Intro

This episode I'm joined by Hannah Rose. She's had a busy career and has worked on the Taldorei setting for Critical Role, worked on multiple Wizards of the Coast books, and maybe most famously in the MCDM community, been the managing editor for Arcadia. We talk about her new venture, the quarterly magazine Horizons, trying to maintain a viable freelance market in TTRPGs, and what ever Deathmatch Island is.

I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.

Interview

Jon Welcome to Goblin Points, Hannah Rose.

Hannah Hey, Jon. Great to be here.

Jon Oh wow, here’s the cat. We spoke about it before we started recording, about your cat, and now one’s visiting us already.

Hannah She saw that I was busy with something that was not giving her attention, so she came over to make her presence known.

Jon Cats are always welcome. Hannah, tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up in the MCDM sphere, basically.

Hannah Yeah, I am a game designer and editor in tabletop games, obviously, and I started out editing for Arcadia magazine back in... God, what would it have been? Well, whenever Arcadia started. Uhm, I think it was 2020, I wanna say.

Jon Something like that.

Hannah It’s all a blur. I had worked with James Introcaso a bunch before, and he brought me on to copy edit Arcadia. I was just so excited to hear about the project, and then when the MCDM team expanded and James became the lead game designer, I became the managing editor of Arcadia.

Jon Right, yeah.

Hannah I did that for about a year, and as you know, Draw Steel started, worked with James and Matt on laying the foundation a little for Draw Steel. And now I am running my own tabletop company, Wildmage Press, and we're actually publishing a quarterly magazine that is in some ways a spiritual successor to Arcadia. So if you miss Arcadia, come check out Horizons. You know, Jon, you and I have been talking pre-show about rambling on and how great it is when people just get to talk about what they're passionate about.

Jon Yeah.

Hannah And one of the things we’re trying out in Horizons is an editorial column, an op-ed that’s called The Desk of Many Thoughts.

Jon Ah, nice.

Hannah Which was a name that my co-founder, Clara Daly, suggested, and it stuck.

Jon It’s a good name.

Hannah It’s a great name, and so far we’ve had an introductory editorial from Clara and me, a article on letting reality inform the fantasy in your games from Quinns of Quinns Quest, and an interview with Brennan Lee Mulligan about philosophy, antagonists in TTRPGs power systems, and how he turns that into telling stories about hope, and solidarity, and community. So yeah, that’s our chance to bring in other creators to just ramble on in a setting that is related to games, to fantasy, to creation, but is a prose format that is not game design, that’s not journalism about games, and yeah, that’s been something that’s been really fun.

Jon I’ve actually become a subscriber of Horizons. I haven’t gotten around to the Brennan Lee Mulligan interview yet because I just leaf through it and realize, oh wow, this is long.

Hannah Yeah. You know, Brennan and I chatted for an hour, and probably about 40 minutes of that became the written interview.

Jon Right, okay, yeah.

Hannah As I turned it from the raw transcribed text into this written interview, I was like, “Okay, this is going to be like three pages.” Oh, nope, this is four pages. Oh, nope, this is six pages. But yeah, it’s always great to talk to Brennan, and it was really fun. And I think it is a really interesting conversation, so I’m happy you’re subscribed, and I’d love to hear what you think of it.

Jon I have to admit, my first reaction was, leafing through the first issue, it really brought me back to Arcadia. I think some about your layout that’s kind of similar, maybe.

Hannah I mean, we’ve got the D&D DNA right in the layout.

Jon Sure.

Hannah And so, that’s a strong basis.

Jon Sure, yeah.

Hannah But then also being able to depart a little from that and make ours a little more colorful, and have our own trade dress, and have some interesting textures. And then, of course, our contributors, you know.

Jon I’m so happy that you kind of continued the front covers and the art inside. It’s so good, I just really enjoy the art. Is it the first issue with the dragons, or is it the second issue?

Hannah The first issue has the Star Dragons, yes.

Jon Yes, yes. I remember the first one kind of caught me off guard. I had to show my kids, like, “Look at this,” and they go, “Wow, what’s this?”

Hannah Yeah. Honestly, Star Dragons would be great for a kids game, because they're, you know, very adaptable and neutral, and you’ve got little proto-stellar wyrmlings. Like, what nerdy kid wouldn’t love that? I would have.

Jon I love all the colors. I just love colorful stuff, and ah man, I am really, really captivated by the art. But speaking of Horizons, in addition to the 5e stuff, you also have the last article that’s usually from another system.

Hannah Yea.

Jon What’s the idea behind bringing in other systems into the magazine?

Hannah Dare I reduce it down to, games are cool. We want to make stuff for games. You know, I do really enjoy playing 5e and making stuff for 5e. When you are just creating stuff for 5e, you know, I don’t have as much of an excuse to play other games and get to know other games and work with other amazing creators in the tabletop industry who don’t do D&D. Clara and I both really like trying new things and learning new things.

One of the things about our collaboration, founding a company together, is that, you know, I'm learning from her the graphic design and marketing, and she's learning from me on publishing the magazine. This was an opportunity to do even more of that. And the hope is that we’re saying, you know, to our audience and to our community; hey, games are cool. If you love D&D, you're welcome here, we're making stuff for you. If you love other games, you're welcome here, we're making stuff for you.

With all of the articles that we create, well, I think having crunchiness and detail, and that Arcadia trademark of "this is stuff you can drop in your game right away," is really important. We're also looking at it as, yeah, you can adapt this for other systems. And I’ll mention in the table of contents post and the release post, like, this is easily adaptable, or you can adapt this, but it’d be some work.

And so we’re looking at it as, okay, we published a Pathfinder article. Hey, we think there's still a bunch of stuff in there that you could either lift for D&D, or, if you want to convert the stat block, you can go ahead and do that. Actually, some folks in our community who overlap with MCDM have already converted some content to Draw Steel, so the Nimrock that’s in issue one has a community conversion for Draw Steel, whatever the Draw Steel rules were a couple months ago. So yeah, that’s great. It’s just kind of a chance for people to try out new things or to take inspiration from those systems and bring them into whatever game they’re playing.

Jon In the… was it in the most recent issue? Because you did the Pathfinder 2 in the first issue.

Hannah And then Candela Obscura.

Jon Yes, and I think it was a sci-fi theme in the last one. I just remember cause I leafed through the third issue. I haven't sat down to actually read it in detail yet, and I remember getting to the last article and seeing the completely different layout and design.

Hannah Yea!

Jon And it was really different. It had a sci-fi feel, but I can’t remember for the life of me what the game was.

Hannah It’s Deathmatch Island.

Jon Yes, it was completely different. I really appreciated how different it felt, even inside of Horizons. This is a different game. I assume that that’s kind of their default layout that they use.

Hannah Yeah, so the designer Tim Denee, the game designer, is also the graphic designer for the base game.

Jon Wow, okay.

Hannah And he did the initial layout for the article as part of him designing it for us. You know, you asked about the impetus behind us featuring different systems and you know I mentioned working with other creators who design for non-D&D systems but also working with other publishers. Like this is such a fun, tiny, really tiny industry. And to be able to say to, you know, our friends at MCDM, at Critical Role and Darrington Press, at Evil Hat Publications who published Deathmatch Island, hey let's collaborate, we’d be interested in featuring one of your games in Horizons, and they suggested Deathmatch Island, hooked us up with Tim. Anyway, Deathmatch Island is definitely a conglomeration of genres. It is a game in which you are competitors waking up mysteriously underway to a island where production expects you to fight to the death. So it's dystopian, battle royale, you know, inspired by Squid Game, Lost, Survivor, The Hunger Games, basically anything you can think of that might be on the inspiration list probably is. It is just a really cool system, really beautifully laid out too in that base graphic design, which we are able to marry with our Horizons trade dress.

Jon Yeah, I really like the design and layout that they used. In some cases, I think it would be strange when you suddenly just genre shift like that in the layout, but I really appreciate that this is very clearly its own thing, and you’re kind of respecting the source material with having, like, the proper layout.

Hannah Yeah, I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Jon I kinda wanna jump back to Arcadia for a bit, because this is an MCDM community podcast, and Arcadia is sorely missed by a lot of the community, at least by the frequency they're asking whether or not there will be an Arcadia for Draw Steel. And Matt has, and I think rightly, said that if there’s going to be an Arcadia or something similar for Draw Steel, it has to come from someone else than MCDM, because they were a third party to D&D 5e, and you kind of need the same kind of relationship to achieve the same thing. And I think he’s right in that. And going back through Arcadia when that was still a thing, because you started out contributing to the first issue of Arcadia, isn’t that right?

Hannah So, I was the editor.

Jon You were the editor, okay.

Hannah I was the copy editor. James was the, you know, managing editor, commissioning and developing all of the articles, and then I would do the copy editing on them before they went into layout and publication. And then I did write two articles for Arcadia, I think in, I want to say, issue seven. And then I know the Shield Bearer subclass is in issue twenty, and that was, you know, a blast too. I love working for James. And then Sadie Lowry also ended up doing a bunch of the copy editing for it, especially once I took over as managing editor. She was our main copy editor, also with Scott Gray, Amber Litke, and Laura Hirsbrunner. So yeah, I have worked on every single issue of Arcadia in one form or another.

Jon I have to almost ask you a favor. As someone who’s never worked in publications or anything, could you possibly explain the difference between all the different kinds of editors?

Hannah Yea, yea.

Jon Because you’re mentioning editors and copy editors, and then there’s someone who’s called editor-in-chief, and is that different from a managing editor?

Hannah Editor-in-chief and managing editor are basically the same thing.

Jon Ok.

Hannah So, like for Wildmage Press, I am also the CEO and CFO.

Jon A lot of hats.

Hannah Lots of hats, right? So I was like, well, I have to pick one, so editor-in-chief sounds like the most high up, right?

Jon Sure, sure.

Hannah But you know person in charge of making the publication happen

Jon Ok, yea.

Hannah And responsible for the final quality of it. So, in terms of editing specifically, and if you look at in-house kind of the scale of potentially in-house to freelance editing, you would have developmental editing, which is giving more high-level feedback especially in TTRPGs, looking at game design feedback, organization, you know, with the rigorous playtest process that both MCDM and Wildmage Press go through, working with the testers and the author to shape the article through its many rounds of revision. And then overseeing the copy editor, who looks more at the paragraph-by-paragraph and line-by-line level.

Jon Ok.

Hannah To do another check, make sure everything’s clear, consistent, make the sentences flow well, make it sound good. Then we also have our beta testers and sometimes alpha testers who additionally help out as proof readers at the final stage because having more eyes on something is always better.

Jon Yea, yea. I wanted to ask, mentioning Wildmage Press and Horizons because your two Co-founders of the company itself and starting Horizons. But then you also have some testers who do freelance for you, or?

Hannah Yes, so my cofounder Clara Daly is an illustrator, web designer and her day-job she is a web designer, marketing expert, basically director of communications so yea my co-founder has a day job. We are a lot smaller than people think we are, and she’s amazing. I'm super lucky to have her. We met working on Taldorei reborn when she did illustration for that and she’s also done a lot more work for Critical Role and work from Arcadia. The Arcana Linguistics language tree and the Nocturn Market map are both from her. Yea, so we founded Wildmage press and then we have a number of Freelancers for obviously design and testing and editing and a community of volunteer beta testers as well.

Jon Is it fair to say, let's say it was inspired by MCDM’s testing regime when you started out with Horizons.

Hannah I would say, Yea. We learned, I learned how to be a really good test developer and I think that MCDM brought some knowledge from the video game playtest process.

Jon Right, yea.

Hannah Lars brought a lot of that from the video game playtesting QA process into how do you playtest well? And I think that is something that MCDM does better than say this not too punitively, MCDM does uniquely well in the Tabletop Space.

Jon Ok, yea.

Hannah Exceptionally well in the tabletop space and I learned a lot working there and working with the amazing testers there. Many of the testers we have at Wildmage press also overlap with the MCDM test pool. So yea there's shared DNA there and I learned a lot working with James and the design team at MCDM.

Jon Coming from you, that they're doing well when it comes to testing means something. You worked on a lot of stuff, you mentioned the Taldorei reborn setting guide is it?

Hannah Taldorei Campaign Setting Reborn.

Jon Yes that one, that’s with… was it for Darrington Press or was it through WotC maybe?

Hannah Darrington Press.

Jon Ok yea.

Hannah So Darrington Press is the publishing arm of Critical Role. I also worked on Explorer’s Guide to Wildmount and Call of the Neatherdeep which are the Critical Role books published in partnership with Wizards of the Coast.

Jon Ok, right yea. Ah, Business.

Hannah Yea, Don’t even get me on to talking about the SRD stuff.

Jon You've also worked on quite a few products from Wizards of the Coast. I noted down Candlekeep Mysteries, Mythic Odyssey of Theros, and Descent into Avernus. What did you do on those projects?

Hannah I was an editor on those projects and also contributed a tiny bit of game design to Candlekeep Mysteries as part of the developmental editing process, and Netherdeep as well, really. So, yeah, I worked on a bunch of titles with WotC and really learned a lot. Different things. You know, it's not part of the playtest process, but I learned a lot from there that I’ve been able to take forward into how to publish and knowing how to be a lead designer and managing editor for things like Taldorei Reborn and Horizons.

A lot of very informal, just Chris Perkins showing me some of his process as we worked together. And the lead designers at WotC really do such an immense amount for the book that I think most people don’t realize. It's not just writing, they also flow the entire text into layout, they do the initial layout for the book, they write the art briefs. It’s truly an immense amount of knowledge and work.

So, a lot of the things I was able to observe then, I got to put into practice co-leading Taldorei Reborn, and working on Arcadia, and now running Horizons. I really believe that every lead designer should know how to use InDesign, or whatever the layout software of your company is, and be able to get into the text and edit without having to go back and forth with the layout designer. It allows you to shape the text and facilitate better communication with your design and editorial team then, if you can't touch the file in layout.

Jon Yeah, I can imagine. I wanted to ask… I'm all over the place. I wanted to ask about the frequency of releases of Horizons, because you're doing quarterly now.

Hannah Yea.

Jon I can only imagine how much time it takes to bring a whole issue together, because Arcadia, which I'm comparing you very much to...

Hannah Sure.

Jon Did it monthly, and I heard from both James and Matt when they’re kinda being retrospective it was a ton of work, and in reality slowed down MCDM’s progress doing other stuff because it was such a huge amount of work getting Arcadia out every month.

Hannah Yea.

Jon I assume that kind of influenced your choice when going for quarterly releases instead of monthly.

Hannah Yea, so our quarterly releases we do, at least so far we've done four articles per issue, so they're bigger than Arcadia, which was three articles per issue. Originally, when I was thinking about doing this, I really loved working on Arcadia. I know the community really was sad to see it go. Could I do something similar? I was like, “Well, there’s no way, even with a team of two or three, there is no way I could do monthly, but the Patreon subscription model is monthly, people are going to expect that. Eventually, I came around too. You know, from the creative perspective, we want to create something really good and high quality, although creative cadence means doing it quarterly. I mean, publishing anything monthly is just a lot; there is so much work involved in the release. Yea, there are a lot of people, even though the managing editor does a lot and I ended up as managing editor for Arcadia, writing a lot of the art briefs, working with playtesters, and all of that, but there's still a lot of people who are helping out and have their hands in the pie and who are also responsible for running the company, which is something that I do now running my own company, and it is a challenge to balance. Like, I actually like doing a lot of the admin work, I like spreadsheets, but…

Jon Oh, you're that kind of person, I see.

Hannah Yes, yea. I have fancy color-coded spreadsheets. But it is a big challenge to balance the administrative part, and the creative part, and the running our social media part, and making sure we're registered for our business license and are paying our lawyer part. You know, so that all goes into it being quarterly, and then we put out a bunch of bonus content between issues. The more subscribers we get, the more bonus content we can do. Those are things like tokens. Actually, just a few hours ago before recording this, I put out a behind-the-scenes post on our art process. You mentioned how gorgeous the art is, and coming from, I sort of fell sideways into being an art director and then doing that more and more despite not really being an illustrator myself. Clara, my co-founder, is an illustrator. We really wanted to highlight the work of the artist as well as the designers, as well as the game designers. We've done some behind-the-scenes posts on that art, showing the concept art, talking about the art direction process. This one I included some really cool references from the artist, a clean air study that he did during his exchange program in Granada, that was one of the reasons we picked him for the concept for this piece, and photos he took at the National Museum of Archeology where he lives in Mexico City.

Jon Wow.

Hannah Yea, it’s really cool. We wanted to highlight that and talk about that, and that's a part of our bonus content. And then we have other bits of game design, magic items, collaborations with other creators, and again, more things we would like to put out when we have the funding and bandwidth.

Jon You're basically doing like a second behind-the-scenes magazine on the Patreon beside the main. It almost sounds like.

Hannah I would say it’s more of a blog and downloadables. But it is, again, and that’s like, well, all the time that I spent setting even that relatively simple post up and publishing it both on Patreon and our website and sending it out via email is time I did not get to focus on designing the next issue.

Jon Yeah.

Hannah I’m not complaining here, but it is, again, a very small staff, and that is the challenge, it's just one of the challenges of being a small creator.

Jon It sounds like you're putting in not an insignificant amount of work. I mean, something that's not really your mainline product, but I'm not complaining.

Hannah Well, you know, we, again with the quarterly release and being the ways that we are a successor to Arcadia where people did get something monthly, I think it is both something we really want to maintain. That contact with our community and also, frankly, something that's just necessary from the marketing side to feel like people are providing value and not have subscribers drop off between issues. Yea, that’s important.

Jon To ask you a bit of a business question, which you're free not to answer, but do you see a drop between issues and people coming back once you release a new issue?

Hannah We see some; there are definitely people who drop between issues, more on Patreon than through our website. But also, a large percentage of our website subscribers are annual because there's a 10% discount there, so it’s some. But, you know, the majority of the community also wants to support us and support what we're creating. But I think if we didn't put anything out for two months, you know, then we're going to see more.

Jon Sure.

Hannah More attrition.

Jon Yea, I can believe that. To bring it a bit back to MCDM again, because that’s where we are.

Hannah Yes, absolutely.

Jon I am kinda curious, cause you were at MCDM right when design of Draw Steel started. I remember you were in the first week when you did intensive playtesting every day writing a patreon update every day.

Hannah Yea, was also finalizing an issue of Arcadia that same week.

Jon Oh, I can only imagine how busy that was.

Hannah One of the things I really loved about working on Arcadia, and honestly the thing that made me very connected to the community, was working with so many different creators and putting something out on a regular release schedule. You know, monthly is a lot, as we’ve just been discussing. You know, having that connection with the community and getting to hear all about people using what we create right away; getting to work with a lot of handpicked designers and artists, playtesters, and editors in the industry and providing that work for them too, right? This is a hard, you know, a very small industry, and it has only gotten harder for freelance creators. I was making a living doing full-time freelance for a few years before I was at MCDM.

Jon Right, yeah.

Hannah That is harder these days. It was always very hard.

Jon Yeah, I can imagine.

Hannah But I was lucky to be able to do it, and there were a lot of factors and privilege that went into that. But yea, I felt really bad with Arcadia ending, honestly not just for the community but for the creators at a time when things were really up in the air because of the OGL debacle, because of people pivoting to different systems and publishers kind of tightening their belts, WotC being at a point where they were really staffed up on full time and not hiring a lot of freelancers. Yea, it was hard for creators, and I know our contributors were really sad that they weren’t going to get freelance work, at least until Draw Steel picked up.

Jon Right, right.

Hannah And I really just loved getting to work with so many different people.

Jon Yea, I can imagine.

Hannah The collaboration was really important to me, so that’s my reason why I wanted to start Horizons.

Jon I’m really glad you did, I'm one of those that really miss Arcadia. I ended up using a lot of that material to just drop into my campaign, especially at that time because I was running a campaign in my own homebrew setting, and you know, it's a lot easier. There was one of those mega-lists that someone in the community made of, like, all the Arcadia articles.

Hannah Reuben, amazing.

Jon Yeah, yeah. And just going through, ok, I just need a short adventure, I just need a three-room dungeon.

Hannah I need a CR 7 statblock, yeah.

Jon Yeah, yeah. So using Arcadia for that was fantastic, and I’m really happy seeing some of that doing a reprise with Horizons. And honestly, especially with, like, Death Match Island, it's probably going to make me try some new games because I was really intrigued in that last issue. I can’t even explain, because I usually skip the table of contents because I want to be surprised when I get to each article. And turning the page and just, what, what is going on here?

Hannah What are these skull logos, what is this table of acquisitions, what are these redacted bars?

Jon Yea, that was a treat.

Hannah Awesome. Yea, Deathmatch Island. We also had a staff game of that when we decided to feature the system, and that was really fun. It was just a game we all fell in love with.

Jon I am trying to figure out if I can get a group together to try it out because I don’t think my regular group would enjoy it. There’s like a taste that they kind of like, but yea, maybe who knows. I’m not adverse to just running a short thing or like a couple of sessions just to try something out.

Hannah You could probably, if they really love fantasy too, reflavor it as fantasy. Or if the battling to the death, you could do a non-lethal mode. Also, one of the core, beyond mechanics really, both sorta mechanics and themes, in Death Match Island is Production wants you to play to Win™ but you can also unite and break the game.

Jon Oh, ok.

Hannah So you can work against the evil forces of production.

Jon Now we're talking.

Hannah And it’s very fun this way.

Jon Ok, yea. That’s interesting. That actually, well, you mentioned Hunger Games being an inspiration.

Hannah Yes, very much ala Hunger Games and that sense. You can play to win or you can try to work together to figure out what's going on behind the scenes.

Jon I, of course, have to ask, considering you’re including other systems in Horizons, do you foresee a Draw Steel article in Horizons at some point?

Hannah Yea, I mean absolutely right. I know there's going to be a license for it, cause MCDM is very passionate about that.

Jon Yea.

Hannah Obviously, we have a lot of shared community and shared creator DNA. Willy Abeel, who's now a game designer at MCDM, wrote an article for the first issue of Horizons. James Introcaso wrote an article for the second issue of Horizons.

Jon Yea.

Hannah Yea, he wrote some really cool traps. And actually, another member of our community used those in a Draw Steel game, at least one person. Yea, we have Leon Barillaro, who is a frequent MCDM contributor, and Draw Steel designer Sadie Lowry, who wrote one of the Draw Steel intro adventures and a bunch of monsters. So yea, we have shared community and creator DNA, and that will absolutely happen at some point.

Jon Fantastic.

Hannah I will say one of the kind of bonus content goals I have that we would really need a budget for, because obviously we believe in compensating people well, and compensating people, you know, not just at minimum but being able to feel like they can devote time and passion to it and do their best work, is, you know, having pre-made conversions. Not just saying “convert this for yourself, it’s not that hard,” but being able to convert for other systems, being able to turn our Pathfinder article into a 5e article, being able to turn that trap article and, you know, Willie’s Skycity of Cuculan and anything else into a Draw Steel article for our patrons and our subscribers and just having that up front. You know, if folks in the community want to do that, that’s cool too, but it would be nice to be able to do it ourselves and have that be available. But it is definitely work and requires a budget.

Jon Yea, yea.

Hannah And you know, it needs to be not only converted, but re-edited and re-laid out.

Jon Right, yeah. Speaking of publishing stuff in Horizons, how much lead time do you have? How long does it take to put together an issue?

Hannah Right, so similar to Arcadia, we try to have at least six or seven months of lead time.

Jon Oh, wow, ok.

Hannah For some of the articles it’s not that much, it kind of depends on the playtesting needs. For some of the articles it's a little longer but occasionally as I'm juggling everything a draft will sit in my inbox for a bit. And again that's a reason it's quarterly right, we can only juggle… again with four articles per issue just it’s a lot of plates to be spinning even on that purely creative side because not only are we working with the designers for each of those there also going through several rounds of playtest feedback and deciding what the art briefs are going to be and then writing the art briefs, and reaching out to an artist and contracting artists for them, working with the artist for their own phases maybe, thumbnails, and work-in-progress updates, and pre-final, and do we want any adjustments before finalizing it. So yea it’s a lot, but that’s our goal is to have six-seven months of lead time on it.

Jon Wow, I feel like I've only scratched the surface of how much work it is to put together these issues. I’m trying to comprehend how much work Arcadia was.

Hannah I will say, you can decide whether to leave this in or not. I finally, this year, got a wonderful therapist who is familiar with the games and with the TTRPG industry, which has been kind of like a dream of mine for a long time, to be able to work with a mental health professional and have that support from somebody who gets it.

Jon Yeah, yeah.

Hannah And she told me recently, hey, I don’t think you're even charging enough. Like, I think it's a steal, I think you can be charging more. And I was like, wow. My therapist says that $5 a month or $15 an issue is a steal for folks then.

Jon Yea, it’s really good value.

Hannah Good, I'm glad.

Jon I mean it feels, again for me, it really comes back through the art, which I just adore the art that you get for Horizons, it’s aaaahh. Also, I really like the logo.

Hannah That's Clara, my co-founder, graphic designer. Both our Wildmage Press logo and our Horizons logo, and the kind of base layout, come from her work and expertise, and then it's been really fun. If we have time at the end, I will show you some of the framed prints of Horizons art I have.

Jon Oh, wow. Yes, please.

Hannah Yes, I need to post some pictures of them, but I have a couple that I just recently got framed.

Jon I’ve been debating doing this with some of the Arcadia issues too, trying to figure out could I get these in like proper prints.

Hannah A lot of, not all, but many of the artists have prints on their sites or INPRNT. If there's a particular piece of art you want, just ask me, cause the artists are not credited per article, which I’ve started doing in Horizons.

Jon Yes, I noticed in the latest issue, yeah.

Hannah Yeah, the latest issue, yeah. ’Cause I knew I wanted to do that, but I had to figure out how to place it, anyway, so if there are any pieces from Arcadia you want, e-mail me whatever, tell me what page it’s on, and I will be able to tell you who the artist is and point you to prints if they have them listed.

Jon Wow, ok, fantastic. I love the work you've already done with Arcadia and are doing with Horizons when it comes to the art, it’s just a treat.

Hannah It’s such a treat to be able to commission these artists and to have, you know, the support and the subscribers to be able to commission these really amazing artists.

Jon Yeah.

Hannah And work with them, and work with people from all over the world who bring their own expertise and stories, and backgrounds and inspirations. I mean, we talked about Adrian with both his exchange program in Spain and his, you know, drawing inspiration or references from where he lives in Mexico City, and then the desert landscape that you can see through the magical portal, right, of the wizard study. The door in the cover of this most recent issue.

Jon Yeah.

Hannah He told me, completely after the fact, “Oh yeah, that landscape was inspired by the desert near my grandfather's house.”

Jon Ok.

Hannah I was like,”'Oh, awesome!”

Jon Wow.

Hannah So, yea, it’s really fun to work with people who bring so much of their own creativity, passion, and skill.

Jon Yeah, I had to double-check because Quinns always goes by Quinns online.

Hannah Yes, Quinns plural.

Jon It’s just Quintin. I’m like, is that Quinn’s full name? I can’t remember. Luckily, in the back, you credit him with both his full name and Quinns.

Hannah I asked him what we wanted to be credited by, and I was like “you know what, can we do both?”

Jon Thank you, because I was really unsure, and like, “Is that Quinn’s full name?”

Hannah Right.

Jon I can never remember, I just remember that he’s named Quintin.

Hannah Yes.

Jon But yea, so I really enjoyed the Desk of Many Thoughts, and I’m really looking forward to the Brennan Lee Mulligan interview because he’s, I mean, he’s a really big-time DM at this point. But he’s not afraid to state his opinions, I feel. And I know at least in the past he’s had opinions I don’t agree with, but I always find them interesting. So I'm really looking forward to that interview. And it is long, but I'm kind of saving it. But yea, I really enjoy the editorial at the beginning because usually, I say usually, in some of the magazines I purchase and subscribe to, it’s usually a letter from the editor. And I've been really enjoying getting these other… it sounds like I don’t want to read your writing. That's not what I meant.

Hannah No, no, no, I totally get it. You know, I will tell you, the letter from the editor in Arcadia was something I thought was really cool. I always, you know, enjoyed editing, quote-unquote, "letter from the editor." It was like a quick proofread and a couple suggestions.

Jon Right.

Hannah But you know, I’m really proud of some of the ones I wrote. But it was always like, “Oh my god, we’re leading up to release, you know, I’m trying to copyedit all these, get all these other articles copy-edited and get them to layout, oh yea, I gotta somehow figure out a kind of topic that will encompass or relate to all of these and then write it and get into that creative mindset.

Jon Yea.

Hannah While I’m in a very coordinating and administrative mindset, and again, I’m proud of a few of them in particular that I really did enjoy writing, I both felt like it was a little bit of a burden to always be writing that and wanted to open it up to other voices and have something I felt I don’t see in the industry, which is non-game writing, you know, not game content, prose writing that’s not a press release or a review of a product, or a full-on formal academic paper. Right, we have footnotes, Brennan uses some big words in his article, but I use some big words in the one Clara and I wrote. And people, there are just so many people here that have some really keen insight. Some of the inspiration, I think, were from places that have really great insights in other formats, so like the Monte Cook blog is a little more aimed at game designers and secondarily DMs, but it is just somebody being able to talk about something they’re really passionate and knowledgeable about. And then the fireside chat that Brennan does on Worlds Beyond number (which I will probably shout out at the end of this episode) that’s just such a mix of unhinged silliness and incredible insightful, creative, and philosophical insights into playing D&D and telling stories.

Jon As you mention, we're coming up on the end of the episode, and I always ask my guests to bring a few recommendations. It can be anything from a book or a TV series, or a piece of music or a game to try out or that people should become aware of, or maybe. So I hope you've brought some interesting stuff.

Hannah Yea, oh, you didn’t tell me I can do multiple, but don’t worry, I'll have them. So I guess I’ll start with Worlds Beyond Number cause I just mentioned it. Worlds Beyond Number is, truly to me as a fan, even though I'm now doing work for them, an incredible, groundbreaking actual-play podcast. Folks listening to this who like podcasts and maybe who prefer it over watching something on a screen. Episodes are about an hour to 90 minutes long, a story that is told through the vehicle of 5th edition D&D, but the vibes are very much Studio Ghibli for adults.

Jon Oh, interesting.

Hannah So it's kind of Studio Ghibli but it you know it gets darker. I mean Studio Ghibli can get pretty dark but their telling continent spanning stories and really it’s Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Lou Wilson, and Erika Ishii. I think I've used the word includible already, but fantastic sound design by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse. It’s just never compromising being able to hear and understand it but immersive auditory experience. And I enjoy it deeply as a fan aside with working with them on some stuff, on some game design. Would recommend it to anybody who likes Podcasts, D&D, Actual Play, Fairy Tales, Storytelling. Really, really fun.

Jon Did you have any backup recommendations?

Hannah You didn’t tell me I could do multiple. For TV shows, one of my favorite shows of all time is Leverage.

Jon Oh, interesting.

Hannah Which one of the creators, John Rodgers, is actually a big TTRPG nerd and I think has described Leverage as if you had a D&D party of five rogues. It’s about thieves who turn away from crime purely for the sake of crime or profit and instead take down the powerful and corrupt that the system permits to continue hurting people. Incredible, cathartic, and now also the best, like sequel, not even really reboot but sequel, to a TV show is Leverage: Redemption, which is on its third season. Getting a little too real with the AI-related episode, but really good nerdy creators and, again, just incredibly cathartic in these times.

Jon Fantastic, thank you so much for coming on, Hannah. It was a delight speaking to you.

Hannah It was fantastic chatting with you. Anytime.

Outro

Thank you so much to Hannah for coming on. After we stopped recording, Hannah showed me a couple of framed art pieces from Horizons, and I'm a little jealous. As I mentioned, I'm a subscriber to Horizons, both because I enjoy and make use of the content, but also because it's part of what makes this hobby better. By allowing artists and writers make money creating wonderful art, great designs, and fantastic writing.

Paying patrons can submit question for upcoming guests. Link to join can be found in the episode description.

If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on tips@goblinpoints.com.

Links to the MCDM Discord server, the subreddits for MCDM and Draw Steel, the YouTube channels of Matt and MCDM, the complete link section, and this script is in the show notes. It's also on goblinpoints.com.

Next episode is on the 5th. That'll be the new roundup for July. See you next time. Snakkes.

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