welcome back to the corner of story and game where we dive into the intersection of Storytelling and game design I'm your host Gerald Ford and today we have a fascinating guest joining us Jason Kingsley co-founder of rebellion developments and an industry veteran known for his contributions to game design and storytelling Jason has a deep passion for history which greatly influences his work in video game narratives today we're going to be discussing the intersection of history and game design and how historical events and figures can INSP ire the narratives we see in games and fiction so let's dive into it Jason thank you for joining me my pleasure it's delightful it's very cold we were just talking earlier about how cold it is here it's not cold by standards of really cold places on the planet well I it's warmed up here finally today it's only minus 10 but yeah it's I know the cold yeah well I I'm afraid we're only we're minus we're minus 2 and degre centigrade here in the UK which means it's Frozen which means the horse troughs all have to be have the ice broken which means that when you walk the mud is now Frozen and is a bit lumpy so you have to be careful you don't twist an ankle and he's you're carrying hay bales and things like that so very reminiscent and it kind of it's quite a leveler it takes you back down to what it must have been like quite recently for most of humanity in the winter that this is what me would have experience whereas we now with Central Heating and and cars and paved streets we we don't experience it in in the same way but the vast majority of human human history has had Frozen landscapes for some of the time anyway yeah I growing up I I know exactly what you're talking about but you mentioned history and that's what we're here to talk about today is is pulling from history to inform narratives in digital games and fiction so that's the topic I want to get us into but before we get there I do like to set the stage kind of lay a foundation with a An Origin story how did you fall in love with the written word with games how did did you find your way into the industry kind of the story of your journey okay as it happened well I was a I was a very precocious reader at school I remember when I first went to school they showed me the books and I said have you got any bigger books than that to read and the teacher went okay and they gave me the books from the the year above and I went no no those are too still too rubbish so I had to go three years ahead according to my mother I didn't remember this so I'm being told this I had to go three years ahead of my reading age because I want wanted to look at adventure stories and I you know I I I liked books with pictures but not too many pictures and in my my reading I I was always interested in Escapist fantasy from a very earliest you know years King AR obviously not the original King Arthur stories but the sort of modified stories for children because the original King Arthur stories are quite dark and um and have a lot of adult content in them but they're interested in the quest and the the narrative in general and then I had a bit of a problem at school which was I loved my English and I loved my creative writing but I also loved science as well and in the under the English system you had to sort of choose you had to choose arts or Sciences at quite an early age sort of more or less at about 12 years old you you sort of if you wanted to do science you did biology chemistry physics maybe maths and you have to drop Arts English you music you know you bundled into one of two and I I went through this sort of process of thinking well look I can study story and narrative on my own which I've been doing anyway I can't really study Physics and Math and Science in the same way I kind of need a bit more formal training and you got to read the textbooks and everything so I chose the science part but I kept I I managed to keep going with my love of Storytelling as a background task through throughout it and then I went to university did a did a zoology degree at Oxford University did a MERS there and then started Rebellion with my brother so computer games started to come in and I wrote a I wrote a book called steel line the Lost Magic for ladybird which is now defunct book publisher but they published hardback books very small ones that were so informational and and interesting and this was a competition book where you have to like a Choose Your Own Adventure this is roughly the same time as the choose your own Adventures were kind of coming to prominence and that was very successful it was a it was a worldwide not worldwide it was an British number one and they paid me £800 which when I was 16 was a lot of money you know it was W like wow this is great full buyout and I've got the rights back actually because they were bust and I managed to actually literally buy the rights back from for the book um and and so I was interested but that was a computer that was a game book but you could flick through it and choose paragraphs you went to so you'd sort of unravel the story and I felt that that could be done with a computer and my brother was really into the technology and the computers and I thought wow we could computerize this so I started to look into computers we're talking about the very earliest not the very earliest computers but pretty early like Commodore pets and commodore 64s and 8bit computers and we never did computerize that but we started our journey in making computer games and I I've retained my brother and I both we're the co-owners co-founders of rebellion we've got nearly 600 full-time members of Staff now in the UK quite a big turnover we make big games like Sniper Elite uh zombie army we got a new game out called atam fall which is coming out next year there's another sniper leag game coming out so so we have a a a huge catalog and growing catalog of things going on we also published comic books we publish novels other people's novels and in my case we're publishing one of my novels called the Lord of Blackthorn which hopefully we'll talk about a little bit later great but we we focus very much on storytelling in different media because you can you can tell a story in a linear way like a novel you can also tell a story in a kind of branching way like a you know an interactive game book you also tell a story in a computer game which is n branching it is more here's the landscape now you make your story by your actions as you go through the adventure and for me they all have their own challenges and structures and it's really interesting to have grown and you know matured in that world with telling stories in lots of different ways that's where I am now and i' now got my first novel underway so wow so really this podcast could have been about branching narratives versus emergent narrative and it could have been about trans media storytelling it literally could have been yes yes and and one of the things I'm often telling the team because I've got teams of people that um I'm still the creative director and CEO of the company i' I've kept that term created director in there because it's important to me because I don't want to be just CEO yeah whilst I'm one of the bosses with my brother I that I see that as almost as an obligation not a write and my my my the thing I choose to do is to tell stories in interesting ways and focus very much on what matters to the player what matters to the reader so sometimes when you're designing a computer game you have this view like being like being an author you have this view of the landscape that the reader or the player doesn't have and if you if your story only works because you have this sort of helicopter view of the landscape and you're not telling the story you've got to tell the story from ground level including with a computer game including with a novel you you got to imagine what these people can see and what they can't see as well and you got to explain that to them somehow so anyway yeah so we we could probably talk for a long time on the theory of story design I'm thinking that you I'm going to have to have you back again in the new year to do the do another one on that because that yeah I love talking about that stuff too but I I need I need to talk to you about histo polling history because you are a historian like you are recognized as somebody who studies history and incorporates it into what you're working on so that's that's the focus today yeah yeah Okay cool so my my I've fallen into being a YouTuber so I have my own YouTube channel called modern history TV it's a weird choice of name I agree but it wasn't meant to be a success and then it became a success and then I didn't get around to changing the title and now it's kind of stuck and I'm like I should have paid more attention up front but never mind um so there we are so I in particular I'm fascinated by the medieval period because it's such a transitional period between kind of Imperial Rome and then you go through what I think poetically Works called the Dark Ages although one is not supposed to call it the Dark Ages anymore but I still think that kind of works as reference to the sort of Empire of Rome and then no Empire of Rome and what happened to the island I'm living in Britain in particular and knights and armor and horses and the shivar code that never really was or was sort of only a vague notion that some people had um I I studied I I studied the sherar code and the more I studied it the more I didn't understand what was going on it moved away entirely and some of the earliest rules for Knights were don't Rob from the church and don't fight on Sundays which is kind of quite basic rules for for Violent Men you to to adopt fairly easy to not Rob churches obviously the church set these rules up don't Rob churches or or Holy Ground and don't fight on Sundays because you should be praying that was the very beginnings of the Shar code and then it expanded into the thing we understand it vaguely about today but I'm also particularly interested in Ordinary People Kings and Nobles are great they get written about and you know Wonderful talk about King this and Emperor this and whatever it might be but I'm fascinated in particular by what it meant to be who most of us were which was ordinary people that didn't get written about in names although in some cases they do get written about because one of the areas I I'm very keen on primary evidence so I'm keen on actual archaeology and written documents from the time period and we have some wonderful original documents some of them are obviously written by people at the time with a nod to the Future like the venerable bead in the Dark Ages is sort of writing a history of Britain which is filled with real stuff and not real stuff and then very clearly not real stuff so for example he he talks about Britain was founded by The Castaways of Troy and you're thinking what and then Brutus gets involved it's all very weird and and surreal it's like fanfiction for history but then you go up to 11th 12th century you start to get court records we start to have the notes taken by scribes in court cases and these are always this are very praic and they they illustrate What mattered enough to people for people to go to court and these are very primitive forms of court but nonetheless they decided they had enough of a peeve with their neighbor to take them to court and that would have taken years and probably cost an equivalent amount of money as it does today but it's things like this person's name you know Patrick whoever his Pig escaped and ate my turnips and you think that's funny but it's also in an agrarian society very serious because if your turnips get eaten you're that's a big chunk of your food because the weren't supermarkets and and other people you if they had a bad Harvest and you had a terrible Harvest because your some your neighbor's pig ate your turnips you are going to potentially starve and if not starve to death you're going to be very hungry because maybe you don't have the money to buy tops from anybody else maybe risen to Surplus and there's a huge amount of cess pits overflowing for example and people people's boundary walls not being maintained and these are the sort of thing that neighbors fall out about today you put the fence in the wrong place you know and then a massive fight ensues between two neighbors who live next to to each other but now hate each other we we've all probably either heard about it or experienced it ourselves somebody's making too much noise they had that as well after after curfew so and so is playing the bag pipes excessively and and he was fined 2 Shillings and 6 and told not to play the bag pipes after Sunset and you go what a brilliant story so there was one person madly playing the bag pipes in this Village for months you know and driving people crazy just you know that kind of stuff is fascinating but very very human stories so I talk about a lot of um a lot of my videos about that how did how did poor people travel it's all right talk about rich people they had money to spend but if you wanted to travel on pilgrimage and you didn't have any money how where do you stay how do you survive and the answer is monasteries the whole religious these religious institutions had a duty of care to poor people in need and so you went from Monastery to Monastery having very modest food but being looked after by the by the church and I think again that's a wonderful background for a story as well so how much of this interesting historical minutia influences narratives you've worked on how does that influence your storytelling hugely but in the background so so for for example I I have I do joust I fight real fighting in tournaments and I've really jousted with solid lances in exactly the same way that Knights of old on my horses with real steel armor in a competition at the Tower of London same exactly the same place that Henry VII did joust uh I've done it at pendennis Castle DOA Castle you know korth Castle these are all real places where real knights in the medieval period jousted and I've jousted there for organizations like Eng Heritage or the historic Royal palaces which are all charitable institutions in the UK that look after old buildings and these these some of these buildings are very very old I mean they go back pre- Roman you know DOA Castle has got a Roman Lighthouse on one end and then a medieval castle and then World War II bunkers and you know this is just the the the the place is so steeped in history including up to the modern day so I've done that so when I'm talking about weapons in my games or real armor I know from personal experience what it's like to wear plate armor I know what it's like in the cold I know what it's like in the heat I know what it's like to have a fly fly into your helmet just before you're about to take a pass down the lists and how distracting it is to have a fly going Tin dtin Tin Tin inside your visor and then you suddenly realize what if it's a wasp and and and I can't open my visor because I've got one I've Got Hand on the Range and I've got a lance in this hand and he's just signaled so I have to go and I have to ignore the fact that I've got a fly in my visor and you're saying yeah I wonder if Henry VII felt this you know i' I've sweated in armor so much that I can't get my helmet off off at all CU it's stuck on my head because the linen lining because it's made of natural materials the lining lining has got so soaked in sweat that it's swollen slightly and stuck on my head head and then I have to have the ground crew very carefully sort of Wiggle the helmet up off my face until and when a helmet is halfway off it's the worst feeling ever because you can't see you can't hear really uncomfortable but you can't do anything about it you're relying entirely on your ground crew and your horse to stay still and you think oh my goodness if the horse panics I can't see what I'm doing or where I'm going what how's this going to end um I've had a saddle break underneath me pushed down into a horse's spine the horse was fine horse called warlord is still with me and he's he's brilliant old boy but he panicked because he had this nasty feeling on his back and I had to throw myself off the saddle at a full Gallop in plate armor to get my weight off his back and then as soon as the weight was off his back the saddle was fine and he slowed down and he was fine but I had to make a decision it's like where do I try and fling myself off the saddle because it all looks very hard down there it's all it's all six s foot down on the ground that I'm traveling at 30 miles an hour this is going to hurt but I've got to do it you know so so those those those facts kind of go into the background so I I also know about researching history so the Sniper Elite series of games that we do is is all about the sort of War behind the war so it's all about about spying and assassinations Behind Enemy Lines and to a certain extent we play on the idea of the the super weapons against each other yeah the in in the case of sniper leite the Nazi super weapons the vavaa as they called them the V2 the V1 all the other special weapons they had the Allied side had their own Super weapons as well and so there we try to lean on history in a plausible way so I I think of sometimes when people saying oh is that accurate it's like well it's plausible we won't ever know what actually happened because nobody wrote it down but it's plausible and I sometimes think our historical research is a bit like that obviously some things that are impossible you know if somebody was born 100 years after somebody else they could have never met but it you know things could have happened that weren't recorded because so little history that was actually written down that survives today which is incredibly frustrating but also gives us a bit of scope so that's how I look at it I look at things like historical plausibility in my writing would you say having like those experiences is it more important to have authentic to have the emotion authentic the feelings of what it would be like the sense of what that world might feel like as opposed to exact minutia I I think personally I think so I think the the human emotional side of an experience is connects us more to the Past you know saying you know if I say that the plate armor I wear is quite heavy and is hot in the summer that's factually true but if if I was to say that the joust was delayed by half an hour but I already had my armor on but for reasons outside my control I had to wear it for half an hour longer I'm now quite tired I'm now much sweatier than I'm expecting I'm desperately thirsty and I can't find my Squire my Squire's gone off to do something else and I desperately you know I desperately need a drink how do you get a drink into your helmet when the helmet's fastened to you you know can you take it off some helmets you can some you can't some of the ones designed for jousting are very specifically designed not to come off very easily to protect you from the Lance which is going to kill you if it hits you in the wrong way so you know good on you for wearing armor that stops you dying that's the principle then sometimes I look at so criticisms of fiction when I look at even in a fantasy environment let's say Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones if the armor doesn't protect people from the threats they're going to face for me I'm instantly taken out of the story because you only wear armor if it's going to protect you because it's heavy it's expensive and it does slow you down and it tires you out so if it doesn't actually add to your survivability on the battlefield why on Earth are you wearing it is not costume the real thing so when I look at a jousting show for example or jousting sequence in a movie and there's a big gap the armor there's a big gap on around the neck for example the the the goe doesn't fit or the rapper doesn't fit properly because it's costume armor it slightly freaks me out because a I know that I wouldn't be able to take a a a joust I wouldn't take a shot at that person cuz their arm is broken you there's there are ways you can signal to your opponent you put your arm what we used to do is you put your Lance outs sideways and you signal to everybody you've seen something and maybe other people haven't seen on their armor so you're not take a hit you're not going to try and hit them because it's dangerous you know and if there's a piece of armor not attached or their visor is not down I've had people charge at me without the visor down they've forgotten they're so nervous they've forgotten to lower their visor and you're thinking you lunatic you're coming at me and it's like no no don't don't take a shot um things like that the armor protects you you cannot unless you have a magic sword I suppose you're not going to cut through plate armor you know steel is good at its job you could maybe stab through it if you're super strong and I guess if you're talking about really super strong or unnaturally strong characters iner circumstances that's fine but when you see the hero without a helmet cuz Heroes rarely wear helmets in in movies because you you want to you want to spend the money on your actor and you want to see their face I guess you rarely see them in a helmet and you're thinking yeah the slightest tap on that head with you know an accidental smack on that head with even the piece of wood is going to put you out of the combat you know and they're they're slicing across the belly armor of heavily armored Orcs coming towards them and you're thinking that orc armor looks pretty much bulletproof you are not going to cut through it even even with Glam dring you know even with with you know a massive unless again unless there's a magic sword involved and maybe you know magic kind of Trumps the physics of it so I'm always keen on seeing even if you've got dragons the armor still needs to protect you from the ordinary threats right that's that's the depth that your mind goes on that is that's incredible bringing historical relevance to fiction whether it's fantasy or not and to games does that offer the opportunity to explore viewpoints or perspectives that other genres may not like is there is there an advantage there just in the format well I think it's quite interesting looking through history trying to imagine yourself into the role of characters from that age because it's a bit like doing a role playing game you if you're genuinely trying to roleplay you sometimes have to forget what you know as a player you know I I'm I'm a huge believer in role playing for fun and not necessarily metagaming not necessarily playing the game to get the best score you could do that that's fine there's nothing wrong with it but it's not how I play it I play it to pretend to be somebody else so if I'm playing I don't know a heroic character who is desperate to show his worth on the battlefield and the DM says to me this you there's a giant thing coming down the corridor you don't stand a chance it's it's like I don't care my character thinks that here's my chance to prove myself and and all the other players again no no no he's got more hit points than you and he's got all this and it's like no no no no my character wants this moment and I'm no I know he's probably going to die but that's the point that's the that's the narrative Point his motivation is to prove himself against unsurmountable odds and mostly in real life you go in against them insurmountable odds and you're done for aren't you you know most of us aren't Heroes but in a narrative environment where you've got a good M and other players everybody leans into that and then they can make it into a heroic moment and and maybe maybe the the Barbarian who who isn't quite as Brave as me the whatever the the Knight the Paladin or whatever I often play paladins what a surprise but um you know maybe he trips me up on the way there and drags me you know binds me and and drags me away because he knows I won't you know that my character won't not fight this character this monster coming and he wants to to get me away and so now I've got an annoyance my character's been his his his future has been stolen by the other party now how how does he now deal with the fact that you've prevented him from trying to seal his Destiny by having This Magnificent fight and dying heroically and and that's where narrative comes in so now you've got an interesting kind of conflict to resolve as a party and as a in a narrative as well you know these this is where story comes from it comes from this kind of conflict but if it's if it's artificial conflict it doesn't work but if it genuinely comes out of the characters then then that's cool as well you know I played another character where um there was a Psy there was a psychic one of the other characters was was a very strange and sort of thiefy type of character but we'd set it up that this thief had be given a side mission to look after me my my my father who was very wealthy but I hadn't been told as a character but the Thief character been told that was a big bag of gold at the end of the adventure if he keeps me alive so he's he's got this meta you he's he's desperately trying to keep this stupid Paladin character alive and and I know it as a player because obviously you can have those moments outside the story but within the story and I you we we were on a we were on a boat and I'm in plate armor and I wanted to jump into the river to fight the monster and the DM said well you can't swim in the armor I right no I know I can't but my character is ignoring that and so so I jumped in and everyone's going what are you doing I I'm doing what my character does which is and and now I'm going to start drowning so somebody better come in and try and get me you got get me out of this situation and and it became a really interesting moment in the adventure because you know they were all really angry with me because they had to keep me alive and and and and I had a few people going yeah but that was really annoying I said it wasn't annoying it was wonderful it was wonderful storytelling because we created this scene of this lunatic Paladin he jumped in the water and was starting to drown the the thief had gone in after him because he's worth a lot of money at the end of this adventure and you got the magic user and the the Druid going this is insane we've got the monster to fight as well and it and the DM went with it and it was great you know we we survived and I was dragged out the water and I was pumped for you know water was pumped out of my lungs and I was revived and and you know but it was really me able moment of role playing and I I think when you're constructing a novel it's the same you almost need to do things with your characters that you definitely wouldn't do but your character would your your protagonist would because of their motivation so anyway I probably talked too long and passionately about I love it I love it do do you play like do you play today do you still play tabletop role playing games I try but I very rarely find the time I've got a young family and my horses and I've got my business and I've got the YouTube channel and I've got my rting to do so anybody who's a parent knows it's hard to find time but I do find the time very occasionally was also trying to find people people I enjoy adventuring with and and my ideal role playing team is a bunch of people that are having fun you know and and the idea isn't to kill all the monsters and get the gold the idea is to have a brilliant adventure and all sit back at the end of the evening and go that was mad but brilliant I love that that's the goal that's the dream right there yeah absolutely well you mentioned writing so let's kind of Branch off into that for five seconds here your book b of Blackthorn how much historical research relevance accuracy is there how much is leaning more into the fantasy side kind of walk me through the balance there well it's an interesting setup because it takes place in what we would think of the 14th 15th century so the early the late 14th early 50s so plate armor is a thing but it isn't our world exactly but the characters in it don't know it's not our world because it's their world so the king is not named for example the king is just the king because everybody knows who the king is it's the king isn't he and and the the place is called the realm or the kingdom and there are places outside you there's the northern tribes and there's the the Western tribes of sea people as well that are are being shut off and and our our character the protagonist is a fairly lowly Knight and he is he gets involved there's a the the the book opens with a Siege the siege of a rebel Baron and our hero succeeds in being the first man over the wall and the King has said he'll he'll earn the castle anyway it turns out the king wasn't quite being true so he does earn a castle but he he doesn't he doesn't ownn the castle this big Fantasy Castle he gets sent to the Borderlands to a you know a a thiefdom still significant but a thiefdom that's not got had a lord for a long time and he gets sent to out of the Kingdom to a place he's not comfortable with and he's not well known and he doesn't have much in the way of money and he's got to rebuild on the Borderlands and he's got to for new alliances and it is heavily based on the medieval period but in this world magic does exist but in a background in a very background type of way so there are two competing religions there's there there's a the the religion of the book If you like which is the sort of more of a more of medieval Christian economy a similar thing to Christianity with Bishops and and and you church people and monks and things so it's very heavily real but then there's the old ways as well which aren't talked about very much and in fact still exist but nobody talks about it because it's impolite to do so in High Society because it's the old stuff The Peasants The Peasants and the Ordinary People Know It exists so they know but don't have any direct experience of goblins in the woodlands and unicorns have definitely been seen but not by me but by a somebody whose friend I know is definitely seen as Goblin people people got Tales of dragons and he our hero learns about one of these Dragon Tales from his grandfather who tells it as if it's a myth but his grandfather according to his grandfather did fight a dragon but he of course thinks it's all nonsense it's all fanciful and as The Story Goes On we learn as the reader that maybe some of it is true maybe some of it isn't but maybe some of it is true but it's still very realistic it's still very grounded so they have people casting magic spells but it happens in the background there's there's weird stuff there's a weird set of Woodlands of big forest with a path through it that that our hero has to take and the woods seem to be encroaching as he walks as he rides through it the woods are encroaching on him and then he manages to get outside and they sort of back away again and is it his imagination or is it something happening so that that that was the that was the idea to try and imagine what a world would be like if these things almost certainly might exist and every was quite sure and but some people are sure and some people are sure that they don't exist and some people are sure they do exist lots of people exist in this sort of limbo state in the middle which is kind of yes kind of no but doesn't really affect me very much I've got to get the Harvest in anyway and I've got to look after the horse is and I've got to look after the pigs so all of that stuff who knows that sounds like a historically accurate experience though like like I'm sure back then they thought it was real like they they knew somebody who had seen a unicorn or had heard a goblin outside the door at night one night or they didn't leave M out for the fairies so their cat disappeared like those they believed that so it sounds like you're tapping into that historical accuracy I am I am trying to things like so for example it occurred to me that in a way unicorns do exist in our world they're called rhinoceros so a single horned creature albe it not very frail and you know pale looking and but there is a creature with a single horn it's called a rhinoceros but it doesn't resemble the unicorns we know but in the medieval mind in medieval Europe clearly people were telling the truth when they'd seen a single horned beast that galloped like a horse happen to be quite Stumpy but also the narell the narell exists and people had real unicorn horns so you've got this weird balance that and unicorns are mentioned in the bible as well so which is true obviously as far as though those people were concerned and it was all literally true for those people and therefore you had real Tales From Africa from Travelers of unicorns over there and you had proof because you'd seen somebody's actual unicorn but you've never seen one so you unicorns exist in the same well were yes in the medieval mind I think they probably did and this idea that the further away from home you go the more strange everything gets is still prevalent today let's face it lots of people don't travel very much and when you travel you realize that people are people they live in cities or live in the countryside they might speak a different language but they all pretty much want to live a decent and peaceful life and get on with doing things that people want to do they they don't have a single foot that they shelter under to keep the Sun from their face you know they don't have dog heads or fishtails but you know I think that stuff is fascinating we still do it to a certain extent today so what happens when you take a book like that where there is that authentic sensation and feeling and mindset of a hisor iCal setting and then you inject real magic what does that what does that do to those narratives when suddenly there is real in your face spellcasting or a magical object or well it it causes confusion is that you know people yeah people deal with unpalatable truths today you know they they get into denial or they figure out a rationalization you know they they go that can't be true like well it is well I don't believe it or it's fake news or any of the you know we're living through really fascinating times at the moment um in geopolitics and and you can see the same kind of justifications people some people go I'm going to have to completely reevaluate my understanding of the world and some people go no I don't want to reevaluate my understanding of the world I'm just going to deny that that happened even though I've seen it it didn't happen that way I'm going to reimagine it and and rethink it and put it in a different context and and put it in a different I just going to say it didn't happen people back in the medieval period did the same people in 400 years are going to be doing the same you know sadly human beings do this because it's a way of coping and I think if you're writing a story you can you can do the same you know there there's one of the characters in the story that sort of has personally witnessed things that are very unusual and almost certainly magical and when asked it sort of goes I haven't got time I I'm not I'm not bothered about it didn't hasn't had much of impact on me I'm not that bothered so you can worry about it if you like but I'm just going to pretend I didn't see it or cuz I cuz he can't deal with it it doesn't have the tools to deal with it whereas other characters do and other characters lean into the whole thing but you've still got horses you've still got lances you still got castles that need to be repaired you've still got a moat that's got to be dug out because it is just a mess and it isn't really a good Mo you've still got trees in the wrong you know you got brush in the wrong place that got to be cleared out you got roads that got to be improved in this particular place is a bridge there's a very significant strategic Bridge that's got to be dealt with and there are neighbors that have got to be communicated with and and that's where true narrative is is in is in the kind of situations and conflicts and how people in the story deal with those conflicts in a meaningful way you know one one person might deal with it by being very aggressive the other person might want to talk and everything in between and there's probobly a time for talking hopefully most of us will talk first and then sometimes you have to get into the physical physical altercation but hopefully you can wind that back misunderstandings happen as well uh um misdirection I always find misdirection or people assuming the worst about other people is is fertile ground for novels the story because we as the viewer and the reader no no no no you see both sides yeah no no don't think that because this person is good as well but the characters might not see it that way they might interpret it in a in a much stronger more aggressive way and and again that's part of the story so I've tried to bring that out so magic if if magic exists it depends on how all-encompassing the magic is if it's magic like Dungeons and Dragons where pretty much every other person has some kind of incredibly powerful magic spells Society would be very different because you know who would fix your plumbing and if you can do magic spells wouldn't you have magic spells to make your life easier to heat water yes because you don't want to eat wash and cold water does somebody go around heating up everybody's water is that their job you are they the are they the water heater they just walk around the village quickly zapping everybody's jug of water for their morning ablutions heat up and you've got hot water everybody's got hot water great and you pay the you pay the fire Mage some money to heat your water not very adventurous or heroic but probably how it would happen you got minor magic spells to to heal things you've got an injured pig or an injured horse well you're going to go to the magic user and pay them a pen can you cast a spell to F fix my lame horse please yeah sure think okay fixed these are the sort of ordinary level things and I I find that would be is really intriguing to look into how would you use those magic spells for everyday circumstance yeah yeah lighting a lighting a fire in the wilderness is a pain in the ass sometimes especially if the woods dry well you got you know if you can control fire brilliant you don't have to worry about it but you know get it going and then rest you that was probably what fires would be doing most rather than casting Fireballs at monsters be they'd probably be lighting campfires and and you because it's more convenient than than using a flint and steel if you can fly what does that do to the transport infrastructure you if you got a A spell where you can run incredibly fast well you make a great messenger so you could set up a whole postal system of Mages that can haste between various places are they going to be doing that yeah some people don't want to go into dangerous Dungeons and risk their life some people are just happy to make decent coin by doing an ordinary job and if you had flying spell you could do it once a day you know great you make a great Postman there you go I love those kind of Worlds where they extrapolate what society would be like if magic was extremely common like yeah it's fascinating fascinating well I always wonder I always wonder about economy as well because you know as we all know I've got basic sort of I've studied the economics a little bit at a very basic level but supply and demand is a thing and in the medieval period there were times when nobody was making money nobody's making actual coins anymore and coins get lost and you know they get used up or they get hoarded and buried and sometimes there were times in in in English mediev History where there weren't coins to go around so suddenly had to drop to a barter system or there weren't coins enough to do big things so somebody had to invent new coins and and make them work and and all of that around the coin clipping and it's not pure gold it's 50% gold and then what's it actually worth and all of that wonderful complex economic arguments but at the same time if you have a village shop and there are adventurers coming in with magic weapon after magic weapon after magic weapon who who's going to buy those magic weapons if you buy them off the adventurers people are going okay so it's plus three magic sword but I've got six of them dude to be honest nobody this this is a village who want who wants a magic sword other adventurers yeah but you do you want to I don't want to buy it what not for I know I my shelf is filled with magic swords all right and I'll take it off your hands for a penny all right just do your a convenience but but this is a magic sword yeah I know and I've got six of them and they're not selling very well cuz everybody around here has got a magic sword from that Bloody dungeon over there that seems to be endless that everybody goes into some people come out of it Laden down with jewels and gold I've got more rubbies than I can shake a stick at you know the kids are using them as marbles in the street because nobody wants them because let's face it if something becomes so common there's no scarcity value so suddenly the price collapses you know diamonds in our modern society diamonds are only valuable because it's a diamond cartel that artificially restricts the amount of diamonds released to the market if they released all the diamonds all the time diamonds would be dramatically cheaper yeah they're allowed to kind of create an artificial system for that would you have the same system would you have Guilds of adventurers going you know what I know you've got six magic swords but we cannot release more than one magic sword to the public we just have to have a massive Warehouse filled with magic weapons of all sorts and we will slowly release them to the community to keep you know that that's we literally have that in the modern day you know oil oil prices hugely influential on Modern economy price goes up and down because people decide to get more oil out of the ground you know and then suddenly the price comes down everybody goes oh no all those people who are trying to get oils from Shale which is expensive suddenly can't make it they can't make any money anymore so they close it down and and you know you can imagine a fantasy setting where where I wouldn't I wouldn't bother to be honest you know you can't buy a turnip for magic sword just just too many of them you know the economy would collapse there's only so much gold an economy can swallow before gold becomes like silver and before silver becomes like copper and copper is totally Valu um so I find all of that fascinating I mean I'm not trying to take away from the heroic fantasy Trope or whatever but sometimes especially in a computer game you can model this but it does frustrate the player because they've risked their life and they've got nothing of value it plays with their expectations it'd be a fun World building exercise if nothing else just to take it as far as you can and see what comes out of it let's go one of the other things that occasionally occurs to me is Magic Animal so if an animal can talk to you I tell you what I train horses and one of the things about training horses is trying to communicate with a horse with body language because you can't talk to a real horse verbally you sort of can but not if you could explain to a horse I want you you know can you do this for me maybe they'd say no go away I'm too tired or yeah okay cool that sounds good let's have a go at that you if the horse wants to have a go at jousting maybe some horses that are talking horses go no no I don't like that it's bit dangerous for me so can I just fart around pulling a cart please no but you're a mighty warhorse you're yeah but I don't really want to do that I just don't fancy it I've got I'm having a bad day I've got a headache I'm having a bad day I don't want to Jou and then the other thing I I stumbled across was ins right so ins exist they're basically travel lodges motels whatever in the medieval period you you go there you pay a bit of money and you you stable your horse or your pack ponies or whatever it is stay overnight drink some you drink and eat and then on your way again in an adventurous setting a Tavern would be attached and that kind of stuff if you're traveling on different creatures which probably could be in a high fantasy you're going to have to keep them in the in as well but some of them aren't compatible you know horses and horses are mix you know horses and ponies and donkeys and camels and things fine they're all hers but if you're riding I don't know a a war cat the size of a huge tiger that's not going to mix with the horses you need flal facilities you're goingon to have to pay more money to the animal handlers and there's going to be this whole group of society that are going I tell you what we can deal with hippogryphs but we can't deal with Battle Cats right Battle Cats You' have to go couple of couple of in down they specializing Battle Cats and and War Dogs okay giant war dogs and and and and Dragons right they've got a big they've got a fireproof place okay but it's going to cost you a fortune and so you suddenly think you know what that's really fun you could have a whole roleplaying session around and in with incompatible creatures that all turn up at the same time and they're all on to bed for the night and they they're just and the inkeeper doing his nut trying to work out how to how to make it all work and I just think yeah that would work really well that's such fun that would make a great story even that's fantastic brilliant yeah and my last idea is about gong Farmers so have you heard of the term gong farmer gold F gong g n gong farmer so gong farmer was a real profession in the medieval period their job was to empty cess pits of human waste very important people poop into pits and it gets dug out by Chim things put into wheelbarrows and sold to Farmers or sold to people who are using it for Tannery or sold to make gunpowder in the later medieval period of salt Pizza these people became very very wealthy because they dealing with other people's poop okay that still exists in a medieval fantasy sitting you're going to have a category of worker of sort of Municipal worker that are gong Farmers that the the poop trucks and in a lot of medieval societies they did this stuff after dark they they they they they didn't do it during the day because obviously people don't want to look at wagged loads of poop Grace right in the you know when they're polite they want to have this done undercover and out of the way and so you've got a whole trch of society not just the thieves and the Thieves Guild and assassins going around at night you've also got the poop trucks trundling around and it suddenly occurred to me the gong Farmers Guild is going to be powerful is going to know stuff because it is going out at night totally legitimately is going to have a relationship with a Thieves Guild because thieves and the gong Farmers you know in cesspits sometimes things drop down there and they you know the gong Farmers the the cesspit emptiers will need to shift a jewel that they found in the in the cess pit of the local castle that Jewel could be really important you know a magic ring that's fallen off the finger and fallen into the poop and taken it and they're going to know the Assassins as well there going to be some kind of deal done with the poop Guild and the assassins guild because the Assassins know they've got cess pits that need to be emptied as well and the Thieves Guild does as well you know that the Thieves Guild has garderobes and toilets that need emptying so the gong farmers are going to be very well connected with all strata of society and it suddenly occurred to me there's fertile if you pardon the expression ground for storytelling in an urban environment in a in a fantasy City somebody is emptying the cesspits and they know a lot about a lot of people now that is a brilliant setting for a story really interesting and you don't think about it don't anyway there you go wow that's it's a hell of a brain you've got there that's that's incred inedible and the fact that they go out at night in a fantasy setting would also mean that they predominantly be nocturnal like Dr or orc or so you're going to have that yeah do can can vampire not all vampires are going to be wealthy yeah is a job that a Vampire the only job vampire can do if you follow the rules of you know they can't you killed by sunlight or whatever is at night well that's a you know it needs strength as well persistence you need to be comfortable at night with night vision you need to be good at digging poop you go on you know and and you suddenly go you know what you could have goblins and vampires working together in a night soil because they're called night soil night soil men and a night soil team you know you've got yourself a little team of Municipal workers that are the underclass and that's cool that is really cool but they're well connected you know nobody's going to the Thieves Guild is going to steer clear of the poop collectors CU they need their latrines emptying too and and you suddenly think wow that that's really intriguing you're right vampires would you need a strong stupid character do you need a troll with a shovel yeah who's really dumb but is looked after and doesn't really want to fight anybody and he helps shovel he's the one that jumps down into it and shovels it all out and he's big and smelly but he doesn't mind cuz he's a troll you know it's right at home yeah there's so many opportunities so you've got to do something with that that's brilliant well I I I've got so many ideas I might do but I happy to fling the ideas out because as a print in principle thing you know these These are if you study history you discover things like this you know you discover simple things like tanneries were always downwind and downstream so if you go to a new city in the medieval period you will be able to find where the tanneries are because you know it's Downstream and downwind because they stink and you know polite Society wants the tanneries to not cast their stinch across their houses so you suddenly got a sort of geography so you know the Posh houses are going to be upwind and and and you know and up Street and the the poor houses and Industrial places that are going to produce effluent are going to be Downstream so suddenly the geography makes sense so you know things like that and it comes from history it just comes from reading and I would encourage people if you want ideas for Adventures look up history look up history of ordinary people and and ordinary jobs and imagine what it was like what it be like if you turn it into a kind of a prosaic an ordinary fantasy setting because fantasy can be Fantastical but you've also yeah I was I was watching Lord of the Rings recently the extended edition and I was thinking I was looking at floran and I was thinking lovely brilliant Majestic and everything but somebody's cooking the food somebody's sweeping somebody's sweeping as well there are elves presuma they're elves I don't know whose job is to work as chefs toare wonderful meals for their guests there's going to be delivery services they're going to be High Elves that deliver food as well and you suddenly think this isn't mentioned in Lord of the Rings but it has to exist in their infrastructure to make L lauran beautiful place that it is to make it work and you suddenly think you know what has a whole category of existence in wonderful places like that I've not really thought about and I wonder I wonder how it works and what it does and then you start speculating and and you can just go everywhere with it you know and I I just find that I love it I love exploring that idea I the whole point of talking to you today was to figure out how can we use history and the research of History to inform narratives and games and fiction today and that's the answer right there is doing that research allows you to look at things in a different way and examine the minutia and try and understand how things would work that people may not look at not just the glossy surface stuff but what's happening underneath what's the night night night soil team doing what's who's cooking the food but that's that just stories there and it gives you stories and it gives your stories depth as well because you know if your you know your Barbarian gang is sitting in a Tavern drinking well some you got you got your your Tavern maids and you got your your bar your barkeeper inke keeper whatever talking to them somebody's cooking sure but what else is going on is somebody delivering cabbages out the back somebody's going to be taking away the empties somebody smashes a flagon and somebody's got to go to the Potter to get a new one and you suddenly start seeing this deep dimension of of real lives even in a fantasy setting which is is is rich rich possibility of stories beautiful that's that's what I was looking for today that that kind of ties it in a nice little bow that's what I wanted my pleasure my pleasure for the way my mind works has always worked this way and I um and I'm happy to share and I get excited with new ideas and I don't have the time to build on all these new ideas at all so other people can have a Go Go I may steal a couple myself okay so before we start heading for the door there's a couple questions I like to ask everybody one of them is kind of the philosophical question that lives at the core of this little podcast experiment of mine so I'm going to hit you with it and uh this will be fun in my opinion there's a magical space at the intersection of obviously story and game but also things like improv comic book writing film all of these things where people can just get together hang out a natural Fellowship shared language what is the common thread that holds that space together an ability to step outside yourself and the space that is familiar to you it's something that I've always wanted to do is why I want to train horses because I want to know what it's like to train horses some horses you can train easily some horses do certain things more easily and then I will use my imagination to imagine what it's like to train a battle cat or a giant riding Warg or whatever it might be or a dragon so how can you train a dragon okay well probably the same way you'd train a real horse with different commands depends how intelligent the dragon is and depends what you wanted to do can you teach a dragon to roll over I can teach a horse to roll over takes a long time but I can teach them to do it can you teach a dragon to show off in the ring you know doing all the fantasy pants moves and I think the answer is probably yes and if the answer is yes somebody's done it somebody's tried it so that's cool and and so yeah I think the ability to go right what what do I do that's mundane and how I brush my teeth how did Medieval people brush their teeth well actually they did have toothbrushes sometimes but also they were expensive they use twigs and he suddenly thinking yeah they use twigs and then people go yeah and we use Twigs in the sub continent of India all the time and that's what they say they sell Twigs instead of toothbrushes in their culture toothbrushes chewing toothbrushes and then not toothbrush chewing twigs and using it to clean the teeth is a thing they do and you suddenly learn something about the real world as well as thinking well okay we don't do that in the West in the same way but they do in some parts of the world and they did in the medieval period in in the west as well so brilliant I've just learned about other people and I've learned about the past and that's great um so yeah I think an ability to think outside yourself that's a great answer and I haven't heard that one before so thank you for that that's good my pleasure all right well we're getting close to the end here a couple quick fire questions just to get to know you a little better what are you reading these days what am I reading I the last book I read I delved Into The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant again because I hadn't read those for a long time I read them as a as a as a young man so many decades ago and I felt I wanted to reacquaint myself with with that sort of Gothic worldbuilding grand scheme of things Lord foul and the ill Earth war and yeah Ro F's Bane I I also ref familiarized myself with Lord of the Rings about a year ago because I loved the movies lots of things wrong with the movies they're not perfect but they are brilliant I really love them but I also felt I had lost a little bit of connection with the actual book so I went back to the book to read it and as usual with a good book whatever the book might be you see different things again because you're at a different period in your life so you see it differently and I'm reading quite a lot of what is the book I've got at the moment um next to me I'm reading quite a lot of books about Medieval women at the moment because I'm really interested in Fairly unrepresentative part of History which is what what many women wrote about and and and how and why and there something I'm interested in exploring because it's that way outside my comfort zone and obviously I'm not a uh and therefore I think it's really interesting to learn a little bit about historical perspectives if I can and there there is there's some really interesting stuff about it but there's also not much which makes it even more challenging and then Court roles i i i i they're very dry and some of them are incredibly boring but you flick through them and you think again again again oh that's interesting you know tragedy like people falling down Wells when drunk and dying is it's just awful human tragedy but it it brings it back that that happened to people back then happens to people now but it happened to people back then it was written down about and there were some weird rules as well you know you start to read about this there's a rule that you um under the Danes and under the Normans in England if you found a dead body if you could prove it was Norman there was a bigger fine there was a fine for the whole area there was murder room fine so and it was quite quite a lot of money so the whole area monasteries were exempt from this but the whole area will be fined unless you could find the person who did the murder if the body wasn't Norman but was an Englishman the murder and fine wasn't didn't count so there are there are stories and it's kind of funny but Grim as well but there are stories of people desperately trying to prove this corpse is an Englishman not a Norman because if they can prove it's an Englishman they don't get fined and if they can if it turns out to be a Norman they do get F and the fine is it's the equivalent of you know thousands of pounds for each person so it's it's well worth trying to pretend this person is an Englishman she got it's called a WR it's called englisher it's proving englisher and it's designed to save you money it's all very yeah it's it's just odd but it if it mattered it it mattered to people so I'm I'm reading Court roles because you you find stimulation for the brain about unusual crimes as well it gives you a Viewpoint of history but it also kind of gives you a peak Into The Human Condition in different ways yeah absolutely the one recently I did a thing on media fashion crime so for example there's times when the law says your toes your shoes are not allowed to be pointed more than two inches from the end of your feet the implication being people are going around with ridiculously pointy shoes right which they were and so they br in a law and you could be find money for having shoes that were too pointy by the authorities unless you were Noble so if you were Noble you could have pointy shoes and guess what people wanted to show off so they had pointy shoes and they got fined and then they had to prove they were Noble and they didn't get fined and then there are complaints about men's jackets being indecently short short in the medieval period so the young Bravos of the medieval town were going around with indecently short jackets and showing off their bits and you think oh my goodness that's outrageous even today and but but it suddenly you go yeah so you wouldn't write this down and have a law unless it was proper Menace so you've got these young men strutting around like young men do they still do today know showing off and everything showing off with absurd Fashions and he's thinking yeah so it's not it's not just now is it it's back then as well yeah it's the same it's same same thing happening so yeah so I I just love it so that's fascinating imagine the fine David bowi would have got for Labyrinth showing off the package absolutely yeah absolutely yeah but is it a crime though it's different different the I guess indecent exposure still exists but yeah there much about how short how short your doublet was and then you have you'll have the police you have police going around saying your jacket's Too Short sir we're going to have to find you here's here's a fine imagine if we had that today maybe we do some places they do have religious police don't they telling people what they can and can't wear that's so true still exists you know yeah humans will be humans all right well we're getting close to the end here I do like to open up a little space here near the end for you to just promote what's some mention things that are out there that you want be able to look at or where to find you online obviously a book coming out just uh me one more time yep I've got a Kickstarter for a book called for special editions of my book called lord of Blackthorn it's the first of a Trilogy I've written the first one it's ready to go it'll be published to the general public next year sometime next year I've committed to writing a Trilogy and I haven't written the next two books so i' I yeah I'm excited and also slightly nervous about more writing you know what it's like if you're a writer it's like oh what have I done I'm going to have to keep right but there's a lot more to explore in the in the book it's called lord of Blackthorn if people want to hear me on YouTube Modern History TV there's tons of work there I've got I'm I'm amazed to think that I've got over 860,000 subscribers now so it's doing hugely well and I'm you I'm very flattered that people like my work there uh you can see me on a horse using swords and also walking through the woods talking about fashion poor people traveling and that kind of stuff and then if people want to see another part of me all the Rebellion games so Sniper Elite zombie army very different from my hobbies of medieval and writing but but yeah CEO of a of a of a I suppose it's multinational I don't know where a big a big company CEO of a big company with all the stresses and strains that brings but I'm only CEO because somebody's got to be and I use it as a vehicle to do cool things nice we never talked about it or even touched on it but I do want to throw it in here really quickly as well you also wrote leading the Rebellion a book about leadership based upon the Shor code and applying those tenants to leadership and mentorship yeah yeah well I thought it was a fun idea to try and I'm I'm a Hu I'm a huge believer in ethics in business and I think the world needs a little bit more ethical structure and too many people the media loves unethical business you know the the the the bad CEO is a bit of a Trope the bad business is a Trope but it exists you know people are bad in business sometimes but they're also a lot of people that run businesses very ethically and so I was I was having conversations with my friends and family and talking about the shiar code and how it's a useful guideline for men who are good at fighting to know how to behave to help them understand how to behave to sort of control the worst Parts some of the worst parts of an ability to fight you know the fighting is necessary and good sometimes but it could also be unnecessary and bad so how do we how do we formulate a plan to get the best out of being able to fight and and control the worst and so the rules of chivalry I thought it was an interesting structure to write a sort of Business book called and it's called leading the Rebellion questing to succeed in in life and business and it it talks about how I've tried to use elements of the rules of chivalry to reflect my business so it can be as simple as tell the truth if you if you can pay your bills on time try and be decent to people as a default uh I'm a great believer in repeat business I know if if somebody buys my book or my game I really want them to buy the next one I want to have a great experience to feel they've got value for money enjoy it and then go what else has he done oh he's done this Oh okay that's cool I'll buy that now and and and so I'm a huge believer in that I I'm not a believer in this sort of rapacious business philosophy of screw the other guy over and move on because I think you actually lose more than you gain without even realizing it because you do a disservice to somebody they will mention to other people you might not even know it but they'll go I I wouldn't I wouldn't work with them or if you have to work with them okay I understand but get your money up front or just charge a bit extra for me because they did me a disservice and you won't even know that they're doing that and you'll lose out and there are there are big figures on the world stage that have done that to people and I think they probably could have been an awful lot more successful if they'd been know and and if they've been ethical in business that doesn't mean being a pushover it doesn't mean doing bad deals or anything like that you know or or not know not fighting to win but it means working out when you do it and how you do so it was a it was a bit of a personal exercise and was very successful a lot of people have found it quite valuable and um one of the key things about that is for me was was the framing things in the quest because I love the quest narrative and and I've said you can you don't have to be searching for the Holy Grail there are lots of other question so a quest can be to to find a a good job can be to write that book at last you know it can be to get up in the morning you know because you're not feeling good about life and you're depressed and you know everything seem and it does to all of us sometimes but if you if you frame it from the this is the Beast I've got to conquer today it almost makes it more of an adventure you know you think right okay I'm going to I'm going to try and beat that Beast I'm going to get up I'm going to exercise a bit more I'm going to eat a bit better I'm just going to do a little bit and it can make it can make even a you know even a commute in the morning's actually quite quite fun if you put a framework of the of a of a nightly Quest over the top of it it's just a little mind game really to help people sometimes deal with things that just ordinary if you frame it differently you can get a different perspective on it I love that that's brilliant do a another podcast on that and I'm going to bug you again in the new year I promise you great um the links to all this will be in the show notes so people can check out all this stuff and and follow along so that's about it but before I push out on the door I out into the cold as you head out the door I'm going to give you the last word do you have any parting words of wisdom yeah just be nice to people as you can possibly be thank you for a wonderful evening everyone but it looks like it's once again time to close up shop I just received word that the ghost of a long forgotten Bard has been wandering the Halls searching for his lost loot his haunting Melodies have begun to drift through the floorboards and I'm not sure if they're meant to inspire or drive us mad so it probably best to play safe and get out of here but before we go I want to once again say thank you to Jason for taking the time to stop by and share your stories and to you dear listener as always thank you for taking your seat at the table and until we meet again keep creating exploring and sharing those worlds and stories stay safe Wanderer your chair will be ready by the fire the next time you stop in at the corner of story and game