093: Bringing historical magic to game development with Andrew of Shewstone Publishing

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Courtney: Hey entrepreneurs today, we are chatting with Andrew Gronosky, the creative director of Shewstone Publishing. We talked about all of the research that went into the historical understanding of magic while creating his game, Magonomia and about his monthly magazine publication, Drinterra, which will be funding via Kickstarter next month.

It is a great discussion about how important lore and world-building is while you are [00:01:00] developing your games. And I found it really fascinating. I hope that y’all enjoy it.

Before we dive into the interview, I want to welcome any new listeners to Roll Play Grow. This show allows me to chat with so many amazing books about business marketing, hardships lessons learned, and how to guides across a wide spectrum of industries within the TTRPG scene. I talk with crafters, game designers, musicians, editors, artists, and more.

And speaking of fun creators, I also want to give a quick shout out to one of our favorite dice companies, dice envy. My very first interview on the show was with David Derus, the founder of Dice Envy, and we have gotten so many different dice sets from them over the years.

I’d highly recommend you check them out as they have dice and all sorts of materials, like resin, metal, wood. They’ve got chunky d20s and really cool shapes for their d4s. We are affiliates with them. So if you go to diceenvy.com/lightheartadv you can grab some [00:02:00] snazzy dice and you’ll also help support the show.

All right. That is enough for now. Let’s jump into this interview with Andrew.

Hello, friends! We are back now with Andrew Gronosky, the creative director of Shewstone Publishing. How you doing today, Andrew?

Andrew: I’m doing very well, happy to be here. Thanks, it’s a lovely bright day in Boston.

Courtney: It is not a lovely bright day in Seattle, so I’m envious. To start things off, I would love to know What is the first game that you remember playing?

Andrew: You mean tabletop role playing game or any game?

Courtney: Any game.

Andrew: First game that comes to mind is Candyland.

Courtney: Nice.

Andrew: yeah, I’ll stick with that.

Courtney: I don’t know if it was my first game, but it was [00:03:00] certainly one of them.

Andrew: Chutes and Ladders was in there.

Courtney: Mm, yep.

Andrew: Yep.

Courtney: I remember playing a lot of, like, what was it? I think it was HiHo Cheerio? Was that?

Andrew: Yes!

I do!

Courtney: putting the cherries in the tree.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. And, alright. So, there were Melton Bradley games. I remember, but they weren’t the first. Yeah, they were

Courtney: Yeah.

Andrew: good times.

Courtney: Okay. So now what about TTRPG?

Andrew: The first TTRPG I played, was original Dungeons Dragons. My older brother brought it home from military school in 1978 and he introduced me to it. I was immediately captivated. I’ve been gaming ever since. I’m a forever game master since my brother moved away. So

Courtney: I honestly love that he picked it up in military school.[00:04:00]

Andrew: Yeah early Dungeons Dragons circulated through the wargaming community and it was popular in the military.

Courtney: So, okay. You said you’ve been a forever Dungeon Master.

Does, have you occasionally gotten to play?

Andrew: of course.

Courtney: Okay. Okay.

Andrew: Okay,

Courtney: Awesome. What are you playing these days?

Andrew: Mostly I’m playing the games that I make. Actually, that’s not true. I have a weekly Call of Cthulhu game. 7th edition we’re playing the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign which is the best game product I have ever read in my opinion.

So I can talk about why it’s awesome. I don’t make Call of Cthulhu supplements but I learned a lot from Call of Cthulhu and it influenced me as a designer in a lot of ways.

So I play weekly Call of Cthulhu. I play A game that I [00:05:00] make called Maginomia, the role playing game of Renaissance Wizardry with some of my old friends from college. And, that’s mostly, that’s about it for the past year or so.

Courtney: So we’re definitely going to get into your own game in a bit, but I am curious to circle back on something you just said, which is that Call of Cthulhu influenced your design. In what

ways?

Andrew: Call of Cthulhu has a definite tone. It has a mood and a vibe. I do think that there’s a lot of range in how you can play Call of Cthulhu, but the game takes a stand on how it is to be played and the experience that it’s trying to create. And that is a real strength of Call of Cthulhu. I think it’s why people love it and

I tried to draw inspiration from that and to do the same thing [00:06:00] with Maginomia. and the, the system you can see in Call of Cthulhu is designed with mechanics to support the experience. And this is true throughout the system. I mean there’s a special sanity mechanic. The way spells work in Call of Cthulhu will only work in a horror game where magic is forbidden and to be used reluctantly. So, and I don’t know so much about 7th edition, but I think 3rd edition and 5th edition are the ones that I’ve read thoroughly cover to cover. And 3rd edition told you how to play. Told you what the mystery experience was. And that, that it is a mystery game of that the pacing should be of Well, they use the metaphor of peeling an onion, where you [00:07:00] discover layers of truth and trouble and horror, because it’s a horror game.

And, you know, Call of Cthulhu is perennially one of the most popular role playing games. If you ask the tabletop role playing game community what are their four favorite games or three favorite games, Call of Cthulhu is going to rank in the top three.

Courtney: Yeah, I think that that is really a cool way to pull into what’s in your games, and so I want to talk about now how you went from playing to designing.

Andrew: You know, back in the day in junior high school and early high school we didn’t have pocket money, my gaming buddies and I, we had a lot of time on our hands and we did have Dragon Magazine, which is great and we We experimented and we made variations [00:08:00] on systems just to to try something out. So, you know, we wanted a, a science fiction adventure game.

And I think Traveler was actually on the shelf of my buddy’s brother. But we didn’t, instead of asking for, to, to learn Traveler, we made our own space game. And it was, I mean The design you’d expect from junior high students, but we had fun playing it. And then later I became a big fan of the historical games. fantasy game called Ars Magica, which is just wrapping up a very major successful crowdfunding campaign for sort of a capstone product of their probably 30 years or more of print history. And There was an online community early on and I was active in that. People were sharing occasionally rule [00:09:00] mods and character ideas and definitely spells that they had invented. And so I started writing for Fanzine and then when the 5th edition came around, when it was under development I had just happened to have written a fanzine article. I don’t remember what I was asking for, but I, I asked the editor, hey can I make some kind of contribution and he sent me back a non disclosure agreement. And that was for the, I can’t tell you what it was for. Now it was for the playtest. It was to be a playtester for 5th edition and After playtesting it there was a kerfuffle over from, from the fans when it was released, there was something missing. And it was animal, statistics for animals, which used to be in the Bestiary, and they weren’t included in the Core Rulebook.

So I offered to write that, and that’s how I got started [00:10:00] writing for Ars Magica.

Courtney: That’s a really fun way to get into it.

Andrew: Yeah. Oh, I wrote, when I was in high school, I wrote an article for Dragon Magazine. So I’ve got one Dragon Magazine article credit.

Courtney: So how long ago was this that you got involved with Ars Magica?

Andrew: I’m trying to remember. Probably 2005 ish.

Courtney: Okay. And are you still working with them?

Andrew: No, after David Charr announced his retirement as line editor and there was there was no replacement. I wanted to be his replacement, but there was no replacement. And I got together with a bunch of my friends and we, Started having discussions about design, And after we realized we weren’t going to be writing for Ars Magica, I asked, well, what if [00:11:00] What if we were to change some of the assumptions of this historical fantasy setting where everybody plays a wizard. And we keep historical fantasy in Europe because we like that. And we keep everybody’s a wizard because who would want to be something else when you can be a wizard. And then question some of the other design assumptions of the game. And this turned into Maginomia, game of Renaissance Wizardry.

So the first thing that we changed was the time period Ars Magica is set in a fantasy version of the 13th century, the high middle ages. And it’s cool. It’s a cool time period. It’s less well known and less approachable. And I was looking for what can we do to make this, Ars Magica’s Famously known as the game you have to learn Latin to [00:12:00] play. I mean, that’s not quite true, but there’s Latin, there’s Latin jargon in the game. And I was looking for something more approachable and quickly came to the Renaissance.

And then did a little bit of research and quickly came to a time period. I don’t know if I’m going too deep into Maginomia

Courtney: No, not at all.

Andrew: but very good. Because there was a turning point in European intellectual thought. So from Ars Magica I had learned some of the history of real magic. When I say real magic, I mean magic that people believed in at the time. This is a very alien concept to us now, but astrology was thought to be real. Astrology was considered a science. And there was a time when the great [00:13:00] intellectuals of Europe also studied magic. And that stopped right around the Reign of James I of England, James VI of Scotland, because he had as one of his courtiers Francis Bacon and Francis Bacon said we should use a scientific method to test our ideas and that’s the turning point when magic really sharply declined in its relevancy, in its currency. But before that magic was science and it was, it, it’s oversimplification to say that magic was accepted, but things that we today regard as magic or as paranormal were definitely accepted. So, That was a time period that I, that I [00:14:00] picked. When people think about historical magic, you know, there are some tough topics in there with witchcraft trials and so on and there was a relatively safe spot and it was really in between. Henry VIII and the end of Elizabeth, I reign in England. We picked England because the sources are so much easier, right? If you want to do research, you can pick up a digital scan of a, of a edict from from 1580 and you can just read it like I can other people could read ones from Spain and so on, but not. You know, my other languages are a little soft. And the Renaissance period is, it’s fun, it’s vibrant. There’s a lot of change going on. You actually can learn some relevant things about our own society by looking at it, because it’s so, it’s more proximate. [00:15:00] And also, they had the printing press, which just changes the whole nature of history and scholarship about the period.

Courtney: I honestly am now really feeling like my education is . Or my historical education is lacking because

Andrew: I’m sorry. Well, go

Courtney: no!

Andrew: and,

and ask me some questions because, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s funny how, you know, I started reading about history. The fire got lit with Ars Magica when I started playing it, and I started looking at what was going on in the 13th century, and England ruled half of France.

What? For example, okay so, you know, I’ve been reading history since of Europe mostly, although I’m branching out now because I, I, I want and need a more global perspective but you know, I’ve been reading history for, you know, 30 years now, so you shouldn’t feel that your [00:16:00] your education is lacking when you’re next to a long term hobbyist.

Courtney: No, it’s mostly just this, when I’ve thought about it because I have had a very large like interest in Celtic mythology and Norse mythology and everything for a while. The transition from believing in multiple gods to Christianity, whether that was willing or forced you know, there’s definitely, I guess, a period, but I had always thought that by the 16th century, you know, in your local village you might have a healer that everyone thinks is, has magic, but, you know, they accept it because they need the help until it’s too dangerous to, and then, of course you hear about the witch trials, and that’s just kind of, My understanding?

Or what I thought was going on?

Andrew: far off.

Courtney: Yeah.

Andrew: I mean [00:17:00] there, there’s a lot of complexity that I could layer on to that summary, but it’s not wrong.

Courtney: Alright, so, I love all of the research that went into starting with this game and that y’all picked the Renaissance, and really wanted to dig into the wizardry aspect of that.

So talk me through the process of pulling this game together. Like, how many people were you working with, and who did what?

Andrew: I was, I hope I don’t lose count. So I was working with here I am with my fingers well I’ll name names. I was working with Kristen Jensen Romer who’s a mate of mine from freelancing in Ars Magica Timothy Ferguson, another mate of mine Tom Knoll new to me friend at the time, also a big Ars Magica fan. So everybody really, [00:18:00] and my wife Vesna whom I met playing Ars Magica, so it was really an Ars Magica crew,

right, that we we worked with. And then I need to mention the artists because the illustrators for Maginomia were people that I recruited after I’d formed a company. Right, and they’re all great.

In the core rulebook, we’ve got Jeff Koch we’ve got Colin Throm, and Teresa Guido. And So they, I recruited as freelancers. They were not part of this secret council trying to keep Ars Magica or take over Ars Magica after it retired. And yeah so, so that’s about the people. So the first design decision was do we build our own rule system or do we buy one? And this is where [00:19:00] my professional experience or professional deformation, you might call it, comes into play. I’m a software engineer and I worked for more than 20 years in the defense industry for research contractors. And the build or buy decision is part of just their proposal to me. Creation process.

It’s a normal business process for these government contractors. So, I did it. I made that decision. I shopped around for a system that was customizable to include the kinds of magic effects that we wanted to create that that we imagined. I didn’t have specific ideas for something and for something that really encouraged improvisational gameplay and encouraged and could reward original thinking. [00:20:00] And would create what I considered a sense of immersion in the in the setting and in the experience of being a wizard in the setting. So, it was Goldilocks. I looked at Chaosium Basic Role Playing System, which is the engine for Call of Cthulhu. Call of Cthulhu magic could be adapted.

I’d take away the sanity cost if you play Call of Cthulhu. But I could build a magic system. I knew I could build a magic system onto the Chaosium Basic Role Playing Engine. But at the time, their license was not fully an open license now it’s licensed under the the ORC, my favorite license, the Open Role Play Creative License, but at the time it hadn’t been ORC licensed yet, it was not OGL, they had their own license, I [00:21:00] didn’t like the terms, so that was a non starter, and it’s probably good because I’m happy with where we landed, and I would have stopped looking. Then I tried Powered by the Apocalypse, and I liked the system, I had not played it before and I knew that it was suitable. And it gave the experience that I wanted, but it was a big learning curve. It was, it was a paradigm shift from what I’ll call second generation role playing games like Dungeons Dragons and Call of Magica. It was, it was a whole leap in the play experience and I didn’t think that I was ready to teach that. I didn’t think I was ready to write a book that would teach that and I wasn’t sure that I could sell it and I thought that the market for this is The people [00:22:00] who play Powered by the Apocalypse are either going to be already have a system that they’re playing or that they’re gonna be making their own.

So next I tried Fate. which had been recommended to me and I gotta say I didn’t take to it right away. I was about to reject it and move on and actually I was on the brink of switching to to an open, open game license 5e variant for Maginomia. I’m sure it would have sold better if I had done this but I like the, I like the fate system a lot better. It was just really hard to get used to I think that the Fate Core rulebook wasn’t very well written as a tutorial at the time. They’ve since published Fate Condensed, which is what I strongly recommend [00:23:00] for anyone who’s going to be playing Fate. It’s just a much better written, much better presented system.

But there was a episode of Oh, Will Wheaton’s show, and I haven’t watched much of Will Wheaton’s YouTube show I forget now what it’s called, but it’s mostly about board games and role playing games. And they demoed a game of Fate. And I saw how it’s meant to be played, and I said, alright, that’s it, that’s the thing. So, we just leaned into Fate, and now Maginomia is a Fate game.

Courtney: Alright. How long did that research process take you?

Andrew: Selecting the system took me about four months, but I was reading a ton of history and historical magic at the time. That’s another thing about the Renaissance is the books of spells by people who thought that these spells would work You can just buy, [00:24:00] right? That’s not true of 13th century magic. But also Ars Magica wasn’t aiming for that kind of historical fidelity.

That was another one of the design questions we asked ourselves. What would happen if we stuck closer to what would happen if we stuck closer to historical magic to more accurately, accurately try to portray in the game? And It turns out that it’s very playable. There are, I know game balance is a term that people tend to scoff at in the community, but I’m a big believer in it. And there are balance restrictions built into historical magic. You can’t control people’s minds. Okay it just was thought. not to be possible by the intellectuals. And other things that historical magic doesn’t create things from nothing. So, no fireball. Sorry. [00:25:00] Gas Fireball. That’s for D& D. And, you know, it of course was rationalized, right? And by that I mean that it was fit into a framework of how the universe works. So it’s already figured out for you. It’s already consistent with no plot holes. I’m a software engineer in my day job. Making a complex system with no holes in it is like, it’s easier said than done.

Courtney: Mhm.

Andrew: Which is why we also went to buy to buy or acquire the rules engine. We didn’t buy FATE, it was open license. Thank you very much Evil Hat.

Courtney: Alright. Alright. Once you Had the system picked out what happened after that?

Andrew: we started making spells. We had to designed for the gameplay experience and we [00:26:00] decided since everybody’s playing a wizard that we’re gonna make different flavors of wizard with different spells and the flavors or classes, dare I say, were, well we call them sciences. And this is actually a little in joke because Ars Magica calls the Magic Skills Arts So, um, humor me. And there are four of them actually five. There’s astrology, alchemy theorgy, which was, it was magic that was rationalized into Christian theology and was called magia or white magic it wasn’t fully accepted but there were people who were willing to defend it. And then there’s sorcery, which is Blackmagic. For us, [00:27:00] we didn’t believe in writing good and evil into the game, but the difference between theorgy and sorcery is that theorgy is the hard road of building up your spiritual authority so the spirits choose to obey you. And sorcery is using other means to get the spirits to do what you want.

Offering them payment, making deals, or if you’re a villain, coercion. But that’s that’s for villains. And then the village healer that you mentioned You know, these all are, the previous four were all what is considered high magic, and I don’t even like that label, but they’re academic. And then there’s the non academic folk magic. We didn’t have a good word for it. We went with [00:28:00] witchcraft. As the, as the least bad available word and Witchcraft is probably the most powerful of the sciences because it, it picks and chooses from some of the others and it you know, so it brings in elements of alchemy and astrology and a little sorcery.

Yeah. So. You know, we designed that, and then we we began making spells, making lots of spells. I thought that it would be hard to make enough spells. It wasn’t hard to make enough spells. Once it got rolling, it was hard to stop making spells. And we’ve got, I think, 190 in the, in the core book.

It’s a good selection of spells. And probably a quarter of those are adaptations straight out of 16th century [00:29:00] grimoire. And the rest have some connection to either period literature or, not all of them. Some of them are just cool and we had a cool idea. But you know, a lot of them are connected to European folklore.

Courtney: So I see that Maginomia is available on DriveThruRPG.

Andrew: It

Courtney: Was that the original place where y’all sold it once it was done? Or

Andrew: Yeah, we crowdfunded it.

at the time this was during, um, the previous CEO of Kickstarter and they were strike breaking. So I, I tried a Kickstarter. I wasn’t actually ready. It didn’t fund.

And then, I tried again, but I tried it on a different platform.

And was successful on Game on Tabletop. and, yeah, the idea all along was to publish this as print on demand. Right. And you know about this from, from your [00:30:00] role as a project manager, right? The production, the distribution. I’m running this part time. It makes sense after you get to a certain volume of sales. And, I’m not there, yet.

Courtney: I’m curious if you Changed anything about your crowdfunding page or advertising between the first and second attempt other than just picking a different platform?

Andrew: Yeah, I think the message was, there was a lot more of a focused message about the game. I think I put up some more art because there was more art that was done. Not a lot really was, did I change. And mostly I got the backers through some, paid advertising on Facebook before Cambridge Analytica and the scandals and people lost confidence in Facebook. There was a, [00:31:00] there was a brief summer time when you could actually pay for ads on Facebook and people would read them and buy your stuff. That was cool. And some organic social media.

Courtney: Yeah, I’m always interested when, because Burnaway actually went through the same thing where we didn’t fund the first attempt and so we actually made a bunch of changes and funded the second attempt and so it’s just always, I don’t know, something that I’m always curious about is you.

Andrew: Oh, I lowered the funding goal a

Courtney: Yeah,

Andrew: right?

Courtney: that helps.

Yeah,

Andrew: you know, what is it, what are your actual costs? So I tried to fund to the actual cost. If I had funded to half the actual cost, the Kickstarter would have been way more successful. But, you know, I listened to bad advice. Nobody talked about this. I went to a couple of seminars at Gen Con about how to run a [00:32:00] Kickstarter and nobody said you have to sandbag on your funding goal. But you have to sandbag your funding goal. You should set it to 25 percent or less of your total cost.

Courtney: we learned that too.

Andrew: Yeah, I was actually expecting, you know, crowdfunding to fund my project. Silly me. And that was, you know, 2020, which was quite some time ago. The industry is a bit of a rollercoaster and things have changed.

Courtney: Yeah, it feels like they change monthly. Mm.

Andrew: That, I didn’t expect when I founded the company. I, I thought, you know, I’ve been following the industry for years and You know, I kind of know what’s going on. No When you actually start writing checks And you know Trying to run a business [00:33:00] things change And Some things I mean I partly called the company Shewstone Publishing because mean that’s an archaic word for a crystal ball that was used in Renaissance England and it’s just a cool name but also because you know I thought I could see where the industry was going and I wasn’t wrong. I was right about a lot of things. I was right that it was going to be a lot more important. You’re not gonna it was going to be important to be inclusive and to find ways to make gamers feel comfortable with the setting that you’re providing. Print distribution was going to be less important. I got right that, you know, distributed freelance teams is the way games get written and that you can do this all electronically through collaboration tools.

Courtney: Man, so you [00:34:00] founded this company in 2020?

Andrew: No, I founded it in 2016,

Courtney: Okay.

Andrew: alright. Worked on the game for three years, tried to crowdfund it, didn’t crowdfund it. Crowdfunded it again the following year, successfully. Delivered a year late

because it was my first project. Timothy Ferguson saved our bacon coming to the rescue when we really needed him. And now we’ve got this really cool game.

Hey, entrepreneurs. I love introducing you to new creators every episode, but I could really use your support. I would love to invite you to join our Patreon page, where you’ll gain access to behind the scenes content, add your questions to upcoming interviews, and you could even receive a shout out on our site in an upcoming episode.

To learn more, go to lightheartadventures. com slash RPG. And now back to the [00:35:00] show.

Courtney: And now you’re working on Drintera.

Andrew: Drintera. Thank you for mentioning Drintera.

Courtney: Yeah, so I definitely want to dig into this because it’s a monthly digital magazine.

Andrew: That’s correct.

Courtney: I’m very curious about how this came about and what all is included.

Andrew: Yeah, thanks. So this came about from Gen Con I went to a panel discussion and Greg Stafford was on the panel. For those who don’t know, Greg Stafford was the lead designer for the World of Glorantha Runequest, which is a Amazing opus and a really deep rich world that is one of the first multi, it [00:36:00] was the first multimedia fantasy world that I can think of.

It’s appeared in board games and there’s the RuneQuest role playing game. There’s a computer game which is where I first encountered Glorantha called King of Dragon Pass. It’s a classic. The panel discussion was about gods in a fantasy world and Greg Stafford is an authority on mythology.

He created a really rich mythology and I was blown away by how he characterized pagan gods, polytheistic gods, and just the thought. That he put into it. I said I want to bring that to gamers because so many fantasy worlds have are Pretty shallow in their treatment of Polytheistic pantheons and religion And there’s so much potential I could go play in [00:37:00] Glorantha, but Glorantha is a little weird It’s just a little, it’s just not quite accessible.

If people who are willing to take a big departure from DD conventions are already playing in Glorantha, right? So I want something that’s richer and will be more thought provoking and will be for will encourage a

a deeper, more thoughtful kind of storytelling. It will, it will invite it, right? And, and yet still be accessible. And within reach from these D& D conventions. So that’s where the idea of Drintera started. It started with the gods. And when I said I was making a fantasy world, the first question people would ask me is what are the gods like?

Now interestingly, no matter what I said, the answer was always meh. I think, that they’re hesitant, they’re apprehensive about religion, okay? And in a [00:38:00] fantasy world, they expect that there’s going to be religion, but what’s it going to be like? Is it going to be as bad as it is in our world? Right? I get it, okay? So, and I worked on that and put a lot of thought into it. Dreamterra is a pantheist world. Everything has a spirit. People, animals, plants, even inanimate objects like like a clay pot or house, have a spirit. And some of, some things in nature are Globally Visible, Globally Influential. The Sun, Moon, the Sea, Mountains. These are the gods. Their spirits are the gods. So that’s what the gods are like. And actually, like Glorantha, The gods are recognized all over the world. They’d be known by different names. They’d be, but they’d be recognized [00:39:00] and they’d be regarded in different ways depending on the importance of their domain to the society. So, hunter gatherers don’t care that much about the sun god, right? It’s the agricultural societies that put a great deal of weight on the importance of Zuvonar, the sun god.

So, how we actually got started was a professional acquaintance of mine posted on Twitter saying, hey I lost my job, I need some freelance TTRPG work to, to fill in the gap and I said, well, I’m going to help out my buddy and I’m going to light this candle and So, we started building the world and for two years it was just the foundation of the world without thinking about how to monetize it. And the team grew. So it started as a partnership with me and Jackie. [00:40:00] And I brought in some other creators early on and the team’s grown and I’m paying for all this out of pocket. So after about two years, it’s time to monetize this. Right? It’s time to monetize. So I soft launched it on Patreon.

It’s there now. But listeners, please don’t go run out and join my Patreon. That’s a weird thing to say, but we’ve got a Kickstarter coming in a few months and What we’re trying to do is just get subscribers on board, right? The rewards are going to be a subscription. So we’re making this as a magazine.

I’ve been publishing it since March of 2024, and have got my head around how to produce a magazine on a schedule. It’s, it’s not meant to be entirely a pitch for the Kickstarter. You asked about the magazine, so why a magazine [00:41:00] format?

A book is a lot. A book is a lot of investment. Not for me, but for the reader. Alright A book is something that you want to buy and read if you’re going to run in the world, or if you collect worlds, which some people do, okay? It’s fine to collect worlds, in fact, you’re my target customer if you collect worlds. But, I think, I am very focused, because I’m a forever game master myself, I’m very focused on the game master experience. And one of the things game masters need is they need some stimulation. I think that experienced game masters in particular are often less interested in ready to play adventures they can just buy and they’re more interested in stimulation, creative fuel I call it. For their home campaign, for their home [00:42:00] group world. And instead of selling a dump truck full of creative fuel in the form of a book, I want to give it as a steady subscription. So that’s one of the reasons for the magazine format.

The other is there’s too much. There’s actually too much to put in a book. So, the magazine makes it digestible, but it also makes us not have to publish three or four 200 page books, okay? And then finally, and this is a very important point, is it allows us to bring more authors into the pool and more diverse voices. So, one of the things that I wanted from the beginning is for Drintera to be less Eurocentric. Than a lot of the products that you’ve seen out there. And I, I’m talking about European history and Europe. Europe this year. Your, that, the whole interview. The world is bigger than that. And you know, my crystal [00:43:00] ball says maybe we should let people’s whose heritage is from outside Europe, right. Let them be seen and let them show us. what fantasy in their cultural heritage would look like. Show us what fantasy in a, in a Chinese inspired setting by a person of Chinese heritage. What would that look like? All right, there’s a little less kung fu than if an American, white American, had written that, okay, and more about You know, the importance of their family, very much more about literature and calligraphy and literacy and poetry. So, the magazine lets me be a vehicle for more diverse voices.

Courtney: I love that so much. I’m really glad that you’re able to provide a platform for these writers. How [00:44:00] are you finding them? Are people submitting submissions? Are you out recruiting?

Andrew: Yeah I guess the first thing I want to say is all you aspiring writers out there, I need more subscribers before I can take on more freelancers. But how am I finding them? I started with my network, such as it was, because I had been in business for a few years. And then, believe it or not, two of my freelancers contacted me on LinkedIn. They made a professional presentation with Portfolio, and I said yes, come on board. Now I had joined the Rising Tide TTRPG Discord server, and its predecessor, but now it’s Rising Tide. And that is just a huge boon. If you have Financing. If you’re [00:45:00] able to pay freelancers, you just run up a flag on Rising Tide and you will get more freelancers than you can handle.

Courtney: Yeah. I honestly, I love this community and just finding folks to work with on really fun projects. I do wanna make sure that we have time for some questions I like to ask in every interview, which is that. I mean, you’ve been working on this for a long time now, and we do this because we love it, but obviously there are challenges.

So I would love to know, like, what are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve run into during this journey?

Andrew: Finding my audience. Getting my message in front of the people who want my product. I know there are people who want Maginomia. You know, listeners, if you want it after hearing me talk about it, right? But you may be hearing about it for the first time. So that’s the biggest challenge. And [00:46:00] the fragmentation of social media is terrible. It’s not just the gaming industry that’s struggling with this. Big companies are struggling with this. So, I mean that’s the biggest challenge, and Kickstarter is effective. Crowdfunding is effective. Crowdfunding is necessary now. And crowdfunding is not what it’s claimed to be. Crowdfunding is a distribution channel. You, you will not, I don’t think you have good chances of success. I’m not going to say you won’t succeed, but you don’t have good chances if you are starting your project and you start crowdfunding, right? You need to, unfortunately, invest the time, the money, large amounts of money and effort to create a professional product. then maybe you can crowdfund it. You can attempt to crowdfund it. So those are the challenges. The [00:47:00] challenges are all on the sales and distribution side. However, I will add that I have talked to print distributors who sell the brick and mortar game stores and they are super easy to work with. If you have a A few hundred copies of inventory, if that works for your budget, just literally look them up and call them. And I thought it was going to be intimidating. So I, I have explored print distribution, right? And don’t be afraid of it. Be afraid of how you’re going to pay for your print run. and how you’re going to recover that cost. Be afraid of the high cost of print on demand relative to offset printing. So, so those are the, those are the challenges.

For me is, and it’s a crowded field. There are millions of gamers. There are, I [00:48:00] think, millions of people who want to read role playing games and, and see new things, and it takes me some time between when I buy a game and when I play it, right? But I buy them. But, it’s a very crowded field.

Courtney: Mm hmm.

Andrew: I can just sell on social media. Well, it’s not that easy, right? So Thank you so much for the help, for the visibility that you’re giving me for free, right? And it’s a real service to the community to run a podcast like this.

Courtney: Thank you. I appreciate it. Honestly, I just have fun chattin games for an hour.

Andrew: Don’t we both? I mean, this is why I started the company. This is why I’m not crying over the I’m not at all profitable yet,[00:49:00]

Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew: you know it’d be good I’d love to keep doing this for another gosh eight years but you know I’ve got it I’ve got to pick up my game I’ve got up my game on the

Courtney: Mhm.

Andrew: Those are the main challenges.

Oh, I mean I can, I can talk about something else that wasn’t a challenge, but I would recommend, I like did it right the first time which is do get a lawyer and do get a lawyer’s help with preparing your contracts. It will give you security. So, I did great. This was the thing at the beginning. I wanted to create the business to be future proof. To be able to grow. What I mean by that is, I wanted to, if it’s successful, I wanted to be able to bring in a partner. If it’s successful, I wanted to be able to sell it. Maybe when [00:50:00] I’m too old and it’s not fun anymore. And to do that required setting up the legal stuff in advance. You don’t have to do it like I did. You don’t have to hire a lawyer first, but you should hire a lawyer before you start exchanging money or equity or, you know, share future sales with somebody.

Courtney: I think that’s really good advice. Unfortunately, we are gonna have to wrap up, despite the fact that I really do have so many more questions. But do you have a launch date for Kickstarter, or for the Kickstarter campaign at this point?

Andrew: Yeah, I do. the Kickstarter campaign for Drinterra is going to launch in mid January, and you can sign up today to follow it to be notified on the launch. And you know probably how Kickstarters work. We want to have a strong first day. We want to fund fully on the first day. [00:51:00] So please don’t wait for the launch date, but the launch date is coming in mid January.

Courtney: Perfect! Yeah, I will have a link to that in the show notes.

Andrew: Thank you.

Courtney: If people want to find you and find your company, where should they go?

Andrew: Shewstone. com. I’m also on Linktree. Shewstone, I should give you that link for the podcast. I’m active on Threads, and Blue Sky, and Mastodon, and Facebook.

Courtney: Perfect.

Well, Andrew, this has been a really fun conversation. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Andrew: It was a real pleasure. Thank you.

Courtney: So, listeners, at this point, we are going to stop the official interview. I’m gonna hit Stop. And then we’re gonna start right back up and jump into a fun little quick question blitz, which is available for my [00:52:00] patrons. So if you go to patreon. com slash rollplaygrow, you will find this fun little tidbit and tidbits from previous guests as well, where we talk about more silly things, like Describe the perfect sandwich, which is a personal favorite question.

ha, ha, ha,

Andrew: Oh wow,

Courtney: So now you get to think about that.

Thank you so much for listening, guys.

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