Echoes of Adventure: The Last Hour Between Worlds
with Colleen Nachtrieb and Roger Alix-Gaudreau and special guest author Melissa Caruso
Check out Melissa Caruso’s Webpage at melissacaruso.net or at https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/contributor/melissa-caruso/
And pre-order her new book The Last Soul Among Wolves
Check out the Wandering DM’s
Check out Roger’s webpage Here
Speaker A
00:00:11.040 - 00:00:42.780
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great role playing experience.
Mystery, adventure, magic, romance, they all come together when Game Masters Roger, Alex Kudrow calling Noctrum and I talk to author and game master Melissa Caruso about her book the Last Hour Between Worlds, the first book in the Echo Archives trilogy.
The first time we are not only discussing how elements of the book can be used in the tabletop role playing game, but also how Melissa's gaming influenced the creation of this book. Let's get into the conversation.
Speaker B
00:00:45.660 - 00:00:53.580
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club. I'm your host, Eric Jackson and today I am here with two of our.
Speaker A
00:00:53.580 - 00:00:56.620
Previous game masters and one very special guest.
Speaker B
00:00:56.700 - 00:01:18.840
I'm very excited about this so I'm going to start off with our regulars.
Go ahead Roger and give us your introduction and our question for our GMs today is given the topic which is the Last Hour Between Worlds, we are going to talk about time travel and how that's occurred in your game before. So go ahead Roger and tell the people who you are and about time travel.
Speaker C
00:01:19.000 - 00:03:29.820
Hello everyone, my name is Roger Alex Godrow. I have been gaming for a little over 40 years. Started with D and D when I was the wee age of 13 which gives you a sense of how old I am now.
I've played all flavors of D D. I've played many other types of games, a few indie games, not as many as perhaps I should have, but had a lot of experience with a lot of different styles of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, spy, etc. Etc. Time of Travel I am a time travel fanatic in my reading. I love reading really good time travel stories. I love trying them in role playing games.
They take a lot of work to get right. But I think one trick I have found because people will always ask, well, what happens when the PCs change the history of your world?
What works for me is to trick the PCs into creating the major problems of the history of your world.
So as an example, in the Eberron setting there's in the ancient history, there was this cataclysmic war between the Empire of the Giants and the dragons. And the dragons basically wrecked the giants and sent them back to the Stone Age. Destroyed their empire.
They used to be incredibly accomplished artisans and mages and so on and so forth.
So in my game, PCs are trying to find a power source for this massive eldritch machine that will protect their homeland and they end up getting they're experimenting with time in this laboratory. They get kicked back in time and they find themselves in the bowels of this flying giant fortress.
And there's a power source that they're able to get. They have to sort of sneak through things or the giants are defending themselves from the dragons and so on.
So they go in and they rob the giants of the power source. And it turns out that that power source was what was protecting the giant dome that shielded the giant empire.
And so as the PCs sort of snapped back to the present with their power source in the past, the giant's defenses fail, the dragons break in and wreck them. And so the PCs were the reason the giants empire failed. And they all felt terrible about it.
Speaker B
00:03:29.900 - 00:03:34.460
Yeah. Yeah, make. Make the PCs the bad guys. I love that. That's fantastic.
Speaker D
00:03:34.460 - 00:03:35.020
Yep.
Speaker B
00:03:35.020 - 00:03:39.580
Okay, Colleen, introduce yourself and tell us about time travel.
Speaker E
00:03:39.820 - 00:05:44.930
I'm Colleen Noctreb. I'm a game developer. I've made several video games. I also work in tables of RPGs and. But I usually do like art direction and illustration for.
For games. I worked with Paul Siegel on a tabletop RPG called Fearful Ends. Go check it out. I know this isn't the time for plugs. Oh, no, I'm going off book.
But the time I used time travel was I made a homebrew superheroes in space soap opera game. It was loosely based around the mechanics of Lady Blackbird by John Harper.
And in that world, they had things like the Infinity Stones or similar, but they got to make up whatever the powers were. And one player decided to take time, primarily used it for teleportation. But things got wonky.
One of the major villains that they were facing was a series of other supers who came from kind of a different realm or multiversed or time stream. In that stream, there was a villain called Paradox. Paradox was a time stone holder.
And there was a fair amount of setup I did with another character who was the good Time Stone Holder.
He was an NPC that they befriended and worked with, and he was supposed to help and aid the PC with the Time Stone, but in fact was a paradox and we never got to the end. But PCs kind of did it to themselves where they were setting up the. The future of Paradox, actually being the PC as well.
So they all kind of converged into one large timeline. But I love time travel.
I'm a big fan of paradox in time, like Doctor who, the Flash, anything where anytime you have a butterfly effect, something else is going to occur or impact a future or past. I don't think that time is very linear.
So using it in that sense, especially In a superhero game, time can have such a rippling effect, so I tried to do that. Unfortunately, Covid happened in the middle of the campaign, so that's why we didn't get to get to the end.
Speaker B
00:05:46.050 - 00:05:54.370
But awesome. Also making the character portrayal and setting up the development of the hero with the character, always a great twist.
Speaker E
00:05:54.930 - 00:06:03.730
It was really awesome to let them kind of build the world so they were building up facts, and then I would just kind of twist the facts to work within different time paradox lines. It was cool.
Speaker B
00:06:03.730 - 00:06:26.030
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, folks, it's time for the big reveal. Normally we have wonderful game masters come on and tell us about a book that they just read.
We have a real expert here. We actually have the author of the Last Hour of Between Worlds, Melissa Caruso here.
Melissa, would you care to talk about yourself and tell us about time travel? Because you wrote a whole book about it.
Speaker D
00:06:26.670 - 00:08:23.040
I'm so glad to be here. I'm Melissa Caruso. I did write the Last Hour Between Worlds as well as two other fantasy trilogies.
And I also have been gaming since, I mean, you know, basically time immemorial. Although I think Roger has a little bit of an edge on me.
My brother got the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons set for Christmas when he was small, and I was consumed with jealousy and started trying make my own monsters and write my own mods and did not, in fact, get to GM until I was in high school. But, you know, never looked back from there. You know, I also write.
My gaming and my writing have actually really informed each other because I think that GMing is such a great playground for ideas. There's this feedback you get when you're GMing that you don't get as a writer.
Like, as a writer, you write a story and you're like, gosh, I hope people like it. I may never find out, and if I do, it's not going to be for like a year when it's too late to change it.
Whereas as a gm, you can see how your players are reacting and adapt on the fly. And I feel like you learn a lot about storytelling that way. I know I really have.
But, yes, for time travel, ironically, I think it's a giant pain in the rear to do, and it kind of makes my head hurt. So I've only done it a few times. Time I've been like, oh, boy, that maybe, maybe I should have picked something easier to work with.
But first foray was as a gm, lo these many years ago, probably, like, I don't know, over 20 years ago in a Long running campaign.
I had my players have to go back before the big cataclysm that was 10,000 years in the past and basically was the starting point of history for my campaign.
They had to go back before it to make sure that it happened because someone was trying to mess with time and they had to make sure that there was not a horrible time paradox that would unmake the world. And so it was this big tragic arc where everybody they met pretty much was gonna die.
And they had to, you know, sort of convince people to do things that would lead to this horrible tragedy, knowing all the time that everybody was doomed and talk people into making these big sacrifices. And so it was a real, you know, it was a real arc of the campaign.
Speaker B
00:08:23.200 - 00:08:32.000
Yeah, I'm noticing, I'm definitely noticing a trend here, folks. Time travel equals player pain is pretty much what I'm hearing.
Speaker D
00:08:32.560 - 00:08:40.040
Well, you know, if the GM has to suffer through trying to get time travel to make any sense, I feel the player should also have to suffer, at least emotionally.
Speaker B
00:08:40.040 - 00:10:13.600
That's awesome. That's great.
Just to throw my two cents in, I recently ran a campaign where my characters went back in time and originally only one person escaped and they managed to save a second person from the same horrible melee combat that they. That didn't. That didn't actually survive the last combat.
And what they found out was that that particular person went on to be the vessel that a demon who has been plaguing them for the entire campaign that was one of his first vessels. So if they hadn't saved that person, the demon wouldn't have come in contact with them. So it became this big giant loop.
Why was this demon bothering them? Well, they made it possible, so that's why they made it possible for it to remain in the world. And therefore that's why it was involved with them.
So it had to bug them to get them to go do the things so that they would eventually save the vessel that they would eventually be in again. Also, more player pain is really all. Apparently we use it for. That one was really fun too, because I had a guest star come in and not play the.
The new character who got saved, but the original character who was the grandfather of one of my other characters, and so we got to save his own grandfather. So grandfather paradox. Yay. Cool.
So now that everybody's had a chance to figure out what all of our GMs here are like and what how we feel about time travel, I think it's time to talk about the book. And despite having the author Here the author has asked me to give a summary, so I will do my best.
Speaker D
00:10:14.290 - 00:10:15.330
Some reason the worst.
Speaker B
00:10:18.050 - 00:11:04.350
I am nervous, but we will try. Here we go. Ready, everybody? This is the last hour between worlds. Mystery, adventure, magic, romance.
The last hour between worlds brings all of these together as investigator Kimberly Thorne attends a year turning party. Her first break away from her newborn daughter. But that break ends when people start dying.
The entire party slips down the layers of reality and powerful beings from the beginning of time turn the guests into pieces on a chessboard.
To decide the fate of the upcoming year, it's up to Kimbrell and her compelling nemesis, Rika Nunsuch, who has her own part in this game to save the city and their broken relationship. All before Kendril needs to get home to take care of her.
Speaker D
00:11:04.350 - 00:11:10.590
That was beautiful. You should write the blurb on the back of my book. I'm gonna have you come on every time I have to describe this thing.
Speaker B
00:11:12.530 - 00:11:25.170
That is fantastic. Tor did a great job of writing your blurb, but I was. I actually thought maybe you had written it, and I was like, darn.
I don't know if I can do better, but I tried. So apparently I have the author's approval. Does anybody else have anything they want to add in that?
Speaker E
00:11:25.170 - 00:11:31.210
I guess it's a fun adventure. It's got lots of Fae creature magic kind of going on, but they're not called Fae.
Speaker C
00:11:31.210 - 00:11:37.730
It's got badass women running around in fancy dresses, flashing swords and saving the world. What more do you need?
Speaker E
00:11:37.960 - 00:12:11.230
Oh, my gosh. The descriptions in this book are fantastic. So you go through these echoes, the world itself, the prime reality. And then there's echoes.
And there's 11 levels of these echoes of reality. Every echo gets weirder and stranger. And the descriptions of those echoes are fantastic. I want to go to this party and I want the fancy dresses.
The only sadness is that if you get stuck outside of this game loop, that happens in the world, you get stuck in the same dress. And that just made me a little sad that, like, Rika Nunsa just got stuck in her.
Speaker D
00:12:11.630 - 00:12:12.430
Her gray.
Speaker E
00:12:12.830 - 00:12:26.030
I'm sure she looked fantastic, but she kind of got stuck there and there. Some of those outfits descriptions were just fantastic.
But yeah, it's a fancy dinner party inside of a horrific Cthulhu shell by the time you get to the bottom.
Speaker B
00:12:26.270 - 00:12:35.670
As a huge romance fan myself, very compelling romance, very happy with the banter and the development of the romance and how that all happened.
Speaker D
00:12:35.670 - 00:12:57.690
Oh, thank you. And y. I actually, in early drafts, I did have Rika and Kimbrell's outfits also change.
And then I realized that made absolutely no sense, that if they could get injured and have it stick, they should also have their outfit stick. And it made me a little sad.
But then I also didn't need to waste like three paragraphs describing a new dress at the beginning of every chapter, which would have taken up a lot of space. So it was probably for the best.
Speaker B
00:12:58.410 - 00:13:00.570
But still would have been fun. Absolutely.
Speaker D
00:13:00.650 - 00:13:04.970
It would have. It would have. If it was like a comic where I was drawing it or something, then it would have been.
Speaker E
00:13:04.970 - 00:13:09.290
Well, I definitely enjoyed the room with the creepy, creepy mirrors. Sorry, I'm gonna go on about the.
Speaker B
00:13:10.550 - 00:13:35.430
No, that's totally fine. We'll talk more about the rooms and the cool stuff when we get to that part of the podcast.
All right, now that we've described this fantastic book, and I'll let Melissa lead us off here. We're going to talk about how we would mechanically through a game system or a homebrew. How could we bring this sort of vibe to our games?
What system would bring that out for us? Melissa, do you want to start?
Speaker D
00:13:35.860 - 00:15:23.920
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned.
I am as a gm, I always write my own homebrew system to go with the particular campaign because I guess I like making extra work for myself and also control. So there you have it.
But yeah, I know if homebrew is a gm, if I were going to write a system to run in this, in this game world, I think I would probably do something around the guilds because there are also all these different. I know that all these different guilds that people are members of each have their own specialties.
And I feel like they would map pretty well onto like a class system, essentially. Like Kimberly is a hound and they do kind of investigative work and also rescue missions into these echoes, the alternate worlds. Rika is a cat.
They do stealth stuff like assassinations and thievery and con artistry and that sort of thing. And there's. There are also these other guilds, not all of which actually get mentioned in this book, but that each have their own specialty.
So I would probably wind up doing something that was class based around that.
But I also think because personal backgrounds and personal complications are such a big part of this kind of story and make it a little more interesting. I would also want to incorporate.
I know there's a bunch of different systems that have done this in different ways, but things like the sort of merits and flaws or twists where you have like, you know, you can pick things like you have an enemy that's hunting you, or you have a contact in the Echoes that you might be able to get information from. And you know that cost points or give you points, depending on. On whether they're good or bad.
So I would definitely want something like that also, because as a gm, I always love excuses to kind of dig my hooks into players.
So if they're kind of building those in themselves by being like, oh, I start out cursed, or, oh, I have like, you know, a weird memory gap or something that I can play with, I will absolutely systemically encourage that to give myself little toys to play with during the campaign.
Speaker B
00:15:24.880 - 00:15:32.170
Colleen, would you like to talk next about what mechanics you think would work well to evoke the last hour between worlds?
Speaker E
00:15:32.970 - 00:17:52.520
Yeah. So I went digging into my indie pile of books, and I came out with a system that I haven't run in a pretty long time. It was developed in 2006.
It's written by Brendan Taylor. It's called Mortal Coil. It's a game about magic and passion, and it uses a token system. So you have a series of action tokens.
Third, which your character passion tokens which you can spend to give yourself a boost. Power tokens, again, can give you a boost in different ways. And then magic tokens when you want to evoke a magical effect.
And the system works where you get to create your character. So the GM sets up the world, so you would set up all the echoes, all those things in the world.
And then if you wanted to play Kimbrel, you would then make a hound like character and give a certain amount of tokens to Kimbrel. And then when you anytime you wanted to use a magic ability, you would spend a magic token and then just make up whatever the heck that is.
So on the fly, you could just create a fact about the world that would be convenient for the story. Can be convenient for using passion in order to hide your true emotions and feelings away from. You can untouch or however you wanted to deal with it.
But you would put those tokens down as an ante. The only tokens that you spend are passion, power, or magic. And then actions are just the ante that you put on to try to win in the scene.
And the GM usually sets up the scene. And then each player can put their tokens out. So let's say you're having a lover's fat between Kimberly and Enrique.
They would both play tokens against each other, basically like a poker. And then they could spend things like passion or magic to try to change the outcome. It becomes this really great dynamic between players.
But it's very much a PC driven action game.
And if you want to have conflicts that are lover spats or combats between players, this system is nice because it's not, it doesn't feel like a big detriment. It's a, it's a very playful storytelling way of resolving conflict. I, I enjoyed MSU when I used to run it back in the day in the before times.
And I think it would work really well with the, the world.
Each of the worlds have like a different setting level, so you could actually put a different level and different difficulty to each echo that you go through in the world. And that's how I would approach it.
Speaker B
00:17:52.600 - 00:17:54.840
That's a solid match. That's fantastic.
Speaker D
00:17:55.160 - 00:17:56.040
Sounds really cool.
Speaker B
00:17:56.040 - 00:17:56.840
Yeah. Roger.
Speaker C
00:17:57.800 - 00:19:48.990
All right, so I agree with what Melissa said about how the guilds kind of line up nicely with classes. And whenever I think classes, I think D and D. But then the magic in this book is very subtle and nuanced and not as sort of explodey.
D and D wouldn't be my first choice. People who've heard me before will expect me to say cipher system because of course the cipher system can do anything.
But I decided this week to go to stretch my wings and sort of go outside my comfort zone and do some digging around and some research on some indie games. And I was looking at the Dresden Files RPG mostly because it's a fantasy noir setting, right. It's urban fantasy.
It's, you know, got a lot of good magic. There's, it's all about investigation and that kind of works.
But there's a lot of story world like the Dresden world baked into the game, which doesn't jive as well with the last hour between worlds. And you could, you could make it work, but you'd have to change a lot. But the underlying system, the Fate core, right.
And you know, its definition, its use of aspects to define characters, like that's again, very flexible and, and that could work. I was doing a little bit of other digging and Eric, I hope I step on your, on your toes here, but I have not played this game.
But from reading this might work. Time Watch in, you know, on the Gumshoe system focuses on time travel and parallel universes and your investigators.
So that was a little more like, hey, go prevent someone from killing Hitler or whatever. But that could work. Here I did a little bit of reading about a game called Urban Shadows, which is powered by the apocalypse.
And this would be much more focused on like the guild side of things, right. The guild conflict set you the representing the city and so on and so forth. So that could work. And then I'm, you know, sort of last.
It occurred to me, I was sitting here this morning thinking. A really cool aspect of this story that is mentioned in the book, but is, I think, less central to the.
Speaker D
00:19:49.060 - 00:19:49.180
The.
Speaker C
00:19:49.180 - 00:20:19.940
To the. To the plot is just the fact that there. Well, we talked. It's in there.
The fact that there are all these treasures sort of distributed throughout the Echoes.
And I thought, like, how much fun would it be to just play an Indiana Jones style, like, dive into the Echoes and go retrieve the McGuffin of the week and bring it back for your wealthy patron?
And so I would use something like Savage Worlds, which is really lightweight and flexible and really focuses on quick, fun adventure to run a game like that, which is within the world, but perhaps not the specific story told in this book.
Speaker D
00:20:19.940 - 00:20:25.600
Oh, I think a. A relic smuggler campaign would be great. Honestly, that sounds like a blast.
Speaker C
00:20:26.080 - 00:20:27.120
I would have a lot of fun with that.
Speaker B
00:20:27.120 - 00:20:35.120
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we have the ringleader of that particular world on the page at this point. Melissa. I don't remember the character's name.
Speaker D
00:20:35.680 - 00:20:37.920
Well, that's a huge spoiler too.
Speaker B
00:20:38.080 - 00:22:08.090
Okay, yes, point taken. And I did keep the introduction a little spoiler. But yes, that person is involved in the story. And so I do think.
Roger, it's very closely related to what I do think. You're right. It could be a really nice place to kick things off. As already stated, I am a huge romance fan.
And so I immediately went to one of my mainstays when I want to do a dramatic heroic fantasy romance, which is Thirsty Sword Lesbians. It's a Powered by the Apocalypse game. The author is April Kit Walsh. It is a fantastic game.
One of the things that I like about it, in addition to there being playbooks, a good set of playbooks can really make a game. And I really did feel like Kimbrel and Rika both had definite moves that would be on a playbook. So I felt like you could build them pretty easily.
And actually, within Thirsty Sword Lesbians, there are archetypes of the investigator and the scoundrel. So our main characters are definitely represented there.
Another mechanic that I thought is really good for this is they have what are called heartstring moves, which are basically designed to build romance within the game. You can use a entice maneuver to invite a PC to become smitten. And smitten is a condition within the game. And definitely Kimbrel goes through that.
So I was really excited. I was like, oh yeah, this will totally work.
Speaker D
00:22:08.090 - 00:22:08.810
It's going to be great.
Speaker B
00:22:09.130 - 00:22:41.000
And then on top of all of that, there's also emotional support things so that, that also happens. So you can do things not only from a romantic standpoint, but just from a emotional building perspective.
I mean, if you just read through Thirsty Sword Lesbian says for their GM principles, it's be excited about the PCs and their stories.
Make the world action packed and perilous, make adversaries appealing, create space for the PCs to feel their feelings and make the story vivid and personal. That was the last hour between worlds and that's how I would run it.
Speaker D
00:22:41.550 - 00:22:42.350
Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker E
00:22:42.670 - 00:22:55.150
That's a brilliant match. Tissues are Lesbians is a wonderful built by apocalypse based game and I'd like.
I just want to fully endorse it, Eric, with the, with this, with this world because it's a fantastic fit.
Speaker B
00:22:55.150 - 00:23:00.270
Yeah, I think everybody's done a great job. We've all done a great job. Pat on the back for all of us. Way to go, guys. Nicely done.
Speaker E
00:23:00.350 - 00:23:08.530
We like. Roger and I both try to avoid the Cypher system, but the Cypher system is also a very good fit because we have echo relics and those could.
Speaker B
00:23:08.530 - 00:23:26.970
Easily be ciphers and you could definitely design a character with the correct adjectives and action verbs that that system builds very easily. Not only our main characters, but a lot of the side characters are very clearly defined that way and would make that. I agree.
The cipher system would be pretty cool.
Speaker D
00:23:27.050 - 00:23:28.730
Clearly. Need to check this system out.
Speaker C
00:23:28.890 - 00:24:03.710
Oh, the cipher system by Monte Cook. Yeah, it's good stuff.
So one thing, like I was sitting here actually thinking about that, even though I said I wouldn't talk about cipher system, right. So cipher system's got the four main archetypes, right? The warrior, the adept, the speaker and the explorer.
And I just love the idea that Kimbrel and Rika are clearly both explorers, but totally different. Maybe you can make a case that Kimbrel is a warrior, but you know, that's there's a different character whose name escaped me at the moment.
The, the big flamboyant woman who's always like looking to get in, like getting, getting into trouble and is sleeping with someone she shouldn't. She's clearly a warrior.
Speaker D
00:24:04.500 - 00:24:05.700
Chase the morning ray.
Speaker C
00:24:05.780 - 00:24:38.160
Yeah, thank you. But yeah.
So the fact that like Rika and Kimbrell are both clearly explorer characters but have totally different skill sets, totally different specialties is the kind of thing that the cipher system just loves to do. So very flexible, very capable system. And yeah, as Colleen said, right. This book is full of ciphers.
And you know, Melissa, ciphers are basically one shot magic items that are. You're encouraged as the GM to sprinkle liberally throughout the game. So PC are always finding them and using them and looking for new ones.
Speaker D
00:24:38.160 - 00:24:38.880
Oh, that's fun.
Speaker B
00:24:39.440 - 00:25:55.520
Now that we've discussed mechanics as GMs, we all know that we liberally borrow from everything that we read and try and find ways to put scenes and stuff and characters into our games we're playing, even if it's not specifically designed to be this story.
So I'm going to lead off and say that one of the things that always gets me deeply involved in any story, be it TTRPG or a work of fiction, is a very well crafted calendar or time system. There's something about putting me in a place where I know what time it is. I'm. I'm oriented within time.
And to know about that really gives the world a great deal of depth because it's something that human beings always deal with first. We like, well, what time is it? You know, how do we deal with that?
And if, and particularly in this case where they talk about the moons and the moons are linked to some of the things that are happening within the plot, all of the different moon names and they all had different sorts of celebrations associated with them. Just absolutely my favorite thing, I would just lift all of that and just drop it into a world and not tell Melissa is basically what I would do.
Speaker D
00:25:56.960 - 00:25:57.600
Awesome.
Speaker B
00:25:57.760 - 00:26:00.840
Roger, what would you bring out of this universe and put into yours?
Speaker C
00:26:02.510 - 00:26:59.410
So, so many things. But at the risk of talking forever. Well, first the clock. Right, the grandfather clock. That is the. At the heart of the story.
It's clearly doing something. The PCs don't know what they need to figure it out. There's an NPC related to it so much focused on the clock.
I just love anything involving big, cool, mysterious artifacts that the PCs have to figure out. Which may be why I love the Eberron setting so much. Because eldritch machines are such a thing.
The clock in this book really is an eldritch Mach machine.
And then the other thing I'll mention is like a total kind of setting thing is the tea shop where like you're in the middle of this life threatening, strange version of reality and there's a tea shop where you can go and just be safe for a little bit. But safe is a relative term and the shop owner knows way too much and is a great source of information and inspiration for. For the player.
Those are two things I would definitely lift.
Speaker B
00:26:59.410 - 00:27:03.400
100%. Agree. Both of those are great. Fantastic. Colleen.
Speaker E
00:27:03.480 - 00:28:17.370
Yeah, the tea shop is fantastic. It's very much like that neutral area. Everybody knows that you don't start stuff. You don't start crap in the tea shop. I would take the echoes.
I love them. I love this idea of these layers of reality. And I really like the fact that it wasn't just a 1 degrees difference. It was major differences.
And it almost seemed like there was a level of. Of Lovecraftian horror at some point in them because the. The bottom ends out into the void. I really liked all the descriptions.
So this, this whole book takes place at a giant party and every time you go into another step into one of these realities, the whole room changes and all the descriptors change. So there was this I talked about a little bit earlier, but there's a creepy mirror room, which I like.
When you look into it there, you see all these skeletons and kind of ghouls and things around. I just like that otherworldliness. I liked the, the fact that an echo can also have. And this is spoilers, an echo of a person.
So there can be another version of that person in an echo and that echoes. There's. There's like the prime, which is the real reality, and then there's the echoes, which are shadows of that reality. Kind of.
I feel awkward telling this in front of Melissa because she's like, am I right? I don't know.
Speaker D
00:28:18.090 - 00:28:18.970
Oh, you're good.
Speaker E
00:28:19.210 - 00:29:28.410
But yeah, there's a lot you can do in that space. Right. Because you could even have. You have these wonderful creatures in the book.
Book that were the beginning before echoes at the beginning of time also. Who. How do they stand within in Prime? Like, they make these foundational pillars of emotions. It seems like those are also very, very awesome. Yeah.
Echoes. I would, I would almost want to do, like, if you're an echo, how do you feel about Prime? Like, do you even have feelings about it?
What's the life of an echo? I would want to explore that with players. I think like unknown armies or urban shadows would be a good base in which to kind of explore that.
That theme. But yeah, the, that whole premise of the different realities, I think is an amazing little playground to play within.
And my last thing is that the whole idea of the fact that only Kimberl and Rika at one point know that they're in this space and when things kind of get reset, everyone else forgets. And that is such A beautiful spell. I love that there's actual conditions around it where when they try to talk about it, people.
It's like Westworld that don't look like nothing to me, or they just don't know or just don't engage with the person talking about it. I love those kinds of quips and spells.
Speaker C
00:29:29.370 - 00:29:42.650
I really love that Groundhog Day loop part of it. And, you know, it's interesting when you try and get creative, Right.
How do you get people to do things when they have no idea like, that they've done this six times already. Yeah, it's great, great bit.
Speaker E
00:29:42.730 - 00:29:57.930
And I love that sometimes things did change just slightly being like kind of the echo that they were in. And so. So it's a great mystery for players to figure out, like, why did this thing change? How do I.
What happens if I change this one part of this timeline or this. This echo that I'm in?
Speaker D
00:29:58.570 - 00:30:17.180
Well, let me tell you, you guys can't see me.
My face is just splitting with a big smile because, you know, nothing makes me happier than hearing other people be inspired by my stuff and want to steal it for their tabletop campaigns. That's the best form of flattery. So thank you.
Speaker B
00:30:18.060 - 00:30:41.100
Oh, yeah, no, I'm already imagining, thanks to Colleen. I'm like, what if we had an entire party and they were all the same person, but different echoes of that same person?
And how would that, like, oh, it's just. Yeah, no, I'm on board. I'm totally there. But, Melissa, go ahead. You had promised us, since obviously you're a game master.
Have you used these in your games or how does the book relate to your games?
Speaker D
00:30:41.830 - 00:31:40.450
Right.
I know I mentioned earlier, there's very much a back and forth between my jamming and my writing to the point where I know a lot of people who have played my games and have read my books have been like, you know, this is really familiar. I think I've been in this encounter, Melissa. They'll meet an NPC and go, oh, this is not going to go well.
I mean, sorry, a character who's not an npc, but you know what I mean? But, yeah, I have to say that I did draw on it pretty directly in places sort of going backwards.
When I was writing a lot of the individual echoes, I was really trying to capture.
Capture the spirit of, you know, when you're GMing and you make up an NPC because the PCs have gone somewhere you didn't expect and you hit like a really weird voice and you're just on your stride and you're winging it. And the PCs love this NPC and they hang with them for way too long.
I was trying to catch that vibe of the weird NPC that the PCs wind up really clicking with. Like there was Sack Guy.
When Pembril and Rika just meet this weird guy in the Echoes who has a big sack and you can reach in and maybe you'll find what you want there, or maybe you'll get your arm.
Speaker B
00:31:40.920 - 00:31:54.480
Oh my God. When I encountered that in the book, I stopped reading.
I went to my wife, who was also a role player, and I said, oh my God, we're gonna have to put this person in a game at some point. Like, this person is showing up in a game. You're going to see him. It's fantastic.
Speaker D
00:31:54.480 - 00:32:18.850
Yeah, he's such an npc. Right? And like. Except that if I did that in a tabletop game, see, in the book, the characters were smart and did not reach their arms into the sack.
If I ran this in a tabletop game, they would spend half the session and just making bad choices about that sack. Right? And then we'd wind up with half the party would be down an arm and then others would have given away, like their middle names or something.
It would just be a complete mess and everyone would have a great time.
Speaker C
00:32:19.010 - 00:32:20.770
You always reach into the sack.
Speaker D
00:32:20.770 - 00:34:17.200
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, PCs always reach into the sack. This is one place where my characters were smarter than PCs.
Like, I'm not reaching in that thing, but yeah, no, things like that and the tea shop were just absolutely the sort of things that I would throw into my character tabletop games.
And I was really trying to capture that energy, particularly in the Echoes, because I feel like sometimes as a writer it's possible to sort of plan yourself out of having any fun. So the Echoes were where I tried to grab that kind of like it's, you know, 1am I've been GMing for three hours.
I've drunk so many caffeinated beverages and I'm just making shit up kind of energy. And so that was that deliberately trying to channel that very specifically. And that was a lot of fun.
You know, Will I use any of these elements in a game going forward? Well, I can tell you that while I was writing this book, I did run a time loop, three shot larp at the same time.
That was completely different and not related in any way. And I was doing very different things for the time loop. And I don't know why I did that. Like, one time loop was bad enough. Time loops are the worst.
There are a lot of work. There are so many things you have to make not. It's just they're very complicated.
I don't know why I did this to myself but I guess I was like, oh, time loops. I can explore this in multiple directions at the same time because I hate myself and I don't want any free time. So.
And it was a lot of fun and everybody had a great time.
But I think if I were going to actually going to run a tabletop off of this, I would probably do something with the guild and have it be totally unrelated to the events in the book and have people be doing little guild missions into the Echoes as various guild related characters and have a good time with that.
Oh, and the other thing is of course anyone who has read any of my books or played any of my games know I cannot stay away from fancy parties full of weird power beings that are messing with you. I just can't. Like I keep going back there. I don't think I'll ever stop. Can't stop, don't want to stop. It's just fun. People have fabulous outfits.
There's a lot of tension to work with. Anything can go.
I think I just watched Labyrinth at a formative age and around the same time read Mask or the Red Death and it was all over from there.
Speaker C
00:34:17.840 - 00:34:30.459
I remember reading the opening chapters and like it turning to Kat at one point and said this book is such a Melissa book because absolutely like it's everything I know about the types of games you write and run. So I love it.
Speaker D
00:34:30.459 - 00:34:35.979
It really is. It's like the one shot larp I would run if I had an infinite special effects budget.
Speaker B
00:34:36.379 - 00:34:45.419
Nice.
Melissa, would you be so kind as to tell us about books that you think are similar to your books that might inspire people to write similar stories like the Last hour between worlds. Sure.
Speaker D
00:34:45.419 - 00:36:38.800
Well, if you are looking for more inspiration for something that is kind of multiversal and involves some very tabletop game adaptable shenanigans and beautiful vibes of the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman really reads like the best tabletop game you've ever played or like one of the best anyway. And I know that she is a gamer and you could kind of tell it's the idea is that there are these.
There's this extra dimensional interdimensional library that touches on all these alternate worlds and there are these librarians that go into the worlds collecting books that are unique to that variant and there's all kinds of skulldudgery and Shenanigans. There are fae and dragons there who are sort of represent an order and chaos spectrum.
It's just, it's a ton of fun and you will get so much energy to write, to run a good game or write a good story after you read that series. So I highly recommend that if you just like locked room murder mysteries with lots of over the top personalities.
Voyage of the Damned by Francis White is an absolute blast. You know, it might possibly make a good game, but it certainly is a good book.
It was one of my favorite reads last year for an interesting, I almost said an interesting system because I'm thinking about games.
A book that I really loved from a couple years ago that also I feel like has a certain amount of good gaming vibe to it is the Monsters We Defy by Leslie Penelope. And it's a, it's a heist book. It takes place in a prohibition area, Washington D.C. and they had like a sort of an upscale black neighborhood.
There's a lot of like jazz musicians and bootleggers and things like that.
And there's a heist party made of people with like these little sort of magical powers that they got by making deals with these power beings who are sort of reminiscent of the, of the very vaguely fey like creatures in my book.
So if you want people with little weird quirky powers getting together to do clever things despite complex personalities, I think it's a fantastic book that might scratch that itch.
Speaker B
00:36:39.040 - 00:37:13.850
That last one sounds a little like just jump in a little plug here.
The heist book sounds a lot like the book that's going to be released shortly with both Colleen and Roger and Petra, who isn't here this time, which is Sarah Gailey's American Hippo book. Specifically the river of Teeth is what we read.
And that definitely has a whole bunch of people with weird skills who are interesting people who are on a heist. So just throwing a little recommendation back out there and a recommendation to listen to the podcast.
Let's move over to Colleen and Colleen, what book recommendations do you have that are similar to our book for the week?
Speaker E
00:37:14.010 - 00:38:03.950
Roger actually mentioned the Dresden Files and there's a book series, Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.
And it's not exactly like this book book, but the type of pacing and the way the characters act and the way that the mystery kind of unfolds reminded me a lot of Dresden. Dresden also has a lot of the fake features, bargains, deals and really weird mishaps that happen throughout it.
It's, it's a really, they're a really fun read and I just. I don't know how the world unfolded. Just reminded me a lot of reading Dresden back when I read a ton of Dresden.
And there's also weird awkward romances that probably should never happen. And the main protagonist also ends up injured in weird, awkward ways and still somehow manages to get to the adventure.
And everyone always comes to the hero's aid. So it just has a lot of those kind of fun, quirky elements that reminded me of this book.
Speaker B
00:38:04.190 - 00:38:06.590
Roger, what sort of book recs do you have for us?
Speaker C
00:38:07.150 - 00:39:39.110
I will second the recommendation of the Dresden Files. I absolutely love that series and I wish he would write the faster. I think he. I think there's only a few left. He said there were going to be 20.
So I think there are a few great options depending on sort of like which aspect of this book you like. Really resonated with you.
I think one of the strengths of the books this book is that it has so many different dimensions all sort of mashed together. So, you know, a lot of different types of fans I think would really get into it. A couple of books. Some things that come to me.
So the Seven and a half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Castle, where you've got to solve a murder mystery to stop a time loop. In that one, the detective, he wakes up in the body of a different guest and has to.
Has to figure out the murder before in order to stop that looping.
So that time looping sort of mystery aspect of the story, I think would be good there if you want to focus on the rivals to lovers kind of aspect of the story. Right between Kimbrell and Rika. This is how you lose the time war, I think would be a great read for that.
For something a little more kind of just fantasy noir. There are monsters and dangerous creatures and there's power players and guilds. I like Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews.
But the one that I think really vibes for me is Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett, where you have this magic system that is all about manipulating reality. And the whole plot focuses on a mysterious artifact and a conspiracy to use that artifact to completely rewrite the world.
So how about, you know, pretty lines up pretty nicely to. For the last hour between worlds.
Speaker B
00:39:39.110 - 00:41:04.520
Yeah. Wow. That's right on there. Fantastic. So I've given myself the final position here for the book recommendations because I just. This is just fantastic.
The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to recommend a future book which is the Sundered Realms by Casey Blair, which is Another couple in a magical situation trying to stop the end of the world. And they're definitely not a couple at the beginning. And they become a couple through that adversarial, then cooperative relationship.
So definitely the Sundered Realms by Casey Blair. So that's great. And it's going to be a future podcast book. So very excited about that. Next. Could not have a female. Female rival. Sliver's book.
This sort of fantasy setting without mentioning Gideon the Ninth. Tamson Murr's book is just really great at that.
And I really felt like there was a similar sort of push and pull that was happening with these two characters like there was in that book.
And finally, there's a male mail book called the Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Gailey, which has people not trapped in a time loop, but they're trapped by fake contracts. And they're trying to figure out how to get those fake contracts to work so that they can escape and not be trapped forever in.
In these contracts working for these powerful Fae creatures. So that that book once again, Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Gailey.
Another great romance book, fantasy romance book that I think relates really well to Melissa's book. All those, I think, would be good, good options.
Speaker D
00:41:04.520 - 00:41:34.010
Boy, these all sound like some really amazing recommendations. I gotta take some notes here. I'm a huge Gideon fan, Loctoum fan myself.
You know, I mean, I feel like while this is a different story, I think you kind of like. I feel like Gideon inspired me, particularly in the sense that it.
I felt like, wow, okay, you can do some wacky stuff and still tell a good story and just be out there and try the things you think are too risky. And that doesn't mean that you're going to fail.
It's a great book for giving writers courage as well as just being an amazing book that I have read three times.
Speaker B
00:41:34.489 - 00:42:02.680
Awesome. Wow. Three times. Okay. Fantastic. Okay, folks, we've reached close to the end, so it's time to do our plugs here. And I'll step up and plug for Melissa.
That not only should you read the last hour Between Worlds, but coming out on August 19, which should be a couple of weeks after this episode releases, the second book in the Echoes archives is scheduled to release. Is this still true? The Last Soul of the World. Yes.
Speaker D
00:42:02.680 - 00:42:18.550
Thank you. Wow. You did your homework. Oh, you saved me the trouble. I don't have to plug myself.
Yes, it's coming out on August 19th and it continues to follow Kimbrell and Rika on their next. Next. They would like to not have any further adventures of this nature. But alas, it's a trilogy, so they do.
Speaker B
00:42:21.190 - 00:42:25.270
Ah, yeah. See, you've answered my question. Which was there is going to be a third book, right?
Speaker D
00:42:25.270 - 00:42:47.410
Yeah, I'm working on book three right now. I have a deadline coming up. I gotta. I gotta get cracking on this book. But yeah, no, I'm really excited about book two.
So, you know, I can tell you I'm going to give you a little spoiler that for the people who've read it, which is the very first line of book two is like so many things. It was Jaisal's book fault. It goes from there.
Speaker C
00:42:47.890 - 00:42:49.810
Excuse me while I go pre order the book.
Speaker D
00:42:50.290 - 00:42:51.410
Oh, thank you.
Speaker B
00:42:53.730 - 00:43:13.400
Everyone should pre order this book now. And if you haven't already purchased the Last Hour Between Worlds or any of Melissa's other books, the Tethered Mage series is fantastic.
So any book that she's written, I would recommend. So anything else? Now that I've stolen your thunder, is there anything else you'd like to recommend? Any other projects that are coming up?
Other people's projects that you know of, anything like that?
Speaker D
00:43:13.550 - 00:43:50.010
Gosh. Well, I was all set to plug my book.
Boy, I'm trying to think if there's any good books that I have just read and blurbed that aren't out yet that I want to tell you about. But now, of course, my brain is completely blank.
I can tell you that I just recently finished the Incandescent, which is out right now by Emily Tesh, and it was incredible. That's not something that's upcoming, but it was a lot of fun.
That's wizard school, but from the perspective of the overworked teacher, it's just incredibly well written and clearly comes from someone who has a lifetime of teaching experience trying to deal with what happens when a bunch of teenagers full of emotions summon demons and things like that.
Speaker B
00:43:50.410 - 00:43:53.450
Colleen, do you have anything on your list to rec this time around?
Speaker E
00:43:53.450 - 00:44:12.310
Actually, I. I noticed that Roger recommended Time Watch, and I just wanted to say that that was written by Kevin Culp. He's a local Bostonian and you should check out his game.
I just know that Kevin would appreciate the plug because we did mention his game, and that is Time Watch, and he was the. The lead designer and author of it. So. Go Kevin.
Speaker B
00:44:12.870 - 00:44:13.670
Go Kevin.
Speaker C
00:44:14.710 - 00:44:31.030
Roger, just my perennial plug that my tiny little corner of the Internet is over on www.rogeralexgadro.com. not a lot of new updates there lately, but I am still plugging away on revisions of my novel and it will be announced there once it's ready.
Speaker E
00:44:31.830 - 00:44:40.200
Yeah, Eric, I actually have one last thing. If you haven't checked out, there's another podcast. Not to take away from your podcast, but there's no.
Speaker B
00:44:40.200 - 00:44:41.680
No, all podcasts are awesome.
Speaker E
00:44:42.560 - 00:45:00.880
Well, the wandering GMs is Paul Siegel and Dan Collins. But Paul Siegel is doing experiment right now where he is trying to teach an AI to run D&D. The AI is named Martha.
It's hilarious because it's not great at it, but he is training it how to be a storyteller and he's learning wonderful, amazing things. So go check out Martha and Wandering Genes.
Speaker B
00:45:00.880 - 00:45:37.870
All right. And I'll just plug this podcast itself. This is the GM's book club, but right before your book, we're covering Ex Heroes by Peter Klein Lines.
After your book, we're doing Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Deniman. So we've got a bunch of different books that are coming out soon, all with different GMs.
And if you enjoyed all the stuff that we talked about today and enjoyed listening to other GMs and an author, please feel free to come back and visit us again for more fun and interesting game stuff. Anybody have any, any last minute thing they want to throw in that they didn't get a chance to say or anything along those lines?
Speaker D
00:45:38.580 - 00:45:50.500
Thank you so much for having me on. I just, I always love talking about the connection between gaming and books.
I don't get the chance to do it as often as you would think in this world of nerds through which I move. So it's always an absolute pleasure.
Speaker A
00:45:56.020 - 00:46:54.580
And that's our discussion with Melissa Caruso about her book the Last Hour Between Worlds, the first book in the Echo Archives trilogy, as well as we mentioned in the broadcast, be on the lookout for book two, the Last Soul Among Wolves, coming to you on August 19, 2025. You can find a 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, at gmbookclub, bluesky Social, on Facebook, at gamemasters Book Club, and on Instagram Amasters Book Club. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
It's no mystery that Roger, Alex Goudreau and Colleen Noctrive are amazing game masters and I am deeply grateful for their continued participation in the podcast. You are both incredible. Thank you. Extra special thanks to Melissa Caruso for joining us on the Game Masters Book Club. It was a real thrill to see.
Speaker B
00:46:54.810 - 00:46:55.890
Speak with you, Melissa.
Speaker A
00:46:55.890 - 00:46:58.090
Best wishes for good writing and good gaming.
Speaker B
00:46:58.170 - 00:47:01.690
We loved having you on the show and would love to have you back anytime.
Speaker A
00:47:02.490 - 00:47:31.780
Go to her website melissacaruso.net or Orbit Books to check out all of her great work. Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Be sure to check out our next episode when Game Masters Eric Drix, Marshall Smith and George Krupke returned to discuss the art RPG lit juggernaut that is Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinnaman later gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.