Episode 1 - Transcript

The First Ever Episode

Bianca:

Hi everyone, and welcome to the very first episode of the Big Milkshake Podcast. I'm your host, Bianca. I'm also the social media manager for Two19 and we are joined here today, by the whole gang, the whole Two19 gang.

We have the managing director, Sebastian here.

Sebastian:

Hello.

Bianca:

We are also joined by our creative director, Alex

Alex:

Hi!

Bianca:

And our director of game design, Nathan.

Nathan:

Hey.

Bianca:

How are we doing, everyone? We having a good week so far? Absolutely good. I'm really excited to be doing this with you guys. I feel like it's a little personal, like, oh, I'd love to host my own show or host a podcast and you guys are giving me the opportunity to do that and it's for something really amazing and for anyone who's listening or watching at the moment or reading along in the transcript. Hello and welcome. We have decided to put together a podcast to talk really about ourselves and about Two19 and what we do. And of course, we can't talk about Two19 without talking about Kingless as well. Actually, I'm the newest member of the team and before I joined Two19, I was actually quite a big fan of the game Kingless. So I'm really excited to hopefully be answering questions that anyone at home might be wanting to know, or if you're new to us here and want to get to know us, if you're a fan of tabletop games, or even if you're potentially looking at creating your own. This podcast series, I think will be really fun to get amongst and be a part of. So I guess talking about 2019, I just want to kind of get to know you guys. I want you guys to introduce yourselves first, like who you are, what you do, and kind of what your role at Two19. Entails. I'll start with you. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Sebastian:

So I'm the managing director at Two19. I try and wrangle some sense out of Nathan and Alex and now yourself actually Bianca, so good luck with that and sort of just rope everything together. We've got so many cool projects going on at the moment, we've got so many ideas that we've got to sort of turn into something and I'm sort of just here to pull it all together and collect the creative brains that are part of 2019.

Bianca:

Awesome. Yeah. And Alex, can you tell us a bit about what you do at Two19?

Alex:

Absolutely. I mainly contribute to giving Seb a load of work to do. I come up with a number of different ideas, some of which are practical, some of which aren't, which he has to channel into the constructive, ultimately turned one of them into Kingless, which we've greatly enjoyed developing. My role largely is to help with the design of characters as an idea, come up with names, lore, and just generally work on all of the less technical details, which I rely on Nathan for.

Bianca:

So you're responsible for, I guess like the world-building that has started to happen with say, Kingless now, which I'm really excited to obviously get to and talk about. And obviously behind you in your camera there, we could see a whole bunch of those different characters from the game as well, which probably had a later episode we'll talk about because there's just many wonderful different dwarves there that are so unique to one another. Nathan, what do you do at Two19?

Nathan:

Yes, I'm the director of game design, so I know originally I got told a bit of a base idea and it's my job to make a game out of it. So about getting the mechanics, testing, retesting, retesting and putting out something that's enjoyable for everyone to give a go.

Bianca:

Well, I think one of the things that I've always wanted to know about Two19 or about you guys in general since I've met you, because I've only been working with you guys well, I say only, but I've been part of the team for two months now. But something I want to know about you guys and about how Two19 actually formed and this is before Kingless. Were you guys all friends beforehand or did you meet each other along the way? Like how did the start anyone can take the floor here.

Sebastian:

Unfortunately, we were all friends beforehand and it was just natural to pull us all together. I think it originally began with just Alex and I. The whole writing on the back of a napkin is a common phrase, but it pretty much started that way. Alex and I were just tossing ideas around and we just had a concept that we wanted to come up with. There was nothing like Kingless to begin with and then we ended up bringing Nathan on board who then sort of added a little bit of structure to those ideas and added some complex rules and designs around it which we scoffed at and after a good couple of years we managed to turn that into Kingless.

Bianca:

And I imagine all of you as well have been fans of tabletop games before growing up. Alex, is that always something that's been like a really big part of your life or did any of you get into tabletop games a little bit later on?

Alex:

Yeah, absolutely. You start off with a lot of classics. Every family has those disastrous games of Monopoly when they were small and that just leads on to more and better games. In my case, maybe not better. I love the much-maligned Munchkin playing that with my family. I am a huge fan of Betrayal House on the Hill. I don't think it's the best game technically because you can always end up bogged down on small minute details of the rules, but the sheer amount of fun I've had playing it and the variety it's able to deliver are off the charts. You run around and you're almost certainly going to fail and die, but you all fail together and you all have a laugh. It's fantastic.

Nathan:

I was probably a bit later to the party then, I guess would be expected of someone who's making games. But yeah, I really got into it probably late teenagers, around 18, sort of my sister's partner and me and my sister really got into it and that went from playing a few once a week to having a whole bedroom just filled with board games and going to a game store now and just about have played most of the ones on the wall. But yeah, probably a later start than that. As Alex said, bloody some real terrible Monopoly games. Such a deep genre. There's a lot of good games out there. There's normally one for everyone.

Bianca:

Yeah, I think that's the same with me as well. I grew up with like, Monopoly, Uno all that frustration. I think the best part about tabletop games is obviously the social part of it is like sharing it with other people. I know Alex said you love a game of Munchkin. Nathan Seb is there one game that comes to mind when you think of a favorite that really took off your love of tabletop games at all?

Sebastian:

It's hard to pick a favorite. I don't think you can pick a favourite. That's unfair. There's so many good games out there that have just crafted the way that I've played games and have with these guys and my family and things like that. Yeah, I couldn't pick an all-time favorite.

Bianca:

Nathan?

Nathan:

There are aspects that you just love from loads of different games. I haven't played it in ages, but there was a game called Arabian Nights that just has a huge book and it's just basically a story and through the game you are directed to other places and read through and there's other games like Fortune and Glory that I really enjoyed. Once again, there's so many that you sort of fall out of favour with them. But there are loads. But those two come to mind.

Bianca:

Well, I guess this is something I've always wanted to ask since playing Kingless as well. I'd love to know from you guys where the concept came about. How did Kingless come to be? Because Seb you mentioned before it didn't start off when you joined forces of Alex and Two19 came about. It wasn't quite Kingless just there. How did we kind of get to where we are now?

Sebastian:

Kingless was a totally different game when we began those initial conversations.

Alex:

Yeah, we literally just sat down with A4 for sketch pad, taking down a few ideas quickly. We initially planned things so radically different that it's an entirely separate idea. We did eventually come up with the idea of competing for influence, we didn't name it that of course, that was loosely what we were thinking and then we handed that concept over and it just transformed. And the thing that we knew and felt was sort of exactly what we wanted to work on.

Bianca:

So I'm guessing, obviously, you guys must be big fans of the fantasy genre. What I guess were your influences to put a play on words there in terms of kind of bringing Kingless together. Because when I think of Dwarves initially, like, I think of Dungeons and Dragons. I think of Lord of the Rings. What were your kind of inspirations?

Alex:

Massively Lord the rings, and Dungeons and Dragons, the big favourites. We took a lot of inspiration from sort of the happy-go-lucky nature of the Dwarves sort of from The Hobbit, more so than the heroic Gimli from Lord the Rings because not all of these characters are heroes necessarily. So, yeah, really just the big stories with all those thoughts that we know and love. Too good to ignore.

Bianca:

Something I want to ask you guys is with creating Kingless and you guys were talking about your own favourite games and things like that too. What did you have in mind when creating Kingless that you wanted to bring to, I guess, the players of your game, if that makes sense. In terms of what you enjoyed about your own tabletop experience, what did you want to bring to Kingless players?

Sebastian:

I guess from the very beginning, I think it was important for us to make something that was really easy to pick up but also hard to master. And that's quite a tricky genre to fall into. I'm a bit biased, but I think we did it quite well. I think the cool part of that was from the very beginning we came up with a principle that we coined F.E.F, which stands for Fast, Easy and Fun. And every idea that we had a mechanic that the team and Nathan came up with, we sort of all ran them through this principle. Is it fast? Is it easy? Is it fun? And there were a few that didn't make it. There are a few really good ideas, and this is the hardest part. It was not easy to cull things out of the game that you've poured so much time and effort into one of them. Nathan, you can talk about it, but one of these ideas is really close to my heart. I love this idea, but it didn't work with what we're trying to achieve but the principle behind it and we had lore for the characters and everything. It's really cool. Perhaps it's something we will revisit in the future that we might be able to make it work for us. But, Nathan, talk a little bit about the..

Nathan:

Yes, he intro'd it. It was fake Dwarfs.

Sebastian:

Fake Dwarfs.

Nathan:

Yeah. In the original play, we kind of had this idea that we'd have obviously it's a Dwarf village. That's the theme for the whole game in a tavern and that there'd be some non-dwarves sneaking in there and that we'd have a whole mechanic built around these fake Dwarves, some sneaky humans, orcs and elves, which are all still in the game. It's just the mechanic that got cut. So you can still find them in Kingless, little easter egg I guess. But yeah, we were going to have other cards that would interact with all the fake Dwarves, whether it's to gutter them, discard them or whatever it is but when we sort of brought that back to the rules, it was so complicated, it confused people when we started doing some play testing and it just got to the stage, it's like, we really like this, but it's just not F.E.F.

Sebastian:

Yes, exactly. That's what you've got to do there, isn't it? It was a really hard call to make and a few things went the same way, but that was just one of my favourites. And as Nathan said, there's still characters in the game now that have a sort of legacy from that world that still features in the lore of other characters and a part of the hammer and crown and the Kingless universe as well.

Bianca:

Take me through, I guess, in the most simplest way possible because I know, like, no journey in creating a tabletop game is far from simple. Kind of how Kingless came about. So when did you start creating Kingless? Like, when did you get that ball rolling?

Nathan:

When I first got involved, it was Seb & Alex coming at me. It was late one evening at about 10:00, I think, from memory, and just say, "oh, we really want to make a card game" I think it was called Dwarfquest at that stage and we want to get it together. And I'm like, why haven't I ever thought to make a game that sounds really cool. And I remember I grabbed my phone, open the note page and just put down about 15 lines of just different mechanics, just dot points, spitball, sort of stuff, and then putting all that together, then making a version. Obviously, at the start there was a lot of unnamed things and that's where Alex came into it like a boss and gave us a lot of good content there and we could make the names and start from some actions and some mechanics and making some base rules. And that first version was a bit rough, I do say so myself, needed a lot of polish from there. But that's kind of how I rolled in for Kingless at the beginning.

Bianca:

And this was a couple of years ago, is that right?

Nathan:

God, it's not too.

Sebastian:

We are looking at three or four years ago now.

Nathan:

Yeah, I could open the note page.

Sebastian:

Yeah that original note still exists. It's a relic.

Nathan:

The first of September 2018.

Sebastian:

There you go.

Nathan:

Last edited at 01:52 a.m. On the 1 September 2018. Still got it word for word

Bianca:

So I'm kind of backtracking here a little bit. But who was it? I guess first it was between Alex and Seb but who came up with the idea of dwarfs like this fantasy card game to each other first?

Alex:

I believe that was me. I think that was literally how I worded it, I think late one night, just on WhatsApp or something I said to Seb, "do you want to make a game about dwarfs" or "wouldn't it be cool if we made a game about dwarfs"?

Sebastian:

I said, no, don't be silly. Go back to sleep. Alex.

[Laughter]

Bianca:

And just to clarify, this was your first introduction into creating and producing a full tabletop game, is that right, Seb?

Sebastian:

Yeah, we've never done anything like this before. My background is in technology and I've been involved with app creation and things like that sort of my entire career but this was a completely different step. We've gone from the digital world that we all live in, using our phones and all of our devices, to the physical world now and sort of taking a step back that is different to anything else we've done before. Well, certainly I've done before. It's really refreshing, actually. It's great.

Bianca:

I think it's still really great that there's such a strong tabletop community out there despite in the age of technology and stuff, people are still excited to meet up together and play a campaign or play a card game or board game and things like that. I think that's something I've always really admired about the community and I guess I'm pretty new to the community, I guess, online, since working with you guys and it's just brilliant to see all these ideas come together that start in like the smallest of places and turn into something really cool. Alex, tell us a little bit about we've kind of discussed a bit about world building and the characters that you have in Kingless. Do you remember the first character that you created for the game? Like if they're still in there now and what your inspirations were for it?

Alex:

Absolutely. Well, the first character in the game should be wearing a bright red coat appearing just over my shoulder, Klem Poncewell, Now, he's very loosely inspired by a very dear friend of mine. His whole theme is that he's vain, pretentious, and selfagrandising at every step of the way, and he was our absolute first Kingless character.

Bianca:

And you can find him on one of the cards now, which I think is awesome. And then I guess when you start creating these characters, did you just start from having one character and then building on from there? Because I believe we've had discussions in the past before about how some characters are intertwined with others. Did you build a small little community or little family of characters or was it like a one-by-one kind of process?

Alex:

We largely went one by one. We wanted all of our dwarves to be essentially jolly and fun, so we set out with a theme and then we figured out how to build on top of that. So we wanted a dwarf who was in charge of maintaining law and order. We then ended up with someone, a character that looked like a British bobby, essentially, with that old-fashioned helmet. And so it went through all of them. Now, once we had them, we started drawing direct links between a few of them. So some of them will gutter or remove others from play effectively. Other characters based on some traits that they have and some background and basically a relationship that they share. Others will just remove items or things like that based on what we were trying to go for with their personality, for want of a better word.

Sebastian:

I think as we were designing the dwarves we had a sort of a parallel between the mechanics of these characters, but also how we wanted them to look and their background and things like that, so they play into each other. It's not just, here's a random mechanic that's attached to this one random character. They all have a meaning behind the mechanic that's attached to them and in some instances, not the artwork, but the character design came first and then we built a mechanic around that, and then other times it went the other way. We had a mechanic that we wanted to use and we build a character around that.

Bianca:

Mechanics aside. Favourite character?

Seb:

Alex.

Bianca:

Anyone?

Alex:

I was waiting for you.

Nathan:

Klaut and Biscuit. Come on everyone loves a dog.

Alex:

Yeah yeah it has to be the dog. Klaut and Biscuit. Although I really love Torb the Solid.

Nathan:

Stumpy. The were-beaver.

Sebastian:

Yeah, a lot of interesting stuff there. For me, it has to be Klem Poncewell.

Bianca:

Why's that?

Sebastian:

Alex alluded to that being after someone. I think he may have been referring to me, unfortunately. But definitely. It's the original, the original character it's the first one we created and I've got a soft spot in my heart for that too.

Bianca:

I was going to say. And like, obviously you guys can keep the secret if you want, but I didn't know this until quite recently, but there's a couple more characters that are based off you guys. Is that right?

Alex:

Yeah. So one of the Dwarves, Egrunt Hardfeaster, he might have some traits which maybe are associated with me.

Sebastian:

And Bran Lawbringer, who is loosely modelled on dearest Nathan there.

Bianca:

Lawbringer rule maker I like the connection. I think it's really clever. And I like the fact that it's like a little easter egg that maybe not a lot of people know about, which they do now, which is really cool.

Sebastian:

And I heard that there may be some involvement from you in the latest expansion that we might have touched on as well, Bianca, maybe a little feature,

Bianca:

Maybe... maybe... I wasn't going to suggest anything, but you said it. Perhaps we'll just have to wait. I was going to say as well for anyone listening if you do want to get some updates since this podcast, we have actually announced an expansion for Kingless called the Festival of Explosions. If you would like to stay up to date with all the news coming your way for the new expansion and for new Two19 material and news, make sure you go visit www.thebigmilkshake.co and you can sign up to our newsletter there because you give some really awesome monthly wrap ups there about what's been happening. Obviously we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and hoping to bring out a lot more content in the lead-up to the release of the expansion, which is super, super exciting,

Sebastian:

Really is.

Bianca:

I think it will have to be a whole other episode where we talk about the expansion. Obviously, we're quite limited to what we can talk about but, maybe I'm biased, but I am very excited, especially working with you guys on the last couple of months and getting a glimpse at it, especially seeing that logo for the first time. It's such an awesome thing to be a part of and to share that journey with you guys. Interestingly enough, I don't think we actually mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast because we are based in Australia for anyone tuning in around the world and we've come into this interesting hurdle of us living on separate sides of the country, like different sides of the country. So I'm actually in Western Australia. I think the fun part is hopefully we will all meet each other for the first time towards the end of the year, potentially.

Sebastian:

Fingers crossed at PAX.

Bianca:

Yeah. And I would love to talk about at some point and maybe even briefly now, about the involvement that you guys had at PAX with Kingless as well, how that all came together, because you guys did some really cool stuff there. I mean, I wasn't there, but could any of you tell me a bit more about that?

Sebastian: Yeah, I mean, last year we won the PAX Indie showcase for tabletop games. Unfortunately, it got moved because of COVID to an online-only event, so we weren't there in person, which is a bit of a shame, but we had some panels, we did some talks over the course of PAX and we were demoing Kingless.

Bianca:

I feel like it's really hard to not talk about the pandemic over the last couple of years. Kind of run me up to speed here. When Kingless had come out, how long was it after that? When everything kind of just....

Sebastian:

We actually were planning and we had planned for a long time. We were sort of a year ahead of ourselves and we knew when we were going to launch on Kickstarter. And I think it was about, correct me if I'm wrong, Alex, about May 2020 when we had planned and that was sort of... sorry, March. It was about March, wasn't it? And that was about when everything was kicking off at the very beginning of COVID and we had a really tough decision to make. We saw other people running Kickstarters at the same time who were cancelling or delaying, some people deciding to, you know, let's just hold out and launch later in the year. Nobody knew how this pandemic was going to unfold and how many years we'd sort of be involved in this. We made the decision to press ahead and sort of continue with the Kickstarter. A lot of people who talk to us sort of think that this was one of those everyone's in lockdown, let's make a board game style things. But we've been designing and building King's like a year prior to the Pandemic and it was just crazy timing for us. Obviously, we couldn't manufacture in time for lockdowns and things like that. We didn't get that finished, but we launched officially at the beginning of 2021 and delivered to all of our Kickstarter backers then. So a lot of people who are still in lockdown managed to have a copy of Kingless to play at home with friends and family that you're unfortunately locked in with.

Bianca:

Like you said and talked about PAX earlier before having the facilities to still be able to show off your game and still play the game online. I guess it's just,

Sebastian:

It's so helpful we can do that. Yeah, it's amazing.

Bianca:

I think especially with social media and everything now, it's like you still have the facilities to be able to advertise your game and stuff like that, despite all of it. And that's something I personally really enjoyed working with you guys so far. You guys have this amazing world that you've created and all these awesome characters to show off and I think that's obviously really excited to see Festival Explosions come together and for us to show off more stuff because obviously, like I said, there's a lot of things we can't talk about yet, but just getting a first taste of everything is super exciting. So I think that's all we have time for, for today's episode. Thank you again, you guys for joining me this afternoon. I know it's like late at night for you guys and it's only in the evening for me, so I do really appreciate it. So thank you Alex, thank you Nathan, and thank you Seb for joining me tonight.

Sebastian:

Absolutely.

Alex:

Happy to.

Bianca:

I think I'm really looking forward to recording more of these sessions with you guys just so we not only can all just chat together and everything, but also so we can keep everyone in the loop of any updates that we have coming on any other things that we want to talk about. I know that we want to have an episode just talking about Kickstarter. I know I personally would love to know because this was your first Kickstarter campaign, is that right?

Sebastian:

First Kickstarter.

Bianca:

All of this was all very first time for you guys. So I'd love to know more about the process and what was involved just so anyone who's watching or listening or reading might want to know a little bit more about it and then also just what it's like to build a game in general. Like I said, it's no easy feat and we could spend hours just talking about it and I personally would love to know more about Kingless and what you did do what you didn't do and why you did it, why you didn't do it. So I just want to say thank you to anyone that's been listening or tuning in so far. You can stay up to date with Two19 and Kingless on our social media channels. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, potentially more platforms on the way. Maybe potentially. If you want to stay up to date with the podcast and any of our posts for our monthly shake-ups, make sure you check out www.thebigmilkshake.co and I will catch you guys very soon for the next episode. Thanks, everyone.

Sebastian:

Thanks very much. Bye, everyone.

Nathan:

Ciao

Alex:

Bye.