Wyrmworks Publishing Do you ever feel like the whole world is just fronting? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are helping you make lives better through tabletop roleplaying games. Wyrmworks Publishing Our Kickstarter campaign just finished up: Limitless Champions, the largest most diverse collection of disabled fantasy miniatures ever made. It's funded, and it's getting ready for pledge management and fulfillment. So if you missed the campaign, you can sign up for the Dragon's Hoard, our email group of treasured people, to get notified so that you can still get in on it and get the early pricing. Wyrmworks Publishing Next piece of news is a bit of sad news, but we're hoping for your help. Alright, we'd like to encourage you to stay off of Reddit. If you are a Reddit user, from at least June 12 through the 14th, they have made a direct attack on accessibility and the disabled community along with a whole bunch of other people. And so if you'd like to learn more about it, if you haven't heard about it, we have an article on our website about it. And there's a link to that in the show notes. A huge amount of the Reddit community has gotten behind this, and we really appreciate that. And so we hope that the you can be a part of that too. Wyrmworks Publishing But in good news, we are creating captions for the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon that's on YouTube. All right, if you remember the old or even if you haven't seen it, boy, you should check it out. It's great. The old 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, which, we're showing it to our kids, because we want them to…we want to show them the new D&D movie, but we want to make sure that they get all of the the cameo references, and so we're having them watch the cartoon first, and they are loving it. (Although I have to admit that my 11 year old keeps saying, "This is fun. But can we just play D&D?" So how can I refuse? Summer break's coming up, and she'll definitely be doing that!) But anyway, we are working with the guy who took it, remastered it to 4K, and posted it up on YouTube. And we noticed that the captions are the YouTube automatic captions, which are really not great—kind of funny, but not all that helpful. And so I reached out to him, and he said that if someone could create the caption files necessary—in fact, he created them; they just need to be edited—that he would be happy to add them to the the episodes that are on YouTube so that everyone would be able to enjoy them better. And so if you would like to help out with that, we'd really appreciate your help in getting that. There's 27 different episodes that need to be edited, and I just don't have time to do all of them. I'm definitely going to pitch in. But we'd really love your help. And so there's a link in the show notes where you can sign up for one or more episodes. I will send you the transcript file. You just need a text editor, any text editor on your computer, to edit that, and then just send it back to me. And then I will send it to him, and we'll get them all uploaded. And just more people will be able to enjoy that show. So I really hope you can help out with that. Again, link is in the show notes, and now on with our really great interview. Wyrmworks Publishing Today on Gaining Advantage, we have a special guest, Drew Wale, the creator of the Dretelia campaign setting for 5e and core fantasy role playing. This unique setting incorporates the concept of a sick planet, with an internal dysfunction inspired by Drew's own chronic illness and disability. So get ready to be inspired by Drew's innovative approach to game design, and the power of tabletop roleplaying games to create meaningful experiences. Welcome, Drew. Drew Wale Hey, everybody! Here comes that inspiration. Drew Wale So what would you like to tell us about you personally, specifically speaking to the tabletop role playing game crowd? Drew Wale My name is Drew. I have been writing as a an author, semi-professionally for about 15 years, haven't had any published works, just do the kind of writing that's pays the bills and is behind the scenes, such as like answering people's questions online and getting paid to do that. But a couple years back, I saw that people were getting kind of desperate for books in Dungeons and Dragons, which I've been playing for…ever since I was a teen. And in the community, people were asking for setting books to be more fleshed out. Recently, we've been seeing some stuff like this in Spelljammer and in the recent Dragonlance book, where these companies are putting out setting books that have 15-20 page long settings, and these game masters are are saying, Look, that's that's not really enough. You know, I when I when I look to somebody for a setting book, I want a whole setting. I want to have that setting fleshed out. I want to know interesting details about it. I want to be able to run that setting out of that book, without having to fill in the blanks. And this kept going for for a long time, and I thought, "You know what, I think I can I can fix that. I think I can solve that problem." I wanted to make a setting book that really dove into the idea of something unique and new. And an idea that nobody had really presented before, but I didn't have anything for a long time. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't really know okay, how am I going to come up with an original idea? Nothing is really original anymore. You know, everything's already been done. But I read this passage, where somebody who is a prolific writer, I can't remember who they were at the time, but they said, "The best technique for creating something meaningful that resonates with other people is to be vulnerable, and to put a bit of yourself in your work." And I have a chronic illness. I have my illness is called myalgic encephalomyelitis. And during your introduction, you mentioned that that was the starting point for the setting. It's more than a starting point. It really just encapsulates the entire idea behind what this setting means. If I weren't sick, if I didn't have this chronic feeling of lack of energy, this setting never would have happened. I wouldn't have had the inspiration for it. I wouldn't have been able to come up with the idea. It was born out of the fact that I feel sometimes like there's there's no energy left in the tank. And what would that look like? If an entire setting was based around that? What would that look like? And so from that was born this concept of a planet which is a lot of ways a living organism. What would happen if it was sick? What would happen if it didn't work? Right? What would happen if it was like me? And I figured if there's no original ideas out there, at least, the least I can do is take something that barely anybody is paying any attention to or an angle that nobody's really looking at and try to tackle a setting from from that angle. I honestly I think it's made a really interesting writing project, so, and the book is coming along pretty good! Wyrmworks Publishing That's cool. I just I love that concept. It kind of reminds me of that recently the Pixar movie, Strange World. Drew Wale I haven't seen it. What's the what's the hook? Wyrmworks Publishing I don't want to spoil it for anybody that hasn't seen it. But it is it they basically they, this the people are living in this very isolated sort of mountain valley and all they know is is what is within this valley. Their entire culture revolves around it, and there's a…there's this fear of going beyond it. And and so eventually they do and they discover the that there's this whole sort of inner world like within their world and and there's there's something unhealthy going on with the whole thing. And so that's the movie is trying to figure out what's what's going on with it. And, and I won't say more but I think that if people that have seen the movie, I think you kind of get some concept of of what's going on here. So I say: wait to watch it, don't watch it until you finish your books. Drew Wale Oh yeah, one of the things that I definitely try to avoid is if there's anything that is somewhat of a parallel to anything that I'm working on, I, as a writer, you kind of should probably try to avoid it, because you don't want to get any kind of like cross-contamination that you don't want to because you read it and then it kind of subconsciously imprints on you. And then even if you don't realize what you're doing, you're kind of crossing the wires a little bit. Sometimes. So it's best to just go go in there, and one of the things that I'm trying to do with this project, in order to be at least as close to originality is one can get in writing, trying to keep it about a parallel to my own problem because there's enough going on internally with me. That gives me plenty of material for some pretty messed up ideas and harrowing stuff that can go on and in the inside of a planet when you're prepared to just mess it up really well. Wyrmworks Publishing And I just, you know, I love this concept, because so many people experience this. I experienced this with mental illness and my ADHD, and with so many people, the just the whole concept of invisible disabilities that the…and chronic illness and neurodiversity where there's just stuff that is not very often…you don't;anyone just just looking at you…it's not immediately obvious that there's something sort of atypical shall we say with you and which can often lead to judgment and all kinds of strange reactions too, but it also is it's it's a sense of, you know, there's there's more to me than what you see. And, you know, I also even even for, for people who are neurotypical and pretty mentally healthy and all the rest of that, you know, there's still I think everyone can resonate it with it, just from the sense of like, the whole "How you doing?" And, you know, "fine." Drew Wale Yeah, nobody ever answers that question truthfully. Right. Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing And I always want to, you know, be honest and I'm like, No, you don't want to you know, Drew Wale that the actual answer that question would be way more complicated than anybody has any reason to try to tell somebody else in the span of a normal conversation like you could ask how you doing? And then, you know, anybody could probably talk at length until somebody gets bored or irritated or annoyed with how you're actually doing and I don't know, that's it's important to have a support structure, I guess, for people to talk about these sorts of issues with other people who understand because the average person who's asking you how you're doing they don't really care about that. They don't want the long answer. They want you to be like, Oh, I'm doing good or, or worse. They just want you to ask how they're doing so they can talk about themselves. And then they don't end up actually really caring how you are doing, and I can't speak for everybody who also has a chronic illness. But I know that as an introverted person who does have some issues that I don't really want to explain to the average person for, you know, just for uncomfortability, for purposes of time that I know they don't really want to know like, what kind of answer like you say, how are you doing? And my answer is really bad. And I hope you don't feel really depressed for the rest of your day for hitting about it. I got I don't want to be the guy who drag somebody else down it for the rest of their day because they had to hear a depressing story about how I was doing it. Um, so So you just say Yeah, fine. And you go along with your business, but yes, hopefully, you have people at home, who you can talk to, who have a support structure who you can tell how you really feel and they will listen and hear you and relate. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, this seems like it's like a whole planet like that. Drew Wale Yeah. So one of the things you said was spot on, you're spot on and I want to I want to talk about that for a second. So anybody that's actually interested in Dretelia as a setting, the key point that sets it apart from every other setting is that it does speak exactly to that idea of invisible illness on the inside, but also this kind of pseudo-idyllic presentation on the outside because as everybody knows who has any kind of chronic illness, mental illness, or it's just somebody who's even had a bad day and doesn't want to talk about it, we present something entirely different on the outside than what is going on, on the inside. So the surface of Dretelia as a planet is not just defined by the fact that the inside is sick. The entire civilizations of Dretelia have this front, where they are working together with this illusion of cooperation. Because as anybody who knows anything about geopolitics will tell you, it's very difficult to get a whole bunch of different people with different values to cooperate together on anything for any length of time. That's a near impossible task. So you've got all these races, and many of them, like elves and dwarves typically don't like each other. You get tons of settings where one race and some other race have been at war forever. I mean, if you look at Eberron is a great example of races that are at war with each other. Warforged were created specifically for war, if I recall correctly. There's a lot of examples of people not getting along. But they have to present the idea that they are getting along. Because if they don't, there's a giant example of a planet hovering in the sky that looks exactly like their planet, and it didn't do so well. So if they don't cooperate, they know what's going to happen to them. And that whole idea just stemmed from the fact that I knew this whole setting was going to have to be dysfunctional on the inside. Kind of fake presentation of everything being fine on the outside, and from that, all the cities came, all the geopolitics came, all the factions came, every idea stemmed from that one little seed of, "The surface world is fake. The surface world is everybody just pretending to get along, while we know that something is messed up internally." And I think it makes for a fantastic idea. I just, I don't know. It's just, it's working out I think. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, I love that. It's, you know, this sort of this Cold War idea that you've got your, your dystopia cyberpunk kind of stuff and things like that where it was all just really obvious in your face, kind of stuff. But this whole concept of the sort of intrigue below the surface, both figuratively and literally. It just, it completely. It just adds a…it's hard to talk about this without using puns, but it adds depth. Drew Wale Right? Yeah, I ran into that same problem already. It's hard yeah. It's fine. Legend of Zelda, just Tears of the Kingdom came out, and they literally just called their underground, the Depth, so I mean, if they can get away with it, so can we. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay. Yeah. So okay, so tell us what…Dig in. Drew Wale I'll get right on it. Okay. So I mean, I've already talked about the hook that essentially separates Dretelia from the majority of other settings is the planet being sick and the idea of exploring something new and to wrap a bow on that point, to get to some of the other stuff, people are generally uncomfortable talking about their faults. People are generally uncomfortable about talking about things that make them vulnerable. And by exploring the idea of things that are vulnerable, I can kind of tap into some themes and some scenarios and some creative ideas that aren't normally going to get to be expressed in your typical fantasy setting. But beyond that, I think you were trying to touch on this a little bit. People like Grimdark. I think a little bit the last thing you were saying was kind of alluding to the idea that people like things being dark and harrowing and hard to deal with in their settings. And that's great. I love Dark Souls as a game. I love Monster Hunter as a game. I like the idea of working really hard through challenging, harrowing scenarios to eventually handle adversity and come out on top. But we don't get enough hope. We don't get enough hope in our settings. And I think that one of the things that too much Grimdark doesn't really get right in a setting is the other side of the coin. Grimdark means nothing unless you give hope for people to work their way out of that Grimdark. If you just have darkness and brooding and harrowing monsters, and don't get me wrong, I sent you the key art. I've got some some pretty harrowing monsters in Dretelia. But the fact is, they are present in order for for people to be able to overcome them. And the sickness in the world is a mystery presented in order for people to be able to overcome that. So if you want Grimdark, if you want this kind of harrowing, seat of your pants, "My characters could all always die around the next corner," you can go down into the lower layer, which I called Mardukill and you can go down there and you're gonna get your ass handed to you. And there's plenty of that Grimdark down there, if you want that. It's there's a thing in in this lower layer that is strongly based around my chronic fatigue syndrome. And it is a…I literally take the word malaise out of out of post exertional malaise, which is a condition that I get as a result of my disability. So I took that there's a fog. And that fog will just kind of slowly build up in this layer like an effluvium, like an invisible pressure. And you can't see it, because again, theming, but eventually it becomes crushing. And when you're down there, if you aren't prepared. you will get some of the kind of gamified version of the symptoms from my chronic fatigue syndrome condition. It will crush you. It will make you feel like your body doesn't work. It will take your legs out from under you. And it will essentially just be like okay, at random, here's the incapacitated condition. Also, there's a lot of monsters down here that can kill you. And they know where you are. And they're haunting you, and you can't move. And to me, that's horror. The idea that you can't do something to your body no matter what you are trying to do. You can't make your legs work. You can't lift your arm. You can't cry out for help. But there's hope, because there's three other players presumably, and your team. And when you go down, maybe they pick you up. Maybe they carry you. Maybe they drag you to the nearest safe zone, and you'd be like, "Hey, We have to get out of it. You know, we got these monsters and they're hunting us, and they're gonna kill us if you don't do something right now." So that kind of extra layer of tension is really something that you can only explore when you design your game mechanics around something that is based around real fear. And I really liked that it led me away from the idea of Grimdark, just for the sake of it. And instead towards there's hope. But it's gonna be hard, and you're gonna have to earn it and it's going to be really scary the entire way through, but if you can get there, there's hope at the end of the tunnel. Wyrmworks Publishing I love that. That's I just I recently heard there was some discussion in various parts online talking about hopepunk. And this kind of reminds me of that. Drew Wale Yeah, hope I like, I originally, the concept Dretelia, i really originally started with solarpunk. I was like what's what's not being explored right now? Because I came up with the idea for the bloom fonts. That was one of the first things that I did, and for the uninitiated who haven't checked out my preview, I have a preview at my Kickstarter where you can download a 20-something page preview packet that will tell you the gist of the book and give you some content. If you want to see what's an idea of what's in the book right now. And one of the the setting's foundations are these giant elemental plants that are about eight stories tall, that just kind of pop up everywhere around the world called bloom fonts. And what they do is that's that's my way of saying there's, there's magic in the world. I didn't want to go with your traditional magic setting. And I know elements can be a little cliche, but you know, it's 5e. Wizards be castin' fireballs. So you gotta explain it somehow. So I've got these giant elements of plants, and they essentially just throw magic, which I call veressence in this world, into the atmosphere, and you can channel it through that and that was one of the first things I built. And so I thought, "Okay, well why not go with a solarpunk setting?" But as I developed solarpunk and I was like, "Okay, what, is my world going to be a plant?" And then I did some research, and you know, that's been done. So I was like, okay, cool. You beat me to it. Maybe I'm gonna pivot. And now honestly, I do think hopepunk. I hadn't heard of it before but that's a pretty good…it's a pretty good moniker. I think I can I could settle into some hopepunk. I think anybody with chronic illness or suffers from depression or any of these issues that are, I'm sure your your listeners regularly are aware of, hope is important. Is getting getting something that gets you through challenging difficulties that you have to deal with in your life, which everybody can relate to, chronic illness or no, just having that, that light at the end of the tunnel, knowing that that if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, eventually, there's a good chance you're going to come out okay. That's what gets us through and to be able to put some of that into a setting. Chef's kiss. Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing That's cool. When I communicate things. I use analogies a lot. And that's just how I explain things and and so to be able to say, "It's like this. Yeah, this is this is what it feels like." And you know, I've had so many people that have seen the the game mechanics that we've developed for different conditions and experiences the way they've said, "Yes, that. That is that's my every day," you know, and, and to be able to say, I mean, we've got there's a lot of D&D in our family. My kids, I don't know where they get it from, but, um, they you know, there's stuff where it'll just sort of come out. I've been having some problems with my legs like well, reduced movement speed, you know, yeah, that's Drew Wale That's a that's a favorite: reducing movement speed is a go to, for anybody who deals with a mechanic that's based around it stuff not working the way it's supposed to: movement speed, half strength, you know, non-regenerating health bars, things like that are just are pretty much the go to. I do still include some of that. But I remember there being a conscious effort for me to be like, "Drew, there's going to be other people who are are developing chronic illness stuff. They're going to mess with move speed. Maybe try to find a different way of expressing that." Wyrmworks Publishing But no, but at the same time, that's that's awesome because I think it's so important that we find lots of different ways, and I harp on this constantly, that that there's no one way to, especially when you're talking about in game terms of of how to express specific experiences. Right, you know, I mean, there's there's an infinite number of analogies, and whether you're using, you know, pluses and minuses or, you know, or something like that, or whether you're you're using, you know, it's it's a well, it's the world that has this, you know, the planet itself has this and, you know, or, or it's a culture or it's a you know, like there's there's so many different ways to express it in concrete and abstract terms. And I think the more different ways you can do that, is you're just looking at, at these experiences from all different angles and it just for some people, it's going to a particular expression is going to resonate with them and and they're going to go okay, now I get it. You know, that were another way of explaining things you know, we all have different ways of learning and different experiences that we use as filters to how we process information and things. And so the more different creative ways that people can come up with to express their experiences, their their conditions, whatever term that you want to use. It's just, it's gonna expand through one's awareness and knowledge of just what's going on with other people. It's going to it's going to amplify empathy and, and all that which I mean, I'm, I'm getting ahead of you on this, but how do you see your work changing lives? Drew Wale Well, that is a that's a bit of a deep question. To be honest, I, I'm not sure if I, I do see my work changing lives like I mean, it's, I'm grateful to be in a position where I still have the energy to write a book that other people can read and enjoy and and can produce entertainment for them. And I'm hopeful that on some level, that maybe my work can resonate with them. It's a bit of a silver lining, to be able to have a condition that causes so much difficulty in my own life. But to see that that silver lining allows me to present a different set of mechanics that as you like, like you said, resonates with other people. That's that's not something I would ever be able to do if I hadn't gotten sick. So and it is silver lining, like it's not it's not all great. There's a lot of challenges that I face with this condition. But without it, would I be in this position to be writing this book right now? Would I be in this position to create something that had resonance for not just people in TTRPG community who are playing games like D&D and looking for examples that they can relate to, but with everybody, because it has, it has a large net, everybody on some level knows what it feels like to to be ostracized, to be othered, to to have a condition that they can't necessarily or problem that they can't necessarily talk to anybody else about. And to be able to affect that in a small way. I think is the best I can hope for, I don't, I don't know if I go so far as to say that I'd be changing lives. I would like to. Like for example, say say that I just give somebody a platitude. They don't, like I say, "Hey, I do the best I can with what I've got, and you can too." I guess that's that's gonna come off…some people are going to resonate with that. And I think, "Yeah, they'll they'll redouble their efforts." And maybe for that day, they'll they'll do a better job, but other people would just be like, "Okay, well, you don't know my circumstances. Like I know that you are also struggling with disability, but maybe you're not struggling with mine. Maybe you're not dealing with the same thing I'm going through." So I guess I can't hope to to help everybody. You know, I can't I can't really change lives on a grand scale. But you know, you know, some people have given the idea, if it if it helps one person, you know, then at least I've done some, some good in the world. If I can inspire somebody else to who was out there who maybe has, not just in the TTRPG space, it'd be great if we got more worlds, that's awesome, but even maybe an author or somebody who's in any creative endeavor, if they were thinking you know, maybe I can't do it. I hurt too much. Or I'm tired too much, or things that most people don't normally understand are preventing me from doing things that I other people can do that I can't, you know, if I can inspire them to do that, then then I think the world is a little bit of a better place. Yeah, that's a tough question. I mean, as like, I don't know if I feel like I'm in a position to change people's lives, but I think on some level we all want to affect positive change if we can. Wyrmworks Publishing No, I think a lot of people are gonna resonate, you know, with this, people that just feel feel seen, feel heard that they go, "Oh, here's here's someone else that has some sense of, you know, of my experience and could even play this with other people and go, 'That, okay, this is, you guys, this is what what I'm dealing with, you know, this is to help you understand me a little more,'" and I think is important, and clearly, this isn't a sort of a beat you over the head, preachy kind of thing. Drew Wale Mm-hmm. I am trying to appeal to everybody as well. I mean, there, there are aspects of the generation of this setting that I have some creative energy that was brought forth by my issues, but it's it's by no means exhaustative based around that. It's more of a springboard for for an interesting way of creating stuff that I don't think is being explored as often as I would like. Drew Wale So whether or not that creates interesting cities or subclasses, or monsters or ideas or mechanics that come out of that, it's still there to appeal to everybody. But absolutely, I do think that almost everybody on this planet can at some level relate to some of the subject matter that we're discussing right now. Even if you don't, if you have a chronic illness, that maybe you're going to start, it's like Easter eggs, you're going to be like, "Oh, yeah, I see what you did there." You know, but the average player who's just looking for a new setting to play is still going to get a ton of enjoyment out of this, because I'm devoting a lot of energy to really fleshing out the setting. And the fact that I can speak to some of these issues is doing a lot to help flesh that setting out, whereas a normal creative endeavor, where you don't have these things that are deeply personal to you, that are deeply resonant, where you're you're not… you're just creating from raw creative energy, rather than creating from a deep personal experience about something that affects you every minute of every day in your life that you need to get out, I feel like that helps me, as a writer, make a more cohesive world. That is, if I were just like throwing darts at a dartboard with creative cool stuff, and hoping that it sticks and then trying to tie it all together, it has a foundation. It has a core that helps me build from that core; everything is in service of that idea. And from that, then I can be like, "Okay, this subclass is really cool. I just, now I want to I have really cool monsters that terrorize everybody in the lower layer and make you terribly afraid, and you can't do anything about it." But then also, here comes this barbarian subclass that just looks like one of these giant monsters and wants to throw big rocks. Because because nobody has a subclass in 5e that is based around picking up giant rocks and hitting people over the head with it, because nobody really wants to handle grapple rules in a subclass. So I'm like, "How can I tie what people want from 5e? What's missing? From subclasses, locations, monsters in 5e," and tie that into my central idea and give them what they want, what players are looking for, what's missing from from mechanics that they can't currently explore with that hero fantasy? How can I merge these things? How can I take my idea and what I want to convey, and what what players want to see in a setting book and tie them together in a way that is narratively cohesive?" Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, I think of this like listening to music, alright, if you are a musician who, you know, a trained musician, you you play an instrument, or you you sing and you know kind of all the nuances and the specific skills, things that you have to pay attention to things like that. You're going to experience music in a different way. And in fact, I've seen that you even just use a different part of your brain to listen to it. Right? But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy music, right? You don't have to, you don't have to be like know all of the details of it to go, "Oh, I love this song." And, and that's how I see your world is is that it's got this stuff like, if you understand the kind of core that went into it and stuff like that, there's stuff that's really going to resonate with you. But if you don't, this is still just a really fun world to, you know, to play in. Drew Wale Exactly! Wyrmworks Publishing So, so yeah, I mean, I was I was worried that, you know, that when anytime that you sort of bring these concepts in, the people are gonna go, oh, well, I don't really know anything about that. So I guess that's not for me. Drew Wale Yeah, that's a huge pitfall. You have to also bring in a solid understanding of game design into it, regardless of of circumstances. Great, as you said, to come from a specific viewpoint or a specific angle for your project. But if you're not also putting in classic, well-understood tenets of game design, if you're not in touch with the community, if you don't know what people want to see from a game on top of just a narrative concept, it's going to fall flat. So you do have to merge. It's a perfect example that you just gave, you do have to merge the concepts of proper game design with the general narrative idea or you're just going to spiral out of control with trying to get something out of your brain. And you're going to you're going to trip over the fact that, yes, this also does need to be a game that people can open the book to whatever page and, and be like, "Okay, yeah, I kind of want to also build a subclass. That's nice, but what does it do? What can I do? How do I have fun with this?" And this is a bit of a segue, but I, my first real creative endeavor that other people got to see was a video game, Mario Maker, and I was a very ubiquitous member of the Mario Maker community. I made an entire game in Mario Maker. I made 80 entire levels in that that system, and a lot of people, they really loved it, and that spurred me on to keep creating, but I realized, you can't just keep putting pieces together and hoping that it works. You have to learn the tenets of game design. There's a reason Nintendo keeps knocking it out of the park with 10 out of 10s and Super Mario Brothers as a as a series have sold trillions of copies is because they understand the fundamentals of game design. Now on the surface, yeah, like Mario is a plumber. My surface level is, has its creative style to it. But if you don't also nail the mechanics behind it, you don't have anything. You don't have anything people can enjoy. You don't have fun. And ultimately, that's what are we trying to do here as game designers. We're trying to give people content that they can have fun doing. So it's just as important to put in solid game mechanics as it is to have new and interesting angles for creativity. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. So you just rescued a genie from the hands of an efreeti. It gives you three wishes. I'm just gonna say three wishes. For anything. What do you wish for? Drew Wale Okay, do I do the cheat answer or do I do the answer that's actually worth a damn? Because the cheat answer is to to ask for a notepad that creates anything that I want, and then I make more genies. Drew Wale I don't know. I mean, I guess. All right. So let's let's do let's do two answers. Let's do one answer that touches to the part of your fan base that wants to hear about chronic illness and do one answer that touches to TTRPG fans so that I'm covering both bases. And if I can't come up with a third way, then we can move on. You know, three wishes are hard. You don't want to monkey's paw yourself. So for the on the creative side for my book, and what it has to do with chronic illness. It would be low hanging fruit for me to say I want to get better, right? Everybody who deals with a chronic illness knows what the struggles of day to day stuff and how hard it is to go through every single day and wake up and know that the next day is going to probably be just as hard as the last. And it's it's it would be so easy for me to just say I wish I was better. But the reality is I think I'm a different person, in a lot of ways as a result of having this illness. I've been sick for about five years. And I've gone through the whole spectrum of fear of wondering, you know, is this going to kill me? Am I going to die from this? Isn't this terminal? What's wrong with me? Doctors are telling me I'm fine. My bloodwork is fine. My MRIs are fine. Everybody who's educated in this subject is telling me I'm okay, but I'm not okay. And it would be just really easy for me to just be like, "Okay, let's just get rid of it." But if I had done that, I wouldn't have half the strength I do today. I would not have gone through that fear, and that, that pain and and used it and learn from it and figured out ways of rising above it to turn it into an armor that makes me a stronger person. And now after five years of struggling through that, I still feel that pain and it's still sucks. But when I feel it, there's this part of me that says, "You've done this before. You've got this. You've how many 1000s of times has this hurt? How many 1000s of times if you come out on the other side? Not necessarily okay. But you survived it." And now I see that as an armor. Now I see it as something that makes me not necessarily a better person overall, because it's still always there, but in some ways, it makes me a stronger person. And I struggle to think which one of these is worse, Having gone through an entire life without facing that adversity, or facing that adversity head on and learning how to come out being stronger and more durable if a person as a result? So if I wish that away. I'm kind of also wishing away the strength. I'm kind of also wishing away the experience. of going through that. I'm wishing away the adversity. And what, I mean monkey's paw, what happens to me if I say I want the chronic illness to go away? Do I revert back to the person I was? Do I lose that experience? Do I lose that strength? I don't know if I want to lose that strength. So I don't think I could wish for that. I think I'd have to come up with a different wish. And for the TTRPG crowd, as an author, obviously I'd like to I would love to be successful. But I don't know if I could handle monumental success. I look at people like Matt Mercer from Critical Role. He's he's got a multimillion dollar show. He's got a crew that's making millions of dollars doing what they love, and more power to them. Nothing but respect. I don't think, as a disabled independent creator who does all everything by myself, I don't think I can handle that. So if I say I wish for amazing success with my book. can I handle that? Could I handle all the things that come with that? Could I, I'm somehow… sometimes I wonder what am I what am I going to do when I have to ship things? You know, I'm going to have to sometimes it's hard for me to get up and take a shower. And I'm going to have to ship these products somewhere along the line. I'm going to have to figure out how I'm gonna have to get up and go do that. Now I have happened to be very fortunate. It's like, I'm married. I've been married a long time, and I have a wonderful, supportive wife who will help me with that. But not everybody does. Not everybody has that. And so when you wish for success, what comes with it? There's a life lesson that I I tell people, and I say: Jealousy: Jealousy is a very difficult emotion to completely process. Because if say I'm, hypothetically, I see somebody who has an amazing life, my my interpretation of what I think looking looking in, have an amazing life. They've got a lot of cars, they've got a lot of money. They're married to some person that they that looks like the perfect person for them. And I'm a normal person, and I think I wish I had that I want to aspire to that. I can't cherry pick the elements of their life that look good from the outside and think I'm just going to take those and forget the rest. If I were to take what they had. If I were to look at jealousy objectively and be like, "I want that. I want to be like them," I don't know what they're going through. What if the relationship isn't as good on the on the on the on the inside as it is on the outside? What if they have a lot of money but they've got a lot of stress, and they don't know how to deal with it? What if they got a lot of debt? What if they had to had to work really hard to get to that position, and I don't happen to be the kind of person who has that effort? I can't supplant myself into that position and sustain their work ethic. I can't take the good parts and and hope that I'm just going to leave all the bad stuff behind. I can't do that. So say I wish for amazing success with my book. And then a bunch of stuff I can't handle comes with that. Can't do it. So I guess my wish would be that people see it. They see it and then they can decide for themselves if that's something that they want. Because you know, right now, nobody knows who I am. I'm just one guy basically in my garage, making a book that I hope people can enjoy. And you know if more people see it, that's that's really all that I want. And then if if they recognize that it's something that they can enjoy, and they have fun with it, and they feel like it's a good product, then great. That's the best that I can hope for. Cool. Oh, and world peace. Wyrmworks Publishing There you go. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, 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? Drew Wale Okay, so I'm not terribly big on social media. But the probably the best way to contact me is on Twitter. I am at @strongestbunny3. It's my username in most places is third strongest bunny. It's kind of my moniker, but I don't have a huge social media presence. So if you want to get in touch with me, head over to Twitter. But if you really want to get to know me, I just put everything into my work. So the best way to get to know me is to you know, read the book or you know, even if you were ended up getting it through other means, later on. Doesn't really matter. But that's that's me. I put as much as I can of myself into the book and then if you absolutely have to get ahold of me. I guess Twitter is the best place but don't count on it, because I spend a lot of my time resting, so I probably won't see it but I'll try. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, well Drew, thanks so much for coming on the show. This is so much fun. And that link to the Kickstarter is in the show notes. Definitely got to check it out. Check out the preview. Just amazing. You know the the art, just the concept is beautiful. So Drew Wale Thank-you for that. I really appreciate it. Thank you for giving me the time to talk about my work and a nice, a nice place for understanding some of these other things that don't normally get talked about in in most circles. I appreciate it. Wyrmworks Publishing That was so much fun. I really hope that you'll check that out that Kickstarter—ends in just a couple of days. And so don't delay—make sure you go check that out. The link is in the show notes. Wyrmworks Publishing A big thanks to our patrons. Every month, we are able to add Community Copies to our store for those who cannot afford our products. And so if that's you, you can sign up for our weekly emails to get notified when they come available. And in fact, as this posts, we have a whole bunch available, because this month, we were again able to add 28 copies of the Limitless Heroics Coloring Book and 11 copies of Limitless Heroics. That's $580 worth of products that you, our patrons, made possible. And so patrons, besides contributing to making our products available to those who can't afford them, get access to all of our content in a modular format that we call the Lair. Plus, there are all kinds of exclusive extras. And that's only $3 a month, and there's higher tiers that have all kinds of added benefits. Like for example, free copies of all of our publications. And so you can check out that link in the show notes for more details. Wyrmworks Publishing Now if you see this show being helpful, if you're watching this on YouTube, hit the like button. If you'd like to see more of this, please subscribe. And if you know people that need to hear this, please 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 please, if you're listening to this in podcast, whatever iTunes or or Spotify or wherever you happen to be listening to this, please go to that platform, go to the podcast entry page for this show, and leave a review. It doesn't have to be long. Just hit the the number of stars—we hope that it's five stars but if not, please you know, post, give your feedback. Give those ratings. It's so important to help more people find out about this. And so thank you to everyone for joining us and helping us make lives better with D&D. Wyrmworks Publishing And for our closing question, how have you seen the world reflect your personal experiences? Transcribed by https://otter.ai