GMBC ep34 - Sapphic Steampunk Shennanigans - Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory at Rising Phoenix Game Con
Elizabeth Bear
Karen Memory
Speaker A
00:00:03.680 - 00:00:49.460
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience for the next four weeks. We're coming to you from Rising Phoenix Game Con in Milford, Massachusetts.
This is the con's fifth year of providing fantastic tabletop role playing experiences. Along with board games, amazing panels, great vendors and an immersive con experience.
Game Masters Book Club was invited to interview both of the guests of honor, Hugo nominated authors Elizabeth Baer and Scott lynch, as well as two other amazing local authors attending the convention, Tricia Wooldridge and Monocwil Black Goose. In this episode we are speaking with Hugo award winning author, Elizabeth Behr.
The Game Masters Book Club chose to speak with her about her steampunk spy thriller, Sapphic romance, Karen Memory. Joining Elizabeth Behr are three game masters.
Speaker B
00:00:49.460 - 00:00:50.900
Who are smart as whips and wild.
Speaker C
00:00:50.900 - 00:00:51.820
And willy to boot.
Speaker A
00:00:51.900 - 00:00:55.260
Rob Chimarco, Rowan d' Andrea and Luanika Miller.
Speaker B
00:00:55.340 - 00:01:19.600
Let's get down to John Partners. Now that we have everybody here and our massive audience, thank you once again. So welcome to the Game Masters Book Club.
My name is Eric Jackson and I'm the host. And today we are coming to you from Rising Phoenix Gamecon 2026. This is really great.
I have some fabulous people here to talk about a fabulous book written by a fabulous author who happens to be fabulously here.
Speaker C
00:01:20.240 - 00:01:20.800
Yay.
Speaker B
00:01:21.200 - 00:01:24.760
Elizabeth Barris here. Yay. I didn't know that part.
Speaker D
00:01:24.760 - 00:01:25.480
That's awesome.
Speaker B
00:01:25.480 - 00:01:40.780
Yes, thank you. That's fantastic. So, yes, Elizabeth Behrs, we're going to be talking about her book, Karen Memory.
So today, one of her very many, many, many, many, many, many books. So we had to pick one. So that was the way we went with it. So there we go. Oh, no.
Speaker C
00:01:40.780 - 00:01:41.180
Oh, no.
Speaker D
00:01:41.180 - 00:01:42.860
This is from. It's 11 years old.
Speaker C
00:01:42.860 - 00:01:43.540
2015.
Speaker B
00:01:44.180 - 00:01:53.980
Yeah, it's more than 10 years old. Random. Honestly, it was a. There's a whole list and I went like this and put my finger on it and said that one looks good.
And that's the one we ended up doing.
Speaker D
00:01:53.980 - 00:02:03.870
So it's called Karen Memory. Karen K A R E N Memory. M E M O R Y. I can spell.
Speaker B
00:02:03.870 - 00:02:04.950
Yep. Way to go.
Speaker D
00:02:05.190 - 00:02:06.550
I didn't know there was gonna be a quiz.
Speaker B
00:02:06.550 - 00:02:07.350
Yeah, quiz.
Speaker C
00:02:07.750 - 00:02:09.350
There is, because I got questions.
Speaker E
00:02:09.590 - 00:02:10.910
This is a book quiz, everybody.
Speaker B
00:02:10.910 - 00:02:11.590
Yeah. Welcome.
Speaker C
00:02:11.670 - 00:02:12.350
You ready to go?
Speaker E
00:02:12.350 - 00:02:13.150
Hope everyone read it.
Speaker A
00:02:13.150 - 00:02:13.510
Chris.
Speaker B
00:02:13.910 - 00:03:20.030
Yeah. Yeah. Let's see how this goes.
All right, so before we go too much further, I'm gonna have everybody introduce themselves and we're gonna start all the way down at the end. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna have everybody say their name and then you can say why you're here at the con.
You know, like, do you come here all the time? Are you a volunteer? Are you somebody? Do you just enjoy games? Whatever it is.
And also, since Carrot Memory is I would definitely classify Carrot Memory as a steampunk sort of book. Tell us about your favorite steampunk gaming, your favorite steampunk gaming event, character item, thing that you've experienced, however that goes.
And when we get all the way back down to me, we'll wrap up with that and then we'll have the author give us a quick summary of the book. And then after that we'll, we'll talk about game mechanics. And then after that we'll talk about stuff which we like to call portable.
Borrow, steal from the books to put in our campaigns. And then after that we will talk about other media that works with this particular book that we think would work.
So that's the plan and we'll see if we can stick to it. All right, so going all the way down at the end, Rowan, go ahead, lead us off.
Speaker F
00:03:20.990 - 00:03:38.740
Hi, I'm Rowan d'. Andrea. I'm a volunteer and part of the Cons extended family. And my go to steampunk mechanic system is the Iron Kingdoms RPG system.
It's the only one I've really played around with anyway, but I have familiarity with its other wargaming aspect as well.
Speaker B
00:03:38.820 - 00:03:40.340
All right, fantastic.
Speaker D
00:03:41.140 - 00:04:07.380
I am Elizabeth Baer. I wrote the book in question. And I no longer run Tabletop, mostly because I've discovered that I can either write fiction or I can run fiction.
And unfortunately my job requires me to write it. However, I have in the past been quite a fan of Castle Falkenstein and some similar games, so.
Speaker B
00:04:07.460 - 00:04:09.060
Oh, fantastic. Castle Falcon.
Speaker D
00:04:09.540 - 00:04:10.659
I know, Deep Cut, right?
Speaker B
00:04:10.659 - 00:04:15.780
Oh, yeah. No, the game with the cards. That's all I always remember it as.
Speaker D
00:04:16.020 - 00:04:16.980
And the beautiful art.
Speaker B
00:04:16.980 - 00:04:17.780
Oh, yeah. Yes.
Speaker D
00:04:17.780 - 00:04:23.300
And the illegible rules. Oh, outside voice.
Speaker B
00:04:23.380 - 00:04:24.180
Go ahead, Luke.
Speaker C
00:04:24.580 - 00:05:37.740
Hi. So I go by Lewanika Miller. I am one of one part of the team at the Tabletop Journeys podcast. We're a podcast that does gaming stuff, TTRPG stuff.
We drop multiple episodes a week. We have a live show. We are all about building up and building out our community. In general, we do heavy sci fi on Tuesdays. What we call Trek Tuesday.
Our regular more fantasy oriented and other game systems are generally what we do on Fridays.
And the live show when we do that about once or twice a month is whatever comes up I'm affectionately known as Lou by the Rising Phoenix Khan family, which is absolutely fine.
I, however, have a much longer first name, so if anybody were to look me up on Facebook, which you're all more than welcome to do, it is quite a bit longer. It happens to be Akashambatua Nguyen Dwalale Liwanica Sikopo Lewis Miller Jr. But on Facebook, it's Akash Batwa Lewonica Miller.
And the worst you'll do is you'll get my dad instead of me because he's in Kashimbato Mitrasita Liwonica.
Speaker B
00:05:38.220 - 00:05:38.780
All right.
Speaker E
00:05:39.740 - 00:06:19.500
Hi, I'm Rob Trimarco, avid gamer. I've been coming to this con since inception. I met the Rising Phoenix folks at Tolacon and been going to that one for a while as well.
Avid tabletop RPG player, runner, collector, you know, since I was a small giant baby.
My favorite steampunk thing, I mean, I like a lot of the aspects of it, but, you know, in D and D is the apparatus of Qualish, that steam crab underwater device monster from the old edition.
Speaker B
00:06:19.500 - 00:06:19.900
That's.
Speaker E
00:06:20.140 - 00:06:30.300
Why is this here? I don't know. I need to have it and be in it. That is sort of like, you know, it's always like a fun element of technology to throw into a game.
Speaker B
00:06:30.460 - 00:06:34.820
Absolutely, yeah. A giant. The giant functioning crab monster.
Speaker F
00:06:34.820 - 00:06:35.220
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:06:35.220 - 00:06:35.660
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:06:35.660 - 00:06:36.620
Who doesn't want that?
Speaker B
00:06:36.890 - 00:06:37.170
Yeah.
Speaker C
00:06:37.170 - 00:06:37.450
No.
Speaker B
00:06:37.850 - 00:07:10.080
And I'm Eric Jackson again. I am the host and I've been playing since the Pleistocene, various tabletop role playing games, and I have.
I attended a number of steampunk conventions. And so this game, this book was like, right up my alley. Super excited about it. I did not wear my top hat, but I probably should have, so.
So anytime, anytime you can throw a top hat on top, on top of stuff, it's great. All right, so we've sort of hinted around the idea that this book is steampunk.
So, Elizabeth, would you be so kind as to give us a quick summary of what the book is?
Speaker D
00:07:10.800 - 00:07:43.020
Well, I mean, you could call it steampunk, you could call it gaslamp fantasy. It sort of fits into it, edges up to both categories, I would say. It is a 1870s Pacific Northwest adventure murder mysteries, spy thriller. The.
That I have described as its leverage with heroic saloon girls fighting vulture capitalists.
Speaker B
00:07:44.460 - 00:07:45.980
Yeah, that's it.
Speaker C
00:07:45.980 - 00:07:46.460
That's it.
Speaker A
00:07:47.020 - 00:07:47.740
Podcast over.
Speaker E
00:07:47.740 - 00:07:48.220
We got it.
Speaker A
00:07:48.300 - 00:07:48.660
Done.
Speaker B
00:07:48.660 - 00:07:49.020
Finished?
Speaker C
00:07:49.020 - 00:07:50.300
Yeah. And cut.
Speaker F
00:07:51.500 - 00:07:52.180
Right's great.
Speaker D
00:07:52.180 - 00:07:52.940
Let's go to the bar.
Speaker C
00:07:55.500 - 00:07:56.540
It's not open yet.
Speaker E
00:07:57.980 - 00:07:58.860
I checked.
Speaker B
00:08:02.300 - 00:08:07.020
I was gonna say, did anybody have anything to add to that, I know we just said, like, good, but perfect summary.
Speaker C
00:08:07.180 - 00:08:24.060
I would only add that I read. I have limited a lot of my fiction of late to be very choosy.
And I am so glad that you reached out to me to let me read this book because your descriptions are fantastic.
Speaker D
00:08:24.060 - 00:08:24.540
Thank you.
Speaker C
00:08:24.540 - 00:09:13.570
Like, I was reading it because I study a lot of history and I do architectural history just. And just as hobbies.
Like, I watched bunch of architectural histories and just reading it, your grasp of the way Seattle was built and then built again with the dropdowns and the. And all of that. Like, you don't see that in period pieces often. Like, and the fact that it was in that book was key.
Like, I was just your description of how those things work on point. Like, that's the kind of thing that I need to have in more. In more books. If you're gonna do a period piece, get that period piece. Right?
And I was like, oh, Northwest. Got it. We're in Seattle right now. We're in a version of Seattle. And I just can't say enough about that.
Like, that is as a writer myself who's not at that level yet, that's the kind of thing that I need to read more of so I can learn to do that better.
Speaker D
00:09:13.890 - 00:09:40.240
So I think, yeah, it has some.
I stole some elements of San Francisco as well, but, yeah, definitely inspired by Seattle, Portland City, Francisco, and just the Gold rush, Pacific Northwest.
And one of the sort of science fiction writing, science fiction and fantasy and alternate history and steampunk is all about, I think, kind of like formalisms, like these rules you set for yourself. These are the. We call it world building.
Speaker F
00:09:40.240 - 00:09:40.520
Right.
Speaker D
00:09:40.520 - 00:09:56.600
These are the rules of the universe. And one of the rules I set for myself was that there was no obvious magic in. In this world, but there was super technology.
And also Cryptids are real. Yeah. So the.
Speaker B
00:09:56.600 - 00:10:02.920
The. The almost spotted Bigfoot was. That was like. We almost got a Bigfoot story out of this. This is great.
Speaker D
00:10:03.000 - 00:10:04.800
There might be a Bigfoot story one of these days.
Speaker F
00:10:04.800 - 00:10:07.320
Oh, dimension that Phoenixes exist.
Speaker D
00:10:07.320 - 00:10:07.800
Yeah.
Speaker C
00:10:08.120 - 00:10:10.120
The Sasquatch. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker F
00:10:11.080 - 00:10:11.560
All right.
Speaker D
00:10:12.760 - 00:10:17.240
There's a. Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. There's a Tommy Knocker in the second book.
Speaker C
00:10:17.240 - 00:10:17.800
So, yeah.
Speaker B
00:10:17.800 - 00:10:18.440
Oh, okay.
Speaker F
00:10:18.600 - 00:10:21.140
I'm looked into it already.
Speaker D
00:10:22.340 - 00:10:26.340
But yeah, it's. It's a very. It's a very queer book. It's a super queer book. It's.
Speaker F
00:10:26.340 - 00:10:28.940
You know, as a queer person, I loved it.
Speaker D
00:10:28.940 - 00:10:29.380
Yay.
Speaker B
00:10:29.780 - 00:10:30.260
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:10:30.340 - 00:10:31.860
Well, as a queer person. Thank you.
Speaker B
00:10:33.540 - 00:11:03.330
Yeah, no, it was definitely. That's how I was I was describing it to people. It's like, oh yeah, it's like a steampunk sapphic romance, spy thriller, blah blah, like just.
Just kept going and that was on there. So really great stuff. So now that we have a general idea of what the book is, we are at a gaming convention.
So the next thing would be, of course, that we should talk about what if we wanted to do this, if this was this, if this was the goal, if we wanted to make this book happen in a tabletop role playing game, what would be the best way to do it? Rob, I'm going to ask you to start off on this one.
Speaker E
00:11:03.330 - 00:11:10.170
Sure. What do you think the themes of, you know, all the best ensembles are found?
Speaker C
00:11:10.170 - 00:11:10.530
Family.
Speaker E
00:11:10.770 - 00:11:54.430
Right. And I feel this is a lot of representation there.
And because it's a crew of people, there's a few games specifically, maybe ones that are aimed toward interaction between the teammates and the hostel or whatever world they're living in. There's a Blades in the Dark game, if you're familiar.
Very themed toward having playing a group together as a group is very appealing, I think, and fits well for this story.
And I could also maybe make an argument for any dungeon world powerly by the apocalypse type game because it has the bonds mechanic, which I think is a pretty prominent theme in the whole book.
Speaker B
00:11:54.670 - 00:12:00.870
Yeah, there's definitely folks who are. I'm doing this for. Because of this person, because of this person, because of my attachment or because.
Speaker E
00:12:00.870 - 00:12:08.710
I despise that person. You know what I mean? It's not just what links you to people. It's also what links you to people that you're maybe not a fan of,.
Speaker B
00:12:08.710 - 00:12:14.470
You know, and has mechanical benefits. Like clearly it's like I will push through this pain so I can kick that guy's ass.
Speaker E
00:12:14.470 - 00:12:21.710
Exactly. Or rescue my girlfriend, however it might be. But that's. That's at least one of them.
Speaker D
00:12:21.870 - 00:12:22.830
Or save the cat.
Speaker C
00:12:25.070 - 00:12:27.070
Me and my onions were having this fight.
Speaker F
00:12:28.670 - 00:12:29.630
Avenge the Cook.
Speaker D
00:12:29.870 - 00:12:35.010
Avenge the Cook. Spoilers. Got to save the cat.
Speaker E
00:12:35.400 - 00:12:37.680
Did we do a spoiler alert? Because this is. This is it.
Speaker B
00:12:37.680 - 00:12:38.080
Oh, yeah.
Speaker C
00:12:38.080 - 00:12:38.440
Sorry.
Speaker B
00:12:38.760 - 00:12:48.200
For those of you who haven't again, hopefully I forgot I did say what we were going to do through the whole thing. But yes, we are spoiling the heck out of this. So, ready to go?
Speaker C
00:12:48.360 - 00:16:00.800
Yeah. So I had an initial thought as I was reading through the first couple chapters and then I changed as I was reading the rest of it.
Initially I was thinking what a great way to make Eberron more than what the game naturally is. Right. Eberron is designed for a noir steampunk aesthetic. You could pick any of the major cities and just run this. Run this here.
You could build a campaign that is literally street level or slightly below just in any Eberron city. And any of the factions that exist in that game could be mirrored by any of the groups and the different.
The different characters and groups of characters, the order of the Sasquatch and things like that, the elections and all that with minor alterations. But Eberron was what I was initially thinking, but when you brought up collaboration, it changed my mind on that a little bit.
I actually think Modiphius 2D20 system would work better. And for those who aren't terribly familiar, Star Trek is one of the games that I run a lot. Very familiar with that.
I've also run cohorts, Cthulhu, which is like Cthulhu in Roman times, Roman legionary times. And there are whole different kinds of iterations.
So each iteration has the same game mechanics, but you can title your attributes to fit your type of story. So in Star Trek, you have things like command, control, fitness, reason, insight.
You could change those names and have them cover the same kind of grounds, but make it more unique to this world.
So it could be much more in a connection or, you know, a much more emotional thing like the Sentience 2D20 game, which is all emotions like it's anger, it's love, it's hope, it's fear, those types of things. So you can alter that defense fit the story you're telling.
And the biggest and best part of the core Mechanics of the 2D20 system is the assistance factor. There's a meta currency that you use, and there's also the ability to aid your party, your group in doing something.
So if somebody wants to take an action, say shoot a hostile who's attacking one of your fellow saloon girls or what have you, you may not be the person who has the gun, but you can aid them, whether it be by distracting them or yelling at them. And that aid allows you to roll a die. So they are rolling their dice for that thing. And then there's a number of successes you have to reach.
As long as they get at least one success, because you're helping them, you get to roll one other die, which can help aid to that success. And I really think that would really strongly reinforce that bond between characters.
And that metacurrency is a great way to amp up the tension or lower the tension with, you know, momentum and threat or whatever you might call it. In those situations. And I thought that that would be a perfect expression of this game.
Speaker B
00:16:01.040 - 00:16:01.600
All right.
Speaker D
00:16:02.560 - 00:16:13.600
I love that. I love the. I love the idea of being able to select your relevant attributes. Yes, that seems super cool. Totally bespoke character generation.
Speaker F
00:16:13.600 - 00:16:14.240
Basically.
Speaker C
00:16:14.640 - 00:17:00.040
I actually do that with all of my role playing games. I rarely running a game will dictate. You must give me this kind of role. I want to be collaborative at the table.
I want people to say, what do you think works for your character? Now I may step in. It doesn't make sense for you use athletics to figure out why a person is telling the truth or a lie.
Like that may not make sense, but somebody could convince me that survival might make sense. And if they've got a good reasoning that matches the narrative of the character that they've brought to the table. Heck yeah.
That's what we're here for. We're here to tell stories about people doing things that are cool. We're not going to do that by me being a dictator saying, go do this.
I'm not going to get on that soapbox, but I'll pass.
Speaker B
00:17:00.040 - 00:17:00.520
All right.
Speaker C
00:17:00.520 - 00:17:02.320
I'll do my best to use that.
Speaker D
00:17:02.320 - 00:17:03.640
Storyteller to make you tell the truth.
Speaker C
00:17:05.560 - 00:17:06.840
Working with other people.
Speaker E
00:17:06.840 - 00:17:11.760
Come on. Doing push ups until you tell the truth. That's so weird. Okay, I'll tell you.
Speaker C
00:17:11.760 - 00:17:12.280
Ha ha.
Speaker E
00:17:13.130 - 00:17:13.930
Athletic troll.
Speaker C
00:17:14.010 - 00:17:18.010
Yeah. Welcome to the gun show.
Speaker B
00:17:18.410 - 00:17:19.770
Yes. How about now?
Speaker E
00:17:22.330 - 00:17:22.970
Oh, shoot.
Speaker C
00:17:22.970 - 00:17:23.690
Advantage.
Speaker B
00:17:25.690 - 00:17:31.250
Geez. All right, Elizabeth, you said you weren't doing as much role playing right now, but did you have any suggestions from.
Speaker D
00:17:31.250 - 00:17:52.570
I mean, I'm doing some role playing in the sense of playing. I am hopelessly behind on the state of the art in terms of game design. And I haven't been game mastering probably in 15, 20 years.
So I am way behind on that. So everything. Everything I would suggest would be extremely.
Speaker B
00:17:52.570 - 00:17:54.170
Old school, which is okay.
Speaker E
00:17:55.450 - 00:17:57.289
Don't worry. We're all old here.
Speaker D
00:17:57.370 - 00:17:58.010
Oh yeah.
Speaker C
00:18:01.450 - 00:18:02.970
I haven't got younger this week.
Speaker D
00:18:04.090 - 00:18:10.240
I think somebody did. Somebody said blades in the dark already. Yeah, I think that's a very good call.
Speaker E
00:18:10.240 - 00:18:10.680
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:18:10.920 - 00:18:20.680
Especially because of the like, justify your existence mechanics built into it. If I can explain a way for this to work, that it can work, but that's also something that Lunieke was talking about. So.
Speaker F
00:18:20.920 - 00:20:36.360
Yeah, I actually had two ideas. One is very similar to Blaze and Dark with the ever popular Thirsty Sword lesbian system by evil Thirsty Sword lesbians.
It fits very well on the narrative both on, of course, the young adult woman female power female community. That is such a strong part of that system inherently.
But as well as the fact that that system's all about your connections to the other players, the other party members and how your connections with them make yourselves stronger in your dynamic and relationship. Fits very well with the narrative of Carrion Memory. But I also had for the very much the steampunk aspect.
The Iron Kingdoms rpg not super popular RPG system has all that fun, ridiculous, silly steampunk nonsense that people love as well as interesting mechanic of how all the characters, the protagonists of the book have a lot of similarities but also a lot of unique differences that system has. You pick two classes when you make your characters.
Everyone has that sort of social class that can represent the working in the brothel as well as that secondary class that fits each unique character. Like how Karen has her affinity for horses and riding.
You can pick a class that has that affinity or you can pick a character with a character class with love knowledge like Priya or someone who works on the steampunk mechanics and such.
All these different classes you can pick that allow you to have everyone feel very similar, that they all work in the same place but have their own unique traits and aspects and mechanics that I know players love their unique mechanics. Not everyone feels like they're playing the same character that have that connection. And again you have all the ability to do all the.
And make and work with fun steampunk mechanics, machines and weapons that people love. So I'm sort of stuck between both those systems for various reasons. Two systems I have experience with and I love.
Speaker B
00:20:37.320 - 00:22:17.130
Yeah, no. And there's nothing wrong with hacking those two together. If that's what you were gonna be, that's what you're working with.
You guys have covered a decent number of the things that I've hit. Thirsty Sword, lesbians, Blades in the dark. Those were things that I had considered as a quick one shot. I would probably use Spirit of the Century.
Just a nice fate based, easy to get things done really quick. I could get that. That feeling in, but I don't feel like it would. All of the modifications to the. To the Singer sewing machine was just.
That requires something more like Iron Kingdoms or. I was thinking in terms of Girl Genius, the girl genius tabletop role playing game because they have a whole like. Like mad science invention thing.
And that's. I just kept picturing like that like this continually evolving sewing machine of doom.
And I was trying to think what could I do that would let somebody actually make that and work with that? And that was the system that I was looking at there. All right, so we've discussed general mechanics, but now we're going to move on to.
We're going to move on to the thing that is the most popular among all game masters, which is we're going to read a book and then we're going to immediately put that into our own campaign and pretend like we made it up ourselves. And I think I've already sort of started. Said one of the things that I was really interested in. I really love the modified Singer machine.
I was absolutely all over that. I am a sucker for any sort of like generally modded piece of equipment in a. In a steampunk thing. I. I love the. The octopus ship. I mean, come on. It's.
It's got ship with tentacles. I mean, come on. I'm instantly going to put that in there. So those were mine.
I'll throw it all the way back down to the end of the table down the road. Rowan, what would you. If you were gonna pick something from this book and throw it right into a campaign you're running now, what would you steal?
Speaker F
00:22:17.850 - 00:24:01.120
My idea is actually a little bit more abstract in that I really liked the book's ability to give consequence and failure that wasn't the death of the characters. Not every action and decision they could make. They were all worried about their own injury and death.
They were worried about how it would affect their own narrative and characters and relationships and even themselves in ways that wasn't death.
Like, Karen can only do so much to help, you know, the ones she loved without risking getting kicked out of the brothel, as well as all the other times where they did fail and they got captured and, you know, they risked revealing other information about the other parts of their plan.
And all these instances are inspiration that I want to use for my own campaigns, for when my players and their dice do roll poorly or do make decisions that probably aren't the smartest. So I can give them opportunities to have that feeling of failure that they messed up without losing a character.
That's something I really like to do, like to improve on with my own campaigns. And I was really inspired by the book for specifics. No one wants to lose their character. And I know my players love when they do fail.
They don't mind failure because failure is just more opportunities to get back up again.
And when I offer them risks that aren't injury and death, that they care about getting kicked out of an organization or a group or found family, they're going to make different decisions now. And it's for entirely narrative reasons. So, yeah, that's what I really, like, I want to really take away from my own games.
Speaker B
00:24:02.480 - 00:24:04.160
That's inspiring. Awesome.
Speaker D
00:24:04.800 - 00:25:09.050
Absolutely true that emotional stakes are the most interesting stakes. Whatever. Your character has to want something. Like, even as a player, your character has to want something.
As a game master, your antagonists have to want something. Otherwise they just become these people who show up, lurk on a hillside gloweringly and then vanish. And like, there's no.
You need to know what they're doing when the players aren't around. So. And it's the same with the, with the villains in a book. You need to know what they're doing when the players aren't looking at them.
And that means that for me, one of the most interesting technologies that I. Or, you know, steampunk toys that I put into the book was Peter Bantle's mind control machine. Because that allows him to, like.
I mean, it doesn't allow him to completely control anybody, but it allows him to manipulate them. And I mean, it's basically disinformation. Right. Except he can do it directly to your brain. And we all know what it's like living in that world now.
Speaker B
00:25:10.170 - 00:25:12.810
I was gonna say a fairly perceptive.
Speaker D
00:25:13.050 - 00:25:13.690
Too soon?
Speaker B
00:25:14.730 - 00:25:16.570
Just ahead of your time there for sure.
Speaker C
00:25:18.100 - 00:25:19.780
Herald or harbinger. She got it right.
Speaker D
00:25:19.780 - 00:25:38.580
Sorry. Sorry.
But for that, I feel like that gives you some interesting things to do as a game master with your player characters where they're never quite sure who they can trust and they're never quite sure if they're being influenced as well. So that's fun for me.
Speaker B
00:25:38.580 - 00:25:44.680
Yeah. To have people question their own motives while they're in the middle of the game. That's always. Yeah, that's. That's role playing gold.
Speaker D
00:25:44.680 - 00:25:50.120
And it, it gets him invested because it really, really start to hate those villains. They really start to hate those villains.
Speaker B
00:25:50.120 - 00:25:59.640
No, he was the. He was definitely the smarmy frat guy that I want to punch in the face from. From sentence one. So fantastic.
Speaker F
00:26:00.600 - 00:26:02.680
My player's favorite type of villain right there.
Speaker C
00:26:03.480 - 00:28:55.140
I would say that for me, I think again, just. And I think I'm reiterating to some extent what everybody else has said, this narrative gold here. What we're really mining for is consequences.
What we're mining for is how do you in a game, in a game setting, allow players to fail forward dice are going to betray us. We know that. They betray us as GMs, they betray us as players. They betray your friends probably more than you.
At least that's what you're going to tell yourself when you go Home. But the reality is is that Dice will betray the game. And as GMs and as game writers, which we at Tabletop Trees also do.
I didn't mention that earlier. We write game books and adventures as well. Is you have to make sure you build into your game system.
A way to make roles have consequences that do not stop the story. Different systems do that in many different ways. We try to borrow from all the systems that allow fail forwards in our games.
Whether it's a 5e game or not, we will. Most of our challenges are built with some form of threshold. If the goal is 155 over you're, you know, or 145 over is super success.
You get more than what you would have expected. Anything between that that threshold is going to be a regular success. Similarly, a failure that's five under isn't going to be an abject failure.
You're going to get a base amount of information, maybe a little wonky or have some consequence and we will write that into each of those critical scenes and then anything under that would be more. That's not a WOTC standard and it's a thing that we picked up from other games powered by the Apocalypse Blades in the Dark.
Any game that has that fail forward kind of mechanic and the way that 2d20 does it is they have a complication. So if you roll a failure or a critical failure, you get a complication.
And what that does your die roll doesn't change the success or failure specifically. What it does is change the narrative. So you can fail a role. Like if you're on a starship and you're like we have to dodge this asteroid.
That doesn't mean your ship blows up. It means your ship got hit. Now you've got a system breach and maybe you lost some crew members somewhere.
Your life is now harder because you failed your role, but you are still in this adventure.
Similarly, if you get that critical failure now you have a much harder consequence in addition to the ship that has the breach and all those other things. So as a game designer and as a game master, whether that's in something I'm playing or not, I always put that in and sometimes I just do that.
I get lost in the sauce. Right. So I'm just doing that on the fly. That's where I think my particular skill comes in is improving that type of thing.
Speaker B
00:28:56.020 - 00:28:58.980
Fantastic. What a great idea. Go ahead, Rob.
Speaker A
00:28:58.980 - 00:28:59.300
Ready?
Speaker E
00:28:59.300 - 00:29:23.070
I always like an HQ for a campaign where we're playing in for characters that have a place to come to to either do their research. Meet each other, talk with each other, interact with each other outside of the game world. Not the world, but outside of the sessions even.
You know what I mean? Like, you. Like the world persists because you have a home.
Speaker F
00:29:23.470 - 00:29:23.750
Right.
Speaker E
00:29:23.750 - 00:31:00.050
It's not just like, okay, you get to the dungeon. I was like, what did we do before that? I'm not saying I want to roleplay having lunch, but I will like to have rules like the brothel.
Like have a cast of characters that aren't necessarily the players. That kind of makes the world feel more real and influences how you behave outside of combat or outside of the mission. Right.
That helps build a character and build your team and builds camaraderie. You know, Blaze in the Dark does that.
There's a whole thing with expanding influence and expanding your territory and also building how secure your base might be. Like, you know, a lot of the superhero games we've played in the past have base rules. You know, certainly physical. Like, how hard are the walls?
Are there drones, the sentry things? Or is it a magical base? Whatever.
Whatever the HQ has that you kind of influence from your character kind of influences the world you play in and, you know, makes your bond stronger as a team.
And I feel that that is what I would take out of that they put into any game, whether it's steampunk, intrigue or post apocalyptic Mad Max sort of thing. You know, you can have that same outline, but the genre is wildly different. Like cyberpunk. This would be great for cyberpunk.
You can port the story without any much changes other than the technology being different. Right. Big corporation, big villain, small gang.
Speaker B
00:31:00.280 - 00:31:03.880
Yeah, change it. Change. Change the cant slightly. Yeah. And you'd be there.
Speaker C
00:31:04.040 - 00:31:04.440
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:31:04.440 - 00:31:06.120
One less tarnation. One more.
Speaker C
00:31:06.600 - 00:31:07.520
One more frack.
Speaker E
00:31:07.520 - 00:31:07.800
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:31:07.800 - 00:31:08.440
Right, right.
Speaker C
00:31:09.160 - 00:31:21.960
I have to keep the. Until I up my Chuck. Use that until my kids get angry at me.
Speaker D
00:31:24.440 - 00:31:28.470
Then my work here is done. That is my legacy.
Speaker C
00:31:28.710 - 00:31:31.750
I love that, like, that had me in stitches.
Speaker D
00:31:31.750 - 00:32:07.740
I'm like, I have colorful. Language was really considered kind of an art form in the western US in that time period.
And I spent so much time, like, combing through old newspapers and accounts of things people said or, you know, like, things people wrote down because in. In diaries, because they thought it was clever. And it turns out, for example, like a lot of the Doc Holliday's.
Val Kilmer's dialogue in Tombstone is actually things Doc Holliday said.
Speaker C
00:32:07.740 - 00:32:08.180
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:32:08.900 - 00:32:09.620
Huckleberry.
Speaker D
00:32:09.620 - 00:32:11.100
I'm your Huckleberry. Yeah.
Speaker A
00:32:11.100 - 00:32:11.940
Well, well, well.
Speaker C
00:32:12.100 - 00:32:14.780
That was extraordinarily well researched character.
Speaker B
00:32:14.780 - 00:32:15.420
That's Very good.
Speaker D
00:32:15.420 - 00:32:55.760
And one of the other lines that didn't make it into the movie that.
That I thought was absolutely fabulous is apparently after the gunfight around the corner and down the street from the OK Corral, he went back to his rooming house and said to his girlfriend, well, I don't know what I'm gonna stack up against today. I'm like, wow. Yeah. You know, so this.
That being entertaining in speech, being a raconteur was considered, like, a good thing, you know, a character strength. And I really tried to get that in there and give that.
Speaker B
00:32:55.760 - 00:33:16.510
It's definitely a value of Karen's, and it's a nice way. It's also awesome because, of course, you're the writer and you get. You're writing about the writer who's doing.
Who's enjoying the writing and doing the writing thing. So that's always fun. But that brings us to the next part of our discussion, which is. And we'll start with you, Elizabeth.
Obviously, for the rest of us, we may have things that resonate with other books that we have read.
Speaker A
00:33:16.660 - 00:33:16.820
Read.
Speaker B
00:33:16.820 - 00:33:29.380
But you wrote this, so were there books that direct.
Obviously, you just said that the historical stuff directly inspired what you were doing, but were there books that you were like, oh, this was like this? Or I wanted to write something like this. Or something along those lines.
Speaker D
00:33:29.460 - 00:33:38.660
Oh, definitely. I mean, so I think probably. I'm sorry, I'm having an aphasic moment.
Speaker B
00:33:39.460 - 00:33:42.830
Should we shout random things at you until you remember Pickles?
Speaker D
00:33:43.230 - 00:34:22.780
Pickles. Yeah. No, that's not. There's a stag beetle. Thanks a lot. You're all helping. But there was a. I mean, there's.
There's, you know, Lonesome Dove and True Grit, and all of that is definitely, like, stuff that I came in with. And the 1980s, 1990s, deconstructive Western things like, you know, Once Upon a Time in the west and Unforgiven. Yeah, Unforgiven.
Definitely a big influence. There's also. Scott. What's the comic book? Tim Truman.
Speaker C
00:34:22.780 - 00:34:23.660
Oh, Jonah Hex.
Speaker D
00:34:23.660 - 00:34:34.060
Jonah Hex. Jonah, yeah. Big, big Jonah Hex influence. Thank you. For those listening at home, my spouse is in the audience, and he is my global brain extension.
Speaker B
00:34:35.340 - 00:34:36.590
Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker C
00:34:36.590 - 00:34:45.230
Yeah. That's how desperate it is. I'm someone else's. We only go through some form of symbiosis, my friend.
Speaker D
00:34:47.550 - 00:34:52.830
I have. I have outsourced all of my. All of my dates and. And proper nouns to Scott. That's sad.
Speaker C
00:34:53.950 - 00:34:57.550
Obviously, I'm not great with the time thing and my Wife is back in Connecticut. Oh no.
Speaker D
00:34:57.550 - 00:34:58.110
I'm so sorry.
Speaker C
00:34:58.110 - 00:34:59.150
This is why I'm hurting.
Speaker B
00:35:00.750 - 00:35:18.250
But everybody else, obviously we read the book and we've all enjoyed books like this before. Is there a particular book, Rowan, that you. That you were like.
Yeah, if I were reading after I read this, obviously there are more books in the series, so. But after that, what media do you think would really resonate with this book?
Speaker F
00:35:18.810 - 00:36:28.570
I did realize reading this book that I've sort of been slacking my steampunk literature as of late.
I didn't quite realize until I was deep into this book and thinking about that in a non steampunk option, it reminded me of this book I read a while ago or a series called the Seven Realms novels. I want to say it was by Cinder William Shima, if I'm getting my author's names right.
It was a very similar book that focused on a one particular city. It was, you know, a fantasy city fantasy setting in this example. But it was all about the dynamics between the different factions within the city.
Much like this book and you know, the, you know, Karen's workplace and all the other brothels and the. The mayor and such. That dynamic reminded me of what went on the Seven Realms novels. I don't know.
Real like strong connected connection is just what it reminded me of in. In the narrative and the thorough lines throughout. Karen Memory just resonated with that book series. Brought it up, brought it back up to my mind.
But I am behind on other steampunk genre apparently, so I need to double down on that after the come.
Speaker B
00:36:28.570 - 00:36:31.770
I'm glad we've pushed you in that direction. That's always the best.
Speaker D
00:36:32.170 - 00:36:52.700
I think if you're looking for more steampunk with like Seattle references and sex workers, then Sherry Priest's own Shaker, Dreadnought and Ganymede would probably be a good place to go. More zombies.
Speaker G
00:36:53.660 - 00:36:54.300
More zombies.
Speaker D
00:36:54.300 - 00:36:56.860
Yeah, more zombies. Far more. Many, many more zombies.
Speaker E
00:36:57.500 - 00:36:58.540
Steampunk zombies.
Speaker B
00:36:59.100 - 00:36:59.740
There you go.
Speaker C
00:36:59.980 - 00:39:06.260
So oddly have not read a lot of steampunk. I played a great deal of steampunk, watch tons of it. Reading it I had not really done much of before. I'm sure I have, but effing.
I would consider John Carter of Mars a version of steampunk in some of its application, even though it's not the setting specifically. And I read all of those when I was younger.
What really resonated with me is it verified and honored all of the little ADHD hobbies I had as a child growing up reading Western biographer fees, wasting half of My summer and it's not wasting. I say that tongue in cheek at the library doing microfiche work because I was bored.
I used to read relentlessly and I would just run out of things to read. I had read every book in the kids section before I was seven.
And so I would just literally just randomly have somebody throw me a topic and I would just read everything I possibly could on it, research it. And so Western era was kind of that thing.
As an adult with a full time job, family, kids, grandkids, side business and going to all these conventions, I read a lot less than I would prefer. But I do spend a lot of time doing a lot of shorts and stuff on YouTube for various topics. One of my most recent recent hobbies, architecture.
Which is why I really picked up on the Seattle Pit.
Because I had three weeks ago just read a whole lot about when Seattle was being reconstructed and, and how they did that and the drop downs and the ladders and all of that stuff. And I was just fascinated by it. And this book really just gave me a way to kind of blend that with setting stuff.
So writing setting is, I'm good with narrative setting is not my strength, but it really gave me a window at as to how to approach setting based on the types of things that I know. And so it just resonated with like all the things that I've actually been a part of.
Speaker B
00:39:07.060 - 00:39:12.100
Awesome. I'm glad this timed out perfectly for you. Like the best thing. Rob.
Speaker E
00:39:12.180 - 00:39:31.270
Yeah, I was a big fan of the Arcane series on Netflix, which is a very much class divide.
Technology is power, but you know, the lower class either tries to get their hands on it or duplicate it or break it so they can not be under that boot.
Speaker D
00:39:31.350 - 00:39:32.950
The street finds its uses.
Speaker E
00:39:33.030 - 00:39:50.540
Yeah, exactly.
And you know, RoboCop, like, you know, dehumanization, how much technology can change you or maybe not if you're strong enough and how you can use it against your oppressors controllers.
Speaker B
00:39:51.420 - 00:40:20.330
I'm just gonna throw in the Bloody Jack series by L A Mayer, which is fabulous YA series about young girl doing all these weird things throughout history. And that kind of, that felt like that was. That definitely resonated here.
Also, I already brought up Girl Genius, which anytime you bring up steampunk, one must bring up Girl Genius. It must happen. Also the Mel Jean Brooks series, the Iron Sea series, specifically the.
The Iron Duke is the first one that literally has a giant like mechanical kraken that attacks people also. And I was like, okay, here we go.
Speaker D
00:40:20.970 - 00:40:23.050
I mean, we're all Copying Jules Verne.
Speaker C
00:40:23.050 - 00:40:23.930
Yes, we are.
Speaker B
00:40:24.730 - 00:40:27.450
We're all copying Jules Verne. Absolutely on board.
Speaker C
00:40:27.530 - 00:40:30.170
Number one to this day, favorite author of all times.
Speaker B
00:40:31.450 - 00:40:53.530
We're all just trying to evoke that feeling of like. Of let's have something like explode out of. To have this strange yet weird, wonderful, mechanical thing.
Chris Granis is in the room, and I know he's mentioned this before on the show, so I'm going to say also, Wild Wild West. Not necessarily the greatest film in the world, but for visuals, visually.
Speaker D
00:40:53.770 - 00:40:56.770
Visually, just giant spider in the third act.
Speaker B
00:40:56.770 - 00:40:57.450
Giant spider.
Speaker C
00:40:59.130 - 00:41:00.810
Can't be improved by a giant spider.
Speaker B
00:41:00.810 - 00:41:06.970
Yes, it's very true. As. As we will see at this con this year, too. That's my understanding. All right.
Speaker D
00:41:08.660 - 00:41:15.780
The original 60s television show was also. Yeah, one of the mother texts of Seampunk, for sure.
Speaker C
00:41:15.780 - 00:41:16.500
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker B
00:41:16.580 - 00:41:18.180
All right. So before we run out of time,.
Speaker C
00:41:20.420 - 00:42:13.940
And it's a weird one because I absolutely love the show and I hate the fact that it was related to the person involved at the Nevers on. On hbo Max was a brilliant steampunk series. It was not so much on the. It wasn't high on the technology bit, but the fantastical elements were there.
It ended up being a weird sci fi thing in the end, but I love that feel of it. And it really.
I saw a lot of parallels between the types of characters and the plight that women were forced into and the strength that they showed when they're like, no, not today, not tomorrow. This is where this ends. And I loved that element of it. Like, I got a lot of those vibes from this book. And I just.
It's a pity that such a great piece of work had to do with Mr. Whedon.
Speaker E
00:42:13.940 - 00:42:14.860
And that's.
Speaker C
00:42:14.860 - 00:42:33.620
That's the part that makes it hard to bring up for me, but the actors that were involved in it, the work that they put in, and the other people involved was amazing. And I would honestly say if I could find a way to do it without giving that guy a penny, I would recommend watching that.
Speaker A
00:42:33.620 - 00:42:34.100
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:42:34.900 - 00:42:50.380
All right, so we are coming towards the end here. So we will start with our author, but then everybody will follow after that.
If we have stuff you'd like to promote, because, you know, obviously people will listen to the show and we want to be sure that they know where to find you and where to find your stuff and where to find more of your stuff.
Speaker D
00:42:50.380 - 00:43:09.300
So, Elizabeth, I am currently a newly Hugo Award nominated for best series for my White Space books, which are also very gay. They are stem lesbians in space. In the far future. And it's not a utopia. It's not a dystopia. It's a topia.
Speaker B
00:43:11.380 - 00:43:12.220
Dystopia.
Speaker D
00:43:12.220 - 00:43:38.700
It's just a topia. Yeah. And there are two sequels to Care in Memory Stone Mad, which is a technically a very short novel. It's just over the line into novel.
And the book that just came out last year, Angel Maker, in which Karen and Priya get jobs as stunt workers on an early motion picture.
Speaker B
00:43:39.260 - 00:43:41.260
Oh, so early Hollywood. Fantastic.
Speaker D
00:43:41.260 - 00:43:41.820
Early Hollywood.
Speaker C
00:43:41.820 - 00:43:42.220
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:43:43.180 - 00:43:45.340
Rowan, do you have anything that you want to tell the folks about?
Speaker F
00:43:45.980 - 00:43:54.220
The only thing I really have is the. The con we're in right now. The Rising Phoenix Con, Milford, Massachusetts, every April. Come check us out next year.
Speaker B
00:43:54.460 - 00:43:54.940
All right.
Speaker C
00:43:56.140 - 00:46:23.020
Yeah. So I, as I said, I'm a tabletop Journeys. We do a podcast. I'm actually wearing our shirt.
For those who have ability to see is our factions book, which is a book we released last September that has. It's basically about factions. The way we like to run factions at our table.
There are nine specific factions that we detail and how they work narratively, giving them weight. We have a how to chapter which is building up your own factions.
It's largely system agnostic, so you can use those concepts in any game system you would like. For the ease of use, we have included stat blocks which are 5e based. 5 5E based.
And the idea there was since most people know that game, if they play a different system, it'll make it easier for them to iterate those types of characters into whatever game system they're using because they have a baseline. So that's beyond that. It is all system agnostic.
Our most recent book is the Bridgewell Chronicles, which we did determined that talking about factions wasn't good enough. You needed to display them. They needed to get some legs under them in order to be good. So we wrote a series of adventures.
One pagers that are designed to have low level characters. This happens to be 5e based. Interact with the factions. They don't necessarily have to be against or for. They don't necessarily have to join.
But each adventure features a different faction that the players can interact with.
And the ideas give players a time to see all of the factions and then they can decide which ones they want to be with or not with and let the narrative determine whether or not they've made friends or enemies of the factions. Because none of our factions are wholly good or wholly evil. They are with one exception. They are all.
They all have their own, as you said, goals, needs, wants. And they have their drives and they have what they will and won't do to get it.
And if your player group runs afoul of one of those, they could be the nicest group of guys. But if you run afoul of somebody who's willing to do whatever it takes for their goal, you've made an enemy.
And that's the kind of thing that we like to do at the table, to Rowan's point. Consequences. So that's what we are writing and we're working on our second set of adventures with those as a feature in our own setting as well.
You can see us online. We talk about it all the time. Drop by, say hi, tell us if you got us on this podcast.
Speaker B
00:46:23.020 - 00:46:25.140
Yeah, that'd be great. Rob, anything?
Speaker E
00:46:25.140 - 00:46:28.420
No, I'm not promoting anything. I have nothing. I'm not involved in anything.
Speaker C
00:46:29.060 - 00:46:29.460
Good.
Speaker E
00:46:29.940 - 00:46:34.740
I'll promote sandwiches. Sandwiches. They're delicious sandwiches.
Speaker B
00:46:34.740 - 00:46:42.260
And we have sandwiches for everybody now that we're all finished with the podcast. So thank you all very much for being here on the show. Thank you for talking to us. It was great.
Speaker C
00:46:42.420 - 00:46:43.140
Fantastic.
Speaker A
00:46:43.380 - 00:46:48.060
And that was Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear. Thanks again to Lou Anika Miller, Rowan.
Speaker G
00:46:48.060 - 00:46:49.860
D' Andrea and Rob Chimarco for all.
Speaker A
00:46:49.860 - 00:47:00.260
Their bang up first rate speech, Brian and a special Much obliged to our guest author, Elizabeth Behr. I was plain thunderstruck to be able to chat with such an amazing writer, gamer and fellow nerd.
Speaker B
00:47:00.260 - 00:47:01.860
Thanks again for being on the show.
Speaker A
00:47:02.740 - 00:47:16.470
Thanks again to Rising Phoenix Game Con for making this series of interviews possible.
Be sure to check out their website@rising phoenixgamecon.com and make sure to leave room in your gaming calendar in late April to attend the Con in Milford, Massachusetts.
Speaker G
00:47:16.630 - 00:48:04.340
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 Blue sky, at GMBookClub BlueSky Social, on Facebook, at GameMasters Book Club, on Mastodon at GameMastersBook Club and on Instagram Amasters Book Club.
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. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music. Later, gamers and to paraphrase the great.
Speaker B
00:48:04.340 - 00:48:06.160
Terry Pratchett, always try to be the.
Speaker G
00:48:06.160 - 00:48:08.920
Place where the Falling angel meets the rising ape.