Wyrmworks Publishing How much do you know about mythology besides Greek, Norse and Egyptian? What happens when we explore another one and it's accompanying and cultures? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We're using role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better. The big project, Limitless Heroics: including characters with disabilities, mental illness and neuro divergence in fifth edition, is going to launch Live on Kickstarter January 4. That's next week if you're listening to this on release day or it's possibly live now if you're listening later. Limitless Heroics will include D&D Fifth Edition game mechanics for over 450 different symptoms, over 90 new assistive magic items, real world examples so that players can learn more and better represent the symptoms, opening articles discussing how and why to implement these symptoms, how to discuss it with your players, common tropes to avoid, all the tools that you need to run an inclusive campaign. Just go to inclusiverpg.com, and you'll find all the details there. And we just hired another sensitivity consultant, therapist Naomi Hazlett, whom you may remember from episode five of this show talking about Level Up Gaming with Daniel Kwan. If you go to the Kickstarter page, make sure you read the staff bios. We have an amazing team, and everyone that was hired for this project is disabled. neurodivergent, mentally ill, or a combination of those. So make sure you don't miss it. Go to inclusiverpg.com right now, and if you catch this on the first day, Tuesday, January 4, you also have the opportunity to get a extra gift, bonus gift, for being a first day backer. And now let's get to our interview. Wyrmworks Publishing We can learn so much about our own world by imagining different worlds. Here to talk with us about that today is co-director of the Islands of Sina Una housing. Welcome Paladin. Paladin Thanks for having me. Wyrmworks Publishing So what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically speaking to the TTRPG crowd? Paladin I purposely obfuscate my personal details and make myself more and more cryptid with each era that I work in this industry. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright so the Islands of Sina Una is based on the Philippines before colonization. So tell us about the project and how you experienced it personally, what drove you to this project Paladin At first, genuinely speaking, money. The person who started the project is Lucia. Otherwise known as @seersword online on Twitter and stuff. And she had this little project she was working on she needed a graphic designer. Because only Filipino working on book she was looking around for a Filipino graphic designer who wanted her TTRPG stuff. And that happens to be like, in the Venn diagram of those, that's where I fit in quite nicely. So initially, I was like okay, yeah, sure. I could use a couple bucks. I'm, you know, a freelancer, I'm poor, I could use a couple bucks. I started working on it, started working more and more on it. At some point. I decided on a whim, I should try and go to Gen Con. I should try and go to Gen Con. I can printout this little book, but I can meet a bunch of people in the industry and tell them about what we're working on. You know, maybe we can get some notice notice there, you know. So that went over well. Genuinely. And from there, Lucia told me, "Hey, you're co-director now," and I'm like, "This seems forced." Um and then from there just kind of escalated into more and more. Around that time, I found this tweet on Twitter that said, "Do what you love, and it will devour every waking moment of your life." And yeah, for a solid year, year and a half Sina Una took up 10 to 14 hours of every day of my life. Wyrmworks Publishing And probably kept you from sleeping too. Paladin Oh, mmm. Yes. This is what caused me to have sleeping problems that nothing else before that. Definitely just the book. Wyrmworks Publishing Well, I'm sorry I so resonate with that because as I'm getting ready for my own Kickstarter right now, and it's like, wake up in two hours before I need to get up and and you know, my brains just running processes and Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, well tell us more about the project. Anything you'd like to explain? Yeah, Paladin Sure. So it's based off pre-colonial Philippine mythology and culture. And part of the process of doing that is kinda divvying up between history and culture and mythology. What is and isn't pre-colonial, which requires more reading than you ever want to do. Genuinely speaking. If you're someone who likes to read, this is too much reading for you. I It's gotten to the point where I have a couple books in my personal library, and they're the only copies of them for miles and miles around. I one of my one of my current books right now is one of three copies in North America. And that's not a good feeling. That's not a good feeling. And you know, it got so expensive that at one point I I paid one of my researchers in the Philippines. "Hey, here's some money. I need you to go to your university library and get these books. Because if I pay 200 overall for them from you, I won't have to pay 4000 over here." Wyrmworks Publishing Oh wow. Paladin Because there's such a thing as information scarcity when it comes to verifying good information. And even then, that wasn't even the cusp of it of just, you know, figuring out what is and what isn't precolonial and using what we have after that. We it's vaguely precolonial for for the longest time, as of like a week before we released the PDF. It officially became porcelain era inspired Filipino culture. Because we had Spaniards before the guns. And my researchers told us this a week before we released the book, which, you know, is upsetting because I use guns and a lot of like, just just meme humor you know? Just like "look at that monkey's got a gun" is like peak humor to me. Yeah, just a lot of reading, a lot of intensive studying and sieving that sieving that into what we have today. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright. Anything else on it? Paladin Yeah. Mythology is really hard to research if it's not one of big three, Egyptian Norse or Greek. If you are a researcher for anything that isn't one of those three. I commend you. Good luck. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. And there's so much, because those three are so common, and sort of part of the broader Western culture, you know, it's, it becomes everything sort of based on that. And, and, and so we get these ideas about how just kind of general ideas about how mythology works, but it's, it's really, it's just such a small non-representative sampling. Paladin By and large, a lot of D&D settings doing the same thing with faith and religion constantly. Where you have deities represent very archetypical things in nature and then some abstract humanistic ideals. You know, you have your necessary war deity, you have your necessary God diety and then you have to be like, "Oh, what about a deity who isn't of death but of dying, of going to the afterlife," and like I, yeah, sure. You see those patterns a lot and then you see them, cross it with Abrahamic faiths, where the afterlife and dying is reward and punishment based, based off of someone's arbitrary values, and if you base all of your faith and religion stuff, purely off of reward and punishment, and vague polytheism, I… Everything kind of tastes the same, you know? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Yeah. So can you tell us just how, how this is different. Paladin Yeah, sure. Sina Una is rooted in animism, the belief that everything in nature and everything that you have kind of a strong relationship to or tie to has its own spirit and awareness. A particular piece of grass might not have huge awareness, but it has its own spirit. But it's small comparison to a tree and that small comparison to a forest. A river is small compared to an ocean. But then you get things that are wildly huge in nature, such as the harvest, or the sun and moon cycle. You know, we have our creation deity, Bathala. But even then, he isn't lording over and am I allowed to swear or no? Wyrmworks Publishing Sure. Paladin I don't want to swear this seems very, very polite. Who wants to mate with anything and everything a la Zeus, you know? He made the world and just kind of, you know, went off, said, Hey, have fun. I'ma go relax, you know? And then you have different deities of different cycles of the moon because the moon is a very important important to precolonial Filipino mythology and culture. There are a bunch of ocean based deities and even then from culture to culture, because there are 185 ethno-linguistic groups in the Philippines, one story in one part of the islands will differ from another part. And that's actually part of the work we had to do is kind of parsing through different deities because there's so many and choosing just a handful to put into the book. And nothing is arbitrary based. It's all based around what we actually have a relationship to as humans. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, so you mentioned all these different cultures that you're working with, and trying to bring it together in a book. How did you how'd you mesh that while recognizing those cultures? Paladin It was a hard choice of just deciding which ones are gonna make the cut. Honestly. There are a lot of deities that are cool, but we just didn't have room for in all honesty. If we wanted to include more and more deities or if we didn't cut as many as we did, we would have gone from, you know, a 330 page book to a 400 page book. Wyrmworks Publishing Sure. Paladin So it wasn't any real official process to it. It was we had these main storylines, and then what can we use to kind of cover the world? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that's fair. Stuff always ends up on the cutting room floor that you go, "Oh, I really wish that I could have kept that. But…." Paladin Yeah, we had a deity just covered in eyes and that was sick. We didn't have room for it. Wyrmworks Publishing And so how is the…this is a fifth edition based game. Alright, so how is the playstyle different than just your standard D&D? Paladin We've put a lot of emphasis on building relationships with other people, on the fact that you aren't in just some abstract place with strangers all around you. You have a place in the world. You have your neighbors, you have people you have genuine relationships to going with…Going down to that root nature of animism of the things you have are bound to become kind of stronger and more important. We put a lot of focus on community. You know, there are aesthetic changes like you know, if you can have tattoos that represents how, what you've done in the world or maybe how important you may be, then you know, you don't have shoes unless you're kind of well off and you don't have metal armor because you're in a place that is humid and has lots of water, and drowning is still a very real danger. But we put a huge emphasis on the fact that you aren't some stranger in some strange land. You are so and so. You are in your home. These are your neighbors. Wyrmworks Publishing And that's that's a really different twist. I mean, normally when you think about a sort of local campaign, you know, it's a city. It's Waterdeep or something like that where or even at home. You're not really at home. You're finding strange places, even within the city, you know, or something like that. Paladin Yeah, people play or play play city campaigns or the urban campaign. Ugh gross. City campaign's they focus on you being a stranger, you know, you have your home, you have your close group, but you are otherwise a stranger in a strange place. Focusing on community is harder, both on like the DM side because like you have to focus on like recurring NPCs and stuff. But it's harder in the sense that building familiarity, building deeper bonds in a social setting is inherently more taxing than just, "I went off to this place. I purchased some things. I made a joke with that one local innkeeper and now I move on. Wyrmworks Publishing Mhmm. Yeah, absolutely. And yet at the same time, one of the big strengths of D&D or any tabletop role playing game is the concept of community that it's a cooperative game. And and it really is about building relationships. And so when you deliberately work that right into the, the campaign format, that's just going to make the whole experience better and stronger and especially right now with you know, and not not just because I mean, COVID is has really kind of split people up and things like that. But at the same time, Western culture as a whole has been moving to very isolated. Think in United States especially there's, there's this real individualism that causes us to kind of isolate ourselves and miss out on community and so something that, you know, that really promotes that concept of community, that's a really positive thing. Paladin Like in America especially, there's this focus on the American dream, or hustling or grinding or just pushing yourself forward, especially if you're like, I'm in this weird place, right where I am both someone who just kind of makes books and works off with himself or with teams. I am also someone who was recognized as just a personality, you know, and as a personality, yeah, I have to kind of keep on social media in order to keep growing my social media career because it makes the bookmaking part the stuff I really do like and the streaming stuff that I am starting to enjoy easier. But I like to go off and just focus on bookmaking. There's this idea that I've had in my head, this past year of community and what it means to actually be close to people, and it's difficult, you know, distant people aren't obviously because they have to be for safety reasons. But the idea of community is so much more than just being a group of people in a place. It's about actually developing closer relationships with people. Recently, I've done this thing where I, if I'm going to be on going to have a quick you know, call with someone I actually ask if I can do a phone call. A phone call feels more real to me than like a Zoom call or just on Discord because there's actual physicality to it. It feels real to me. And I want people to feel real to me rather than just having them be "Oh, yes. I see their name retweeted into my timeline on Twitter." Being it really means actually talking to people connecting to people, and I don't know, responding to people on Twitter. It doesn't feel like real connection sometimes. Wyrmworks Publishing I hear that. So how have you seen lives changed from your work? Paladin Well, I used to be some elsewhere on this. I used to be some bumfuck loser before Sina Una. And now I'm doing interviews. It's kind of a kind of a leap. But I've had a lot of people talk to me about how much they appreciate the fact that my team didn't apologize to make Sina Una. None of us ever felt the need to apologize or ask for permission to do our stuff. We just said "Hey, we're doing this thing now." I've had a lot of Filipino people reach out to me over the past year, year and a half talking about the work I did in the book that my team made. It's a little overwhelming, but some examples are someone was reading my foreword in the book to his grandma and she started crying and start talking about how it's a historical book, not just a game book. At PAX, someone told me that they would kind of look up Filipino stuff to run for their family, for D&D system for the family because it's a white guy, but he has a Filipino wife and a mixed kid. And he was looking around trying to find something and he found our book on Indiegogo, and he brought his Indiegogo copy of the book to PAX U to get it signed by me. That's wild to think about because that is A) such an inconvenience. It's such a heavy book. It's 336 pages, you know. Paladin But on a smaller level, I have a little brother. I have a little brother named Lucius. He is 15 this year, I think and working on Sina Una, I had to unpack a lot of diasporic feelings, a lot of feelings of inadequacy inadequacy. People know what word I'm going for. I'm not going to try to pronounce a word I can't pronounce. I've thought a lot of ways a lot of harsh ways about being Filipino before Sina Una, and I had to leap latch on to things like Samurai Jack to feel like I was seen in media. My little brother's going to deal with that nowhere near as hard as I did because of this book. And if I can make these really complicated, kind of generational pilot feelings a little less harmful and easy to work with because of the work my team did, then I feel accomplished. I watched Tick Tick Boom recently on an airplane and a bunch of my friends watched it and freaked out because they're almost turning 30. And they want to do something big before they turn 30. You know and that's kind of the core thing of the book. You know, this guy wants to make a big musical before he turns 30. I turn 30 in like a year or two here. I'm really not stressed. Because my great thing is Sina Una. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what one message would you like to give to people of marginalized demographics? Paladin Oh, just just put in the work. Genuinely don't apologize. Don't feel the need to over explain. Don't feel the need that you have to exert your time that will be better spent just doing what you want to make into explaining why you want to make stuff because either you're going to let yourself be dragged down by people who want to question you. Or you can just push forward and meet people who are actually going to support you. Difference between just talking to people and actually connecting to people. There are people who will genuinely support you and love what you have to make and what you have to say. As long as you ignore people who are going to try and get you to stop. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright and what one message would you like to give to people of privileged demographics? Paladin As kindly as I can say this, I need some of you to understand that you're not as good allies as you might think. Genuinely speaking, some of you talk, and I need to, I need you to shut up. I need some of you to shut up when some of us are talking because you all like to run your mouths a whole lot. And I love you. I love many of you. Oh my god. Some of you ask the same questions on repeat. And you woudn't be asking those questions if you listen the first time. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright. Alright. That is helpful. So what projects are you planning for the future that you can talk about? Paladin Well, I'm finishing up the interview book finally, and I'm finishing up a Incantations, a book on very oddball spells. There was some delay because end a September I lost my computer of half a decade and I lost my friend of a decade and a half. Really through both October and November in the fucking gutter. We're finishing that up now. Hoping to release a PDF soon and get an idea of print copies. But after that I got I'm working on some drinks and working with some artists on books they want to make. I'm working on a Tarot themed book. And I'm working on a couple of larger projects. Nothing on the scale of Sina Una because I don't want to make another 300 Plus page book because that is a lot. I will say it's a lot. But in the next couple in the next like year, year and a half. I will have released 10 books before I hit 30. That feels kind of cool. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so we will have all your contact information in our show notes. But where's the one best place that you'd like people to start to learn more about you or to contact you? Paladin Twitter. Twitter's the best place to find me. It's where I'm most active. I'm on Instagram but like I don't do much except for photo dumps from trips I take and you can find me on Facebook. But from the bottom of my heart, fucking don't. It's so weird to get adds from people I don't know. Please stop. Wyrmworks Publishing I hear that. I hear that. My My Facebook is is for people I know, for close friends and family and things like that. Paladin Yeah, people you like have connections to and interact on a day to day basis. Not people who like look at your work and wanting to know you personally. That's…eh. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Everyone, check out those links in the show notes. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Playing the Other: how to play a disabled, mentally ill, or neurodivergent character, whether PC or NPC, that properly represents symptoms so as to represent those real life people in your game and give them depth as characters while avoiding harmful stereotypes and tropes. Today to help us with that, I'm happy to welcome Nikki. Nikki Hello. Wyrmworks Publishing So Nikki, what would you like to tell us or what would you like us to know about you as a person and as a gamer? Nikki Um, I've been playing tabletop games since I was 15. So going on 19 years now, and I have fallen in love with it. I've been gaming on and off throughout my entire life. I didn't get hardcore into it until I turned 18 and moved out of my house. But mostly tabletop games are the things that just suck me in and I have literally created my entire life to work around that. I work in tabletop games. I'm a professional GM now, I do everything I possibly can to focus on tabletop games, including podcasting. So my entire life literally revolves around it now. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what would you like people to know about your symptoms, how you experienced them how you adapt to them and what is and isn't helpful? Nikki So I have a couple of different things. So I have for mental illnesses, I have depression and anxiety and potentially PTSD. We're getting a diagnosis for that. But I've been dealing with those since I was in my teenage years. And recently, it's gotten significantly worse due to stress and like life and everything. I have a kid now, who's a teenager already because we adopted at 16. And it's just been a whole lot of changes. And then I quit my corporate job six months ago which is added to that stress. But now that I'm medicated, that helps significantly, and being able to go talk to my doctor and like adjust the meds as needed if I'm having a really bad week or two, that significantly helps, learning how to like pull away from a situation when I'm angry or upset and not make decisions rash… irrationally, helps me a lot too. The problem is I end up having to deal with my emotions and in like my child's emotions, who has their traumas and PTSD and depression, anxiety and borderline personality disorder. So I have to work with both of us all the time. So mine ends up getting pushed far, far back to deal with the others. I'm trying to get better at that. For the anxiety, I just have to remind myself logically, even though my brain won't listen, but logically like that's not the case. You know, that's not the case. That's not what's happening, and your anxietie's like, "Yeah, that's what happened there. They're dead somewhere. Like, they're driving home and they're in a ditch somewhere," and you're like, "No, no, they're just taking a some time stuck in traffic. It's fine. It's fine," but you set up protocols with people like, "Hey, text me when you get home," and that helps with that part. The opposite side of the spectrum. I have a lot of chronic illnesses and invisible disabilities, so to speak with I have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and spondylitis for my spine. It's pushing my nerves constantly. So I'm in constant pain every day, and I have sciatica, and then I get constant migraines, which have lessened significantly since I stopped working in a corporate office with the bright lights above my head, which has been a godsend, but I still get them now. But just far fewer maybe once a month now versus once or twice a week, which has been perfection. Um, and with those I just take it day by day. I try not to… I refuse to go on pain meds yet because I know it's gonna get worse. And I'm only 34, so I don't want to start pain meds now if I can still withstand it. And then in 30 years, be immune to the pain meds and be on such a high dose that it's like, it doesn't matter. So I've been pushing myself to avoid that as long as possible even though my daily pain scale's probably a four or five and then a bad day is like an eight so if it's a bad day, then I'll just try whatever possible to make the pain go away but it's usually not that bad all the time. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, is there anything that is this helpful or not helpful for you coming from other people? Nikki Um related to anxiety, it's helpful when you have like I said, a system. I know that my friend, my best friend who I've been friends with for 24 years now. She knows that I know she loves me. But when she's busy and doesn't respond to me, my anxiety tells me "Well what if she doesn't love you? What if she hates you now suddenly," so she knows if she doesn't respond whenever she answers me. She purposely responds with, "Hey, I was playing video games what's up? I'm sorry, I missed your call." And like that will instantaneously solve the anxiety side of it, because my brain will stop and be like, "See, here's a logical reason you knew that," and like, reaffirm my logic. With depression, it's just time or distractions. So I have a couple of friends I go to who I can just like "Hey, I just need a distraction. Can you get me to laugh right now or just make me think of anything else?" And it takes like 10–20 minutes versus me sitting in there for three hours trying to get myself out of the depression. For the pain, there isn't really much maybe like massages sometimes. But with pain, it's just like kind of sit and wait and hope it goes away sooner or later. Hot, hot pads will work sometimes, heat pads will work sometimes. Ibuprofen will work sometimes, but other than that, there's not really much other people can do. If it's a migraine, I'll ask people to like turn down the lights or turn off the lights if we're playing together or doing something or turn down something we're listening to. And most of my friends are pretty accommodating about that. So it hasn't been a big issue, but if it's too bad, I just hide in my room and sleep. Wyrmworks Publishing Is there anything that people do that t you really wish they wouldn't? Nikki Tell me to lose weight? Like I know I'm overweight. I get it, but, "If you lost weight, you'll stop having migraines. Your psoriasis will magically be cured, everything will get better." It's like that's not how this works like. None of my problems are caused by my size. So that's not going to magically fix it. And that comes from doctors a lot honestly, not just even normal everyday people. The one I got from a normal everyday person was a coworker who's like, "Oh, if you became vegan, your psoriasis would be cured." I'm like, "That's not how this works." "Well I read it in this book," and I'm like, "That's not how this works. I've had it for 33 years. I know how this works. My psoriasis wasn't caused by eating meat, therefore it will not get better if I stop eating meat. Please, please stop," and they kept pushing it, and I literally just got really upset. It's the only time I've ever snapped at somebody. Like there's no cure. Stop it. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so if someone is including a PC or an NPC in their game with symptoms like yours, how would you like that character played, and how can other party members help? Nikki Um, for the pain reasons, I think it's pretty easy to just brush on it, but not necessarily focus on it. Like you can have somebody if you're playing tabletop games, you can have somebody who is an NPC or a PC who goes to bend down and pick something or like "Oh crap, that hurt." Okay, and then they just pick it up and they keep going; they're not like hyper focused on it anymore. Or if they're like, want to have if they want to have a headache, or constant migraines or something like that or want to showcase that, just have them be light sensitive, almost like drow can be or a underdark race could be so that in that perfectly is acceptable. It's like oh, "It's a little too bright. Does anybody have something to that I can wear?" Or they might already have something that would help negate the problems. For mental illnesses, just don't do tropes. Like the "Woe is me. Everything is Terrible." And I try to avoid… I don't like it when, personally, I don't like it when it goes even darker than that. But I like when people have characters who have moments of, of pure emotion like anger and jealousy and depression and anxiety and all of those things are natural things that all of our characters are going to feel so just give it justice and don't make it a cartoon or a caricature of how it should be. Don't overdo it. Don't just make it, "You see a person, and they look depressed," like it's going to subtly come off. They're going to try to hide it as much as possible most of the time. And they're just going to, at least in my experiences, they'll be open to talk about it and willing to discuss it. But I'm perfectly capable now and fine with talking about my mental illnesses. But I'm not going to go to a complete stranger and be like, "Hey, I'm depressed, so like, cool, be nice to me." But if I'm talking to a friend and we get the topic comes up, then I'll be like, "Yeah, I've been suffering from that since I was 15 blah, blah," and then move on with the conversation unless they have questions. So yeah, and I think that goes with like anything, not just…disabilities. Just don't caricature charicaturize anything. Be respectful of all the issues and do your research. Yeah, like do your research. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, anything else you'd like to add? Nikki I personally use tabletop games as an escape for depression and anxiety. It gets me out of my head. I can be a character that's happy go lucky and has no concerns in the world other than who, whose face they can punch next. And those are fun characters to play. I have characters that are anxious, but they're anxious for different reasons. It's not real world reasons. It's just whatever their issues are. And so I tend to accidentally overdo it. And I'm in way too many games and way too many podcasts and way too many things. But it helps me not have to think about like real life, which helps me get through my day. And that works most of the time. It doesn't necessarily work if I'm in a severe depression low because then I can't get out of it to pretend to be the character. But if I'm feeling like it's coming on then I'm like, "Let's play a game!" So I can stop it from happening and go into character, character mode and pretend to be okay. And that worked a lot. And I think playing characters has also helped me gain competence and charisma and the ability to talk to people a little bit better, which I did not have before. And it's helped me learn how to how to take care of certain situations that I normally would shy away from because I'm very non-confrontational and very much like, "I'll just step away, it's fine. I'll be upset. I don't care. I don't want to deal with the consequences of this conversation. Have fun. Bye." So I think playing play characters to learn how to deal with your shi…can I curse in this? Wyrmworks Publishing Sure. Nikki Okay, how to deal with your shit. Because it helps you a little bit. Learning how to do it in character will help you translate that to how to do it in person within reason. Obviously, if you're playing a monk, and your response to everything is punching it, don't go do that in real life. But if you can learn how to talk your way out of things or learn how to meditate or learn how to quell that anger and that frustration, then you could take some of those things into your real life, personality and help contribute feel and be a little bit better person. So I think that helps a lot of people with a lot of things including being LGBT plus and their sexuality and their gender and stuff like that. I know quite a few people who learned that they were LGBT because they played an LGBT character in a D&D game or they were nonbinary because they played a nonbinary character. They're like, "This feels right. Why does this feel right?" And so use it to explore everything but just be respectful. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, so you've already mentioned that you're involved in a number of different online projects and things, so go ahead and let us know what are all of those things? Nikki Okay, buckle up guys. So I am the creator of Beholder to No One which it will be hitting two year anniversary on the 30th of December, which I'm very excited about. That has discussion episodes, one shots and an actual play that are all tabletop related. The discussion episodes are with the people of the TTRPG community where we discuss anything from annoying people at the table to like non-colonialism to racism and sexism at the table to new games that are on Kickstarters and then the one shots are all well, mostly non-D&D based systems so we can try indie tabletop games like my favorites been Loot Grannies, Upriver/Downriver, we did we did Inspirisles, which is an amazing ASL BSL game where you get to learn sign language to cast your spells. And there are so many other games that we got, I've gotten to play just through that. And then our actual play currently is Morning Blues, which is like a Cowboy Bebop inspired bounty hunter, fifth edition game, but we have a completed 13 episode series of or sorry, 26 episode series of Behold Clearlight, which was a horror inspired or horror esque game where the mist was taking over the world around you. And then on top of that, I'm currently working on two new podcasts that should be going live in 2022. One is Dice before Dawn were our first game will be a Vampire the Masquerade game, Phoenix by Night, and then Sound Control RPG where our first game will be a Savage Worlds game, Radio Signal, and everything on on Sound Control will be sci fi related everything Dice before Dawn be more adult in darker related and those are my shows but I also am a DM over on Awfully Queer Heroes for their prior Uncaged Anthology in their future on January 21 2022: Tower of Souls, I'll be DMing for them, and that's a very deadly game where the players are playing chaotic and evil monster monstrous races, and they're trying to take down order and balance because they're tired of being attacked for being who they are. And it's kind of a symbolism as well, but it's a lot of fun. And then finally on Fridays, starting on January 7, again, you can start seeing me on 2000 Tales for Weird Web, a Monster the Week game playing Karen, the ghost turned demon turned undead human and very confused right now and has rage living inside of her head right now. So she has some anger problems herself to deal with. But that's all the podcast stuff and streaming stuff. I also am a professional DM and I also am a podcast audio editor for hire and a community manager. Wyrmworks Publishing All right, Nikki I think that's it. Wyrmworks Publishing OK, we're gonna have all those links in the show notes. So I encourage everybody to check those out. So where's the one best place to get ahold of you? People want to find out more about you. Nikki Probably @beholdertonoone on Twitter. I'm always on that. And anything I post on the other Twitters will be shared on that account too. So that's the best place to reach me. Or my Discord server if you want to, if you like my show that's in the linktree. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay. Well, Nikki thanks so much for coming on. Everyone, check out those links in the show notes. Nikki No problem. Wyrmworks Publishing So don't forget, go to inclusiverpg.com to check out our Kickstarter. And in fact one of our backer tiers, you can have a veteran artist from Marvel / DC Comics and D&D books, doing character illustration for a character that you helped create. Doesn't that sound cool? Just go to inclusiveRPG.com. Go. And there's a first day backer bonus too. So if you're hearing this later, you can still back it so that we can make this project better with all of our stretch goals and help us to realize the full scope of the project. But if you're hearing this on January 4, or before, you want to go there right now. Make sure you don't miss out on that. If you haven't signed up for our newsletter yet, go right now. That's the best way to not miss out on all kinds of things that we have coming out soon, including dozens and dozens of free 4k combat maps that are available right now as soon as you sign up, a free subclass, discounts, other specials, latest news, blog posts, all kinds of great stuff that we have coming, just go to WyrmworksPublishing.com, and you'll find more information there about our Kickstarter. And you can also again go to that Kickstarter, inclusiverpg.com. Wyrmworks Publishing Now if you want to support the ongoing work of Wyrmworks Publishing, you can also check out our Patreon, and there's more information on that on WyrmworksPublishing.com and we'll have a lot of things on that after this project wraps up. So just get on our newsletter. You can find out all about that or you can go straight to our Patreon, link again on our website. Wyrmworks Publishing And if you see this show being helpful, hit that like button. If you'd like to see more, subscribe, and if you know people that need to hear this, pass it on to them. And if you, like me, think everyone needs to hear this, pass it on to your social media friends. And don't forget those podcasts ratings. It makes a huge difference to just spread the word. So I hope you all have a great 2022 and we close with this question. How have RPGs helped you learn more about other cultures? And which one do you want to learn about next? Transcribed by https://otter.ai