GMBC ep51 - She Pens Gothic Gaslamp, They Turn It into Game Night: Olivia Atwater Inspires Campaigns with The Witchwood Knot
The Witchwood Knot
Olivia Atwater
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.560
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:05.440 - 00:00:38.740
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience.
And where else would we go for great fiction than to Olivia Atwater and her gothic gaslamp fantasy series that starts off with the Witchwood, not There's something strange going on in Witchwood Manor and Winnie, our confident and competent protagonist is going to figure it out.
Karen form and Chris Grannis, along with the author herself, Olivia Atwater, are going to help you figure out how to run a magical gothic horror game with Faye.
Let's get into the conversation and welcome.
Speaker C
00:00:38.740 - 00:01:25.560
Everybody to the Game Masters Book Club where we take great stories and we turn them into great tabletop experiences.
And this time, the second time running, we're going to have an Atwater on the show and we're going to be talking about one of her books, the Witch would not a wonderful gothic fairy tale.
And as a result, I'm going to have our game masters come and introduce themselves and when they do, they're going to talk about the bad things that fairies have done.
And just a quick reminder, one of those game masters is the author.
So this is going to be great.
All right, we're actually going to start with our author herself.
Olivia, would you mind introducing yourself, telling some people a little bit about your gaming journey and tell people about the bad things that fairies do in your game?
Speaker A
00:01:26.920 - 00:02:11.230
Yes.
So I'm Olivia Atwater.
I have been in a full time author since around like 2019.
Well, no, I've been like a part time author since 2019 and then I went full time right when Covid hit.
My most popular books were probably the Regency Fairy Tales which starts with Half a Soul.
They got republished by Orbit.
These days I am working on the Victorian fairy tales which is a follow up to those and a lot more gothic.
And I also write, co write with my husband Nicholas the epic steampunk fantasy series Tales of the Iron Rose, which you guys already know about.
So.
Speaker C
00:02:12.990 - 00:02:13.830
Yes, which we.
Speaker B
00:02:13.830 - 00:02:14.110
Which.
Speaker C
00:02:14.110 - 00:02:18.710
Which if you are listening to the episodes in order, you just listen to them talk about it.
Speaker A
00:02:18.710 - 00:03:40.170
Oh, and as far as like horrible things that fairies have done.
God, where do I begin?
I love having fairies in my games when I can get away with it.
It depends on the genre, the system.
Off the top of my head, I think one of my favorites is there was this king that my group was trying to get on side investigate.
They weren't sure whether he was, whether he was a good guy or a bad guy, whether they could work with him or not.
All they knew is that he was really flamboyant and.
And he loved gallivanting off and getting involved in really bizarre folk tale type stories.
And they finally meet him in person and he's just bizarre.
And finally they accidentally caught sight of him with true seeing.
This was a Pathfinder game.
And they went, oh, my God, he's a fairy.
Everything makes sense now because, you know, he was basically approaching it like, this is all a story.
I'm a king, I'm a hero, and I'm going to do kingly, heroic things.
But they didn't make sense because of, of course, fairies have a really horrible idea of both of those things.
We left off on that game.
We're going to be playing it again probably in like January.
And we had basically just left off at that point.
So I still get to see what they're going to do with that information.
Speaker C
00:03:41.370 - 00:03:48.410
Still waiting to see what impact this fairy who wants to be a hero is going to have on the party.
Oh, boy.
Speaker A
00:03:48.650 - 00:03:51.930
He's very bad at being a hero, I got to say.
He's chaotic neutral.
Speaker D
00:03:53.130 - 00:03:54.010
Of course he is.
Speaker B
00:03:54.790 - 00:03:55.110
Yes.
Speaker C
00:03:55.670 - 00:04:02.470
Karen, would you like to tell the people a little bit about yourself and a little bit about what bad things fairies do in your campaign?
Speaker D
00:04:02.790 - 00:05:18.290
Sure.
I'm Karen.
I'm a sock designer by day and a role playing nerd by some nights.
As far as terrible things in fairy, the only thing I could think of was I was running a Strixhaven campaign in D and D with friends of mine, and I had then been gifted the Wild, the witchlight.
So I kind of like pop that smack in the middle of my Strix Heaven campaign, because one of my players, who was playing a Harangun, I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, who had made their special school project searching for the legendary Far Burrow where his people had supposedly originated.
So through a series of admittedly Watership down inspired clues, I kind of led them into Faerie through a portal in a magic well that they found under a student dorm during, like a rager which, you know, happens.
And they find out that most of the Harangan had fled Faerie eons ago because they were known to be blessed with luck, and so were systematically hunted by all the other Fae peoples for their body parts, especially their feet.
So those that escaped did into the regular realm, I guess.
And all the Harangan that they found left in Faerie were all kind of shells of their former selves, and every single one of them is missing a left foot, except for the one who made some terrible lifelong Binding deal to be able to like, keep both of his.
Speaker E
00:05:18.690 - 00:05:19.090
What?
Speaker D
00:05:20.730 - 00:05:22.570
Yep.
Yep.
Speaker E
00:05:22.730 - 00:05:23.930
Oh, my God.
Speaker C
00:05:25.690 - 00:05:29.530
Okay.
Great feet.
Oh, my God.
Speaker E
00:05:30.170 - 00:05:30.650
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:05:31.610 - 00:05:33.370
Anyway, you want a terrible, right?
Speaker C
00:05:33.370 - 00:05:45.450
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, not unless it's like the book is Melissa Mayer's book Cinder.
Where you can craft your own foot.
Like, if you could do that, then maybe.
Maybe you could.
I could.
Speaker D
00:05:45.690 - 00:05:46.090
Ah.
Speaker C
00:05:46.740 - 00:05:47.140
Anyway,.
Speaker A
00:05:49.220 - 00:05:52.180
I just want to say I highly approve.
I like all of this.
Speaker D
00:05:52.340 - 00:05:52.980
Thank you.
Speaker C
00:05:53.220 - 00:06:06.500
I've read your books.
That's not a surprise.
Anyway, Chris, I know you to be a fan of the Fae.
So why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your gaming journey and about your dealings with them.
Speaker E
00:06:06.740 - 00:07:53.500
Hi, I'm Chris.
I am a fan of the Fae.
I have been playing role playing games from the.
From the early 80s and running games from then.
Mostly played D and D, then moved on to most of the White Wolf games.
And now I'm into Lord of the Rings games because the new Lord of the Rings game is cool.
One ring and I have run more changeling games than you can shake a sick at.
One of the better changeling games.
Back in 2017 or so, I had a missing persons game.
With the change with the Fae, it turned out that the local school children there were.
The classes kept getting smaller, but no one seems to notice anyone not being there.
It's just that they weren't.
That the classes were smaller and smaller and, you know, no one can remember any kids actually not being there anymore.
So.
Turned out that there was a fairy kidnapper who was taking these children to hollow out their souls so that other Fae could come in and take their bodies and use them through there.
But because of the way the mists worked and because of the way their magic worked, no one could remember these people.
They just remembered that there's something weird.
It's.
Why are these.
Why are there these extra desks?
Our heroes were able to figure it out once they kidnapped the child of one of the.
One of the heroes.
So went into the dreaming and did some bargaining with the Fae to get them to get their kid, to get the kids back.
But that was probably the worst thing they ever did.
Speaker C
00:07:55.260 - 00:07:56.180
Wow.
Okay.
Speaker D
00:07:56.180 - 00:07:59.660
You asked for terrible Fae things.
You're gonna do terrible Fae things.
They're.
Speaker C
00:07:59.660 - 00:08:02.060
They're horrible, the Fae are.
Speaker E
00:08:02.060 - 00:08:05.580
You know, they're.
They're not nice.
Speaker D
00:08:05.980 - 00:08:07.260
So it makes them so fun.
Speaker C
00:08:07.340 - 00:08:07.860
It is.
Speaker E
00:08:07.860 - 00:08:08.300
It is.
Speaker C
00:08:08.460 - 00:08:10.940
Yeah.
It's that lack of.
That lack of moral.
Speaker E
00:08:11.560 - 00:08:14.800
Exactly.
They.
They thought it was a perfectly good idea.
Speaker C
00:08:14.800 - 00:08:16.680
Oh, yeah.
No, makes perfect sense.
Speaker A
00:08:17.400 - 00:08:18.920
It's completely logical.
Speaker E
00:08:19.400 - 00:08:24.520
They were being they were actually being kind.
No one was missing these kids.
Speaker B
00:08:25.480 - 00:08:26.120
Goodness.
Speaker C
00:08:27.000 - 00:10:08.790
Anyway, my name is Eric Jackson and I'm the host of the show and I have been playing for a long time and I've used the fey on a number of occasions.
But my favorite occurrence of the Fae.
I'm sorry to tell those of you who enjoyed all the really gruesome stuff that has happened so far.
Mine's not nearly as gruesome, unfortunately.
I have a world that I have built around my history of my history as a biologist and in my homebrew campaign.
The Fae are literally a virus.
They are something that has invaded the cell, which is the world.
And they are really good at extracting resources.
One of the things that they do terribly well is that in this world, the elves of this world, who are not fairy, do all of their procreating through trees.
So they are symbiotic with these types of trees which are incredibly magical.
And the Fae love these trees.
So yes, okay, so maybe it is creepy.
The Fae eat the baby trees of the elves.
So that's their primary.
That's their primary thing.
And there have been several large continental level upheavals to prevent the Fae from getting to these trees because they can't cross salt water because I believe there's too much iron in it.
But that's just me.
So that's my.
That's my experience with the Fae.
So.
So stealing feet, baby eating trees, serial killers.
And a hero who isn't a hero and is probably going to kill the whole party.
I'm excited, folks.
This is.
This is what fairy is all about.
Okay?
Speaker E
00:10:09.030 - 00:10:10.430
They are the fair folk.
Speaker C
00:10:10.430 - 00:11:15.580
They are fair.
Very fair.
A little too fair most of the time.
Anyway.
So we're going to talk about the Witch Would Not.
So everybody should know a little something about the book.
So the author is here, but I shall dare to give the summary.
The Witch Would not is the gothic cousin to Olivia Atwater's previous Regency Fairy Tale series.
Winnie is the confident and competent hero of the dark fairy tale who upon arriving at Witchwood Manor, is quickly given an intelligent Fae rival, the post of protector of an unruly boy and the need to evade his lecherous father.
All of this is secondary to her mission to to her mission to determine what Witchwood Manor has to do with the disappearance of fairies.
This is a sinister story of nasty fairies, predatory humans and the twisty rules that both of them abide by.
But there's also brave servants, protective ghost cat familiars and a shared love of music between our Rivals to lovers.
The wonderful gaslight fantasy setting skillfully combines magic fairies and the emerging modern sensibilities of an England that never was, but is definitely fun to read about.
Speaker A
00:11:16.060 - 00:11:18.380
I'm impressed.
That was good.
I'm okay.
Speaker B
00:11:18.380 - 00:11:18.700
Good.
Speaker C
00:11:18.700 - 00:11:29.950
All right.
I didn't make the author mad.
Fantastic.
Chris, would you like to make the author mad?
I mean, would you like to make some comments about the book and about its themes in all of its.
In all of its glory?
Speaker E
00:11:30.190 - 00:12:31.850
I would say this even if the author were not here.
I actually adored this book.
This hit all of the right buttons for me.
It had some amazingly creepy fae.
It moved beyond the mortal veil into the.
Into, well, not quite fairy, but real close to Faerie.
Very adjacent in a way that was very adjacent into the.
Into the dreams of the people within the Witchwood, not very adroitly.
The characters were well crafted and well realized.
Just a fascinating book.
You know, the contracts between the humans and the fae and keeping it all tied into the fear of owing too much and saying your name and all of that.
Really well, well crafted in the way that the fae would deal with things and that you have to deal with them.
Should you be so unlucky to have to do so.
Loved it.
It was really good.
Speaker C
00:12:32.250 - 00:12:33.370
Karen, what about you?
Speaker D
00:12:33.450 - 00:13:39.770
Yeah, no, I super enjoyed this.
I think I read it in like a day and a half.
Everything that Chris said.
Yes.
I also really, really loved all the descriptions of the house itself, both in the human world and in its like, mirror and fairy.
I was so able to picture it in my mind's eye.
A lot of times when stuff like that's described, I get bogged down in language or it's confusing and it never ever was.
I also love Winnie.
She's such a good female protagonist.
She like deals with things logically or by her own logic, but never once makes me be like, oh my God, why did you do that thing?
Why do you keep doing that thing?
She's very level headed, which is definitely the kind of character I love.
And I also definitely want to call out that your author's note at the end that addresses sexual assault and how that trauma manifests in like a myriad of ways.
And that no two survivors deal with this trauma in the same way warms my heart because it's so true and definitely not said often enough.
And the writing overall, you can tell, is very trauma informed, portrayed excellently through the way Winnie reacts to Lord Longfell.
And I am so super appreciative of that.
So thank you for including that.
Speaker A
00:13:40.490 - 00:14:01.180
I'm really glad that Came across well.
It was one of my goals for the book.
I'm very, very unhappy with a lot of the portrayals of sexual assault and survivors in media these days.
And admittedly it was a bit of a spite.
Right.
Sometimes you just read something and you're like, I'm so angry about this.
I'm gonna go.
I'm gonna go do it.
Right.
Speaker E
00:14:02.380 - 00:14:15.980
He was still very competent and so very broken in some ways, but so competent and so well thought through.
I loved it.
It was a competent.
Born there.
Speaker C
00:14:17.820 - 00:14:40.220
With that.
Now that we've talked a little bit about how we would.
How we.
How much we love this book, we need to talk about how much we love gaming and how much we would love to run this as a game.
Because that is definitely my opinion on the subject.
I think there are some really great things here.
I'm going to start off with Karen.
Karen, if you were going to take this game and run it as a role playing game, what system would you use and why?
Speaker D
00:14:42.060 - 00:15:22.940
All right, well, I'm going to go with my aforementioned Dungeons and Dragons Wild beyond the Witchlight Fairy supplement.
Like, yeah, it's D and D. But the way that this is sort of composed is that there is so many more opportunities to solve things out of combat, which is.
I really vastly prefer that in the game to begin with.
So with that, it really lets you, as the GM and your players really embrace the whole sense of weirdness in fairy.
And my very favorite thing, it's when fairy is done as super other, working on other logic, batshit weird, incomprehensible.
And this whole thing has great ideas that you can springboard off of that leave room for imagination in this arena.
So, yeah.
Speaker C
00:15:22.940 - 00:15:30.660
Chris, what about you?
You are famous for your changeling the dreaming choices and this seems like an obvious choice for you.
Speaker E
00:15:30.980 - 00:17:14.610
It is.
However, I wouldn't run this in the dreaming.
I would run this in the Lost, which is, you know, another White wolf game.
This was the replacement for Changeling.
Although it's really a very separate game, very separate ideologies, I have referred to it in the past as trauma.
The role playing game.
It is the game itself takes the idea of you are the changelings.
You have been brought and stolen into Arcadia and you have escaped the fae back to your old world, but you have been forever changed by the Fae.
You have made contracts and, you know, deals with them to gain some, some modicum of power that, you know, whether they've given that freely or whether you've taken it is all part of the story.
But the Magic and the being based on.
Oh, I have this.
These powers because I have, you know, made a contract with the fae.
I can connect over back into beyond the.
In Change of the Lost, it's the Hedge into Arcadia and sort of see Fairy there too.
But I don't want to be there because it's not good and they don't like.
They don't like me and I could be captured and taken back into their servitude.
That felt very much in the genre here.
The fae are a bit.
Well, some of them are a bit nicer than others in this book, but it worked very well for me.
Plus it has a lovely Victorian setting as well, so all combines in nicely.
So that's where I would run.
Speaker C
00:17:15.579 - 00:17:28.539
All right, before I let the author give us the definitive take on this, put mine out here.
And I would say if.
If I were working in the Regency books that Olivia has written before, I would definitely look at Good Society.
Fantastic.
Speaker A
00:17:28.699 - 00:17:31.299
Ah, yes, yeah, all that.
Speaker C
00:17:31.299 - 00:19:47.640
Great.
Like, how do you deal with having manners and who has what reputation and all of that stuff.
And all of that works really super well for those books.
And you could, if you were running a Good Society campaign, I could see you carrying it over to this.
But I think for this one specifically, there is a Scandinavian gas lamp horror game called Vasin V A E S E N It's a.
It's really interesting.
You'd have to obviously take some of the setting and fit it a bit more to the English slash Celtic things that are happening here with our particular brand of fe.
But it would work out great.
There are no hit points.
You do challenges and when you do, if you fail challenges, you take damage to your physical or mental conditions.
That is all there is.
That's all there is.
There's three slots for each of those.
You take the fourth one and you become broken.
And so.
And then there are things you need to do in order to, like, get yourself back to where you need either a very long rest or some sort of medical attention or things like that.
And one of the coolest things is that if you reach a broken or you.
Or you take damage mentally, you can pull up a memento, which is you lean into your personal memories and you recall a personal memory and that memento can heal your.
Can heal.
Can heal the damage that you've taken from some sort of mental condition to help rally yourself, which happens all the time in this book.
We hear all about.
We hear all about Winnie's background and how she draws upon the strength that she's gathered from her past.
And I think that makes this, makes it.
This makes this a really great role playing game.
You also make a resource role at the beginning, which is what resources are available to you right now.
So I could see where if this was in town and in London, maybe she'd have an advantage or whatever the equivalent is in this thing because she'd have more resources.
But in this one she's got very limited resources.
She obviously rolled really low.
I think this is a great system for this and I can't wait to find out.
Slight teaser there isn't.
There are more books coming.
I can't wait to see if that holds for all the books that are coming forward.
So that being said, my opinion is my opinion.
But let's talk about the thoughts of the author.
Olivia, how would you run your book?
Which would not.
Speaker A
00:19:47.800 - 00:21:14.980
Okay, first off, that game sounds awesome.
So I'm.
I am, I am going to actually have to look that up, see if I can steal anything from it.
Gosh.
So I often fall back on Fate because it's just a great narrative based system.
And I do feel like for all that there is a little bit of, you know, potential combat or magic or what have you in this book.
This setting, a lot of it really turns on setting up clever things and taking advantage of resources and things that you know about each other.
But I will say since you brought up Changeling the lost, I can 100% see it.
I always loved the premise of Changeling the Lost.
I never found the system very, very workable.
But I was always like God man, I wish I could figure out how to run this in a way that just steal the setting and then do a different system.
But I am going to say there is a game that I didn't get to play.
I made character, made a character for the game and sadly it never got off the ground.
I thought Thirsty Sword Lesbians would actually be a great system for something like this because it's really all about emotionally leaning on people and figuring out like how to connect with them or how to move them.
And I think there's a lot of that in the book and in honestly a lot of my writing.
So I could see it being very applicable.
I still desperately want to actually play the frickin game.
Speaker E
00:21:17.220 - 00:21:28.180
Just to let you know, Olivia, there is a port of Changeling Lost to a PBTA system and that works Powered by the Apocalypse.
Speaker A
00:21:28.580 - 00:21:29.540
Oh, okay.
Speaker E
00:21:29.860 - 00:21:38.790
It is in my opinion much better than the White Wolf systems because I will agree with you though, I love them.
They drive Me crazy.
Speaker A
00:21:39.270 - 00:21:45.910
I think probably like my thought, and this is always my thought.
I was like, man, I could probably just move it to fate.
Speaker E
00:21:46.390 - 00:21:48.310
You could absolutely do that too.
Speaker D
00:21:48.790 - 00:21:50.470
I do that a lot with a lot of games.
Speaker C
00:21:51.430 - 00:22:14.310
Definitely see Winnie as the trickster from Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
That's the devious and calculating.
I'm just reading the description here.
They fear closeness, sincerity and vulnerability.
If they show you the truth of their heart, they'll be wearing a mask to do it.
So I'm like, so we've already stat at least one character in Thirsty Sword Lesbians from there.
Speaker A
00:22:14.870 - 00:22:22.390
You know what?
I think that's actually the character type that I was going to be playing.
I think that's probably the one I chose.
I know.
Shocking.
Shocking.
Speaker C
00:22:23.190 - 00:22:44.280
Okay, since we have the author here, we're about to talk about the stuff that we would steal.
I mean, I mean, borrow, make portable to our campaigns.
But let's talk to you first, Olivia.
What in this book is from a game.
And.
And I think you even mentioned that stuff from the book made it back into a game.
Is that both of those correct?
Speaker D
00:22:44.520 - 00:22:45.080
Oh, yeah.
Speaker A
00:22:45.080 - 00:23:40.380
It's all squidgy.
Yeah.
A lot of the witch would not came from, I would say, more literary sources, though obviously having some background with Changeling the Dreaming and Changeling the Lost certainly probably made its way in there a little bit.
But, you know, those in turn are from classical mythology.
And so a lot of times I go back to the original.
So, yeah, there's so many sources that I drew from for the.
For the book.
And then I ended up in some of my own games stealing from my own books, which is just.
It's so great as a GM because you're just like, oh, God, I gotta think of like this fully realized character type or this.
I need something, you know, I need a splat to throw in here.
And they're like, oh, wait, I have this entire setting.
I'm just gonna steal that one thing and then turn it in.
I'm sure no one in my DND group will notice.
Speaker C
00:23:40.380 - 00:23:42.460
Do none of them read your books?
Speaker A
00:23:44.620 - 00:23:46.300
They all do.
They all do.
Speaker D
00:23:46.860 - 00:23:48.780
They're not gonna notice.
It's so funny.
Speaker A
00:23:50.620 - 00:24:55.240
I have an urban fantasy game that.
That I run that I stole.
I really did some weird things with fomorians in these books, and I stole a bunch of the weird things I did with fomorians for my urban fantasy game.
So the.
The concept that fomorians just can't die, they just.
They're immortal in.
In every sense of the word.
You can chop them into Little bits.
And they'll still eventually, eventually come back.
And I really love that concept for a villain, for a.
For an antagonist, because in a lot of respects, they represent part of humanity that you can never fully conquer.
And so it really brings up a lot of feelings around.
Yes, you can win for a little bit, you can buy yourself some time, but it will always come back.
And I think that's a really interesting approach to horror.
We can trap it, we can put it to sleep, we can do this, we can do that.
But we've got to resign ourselves to the fact that there is no permanent win.
Speaker C
00:24:55.240 - 00:24:58.160
That is definitely a horror trope for sure.
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:24:58.160 - 00:24:58.880
No, I love that.
Speaker C
00:24:59.040 - 00:25:03.520
Chris, you want to talk about what you would like to borrow from the Witchwood?
Speaker E
00:25:03.840 - 00:25:12.560
Not so now I'm definitely going to steal that from Orion not being able to die thing permanently, because I love that.
Yeah, right.
Speaker C
00:25:12.720 - 00:25:16.640
I'm so looking forward to the next time I play changeling with you.
Oh, yeah, that's great.
Speaker E
00:25:18.870 - 00:25:21.750
It'll be fine.
What could possibly go wrong?
Speaker C
00:25:22.790 - 00:25:28.510
Why don't you just say it'll be a piece of cake and let's just go move on with that.
That just hurts.
Speaker E
00:25:28.510 - 00:25:32.150
Just don't eat the cake.
Don't eat the cake because you know.
Speaker A
00:25:33.670 - 00:25:34.870
The cake is a lie.
Speaker D
00:25:36.470 - 00:25:38.710
Okay.
Cake is a lie.
Speaker E
00:25:38.710 - 00:25:40.310
And also could make you small or large.
Speaker A
00:25:41.110 - 00:25:42.230
Yeah, that's also true.
Speaker E
00:25:42.630 - 00:26:35.710
What I would actually steal is the actual Witchwood not setting itself.
Feel that house.
I love the very expansive but very limited space, the descriptions of the house itself and, you know, the.
The grounds around it and just the fae all being stuck there, being drawn there, being, you know, walled in.
You know, their infinite space being walled in.
I love that idea.
And I definitely can use that in my changeling games particularly.
I also do adore Bellamira, Winnie's sister.
I love, you know, just the little bits we saw of her.
I love the idea of her necromancy.
I've got to be pretty much dead in order to use my necromancy, because necromancy, it's okay.
Speaker A
00:26:35.710 - 00:26:37.190
She, most of the time, she gets better.
Speaker E
00:26:38.200 - 00:26:50.120
Yeah.
And most of the time, she gets better.
I love that idea there.
I think that is an incredible bit of magic flavor that I don't remember seeing before.
And I love it.
Speaker C
00:26:51.080 - 00:26:55.400
I love that idea of having a necromancer that gets more powerful the more you beat on them.
Speaker E
00:26:56.280 - 00:26:59.000
The more dead I am, the more.
The stronger I am.
Speaker C
00:27:00.360 - 00:27:05.550
Karen, what about you?
What is in the witch would not that you would take into your own campaign.
Speaker D
00:27:05.790 - 00:27:41.310
All right.
Well, first off, I love an animal companion, so of course, I absolutely adored Oliver the ghost cat familiar.
It's amazing.
It was so cleverly done how it's a ghost in the real world, but it can be a real cat and fairy, but then also get really big and kick some ass.
So, yeah, any kind of cool animal familiar type traits, I am all in and try to introduce those anyway.
So it's just more ideas.
And then I also really, really love the concept of the ghost in the walls, the screaming ghosts, because the house was literally made of people who had been turned into trees.
It's such a great way to terrorize.
Speaker C
00:27:41.550 - 00:27:43.950
Such a great way to terrorize your players.
That's just.
Speaker E
00:27:44.110 - 00:27:45.070
That's what you think?
Speaker A
00:27:45.630 - 00:27:48.190
Yeah, it's the soil again, of houses.
Speaker E
00:27:50.189 - 00:27:58.670
Yeah, I mean, definitely.
Always good to turn people, you know, to let people know that they.
That the last people have been turned into trees and then.
Speaker C
00:27:59.230 - 00:28:04.490
And that's an option.
That's an option for you.
Just in case you're wondering, you know, that's something that can happen here.
Speaker A
00:28:05.210 - 00:28:06.170
Oh, my God.
Speaker C
00:28:06.650 - 00:29:05.270
I agree with Chris that I really like the.
The pocket universe, this isolating trap that happens there.
I think that that's a fantastic idea and should be stolen at all costs.
But my, my.
What I want to do is I immediately want to, like, write spells and do cartomancy, do.
And, you know, have a magical deck and.
And like do that whole creepy, creepy tarot reading, but also using it as, like inside checks and doing all this really fun stuff.
Instantly adored that particular mechanic and absolutely just want to take that and drop it in a couple.
At least three or four places before for my next campaign.
It's like, here.
I can use it here.
Use it here.
Really great.
I also agree with you, Karen.
There's just so much wonderful atmosphere in the.
In Witchwood Manor that not only like the creepy faces, but just like just the whole empty.
The whole emptiness feeling of it.
So good.
Speaker A
00:29:05.350 - 00:29:24.010
I will say.
So the.
The cartomancy is real.
It's based on Victor Victorian Cartomancy.
So I don't unfortunately have all of my book notes with me, but I will dig it up at some point and.
And I can actually give you some resources on period materials that will explain how it worked if you want.
Speaker C
00:29:24.330 - 00:29:28.810
I'm.
I'm always a fan.
Yes, I am a fan of historical.
Of historical.
Speaker B
00:29:29.290 - 00:29:29.690
Yes.
Speaker C
00:29:29.690 - 00:29:30.410
Yeah.
Great.
Speaker E
00:29:30.970 - 00:29:35.850
Yeah.
And as a tarot card reader myself, I would love to look into that more deeply too.
Speaker A
00:29:36.969 - 00:29:39.810
Yeah, it's.
It uses the standard deck like the.
The.
Speaker E
00:29:39.810 - 00:29:40.090
Yeah.
Speaker C
00:29:40.090 - 00:30:24.050
Yeah, cool references.
What could be more nerdy?
I mean more fun than that?
Actually they're both the same at this marriage.
There's no but there there.
It's an answer.
We've talked about the mechanics and we've talked about what we are going to add to our games.
And we've already mentioned that Olivia.
Actually Olivia mentioned a number of times that she's written a ton of books.
So you should go out and buy all of them immediately.
In particular the new one that's coming out.
More prepping for that big reveal at the end.
But for now, let's say you've read everything Olivia Atwater and you wanted to read something that would put you in the same sort of groove as this particular book.
I'm going to start with Chris.
Chris, what has the same vibes for you as the witch would not similar vibes.
Speaker E
00:30:24.450 - 00:31:33.740
The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill by Rowena Miller.
It doesn't take place in England.
It takes place more in the US south, but similar time period.
It is the.
The dangers of making bargains with the fae increase the prospect, the prosperity of the land which you know, goes fine until it doesn't.
I also could recommend the Dream Runners by Sveta Thakkar.
This is more a.
It's more modern, but it is.
And it's a YA novel.
It's about the.
The rakja, the rakata.
I can't.
I read the.
Read the words but don't say the word off.
They're going out and stealing dreams and all of that.
The people who come back from there, which they're not supposed to.
It felt thematically appropriate for non book media.
You could do Pan's Labyrinth to get into the mood for some really, really really scary Fae and.
Or really and.
But really really scary Fae and then worse, really scarier real life.
Speaker A
00:31:35.110 - 00:31:36.870
Yeah, it's my favorite style man.
Speaker E
00:31:37.750 - 00:31:54.630
Yeah.
And then of course for just for atmosphere if you want to play a video game.
Lies of P which is the.
Basically you're playing Pinocchio in Fairy.
Those were mine.
Those were my recommendations.
Speaker C
00:31:55.350 - 00:31:58.870
Gonna move on to you Karen.
Give us the list.
Speaker D
00:31:59.760 - 00:33:55.760
Alrighty.
I'm gonna start with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.
It really works as a perfect companion to this.
It's like a 19th century style Gothic inspired fantasy story.
It's got such atmospheric weirdness and some of my very, very favorite portrayals of fairies.
The gentleman with the thistled down hair is to this day like one of the most viscerally unsettling characters I've ever encountered in a book.
He's also portrayed unbelievably well by Mark Warren in the miniseries, which I also highly recommend.
They did a great job with it.
Also the Emily Wilde series, starting with the Encyclopedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett.
They follow Emily, who's a professor of dryadology or fairies, and her research adventures along with her colleague Wendell Bambleby, possibly best name ever made.
Sounds rolled up for a game.
My favorite parts of these are like the miscellaneous fae creatures they encounter and all the multitude of ways there are of like appeasing them, befriending them, defeating them.
There's three of these books now there's two more to come, so you got plenty to read.
There's also the Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden, who is one of my favorite authors.
She wrote the Winternight trilogy.
This is a sort of retold historical fiction magic up version of Anne of Brittany in medieval France.
But it's got those super weird otherworldly fairy vibes, unicorns, etc.
And then finally I kind of can't not mention my very fave Sir Terry Pratchett.
And here you can either go for Tiffany Aching and the We Free Men.
Her first book which is, you know, has the let's retrieve a child who's been taken by fairies or lords and ladies which Pratchett really uses to take fairies or in his book elves away from the concept of being twinkly and happy or kind of Tolkieny of, you know, highfalutin and just making them kind of awful.
And you get twisted elf logic.
You get a unicorn in this one too and also a one eyed cat familiar.
Speaker C
00:33:55.840 - 00:34:54.779
Before we turn Olivia loose, I'll on her recommendations I will say that I think that this book has similar vibes to A Marvelous Light by Freya Marska.
Has a lot of that fairy and magic and society sort of thing going on there.
A Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Gailey takes place in Faerie, actually in a very specific part of Faerie, a marketplace which is an intersection between the the two realms.
So that has a a great deal of that feel as well.
But my favorite one, if you have read all of Olivia's books and you would like more romance, you should definitely read the Lord of Star.
Rael by AJ Lancaster.
Also feels really great and very and has a similar sort of vibe and there's definitely some not nice fairies in that one so.
And plenty of romance.
So Olivia, having all of us said all the things, what is your take?
What did you.
What do you think Resembles Your books.
Speaker A
00:34:55.499 - 00:34:57.899
I mean, you guys did cover a lot of my favorites.
Speaker D
00:34:58.379 - 00:34:58.939
Yay.
Speaker A
00:34:59.099 - 00:35:03.499
In particular, I will always shout out Heather Fawcett.
She is also a Canadian author and I adore her.
Speaker D
00:35:04.370 - 00:35:04.930
She's the best.
Speaker A
00:35:05.170 - 00:37:04.970
She is.
But I will say that the witch would not was, I would say, heavily inspired by Wuthering Heights.
Just to go old school, I actually read Wuthering Heights and one day I was like, man, I would love to write a book like that where all of the characters are awful, but I can't look away from the train wreck.
But I don't think I've accomplished that yet because I can't bring myself to write completely unsympathetic characters.
They're not completely unsympathetic.
There's a lot of, like, racism and sexism involved and you can kind of see where they got where they are.
But anyway, that I digress.
So, yeah, Wuthering Heights, I would say Jacqueline Benson's Charismatics series is also set in Victorian England.
It's Victorian fantasy.
It doesn't have fairies, as far as I know, but it does have the right kind of spooky vibes and the like.
Very surreal.
It follows primarily a main character who has the ability to see the future, but it's the best see the future I've ever seen implemented.
Like, I really love the.
The creepiness of it.
And it's.
It's certainly not straightforward.
And, yeah, I just loved it.
And I. I think, lastly, I would say Thorn by Inta Sarkanani.
It's a retelling of the Goose Girl.
And it.
The Goose Girl is one of my favorite fairy tales, so I adored it on that alone.
But I also felt like it got some Fae involved in it.
It also just really hit a lot of things that I normally find missing in retellings and fantasy in general, which is.
I find it really hard to root for aristocratic characters.
Honestly, they're just awful.
I find it inherently unbelievable.
You can have unicorns, you can have dragons, you can have whatever.
But once you say, like, this beautiful, virtuous princess, that's where I check out.
I'm like, that's too unrealistic.
I'm sorry.
She's probably awful.
Speaker C
00:37:07.130 - 00:37:07.930
It has to be.
Speaker A
00:37:07.930 - 00:37:15.450
I joke, but it's true.
It's true.
I can't handle it.
But it's like trying to read billionaire romance these days, where you're like, oh, God.
Speaker C
00:37:17.050 - 00:37:33.090
But just to jump in on that, if you would like to read an excellent version of the.
Of the beautiful princess who is not perfect, literally the first book.
Chris was there for it.
The first book we did on the show is Stephen King's Fairy Tale.
Speaker E
00:37:33.090 - 00:37:33.650
And, yeah,.
Speaker C
00:37:35.730 - 00:37:40.050
It's beautiful, virtuous, and still not perfect.
And is.
And.
And also.
Speaker E
00:37:40.290 - 00:37:41.490
And also the Goose Girl.
Speaker C
00:37:42.050 - 00:37:49.100
Also the Goose Girl, and also Stephen King.
So whole rest of book, super creepy.
So I think you'd probably enjoy that.
Speaker A
00:37:49.970 - 00:38:14.530
But I mean, all to say, this was one of the few books where I felt like I came away feeling like the aristocratic main character was someone I actually cared about and did some growing and some realistic.
Like, you know, in the Goose Girl, she's.
She basically poses as a commoner for a while, and then it's like, oh, this kind of sucks.
Actually, this whole commoner.
I really appreciated that.
I loved it.
Speaker E
00:38:14.530 - 00:38:15.250
Not for me.
Speaker D
00:38:16.850 - 00:38:18.050
Who chooses to do this.
Speaker C
00:38:19.590 - 00:38:20.510
Ah, there we go.
Speaker E
00:38:20.510 - 00:38:21.430
Terrible idea.
Speaker C
00:38:21.750 - 00:38:44.450
Yeah, that's a bad idea for everybody.
All right, so with that, we have.
We've taken our time to discuss the book itself and all the fun things, and I think we're gonna.
We will round out with Libya, because I want to drag this announcement out as long as I possibly can because apparently I'm just feeling that way.
So, Chris, do you have a promo that you wanted to give the folks?
Speaker E
00:38:45.000 - 00:38:57.040
I do not have a promo.
This time, go buy an American Heritage Dictionary.
That's my old.
My old stomping grounds.
And spent many years on those.
And more people need dictionaries.
That's my problem.
Speaker C
00:38:57.040 - 00:38:58.960
There we go.
Okay, but.
Speaker E
00:38:58.960 - 00:38:59.560
There we go.
Speaker D
00:39:00.600 - 00:39:02.760
And, Karen, I like the dictionary promo.
Speaker C
00:39:02.760 - 00:39:05.240
Yeah, no, I think the dictionary promo is great.
Speaker E
00:39:05.720 - 00:39:13.200
Well, the.
The American Heritage Dictionary is good for me because, you know, my name is in it and my fingerprints are on every page, so.
Speaker C
00:39:13.600 - 00:39:14.320
Fantastic.
Speaker E
00:39:14.320 - 00:39:16.080
There we go.
All right.
Speaker C
00:39:16.160 - 00:39:17.360
Karen, what about you?
Speaker D
00:39:17.520 - 00:39:53.390
As usual, if you've listened before, I'm promoting the Crime Victims Treatment center, where I am a volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Actually, I think when this releases, I will literally be in the midst of being a mentor for the new trainees.
This year, the Crime Victims Treatment center has tons of great services, from counseling to legal help, and every single bit of it is free.
If you want to donate or help or if you're in the New York City area, maybe want to become an advocate, you can go to www.cvtcnyc.org.
Speaker B
00:39:53.390 - 00:39:54.070
There we go.
Speaker C
00:39:54.790 - 00:39:58.150
Very appropriate considering our current or current text.
Speaker D
00:39:58.310 - 00:39:58.870
Yes.
Speaker C
00:39:59.350 - 00:40:04.630
So finally over to Olivia with the announcement that we've all been waiting for.
There's a second book.
Speaker A
00:40:04.630 - 00:41:09.060
Yes, yes, yes, the sec.
The second book in the Victorian fairy Tales Rosemary and Thyme is coming out this month on October 27th.
It's.
It follows Claremond, who is one of Winnie's sisters.
And there is.
By the end of the book, there's already a kind of sense that Claremond is dealing with her own issues back in London.
This one picks up with her having to leave London very quickly.
She has a very untrustworthy accidental fairy advisor she has stumbled upon and together they go to Whitby where Tertia, who shows up at the very end of the Witchwood Knot, has made her home.
And they have to gain hospitality and steal something from her that's very important.
You'll find this particularly relevant, I think it's.
Trisha is a Leanne and she.
Yeah, I've always wanted to do Leanne.
Speaker E
00:41:09.060 - 00:41:10.820
And she and I, they're so nice.
Speaker A
00:41:12.980 - 00:42:19.530
They're so awful.
And I really.
I really had a lot of.
I say questionably fun writing her.
It's.
There were a lot of you come upon these kind of accidental relevancies to whatever is going on in the modern day.
And I realized that the Leanne and she is actually an excellent metaphor for generative AI.
So that made it.
Thus proving you can actually satirize anything in historical fantasy.
So, yeah, I had a lot of fun with that one.
Claremond is a very different character from Winifred.
Winnie is very clever, very twisty, very careful, and Clerimond is just, bless her, she's very blunt and.
And cannot lie to save her life.
And so she's really.
It was a lot of fun putting her in a position where you can tell that this plot was made for someone else.
If it were Bellamyra doing this, this particular book, she'd be fine.
If it was Winnie, she'd be fine.
Unfortunately, Claremond ended up with this plot.
Speaker E
00:42:20.490 - 00:42:26.650
I do love a book where the.
Where the.
Where the main character is the wrong person.
Speaker D
00:42:26.810 - 00:42:28.730
Absolutely beautiful.
Speaker E
00:42:28.730 - 00:42:30.330
Oh, this would be so easy.
Oh.
Speaker D
00:42:30.410 - 00:42:33.209
Oh, I'm bad at this.
Speaker C
00:42:33.370 - 00:42:42.800
This is the thing I'm terrible at.
This is.
Quick check in.
Are there any.
Besides Claremont, are there any other characters making reappearances in the tech?
Speaker A
00:42:43.430 - 00:43:44.210
Yes.
So Winifred and Mr. Quincy do show up in Rosemary in Time and as well as Mr. Robert Murray.
And in particular, Claremond had a very special relationship with Elias Wilder and there are epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter of things that he taught her.
And it's great because I actually.
My original narrator for the audiobooks for the Regency Fairy Tales, he was fantastic.
He was a guy named Rafe Beckley and I adore him.
And Orbit went in a different direction with the audiobooks, so they aren't up anymore.
But his voice for Elias was amazing.
And so I actually had the thought of hitting him up again and I said, hey, Rafe, would you mind just reading the epigraphs?
And he said, yes.
And I have them sitting on my computer and they're amazing.
So it was really fun to kind of go back there and have him revisit the role and, and do Elias again for a little bit.
Speaker C
00:43:44.850 - 00:44:22.580
That's fantastic.
What a call.
What a callback.
My promo is always the same.
I have fantastic guests and you should all come back again and do this again with other things.
Olivia, I want, I don't want you to feel like you need to write a book to be on the show.
You're welcome here as a game master in your own right.
Please come anytime if you'd like to read, if you have a book you'd like to read, please let us know and we will put a group together for you.
And that's obviously the same for Karen and Chris, who are just, just solid folks from two completely different book clubs, as it were, and they came together for this and you guys were just perfect.
Speaker E
00:44:22.580 - 00:44:25.060
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker D
00:44:25.060 - 00:44:25.940
This was awesome.
Speaker A
00:44:26.420 - 00:44:28.220
I will, I will keep it in mind.
Yes.
Speaker C
00:44:28.220 - 00:44:36.870
I mean, when you, in your copious free time, I'm sure you have time to just read another book and come hang out with us, but you are, if you do, if that should happen.
Speaker A
00:44:36.870 - 00:44:42.550
Hey, look, I have to read books for work all the time.
I get sent books to blurb so.
Speaker C
00:44:43.110 - 00:44:48.390
Well, and you find a good one, let us know.
You know, the rest of us would be super excited about it, so.
Speaker B
00:44:48.790 - 00:45:07.600
And that was the Witch Was not by Olivia Atwater.
Be sure to read the next book in the series, Rosemary and Thyme, when it's released on October 27, 2027.
A most solicitous and gracious thanks to Lord Chris Grannis and Lady Karen form your expertise on creepy fairies fit the discussion to a tee.
Speaker C
00:45:07.600 - 00:45:08.160
Well done.
Speaker B
00:45:08.160 - 00:46:17.380
You join us next episode when we actually get to the wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm, AKA Robin Hobb for an amazing classic of the urban fantasy genre.
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts at k square productions.com back.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media on bluesky@gmbookclub, bluesky social on Facebook at Gamemasters Book Club on Mastodon at Gamemasters Book Club and on Instagram at Gamemasters 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 Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising apart.