A little while ago I did a rather long and rambly interview for a Spanish podcast. They’re still working on the Spanish dubbing, which was the original purpose. However, I won’t be able to understand that so they’ve also posted the original English version 🙂
It is quite long, and I do wander off their organised series of questions rather a lot (I did warn them), but you might find some interest in it.
No major revealed secrets (that I can remember), but we do discuss:
- my early gaming
- how playtesting differs from playing
- Battle of the Halji
- Bunnies & Burrows
- challenges for self publishing
- Fugitive magazine and early fanzines
- my time at GW
- Lost Patrol
- asymmetry in games
- simple versus complex and the length of games
- the rise and effect of Euro games
- simulation versus game, reality in wargames, theme and mechanics
- DBA
- White Dwarf (and “Fat” Dwarf)
- Dread Fleet
- freelancing
- cross-format thievery
- Dwarf King’s Hold and Pandora
- the most interesting bit of a design
- self publishing (again)
- DreadBall’s early life (as an ice hockey game) and development
- Ultimate DreadBall
- Season 2 teams
- why self publishing?
- Eternal Battles
Happy listening!
Quirkworthy 
Gonna be listening to this in chunks so some comments following the first half hour or so. As you speculate, there is now an incredible range of “indie” rpg’s covering a vast range of bizarre or niche topics and pushing the boundaries of what you can do with an rpg thanks to PoD and epublishing. I don’t tend to rpg anymore but I am still in touch with the indie rpg scen from friends who do play and even publish in it. The two keys things that seem to stand out in terms of getting people to play your game in this environment are to be part of a loose collective and to get out to conventions and run your game as well as sell it. The former is the indie version of being published by a recognised games company and just as people will check out the latest games from a GW, Fantasy Flight or Mantic, in the indie scene people will look out for the latest games with the “Acme Indie RPG Collective” logo on it.
Marketing is always important to promote new products and personal appearances at shows is a good way of both allowing potential customers to try the new game and ask any questions they may have.
It seems that you have to click on “Descargar (65mb)” and then right-click “Descargar audio” and Save Link As, in order to download it. (thanks to Google translate…)
Here is the direct URL, just in case:
[audio src="http://www.ivoox.com/jake-thornton-interview_md_1686857_1.mp3" /]
Really good listen
Thanks jake
Also i did some archaeology during my Classical Civilisations degree
Mine’s in Ancient History. You know, a proper degree. Take that archaeologists lol
How Ancient is Ancient History?
Is this a sound of one hand clapping question or do you want dates lol. The subject is traditionally taught from the archaic period of Greece onwards but it increasingly gets pushed back as earlier texts are discovered and translated.
I just wondered how it differed from Class. Civ. which is archaic Greece and Rome.
It’s all very interesting
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