GMBC ep014 - LitTechs and Jane Eyre and GMO Dodo's...Oh My! A Game Master's Guide to Literary Adventures in Jasper Fforde's "The Eyre Affair"
In this episode, the podcast dives into the whimsical world of Jasper Fforde's "The Eyre Affair," a literary adventure that intertwines genres and time travel in a delightfully chaotic manner. The conversation introduces three new Game Masters—Rob Trimarco, Jason Keeley, and Keren Form, - who share their unique gaming journeys and explore the surreal elements of the Thursday Next series, where genetically resurrected dodos and literary heists come to life. They discuss how to transform this imaginative narrative into a tabletop role-playing game, highlighting the potential for wacky plot twists and character interactions that mimic the book's playful spirit. Throughout their banter, they weave in clever insights about the nature of storytelling and the boundaries of fiction, all while maintaining a light-hearted tone . As they dissect the mechanics of gameplay inspired by this literary romp, listeners are invited to consider how they might incorporate similar surreal elements into their own gaming experiences.
Takeaways:
The Game Masters Book Club podcast highlights the intersection of literature and role-playing games, showcasing how captivating narratives can enhance gaming experiences.
In this episode, the hosts discuss the surreal elements of Jasper Fforde's 'The Eyre Affair', emphasizing the creativity involved in transforming literary plots into engaging gaming scenarios.
The conversation reveals how each guest's unique gaming journey shapes their approach to storytelling, with personal anecdotes that blend humor and insight into their experiences.
Listeners are encouraged to explore various tabletop role-playing systems that can adapt to literary themes, providing a rich playground for imaginative game mechanics and character development.
The hosts also share their preferred alternate planes of existence in gaming, showcasing the diverse settings that can inspire players and GMs alike to think outside the box.
Through witty banter and clever remarks, the discussion illuminates the joy of creating immersive worlds where players can interact with beloved literary characters and narratives.
Speaker A
00:00:11.440 - 00:00:37.340
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club, the podcast where great fiction becomes your next great role playing experience.
This episode, three new Game masters, Rob Trimarco, Jason Keeley and Keren Form Investigate the Eyre Affair, the first book in the extremely surreal Thursday Next series where intrigue, English literature and genetically resurrected dodos collide to make a literary romp at your gaming table. Let's get into the conversation.
Speaker B
00:00:39.900 - 00:00:40.700
Hey everybody.
Speaker A
00:00:40.700 - 00:00:42.780
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club.
Speaker B
00:00:43.100 - 00:01:05.600
And today we're going to introduce three new Game Masters which is always a blast. So I've got questions for everybody here. I'm going to ask Keren to go first. Karen, can you tell us a little something about your gamer journey?
And can you tell us about a secret agency that it has existed in your game or you've experienced in gaming that you think is super cool?
Speaker C
00:01:05.760 - 00:02:26.730
I started role playing a little differently than everybody else. I'm a child of the 70s, but I did not start with D and D. I actually did not start role playing until college and started with Shadowrun.
But since then I have of course played D and D and like a thousand other miscellaneous games, indie games, play testing for friends, et cetera.
I am actually in a gaming group currently and for the past 20 years with my fellow GM here, Jason, a gaming group that was start started specifically to try different rule systems and switch around GMs about every four to six weeks. And I've also with our other guest Rob, done a ton of gaming in various different worlds.
I personally when I dm, like to run very simple games now I really like playing pretend that aspect much more than being bogged down in rules. So I mostly run with this cobbled together set of rules that combines the two dice and add bonuses powered by the apocalypse kind of thing.
And then using questions and character creation to help develop story hooks and character backstories for everybody.
Because this way it helps me as a GM sprinkle the game with plot points that derive from the character backgrounds and really kind of brings everybody together more that way. As far as secret societies, I don't because we run like these four to six week type things.
I generally don't have giant societies built into things, but I believe we also talked about different planes of existence. Our favorite ones of that.
Speaker B
00:02:26.730 - 00:02:43.380
Oh, I screwed up. That was me. Oh no. I even have, I even have it written down here. Anyway, yes, it says alternate planes and I have my note for mine there.
So there we go. So Keren, now that you've told us about your gaming journey, why don't you tell us about your Favorite alternate plane of existence.
Speaker C
00:02:43.540 - 00:03:31.810
So I ran a D and D game set in the Strixhaven universe. And I don't know if anybody's played that. The setting's super fun, but it really leaves a lot of room to sort of play around in.
So I added a bunch of interplanar portals on the campus so we could a have students come in from anywhere. So you could create a character from anywhere and then also be able to travel anywhere.
This may have been influenced by me watching Star versus the Forces of Evil around that time.
So led to us being able to have an adventure in the Feywild which the students got to like find clues to and find a secret portal at the bottom of a well.
And also I ported in from Star the Star Quest buy, which was a really big deal for students to get gift certificates there because it was fun to go there and do like item shopping, but also roll on randomized tables to see what you got out of the dollar bin.
Speaker B
00:03:32.610 - 00:03:33.130
Awesome.
Speaker C
00:03:33.130 - 00:03:34.050
We love a good table.
Speaker B
00:03:34.930 - 00:03:41.250
Dollar bid was great. Okay, great. Jason, would you like to go next?
Speaker D
00:03:41.330 - 00:03:51.170
Sure. Hi, I'm Jason Keeley. If you listen to this, you might hear one or more of the other GMs here call me Hersey. That's my nickname.
So don't be, don't be confused, don't be scared.
Speaker B
00:03:51.730 - 00:04:02.680
It's just like every other fantasy book. You have your name. You have the name that your friends call you. You've got your title, You've got your mystical title and your true name.
So I think our listeners can handle it.
Speaker D
00:04:02.990 - 00:05:56.660
You cannot let them know my true name. Like Karen. I didn't start out like in high school like a lot of other people did. I was more of a video game nerd growing up.
But, you know, roundabout college. A little bit after that, I got involved with some people who were in the Renaissance Fair at the time and who were actors.
And I did a little bit of acting in college. And so it was a lot of that happening. We ran some systems created by the GM and then. Then I eventually started running games myself again. Started.
It kind of started with D and D and branched out into a lot of other things, a lot of other games, a lot of other systems, and did some, some writing, some stuff myself and that eventually parlayed that into a job in the industry. I am now a senior designer with Paizo on the Pathfinder role playing game.
I've done like editing and development work for them for just about over a decade, I would say.
So yes, I, I like the kind of semi crunchy games like Pathfinder and D and D. And I also like the easy to run, easy to improvise end games, like the stuff that Cameron's talking about and some stuff like Blades in the Dark and that kind of thing for planes of existence. I think just last summer I ran a sort of light superhero game.
I wanted to run something that was like the across the spider verse kind of stuff, right. So the. The group which Cameron was part of, we created a superhero together that would be our sort of base superhero.
And then everyone made a sort of an alternate reality version of that superhero. So we made it had this electricity based superhero called Dynamo.
And then people were like playing American Dynamo, which was the 50s, you know, Captain America version. And. And someone was playing Miss Dynamo, which is the lady version. Right. Like Karen played like a sort of a. More of a.
Almost like an Avatar, the Last Airbender kind of version. Paula, my wife, played Dinah Moose, which is just a moose.
And so I sort of like smushed them all together, threw them in a bunch of multiverses that were smooshing together. And I had a sort of a Mr. Miscalc figure called Mr. Metaphysically who was doing all this just for fun.
And so I like to kind of, you know, that sort of like light and wacky other universes.
Speaker B
00:05:56.660 - 00:06:08.700
Wacky universes of fun. Definitely on the list of things that all characters should experience.
Rob, care to tell everybody who you are and what you do and what alternate plane of existence you prefer?
Speaker E
00:06:08.940 - 00:06:13.420
You got it. First off, wacky Universes of Fun title. Your sex tape number one.
Speaker B
00:06:13.980 - 00:06:14.420
Nice.
Speaker E
00:06:14.420 - 00:07:44.820
My name is Rob Trimarco. I've been playing role playing games since the dawn of time.
Well, you know, the early early 80s started with of course, I was an NPC in a D and D game. My junior high school friend was running with his brother.
I was Sturm Brightblade in the Dragonlance module, the one with the black dragon on the COVID spitting acid. And everyone was way too close. So that's when I started to play.
Then there was a hobby shop, a game store near me, and there was a book on the shelf and it was called Champions. I was like, you can play a superhero well for the next. Oh God. Decades, decades and decades of Hero system.
And Champions is what I pretty much played with other systems, kind of like once in a while a little more D and D, a little of this. But I love the like D and D and Pathfinder are Legos. Champions and Hero system is clay. I can mold anything. I can be Anywhere.
There's no class, there's no can build my own unique powers that no one's ever used like that, to me, is the ultimate expression in a. In a role playing game. The character you created, that doesn't necessarily have to be like, well, you're a fighter. But my guy doesn't shut up.
You're a fighter. Okay, Right. And that sort of thinking and mindset to.
Well, all these supplements for Pathfinder, if I have them all, it will simulate eternity and infinite choice. So I have every book, every everything. A million dice. Right?
Speaker B
00:07:44.820 - 00:07:45.180
All that.
Speaker E
00:07:45.180 - 00:09:53.930
So because I host a lot of games at my home, my basement. If gaming was religion, my basement is its cathedral. It is very stocked with everything any GM or player would need.
If you show up here and I don't have a pencil, I have failed. If you don't have multicolored dice in your hand, or if you come in here with a Ziploc bag full of dice, which my cousin did, and I.
And I yelled at him and I handed him two dice bags, and now he never does that again.
So I am a big fan of crunch and infinite character playability and choice and long campaigns that, you know, you start from the bottom and become a God. I'm in. You run a game like that, count me in.
So one of the more recent games we played, we played the Marvel Multiverse rpg, and the world we set up for that was, you know, in the comics, where there's an alternate reality where the sentinels won or Dr. Doom has won and evil has triumphed, and the heroes are all but killed.
Well, in our universe, all the heroes woke up early and said, we have to work together to fight the horrifying things that beset our planet every three weeks. So, sure, you have your X Men and. And Magneto fights, but when push comes to shove, everybody puts that aside and stops the problem.
And an incredibly wacky turn of events. The unifying event or the. The conflict doesn't collapse into evil winning. For once in this universe, the good guys have a handle on it.
And sure, a big incursion comes, and then they fight it, and that changes the storyline of a lot of the timeline. So we had that world, and a lot of the things that happen in the Marvel universe didn't happen in ours the same way.
So my character was, what if Frank Castle found the Crimson Gem of the Citorak? So I have the Juggisher, right? A Punisher juggernaut.
My friend Mike was playing Bucky, the beginning of Hydra, trying to brainwash him to become an assassin, merged with the spirit of vengeance, the Ghost soldier. So there was a lot of fun out of that. And I love alternate worlds that kind of bolster players. I'm a. I'm a big pro player gm.
Speaker B
00:09:54.010 - 00:11:01.470
My name is Eric Jackson. I'm the host of the podcast I've been playing since the Pleistocene era.
I started with a blue box of D and D and have played every game that anyone put in front of me. Since then, though, I have primarily been a D and D player.
And part of the reason why I have this podcast is that I wanted to meet super cool people like you who have done things that are not like the kinds of things that I have done so that we could talk about. So that we could talk about really interesting games.
My favorite alternate plane is the Shadowfell, except I don't use it as like the place where it is darkness and dreariness and no emotions. I use it as a place of forgottenness and I like that better.
And the way that I run the Shadowfell is I run it as if every city that has ever existed, all of the parts of the city that eventually are destroyed and forgotten, they find a home there.
And so basically the Shadowfell becomes a giant city that is pieced together of all of the parts of cities that have ever existed and some that existed in other worlds and other places and other times and other and other dimensions. So that is my favorite alternate plane that I have run on multiple occasions.
Speaker D
00:11:01.470 - 00:11:04.190
It's like the more positive version of Carcosa.
Speaker B
00:11:04.350 - 00:12:39.330
Yes, yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Way more positive. So that's where we are. And we are the people who are going to bring to you today the Air Affair by Jasper Ford.
This is a fantastic mystery time travel literature masterpiece. Certainly received a great deal of popular critical reception when it was first published in an alternate timeline. Thursday next.
A lit tech spy In Spec Ops 27 in the British Empire, Spec Ops 27 specializes in crimes related to works of literature, particularly those of English literature. She is pitted against Archeron Hades, a master criminal, as well as the Goliath Corporation, the big evil guys who saved Britain.
The focus of Archeron Hades ends up being an invention of her Uncle Mycroft, who is a crazy doddering inventor. The invention is called the Prose Portal, which is filled with worms and allows people to enter works of literature. I know. Stay with me.
Archeron seeks to sabotage English literature by going into the pages of Jane Eyre. He is eventually stopped by Thursday within the pages of Jane Eyre with the help of Mr. Rochester.
Also, there's an Old flame, a time traveling father, tourists who are going through various works of literature and her aunt being romanced by Wordsworth. So let's talk about how we'd like to turn this into a tabletop role playing game.
Speaker D
00:12:39.950 - 00:12:42.590
Half the stuff you mentioned doesn't happen to the last third of the book.
Speaker B
00:12:42.670 - 00:12:45.150
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker D
00:12:45.310 - 00:13:20.670
About what's going on in the book. You know it is. I read it when it first came out and I'd forgotten that it was so wild.
There's this alternate history, has stuff going on in it that you know, they cloned dodos and you can have a dodo as a pet. They've got. Okay, this doesn't happen until the second book but there's a massive tax on cheeses, stuff like that.
Like it's, it's weird, it's black eats wild and vaguely it has a, a lot of reminiscent to me of like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett work. So.
And you know, and I think Jasper Ford is indeed, he's Welsh and that's why the, you know, the People's Republic of Welsh is an independent country in this book, I think so.
Speaker C
00:13:21.230 - 00:13:32.070
I had also forgotten about the whole Crimean War thing in this alternate history. They are still fighting the Crimean War and it is a huge, huge plot point in there that completely had like slipped my mind.
Speaker D
00:13:32.070 - 00:14:26.550
This is the first book in a series that's now seven books long. And I think it gets wilder the more you read, the further in you go. It's just stuff happening.
This Acheron, Hades, this super villain, he's got like, basically got super power and something explains that he's can just sort of talk to you, make you shoot yourself essentially. Like he's too powerful to be fought, but yet they fight him. I know one other thing to mention, Eric, is that throughout most of the book they were.
They mentioned how they. How people don't like the ending of Jane Eyre. And I had to like think about it like, like, is that how it ends and. No, because when.
What Thursday does, when she fights Hades in Jane Eyre makes the ending changes the ending of the book for every book. And it's the actual ending that you would know if you read Jane Eyre now.
It's, it's like explains things in Jane Eyre that don't make any sense because, you know, because of what, what Thursday does in the book. It's. It's kind of crazy.
Speaker B
00:14:26.870 - 00:14:35.520
It is absolutely a humbling experience to read this book because it makes me realize how little I actually know of English literature.
Speaker D
00:14:36.080 - 00:15:13.080
If I may like, then you might want to move to some other. There's another series that Jasper has written. They're called the Nursery Crimes and they're basically noir. It's in the same.
So I think they might be just sort of a spin off basically them investigating crimes of the first one is called the Big Over Easy and it's the investigates the death of Humpty Dumpty. Very noir and very, you know.
Yeah, this is the kind of thing that I love because it's so wild and so open that, you know, you can kind of do any, almost any kind of adventure in it. You know, the sort of modern crime mystery adventure, but supernatural at the same time. There's superhero, there's time travel.
You know, it's like it's got kind of just a little bit about everything that you could do. And so I'm gonna start talking about systems now.
Speaker B
00:15:13.080 - 00:15:16.000
Is that how I was about to tell you to do so?
Speaker D
00:15:16.320 - 00:16:21.550
So for me I had a couple ideas for this.
One of them would just be the Fate system, which is nice and big and broad and open and you can just sort of like pick things like what spec ops division you're from. That's one of your aspects.
You know, you really only need to sort of give yourself some, you know, whatever to plus up to plus three and skills, certain skills. Those skills are generally pretty broader. You can sort of make up your own.
So that would be one thing and you know, being something like, oh, I'm a cloned Neanderthal and that would work for you and against you. That's a great way to get a fake point.
And the other thing that I other system that I would think about using, Gumshoe system, which is also pretty rules light and has, you know, just some skills. And it's in basically about solving mysteries. You, the gm sort of gives clues out. You don't have to roll to find a clue. You always find a clue.
And Gumshoe has two setting books, I would say, or sort of offshoots. One is called Night Black Agents which is about sort of solving supernatural mysteries.
It actually I think has a vampirism skill, which is another thing. Vampires, werewolves are in this universe. Hey, something we forgot to mention.
And it's also got a source book called Time Watch which is about time travel. So mashing those two together in some way would probably make for a good Thursday next campaign.
Speaker B
00:16:21.870 - 00:16:23.790
Fantastic. Rob, you want to go next?
Speaker E
00:16:23.790 - 00:17:43.500
Surely given the complete wackadoo nature of this entire book's universe, the Doctor who role playing game probably would be the great fit for It. It's not always about fighting, it's about running and it's about clues and literal. It's just a simple system.
Roll a couple of dice, add a number and you do a thing. But you can spend drama points or plot points. I forgot the word how they use.
But you know, to kind of add to the story or change it as well, says this whole crazy travel into books and talk to Jane Eyre is so Doctor who. But also the system I also kind of was looking at was the.
The Genesis system, which is also the root of the fantasy flight Star wars game with its wacky dice, which, you know, sure, you can roll to hit or punch or shoot somebody, but you might miss but get advantage for the next thing you do. Or you get to narrate a change in the scene based on what you roll, which happens all the time in this book. And, you know, I would throw in a little.
A little dcc, a little Dungeon Crawl, classic, crazy chart in there. Because two people in this as guests here. That's all we did when we first started playing DCC for the first time. We randomized our names.
We randomized where we were from our home base in Roll Damp Number two, Roll Reptile. Great. That's where we're from. We're from Damp Reptile. And my best friend was Dougal Garlik. Okay, sure.
Speaker B
00:17:43.740 - 00:17:49.260
Which would definitely match the names that are in this book. Like Thursday Next and Jack Shit.
Speaker E
00:17:49.260 - 00:17:49.580
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:17:49.580 - 00:17:51.340
I mean, that's just amazing. Shit.
Speaker E
00:17:51.340 - 00:18:11.660
That was a reach. Okay, I get it. You know, that wasn't like a thinly veiled joke. Okay. But that sort of vein where all these. The wacky inventions of micro.
What does this invention do? Let's roll on the chart. Oh, it is a worm that eats words and poops apostrophes. Great, let's use that somehow in the game. We're gonna do it.
Speaker D
00:18:11.980 - 00:18:14.660
I got a part when the text changes because of the book.
Speaker C
00:18:14.660 - 00:18:14.850
Ye.
Speaker E
00:18:15.400 - 00:18:15.680
Yes.
Speaker D
00:18:15.680 - 00:18:20.760
Spitting out too many apostrophes makes it difficult to read apostrophes all through the text.
Speaker B
00:18:21.160 - 00:18:23.480
Rob, I double checked. It is drama points for.
Speaker E
00:18:24.440 - 00:18:26.400
Yes, it is drama points. Okay, I figured.
Speaker B
00:18:26.400 - 00:18:30.680
Okay, Keren, do you want to go ahead and give us your input on the mechanical side on this?
Speaker C
00:18:30.759 - 00:20:08.600
Sure. Thought of two different games that I think it would be fun to run this in. The first is the Triangle Agency, which is.
It's more of a horror bent to that one where you're sort of working for this kind of shady company, hunting down all sorts of weird anomalies and haunted items.
Apparently there's a lot of haunted trees, things that are messing with people and places, but I really feel that that can be easily modded to solve literature crimes or whatnot. It's also very weird and wacky, and you get bizarre powers and strange contacts and, like, different fun items.
And it really kind of would work perfectly to be skinned to different various Spec Ops divisions, I think.
Other mainly because during the entire book, Thursday's father, who is on the run from the time travel agency, keeps coming back and being like, oh, hey, so do you remember what happened in, like, you know, to Nelson in the war? Is he still alive? Like, what went on? I thought that Time and Temp by my good friend Epadiah Ravachol would be perfect for this.
In that game, your temp workers who are kind of working for an organization, you're cleaning up paradoxes. It's a lot of fun.
And my favorite part of that game is that you can come back from a future time to help yourself, but there's always something weird or wrong with you. Like, I don't know, you're missing a leg or you only speak French, or you're a robot all of a sudden.
Fun part is you get to, like, work that into the game, which is a lot of fun. And that's really just kind of goes along the same lines of going back as a person and, you know, switching up time.
And also, I feel the intern aspect would be super fun because Spec Ops obviously is like a real government agency, but I feel there are a lot of interns working around, pushing their paper and whatnot and throwing people in that have no idea what's going on is always a great time.
Speaker B
00:20:08.600 - 00:20:12.200
Nothing quite like putting the innocent into danger to make a game exciting.
Speaker C
00:20:12.200 - 00:20:12.760
Exactly.
Speaker B
00:20:14.360 - 00:22:27.530
Okay. Oh, so that's me now. Okay, great. So when I first started hearing about the various time travel thing, I focused on two different pieces.
The first one, which I will not spend a lot of time on, was Time Master, which is way back from 1984. At the time, it was one of the few games that was really doing time travel and always kept my interest piqued.
It had a lot of secret societies and that sort of thing. Its system is terrible. Please don't play it, but go back and read some of the literature that went with it because it was fun stuff.
There are some great stories in there.
But if I were going to play a more modern game where you were, you had factions that were trying to change either literature or history, I would go with the current feng shui tabletop role Playing game. You could pick somebody like Thursday next who could have the ability to slip in naturally into literature or as an archetype.
Would they use an archetype creation system there? And you can join one of the many secret war factions that try to control the time stream.
And it would be super easy to just take as Thursday's father talks about the French constantly working against the English. You could very easily just substitute any, anybody into these various secret war factions.
Last I'd probably throw in City of Mists M I S T S just to be sure. It has a system where you are playing a literature based character. You play a.
You have a real world logos, the person who goes to work and does things. But you have something awoken within you because you are an embodiment, a mythos, an archetypical type of character.
So you could be, you could be the big Bad Wolf, you could be Captain Nemo, you could be Prospero. Any of those people could be someone who's awakened inside of you.
And there are two worlds that you're constantly bouncing back from, the Mythos world and the Logos world. And that definitely looks like the kind of story that the Eyre Affair is. So those are my suggestions. Rob, we're going to start you off.
Now that we've discussed the book and the mechanics, let's just talk about the portables, the things that were absolutely just going to steal whole cloth and drop into some game we're going to play. Because it's just cool. What do you got? Yeah.
Speaker E
00:22:27.610 - 00:23:26.530
One of the things I liked about the book, it was. It was.
It's not really mechanically relevant, but it was a very fun thing about the universe was the, the fact that they loved was it Richard III the play so much that it became a cult classic in the way that Rocky Horror Picture show did. So audience participation. Shouting People get picked every performance to be the characters of the play from the audience.
And they all know it by heart.
So like a scene in the game from that, like, you know, either revolving around it, people, player characters trying get their performance in that play recognized for a reason, for some reason, or maybe something happened during the play that they're trying to figure out as it happens, but they can't disrupt it, so they have to participate would be very, very, very fun. And Ben also, like, I love a wacky weapon. They're trying to make a plasma gun work with the power of fiction. Yeah, let's write that up.
The only reason it works because you have to pull your enemy into a book and then you can shoot him with your weird gun.
Speaker B
00:23:26.610 - 00:23:30.450
You know, classic player character abuse of a loophole in the rules.
Speaker A
00:23:30.450 - 00:23:30.930
Perfect.
Speaker E
00:23:31.090 - 00:23:34.050
Absolutely. That's right. That's right.
Speaker D
00:23:34.370 - 00:23:34.770
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:23:34.770 - 00:23:39.330
It's like I'm gonna bring you into Jurassic park and I'm gonna kill you with my triceratops. You know, whatever.
Speaker B
00:23:39.330 - 00:23:46.390
Oh. So I'm gonna jump right on top of and say that my favorite thing. Get off of me. Oh. Ah. Oh, sorry.
Speaker E
00:23:46.390 - 00:23:47.870
Oh, don't jump on top of me.
Speaker B
00:23:48.110 - 00:25:19.720
Anyway, don't jump on me.
So anyway, Rob talks about a society that exists in the Eyre affair in which people are obsessed with English literature to the point where they would make a Rocky Horror Picture show or my personal favorite, the one that I liked, they make. There's a little robot that sits on the corner that you can put a pound coin into and it will just recite your favorite Shakespeare soliloquy to you.
The idea that such a society exists and that I could take that society and drop it into even like a fantasy world or a science fiction world and just have that as a thing that existed. Yes. All you have to do is you tap this three times or give a prayer to the God and it will repeat back the words of the prophet or.
Yeah, all you got to do is, you know, three credits and we'll will definitely tell you all about the 12 poets of the nine suns from this solar system. Or have it recite Vogon poetry. Right. Like, it's just. I know that could be a. That's a wmd. We shouldn't do that. But, but, but you get my point. Like I.
We very often talk about cultures that are popular culture obsessed America. But the idea that you would be that.
That popular culture around literature would be so strong that these things would exist just in and of itself to me is a fabulous world building shtick that I'd love to throw in into some culture at some point during my world building experience.
Speaker C
00:25:19.880 - 00:25:20.680
Yeah, me too.
Speaker D
00:25:20.680 - 00:25:25.480
I picture those things as being like Zoltan's basically looking.
Speaker B
00:25:25.480 - 00:25:27.400
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. In a little glass box.
Speaker D
00:25:27.480 - 00:25:31.320
Box. It probably looks like Shakespeare, you know, mechanical version of Shakespeare.
Speaker B
00:25:31.400 - 00:25:37.720
Absolutely. Like does that weird robot gesticulate thing blinks its eyes at the wrong time. Like the whole thing absolutely.
Speaker C
00:25:38.100 - 00:25:40.500
Just goes up and down when it talks. But like nothing else.
Speaker B
00:25:40.660 - 00:25:45.460
Absolutely. 100%. Keren, do you want to talk about stuff that you would make portable?
Speaker C
00:25:45.540 - 00:27:07.950
Sure. Yeah.
So when I run a game and I frequently base things on whatever book or show I'm watching, but I like to sort of play around the edges of things like Instead of going directly in and having like, oh, what if we interact with Thursday Next? I like to sort of have people that either like work for a similar organization or they're on the side while the main action is happening.
And I really love the whole idea of the lit text. It's great. It was very classics based though. So I feel it would be fun to explore that in different genres of fiction.
Things where you can get more insane, whether it's in like fantasy or sci fi or romance. And then also the whole idea that there's a whole division for art as well, which they didn't really go into.
But they kept talking about the fights between sort of the different surrealists and I don't know, the realists on the street. There are all sorts of issues.
So I feel running something that would be where you're on the art tech team, or perhaps it's a lit tech and art tech together who have to investigate graphic novels or comics. I also really, really, of course love the idea that in this alternate time that they have discovered technology to clone extinct species.
People own dodos and Tasmanian tigers. So I would love to be able to somehow play around with that.
I don't know, something like having that old like animal cop show they used to have on Animal Planet where you're rescuing like, I don't know, someone who's got a warehouse full of dodos or whatnot, or anything involving that taking down bad cloners. I think it'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker B
00:27:07.950 - 00:27:09.070
Fantastic. Jason.
Speaker D
00:27:09.310 - 00:27:32.020
I do enjoy trying to shove time travel into games sometimes, even when it's not appropriate.
And the thing I love about time travel is trying to get my players into a predestination paradox, which is showing them something in the future and then basically what the camera talks about the time attempt and then seeing if they would can get. Get to that point.
Speaker B
00:27:32.020 - 00:27:39.580
I'm afraid for just showing them something and saying you're going here and then watching them struggle against it as you continually move them closer to it.
Speaker D
00:27:39.580 - 00:28:10.630
Yeah, yeah, Essentially that kind of thing.
One of the things that sort of does that again to happen in this book, the time traveling dad apparently goes back and gives Shakespeare a book of complete works of Shakespeare. So are the plays of Shakespeare, who are they actually written by now? Now there's no real.
There's a lot of argument about whether it's Bacon or Spencer or whatever. But like the fact that it's not written by anybody is something that I would love to try to like figure out how to work into a.
Into some Sort of time travel game. Oh, you accidentally wrote all the Beatles songs for them or something like that.
Speaker C
00:28:10.630 - 00:28:18.470
Hersey has done a time loop for us that was so good. We talk about it to this day and I swear to God, it was like 15 years ago. It was so great.
Speaker E
00:28:19.270 - 00:28:29.670
I didn't play it, but we helped him come up with it. Or he was. He came up with it, but he was. It was the time dragon thing, Jason, for. I think it was. Was it a paiso. It was an adventure.
Speaker C
00:28:29.670 - 00:28:29.830
Right.
Speaker D
00:28:29.830 - 00:28:30.430
Like, yes.
Speaker E
00:28:30.430 - 00:28:33.630
So the PCs were fighting a dragon who they.
Speaker D
00:28:33.630 - 00:28:34.430
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker E
00:28:34.430 - 00:28:45.790
Definitely met before, but hadn't met yet in time. Right. So I think it.
The part of the thing was trying to get it revert to a point in its time when it knew who they were so they wouldn't die as they were fighting it.
Speaker D
00:28:45.870 - 00:28:53.470
Yeah, yeah, that is it. It's a time dragon that's unstuck in time and the fight happens in a different order for the PCs and for the dragon.
Speaker E
00:28:53.780 - 00:28:53.980
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:28:53.980 - 00:29:03.900
So like round one, you're fighting the dragon and round two, the dragon is 100ft over there and breathing fire on you. But how do they get over there? Because in round three, it's actually back and flying up here, but you're, you know, it.
It was a real fun thing to try to.
Speaker E
00:29:03.900 - 00:29:07.060
It moves out of sync and it was brilliant and terrifying.
Speaker D
00:29:07.460 - 00:29:09.620
It was a high level. It was a high level thing, but.
Speaker E
00:29:09.860 - 00:29:10.740
It was a high level.
Speaker B
00:29:11.780 - 00:29:12.260
Wow.
Speaker C
00:29:13.140 - 00:29:32.040
Ours was just one of our player characters called themselves from the future. So we were in the past timeline and someone got a phone call from themselves and we all got super freaked out by it. Just sort of wa.
For what was going to happen to make this person be able to call themselves in the past. And it was fantastic in doing.
Speaker D
00:29:32.040 - 00:29:34.720
So you were being hunted by the time coyotes?
Speaker C
00:29:34.800 - 00:29:38.440
Oh, yeah. No, they got real mad at us and.
Speaker B
00:29:38.440 - 00:30:02.840
And this is what makes Tabletop Role playing amazing. And that's what it is. It's just what makes it the best ever.
Hey, Jason, now that we've talked about this really interesting story and all the cool stuff in it, are there other cool stories? Be they video book or. Or graphic novel or. Heck, it can be interpretive art.
What kind of story would you recommend to people that is like the Air affair.
Speaker D
00:30:02.840 - 00:31:33.910
Yeah. Like I said earlier, this has a very Douglas Adams vibe to it.
So I definitely would recommend Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which has a mystery in it and also has some time travel in it. Maybe that's a bit of a spoiler, but it has a lot of similarities with the Doctor who episode City of Death, which Douglas Adams also wrote.
So that's pretty cool. Cool. And then there's a couple TV shows based on it that I would also sort of recommend that are pretty good, that have a little.
The American one has. There's a British one in America one and the American one has a little bit of different kind of time traveling.
There's also a graphic novel series called the Unwritten, which is a lot about literature and what is true. And like going kind of like going into books. There's a bad guy who gets shoved into a sort of a Beatrix Potter esque world as punishment.
And we sometimes see from his point of view and he's just cursing up a storm, but he's. He's just a tiny badger, Mrs. Bunny and all this stuff. And that's. He's just like this tough, the gangster type and he's just like, what the heck?
Why the heck am I here? So it's got a lot of stuff they, you know, a lot of good literature stuff.
And just for the Shakespeare of it, I recommend the sitcom Upstart Crow from Britain. It is about Shakespeare's the main character played by David Mitchell. It's written by one of the two guys who did Black Adder.
So it's got that kind of. Of humor and it's a lot about Shakespeare and his wife and his theater company and Kit Marlo and stuff like that and getting into wacky antics.
And he's going, I write comedies. And they're like, do you, do you write comedies that funny? And then it's.
So it's making fun of Shakespeare while also sort of being a loving tribute to the place.
Speaker B
00:31:34.150 - 00:31:36.790
Fantastic. Rob, you have media to recommend?
Speaker E
00:31:36.790 - 00:32:43.620
Yes. There was a show on Netflix called Bodies where this. It was a time travel mystery with a single corpse found across four different time periods.
1890, 1940s, 2023 and 2053, all related to the same sort of conspiracy in the future about someone trying to grab ultimate power and political clout and all that sort of stuff. So that was very much in the book. Travel, alternate dimensions, time travel, feel of the air affair.
Also the way I would run Eyre Affair situations would be a little more dangerous rather than let's go into this book and do something fun. It would be very much like backroomsy.
You might get sucked into a book against your will or there's something's out of control in this particular series and it's abducting people for reasons for good and for bad, you have to go investigate. And maybe that would involve a little bit of twisty timeness based on a series like Game of Thrones even. There's a bunch of books in that series.
We have to fix a feast of crows before we can get to Wolves of Winter or whatever Winds of Winter, whatever it might, might end up being. Who knows?
Speaker C
00:32:43.620 - 00:32:46.340
Or you can go in and actually write Winds of Winter while you're in there.
Speaker E
00:32:46.340 - 00:32:48.020
Yeah, yeah, maybe you could do it.
Speaker B
00:32:48.020 - 00:32:48.780
How about that?
Speaker E
00:32:49.420 - 00:33:01.100
Maybe that's the reason we're playing this game. George R.R. martin. One of my PCs and then like Doctor who, because it's such a Dr. Whoey who I thing.
Speaker B
00:33:01.180 - 00:33:02.460
Yeah, it's very British.
Speaker E
00:33:02.460 - 00:33:04.540
Yes, British and very whimsical.
Speaker B
00:33:04.620 - 00:33:06.060
It is your turn, Kesren. Go ahead.
Speaker C
00:33:06.140 - 00:34:06.300
First, I would recommend any of Connie Willis's sort of time traveling historians books.
I would especially recommend to say nothing of the Dog, which is historians traveling to Victorian times where there's sort of a mystery to solve time things to fix. A lot of references to literature, whether it be Victorian poets or the Golden Age of mysteries. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, etc.
It's a lot, a lot of fun. One of my favorite books of all time. We're going with Vibes only.
I would say Umbrella Academy, whether the graphic novel or the show, because it is time travel and complete wackiness and just people doing bizarre as hell things.
And then finally, because I can't get through anything without mentioning Terry Pratchett or Discworld, I would recommend either Thief of Time or Night Watch. Time Monks are a wonderful, wonderful setting in Pratchett's world.
Though don't read Night Watch before you have read all the other preceding Guards books, so you'll be very confused.
Speaker D
00:34:06.300 - 00:34:09.600
You have to know who Vimes is to know why.
Speaker B
00:34:10.640 - 00:34:11.840
Why he is the way he is.
Speaker D
00:34:11.840 - 00:34:13.280
Yes, why he is the way he is.
Speaker B
00:34:13.840 - 00:35:57.130
Okay, I'll throw mine in here. My first is that I'm currently doing a rewatch of the Librarians.
I'm on season two and I've sped through it so that I could talk a little bit about Prospero and Moriarty, both of whom are freed early on in the season.
And basically they are called Fictionals and they're basically immortal and they have all these cool power and I'm like, hey, this sounds a lot like something I'm reading right now. It does actually eventually involve time travel to go talk to Shakespeare in order to solve the problem of Prospero.
So it really does tie back in to a very similar theme.
I will recommend Seanan McGuire for almost any kind of book and she does have a series of books that are about fictional characters who are from fairy tales who solve crimes. Snow White is the main detective in that. The first book is called Indexing. I think it has the wackiness that we've been talking about here.
I'm going to throw in the Last hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso, a book that we've previously covered here on the podcast.
In that piece of fantasy fiction, one of the things that can happen is that kids who have great imaginations can fall between layers of reality, which reminded me a lot of what happened to Thursday Next and what the Japanese tour could do to get into Jane Eyre. So I wanted to one, plug an older show and two, I thought that that had a good link to as a piece of media. So we've done it.
We've talked about the book, but now it's time to talk about you guys again and or things that interest you. Outside of the Eyre affair, do you folks have any projects, TTRPG or other that you are working on that you would like our audience to know about?
Keren, why don't you go first?
Speaker C
00:35:57.210 - 00:36:27.350
Sure.
I don't have anything TTRPG related, but I do volunteer as a crisis counselor for the Crime Victims center, which is crisis counseling for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. And CVTC has so many great services from counseling to legal help, et cetera, that they provide free to survivors of sandv.
If you perhaps want to either help out or donate, you can go to cvtcnyc.org maybe send some help their way.
Speaker B
00:36:27.350 - 00:36:29.150
And there'll be a link in the show notes for that.
Speaker E
00:36:29.150 - 00:36:48.010
Rob, I don't have it. Maybe like 10 years ago I could have told you about the company. Jason and I had that where we created some things. But this is a time travel podcast.
So now everyone go back to 2010 or 2011 where we won an any for game book Fortunes Fool. But that's. Hey, that's over, you know. Yes.
Speaker D
00:36:48.010 - 00:36:54.450
That they'll relate it to this. Remember how the adventure that we made for it was about nursery rhymes. Fairy tales. Grim.
Speaker E
00:36:54.770 - 00:36:56.450
Grim fairy tales. Yes.
Speaker B
00:36:56.770 - 00:36:58.850
So there you go. Totally get that.
Speaker E
00:36:58.850 - 00:37:00.890
And I'm not plugging it. You can't buy it.
Speaker D
00:37:00.890 - 00:37:01.970
You can't buy it anywhere.
Speaker E
00:37:02.850 - 00:37:18.270
I have to give it to you. You just. If you see me and you want it, I'll give it to you. That's nice.
Also, I want to plug extra life.org extra-life.org Sean Murphy who Eric and I know, friends with and he does it every year at Rising PhoenixCon.
Speaker B
00:37:18.270 - 00:37:23.790
Has also done a couple of shows here on the Game Masters Book Club, one of our guest GMs. Oh.
Speaker E
00:37:23.870 - 00:37:29.670
So I would like to push that toward the the charity to help kids via games. Let's do that.
Speaker B
00:37:29.670 - 00:37:32.670
All right. And the link for that, of course will be found in the show notes. Jason.
Speaker D
00:37:33.140 - 00:38:19.780
Ah, yeah. I want to be capitalist since I work for Paizo in the industry. Buy my book. Buy my book.
By the time you're reading this, there's a book that I was design lead on called Battlecry, Exclamation point. It's a source book for stuff about wars and fighting and skirmishing combat.
It kicks off a large in setting event where the country that basically worships hell is fighting the country that is essentially the democracy of our own setting. Check that out. I've got soon, sometime next year adventures for that will also be a meta event are coming out and I wrote a couple of those.
So keep an eye out to paizo.com. you know what? I'll do this this way.
If there's any humble bundles that Paizo is involved in, they're always pretty great and good for charity and you get a lot for your buck. And I'm going to say, Keren, you do have a little something that you can sort of. We can. I'll talk about because you helped do the.
Speaker C
00:38:19.780 - 00:38:20.380
I do.
Speaker D
00:38:20.460 - 00:38:26.060
You did the design, did the layout work for my free rpg, this Complete breakfast.
Speaker B
00:38:26.060 - 00:38:26.580
Oh yeah.
Speaker D
00:38:26.580 - 00:38:44.940
Which is a game where you play as cereal mascots of your own creation. It is again free. It's PDF. You can get it on my Itch IO page. Is itch IO herzwesten H E R Z W E S T E N Go download it for free.
It comes with a template to make your own cereal box. If you print out the cutout and fold it up.
Speaker B
00:38:44.940 - 00:39:21.640
I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt because I have a weird thing I want to put in.
The one thing that got me to go to the first Total Con, which is eventually what got me in contact with most of the folks at Rising Phoenix, which is what got me in contact with Rob, which is what got me in contact with you. There was a Saturday morning game where we played a Jonny Quest novel while they provided us with milk and breakfast cereal.
And that was what sold me to come to the con. That was the gimmick that got me.
I'm like, if I can go play Johnny Quest and have breakfast and play a role playing game, at the same time I'm in Pretty awesome.
Speaker D
00:39:21.640 - 00:39:37.000
Pretty awesome.
And finally, if you want to hear me talk about Starfinder, which is this space version of the game that I work on, but I don't work on that version anymore. But I but I'm a big fan of it so I talk about it with a couple other people in a podcast called Digital Divination. That's every two weeks.
Speaker B
00:39:37.000 - 00:39:40.960
We will also have a link at the end of the podcast because we like other podcasts.
Speaker A
00:39:40.960 - 00:39:41.600
It's fine.
Speaker D
00:39:41.600 - 00:39:42.200
Why not?
Speaker A
00:39:42.280 - 00:39:43.340
Yes. Every link set.
Speaker E
00:39:43.570 - 00:39:43.810
Everything.
Speaker A
00:39:43.890 - 00:41:16.760
That's the best thing. And that's our discussion of the Eyre Affair, the first book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Ford.
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@gmbookclub.
Bluesky social on Facebook, Facebook @ gamemasters book club, on Mastodon Amasters Book Club and on Instagram gamemastersbookclub.
If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space and be sure to share those episodes with your gaming community. Thank you so much for listening. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Special thanks to literally such a of the best Game Masters in the business, Keren Form, Jason Keighley and Rob Trimarco. Look for them to return for All Systems Red, the first novella in the Murderbot series coming this October.
And don't forget to check out Keren's advice on how to add K Pop Demon Hunters to your game in our special summer Blockbuster Episode Episode 12. Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Check out our next episode, two weeks when we take on the mind altering madness that is Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Later, gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.