm going to go ahead and start with reading a little clip for everyone listening. So take a seat. 00:01:09.69 Jala Your first assignment has arrived. But before we send you out into the wilds on your first mission, a reminder of why we do what we do. We are the Mappa Mundi Institute, and the people of Ivasu look to us to make sense of their world after a hundred years of chaos. How do we do this, and what part is yours to play? 00:01:30.59 Jala With your training complete, the wilds await. The old maps are useless now. The old stories have been forgotten. Ours is a land that has lost its history. And your job? Your job is to write the new one. 00:01:45.40 Jala But it is more than just the people that await you beyond these walls. Before the Flux came and cut us off from each other, this was a world teeming with life. Monsters, those majestic, enigmatic, fantastic conduits of Fate herself, roamed the wilds, some giving blessings, others hunting, all living, all thriving. Go out into the world, chronicler, and find them, observe them, document them, protect them. 00:02:15.96 Jala You have sworn an oath to do no harm. These lands and the people within them are fragile. Your task is a dangerous one, no doubt, but to heal a place is to love it. This is your part to play." When I first read that on your site, I absolutely was like, okay, I have to read this out loud. 00:02:36.81 George TSS I mean, it's just, I know, I mean, I wrote that, but your reading of that has given me tingles with my own writing. So that's, that's a good job right there. 00:02:46.30 Jala Well, ah one of our bonus shows for the network is my husband and I take turns reading our own original writing. And so I do a lot of sort of audio book clips of my own writing as well. 00:02:59.44 Jala So glad that it came out okay. 00:03:02.18 George TSS It's good stuff. 00:03:02.78 George TSS I love it. Well done. 00:03:05.08 Jala Yeah, so um I'm just going to kick this off with just kind of asking a little bit about the studio in general and who you are and all of that fun stuff. So ah first off, what's the story of your studio startup? 00:03:16.73 George TSS ah wow so um I am a now ex-academic. um I did my PhD up here in Manchester in the UK. I started that in 2016 in American studies. 00:03:29.12 George TSS My PhD was focused on radical American social movements and like anarchist spatial theory in the 1960s and 70s, which was very fun and very fulfilling. And I happened to be one week before handing in when COVID-19 happened. 00:03:44.35 George TSS And obviously the world went into lockdown. 00:03:44.62 Jala Mm hmm. 00:03:47.51 George TSS And so I was left with, I just finished three and a half years of a PhD. And then I was like, oh, I've got, there's nothing I can do. There's nothing, nothing for me to do. 00:03:55.30 Jala Right. 00:03:56.25 George TSS um And I started a YouTube channel um called Three Sails Gaming. which was focused on the A Song of Ice and Fire tabletop miniature war game and I did that for ah ah for a few years and I was kind of the big fish in a relatively small pond and I was really enjoying it and I always always wanted to be a game designer and this is one of the things with ADHD people like myself is we have ideas, 100 ideas a day and very few of them stick but the the desire to be a game designer had always been one that kind of come and gone. 00:04:30.45 George TSS but always came back. And about a year and a half into doing this YouTube channel, I then had the confidence to start designing a miniature war game, which is very, very different, obviously, to to what Mappa Mundi is trying to do as a kind of zero combat game. But I designed this tabletop miniature war game and I founded the studio. I changed Three Sails gaming to Three Sails studios. And I bought one of my best friends, Joel, on board because he's an incredible artist. And he he kind of he was the first the first member other than me of 3Sale Studios is one of our co-owners and we worked on that and we crowdfunded it and we funded but I cancelled the crowdfunding campaign two days before the end because the funding was so tight with something like a miniature war game that and the level that we'd raised while enough to 00:05:18.55 George TSS to make the game and to get it out into you know into people's hands. If anything had gone wrong, like our margins were razor, razor thin. 00:05:24.40 Jala Right. 00:05:25.55 George TSS So if anything had gone wrong, I decided that actually it was just, it just wasn't worth it. But during that process, I had started the process of designing Mappa Mundi. 00:05:35.37 Jala Mm hmm. 00:05:37.12 George TSS And yeah, we I kind of pivoted Three Cell Studios from miniature war games over into TTRPGs. And Mappa Mundi is like an incredibly different game, not only in the TTRPG space, but definitely from what I was doing before. 00:05:50.52 George TSS And, um, and we've never looked back and this is it with, you know, we as, as an automated email from Kickstarter reminded me today, we are exactly 50 days away from launching. 00:05:51.03 Jala Right. 00:06:00.86 George TSS So, um, so yeah, that's how we, that's how we got where we are. And and subsequently we've had, you know, Jeremy, uh, Jeremy Blum, who is our developer and my co-writer and our editor and an all round brilliant human being. 00:06:14.79 George TSS ah he is kind of He came on board to to you know onto the studio again, another co-owner to work on Mappa Mundi and none of us have ever looked back really. 00:06:25.22 Jala Right, right. Well, that's really wild. You went from a war game to a peaceful exploration game. 00:06:31.18 George TSS and Exactly, yeah. 00:06:33.83 Jala That's a complete pivot. 00:06:34.03 George TSS I'm a man of many sides, many, many sides. 00:06:36.21 Jala Right. Right. Well, and then too, going from like the political, which is super highly social into this kind of like isolated experience of the world, which I feel probably has something to do with the COVID-19 effect. 00:06:49.31 George TSS A little bit, yeah. 00:06:50.61 Jala Right. but We'll get into it a little bit more, but that is really awesome. And might I also say that ah it is very responsible of you to have canceled that other crown funding campaign because, you know, 00:07:04.07 Jala if it had gone through and you were on that razor's edge, you know you you could have had a potentially disastrous situation on your hands. 00:07:11.76 George TSS ah Yeah, a hundred percent. 00:07:13.00 George TSS I mean that that stuff that kept me up at night and actually continues I mean it yeah it continues to keep me up at night kind of more abstractly with mapper Monday And I'm sure we'll get on to this but mapper Monday will be finished by the day the Kickstarter finishes And was we're gonna be we're looking for a really quick. 00:07:21.86 Jala Right. 00:07:29.05 George TSS We will go to print as assuming we funded we will go to print the day the kickstarter finishes so we're looking for a really quick turnaround on production we've got our manufacturing lined up already it's just we're just getting the artwork for the book finished off um and that is to avoid you know as as a you know as a new as a new player in the ttrpg space as a new publisher as a new designer i realize how you know you get one shot 00:07:56.39 George TSS you get one shot at ruining your reputation and as soon as you do that's it and it will take you years and years to kind of earn that even that baseline trust back so we've we've we've made the decision to do things to make sure we are 100% done before we've taken anyone's money and not everyone can do it that way but we've you know we've we've sacrificed in order to be able to put things out this way and it because that the idea of 00:08:21.23 George TSS having people's money for an extended period of time without giving them anything genuinely terrifies me. So so anything I can do to avoid that we're doing and that's all so that's what we've done and we've put ourselves in this position. 00:08:34.61 Jala Right. Right. Well, that sounds awesome that you've already got that. And just from the stuff that I've looked over, because of course I had some advanced materials to take a look at and I very easily started sinking into it. 00:08:46.50 Jala I'm like, I have so like 7,000 things to do. I can't read all of this right now, but ah yes. 00:08:51.63 George TSS Well, I'm glad that it's having that effect already. So that's good stuff. 00:08:54.10 Jala Right. Right. And so I was sitting there and my husband was there and he was taking a look at it. And then he was getting interested in it too. too, and you know it was this whole thing where it's like, OK, no, we we need to do other things. 00:09:05.82 Jala We have so much to do. 00:09:06.29 George TSS Yeah. 00:09:07.33 Jala But um you know definitely, we were both immediately interested and absorbed in the material and that artwork. 00:09:12.11 George TSS Brilliant. 00:09:14.36 Jala ah So the artwork for any kind of gaming system or any anything anything, the artwork for anything is going to be something that really sets the tone and sets the kind of expectation that people will have of your your product, whatever that product is. 00:09:24.84 George TSS Mhm. Yeah. 00:09:30.79 Jala And I am a fine arts painter. That's one of my things in my past. And I will say I very much appreciate the artwork as well. 00:09:37.91 George TSS Well, Joel is Joel is just I mean, we are we're so lucky that and we're we're so lucky as a business to have him, not just as like, you know, ah as a freelance employee, but as a co owner, someone who is, you know, as actively involved in the in the kind of direction and strategy of the business as as he is. 00:09:55.00 George TSS um I'm also incredibly lucky to call him one of my best friends. 00:09:55.07 Jala Right. 00:09:57.96 George TSS He's just the nicest guy he's, you know, Joel is like, I think he's six foot four. He's a big lad. He's got his massive beard shaved head. looks physically intimidating and yet is the most modest, shy, socially anxious person in the world and just wants to be able to sit and draw and to bring, you know, to help bring these visions to life. 00:10:18.61 George TSS And we are just, we are so incredibly lucky to have him. And it's because he is, you know, I can say this because it's not my work because he is as good as he is. 00:10:29.58 Jala Mm hmm. 00:10:29.92 George TSS And he's genuinely one of the best artists in this space I can, I can think of. 00:10:35.26 George TSS Um, we knew I knew right from the start that I wanted, I didn't just want to be hiring him, I wanted him to be actively involved. and we are We are very, very rare, I think in the TTRPG industry in general, but let alone in a you know small indie like we are, to have a full-time artist. 00:10:53.78 Jala Mm hmm. Right, right. 00:10:56.38 George TSS Like that that that's um largely unheard of, I'd say, even outside the biggest of companies, um you know, where they might have and the art directors and stuff, but yeah, they'll contract out freelancers. 00:11:02.09 Jala ah Right. They contract out. 00:11:06.53 George TSS But I think it's so important for what we're trying to do that Joel it joel feels secure and valued and listened to and kind of actively part of what's going on. 00:11:18.53 George TSS because And it shows through in his work, I think. 00:11:21.81 Jala Absolutely. And it does because um there's so much attention to detail and kind of delicacy of of kind of portraying the feeling that I get when I'm reading through the materials. 00:11:35.26 Jala So um to get an artist on hand who can do all of that and be collaborative is fantastic. 00:11:43.86 George TSS Yeah, yeah, we're very, very lucky. 00:11:45.99 George TSS Best decision we ever made. 00:11:46.39 Jala So, but so I was going to ask you where the name Three Sails studios came from, because I was like, maybe it's because there's three of them and then they each have a sale and they're all sailing together. 00:11:57.78 Jala Like, I don't know, but no, uh-huh. 00:11:59.12 George TSS So this is this is an old one. and It's an old one really. So it's convenient that there are three of us. But actually, so i I'm from Essex in the UK originally, which is down in the south of the country. It's like northeast of London. And my family are kind of from Ireland and east and southeast London. 00:12:18.85 George TSS But I moved up to Manchester back in 2016 To do my PhD and I've stayed here ever since and plan planning. like yeah This is the place I plan on living and dying ah Joel is also from Manchester Jeremy is Taiwanese American and lives here in the UK. He grew up in New Jersey, but lives here in the UK now, but he's in London um and so so Three Sails it's that the city logo crest i don't know what you want to describe it the city crest of Manchester is a ship with three sails sailing on three rivers because there's three rivers in the city and Manchester was obviously it was the center of the industrial revolution um very big on cotton and textile processing and the sign of the city is a ship with three sails now i 00:12:48.27 Jala Right. Oh. 00:13:06.74 George TSS chose i chose the um I chose the name Three Sails Studios based on this and then after I incorporated the company, literally the day after I incorporated it and made everything legal, I then found out that that ship actually represents a cotton trading ship and by extension a slave trading ship as well. 00:13:26.93 Jala Oh no. 00:13:27.86 George TSS Exactly and i was just like oh this is white and as someone who is doing a PhD on substantially on black history this is something that i should have known i really should have known this but it was pointed out i found an article in the guardian the UK version of the guardian which was doing 00:13:45.50 George TSS a series on the UK's role in the slave trade and that's that came up and i I just I saw it and I was like what have I done like what have I done here so I spent some time talking with people 00:13:58.01 George TSS and doing some research and then I realised that while Manchester, so Manchester's other name in the during the industrial revolution was Cottonopolis, almost all of the cotton that was grown by enslaved people in the US s was bought and processed so brought to Manchester and processed here before the before the kind of cotton goods were then sold on across ah across you know across the world. 00:14:20.52 Jala Right. 00:14:20.95 George TSS um But as a consequence Manchester's economy Manchester is an incredibly left-wing incredibly working-class city and always has been which is great for me We are a working-class led studio. 00:14:25.00 Jala Mhm. Mhm. 00:14:31.87 George TSS We're a left-wing studio um And so I started doing my research as any good PhD should and I discovered that um Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter addressed to the working men of Manchester thanking them for helping bring about the end of slavery because basically the entire all the workers in the city, all the cotton workers, at one point went on strike and refused to handle any cotton that was grown by enslaved people. 00:15:00.53 Jala Awesome. 00:15:01.33 George TSS And so what i what I then realized was is while the emblem itself is problematic, it also contains a radical working class history within it, which is very important to us as working oh as a working class-led studio. So rather than change the name, what I decided to do was keep the name and try to um emphasize the radical history that was behind it rather than just the harm that the symbol caused. 00:15:29.47 George TSS So our logo is actually three ships' sails but torn, like slashed and torn as if it was part of a kind of a revolt, as if as if the image has been tarnished by rebellion and resistance. 00:15:44.25 George TSS So that's this is something we are very very open about like I made a you I remember making a YouTube video back when I still had my YouTube channel I made like a 20 minute long video Explaining why we've done this what the issue was why we were complicit in not knowing Or why I was complicit because I chose the name but also what we intended to do about it so the name Three Sails comes from the city of Manchester and our kind of engagement with that name recognises both the city's complicity in the slave trade, but also its resistance important resistance to the slave trade. So yeah, we've tried to kind of um we've kind of tried to reclaim as much as possible, or at least to um to revise the position and the standpoint on what that what that emblem once meant, and to a lot of people does still mean as well. 00:16:38.57 Jala Right, right. Well, that is really awesome and super in line with like the Jala-chan tone, Jala-chan's Place tone. ah We are also a very left wing, very working class and but right. 00:16:46.57 George TSS I figured it would be. That's why I'm here. That's exactly why I'm here. I don't say yes to every interview, but a lot of them, yeah I make sure I do my due diligence first. And this one is one I'm very happy to be on. 00:16:58.78 Jala Well, I'm glad to have you. So that is awesome. And it's so interesting because, you know, like the history of any logo, any organization, any place that you go to is always so interesting and convoluted. 00:17:11.93 Jala And, you know, the more you dig in, the more there is to find, I feel so. 00:17:16.50 Jala And that's also kind of the feeling that I get as well from your game, you know. So ah they like I feel like your background is serving you well in the development of this particular title. 00:17:28.74 Jala because it kind of gives you ah the right tone to it to have for it. And then also like, you know, cause you're rewriting history in this game. 00:17:35.94 George TSS Yeah. Yeah. 00:17:39.50 Jala Your introduction says so. 00:17:39.77 George TSS Yeah. Oh, well, yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, yeah, absolutely. 00:17:43.71 Jala Yeah. Yeah. So that's, you're uncovering the past and then you're making a new history and you're going forward and shaping what will come in future. So that's awesome. 00:17:55.29 George TSS um I'm really glad that came across because that was that was an intentional decision to put in there. So I'm very glad that's coming across. 00:18:01.97 Jala Yes, absolutely. So let's talk about Mappa Mundi. So it's a non-combat TTRPG focusing on exploration and ultimately one's connection with both the natural world and human society, which the players have found themselves cut off from at the start of the game due to the event known as the Flux. 00:18:21.74 Jala So um there are a lot of true to life parallels. Of course, in the beginning of the materials I was looking over, you're talking about all of your influences, which are like travel logs and historical records and things like that mixed in with other things, other video games or other types of ah materials that you're you're inspired by. 00:18:44.27 Jala So that's very cool. ah But the basic premise appears to be rooted directly in the situations we have faced in the past several years. That's at ah least the way that I read it with the climate change pandemic, overall political upheaval. um Pray for us here in the US. 00:19:00.64 George TSS Yeah, we have been. 00:19:02.19 Jala ah Right, right. ah The disconnect of our real life society is a topic that we've talked about on several different episodes of this show, and our sister show, Monster, Dear Monster, grapples with horror in all of its forms, and that includes the horror of you know like our modern society the way it is. 00:19:18.70 George TSS Yeah, the horror of being alive, right? 00:19:20.94 George TSS It's as simple as that. 00:19:21.03 Jala Right, right. So and because of that ah kind of background, um I obviously ah imbibe a lot of horror content as as adjacent to monster to your monster. 00:19:32.64 Jala But horror media trades in situations and monsters which represent fears and the dis-ease of the times in which the work is made. And with this game, though, you're going in a different direction from a horror direction like completely the opposite direction from horror. 00:19:45.51 George TSS Yeah, yeah. 00:19:46.92 Jala You are going in one that is conscientious and compassionately adventurous. So um given the fact that this is at least, I was i was going to ask you if you consider it post-apocalyptic, I do, but I will let you say what you think about it. um But at the same time, this is like a post apocalypse within which there's like um abundance and new life and like, you know, an adventuring spirit and like um the kind of beginner's mind where you're going out into the world to relearn everything fresh. And so, you know, kind of like um having that kind of innocence and openness. 00:20:26.27 Jala So what decisions went into your shaping of that tone? Because so many media these days, if they go in that, you know, into a post-apocalyptic setting, it's always like doom, gloom, horror, you know, that kind of thing. 00:20:37.94 George TSS you So i I when you sent me over because obviously, you know, you sent me a couple of these questions or just outlines of these questions in advance. And this was the one that most excited me because actually I never get to talk about this in this way. So like on a basic level, I do consider I don't know. I don't consider Mappa Monday to be post-apocalyptic. I consider it to be. Despite the fact it could very easily appear that way, I consider it to be part of what academically we would probably call the apocalyptic imaginary so which is so this is me gay so this is me getting very very kind of theoretical hits but i am going to kind of ground I'm going to ground this in real stuff right so my one of my best friends 00:21:17.51 Jala Go for it. 00:21:23.08 George TSS ah Dr. Abigail Bleach is a climate theorist who works with 10th and 11th century English medieval charters, land charters. Now that sounds, it's as weird and brilliant as it sounds, but one of the things I learned from her, because we but we were both theorists, we both are theorists of space, fundamentally we're theorists of space. 00:21:47.61 George TSS and we're working at very different time points but actually one of the things that she pointed out to me is this thing called the apocalyptic imaginary and if you think so 00:21:58.69 George TSS When we think of the word post-apocalyptic now, we think about it post hi Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our vision of post-apocalyptic is something that is globally post-apocalyptic, that actually the entire world could be brought to an end, be that through a nuclear war, climate catastrophe, however we want to think about it. 00:22:12.70 Jala Right. 00:22:20.83 George TSS But for the longest possible time, you know, for all of human history up until 1945, there wasn't anything that could destroy the whole world, not really. 00:22:32.64 George TSS um Even things like the Spanish flu, which were, you know, which which spread globally, weren't wasn't really in danger of destroying all of human life, for example, unlike technologies like the bomb, for example. 00:22:48.12 George TSS And so as a consequence of this, 00:22:51.68 George TSS there has been an apocalyptic imaginary for centuries, for millennium, in which a bad harvest could be apocalyptic on a regional scale, right? Be that ah be that a kind of a region of a country or a whole country itself or ah or a culture or a society. We've always had these apocalyptic imaginaries, like the plague is one that's really, really, you know, these people are like, oh my god, this is actually the end of the world. 00:23:17.32 George TSS But it didn't spread across the whole world. As far as to my knowledge, at least when we're talking about the Black Death, this is not something that had spread into the Americas. It hadn't spread into Australia. So we're still talking about regional apocalypses. And so with Mappa Mundi being set in a kind of pan global medieval period, um the Flux the Flux has not been apocalyptic it has been in in terms of destroying everything and everyone it has been apocalyptic insofar as it has bought an end to one phase of the world one era or epoch of the world and now has ushered in a new one so in that sense Mappa Mundi is absolutely post-apocalyptic but in the sense that we kind of 00:24:04.16 George TSS that we kind of culturally understand it in the in the moment now it's absolutely not post-apocalyptic because people listed around society still exist we've lost a huge amount but we haven't seen we haven't lost the ability to regain or relearn or restart anything like that so while that was ah that's kind of a long way of me saying that like 00:24:28.08 George TSS Mappa Mundi is situated within that apocalyptic imaginary, that that it's something has happened that has brought an end to something, and something new needs to come in and take its place. So in that sense, yeah, post-apocalyptic, but not in the sense that we kind of understand it contemporarily. 00:24:44.61 Jala Right. And you'll notice in the notes, I have a particular book listed, The Ends of the World by Peter Brannon. 00:24:49.26 George TSS Mm-hmm. 00:24:51.62 Jala And this is a book that basically discusses the many different mass extinctions that have occurred throughout Earth's history. 00:24:58.05 George TSS Yeah. 00:25:00.33 Jala And you know the kind of phrasing of it, the way that that book is discussing it, you know it's talking about mass extinction events, which are epoch-ending. 00:25:11.11 Jala But it's not like the total destruction of everything the way that we think in terms of sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk, whatever kinds of things that we get these days. 00:25:19.81 George TSS Yeah. 00:25:21.94 Jala It's in terms of, well, this massive amount of these particular critters or this section of the world or ah a large portion of the world, but not all of it. 00:25:32.40 Jala you know ah Had this particular thing happened, not everybody was able to adapt. you know There were ah massive amounts of deaths that happened, but then life kept on going, the earth continued. 00:25:44.47 George TSS Yeah, yeah. It's a fascinating take on it. 00:25:47.43 George TSS And the fact that one, the fact that a book like that can be written since shows that nothing has ever been completely apocalyptic. And I love the fact that it's the ends of the world. The fact that this is plural apocalypses. 00:25:57.10 Jala Right. 00:26:01.28 George TSS If, for example, all of human life is wiped out by by climate change, the world will still be here. The world will continue to go without it. 00:26:08.88 George TSS And that's, I think, so to return to your other question about what decisions went into shaping the tone of Mappa Mundi, I actually think that's a big part of it, is that So all all all of human life is anthropocentric, right? 00:26:24.27 George TSS it's we can only We can only really understand the world through our own human understanding, but actually so much of the world is beyond that. 00:26:29.58 Jala Right. Right. 00:26:36.33 George TSS it's And so what I wanted to kind of capture was this sense that actually I want to give people a gaming experience where their job 00:26:47.03 George TSS they're still playing normal human beings they're still going to bring anthropocentrism to it but i wanted to show that actually there are different ways of understanding our world the world of the game any ah ah you know small small or large scale different kinds of consciousness different kinds of understanding and i'm not trying to get the kind of like esoteric with this here but i don't think it's beyond the realms i don't think it's like beyond the realms of proprietary to set a propriety to say that you know animal life is different to human life but is also kind of exactly the same we just have different ways of understanding right 00:27:18.70 Jala Right. well it Exactly. so um one of the topics because i'm I'm constantly studying various topics and most of those topics end up on my show at some point. 00:27:32.79 Jala One that will eventually make it to my show is animal language. so That's something that I've been studying, reading from people who have studied animals and trying to interpret what ah body movements or sounds actually have specific meanings within 00:27:43.81 George TSS Yeah. 00:27:50.25 Jala groups of animals because they have language and you know cows have best friends. They talk about the people, you know like they they're humans, they talk about their humans. 00:27:58.71 George TSS Yeah. Yeah. 00:27:59.89 Jala They have all of these different ways of discussing with each other. and um you know The stuff that I've read about animal language also talks about their perception of the world is very different from ours because of the their inputs are going to be different. 00:28:12.77 Jala like A dog has a much wider sense of smell so their primary sense of the world comes from that scent whereas for people we are very visually dominant so that tends to be the way that we perceive things in the world. 00:28:27.16 George TSS And you can even get more granular with that as well. Imagine just if your eyes had different angles. 00:28:33.28 George TSS right Imagine if you had eyes on the sides of your head, like a lot of prey animals do, and how that changes what you see and how that changes your position in the world. 00:28:43.44 George TSS like I find that stuff that stuff tickles my brain. I find it endlessly fascinating. um And I'm very much looking forward to hearing your episode when you dive into it. 00:28:48.43 Jala Right. 00:28:52.99 Jala Right. Right. And that's the thing is that, some you know, all of this stuff is really fascinating. And, you know, ah because of that line of study, again, you know, your your stuff, your mapa Mundi is right up the alley of the kind of things I was already looking into and was interested in and all of this other stuff, just kind of or recontextualizing, you know, recontextualizing where I fit in the world in in society, in the, you know, overall 00:29:18.59 George TSS Yeah. 00:29:22.83 Jala and nature, whatever you want to call it. So yeah, that is very cool. 00:29:28.24 Jala But um I, of course, know a lot more about it because I read materials, but I want to talk about the game a little bit more in detail for the listeners. So ah Fate was mentioned in that thing that I read. 00:29:39.76 Jala So what is Fate in terms of this game? 00:29:42.94 George TSS So Fate is Fate is our kind of prime mover. um We didn't... 00:29:52.06 George TSS So Three Sails Studios, it' my my design philosophy is also the company's motto, which is the real world done fantastically. So all of our games are either set in the real world or in um parallel versions thereof, which are intended to be as close as possible. 00:30:07.93 George TSS Now, um Again the medieval world particularly in Europe um but you know beyond far beyond Europe as well the medieval world was an intensely religious place in a way that we can't really ah certainly as Westerners can't really understand had just how central a concept it was um and so but we didn't want to bring real world religion into the game real world religions we wanted to avoid that because it's that's a lot of that's a very fine line for us to tread um and I would rather I would rather not do it and and and and get things right rather than kind of do it and get things wrong for just for this 00:30:33.51 Jala Right. 00:30:48.02 George TSS it's it's ah It's accuracy versus the ethics of accuracy, if that makes sense. like I didn't think it was the right thing to do to include real world religions, but... 00:30:52.31 Jala Right. 00:30:54.99 Jala Well, and then you also have the case that, you know, um what the old saying is like, don't ever talk about religion or politics. Like religion can be a socially and socially charged thing, even if it's in a fantastical version. 00:31:08.82 Jala So like, you know, that that can be like a big, oh, I don't want to get into that particular game because it's got all of these overtones that I am soured on because of my particular personal baggage, you know. 00:31:14.69 George TSS Of course, of course. 00:31:20.68 George TSS Yeah, no, I 100% agree with you. 00:31:21.61 Jala So. 00:31:22.70 George TSS I mean, so I normally avoid I normally I normally ignore the don't talk about politics rule, like all of my stuff is look intensely political and math among the ears. 00:31:28.51 Jala Right, right. Oh, absolutely. 00:31:31.73 George TSS I mean, it's it's more it's it's, it's intensely political without it's it's it's it's It's always there, it's wo just the concept of the game is intensely political but it's not something that is kind of driving, like intra-political conflict is not driving the game but we did need something that we could refer to at least for the players 00:31:42.44 Jala Right. 00:31:49.32 Jala right 00:31:56.60 George TSS about that there being some kind of force within this world that was a create a creative force. Having a creative force felt very important to us in terms of trying to get players to kind of adopt that role of creative forces as well. 00:32:11.75 Jala Mm hmm. 00:32:11.70 George TSS um but what So Fate is essentially, in in the lore of the game, Fate is the the prime mover. it She is And we refer to her as a she, but her perceptions of her are different all all across the world of Ivasu, or of of the world of Acumeni and the continent of Ivasu. 00:32:25.45 Jala Mm hmm. 00:32:30.86 George TSS But she is, as far as is kind of cosmologically understood in the game, she is the prime mover. She has woven a tapestry, and that tapestry is the world. um however what what we have done is in all in almost all of the regions we have ah so we've got 10 regions in the core game which span from um in real world equivalents to span Eurasia and North Africa that is the continent of Ivassu and the very northern part of the continent of Ebelan um now each one of those regions to a greater or lesser extent has their own understanding of Fate they don't necessarily not all of them call her Fate not all of them call her and court knew recognize her as a as a she in whatever capacity that might be there's various each one has its own story of what creation is but fundamentally they they hold certain shared truths um that the world was kind of 00:33:06.80 Jala Mmhmm. Right. 00:33:25.42 George TSS actively but unknowingly created like some something has done this but there wasn't necessarily a full design behind it so Fate is a kind of prime an unknowing prime mover to describe her philosophically i think 00:33:39.16 Jala Right. That's pretty cool because, um of course, in our world, there's so many different classes you can take on comparative religion where it just kind of, you know, takes a bunch of different spiritual understandings of the world, compares and contrast them and says, here's the root of where a lot of these come from. 00:33:57.20 Jala you know like Proto-Indo-European culture and things like that, which we don't know a whole lot about, but you know there's shades of it that kind of got spread all over Europe, all over North Africa, all over India, you know all of that. 00:34:10.28 Jala And so um yeah that that kind of dissemination by the culture of the area makes a lot of sense for it being like a real world you know analog. 00:34:16.82 George TSS Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 00:34:21.06 Jala So then ah the Flux. 00:34:23.88 George TSS The Flux. 00:34:24.77 Jala Tell me about that. That's that's the big the big thing. 00:34:25.96 George TSS So It is. It's the big thing. And in a way, in a way, like to use kind of other TTRPG terminology, the Flux is kind of the BBEG, g the big bad evil guy. But again, like, it's not, it's, you know, it's it's an environmental catastrophe. It's not, it's not sentient. It has no consciousness. It's not done this as a punishment. It's not being inflicted upon people for their sins or whatever. It's just something that is happening. 00:34:51.67 George TSS um in the original In the original conception of the game, so at the moment we have the pre-release guide available. um People can go and download that for free. ah The pre-release guide contains all of the rules, you know the the original background of the game, plus one of the ten regions and um and a pre-written adventure. 00:35:12.08 George TSS And the original version of the game had the Flux as a far more destructive force. things were but We called it the great unmaking. 00:35:20.51 Jala Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:35:22.75 George TSS So the Flux happened, travel became impossible between the regions and therefore between the continents as well. And um things over the hundred years that the Flux had bit had been happening, monsters, creatures, people, 00:35:39.87 George TSS towns and villages were disappearing they weren't being destroyed they were just disappearing you'd go you know you'd go one year to a village's harvest festival and then you'd come back the next year and all traces of the place was gone um and this that was the kind of original conception of the Flux and um we had Jeremy came up with this concert he wanted these these ultimate monsters that you could eventually track down which we called the effluvia of Fate they were like huge, continent-spanning storm monsters. um And we never actually kind of, we we hinted at it in the pre-release guide, but we never actually, this is the first time I'm confirming this as a thing. um But over time, and so after we finished the pre-release guide, and as I was really drilling down into the writing, ah there's a section of the of the final rule book called the Cardieri. 00:36:31.88 George TSS So, Mappa Mundi uses a set of tarot cards called the Journey Deck, which are all illustrated by Joel, to represent the landscapes and the wilds of the world. 00:36:43.13 George TSS And as I was writing the information for the Cardieri, which is, you know, 38 pages long, with each card getting its own page, as I was writing this, I found myself more and more 00:36:47.29 Jala Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:36:56.10 George TSS leaning towards the idea that actually unlike the original version of the game where the chroniclers were trying to discover information in order to lift the Flux and therefore be able to travel I found myself more and more writing from the perspective that actually travel while difficult has just become possible again it's still tough it's still really difficult no one has done it for a hundred years but actually it's now possible again so the Flux 00:37:18.03 Jala Mm hmm. 00:37:25.96 George TSS remains an ecological catastrophe it remains hugely kind of physically destructive but it has an unmade things like the original concept so you can you can think about it like essentially global storms um we've written for so for isha met which is one of the ten regions in the core book, it's equivalent to North Africa, Aishamet is on the border of, as far as anyone knows, the worst effects of the Flux, which is to take what we have called the Kandy Desert, which is the Sahara Desert, the Kandy, K-A-N-D-I, and has turned it into a wall of sandstorm. 00:38:05.04 George TSS it's um it's become impossible to move between, um move down from Aishamet, across the Candy Desert, down into the rest of Ebulan, which is the continent that it's based on. 00:38:15.58 Jala Mm hmm. 00:38:16.12 George TSS so but So while it is receded locally, regionally, it's still a real thing and it's still a real it's still um stopping travel. so what we've But it's stopping travel continentally rather than intra-regionally. 00:38:31.09 Jala So it sounds like it's kind of like Jupiter's red spot, constant storms. 00:38:36.23 George TSS ah Yeah, basically, it's essentially that kind of thing. 00:38:38.01 Jala Yeah. 00:38:39.07 George TSS Yeah. So like, it basically what it what we wanted, or what I wanted from the Flux is I wanted something that was environmental, that was climate based, that meant that people had become isolated. 00:38:51.38 George TSS And storms are a great way of doing that, right? storms are difficult, they're hostile, they well they're not kind of intentionally hostile, but they're a hostile environment in which to try to move through. 00:39:03.47 George TSS And, um, something that they're something that that people are afraid of they have huge destructive potential and they can be ongoing they can go on for a very very long time um so that's what the Flux was and it kind of came it came over the hundred years that it was affecting um this world of Ecumeni it kind of it came in kind of peaks and troughs sometimes it was worse sometimes it was slightly better but now after a hundred years it's finally gotten to a point where actually people can begin to start trying to reconnect um yeah without just dying in the storms. 00:39:39.51 Jala Right. 00:39:39.72 George TSS um So that's kind of that's where we're at with the Flux. So it's become more refined as we've gone on. 00:39:47.08 Jala Right, right. Well, that's awesome. um Yeah, like the first iteration that you were talking about kind of reminds me of the nothing from never ending story to date myself and my age. 00:39:56.67 George TSS Yeah, was that but that was that was absolutely there. 00:39:58.70 Jala Yeah. Mm hmm. 00:40:01.10 George TSS Interestingly, one of the things that prompted it was um as part what we would the kind of original drive for the chroniclers was not just to try and get through the Flux, but was to document life as it is currently in order to seal life in place. 00:40:19.85 George TSS The idea was that metaphysically, if you documented something, it couldn't be unmade by Fate. um And while I was really happy with that idea to start with, and again, like i sp but as I said, my brain started taking me in the it away from that direction. And then one of our one of our excellent community members, um who whose PhD was in kind of museum studies and heritage studies, very correctly pointed out that actually there's a very kind of Western colonial idea to 00:40:52.78 George TSS documenting and fixing the world in place under a certain system of knowledge and that's something that we really didn't want to be doing and I'd already I don't like as I said I'd already kind of subconsciously started moving away from so when we had that discussion with that with our community around that that was the point I was like right actually you know what we're gonna bite the bullet we're going to go with what my brain has been to has already been trying to do and the point is not to fix history and ecology in place the point is to understand history as it is now so the chroniclers are essentially taking a snapshot of the world as it stands when they see it but that doesn't bring with it a kind of imperialist 00:41:35.25 George TSS this is the world and this is what it is and you know whoever disagrees is wrong um and it so it allows players to experience their own version of the world which is right at the core of what we're trying to do with Mappa Mundi the idea is is that the players are creating their version of this world we're providing them the tools to do that so the idea of fixity also doesn't match with the theme anyway 00:42:00.81 George TSS It doesn't match thematically or mechanically. 00:42:02.44 George TSS So bringing those together in terms of go out into the world, learn about what it is now, and then document that as it is now, rather than being like, this is the authoritative version. 00:42:13.79 Jala Right, so something else that I had thought about when you were talking about that is the concept of like the the book of the dead or the book of Fate or whatever you want to say from any spiritual belief system. There's usually a book involved and in it there's like ah in in at least like Abrahamic stuff there's the you know God's book, it's got everybody's name in it. 00:42:34.73 George TSS Yeah. 00:42:35.10 Jala And so um once your name is in there, that's like, you know, fixed, that is your fixed, you know, above everything else, kind of like the ah Plutonic ideal of, of you is, is centered around that name. 00:42:48.64 Jala And it kind of carries that sort of association of names, having power and how in, you know, olden days, they used to feel that, you know, like if somebody knows your name, then that is, you know, a weakness for you know, to magic or other occult stuff. 00:43:03.11 George TSS and I mean, that's like I love that idea. 00:43:04.32 Jala Right. 00:43:05.31 George TSS It's very Ursula Le Guin. This is what she does with Earthsea, right? 00:43:07.31 Jala Right. 00:43:08.51 George TSS that you have if you Once you know something or someone's true name, that gives you magical power over it. like i that That's definitely been at play in a lot of my kind of creative and game design work to a greater or a lesser extent. 00:43:21.82 George TSS So yeah, I absolutely see that. 00:43:24.71 Jala Cool, cool. So something that I read when I was checking through all the materials was there was a phrase, the world has lost its sense of self. So what is your concept of the game world and the direct relationship that the players have to it? So they're going out there and they are recording the world the way that it is, but What is the players relationship other than just is it just this this kind of. 00:43:51.78 Jala It can't be like a removed sort of experience because they're living it while they're chronicling it so. 00:43:59.15 George TSS ah you um Yeah so i yeah i was I really like that phrase the world has lost its sense of self because I think one ah one of the things that we tried to put in and this was right from the early side it's early part of the game is that the stories we tell ourselves about what we're experiencing are incredibly powerful and this this is this can be kind of on a personal level if you tell yourself you are a bad person or that you are unworthy of something you will your brain works narratively and will listen to the narratives that you tell it even if it's your brain that's generating those narratives and these can become self-fulfilling prophecies and that actually like you know while this is not a replacement for like doing work on yourself seeking out medical treatment if need medical help and assistance if needs be and pharmaceutical help if needs be ah you know therapy is premised on the idea that we have to talk problems through 00:44:31.88 Jala Right. Right. 00:44:51.61 George TSS And that we can change exactly the words have an incredible amount of power. 00:44:51.73 Jala Right. Words have power. 00:44:55.65 George TSS And I think this is, there's very few places better than a TTRPG, which is, you know, a written and verbal and performative medium to kind of tell these stories. And Mappa Mundi is premised on the idea that, you know, the world extends beyond human understanding. 00:45:13.05 George TSS that you know that the animals are not a subordinate they're not a lowest a lower life form they are non-human persons they have their own agency and personhood and then that's really really important and that by logical extension you can kind of extend that to the world itself especially if the world has been created by something um so 00:45:19.93 Jala Right. 00:45:38.33 George TSS what the idea of Mappa Mundi is, especially now with the kind of newer version of the Flux and this idea that you are going out and telling the new history, is that this is a history being given to you by the people people and things and places you are encountering. That there is some kind of essence to these things um and to these people and to these places and these cultures and that that essence is self-defined. 00:46:03.40 George TSS Now your interpretation of that essence might be different, your positionality might shape, work will definitely will shape the way you understand that essence. And that maybe that essence is even different to other, to different groups of people, like the ways we understand the world that can be culturally defined and culturally inflected. And so in know so in a sense, by trying to help the world restore itself, the way to help the world restore itself is to listen to all of the things that are in that world, of which you are one, so you should be listening to yourself or listening to everything else, and trying to kind of piece this story back together, because that story is that sense of self, whether it's collective or individual, 00:46:51.01 George TSS that's what um you know that that's what you That's your job as a chronicler, really. oh like if you If you look at it kind of on the ultimate level, your job is to kind of reveal the stories of the world and its places and its monsters and its creatures and its people. 00:47:07.98 George TSS and help kind of redefine that sense of self. Because when the Flux has isolated people for so long, not just from other regions, but also from people within the regions themselves, you know, over 100 years, you've had generations, two generations live and die under this, you know, the day you had the generation that when the Flux started, then their children and grandchildren have lived through this 100 years without ever being able to travel on without ever being able to kind of know themselves, 00:47:36.75 George TSS through comparison and then finally it's the great grandchildren and their children who are the ones that are going out into the world and beginning to learn not only about themselves but about other people because you know you you know yourself by comparison um so that's where that idea that that sense of self comes from and the idea that it can be restored absolutely 00:47:57.86 Jala Well, and I would even say you know yourself not just by comparison, but you also know yourself by your history. When you start out as a baby, you don't have a concept of self yet because you don't have any history to go off of really. And and as you go throughout your life, 00:48:15.36 Jala that history that you carry with you, your own personal experience of the world at large and society and everything that you interact with and your perspective on it, how you take it and make it your own story is how you know who you are as a person. 00:48:31.76 Jala You have only your history to go back on and you have to have that history in order to inform your future. 00:48:32.04 George TSS Yeah. 00:48:39.77 George TSS 100%. Absolutely. I mean, vehicle we talk about, you know, we talk about your roots, right? We use a natural metaphor to talk about, you know, we talk about family trees, we talk about the roots of your personality and the roots of your history. 00:48:53.75 George TSS We are talking about natural, we use natural forms to understand our place in the world and our place in our culture and our place as individuals within wider cultures and wider, wider parts of the world. 00:49:01.32 Jala Mmhmm. 00:49:06.68 George TSS So I think Mappa Mundi is kind of both consciously and unconsciously drawing on this sense that um that our relationship to the world is ah multiple points in human history has been far far far far deeper than it is now and certainly again for Westerners we're so detached we're so detached from the natural world 00:49:31.76 Jala Right. 00:49:32.25 George TSS that we forget the actual awesome and I use the word awesome and it's kind of original with its original meaning like it's awesome power and context and the ability but like the fact that something could be so colossally on but on scale so much colossally larger than you and yet you can walk into it and feel grounded and rooted within it 00:49:52.89 George TSS that's I think Mappa Mundi is prompting people to think about when we talk about the idea of what the relationship the players have to that world that's kind of what we're trying to prompt here is that this is your world and you are a part of it no matter how much you might feel alienated from it and here is a kind of a gameplay experience that will allow you to explore that feeling um within that around the safety of your table and who knows maybe it'll inspire you to go out and get into some nature and take action as well. 00:50:27.67 Jala Right. That's was something that I was going to say as well is, um, the game just from reading the materials and things like I already, um, am an active individual. I'm a personal trainer among various things. 00:50:39.32 Jala I've been an athlete of various, various types over the years. Uh, so I have a lot of outdoors time under my belt, but, um, reading it made me go, I want to go back and do some more hiking, even though right now is not the time I'm way too busy, but right. 00:50:52.26 George TSS ah definitely not the time yeah i mean this is the thing as well i mean i live i live in Manchester i live in a city of 2.2 million people um and I'm a city boy at heart like i love i love being in the city um i always have done um but i know um like i politically speaking my political history and my social history has always always always told me 00:51:19.03 George TSS through experience and practice that the way to the best way to overcome your sense of alienation is to act doing something whatever that might be strips where it helps to kind of pierce that veil of alienation and if people can't get out into nature for whatever reason hopefully Mappa Mundi is going to help them recapture that kind of, there's a very naive, there's kind of a childhood innocence and naivety to that idea of going out, like ah of exploring, right? Even if it's your back garden or that creek down the end of the street or whatever it is. kit we i we we I was obsessed with that stuff as a kid, even growing up in like built up areas. I was obsessed with it. 00:52:05.41 Jala And, and see, that was something that we were talking about in the green room. 00:52:06.84 George TSS And... Yeah. 00:52:09.22 Jala Cause I had told you that while I was waiting for you and I was sitting here just, you know, ready to record, I was going through, um, photos that I took when I went on my run, because even though it's just down the street for me, it's on, on the regular hike and bike trail, I always go to at the same time I'm sitting here taking. 00:52:27.75 Jala so many photos of wildlife and you know and engaging in the world around me, whereas there a lot of it is your approach and how you come across things and how you you take yourself into these spaces. 00:52:29.37 George TSS Yeah, exactly. 00:52:40.35 Jala Are you um going to just put your headphones on and look straight ahead and just listen to your music and not pay any attention whatsoever? Or do you see the flock of wild Quaker parrots right above you that are you know talking to you and you know the nutria that's down there you know getting its food for today or whatever? you know like what are you doing? 00:53:01.11 George TSS and there's And you know what, there's absolutely room for both here as well. they right One of my favourite things to do is there's a park. 00:53:04.78 Jala Right, right. 00:53:07.61 George TSS So where I'm in South Manchester, I'm in a part of the city called Mosside, and we are right in between two parks. And one of these parks, the bigger of the two, it's actually my least... 00:53:19.39 George TSS my days it's my The other one is my favourite, but in the summer, I absolutely love taking the dog for a walk in this in that park, often with my headphones on. 00:53:29.45 Jala Mm hmm. 00:53:29.96 George TSS because it's ah it's you know it's quite a nice kind of way to escape and to chill out and just to listen like to to zone my brain out but when doing that there's a flock of parakeets wild parakeets in that park and occasionally you'll just see this flash of green fly directly in front of you out in this you know in this it's this kind of it's not even a particularly large park but it's this kind of oasis in the south of the city and there's this 00:53:37.06 Jala Right. 00:53:56.79 George TSS for some I don't know why someone must have released a breeding pair of parakeets in there but they've been there for like 40 years and I often forget that they're there and then just being reminded of that fact while I'm kind of zoned in on my like I'm not you know because I'm listening to my headphones or I've got the dog with me I'm kind of I'm in there kind of an intensely personal space but then suddenly I'm drawn back out of that 00:54:21.85 George TSS by this flash of green and then suddenly you see them kind of flocking and murmurating a little bit like Starlings do as the sun starts to go down and it's just amazing when with the headphones on it feels like it's almost just for you. 00:54:34.85 George TSS Do you know what I mean? It's like you you you you were never alone in that part because it's always really busy but you get your own but almost by closing the world off you've opened yourself up to it as well. 00:54:46.70 George TSS um and i that yeah Again, i think I genuinely think that this is one of the reasons why people are responding to MAPPA as well as they have been, and obviously this will be put to the test when it comes to Kickstarter in 50 days time, but um I think one of the reasons why people have been responding to MAPPA Monday so well is because it gives them that private experience with a world that they are able to be part of without defining in quite the same way that humanity is a whole. 00:55:16.95 George TSS has defined the yeah defined Earth being as being that we're now in the Anthropocene. you know We're such a we are such a powerful force as a species that we've begun to shape the world in in negative, positive ways, but also negative ways. 00:55:31.89 George TSS And Mappa Mundi again is throwing people into that with our shaping mechanic, but it's asking you to do it as an individual, not as a kind of powerful force. Um, so i um I that's one of my takes on why I think people have responded so well to it is because it's giving it's allowing you back into that space that a lot of people are alienated from in our actual world Yep, know 00:55:53.49 Jala Right. And I feel like some of the fun stories, and this is something I was thinking about on that run, that you know it is even more underlined when you're talking about the parakeets in Manchester. So I live in Houston. It's the third largest city in the US, so it's massive. 00:56:09.14 Jala And so, um this little park, it's in the middle of a bustling city, you know, massive metropolis. And yet here's Quaker parrots which aren't supposed to be here and nutrients which are an invasive species, and there are a few things that are native but there are also a lot of things that aren't in like, and um Mappa Mundi, I feel like there's room for those kinds of stories, or at least the questions. 00:56:33.06 Jala Like, why is this critter that's not supposed to be here because that they don't live here? 00:56:35.96 George TSS Yeah, yeah. 00:56:37.57 Jala Why is this one here? you know 00:56:39.11 George TSS yeah and it just it The game gives you that framework to tell stories in exactly, because and especially again with shaping, because so much of the creative control and narrative control is given to the players, not the narrator who's running the game. 00:56:55.94 George TSS So much of that creative and narrative control is given over to the players. 00:57:00.79 George TSS and so they can tell those stories. if you are interested If you're interested in the fungus of Ivasu or if you're interested in its plant life or its trees or the invasive species or the species that are on the verge of extinction or those that are kind of more household or agricultural or the ones that live out on tops of mountains, however you want to tell those stories you can actually do it. 00:57:24.24 George TSS rather than just hoping that that your GM is going to allow you to participate or bear witness to it, you can direct those stories in those ways based on your own experiences. 00:57:35.63 Jala Right. And that is one of the things that, again, is is one of the gameplay aspects that ah really speaks to me as well, because I am the video game person. So so in addition to Jala Transplace, I've also been on The Level, which is a video game podcast for the past decade slash 11 years, maybe now that at this point. So I've been doing podcasting for a long time, video games for a long time. 00:57:57.75 Jala And I'm the person who will break every video game because I'm going to go and and go to every single limit to see what they will let me explore, what they will let me do. 00:58:00.51 George TSS yeah yeah 00:58:07.39 Jala I am always testing the edges. So ah that's me. That's how i how I do. Traversal and exploration are two things that I prioritize very much in any video game I play, along with narrative. 00:58:16.87 George TSS Yeah, I feel like we might actually be the same person, mate. 00:58:19.59 Jala So ah you can see why Mappa Mundi appeals to me. 00:58:26.27 Jala right right so um so yeah but uh kind of segueing at using that as a segue to kind of talk about some of the inspirations behind the game so one of the things that you stated was Monster Hunter which is interesting because with its economy based on the dissection of monsters um you know this this uh Mappa Mundi is taking it again a different kind of turn to that kind of a thing so what kind of elements are you bringing in Mappa Mundi that might appeal to players of so something like Monster Hunter? 00:58:58.58 George TSS So well I mean beyond the fact that it's kind of monster focused and exploration focused and traversal focused I mean so in that way it is exactly Monster Hunter we put in the in the in the inspiration section of the pre-release guide we put that it was inspired that it's Monster Hunter but flipped upside down. 00:59:18.52 George TSS um Now the Monster Hunter games are fun I've not played all of them but I've played a lot of some of them Um, and it's one of those things that's always been like, it's an amazing game, but I find the premise of it incredibly uncomfortable. 00:59:32.60 George TSS And, you know, so I've been a, you know, everyone's going to say, Oh, here comes the preachy vegan, but I've been a vegan for eight years. 00:59:38.34 Jala I'm a vegan. 00:59:39.50 George TSS I thought you might be. Yep. I thought you might be. 00:59:41.95 Jala Yes, I'm a vegan and so is my husband. 00:59:42.42 George TSS Same person, same person, mate. 00:59:43.87 Jala So I will not play Monster Hunter specifically because I don't want to kill and eat the critters and take them apart. 00:59:44.50 George TSS Yeah. Me and my partner. Exactly the same. 00:59:52.54 George TSS Yeah, so I didn't, ah when I was, when I, but when I first played it, i did I was like, okay, you're hunting monsters. I get that. You hunt, you hunt animals and God knows how many games. It's one of those. It's just one of those. It's just, it's such a baseline mechanic now. 01:00:04.60 George TSS Right. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. I didn't realize that the economy of the world of Monster Hunter is based on like animal parts, which then again, I suppose a lot of our economy is based on animal parts. 01:00:16.27 George TSS Um, but I, you know, one of the things for me was like, 01:00:21.47 George TSS If I was to see the last monster of its kind, the last animal of its kind, the very like in in real life, the very last thought that would come into my head was I'm going to kill that and I'm going to display it as a trophy. 01:00:32.41 Jala right 01:00:34.16 George TSS What kind of psychopath do you have to be to think I have the power, I have the power to to do one of two things to this last thing of its kind. 01:00:38.44 Jala Right. 01:00:44.33 George TSS I can kill it or I can protect it. 01:00:46.74 George TSS And the idea of killing something like in that way like that is so alien to me that the i just I just had to i had to say that Map of Mundi was a direct response to it. I can understand why the why the why the core gameplay loop of Monster Hunter appeals. I can fully understand it. And because I can understand it, I wanted to make a game that allowed you to do all of that loop except killing them. 01:01:18.33 George TSS But you have to have something that replaces killing them. 01:01:21.03 George TSS So in Map of Mundi, that is discovering its behaviours and allow and using that using that knowledge to continue to allow allow it to be protected and to and to continue its life. 01:01:32.32 George TSS Because it has agency. 01:01:34.16 George TSS It's a non-human person. 01:01:36.08 Jala So it's kind of like um this is did this just came to me, it's like Monster Hunter, but if it turned into Pokémon Snap. 01:01:44.17 George TSS was for yep So here's the thing, like Pokémon is another one of the games that I listed and Pokémon was the original inspiration for Mappa Mundi. So me my and my partner yeah me and my partner, ah but we've been living together for a very, very long time. 01:01:59.37 George TSS And you know those moments where you are in you are you were in a room with someone and you're asleep and they're awake, which means that you're kind of awake, but you're also definitely still asleep. So you're in that kind of lucid in between state. 01:02:09.26 Jala Right. 01:02:11.59 George TSS And so my partner had woken up relatively early I'm normally I'm normally first up but this was a weekend so she'd gotten up early I think she'd gone up to let out the dog and she'd come back and got in bed and she was just reading through something on her phone and I was kind of partially aware that she was awake and then about 20 minutes later I suddenly sat bolt upright in bed and I was like I said to her I was like I've got I've got an idea for a game and she said what is it I said well what if it was what if it was a medieval world and the purpose of the game is like Pokémon but instead of making them fight your job is to complete the Pokédex and she was like okay what like well like what style and I was like medieval bestiaries and she's like okay I think you've got something there and so I immediately jumped out of bed ran into my office and started concepting the game but like when you think about what Pokémon is actually judging you on 01:03:06.30 George TSS yeah like Pokémon Red and Blue, for example, the original two games, yeah, you go out and you train and defeat the Elite Four and you become Pokémon Champion. But as soon as you've done that, the game then judges you on how much of your Pokédex you've completed and then sends you back out into the world to finish it. 01:03:23.84 George TSS The person that sends you on your quest is not a noted Pokémon battling champion. He's a professor. 01:03:31.90 Jala Right. 01:03:32.47 George TSS The purpose of that game is to complete the Pokédex. 01:03:35.93 George TSS and I think loads of people forget that but that's always what I wanted to do when I was playing Pokémon as a kid and Pokémon Snap was a great way of doing it because you had to photograph them but you could also interact with them to get them to do special things like you know a Gyarados would you know a Magikarp would evolve into a Gyarados or like the Charizard would like do a flame breath thing but it wouldn't normally do that unless you knew what to do to prompt it. So that's like, while it's a direct kind of ideological response to Monster Hunter and includes a lot of the kind of traversal and exploration things that make that game what it is, the core concept of Mappa Mundi is basically go out and do a Pokédex. 01:04:16.39 Jala Well, and I have, this is a complete a hundred percent aside, but I have to tell you this story because it's one that will forever stay in my mind. So once upon a time, I used to be a manager of a videos tour back when video stores existed and we were right next door to 01:04:30.34 George TSS the glory days, the glory days they were. 01:04:32.57 Jala Right and so ah I was right next to a video game store which was part of the same company just like you know like it's it was it was its own separate store but there was an opening between the two stores so you could go to both and um Anyhow, I was on a break one day, and I wandered over to the game store. 01:04:52.58 Jala And there was a little kid who was at the little demos thing. And it was, I think, hey, you yeah we yeah, it was hey, you Pikachu. 01:04:58.72 George TSS Yeah. 01:04:59.70 Jala And so he's sitting there with the thing. And then he's going, hey, you Pikachu. And nothing is happening. And he keeps screaming at the thing and screaming at the thing. And then he starts crying. And then the mother like takes him and drags him out of the store. 01:05:11.58 Jala And then that was the end of that. Well, then ah the guy behind the counter, one of my friends, was like, that's been broken. And they just left it there just to to mess with some of the kids that would come in and just start yelling, you know, and right, right. 01:05:23.66 George TSS But doesn't that show you that we want to interact with this stuff, right? This is all interactive. We want we want to see the ah but the response to our interactions in the world. 01:05:33.15 Jala Yeah, exactly. 01:05:33.27 George TSS And in a game like Monster Hunter, the the response to your interactions is, well done. You've killed a sentient being. 01:05:40.11 George TSS And here's a reward for that. 01:05:41.35 George TSS But in Mappa Mundi, it's like, well done. You've understood this thing and allowed it to continue living its life. And you've improved the lives of everyone around you by doing what you've done. 01:05:51.33 Jala Right. Well, and the thing is, is some it is my personal belief and the ethic, you know, the ethos of my show in general. But um ah we are stronger by our diversity. 01:06:02.62 George TSS Absolutely. 01:06:02.84 Jala And as such, um having that kind of level of respect when you go out into the world and interact with other people or other things or the world itself, you know, is important because 01:06:15.70 Jala you learn about yourself and you get feedback from, again, as we were talking earlier, that comparison part, right? 01:06:22.79 Jala So, um you know, you're engaging with this monster or this animal or this whatever, and you've learned about it. You are, you know, interacting with it to whatever degree you are in this game and by doing so you are learning more about your character and you can compare and contrast and think about your character more deeply and you know um that character's place in the world in purpose and you know you your growth as a character can be shaped by these directly by these experiences you know in a role-playing 01:06:42.12 George TSS Yeah. 01:06:57.62 Jala narrative sort of way, just like how in real life we are influenced by all of the different people that we encounter in our lives and what their effects are. so 01:07:08.89 George TSS Yeah, I couldn't agree. but you could I couldn't have put it better myself. 01:07:13.22 Jala So um I have to say, it bears your game does seem to bear some similarities to Forged in the Dark. um So I am not like, I play some TTRPGs, and I have since I was 10. 01:07:27.32 Jala But I am deeply limited on time these days, so I don't play them as much as I would like to. 01:07:33.89 Jala ah However, I do know about Forged in the Dark. then This seems kind of similar in some ways to that with the like the the safety tips and some of the other things that you've got going on, um and like that that kind of um ah some of the different approaches to the narration and how that's formed. 01:07:52.25 Jala So mechanically, is this based on any kind of existing TTRPG system to a lesser or greater extent? Or is this like, you know ah it happens to have similarities, but it's not um intentional? 01:08:03.51 George TSS So, Mappa Mundi is fully its own system, but like all but like like like any kind of art form, it's and it's inspired by by starting other things, and mechanically whether that's some kind of mechanically or thematically. 01:08:12.23 Jala Right. 01:08:15.92 George TSS So mechanically, um The clocks system from Forged in the Dark, I actually think it's i think it's specifically from Blades in the Dark, the clock system, we adapted that into what we call threads. 01:08:29.92 George TSS So when you are interacting with monsters, they have threads, they it's just a more thematic version of the clock. from Blades in the Dark. So that's absolutely and a mechanical we yeah that's a mechanical kind of ah thing that we've lifted and adapted um to make work for Mapper. 01:08:47.24 George TSS It doesn't work in exactly the same way the clock system does, but it's definitively inspired by it. 01:08:49.25 Jala Right. 01:08:51.79 George TSS Equally, our kind of um ah di our dice system is, to my knowledge, I will never say unique because I haven't played every single game out there, but our dice system is of my creation as far as like, you know, Exactly. 01:09:01.21 Jala Right. 01:09:03.98 Jala It is not intentionally like anything else. 01:09:06.74 George TSS However, however, um in it's, you know, Mappa Mundi, to reflect the idea that these are trained professionals who are essentially adventuring academics to one extent or another, um failure is is almost as important as success in Mappa Mundi. 01:09:09.07 Jala Right. 01:09:25.70 George TSS And so you don't level up your character, you level up your dice. um And so Uh, I think it's mouse guard. um pretty Yeah. It was mouse guard that uses this idea that in order to kind of get better with your dice, you need to, um, fail. 01:09:43.13 George TSS Like you need to fail as well as succeed before you can kind of go through that leveling up process. 01:09:48.08 Jala Right. 01:09:48.20 George TSS So that's, so there's definitely a mechanical inspiration there as well. 01:09:52.87 Jala Well, and the idea of you have to fail in order to get better is just real life application. Again, like you, you know, you have to fail a thousand times before on the thousandth and first time you get it exactly the way you wanted it. 01:09:59.38 George TSS and literally yeah exactly like that that's what it is yeah and also you know but you're like if so if you're trying for example to use well a traverse you let's say with your traversal dice right if you're gonna try if you've never climbed a tree before the first time you climb it you're gonna you're probably gonna fail the first time you try and climb a tree you're probably gonna fail but you've learned what not to do from that experience so the next time you try and climb that tree 01:10:09.97 Jala Right. So. 01:10:29.73 George TSS you remember what you what you did wrong and you do something different and if that one works well done you've climbed the tree and then if you come to like a few you know let's say a few months later you come to like a massive huge tree you can apply the knowledge of both the failure and the success of the previous tree to this new one and you might fail because it's a harder tree to climb but you've not failed in the same way twice or it 01:10:51.94 Jala Yes, it's a new and interesting different way to fail. 01:10:54.39 George TSS Exactly and again and you've learned something from it and that's incredibly important in Mappa Mundi and I think it also takes away a lot of those like feels bad moments that you can get it's like oh well I'm trying to do this and I failed the dice roll so now that's it it's closed off to me I've not gained anything I've just lost something. 01:10:56.20 Jala Right. 01:11:12.66 George TSS but in Mappa Mundi like failure is a good thing obviously you'd prefer to succeed but you do have to fail which means you have to try things that are beyond your capabilities because that's how the real world works and that's so that's what our dice system is trying to do and I'm actually using that a very very similar kind of dice mechanic in all of the other games that i'm working on at the moment as well so Mappa Mundi has kind of been 01:11:38.55 George TSS It's been it's because it's the first TTRPG that I've designed. It's also been me kind of honing my style and knowing what I do want to take forward and what I think is just the map of Monday and what works in other games. um ah But the dice mechanic is one that I'm very happy with. um And so that's something that I'm kind of taking forward. It becomes thematically tweaked here and there in different places. But that mechanic is something that I'm definitely taking forward along with shaping as well. So shaping like we have just formalized this but like shaping One of our playtesters described it as adding flavour text to the world. 01:12:11.49 George TSS At any TTRPG table you have people doing this. 01:12:14.72 George TSS You have them adding surreptitiously adding details into a scene. So shaping is nothing new but what is new is that we have said specifically in the rulebook this is something you can and should do um and given people the kind of you know the kind of legal justification for which to do it within their gameplay systems and so shaping again to one extent or another shaping is something that is coming through into every other Three Sails game because when we were play testing 01:12:44.14 George TSS It was kind of a bit of an afterthought, like it was a really small section of the original pre-release guide. But every time we were getting the feedback, people were like, oh yeah, you know, I enjoyed this, I liked the monsters, I liked the world, but you know, X, Y and Z. 01:12:57.21 George TSS Every single person was like, but that shaping stuff, that was great, like that was really special. 01:13:02.23 George TSS And so we expanded it for the final version of the rules. 01:13:05.84 Jala And that's the whole concept of setting this aside, this thing that happens organically at the table when you have experienced gamers doing a game, um putting that in the rule book and saying, no, you have agency giving people that permission to, to you know, start. 01:13:15.53 George TSS Yeah. 01:13:26.28 George TSS I think yet permission is an excellent way of putting it. 01:13:28.08 Jala Mm hmm. 01:13:29.04 George TSS That's literally what it is. The rules, because people will look to the rules to justify what they do and don't want someone to do. And if it says in the rules, no, this is you were allowed to do this, people start doing it. And it's every time we've run the game, at least once I've had like shivers up my spine from something that someone has said in the shape a moment of shaping. 01:13:47.43 George TSS it's just It's just my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing in the game mechanically. And um like I said, i can't I can't leave it behind. Every time I start concepting something new, shaping, find it just finds its way in. 01:14:00.42 George TSS It just pops in. 01:14:02.17 Jala So what's kind of funny is that it reminds me, so um the way that I ended up, because I have done some TTRPGs, and then when ah I got onto the internet, back in the Stone Age when the internet started, um I would go and do role playing online. 01:14:19.77 George TSS Yeah. 01:14:20.09 Jala And that's, so when you're role playing online, one on one with someone or in a group of people, somebody is tending to be the person who's describing the setting and all of that, but they also have a character that they're playing. 01:14:32.27 Jala And then everybody else adds in stuff, but they also organically will add in their own flourishes and say, well, there's also this thing here and all of that. 01:14:37.93 George TSS Yeah. 01:14:41.36 Jala So shaping as a concept is something that is really apparent in stuff like online role playing, even if you're doing freelance with no dice or rule book or anything. 01:14:51.96 George TSS Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's, it's, that's, that's, my, my experiences were similar. 01:14:56.77 George TSS My first ever role-playing things were like, when I was, ah you know, in my like tweens and early teens on the internet. 01:15:03.92 George TSS And that's exactly what I was doing is exactly that hadn't actually occurred to me before. So thank you very much for putting it that way. But that's a hundred percent where the roots of it in my mind come from. 01:15:15.07 George TSS And it's just trying to bring that formally around the table rather than just on a forum, for example. 01:15:20.54 Jala Right. And so that also leads into the player interface with each other and with the narrator, because if you're thinking about it in terms of like an online role play in that way that I just described, that also seems similar to the way that the players and the narrator interact with one another as well. 01:15:41.46 Jala They're more collaborative rather than, ah you know, like ah dictating from on high from the narrator. 01:15:42.64 George TSS A hundred percent, yeah. Yeah. Well, so we have, I mean, yeah as I said at the start, my PhD was kind of anarchist spatial theory. 01:15:52.79 George TSS So it's probably apparent at this point that I'm an anarchist. And so we don't do GMs or DMs. We don't do masters in our games. it's a not it's you know 01:16:03.42 George TSS the person that so we call them narrators in Mappa Mundi they are a facilitator they're there to facilitate the gameplay they have they have authority because they have to interpret rules but our games are always rules light as well but they have authority but they don't have um absolute power so using shaping it changes that interface between the narrator and the players because rather than now Unlike in a lot of games where the players are referring are responding to the things that the GM says and does, and their only agency is how they respond, in Mappa Mundi the narrator is actually far more frequently responding to the players and what they are shaping. And we've so like to kind of get ah to explain this, we've got in the core rules of the game there's a section we call key principles and then we have a narrators guide as well which also starts with key principles and interestingly a lot of those key principles are the same but with different directions and in terms of how we explain them for like whether you're a player or an narrator so collaboration and creativity and respecting and not undoing other people's creativity is a really really important part of what's going on so and that that can be tough for 01:17:19.54 George TSS people running the game who have run maybe more traditional TTRPGs it can be difficult for them to kind of seed like to seed some of that authority to the players and equally for the players it can be difficult to take on that authority um but because Mappa Mundi is narrative like is rules like a narrative first um it makes the process easier but it is it yeah it's ah It can be an adjustment, but it's an adjustment that we've noted in playtesting comes very quickly to most people. 01:17:55.34 Jala So, something I would say too, is that this collaborative effort to tell the narrative, as you said around the game table with these individuals, um really more so than a more focused and rules heavy RPG. 01:18:11.46 Jala would form a lot more of a trust bond between you and your players and your narrator and whoever else is there because you are putting out there this this kernel of a great idea that you've got that you want to expand on in this game. 01:18:26.34 Jala And you're trusting that these other people are going to take it and run with it and help you realize it to the best advantage ah rather than trampling all over it and telling you no, right? 01:18:35.69 George TSS exactly yeah exactly so we've always we always say that you know like a good improv group Mappa Mundi should always be yes and or no but not just no like the word no unless it's unless it's in contravention to like the agreed safety standards that have been ah established by the group no just a flat no shouldn't be shouldn't be there um it's if the narrator is like actually this is kind of beyond what we've you know what's kind of relevant or 01:19:05.51 George TSS necessary or kind of part of the overall flow it's all right no but no you can't necessarily do that but what about this version of that instead it's about redirection rather than kind of shutting down 01:19:18.31 Jala Correct. So that's awesome. So here's one more question because we're running up on time. So I don't want to, um, you know, get kind of half cocked here at the end. So ah one more question. 01:19:30.20 Jala So this is a zero combat game. 01:19:32.82 Jala We've talked about failures and successes on the example of climbing a tree. So what if you get to this massive, what if you get to one of the big redwoods? And you have decided you're going to climb this redwood and you have only just recently started out on your adventure. 01:19:41.88 George TSS Yeah. 01:19:48.04 Jala Can you die? 01:19:49.49 George TSS So this is an interesting question. 01:19:49.58 Jala Or is it going to be like kind of a miraculous? 01:19:54.81 George TSS So there is a section of the rule book of the final rule book ah that's about health, injury and sickness. um And the initially in the initial concept of the game, 01:20:08.64 George TSS you there was no we didn't even think about sickness injury and health we didn't even didn't even occur to us and then right at the last minute before we released the pre-release I'll be like oh my god we actually need to we do have to address this and so i put together a kind of quick set of rules that were mainly focused around like getting sick and like spraining an ankle or maybe breaking an ankle or something like that and that that was about the extent to which we got but i felt over time as we were working on the final version of the rules i felt that this was um I didn't feel like it was, I didn't feel like it was enough. I felt like it was actually doing a dis, it was because it was an afterthought. It was doing a disservice to the quality of the game. So um what we have done now, the section is still called injury, he sickness, injury and health or something along those lines. It's just one page. But what we have done is we have introduced what we call transformative injuries. 01:21:05.08 George TSS because someone asked me at a convention, we were at a convention here in Manchester and we were showing the game off and someone was like, okay, right, I get it, like there's no cop you can't kill anything but what you know what happens if you get hurt? 01:21:15.77 George TSS like what happens it day And they said, what happens if you lose a leg? And I was like, that's really interesting because the concept of disability hadn't occurred to me before. 01:21:26.95 George TSS And like, we want we tried as hard as we can to make sure Mapper is kind of culturally inclusive and gender inclusive and gender identity inclusive, sexuality inclusive, racial inclusion as much as we wanted to make it as inclusive as possible. 01:21:44.38 George TSS And then I was like, I haven't talked, I haven't spoken about disability, like what, like, which means that 01:21:48.20 Jala Mm hmm. 01:21:50.49 George TSS disability doesn't exist within the world of or the game if we haven't addressed it people could put it in there themselves but we've what we have done is by neglecting to talk about this we have basically tacitly suggested to people like to people who have disabilities that this is not a game that is for you because you're not reflected in it or even mentioned in it 01:22:14.44 George TSS So when I set about, when I reset about rewriting these rules, I introduced, I took away some of the kind of granularity. 01:22:22.08 George TSS So it used to be the case that like, you could pick up a minor injury and that would make traversal a little bit more difficult. So your traversal roles would be more difficult, or you could get a major injury, like a broken arm or a broken leg or something like that, that would make traversal more, even more difficult. 01:22:38.26 George TSS But that was about the extent to which we got. But when I was talking to that person at the at the convention, the way I then explained it I was like well a disability doesn't stop you from being a chronicler it just changes the way you but you are a chronicler so for example if you are an archivist our four character classes we call them licenses are archivist, diviner, fixer and guardian so an archivist is you're kind of like they're librarians and scientists and historians and ah you know ah biologists and that kind of thing 01:23:12.09 George TSS And one of their um interactions, one of the ways they interact with monsters is to sketch them. 01:23:17.87 George TSS And so if you were an archivist who was all about sketching things, but then you, for some reason, let's say you were attacked by a monster, because just because you're not attacking the monsters doesn't mean they can't attack you. 01:23:28.51 George TSS It doesn't mean, you know, the world is still a dangerous place. And kind of to return to that idea right back to the start 01:23:39.83 George TSS In fact, I will reveal one now, I'm going to give you, Jala, I'm going to give you ah an exclusive reveal here. 01:23:43.55 Jala Ooh. 01:23:45.99 George TSS One of the monsters in the Leknitsa region, they are called the Sumpurni and they're basically human-sized bipedal wolves that speak with human voices but in a very kind of dog-like way. 01:24:00.48 George TSS um And they are, they're an Estonian, I think it's, I'm pretty sure it's an Estonian, they're an Estonian folk, you know mythical monster. um And they eat people they capture people keep them alive and kind of butcher bits off them and you have to go and learn about these monsters without dying right so it's a dangerous scary place this this part of the world and these are dangerous scary monsters so it's very reasonable that you could be seriously transformatively injured 01:24:29.10 George TSS you know, becoming a person who's disabled through one of these examples. So let's say you were an archivist, whose entire kind of play style was built around your ability to see the world. And then suddenly you can't see it anymore. Well, well what does that mean for your character? And what does it mean for the player playing that character? Does it mean the character is for all intents and purposes, inverted commas dead, like in another game, and you have to roll up a new one, or Does it mean, like in the real world, you adapt to your new situation? 01:25:00.48 George TSS Okay, you can't see anymore, but someone can still describe something to you and you can still sketch based on that. You can learn new skills. It doesn't just because a transformative injury has occurred to you, either in the real world or in game, doesn't mean you are no longer capable of doing the role that you have always done you just have to adapt to it and the world has to adapt to you as well the people around you have to adapt to your new abilities or your different abilities and so 01:25:30.15 Jala Right. 01:25:31.26 George TSS A transformative injury is something that no one can impose a transformative injury on a character. Like the narrator cannot suddenly say, right, you've lost an arm, you've lost a leg, you're now deaf, you've lost um you've lost the use of your legs, or you've lost the use of your sight. or the narrator cannot impose that on a player. It has to be the player's choice in response to something. 01:25:53.71 George TSS Um, because again, we don't want, you know, it's not, it's not, this is not a punishment for, um, a failure to, to achieve something. 01:25:59.46 Jala Right. 01:26:01.82 George TSS It's, it's, it's part of, it's, it, it has to be an important part of someone's character and it has to be their choice. Even if in the real world, it might not be your choice that this has happened to you. 01:26:12.48 George TSS We want to make sure that in game, it's something that is exactly 01:26:14.92 Jala Right. You don't want to have that association where the players like, oh, yeah. earth Or the narrator is, you know, getting mad at the player for going and being very reckless, which I'm a reckless person in games, in games, I'm very reckless. 01:26:28.96 George TSS Me too. 01:26:30.87 Jala So, uh, you know, I, I'm the one who will sit in dishonored, look out the window down at the cliff and the sea and go, I wonder how long I'll survive before the game kills me. 01:26:40.11 George TSS Exactly. 01:26:42.04 Jala It jumps out the window. so ah Again, I break every game. 01:26:46.78 George TSS Yeah. 01:26:47.12 Jala and um so you know that That's me. ah so so but I can't have a narrator get frustrated with Jala. You're not, to just go through the door, Jala. Stop. 01:26:56.28 George TSS Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 01:26:57.39 Jala you know um They have to work with me and it it should not be a punishment to me. I should say, well, given the fact that I just fell X amount, I should figure that this would happen or whatever. 01:27:09.62 Jala And then and you know I take that agency onto myself so that it's not it doesn't take on a connotation of, you know oh, well, a disability is only a negative, a punishment, something like that. 01:27:22.43 George TSS Yeah, or like a punishment for a moral failing or a social failing, which it is it isn't. 01:27:25.64 Jala ah Right, right. 01:27:27.35 George TSS these this is not This is not how this works. 01:27:30.65 Jala And, and a player could start out with whatever kind of, you know, they could, they could self-reflect. Like if they have OI and they need to have like a certain kind of, um, you know, uh, apparatus within which that they, they move because they're very physically fragile or whatever. 01:27:45.23 George TSS Exactly. 01:27:45.49 Jala Well, then, you know, they just, they, they do whatever it is they need to do. They make their character the way that they want to make the character. 01:27:51.47 George TSS Yeah. 01:27:51.81 Jala And they experienced the world that way, which to me seems like it could give a lot of potential for. empathy and for um understanding on the part of our largely ableist society to understand, well, what is it like if I have these considerations because of my particular situation as this character? 01:28:06.49 George TSS Yeah. 100%. 01:28:16.06 George TSS Yeah, and how as well, if you are a part of a group of able-bodied people playing with ah ah person a person with a disability, how do I support that person in their daily life? like um like how do How do I help them? how do yeah what What role do I play in ah in helping this person go about their daily life? Do I even need to do that? 01:28:39.13 George TSS Like, is it being asked of me? 01:28:39.40 Jala Right. 01:28:40.57 George TSS um but yeah well How do I position myself in relation to this? And so again, it's like Mappa Mundi, to boil it down, a lot of people have asked me in kind of interview situations like this, they're like, oh, so it's a cozy game. 01:28:52.33 George TSS And I'm like, no, there's nothing, there's nothing cozy about this game. 01:28:53.69 Jala No. 01:28:56.18 George TSS You were living rough. 01:28:56.53 Jala Life begins outside your comfort zone. 01:28:58.60 George TSS Exactly. 01:28:58.73 Jala You are having to move outside your comfort zone in the game. 01:29:01.00 George TSS Exactly, and I think people, I think, and I think this is video games fault, but like people have, the cozy game genre emerged, and because it didn't have combat in it, it became two diametrically opposed games. A game is either cozy, because there's no combat, or it's not cozy, because it has combat. And because Mappa Mundi doesn't have combat, people are like, oh, it's a cozy game. And I'm like, no, absolutely not. Mappa Mundi is a hopeful game. 01:29:28.48 George TSS Mappa Mundi is a game that is premised on the idea that you as an individual are important and that the actions that you take have real impact. 01:29:29.12 Jala Right. 01:29:38.60 George TSS Even if that impact is only felt by one or two people or one or two things, that is really important the action you've taken is important and consequential. And it's built on the idea that on the hope that taking those actions can improve the world in measurable, even if it's infinitesimally small, but measurable ways. 01:29:59.71 George TSS there's nothing like again those Sompurni those like six foot six foot six wolf men hybrids who butcher living people so they can feast on them that there's nothing cozy about that there's nothing cozy about fighting through a snowstorm on a mountain so you can go and try you know so you can try and traverse from one region to another 01:30:12.27 Jala Right. 01:30:20.13 George TSS It's hope that's the key word. that's really what I want people to take away from Mappa Mundi is that it's ah it's a game that is in, and again, this comes from the anarchist in me. I have to be an optimist to be an anarchist. I have to believe that what I do and what you do is important. That the system, that we don't have to be working within these huge global systems to make change. When those systems are the things that are often making the change the negative changes, 01:30:47.04 Jala Right. 01:30:47.47 George TSS So, Mappa Mundi at its core it has that hope and that optimism, the hope in individuals and the hope in individuals banding together and then when individuals band together they become better. um that's what's right at the core of Mappa Mundi. 01:31:04.24 Jala Yeah, and I would say too, um this is again me just looking at the game, talking to you about it, listening about it and just thinking about different people engaging with this. 01:31:16.09 Jala I feel like once this is in people's hands, this could potentially also be a force for good in a lot of people's lives because having that kind of attitude, that kind of hope, um you know, words have power actions and you know your agency and your actions have meaning ah could potentially help translate into helping that person feel that way about their own day-to-day life as well because 01:31:43.06 George TSS and I mean that's beautiful of you to say and if that's genuinely my hope for the game. 01:31:48.18 George TSS is I want you to have a wonderful brilliant fun game time with this. But if what if if it if it empowers one person, even just one person, to be like, actually, there is something that I can do, and I'm going to go out and do it, then then then all of this will have been worth it. 01:32:08.39 Jala Right. And just for a funny note, I will say that the Sompurni, I believe you said, uh, they, I will absolutely appeal to Cameron from Monster Dear Monster. 01:32:14.07 George TSS Somebody, yeah. 01:32:19.84 Jala Here's our, here's our resident, uh, Wolfman fan. So right, right, right. 01:32:23.43 George TSS So we were initially, I was like, we were I was like, we haven't got a werewolf. And I was like, I don't actually want to have a werewolf. But the sampurni, they are, they're very, very, I love the idea that what they they are, they're not humans. 01:32:35.46 Jala Right. 01:32:35.48 George TSS And they are mimicking a mocking humanity. 01:32:38.38 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:32:38.48 George TSS Like the king of the sampurni is the one with the longest tail. Like that's the way their structure, hierarchical structure works. And they are just they're like, one of the things we try to do with a lot of Mappa Mundi monsters is we try to look for those that are not regularly, if at all, featured in other TTRPGs and the ones that are featured in other TTRPGs, we've tried to return them to their original cultural context as much as possible. 01:33:03.03 George TSS the Sompurni I couldn't find found one oblique mention to them in English and then followed that down into like i i'm I'm certain it was Estonia but I don't have my notes in front of me so I can't remember off the top of my head I then followed that down into like Estonian language sources that I was kind of google translating into English to try and work out if what I was reading was right or not um but yeah so we you know they are like they are far lesser known 01:33:30.39 George TSS real world mythical creature and that's exactly what Mappa Mundi is kind of living and breathing on is is bringing these lesser known monsters and creatures, at least lesser known to English speaking audiences to life. 01:33:41.99 Jala Right. So that is extremely awesome. And if people listening are not already like Googling this, uh, we will have in the notes, of course links to Three Sails studios and to the Kickstarter project itself. 01:33:57.25 Jala This episode is going to be releasing in January, but the Kickstarter starts in February. What day in February? 01:34:03.33 George TSS February 4th is the first Tuesday in February. 01:34:05.02 Jala Awesome. Fantastic. So a little bit less than a month after the release of this episode, which should give people plenty of time to catch up and listen to this episode first, ah hear all about it, get super excited and get ready to get notified. 01:34:22.00 Jala Go ahead and sign up for that notification. And if you want to check out the pre-release guide, you can subscribe to the newsletter, which I believe is the way to get that pre-release guide right, George. 01:34:32.17 George TSS it's one of the ways, yeah, if people can sign up there, they can come and find us on Discord or BlueSky and Facebook, and we're always happy to send links out for it. 01:34:40.88 Jala There you go so ah that and do you have any wrap up thoughts that you want to add for this. 01:34:46.62 George TSS I just, this has been, this has been an absolutely wonderful interview, Jala. I'm really, really grateful. So thank you so much for having us. I really hope people, you know, this, this is, this is, this has given people as like for all the interviews that I've done, this has taken a different angle in, into the material. And it's been really, really, really like professionally satisfying as well as personally enjoyable. 01:35:05.81 George TSS So I really hope people like what they hear. if they like As you said, if people can come and follow us on Kickstarter, we'd absolutely love to have you. um you're not going to be Once the Kickstarter is finished, like I said, we're going to print basically straight away so people are not going to have a huge long wait to get their hands on the books. So you know come and join in with our communities, come and get involved, get excited, and we'll keep that excitement going and have those books in your hands as soon as we possibly can. 01:35:31.00 Jala Right. And that's always fantastic because with Kickstarter, you can always back something and then five, 10 years later something comes out. 01:35:36.85 George TSS and yeah I've had books run up and I'm just like, what is this? 01:35:39.15 Jala So right. 01:35:41.09 George TSS I don't remember back in this. Like, what is this? 01:35:42.68 Jala Right. but What is this? I don't even remember what this is. 01:35:45.48 George TSS Yeah. 01:35:46.10 Jala Oh, maybe, maybe vaguely. I remember this from 20 years ago. 01:35:48.14 George TSS Yeah. 01:35:51.61 Jala ah Right, right. So ah yeah, everybody listening, definitely check out Mappa Mundi, follow Three Sails Studios, ah jump into their Discord community, and all of that wonderful fun stuff. I will, of course, closer to the time of the Kickstarter launcher after it has already launched. I will mention it as well on the level so those folks can hear about it as well. um Otherwise, I think that wraps it up for us here. ah Your socials are going to be um in the show notes, but if you want to say them out loud so people can look you up royal real quick, you can. 01:36:24.67 George TSS 100% yeah, so you can find us on Blue Sky with us at 3Sell Studios and then all the weird Blue Sky stuff that comes after it. You can find us at MappaMundiRPG.com. um You can find us on Instagram with Three Sails Studios and you can find Mappa Mundi as a group on Facebook as well as just Mappa Mundi and exploration and ecology RPG. 01:36:47.15 Jala Awesome. And of course you can find me anywhere that I might be found @jalachan, including jalachan.place where you found this episode and all of the others. So until next time, take care of yourself and remember to smile. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]