The Future Proof Podcast 027
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:21
Hello, and welcome to the Future Proof Podcast. This is our bi-monthly podcast where we chat about stuff we're working on, and anything cool, we're planning. I'm Melissa Avery-Weir.
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:33
And I'm Gregory Avery-Weir and you got a delivery today. Just like, just now?
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:38
No, it came in a couple days ago. But going to the post office is a little bit of an ordeal right now. So I picked it up today. And that is the Amazon proof copy of the Companion--of Rosette Diceless Companion, which is a whole lot of words. So we've talked about the proofing process before but basically, both DriveThruRPG and Amazon, we need to get print copies that we can't resell--they have like watermarks on them--just so we can see how it prints through their different printers. And so we... the Amazon copy got lost in the abyss that, that I ordered two or, two months ago, maybe over two months ago at this point. And couldn't find it. There's no insurance on it. It's like a $2 book. So I ordered it again. And it arrived. And so now we have a relatively kind of complete idea of what our what our status is on the proofs. And we've got kind of a couple of major issues that are you know, they're not like deal breakers. I mean, they are deal breakers and this is not going to go with them. But they're not, like, massive. One of them is that on the DriveThruRPG copy, for some reason, our images on the cover are just kind of missing transparency. There's something about PDF versions.
Gregory Avery-Weir 1:58
Yeah, Companion's. Yeah, I think it's a versioning issue or version issue of what PDF we gave them.
Melissa Avery-Weir 2:04
Yeah. And then interior on all the books, one of our little sidebar curlicues isn't showing up. Which we could have caught in the PDF. I think that's, it's, it's in the PDF. So that's fixable. And I think we can pretty reliably say like once we fix that in our PDF, we're going to be good on printing in that regard. We probably don't need to reorder proofs to test the curlicue. But the cover situation with with DriveThruRPG is... I think we're gonna want to make sure we have a way to see that happened or to see that it's fixed, whether that's looking in their system after we provide the PDF, or print, getting another print copy. So that's that's pretty close. Like, if you just like bullet point those two things out--and maybe something else, I don't remember--that's almost done. So that's exciting.
Gregory Avery-Weir 2:56
Super exciting.
Melissa Avery-Weir 2:57
Yeah.
Gregory Avery-Weir 2:58
Yeah.
Melissa Avery-Weir 2:58
Another thing that is close to done/is done is some writing we've been doing on Exploit: Zero Day.
Gregory Avery-Weir 3:07
Yeah. So each job in Exploit: Zero Day has a bunch of writing that goes along with it. I think we mentioned this last episode. There's, there's both like some emails you exchange with the person who's kind of being your handler or your, your--the person that, that's sort of prompting you to do this, this hacking job. And then there's--each system has a pre-message and a post-message. And each system is a little puzzle you're solving to hack into a computer. And I finished the writing on... what is it called?
Melissa Avery-Weir 3:38
I know it's job number eight, but I don't know the name of it.
Gregory Avery-Weir 3:41
Yeah, let me check real quick.
Melissa Avery-Weir 3:43
Okay.
Gregory Avery-Weir 3:44
It's called "Military Industrial Complex", of course.
Melissa Avery-Weir 3:47
Perfect.
Gregory Avery-Weir 3:48
And so this is one that takes place on a military base. And I've done the writing for it that I think still may get a few revisions. And then all that's left on that one is puzzle design, which I think you're going to be doing.
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:05
That's correct.
Gregory Avery-Weir 4:07
And then after that, there's only one more job to finish up on Headless Swarm, which is--
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:13
Yeah.
Gregory Avery-Weir 4:13
--it's been a while.
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:15
Once this job is done, we'll release the previous job. We've talked before about how we like to have one sort of ready to go, kind of in the bank. So once, once this. once this one's wrapped up with testing, we'll release the previous job and then move on to, to the ninth and final job. So that's really exciting.
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:38
I'm going to put in a plug here for a game. We don't normally do this. But Solitaire Conspiracy is a new game out by Mike Bithell or Bithell's company, whatever. There are, there are multiple people involved including Tanya dePass and a couple of other writers and it has a very EZD feel to me in terms of its sort of cultural tone and what it's doing structurally. I mean, you might play it and go, "This has nothing to do with EZD." But I just, I don't know, kind of seeing, guessing at some of the innards of it, it feels kind of like EZD. So if you're like, "Hey, what some cyberpunk stuff I can play? I have played all the puzzles in EZD that exists right now, and have made as many as I feel like I wish to make at the moment," go play Solitaire Conspiracy, because it's pretty good game. And it's very gorgeous. So that's all.
Gregory Avery-Weir 5:33
Awesome. And we've had a little release, I think, since the last episode.
Melissa Avery-Weir 5:38
That's right. Yes. So if you are subscribed to the newsletter, you've heard about this. But we released the errata for Rosette Diceless. So errata are a list of corrections, basically, for a book, or for a work. And so typically, in errata, if you've ever played like D&D, you'll have--run a game of D&D, I think, more specifically, you'll have seen this sort of thing. And it'll be like, "Oh, instead of the verbiage, you know, 'in this circumstance, do this other thing', replace that text with 'x, y, z'." And so it's a very, like concrete, specific kind of editing thing. And Rosette Diceless, we knew we were going to have it, we've talked about how we're releasing a new version of that. So part of what these proofs are that we're getting is updated copies of Diceless. So but right now, you can go to any of the places where you can buy Rosette Diceless, and download the errata, or download an updated copy of the PDF version of the book. And you can also download it directly from rosetterpg.com. So it was kind of nice to get that out and have that available to folks. So yeah.
Gregory Avery-Weir 6:49
And very few of those--they're, there are no huge changes. Most of them are just clarifications on intent on stuff. The only thing that's like an actual big change is that Stress and Afflictions are now separate. So, so they're, it's much less confusing to figure out how to, where do you put afflictions? And how do you track that versus stress?
Melissa Avery-Weir 7:12
Exactly. And if you want more game recommendations, and a little bit of game footage from us, we do a little bit of streaming on a bi weekly basis.
Gregory Avery-Weir 7:24
Yeah, so you might know about this already. We've mentioned it before, but it's been a while since we've talked about on the podcast. But we do something called Future Proof Plays, which every other week, one of us will stream, usually a short game that sort of matches the Future Proof Games aesthetic and value system. We try and aim towards that. Sometimes it's we go a little bit far afield. They're often games that we're playing for the first time. So you'll kind of get our reactions in, in real time. And I think we try to kind of look at things from a developer's eye and, and you know, we won't, we won't be particularly harsh on games, but we'll definitely have some where, which you'll be able to tell that we love a lot more than others.
Gregory Avery-Weir 8:13
And, and then both of us will occasionally do other streaming. Melissa is much more consistent on that. But if you go to futureproofgames.com/streams, you can see all our plans for our schedule for Future Proof Plays. And then you'll, you'll, those will have links to our individual Twitch channels where we do other streaming as well. And I actually did an impromptu stream for the first time in a bit. As part of that, the Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid, which was a huge bundle with with over 1000 things in it. It managed to raise almost, just almost $900,000 for, for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency which is helping for people who are displaced and need support from various things, specifically the the Gaza emergency and our games are in that bundle. So if you don't have one of the games that's available on Itch, you can, and you got that bundle, then you have it now.
Melissa Avery-Weir 9:28
Yes.
Gregory Avery-Weir 9:28
So I streamed Terry Cavanaugh's "V" spelled "vvvvvv", which is one of my favorite games. And it was it was fun to do and... I don't know, I feel like I might stream more. I, I like, I like streaming a decent amount once I do it. It just... you know life. But futureproofgames.com/streams we'll have our plans for what we're gonna do. Sometimes it's more or less filled out for the future, but you can keep up with it there or by following us on Twitter at @PlayFutureProof.
Melissa Avery-Weir 10:07
Yup. You can find all of our stuff over at futureproofgames.com. We're on Twitter, as Greg said at @PlayFutureProof and on YouTube as Future Proof Games where we archive our streams. You can get a video version of this podcast, not with our faces, but with a very adorable pulsing heart as we talk. You can hit us up with questions or comments from the blog or on social media. Our theme music is "Juparo" by Broke for Free which is used with permission.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai