GMBC ep26 - Soaring Through Cinderspires: Unpacking Jim Butcher's Aeronaut's Windlass
Dave Stevens
The Rocketeer
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.560
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:06.720 - 00:01:08.740
Hello and welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience. For this episode we take to the skies to explore the world of the Cinderspires and Jim Butcher's the Aeronaut's Windless.
Our swashbuckling airship crew includes Chris Grannis, inaugural and frequent Game Master contributor here on the Game Masters Book Club, as well as Oren and Ari Ashkenazi, brothers and members of the Miscreants, an online publication and podcast about storytelling. We discuss Oren's steampunk game Rising Tides, Ari's creative struggles with various D and D products, and of course, the glory that is talking cats.
Let's get into the conversation and welcome to Game Masters Book Club where we take great fiction and we turn into great role playing opportunities. My name is Eric Jackson and I have some wonderful game masters here with me this evening.
We're going to be talking about Jim Butcher's the Aeronauts Winless in the Cinderspire series. But before we start talking about the book, I want to introduce us to our Game Masters and we're going to start with our veteran game master.
Chris, why don't you go ahead and then we'll have our new GMs introduce themselves.
Speaker C
00:01:08.740 - 00:01:15.020
Hi, I'm Chris Grannis. I have been a GM for 30 years. Something like that.
Speaker B
00:01:15.180 - 00:01:28.140
And oh, and I totally forgot to say that we were going to have our Game Masters talk about.
Since the Aeronauts Winless is very heavily steampunky, I wanted to talk to you guys about what sort of steampunk elements or fun things you've done in your campaigns in the past.
Speaker C
00:01:28.300 - 00:01:59.200
Sure.
So my first steampunk game, don't play a lot of them, but I did play a really cool Everon game or ran a really cool Everon game which had some great heist mechanics. We did a heisting a lightning train throughout the wilds of Everon. I like a good heist as well as steampunk.
And just having the well dressed, obnoxiously bepistaled adventurers stealing items from a lightning train felt very steampunk to me. And the whole setting is steampunk. Yeah.
Speaker D
00:01:59.360 - 00:02:00.800
Heck yeah. That sounds like fun.
Speaker B
00:02:00.800 - 00:02:03.520
Yeah, that does sound pretty good. Ari, do you want to go next?
Speaker E
00:02:03.520 - 00:02:53.010
Yeah, sure. My name is Ari ashkenazi. I've been GMing for about a decade now, playing for about twice that. As far as steampunk I have.
Well, first I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition and now 5.5 and I am a Big fan of introducing arcane tech into some, especially my higher level games to add power. So there's a lot of similarities to some of the technology in this book.
But then for more specific systems, my brother and also here on the show today, Oren, he made a system called Rising Tide.
And Rising Tide is where you have a boat that you manage and then you go on adventures with often a little eldritch horrors to it, general spookiness. And it, I think, would fit very well into similar ideas with the airships of the win last series.
Speaker D
00:02:53.250 - 00:02:55.810
Yeah. And you ran a play test of that campaign.
Speaker E
00:02:56.050 - 00:02:56.610
I did.
Speaker D
00:02:56.770 - 00:02:59.570
That was when we coined the phrase, what's your deal, man?
Speaker E
00:02:59.570 - 00:03:00.930
Yeah, like, what is your deal?
Speaker D
00:03:01.490 - 00:03:04.850
That was the operating investigative question that they were always asking.
Speaker E
00:03:05.490 - 00:03:13.410
Yeah, I had the main villain, worked with the players for quite a while, I believe. Stealth villain, their patron. And then one player was like, what's your deal?
Speaker C
00:03:13.410 - 00:03:17.770
I love a good villain being their mentor. That's a great, great trope.
Speaker E
00:03:18.330 - 00:03:20.570
And it turns out his deal was being evil.
Speaker B
00:03:20.650 - 00:03:23.970
Orin, you've entered the chat, so why don't you do the full introduction?
Speaker D
00:03:23.970 - 00:04:17.460
Yeah. So, yeah, I'm Oren Nashikanazi. I'm Ari's brother. Good luck telling us apart.
Some people have a lot of trouble with that, so, you know, we'll just do our best. A steampunk thing that I'm very proud of is this is many years ago. I've been GMing for a while, I think. I think my first campaign was when I was 12.
And my steampunk one is interesting, is that I wanted to run an airship focused game because I love airships.
But I wanted a sequel to this fantasy campaign I'd run, with the idea being that it was, like, long enough later that we developed steampunk technology. So the first game had been Burning Empires. So I spent months hammering out a steampunk hack for, excuse me, not Burning Empires, Burning Wheel.
And that was way too much work. There was no reason to do that. I could have run it in a different system, but I did it. And so we had steampunk rules for Burning Wheel.
If you wanted to, you know, use that system, you wanted to have steampunk life paths, I got them.
Speaker B
00:04:17.850 - 00:04:23.210
There's nothing quite like taking something and being like, I'm gonna make this system do what I. I'm gonna bend it to my will.
Speaker D
00:04:23.450 - 00:04:28.330
I hack systems way, way more often than I probably should. It's probably not worth the effort, but I do it anyway.
Speaker B
00:04:28.330 - 00:05:24.500
Well, that's one of the good things about this particular podcast.
We like to introduce people to other things because but again it is a ton of fun to grab hold of the system that you're used to and just make it dance. I want you to do a jig for me now. My name is Eric Jackson and I've been plagued. It's the place to scene My favorite steampunk event.
One of our DMs because of a job ended up not being able to dm. They were we need something for three months. Eric go. And so we did a whole thing again Orin we final scene was skyship run by a brain in the jar.
You know, just like lightning going up everywhere. Important people being pushed off of the skyship and people swinging from ropes and grabbing them and all very heavily steampunk the whole time.
The cool thing about that was we did play an Eberron and that was the game that had one swashbuckler and three blade dancers. Like it was the steamiest steampunky steampunk you could do. It was so much fun. We had a great time with.
Speaker C
00:05:24.500 - 00:05:26.220
Sounds like many buckles were swashed.
Speaker B
00:05:26.220 - 00:05:35.620
Oh, many, many bucklings of the swash indeed. Okay, I'm going to give us a quick introduction to the aeronautics Windlass by Jim Butcher. I feel like this deserves this particular treatment.
So here we go.
Speaker D
00:05:35.620 - 00:05:36.180
You ready?
Speaker B
00:05:36.660 - 00:06:06.670
In a world where cities float above a dangerous monsters filled wasteland. Where theme park magic and technology enables flying airships crystals to generate electricity.
And etherealists who can manipulate both matter and destiny. Where humans live alongside both sapient cats. Human animal hybrids called warriorborn. Heroes will rise, a war begins.
Cats will be sassy, villains will be psychotic but polite. And all of civilization is at stake. End book one of the cinder spires. How'd I do that?
Speaker E
00:06:06.670 - 00:06:06.990
Good.
Speaker B
00:06:07.070 - 00:06:08.270
Anybody got anything to add?
Speaker D
00:06:08.270 - 00:06:19.070
Well, at least the the tax system of Spire Aurora is at stake. I don't know about the world yet. We're still figuring out if the world is is at stake. That's real mysterious.
You got to read book two to find out about that.
Speaker C
00:06:19.070 - 00:06:26.970
Or figuring out if actually exists there. If there's actually anything outside of these habits.
Speaker D
00:06:28.570 - 00:06:37.650
Well, there's the ground which is full of mist and monsters. And then there are these big old stone like spires that are like, you know, big old columns of stone that everyone lives in. Right?
Speaker E
00:06:37.650 - 00:06:43.210
What lives in the mist? Yes, and I guess there are mist whales that are dangerous of some sort.
Speaker D
00:06:43.450 - 00:06:48.170
Yeah, we heard about Ms. Well, we never see one, but we've heard about them completely. Miss The Mist whales.
Speaker E
00:06:48.430 - 00:06:50.230
Yeah. I assume they were saving that for book.
Speaker C
00:06:50.230 - 00:06:54.590
I've read about half of book two and haven't seen a mist well yet.
Speaker E
00:06:54.670 - 00:07:03.830
So the mist whales have been positioned as likely. Like one of the main reasons you don't just float around in the mist doing whatever you want.
Because the whales are in there and the whales will eat you.
Speaker D
00:07:03.830 - 00:07:04.830
It's spooky in there.
Speaker B
00:07:04.830 - 00:07:21.000
Oren, Oren, would you be so kind? We've got a great setting here. I think we could talk more about how good the book is. We've got a great setting here.
Really well designed for a tabletop role playing game. What system would you use to best evoke these cinder spires in a tabletop?
Speaker D
00:07:21.000 - 00:08:08.880
Well, to make the best use of the world, what I would probably do is I would use some combination of Scum and Villainy and Blades in the Dark, which are two systems based off the same engine. Scum and Villainy is a sci fi game.
From there, that's where you get the rules for having your own ship, which is, I think the obvious play for this setting is you would want your characters to be the crew of a ship. Weirdly, the book is not about that. The book is about a mystery inside one of the cities. You know, I think the ships are the main draw.
So what I would do is I would take the ship mechanics from Scum and Villainy, which very easily port into the more steampunky esthetic of Blades in the Dark. And they have a whole economy management system.
If you want to get into the real the nuts and bolts of your ship business, which I do because I'm a little weirdo. I think that would be a great way to run this setting. Agreed.
Speaker B
00:08:08.880 - 00:08:21.790
The ships really are very much the stars of the show. I feel like there's a real emphasis on the whole naval pseudo 18th century master and commander y kind of feel to this.
Speaker D
00:08:21.790 - 00:08:32.070
Yeah. But also like World War I, Battle of Jutland. Butcher's mixing his operations a bit, which is not bad.
It does weird me out a little bit because I'm a weird nerd. I do think the ships are the.
Speaker E
00:08:32.070 - 00:08:40.150
Most interesting part of the setting, especially for tabletop purposes. You're probably not porting in like this exact mystery and characters for your tabletop game.
Speaker D
00:08:40.230 - 00:08:40.670
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:08:40.670 - 00:08:46.520
So the ship, I think a very rich spot to pull from for your rpg.
Speaker B
00:08:46.680 - 00:10:18.080
That's where I pulled my particular mechanics from. I was interested in using a game that I purchased which is a really pretty book. On top of being a really interesting game system called Wildsea.
It's another post apocalyptic world with these mile high trees rather than mists. And instead of spires they have mountain islands and what they call tall shanks which are these incredibly large tree based societies.
And they have ships that ride on top of the trees with chainsaws on their prows. So anything where you've got a ship with a chainsaw on the prow is definitely going to be exciting. Again.
That doesn't necessarily exactly fit this steampunky sort of thing. The game continues to like parallel this. There's a phenomenal amount of wildlife that comes in a variety of spooky forms that's deadly.
There's an atmosphere that's like full of poison that can get you later that can make you hallucinate just like the sunlight and the ether exposure. Wildsea is described as like low magic, high weirdness. And I feel like the ether kind of stuff.
And the Etherealists are all in the aeronauts, windless. And finally the. The whole mechanic that they have based around this, they've got. It's basically a.
A bunch of dice that you put together and they've got different traits and you combine those traits which are like grace, iron, instinct, sharps, teeth, tides, veils, which all sort of tie to things like grace's elegance and iron is willpower. And so those are your abilities. So but. And they help build dice pools which I always love. A good dice pool game.
Speaker D
00:10:18.080 - 00:10:19.200
I do love dice pool.
Speaker B
00:10:19.200 - 00:11:18.840
Yeah, no, dice pool is great. And this game is a little harsher I think than the aeronautics.
Winless in that you roll the dice after you have your edges and your advantages and whatever else you decide to throw into your dice bowl. One through three is a failure, five to six is success with complication and six is a triumph.
And I'm like that's a little harsh for this particular book. This book is a little bit more heroic. I'd probably either give way more dice or adjust that to be like 1 and 2 is a failure and 5 and 6 is a triumph.
Because I feel like this book has a lot more of that. There are heroes and we are doing hero things. And finally, just to throw it in, the classes in this book are all based around your post on a ship.
So it really has a lot of the same bits and pieces. Even though the setting is giant tree world instead of a misty post apocalyptic world. That's how I would want to run it.
Ari, do you want to talk about your choice for mechanics?
Speaker E
00:11:18.840 - 00:12:30.930
Yeah. So I think that I already mentioned Rising Tide. I think it Would work perfectly for this. Just switching. Changing from a wet ship to an airship.
If I was going to run a campaign in this world, the most exciting part would be exploring into the mist to the ground. And the Rising tide system where you are a small island of normalcy and going into the great unknown that is spooky scary is. Is perfect for that.
The before I move on, the whole managing your ship, like the parts of your ship and keeping it repaired and upgrading it and things like that would be, I think, a very fun progression system. It's a very good system for giving rewards, both personal for the characters, but then also for the vessel they are on. So I think that's a great fit.
I'm also going to talk about Dungeons Dragons because A, it's super popular and B, it's a system I know the best by quite a wide margin. D and D is not perfect for this, but if you wanted to run this in D and D, there are vehicle rules.
Descent into Avernus has some okay rules for your hell cars that you could switch up into airships. Ghost of Saltmarsh sadly, does not have boat rules, despite giving you a boat. But, you know, we do what we can.
Speaker C
00:12:31.010 - 00:12:33.090
Yeah, that was disappointing.
Speaker D
00:12:33.410 - 00:12:37.170
What do you mean? We could just ram them with our boat over and over again.
Speaker E
00:12:37.250 - 00:13:10.870
I made rules for it, but they didn't give you any for some reason. But I would use the Descent into Avernus hell car rules as a base for the boats and then make modifications as needed.
And then also hextech or whatever you want to call it. Arcane technology combining magic with cool crystals and interesting gadgets. You know, Eberron has a fair amount of that.
And also it's just a very fun space to design into if you enjoy making your own items and abilities, things like that. So you could also totally do this in D and D and it just wouldn't be as specialized, especially the boat portion.
Speaker D
00:13:10.870 - 00:13:17.930
Yeah. Excuse me. This is technically a crystal punk book. They only have a little bit of steam power. Pardon me.
Speaker E
00:13:18.970 - 00:13:20.570
How. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Speaker B
00:13:20.810 - 00:13:23.770
Oren, put those glasses up a little higher on your nose.
Speaker D
00:13:23.770 - 00:13:24.050
Okay.
Speaker B
00:13:24.050 - 00:13:25.650
When you say that, that's just definitely.
Speaker C
00:13:25.650 - 00:13:26.410
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker B
00:13:27.370 - 00:13:28.250
Go ahead, Chris.
Speaker C
00:13:28.330 - 00:13:38.650
Everyone's the easy choice, quote unquote. But I do think they have the Astral Adventures guide has the spell jammer type ships. So if you need some ship stuff, that's there.
Speaker E
00:13:39.050 - 00:13:40.890
Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about the.
Speaker C
00:13:40.890 - 00:15:06.510
I haven't played that in 5e. I've played that way back in the day in 2e. And that was a lot of fun because it's setting.
However, I would run this in Lady Blackbird, which seems custom made for this adventure. Lady Blackbird was written by the same people who did Blades in the Dark and. And it's a small game. It is not meant for a campaign.
Although quite frankly, we have played it as a campaign and it has gone very, very well. It is all about the characters. It gives you pre generated characters which you can modify and such. It is basically a dice pool game.
So you grab traits and build your dice pool and roll four and hires typically are the successes, but it depends on whether you know it's a super struggle. You know, you can have up to, you know, fives or successes or if it's super easy, twos are better. And why are you rolling the dice.
But it has a steamship, which is the owl.
A skyship, rather not a steamship, because though it does run in steam, it is set in a world where you are floating through fog being chased by giant monsters. There are swashbuckling attempts to bring Lady Blackbir to find her lover who is a pirate king, and things go wrong.
There is a strange little creature called Snargle who is a goblin, but serves essentially the same purpose as Raul the cat here. You can basically sift them. Right?
Speaker D
00:15:06.510 - 00:15:21.850
Folks, we need to take a second and acknowledge something. Three of us said that the system we would use is either directly a Blades in the Dark inspiration or like just connected to it some.
We are really not beating the indie RPG accusation here. It's just like.
Speaker C
00:15:22.010 - 00:15:22.890
That is right.
Speaker E
00:15:23.050 - 00:15:26.530
Don't worry. I'm here to. I'm here to give dungeons.
Speaker C
00:15:26.530 - 00:15:29.330
I was gonna say we did say D D win there too. It's not.
Speaker E
00:15:29.330 - 00:15:37.610
You know, I'm here to give the little guy. The Little Guy 5th Edition D A voice because it never gets the recognition it deserves.
Speaker D
00:15:37.610 - 00:15:39.850
Will no one think of Wizards of the Coast?
Speaker E
00:15:40.010 - 00:15:43.530
Yeah, Think of Hasbro or struggling D.
Speaker B
00:15:44.490 - 00:15:47.290
Hasbro, who is not currently sponsoring this podcast.
Speaker D
00:15:47.370 - 00:15:48.610
I would be very thrilled if they.
Speaker B
00:15:48.610 - 00:16:14.390
Would like to sponsor this podcast next thing here. Now that we've talked the mechanics that we. If we wanted to run an exact replica of the aeronaut's windlass or run in the cinder spires.
There's a lot of wonderful things to steal from this and drop directly into your current campaign, be it steampunk or not to a certain extent. But Oren, would you want to talk about like what you'd like to. What would be portable from this particular book and you would put into your game.
Speaker D
00:16:14.470 - 00:16:37.800
Yeah, so I mean, I always like talking cats, which the story has. I don't need a lot of excuse to put talking cats in. In my fantasy games, whatever the subgenre happens to be.
Or my far future sci fi games because then you can uplift them. Like you got. You got options. So I like those. You know, there's also the. The whole spooky mist covering the ground.
I think that's also potentially very useful.
Speaker B
00:16:38.040 - 00:16:43.800
Yeah, it's always nice to have a here there be dragons line that nobody can really cross.
Speaker D
00:16:43.800 - 00:17:00.020
Or like you can, but like it's dangerous. Nobody's coming after you if you do. Creates a good in universe explanation for why adventuring exists.
Because that's always kind of hard to answer if you're trying to come up with a setting that makes sense. Like adventuring is a pretty weird profession if you think about it.
Speaker B
00:17:00.580 - 00:17:02.540
It's not something your parents really want you to.
Speaker D
00:17:02.540 - 00:17:04.020
The economics of it are very strange.
Speaker C
00:17:04.180 - 00:17:08.180
Beat people up and steal their stuff. I mean that's, you know, that's gaming.
Speaker D
00:17:08.260 - 00:17:11.940
I mean you could just be a bandit, I guess that's a kind of adventurer.
Speaker B
00:17:12.020 - 00:17:14.740
All right, Chris, why don't you take up our portables from there?
Speaker C
00:17:14.740 - 00:18:35.550
I'm definitely agreeing with the cats because I do love me a uplifted animal, that sort of thing. It's a lot of fun. But I liked the Aetherytes here.
I liked the idea of the wizards having such a connection to their tools and such a madness to their tools. You know, the more powerful they get, the more their tools define them and they are not defined outside of it.
D and D and many of the other wizard heavy books have the. Oh yes, yes. You have your implement and it's basically. It's a wand and you wave it around and there's no flavor to it.
This has a lot of flavor for how their wizards are burdened with it.
Be that the tools be a bunch of crystals that you have to talk to or talk through or just a random assortment of things that if you don't have your brain doesn't work correctly. Or the need for. In the evil wizard's case, the need for a very proper tea being set up and all the banners being exactly right.
And you can use your powers much more fiercely if someone breaks that social contract, someone breaks that manners down. It's a very neat idea. Something that you could actually easily throw into a game and you know, make the wizards more flavorful.
Speaker D
00:18:35.630 - 00:18:36.070
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:18:36.070 - 00:19:06.850
Sickerance is. Oh, first off, great name such a great evil Character, great, but great evil character. It fixes a problem.
I don't know if it, if it fixes a problem or it takes something that's very traditional. A lot of times in more fantasy settings you have wizards who become more homebound, which is our excuse why they don't take over the world. Right.
They become more and more connected to a place. And this is interesting that you're connected to this collection instead, which I think is really does make it really interesting.
Speaker C
00:19:06.850 - 00:19:26.140
And it could also describe your collection, could be your place.
I do my best work when I'm in my house and as I get more powerful, I add more rooms to my house and eventually I can't leave my house because if I leave my house I lose all my power. And that would be ridiculous.
Speaker B
00:19:26.620 - 00:19:31.740
Yeah, you could see that working. Ari, what is portable for you from the Aeronaus win list?
Speaker E
00:19:33.980 - 00:20:46.350
Yeah, so one of mine was already mentioned, the talking cat. Not even a talking cat specifically, but that type type of character is I think excellent for GMs to stretch their role playing muscles a little bit.
It's just a very different type of character from all the NPCs that the players are meeting. Otherwise they're also a great avenue for the GM to give the player help as needed.
And they're like different enough from the everyone else that they can't just solve all the problems.
But they're a great vector for a GM interference in the party that could be accepted and even welcomed while being entertaining to both play and interact with from the player's perspective. And then the other piece is I enjoyed the visuals of their technology, the gauntlets that they use in place of firearms. Firearms are actually un.
Generally considered unreliable weapons. And also the shipboard versions, I think think that as I said, I like doing arcane technology or hextech.
And that vibe that look can be very easily just slotted into a world where magic and technology work.
Speaker B
00:20:46.510 - 00:20:59.800
It is a really aesthetically pretty world that Butcher is setting up for us. I'm going to go one more time because apparently we all love cats here.
If there's a random noise happening on my side of the microphone, it is because a cat is rubbing against microphone at that time.
Speaker C
00:21:00.040 - 00:21:00.760
Little jerks.
Speaker B
00:21:01.240 - 00:21:03.040
Yeah, yeah, I love the little jerks.
Speaker D
00:21:03.040 - 00:21:03.680
They're fantastic.
Speaker B
00:21:03.680 - 00:21:21.560
Rm I'm gonna sidestep what you said and say that I like this as a character class because you had. You had the sort of keeper of the cat, the person who could talk to the cat.
I felt like maybe that could have been done as like My character is someone who puts all their points into their pet.
Speaker C
00:21:21.720 - 00:21:22.360
Not that.
Speaker B
00:21:22.760 - 00:21:24.760
Heaven forbid that Raoul should be considered a pet.
Speaker C
00:21:24.760 - 00:21:25.120
No one.
Speaker B
00:21:25.120 - 00:21:26.240
No one. Absolutely not.
Speaker C
00:21:26.240 - 00:21:30.410
Yeah. Oh, I was assuming you were saying his little mouse was his pet also.
Speaker B
00:21:30.410 - 00:22:34.770
Also a possibility. Could have done that. But it felt like they were a pair. They definitely felt like they worked as a unit.
And I thought that might make an interesting class or character that you could play at some point. But off of the cat thing, because I knew everybody else was going to talk about cats. I really liked the. I liked the ether nets.
The nets that they threw out that captured the ether, that allowed the ships to move, which gave my scientist brain something for plausible deniability.
When we were talking about why big ships would be more better than little ships and in real water, you want a big ship because it has more mass and it pushes through stuff and can carry more sail. And I'm like, well, why would that matter in the air where you have much less friction?
I'm like, oh, because you can just haul out more of this stuff. They were able to shoot that off so you could slow things down. It had a really great mechanic for chases and catching up.
And it was a little built in sort of mechanic that I would love to steal if I were going to have like ship to ship aerial combat. So that was my favorite thing. It really had that wooden ships and iron men kind of feel to it, but also cool tech.
Speaker D
00:22:34.850 - 00:22:49.090
What they needed was because you know how armor in this setting is silk. It's like the special aether silk. Yep. They mentioned that they don't wear helmets. What they clearly need is aether silk balaclavas. Oh, there you go.
Keep their heads fully armored.
Speaker B
00:22:50.210 - 00:22:52.130
Jim Butcher, you can contact Orin.
Speaker D
00:22:52.610 - 00:22:55.490
I am prepared to share that idea for a generous split.
Speaker C
00:22:55.650 - 00:23:06.780
Jim Butcher is well known to be a gamer geek himself. Can sort of see the classes of the characters in the book. Sometimes it's like, okay, we've got your wizard. There's book.
Speaker B
00:23:06.780 - 00:23:08.660
After you got your swashbuckler and you.
Speaker C
00:23:08.660 - 00:23:15.940
Got your warrior and you have your ranger who would be, you know, little mouse and her and drow and you get your grizzled old veteran.
Speaker D
00:23:16.020 - 00:23:16.340
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:23:16.340 - 00:23:17.660
Oh, yeah. Always the best.
Speaker C
00:23:17.660 - 00:23:19.700
Was way too many experience points there.
Speaker B
00:23:19.700 - 00:23:23.740
Well, yeah, he's not looking to retire at least, so. At least we didn't have that one happen.
Speaker C
00:23:23.740 - 00:23:24.420
Exactly.
Speaker B
00:23:24.420 - 00:23:43.680
Okay, Chris, why don't we start with you because now we've talked about stuff we want to steal and we've talked about how we would run the game if You're a game game master and you're getting psyched up to run your aeronautic winless game or something similar to it. What sort of media outside of Jim Butcher series would you want people to read to get them in the mood to sort of give them the right vibe?
Speaker C
00:23:43.760 - 00:24:55.480
I have a few and I mean, if you want the right vibe, I do run silly games.
So, you know, you could watch Wild Wild west for the sheer awful stupidity of it and you know, see the giant mechanical spiders which, you know, they have hordes of spiders in this book.
So seriously, the Phoenix Guard by Steven Brust, which gives a three musketeers vibe that I really felt in the book had that sort of adventure y camaraderie of a group who are out there fighting a war, but, you know, fighting it on a very personal level. Phoenix Guard has that feel to it and it really is an homage to Dumas.
I would also recommend for a game Lies of P which is a steampunk game about Pinocchio, but it is all swashbuckling. Pinocchio. I mean, how can you go wrong with that for an outsider here? Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Von Pelt. It has an octopus character.
It's a nice way to get yourself into that non human way of thinking, you know, and how to have a character who can't directly communicate with the other characters in the book or story still have a major impact. Those are my recommendations.
Speaker E
00:24:55.480 - 00:24:55.880
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:24:55.880 - 00:25:02.680
And that is a very tricky thing in a campaign to try and have a character who can't communicate. We've talked about that on other shows.
Speaker C
00:25:02.680 - 00:25:03.280
Exactly.
Speaker D
00:25:03.280 - 00:25:04.080
Yeah. That's rough.
Speaker C
00:25:04.080 - 00:25:05.320
The Wookiee in Star Wars.
Speaker B
00:25:05.320 - 00:25:07.840
Oren, do you want to talk about your recommendations next?
Speaker D
00:25:07.840 - 00:26:20.450
Yeah, so I've got a couple. So partly I tend to prefer a much zeppelin y type of airship as opposed to what's in this book.
Like these books are clearly based off of like a combination of Age of Sail and World War I to II era warships. And I like my airships to feel a little bit more fragile, a little more spindly, a little more like they're held aloft by big bags of gas. Yes.
So if I was running something like this, I would recommend for a book I would recommend the Guns above by Robin Bennis, which is, I'm not going to say realistic because anything that does like this airship kind of adventure has to take some liberties but is at least a more grounded feeling take on military airships, they pay a lot more attention to like how much reserve buoyancy they have and like the shifting around of cargo on the ship because that can make the ship go up or down in ways they don't want. Then they talk about weird airship terminology like gold beater skin. If you didn't know what that was, you're gonna learn.
And then for a visual, if people just want a sense of like this for the spooky side of things. Because I also really like to do spooky stuff in my games.
This is a real mouthful of a title, but I recommend the 20 minute short the Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.
Speaker B
00:26:20.770 - 00:26:21.770
That is a mouthful.
Speaker D
00:26:21.770 - 00:26:52.650
Yeah, that's quite. I can never remember the title. And then I find it again. I go, that's why I can't remember the title. Because this. That's bad. That's a bad title.
But it's free. You can watch it on YouTube. And it is very stylistic and is a spooky story of a world where there doesn't seem to be any ground.
Like everything is floating islands, which I thought was neat. Has like those deep mist creatures. It has a vibe that's very similar to what I try to create when I'm doing any kind of steampunk horror exploration.
Speaker B
00:26:52.650 - 00:26:57.660
Okay, Ari, what media do you think would help people get into the groove of this book?
Speaker D
00:26:57.810 - 00:26:58.050
Book?
Speaker E
00:26:59.890 - 00:28:21.360
So this one's I think could be fairly obvious given the author, but I think one of Jim Butcher's other series, the Codex Alera, I believe Jim Butcher has been quoted as saying it is lost Roman Legion meets Pokemon.
If what you liked from this book was like a group of underdogs solving a mystery and putting a stop to forces that on their face seem unstoppable, then I think the Codex Alera is very good for that vibe. It is more of a pure fantasy rather than the steampunk with magic and whatnot being much more common.
If what really drew you to this book was the naval and ship aspects of the airships, then I would recommend the Honor Verse on Basilisk Station is the first one by David Weber. I would guess that Butcher also was inspired by this book.
There are quite a few similarities between certain aspects of like especially the Raul, the talking cat. It's very similar to the character of Nimitz, the tree cat in the Honorverse series. But that one is a hard sci fi space opera. So it is.
The vibe is very different.
But if you like naval battles with cool technology, if you like that kind of detailed explanation of why does this super high tech, but it could also be super fantasy and magic. How does this stuff work? Why does it work that way? What its weaknesses, things like that? That series, I think would be very good. It's also very long.
I was gonna say that series is.
Speaker D
00:28:21.360 - 00:28:26.160
Fun because you can just chart how far into it you are by how big Honor's ship is.
Speaker E
00:28:28.480 - 00:28:31.120
Yeah, her ship gets bigger about everybody.
Speaker D
00:28:31.200 - 00:28:49.610
And you kind of work your way up through the entire Washington Naval Treaty classification of ships. Like she starts with a light cruiser and then she gets a heavy cruiser and then a battle cruiser and then a battleship. And I'm like, yes.
This is what the Washington Naval Treaty designers had in mind when they were drafting this attempt to reduce armament racing.
Speaker E
00:28:51.690 - 00:28:53.090
Every time you get promoted.
Speaker C
00:28:53.090 - 00:29:00.810
Question based on my own gaming experiences. Do they keep the old ships unwilling to release them, you know, as they get more of them?
Speaker E
00:29:03.610 - 00:30:06.630
Her ships have a bad habit of getting blowed up. Yes. As she does heroic things in the face of implacable odds. But you know the ones, they're still around somewhere. Yeah.
Well, not books, but since we were mentioning other media, if you want to be on an airship with your friends and brew it against various enemies. The game Guns of Icarus on Steam, it's $5 now. It came out in 2012, but they're still updating it. And that game, it's fun.
You just take different roles. You could be the gunner, you could be the engineer, you could be the captain. And it can be a very fun team building exercise to play.
And I think it'll run on most computers these days. So that's a video game if folks are into that kind of thing.
And then as far as the last thing is as board games, Leviathan's the Great War is big airship minis that you put on a board and you have broadsides and whatnot. So that is like when I was reading this book, those minis were what I was imagining for the ships.
I think that's not accurate to Jim Butcher's description.
Speaker D
00:30:06.630 - 00:30:16.930
It's okay. Jim Butcher doesn't really know what these ships look like.
His description doesn't really match up with the ships clearly look different from the outside as they do from the inside is. Is one of the things that I noticed.
Speaker C
00:30:17.170 - 00:30:27.410
Same with the world outside of those habl. And even looking at them insane. I. I get where you are. I don't get how these connect through.
Speaker D
00:30:27.410 - 00:30:33.490
The human sized like air vents that they all have. Right. Everyone loves to have human sized air vents.
Speaker B
00:30:33.970 - 00:30:41.790
Yeah, of course. Makes perfect sense. I told you guys when we were doing the pregame for this that I so desperately needed a map I wanted a map so bad.
Speaker C
00:30:42.110 - 00:30:45.310
The map doesn't help, Eric. It really doesn't.
Speaker B
00:30:45.710 - 00:30:47.750
Oh, that's right. You told me.
Speaker D
00:30:47.750 - 00:30:48.190
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:30:50.030 - 00:31:18.850
So I'm gonna go through mine pretty quickly just to be sure that I can get these in. First off, mandatory plug for a episode that we have done on the show that had skyships in it. That's Pjelly Clark's the Black God's Drums.
It's very skyship based. There isn't as much skyship combat, but it does have that. And that is episode eight for us. So please check that out.
If you wanted to have an altern naval battley kind of thing, I recommend Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. Not Ships but Dragons.
Speaker D
00:31:18.850 - 00:31:19.610
It is very good.
Speaker B
00:31:19.770 - 00:32:15.810
It has a lot of that Napoleonic, 18th century kind of maneuvery kind of stuff going on, enough to kind of put you in the right mood.
And there's a ton of those books, but the one that I think does what Jim Butcher does in this book and actually does it a little bit better is Olivia and Nicholas Atwater. Tales of the Iron Rose series. This series starts with A Matter of Execution, is a novella, very short. I highly recommend it to everybody.
I think I've recommended it like three times on the podcast so far. It is a crew full of misfits and their heists, and there's a skyship and there are fae creatures instead of mis creatures, but, oh, really?
Well, just super well done. I cannot say enough about Olivia Nicholas Atwater series there. So I would highly recommend that.
And because I will have my geek card revoked if I do not mention it, we are doing steampunk, which means everyone should read Girl Genius by filling Casiopolio. That's required by law.
Speaker D
00:32:15.810 - 00:32:21.490
Can you even read Girl Genius now? Like, it's. It's been around for so long. How do you start Girl Genius?
Speaker B
00:32:21.490 - 00:32:25.890
It's like, here, here's 40 books. Just here's 40 graphic novels.
Speaker D
00:32:25.890 - 00:32:28.210
Go like, is there. Is there an entry point?
Speaker B
00:32:28.690 - 00:33:04.300
If you like to read like I do, the first 12 graphic novels, they wrote books, books that cover that material, all right? So you can get through that pretty quickly. And that gives you a good grounding.
And you don't have to go out and buy like, like I said, by like 12 graphic novels. But the other good news is it's all still free online. You can go to their website and read the entire comic.
It's huge, but it is fantastic and beautiful and funny and full of cool steampunk stuff. So you could do that? Yeah, I'd still Start from the beginning. But, but God bless you and good luck for that whole series.
You're going to have the best freaking time.
Speaker D
00:33:04.540 - 00:33:06.540
The mother of all archive binges.
Speaker B
00:33:07.740 - 00:33:35.800
Absolutely. Oh my God. Yes. I buy all the graphic novels and I think I just, I filled a whole shelf in my one particular bookshelf. That's all just girl genius.
So that's the book and that's us talking about it. But now let's take a second and let everybody talk about themselves again because we did that at the beginning and it's a great way to end.
And we're going to start with you, Oren. Oren, you have a couple of gaming oriented projects you might want to talk about that our listeners would be interested in. So why don't you go ahead?
Speaker D
00:33:36.120 - 00:34:14.470
Yeah, well, I do have two games if people want to buy them for money. There's the Rising Tide, which we talked about before.
Although that one, to be fair, is a expansion for Torchbearer, which at the time I thought was a really good idea. In the time since I have realized I should have just made it its own thing.
If you like like Torchbearer and you like ships, Rising Tide is a good way to go.
I also have a standalone game called the Voyage, which is a murder mystery game where your characters have amnesia and as a result your character sheets are blank and you figure out what they are by doing stuff is sort of the main gimmick of that one. It's also spooky and on a boat, so I guess that's my thing.
Speaker B
00:34:15.510 - 00:34:16.750
You have a type, Orin?
Speaker D
00:34:16.750 - 00:34:41.940
Yes. Spooky Boat. Spooky boat guy, yeah. And if you're interested in my non RPG related takes, I run a writing advice blog called mithcreance.
That's actually where you can buy those two things. And I write about all kinds of storytelling advice and I've got a novel up there.
It is not about spooky boats, weirdly, it's like weird Byzantine Empire fantasy stuff. But there is a boat in it, so we'll call it.
Speaker E
00:34:42.260 - 00:34:42.740
Thanks.
Speaker B
00:34:42.980 - 00:34:47.300
I was afraid someone might have kidnapped you briefly and replaced you with a doppelganger.
Speaker D
00:34:47.700 - 00:34:50.439
Some guy who doesn't write spooky boats. Boat stuff, whatever.
Speaker B
00:34:51.239 - 00:34:56.199
Ari, what about you? You have anything you'd like to recommend, to promote, to tell people about?
Speaker E
00:34:56.759 - 00:35:52.930
Yeah, well, I mostly GM and play as just a hobby, but I do write on as a guest writer on Mythbreance, about D&D 5th edition. I have all of my, my hottest takes there, so there's quite a few articles that I've written already.
I'm planning on working more for 5.5, so if people want to read those, they can check this out on Myth Grants. And then as far as a project, I am working on a large holistic revision to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.
I'm just calling it 5e revised for now, given my general disappointment with 5.5 that I am looking to make what I would consider a better game. And at some point I will be posting the finalized rules for that on mythcreans as well. So if people are interested in that, keep your eyes peeled.
I plan to be working on it in the coming year and hopefully having at least a version one to play with.
Speaker D
00:35:52.930 - 00:35:53.330
Cool.
Speaker B
00:35:53.330 - 00:35:54.930
And we can follow your progress.
Speaker E
00:35:55.490 - 00:36:11.260
Yep, that's the idea. I plan to write articles about it as I go to help me both.
Both to just give it some visibility, but also just to help me get my thoughts in order because I find writing about the work that I've done helps me find errors in it. So excellent.
Speaker B
00:36:11.660 - 00:36:16.940
Chris, I think you at least have something tangential project you want to talk about, if not your own.
Speaker C
00:36:17.100 - 00:36:59.790
I have two tangential projects. Well, one of them's sort of my own.
I am hoping that we will have by the time this comes out, the Cosmos 2nd Edition, written by my friend Peter Michoud, and I have done the design and layout for it. It should be out by this time. I'll see if I can send you a link to where you can purchase that.
And also I'd like to promo my wife's novel, the first chapter of which has been published on Embark, a literary journal. The October issue of it. It's called the Plague Ship. It is a sci fi novel far future about a girl who is on a plague ship.
They are chased by a larger group of people who are trying to use them for biowarfare.
Speaker B
00:36:59.790 - 00:37:02.070
I honestly can't wait to read it, so that's going to be fantastic.
Speaker C
00:37:02.280 - 00:37:05.360
Yeah, well, I will give you the link to that and it will be.
Speaker B
00:37:05.360 - 00:37:28.770
Here on the show along with links to Ms. Korean and to the various books and to the videos that Orin mentioned and all that great stuff. So everybody can check that out as we wrap up this episode. So I wanted to say thanks especially to Orin and Ari for their first time here.
You guys did great. Thank you so much. Look, and Chris, as always, you are awesome. So thank you for being here.
Speaker D
00:37:29.090 - 00:38:22.290
I have a quick thought. Thought this would be something just for any GMs who are looking to run a game like this one.
Thing that I would recommend that, you know, doesn't often come up a lot when you're reading about how to do this is think about what you want to do with the crew. Because that's a weird thing. Like in a sci fi game, there's sort of the assumption that the crew is just the named PCs.
But if you're running something that's more steampunk or inspired by Age of Sails, you're probably gonna have a lot of non named or even named NPC crew running around. And it can be kind of awkward to figure out what to do with those.
As like a gm, you're like designing a personal adventure and the players are like, all right, well, we rush it with 50 guys with muskets. It's like, that's not what I plan for. So just think about how you want to do that is my big advice.
And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to handle the crew in Rising Tide. So just, you know, be aware of how you're doing that.
Speaker E
00:38:22.290 - 00:38:30.930
My crew has excellent labor union and their contract only has them working their shipboard duties. So they're not, I'm not allowed to bring them on dangerous adventures.
Speaker D
00:38:31.410 - 00:38:34.930
Yeah, they're not, they're not covered for that. You cannot afford hazard.
Speaker E
00:38:35.010 - 00:38:37.970
Exactly. That's my, that's, that's my explanation. And everyone.
Speaker C
00:38:38.290 - 00:38:43.570
Your lines and veils are, are, are. Is more a contract and you know, a union contract.
Speaker B
00:38:43.890 - 00:38:49.490
Yeah, I was gonna say everybody loves to do contract negotiations in the middle of their tabletop role playing game.
Speaker E
00:38:49.490 - 00:38:49.690
Right.
Speaker B
00:38:49.690 - 00:38:50.690
That's what everybody really wants.
Speaker D
00:38:50.840 - 00:38:51.400
Wants to do.
Speaker E
00:38:51.480 - 00:38:52.360
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker D
00:38:53.000 - 00:39:18.800
That is one of the mechanics in Rising Tide is because. So your ship can get conditions the same way that your character can.
And one of the conditions is mutinous mutterings, which is that your crew is upset at you because you're doing all this stuff, putting them in danger and you have to talk to them.
And like, one of the ways you can solve it is you could just give them more money, which you know they like, and it's easier, it requires fewer rolls. But it also means that you're going to have a risk of not making a profit on that.
Speaker E
00:39:18.800 - 00:39:21.110
Run operating budgets too high now.
Speaker D
00:39:21.110 - 00:39:27.590
Yeah, I love telling my crew, my players that their crew has mutinous mutterings. They, it's, it's very funny to watch them get annoyed by that.
Speaker B
00:39:27.590 - 00:40:15.330
You know, that actually brings up one of my favorite scenes from the book, which was when the captain cooks the terrible meals in the crew to force the. Force the engineer to eat it. So they're like, everybody has to eat it. Now you go make sure that he ate it too. And everyone was like, oh yeah, yeah.
The captain really stuck it to him. And they tell the captain like, oh well, not too many more meals like that captain. You know that guy. I thought that was a.
It was a beautiful little command moment. Great captaining. I could see where having to negotiate that, negotiating that with a character like Grim.
Captain Grimm clearly cares about his people.
He's not going to randomly put them into things, but we all know how most players are and as you said, or they'll just send 50 musketeers into battle and be like, yep, that takes care of that, bro.
Speaker D
00:40:15.810 - 00:40:28.050
They will.
So you either like come up with a reason they can't do that or scale the problems around the assumption that they have a bunch of mooks with guns they can use. Right. Those are both perfectly valid. You just gotta think about it in advance.
Speaker B
00:40:28.290 - 00:41:01.670
Definitely something to consider.
And that was the Aeronaut's Windlass, the first book in the Cinderspire series by Jim Butcher and a heart hearty thank ye to our right good and proper game masters Oren and Ari Ashkenazi and that scallywag Chris Grannis for being on the show.
We will return to the skies next episode, but this time it's through the homage to 1950s Saturday matinee heroes created by writer artist Dave Stevens. The Rocketeer Graphic Novels.
Come listen to John Corbett, Sean Murphy and John Mazur talk about how to bring this humdinger of a phony book to your gaming tipple.
Speaker A
00:41:01.750 - 00:41:53.810
You can find it complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-square productions.com GMBC.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media on bluesky@gmbookclub, bluesky social on Facebook at Gamemasters Book Club, on Mastodon Amasters Book Club and on Instagram @GamemastersBookClub.
If you've enjoyed this, please like subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space and be sure to share those episodes with your gaming community. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music. Later, gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising angels.
Speaker C
00:41:53.960 - 00:41:54.200
It.