But the idea of like, how do you elevate the villain kind of to that next stage of being something larger than maybe a one off or a couple instances? Yeah.

To being the long running villain.

Yeah, I love that.

I mean, I love a lot of things about a long looming villain.

I think there are a couple of great ways to do this.

I think making them simply, especially if you're talking about in a game, but I think this works really well in fiction too.

I love when the ultimate big bad is introduced way too early and can just literally kill everyone.

Like, were there certain things like when you were working through making the book that kind of stood out of, okay, these are you, like I said, kind of problematic areas.

So do you feel like it's different for player characters, or kind of the same?

That I do feel like is a little different because when you're creating a backstory for a player character, that is not the same as creating a general protagonist because you're creating someone who, one, i- intentionally by design doesn't have their story written yet, and won't when you leave the pages of a player character backstory creation.

When you leave that, you don't know what's going to happen to them because that's the whole part of play, and, like, you don't know how they're gonna change and grow and, and all of those things.

You're signing up to have their story written in the little writer's room of your tabletop RPG session, you know? You're just getting the bones and the structure to give you someone to jump off, you know, into that experience with.

So I do think it's a little different because you still want that person to have, like, you know, their interests and their flaws and their history, but you really want to then take them and just kind of drive them like you stole them, you know? And-

Mm.

Yeah.

With character backstory creation, one, the game books have the mechanical aspects of your character covered.

Yeah

... and, like, [laughs] like run towards it 'cause Tag has been in the prank gang game for, for, for ages now.

It, it's a shtick that now he's kinda stuck in and can't really do much else because this is the content that drives his numbers and gets the patron happy and all of that.

Uh, but there's some fun stuff that other streamers do that could be fun, and Tag sees a wind chamber.

Like, one of those things where you get to, like, go inside and just be flying, uh- [laughs]

Yeah.

Um, [laughs] yeah.

Like, I think, like, after we get, like, far enough away from crowd and the noise, and, like, like, it's just bewilderment as we're being whisked away.

Is there anything about their part of the community or that their community that you envy? Is there anything that you are grateful for? Who is another group that we are loosely affiliated with that we are spending time with?

So, you know, so we've been spending a lot of time with the sick rats.

They are, of course, dear, dear friends and have been really crucial to this whole operation, you know, in their support and and intel and research and.

They're kind of unmatched in that way.

They do put people off.

So it does sort of create some tensions in the.

you know, community writ large to be associated with them directly.

trying to what's the the best way to say it is talk to me about a machete cut of uh of our finished film talk to me about somebody's alternate cut a director's cut an alternate version of the film that exists in the world and like why it was created what the major differences are in the film and like what it exists as an object

Yeah.

Um, at the very least, all of the, what...

It, in the book, we had, like, disseminated the villains into different, like, categories, the broad categories.

Those all, uh, came from our brainstorming session.

So, like, having the outlaw, the believer, the supernatural, the opulent, the leader, um, those, those all came out of that meeting.

Uh, and then a good chunk of the ideas of the games, maybe not what kinds of mini-games or exercises they were gonna wind up being, but, like, we had a lot of ideas about, like, um, games about making the minions for, uh, like exercises about making their appearances.

Uh, that was definitely one that was, that we knew.

Yeah, the time before the darkness.

We are adventurers.

What's up, heroes? It's me, your host Dylan, back with another episode of One Shot, and our finale of Realis, featuring the game's designer, Austin Walker, GM'd by the game's publisher, Tyler Crumrine of Possible World Games.

I am so, so happy I got to have the privilege of playing this game with these two and some of my best friends, and to share that experience with you.

I really feel that Realis is a special game, and I'm so excited for you to absolutely be hearing more about it, specifically this character from me probably here on One Shot, if I'm being honest.

There are a few short days left in the campaign, so please check the link in the show notes and back it if you have not already.

[gentle music]

[outro music]

Thank you so much for listening, heroes.