Intro
This episode features Sam McGurran and Subharup Roy. Sam's a playtest coordinator for MCDM and Shuv is the mastermind behind The Blacksmith's Guild. Together they're running a crowdfunder for A Refugee's Guide to Nomas, a setting set in a psionic city, with a lava river for a sky, and districts in a constant power struggle.
This is the first time I have two people on at the same time. Which is huge for me, but just another Wednesday for you...
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Sam and Shuv!
Sam McGurran: Thanks for having us.
Subharup Roy: Hello!
Jon de Nor: So we'll start off with Sam. Introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about yourself. And also, how did you end up in the MCDM/Matt Colville sphere or community?
Sam McGurran: My name's Sam McGurran, I'm a Glasgow-based writer/designer. And I first got into sort of MCDM communities through, oddly enough, Running the Game, as I'm sure almost everyone did. My car was out of commission for a bit in 2018, and my flatmate used to have this group of people round every Saturday playing some game, and I was like, hey, can I join in? And that was my introduction to D&D. And then I was like, I've gotta run this. This is awesome. And then found Running the Game, and then obviously MCDM through the first crowdfunder, up 'til now where I'm a playtest coordinator. It's unannounced news, but we're both writing for the Draw Steel: Encounters book as well.
Jon de Nor: Wow. Impr — oh, I didn't know, actually. A scoop. (laughter) And, Shuv, tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up in the MCDM/Matt Colville community.
Subharup Roy: Yeah. So I am Shuv — Subharup Roy, but call me Shuv. So I knew nothing about D&D until about ten years ago. Nine years ago. And then one of my friends ran a game for me. This was when I was still living in Vermont. Very quickly, I was like, I want to run this game. And when I told him that, "Hey, I'm thinking about running," he sent me Matt's first five videos, and obviously, I was hooked immediately. I think this was...when I joined was when Matt released the "slog" video. My memory might be playing tricks on me, but I think that's...the "slog" video was the first live-update video that I saw. So whenever that was, is unless I'm completely wrong, I'm completely misremembering.
But that's how I got into it. And since then I've been basically devouring all Matt Colville content. And when MCDM happened, I started — jumped on board, Strongholds and Followers, Kingdoms and Warfare, all of those. And Arcadia. Arcadia was huge. Like, I love, I still think my favorite piece of art in all of TTRPGs is the cover of Arcadia, issue one.
Jon de Nor: Issue one? Which one was that?
Subharup Roy: That was the one with the fey creature with the ram's horns and with a dead human clutched in the claws?
Jon de Nor: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Subharup Roy: That one. That art was so amazing. So yeah, that was my entry to the community. And I'm here since then.
Jon de Nor: Well, you're both pretty deeply embedded in the Draw Steel community at this point. And part of the reason we're talking now is because you're...well, when this releases, it will be live — your crowdfunder for a...is it right to call it a setting book?
Sam McGurran: Yeah, I'd say so. Setting, rules supplement, we've been kinda calling it.
Subharup Roy: It's a city supplement. Yeah. So city is part of a setting, but it's like a big — if, like, Capital — okay, I'm not comparing this to Capital, but if Capital were a product, that would be what it is.
Jon de Nor: Right. Yeah. And you sent me a preview of the thing, and I said I would at least look through it, and I ended up reading the whole thing! (laughter)
Sam McGurran: (laughter) Awesome. That's what I want to hear.
Jon de Nor: But I assure you, it was by complete accident. (laughter) I found it actually really interesting and really gripping. Because, in short, from my perspective, it is a city which is a refuge, and it's assumed that it's...it shows up for people who are escaping something or fleeing from something. And it opens portals and they end up in this refuge, or this city of Nomas, which has a lava river for a sky, I guess?
Sam McGurran: Yeah. The way I first thought about it...it was kind of me and my partner who put it together. But the idea is, that's like, you imagine, the core of the Earth. So you're like...is the city upside-down, then, or...? It's kind of left up to your own decision. If that's the middle of — I guess, the Earth, in the World Below — but if that's...if up is down, then the city must be upside-down. Or some other force is holding some lava in the sky.
Subharup Roy: Sam, one of the things you told me that was really cool was like, and correct me if I misunderstood this, you said that there's a pool in the center of the city, and if you just keep swimming down and down, you break the surface on the other end and come up in the Material Plane or the Mundane World.
Sam McGurran: You still come up in the World Below, but that's how you'd access...
Subharup Roy: Oh, you still come up in the World Below, okay.
Sam McGurran: ...the rest of the world below. So it's a set of...with the cavern and little caverns and things. But if you go through the pool in the middle, you come up at the World Below. So it's kind of not a planar gate like the other ones, but it's still an exit.
Jon de Nor: Right? Because that's like the, in scare quotes, the "mundane" way to get into Nomas.
Sam McGurran: Yeah.
Subharup Roy: Yes, yes.
Jon de Nor: Okay, let's start from the beginning. Where does the inspiration for Nomas and the — the refugee — and the — what's it called? A guide — no, a ref — a refugee's guide* to No — wait, what's the name of the thing?
Sam McGurran & Subharup Roy: A Refugee's Guide to Nomas.
Jon de Nor: There you go. (laughter) Apparently very hard for me to say. A Refugee's Guide to Nomas. Where does it start? Where is the initial inspiration? And how did you end up working on this together?
Sam McGurran: I can take the start of it. So it was...it was me and my partner were...I had just started D&D. And she didn't think it would be her thing. So we did a one-shot where we played her cats going through a forest, and then she was like, "This is actually pretty fun!" And we went on from there and made some cool characters and had a little campaign.
But she later joined in our kind of main campaign and was coming up with these cool characters, and we talked a bit about where, like, they weren't from the local area, where could they be from? And she put a lot of thought into this and coming up with a little family and a community. And we sort of talked it through, and she came up with this idea of the...I think she had sort of a staircase, leads down, but then you come up into this cavern with a lava sky, and then from there it kind of, in my memory, blurs, and we come up with different things. And when we talked with this character, in their backstory, it's clear that they were running from something. And that was just the needs of the campaign at the time. Because they found a home here, they were kind of like the first refugees, at least from our perspective, if not in the lore.
And when you kind of built up that community of like a safe place, built it out more and more. And I, at the time, was loving Kingdoms and Warfare. So they had all the different organizations. So like Medusean Tyranny or Underwater Colony. And I was like, hold on, you could drop quite a few of these into a kind of unique city. So we do have a district that's submerged and with merfolk. We have a district is run by medusas. And that's kind of how a lot of the mechanical stuff came out of that. And for a while, it was just a kind of homebrew thing. And I was always a bit aware that it could be fun to explore a bit more and share with other people. But I'm organized mostly, but a crowdfunder seemed daunting. And then I bumped into Shuv.
Subharup Roy: Yeah. So that one basically started with a Bluesky post that somebody had posted like, "Hey, what is a campaign setting that you are working on or would love to work on and make into a product someday?" I don't even remember who the original poster was. It might have been Amby Navy, from the community, but I might be completely wrong. And I saw Sam's post there. I'm like, that actually sounds like a pretty cool setting. So I reached out to him, and we kind of hit it off instantly, and like, "Oh, actually, you know what? Let's try to do this. Let's try to do this seriously."
Sam McGurran: Yeah. That is kind of exactly the person, like, I needed to...you know, I hope I've brought a cool idea as well. A lot of the ideas in the book are mine, but the book wouldn't have happened, ever, without Shuv.
Jon de Nor: In the product will, of course, be the guide to Nomas. But are you also thinking of including extra stuff? We've seen Triglav and their Kingsmire thing, where they're also doing a bunch of stuff, items and monsters and quests and whatever. Are you doing anything similar like that, or is it more focused on just the setting?
Subharup Roy: No, we are definitely, thinking about... So we have, we definitely have some new ancestries that are unique to here, like a minotaur. I mean, okay, none of this has been playtested properly, so take everything with a pinch of salt. It might be that there's just no way to make it work, but there are definitely ideas like the merfolk ancestry. There's a minotaur ancestry. There's a fomor, which is a bit like the — Sam, Welsh? Welsh fairy culture?
Sam McGurran: Irish.
Subharup Roy: Irish. Okay. Irish fairies. Or fairies from Irish mythology. So there are a few ancestries. There are new titles, because it is a city supplement, which means there has to be a lot of factions to have the faction intrigue. And if the players want to join the factions, there are unique titles that they can get from, like as they move up the ranks.
Magic items, for sure. There will be some specific to...I think there will be...they will be a little bit more inconsistent because people from various parts of the timescape has come in here. So it's not like there's a theme for the magic items. They will be a little bit more different ideas, from different cultures. And obviously monsters and enemies.
Sam McGurran: Yeah. Yeah, to add to that, I think, of the items, there's not going to be an item section, per se. But if you think of, like, Flee Mortals, and where it had, here's your warband, and here's an item you could find in this warband...things like that, like, little bits peppered here and there. Maybe like a kind of glossary of them, or at the end, or something.
And we're still kind of, I don't know, ironing out the details for farther down the line. But for our preview, we're going to have a district; a faction; naia, which is the merfolk ancestry, which is pretty cool; and a bit about the lore and the sort of setup of the city, and the governance and things like that, which I think is the bit you may have read.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. It told...talked about how the first people came to Nomas and kind of established the city and then the — what happened with the, when the second people suddenly arrived. And then also a bit about how it's now organized with both a, like, a central council for the whole city, but also the factions, each their own district, which is also somewhat independent of each other. And the central authority, I guess.
Sam McGurran: Yeah, like you said, a big introduction part, and then break it down to what people can use, because ultimately, that's kind of what we're hoping for. Like, this was Shuv's idea, but one of the things we've thought about with the book is, there'll be some people who want a cool setting, and will want to run in it, and love picking up things like this, and going. But there'll be an awful lot of people who run in their own setting who just want cool stuff they can drop in. So, things like factions, NPCs, even the districts...one of the things Shuv talked about was, if we've got a merfolk district with all these sort of water-themed buildings and NPCs, that could easily just be dropped in as a coastal town or city.
Jon de Nor: Ah, nteresting.
Sam McGurran: So we're trying to build with that in mind. Like, its own complete setting, but with lots of, you know, resources and tools for Directors to build what they want out of it as well.
Subharup Roy: Yeah, that was one of the primary, design goals I had. It was pretty much — the first meeting I had with Sam, I brought that up, is, most people run in their own settings, including me. Like, I don't run in Orden. So the content needs to be extremely drag-and-drop. So if somebody says, oh, I love this merfolk district, and I have a coastal town here, I put it there. But then they can take the, say, the devil district, and then put it in a completely different city and it will still fundamentally work. So we are trying to make that content as modular as possible. I think there's one district, which is the central district with the council, which you cannot really pick and put elsewhere, but every other district is easily just, like...it's like a slice of a pie. You just pick it up and put it somewhere else.
And, one point on the factions, it is not just the government factions. There's organized crime, there's a relic seekers, there's scout's honor...so all different types of factions, with their own unique ranking system. So those are also easily portable to any setting, and they don't even have to necessarily work together, in order. If you take one of those, put it in your city, it functions, as — by themselves.
Jon de Nor: I've received some questions from my Patreon, and one of the questions that was asked was if you've pulled any inspiration from — you've already mentioned Irish pixies, or like Irish fey, but are there other kind of inspiration sources or mythologies or cultures that you've been inspired by when designing the parts of the city?
Sam McGurran: I'd say so. A lot of them are other fantasy influences. What other districts is there, Maywood? That's where you find, like, faeries, and the fomor. They're more like hakaan. They're actually — in the lore, they are hakaan, who kept that pursuit up for knowledge and foresight, and got more than they bargained for, again.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Sam McGurran: But that kind of area is very much kind of borne on sort of fairy myth, Irish myth, even Scottish stories as well. From things like names right up to, like, probably, riddles, and any little influences and stuff, because that's kind of my culture, if you like. My family is Irish-Scottish. But then things like the Emberward with the devils, we can lean into the sort of Seven Hells from the timescape and go, okay, what would they be like without the archdevils? Things like, there's the Periphery, is a district of undead. Which has certain similarities to the Dead City in Capital, but it's also got a lot more sort of ground-up stuff.
So, my kind of thinking of it was how would a society like that work if everyone's undead? So less kind of, like, it keeps going like it was before. What if everyone arrives and they're undead and you're trying to build up from there? And I don't know that there is a cultural touchstone for that. Which actually made me think more of it as almost, like, little fiefdoms. So it's a district of the city, it functions, but it's almost, like, neighbourhood by neighbourhood...there's not like, one council rules everything. Everyone's pretty independent, and it's maybe more of a — a deprecated phrase from the earlier versions of Heroes — like an anarchic society, where there is a top dog, but it's not because everyone's either deciding communally or bureaucratically. It's just who comes out on top.
Other than that, I guess leaning into things like Greek myth for the Stonewell district, so medusas and minotaurs. I have that linked up with Phaedros for its portal, and lean in to what kind of stuff that could bring out. And probably what I would say is the most obviously influenced is the Rookery, which is kind of classic Underdark, in that it's got night elves, who, I would say, are some kind of allegory, or somehow related to dark elves. Things like, there's dwarves — you don't have duergar, but dwarves are there. There's loads of other communities, probably gonna have gnomes. So it's not just taking the Underdark and dropping it in, but what are the cool parts of that I could lean into and borrow from while adding loads of cool new stuff, and bring in that Orden lore, which I love. I do run an Orden, at least for the moment.
Subharup Roy: And in the middle of all of this, I try to sneak in my murder mystery cultural touchstones. I try to make them not obvious, but I would often get ideas for characters or even, like...I would pick a character, like a weird character from an Agatha Christie novel, and try to make it a faction, something like that. So it doesn't become very obvious by the time I'm done with it. But, many times, many of my plots and ideas start from the classic Queens of Mystery books. And obviously, my, some of it is my own culture from India. I try to put those in, if I see...if it makes sense. If it makes sense.
Like, for example, in one of the festivals in Nomas, many households would light 108 candles and put them on the windows and doors, as a remembrance of the people who had fallen defending the city, which is basically what parts of India does for Diwali. We light 108 candles. But that is to remember our ancestors, which, I'm just like, you know, twisting that a little bit to make it fit in here. So, yeah, my references are a bit more sneaky in here.
Sam McGurran: I'm a sucker for a reference. I'm not sure that there's many, but even just thinking through some of the character names and things, just little hints and things. Yeah, I love a pun name. Although you have to kinda be willing to take the mik.
Subharup Roy: Oh, I do that all the time. Like, sometimes I just take real life names, like I had, a very progressive leader in a tyrannical society in one of my previous campaigns, and I named him Alednam Noslen and none of my players caught it, and I don't think they know it yet. It's just Nelson Mandela spelled backwards. So —
Everyone: (laughter)
Subharup Roy: So yes.
Jon de Nor: Ah, fantastic.
Sam McGurran: So it's — yeah.
Jon de Nor: No, go ahead!
Sam McGurran: No, I can think of one example in the book, but I'm not spoiling it at the moment. Someday someone will ask the right question and I'll tell it, but I'll keep it to myself for now. But not to say it's like a joke book where you open it up and everything's a pun, but, you know, who doesn't like sneaking in something when they can? Even if it's just them that gets a kick out of it.
Jon de Nor: Yeah! (laughter)
Subharup Roy: As long as it's not Lemmy's, I think, Draw Steel community, of course.
Sam McGurran: (laughter) I'm so sure there's at least one already. I saw something earlier, I was like, that is definitely a quote from something.
Jon de Nor: Are you planning on doing any any adventures or, like, shorter quests or anything for the setting, or are you staying away from all that playtesting? (laughter)
Sam McGurran: So we've talked about this, in that one of the things we really want to do is give examples of how the book would be usable. Like the delves. But what we ran into is, for a kind of first entry, like we talked about, this being like the Capital book. It's a really solid start, but it's not everything we ever want to do with the city.
Jon de Nor: Mm. Yeah.
Sam McGurran: Ultimately, we're not going to produce a 300-page book here. It's going to be something much more in the realms of, like, a kinda 100-page area. One thing that putting in a lot of delves would be is to take up loads of space for other things. So what we're hoping to do is give you those building blocks and tools you can use to build your own things. But I haven't talked about it. We'd like to produce some stuff. We're just not promising anything.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Subharup Roy: It also — yeah, the difficulty in promising that is maps are very expensive to make. So that's definitely, like, how much money are we going to ask for? Like, it quickly starts becoming ridiculous because of how expensive maps are. One of the things that we have talked about, because I am running a one-shot in Nomas for the folks at Rise Heroes Rise!, and we have decided that I'm just going to record my prep process. As, like, an example that people can react to, like, oh, this is an a way to make an adventure in here. I am...it kind of depends. We can, we might ask the backers if there's any value in this. Like we can give them some adventure structures like that, that people can run. But in order to like, fully art it out and map it, the production cost is so high that it's difficult to promise.
Would we love to? Yes, but it is a difficult promise. So we're not really making that promise, but we will definitely put in the tools in the book so that people can come up with...like, for instance, any of the major NPCs that you might meet, they immediately have their negotiation — their goals, motivations, pitfalls, negotiation stats. Which means, you know what this person wants, and if any of them strike your fancy, you know, if you want to make them a villain, you know what they want. So you can go from there.
It is very much made with the Directors in mind, in the sense that we are both Directors, so we understand exactly the type of information that we need and exactly the type of information that we don't need when we're trying to run at the table. Like, I don't need this wall of text, for instance. So, yeah. So that is definitely being done in that way. I think I will not be able to resist, but I will do some, like, a couple of quests here and there. But as I said, it's not a promise because we don't know if we will have the funds to map it and playtest it. So it depends on that, yes.
Sam McGurran: Yeah. I think, we talked about it, we thought we'd rather focus on having some good player options like titles and ancestries, and then some monsters in there. So we're not certain how many monsters we're doing. We want to at least get a spread of some of those monsters that you may not see in other places. Like, there's no merfolk villains, or monsters, for example. Right? Devils, devils are in the Monsters book. We're not too worried about them. Minotaurs, there's a couple. We'll see. But definitely our playtesting focus was to go on that stuff rather than adventures, which can be much more intensive. But, you know, if we do really well, is...
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Sam McGurran: You know, we're promising nothing.
Subharup Roy: Yes, that is true. If we do really well, I don't think even Sam will be able to stop me from, like, I want to put at least...like, my original idea was to put six different delves for each of the districts. But then I budgeted it out, and I'm like, no, Sam, we can't ask for 15,000 bucks for this one product. That's just not going to work. So I got to cut my dream down there.
Sam McGurran: Yeah, just a couple of, you know, it's just 42 little delves. One thing we talked about as well is, looking at, even just what we've got, the preview, could we each make a different adventure out of that? You know, using the faction, using the monster, using the district. Could we do something different? So we'll see. We can play. We've got a bit of time to...again, no promises, but adventures and even encounters and things is stuff we definitely want to do. We're just trying to prioritize the most...the kind of building just now.
Jon de Nor: You've already kind of shown the banner art for the campaign, which I assume is maybe like a cover or something, or maybe, a spread in the final product. And that art was done by — I don't know how to pronounce her name.
Sam McGurran: Inge.
Subharup Roy: Inge. Mhm.
Jon de Nor: Inge. Okay, yeah. And the art looks fantastic. And just today, or yesterday, maybe, they also showed off some of the different designs from each of the districts in the MCDM Discord, where they've taken both arches and pillars and kind of designed different details or like filigree or...yeah, designs for each of the districts to kind of set them apart.
Sam McGurran: Yeah. That's Inge. She thinks really deeply about that stuff. So one thing I hadn't even thought about — architecture, I thought about a little bit.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Sam McGurran: Fashion? I haven't thought about the fashion! And then she was like, "You've got to think of the the fashion." And we're all clued up on the fashion. But yeah, that's, I mean...
Subharup Roy: Sam, I have to interrupt you for a second. Sorry. This was one of the most hilarious experiences I have had in doing projects like this, where...Inge is very, like, Inge is like, I have a very hard time drawing characters if I don't know what the fashion is. And us trying to explain, the two of us trying to explain fashion to an artist...(laughter)...is such a difficult task that in the end I had to go, Inge, I think it's best if you ask us specific questions and we answer. Because these broad answers, we are failing dismally at answering the questions here. I felt like it was a very light moment in the stress of production. But yes, Sam, continue. I interrupted you.
Sam McGurran: No, no, no. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just to talk about the pillars and the arches. That level of thought is something...so that's obviously not part of the product. That's just thought she's put into this spread, which is the cover. And what the different — so you see two districts in the cover. You see Maywood, which is kind of leafy, sort of slightly overgrown district. And you see a bit of Riam's Tears, which is the sort of underwater district. And you may see a little bit of Emberward as well.
But yeah, putting that level of thought and design into a spread of different, you know, architectures, different designs for different districts, just to do a cover, was incredible. And it's made us think a lot more about things in the city and in design, like things like fashion materials, just the kind of questions she would ask you in the process of coming up with a cover. Kind of made us all think about it more. And got to talk about the weather. What's weather like when you're in a cave underground with a lava sky? Yeah.
Subharup Roy: It was pretty — yeah. Watching that process was highly educational, for me at least. When she gave us the final art, on the very left, bottom left, if you look on the banisters, you will see that there are a couple of tiny fairies leaning against a gold goblet. And that for some reason filled me with joy. I'm like this — I love these fairies. Like, they're so cute. Like, I love this touch. So, no, like watching that process was amazing.
Subharup Roy: Same for Dojikaan, because, Sam, correct me if I'm wrong, one of — the merfolk ancestry was actually inspired by a sketch that Dojikaan had done. And then we were lucky enough that he had the rights to that. So I, we asked him, like, "Hey, can we use that?" And he's like, "Absolutely. I will spruce it up, I will finish it." And so, yeah, the art has inspired some of the content.
Sam McGurran: Yeah, absolutely. There'll be more than one piece like that. But yeah, definitely. So I had the kind of merfolk in mind, the naia, but, you know, my brain probably went to tritons and mermaids and things. I saw this piece of art Dojikaan had done and it was...what creature was it, an angelfish? It's got kind of blue and white...so it's got like a tail, but it's got almost these little fins coming off it as well. It's really cool. And these black eyes. And I was thinking, how are the merfolk different? And the thing with being a psionic city is pretty much everyone there has some level of psionic power. Not everyone's a talent, but they've got something.
So the kind of ancestries we bring are very much Nomas's version of these ancestries. I'm sure people will do their own merfolk at some point, but these merfolk are metamorphs, so they can change their bodies to different environments. So, you know, if they want to swim in the water, they can breathe underwater. They can get, you know, a tail, and then they can also go back to legs, or go to legs, as they like. And that was definitely a case of just this one piece of art inspiring the idea and inspiring the mechanics. And I'm so delighted we get to actually use that art and put it back in. It's really, really cool.
Jon de Nor: You mentioned the city being psionic. When when reading through the preview that that you sent, it feels like you want that to be very central to kind of the city itself, how it's psionic and how — you explicitly mention that it's not magical. Everything here is more psionic. Technological advancement happens through psionics and not through mundane science or magic. What's the, I guess, reason, or like, inspiration behind making it psionic or explicitly leaning so much into the psionic part of the city?
Sam McGurran: Yeah. You know, I think it was probably because around the time that we were making these characters, or the idea — I'm pretty sure the talent dropped around that time. And I just, all the time, whatever I'm watching on television is whatever my players are playing in D&D. Or Draw Steel. I'm so influenced by whatever I'm looking at at the time. So not only has Kingdoms and Warfare influenced all these districts, opening up and seeing the different specializations in the book...so most of the districts, or all districts, are linked to different psionic specializations. So perhaps not surprisingly, Emberward, with the devils, is pyrokinetic. And it varies, it's not like a hard rule. You can have different kinds of talent, different kinds of psionics in different areas of the city.
But it was probably just a case of at that moment, and then, the character my partner had made, Monica, also had a partner in the world. And we were bringing that character into the game. And I was like, hey, let's make them a talent. And then looking at what would that mean, what would...I've never really had psionics in my worlds before. So seeing the talent and going, well, how does that fit in? Okay, what kind of place would the talents be safe? Again, this idea of refuge and refugees, well, probably a city where everyone's got that. A lot of people do. And that's what kind of spread out there. And again, the number of districts lining up quite well with the number of specializations.
And then the first iteration of this was 5e. And so, a few things have changed. Obviously, mechanics have changed a lot coming to Draw Steel. But originally, there was, you know, gates to the Abyss and gates to the Feywild and the Shadowfell. And now it's, you know, there's a gate to Equinox. There's a gate to the Abyssal Waste. There's a gate to the Great Wode, as well, which is where all the fairies came through.
Subharup Roy: On the note of psionics, something that Sam did — and I really, really like this aspect, because if someone wants to play in Nomas, this is what's going to, this is one of those things that's going to make it feel like, okay, this is Nomas and we couldn't do it somewhere else — is the fact that he has added special psionic traits to a lot of the known ancestries as well. So it's not just new ancestries. Dwarves get certain psionic traits that they can buy. Devils get certain psionic traits that they can buy. And there are a few more as well. So I don't remember them off the top of my head. But that, I felt like, okay, this is a nice marriage of the setting and the mechanics, and it makes sense. It's actually usable. It's not just words on a page. I will feel it as I play or as I run.
Jon de Nor: Nice. So you're extending the available traits for the existing ancestries to kind of make them feel more integrated into the setting. If they...interesting.
Subharup Roy: Exactly.
Sam McGurran: Yeah. Something that I wanted to do — and also, the idea is that you don't have to have been born in Nomas to have these traits, just spending enough time here — what explicitly makes the city psionic is, for the moment at least, left up to the imagination. Is it literally a, you know, is there some being or force keeping the sky up, if that's the way it works, or, you know, granting these powers, opening these portals? Is it some kind of natural force? That's kind of left open, but even just spending time in Nomas, you could pick up some things.
So even if you've got your character, you — or your whole party that you already love, they've all got their own traits, but you end up, through your campaign, coming to Nomas, you might then pick up things, even if it's just a case of taking the Psychic Whisper perk. Just, and you think, actually, that's a good one to pick because we've been here for a couple of sessions, a couple of respites. Or you might say, actually, I want to lean more into this, and pick up some traits and say, actually, my character's changed because of the time spent here.
Jon de Nor: Oh yeah, interesting. 'Cause I read about this, that people who live in Nomas are, to some degree, all psionic. But I was imagining, like, generations of influence on people. But just spending time there will change your psionic attunement, or whatever to call it.
Subharup Roy: I mean, you can gain psionic abilities just being there. So, yeah.
Jon de Nor: Interesting!
Sam McGurran: Yeah. And you also don't have to. Your character might not. You might not. I mean, I think if you don't like psionics at all and your Director brings you here, shame on them. But if you just don't want that on your character, even just the ability to play a character who, in a setting where maybe everyone can read each other's minds, and you're like, I'm not part of the club. That's, you know, it's almost a reversal that way, where, there's a different community in Nomas, or the in-crowd, and you're someone who feels a bit of an outsider because you don't have these gifts and these talents. It's just, that's something else you could explore, I suppose.
Jon de Nor: In the text, you mention that travel outside of the city is somewhat...well, it's restricted through the portals that head to other areas, and it's somewhat less strict if going through the underwater — once again, "natural" or "mundane" entrance. It feels like the portals are an excellent way to be able to do some kind of plane-jumping in a very...it feels very integrated into the setting, that, of course, you can travel to Axiom or to some other kind of manifold that you want, because of course there's a portal there, now. But the setting kind of expects that that would be very restricted. Is there a reason for that, to make it...to make the setting restrict access to those portals?
Subharup Roy: I look at it like going through TSA. You're allowed to come in and go. You just have to go through security and immigration and customs.
Jon de Nor & Sam McGurran: (laughter)
Subharup Roy: But, I think one of the reason for the fear — and I'm speaking, here, a little bit out of turn, because I think my perspective on this will be very similar to a new Director's perspective on this, because I'm not the one who came up with the rules for this — because, to me, my interpretation of that is like, these portals opened from places that these refugees were escaping from.
Jon de Nor: Right, right.
Subharup Roy: So they're constantly afraid that there might be an invasion through the portal. So there's strong guards, but that does not — the city still has to survive. People have to go out and come back, bring technology in, out, et cetera. So you can, it's just restrict — you have...there's guards, there's restrictions on...not any random Joe Schmo can just go and be like, hey, I'm just going to go for a stroll in Hell. So, no, no. So you have to have a reason for that. But, Sam, tell me how...if I'm wrong.
Sam McGurran: No, that is basically the core of it, is that these gates are how people escaped whatever situation they were in. And throughout the history of the city, there have been incursions and invasions. Even...so, taken in particular of the Periphery, which has a gate to the Abyssal Waste. You know, you don't want Khorsekef looking at that and going, "Oh, that's weird."
Jon de Nor & Subharup Roy: (laughter)
Sam McGurran: So...but things have happened, you know, demons have come through that gate. This is slightly known stuff that actually happened in a campaign of ours, but the most recent invasion in the city was from three gates at once. It was from the Abyssal Waste, fairies through the — from the Great Wode, and from Equinox, all at the same time. And there was reasons for that, and things working together, because you don't have to go through Nomas to cross between those different worlds.
Jon de Nor: Ahh.
Sam McGurran: But that's one of their big fears, you know, defense. But it kind of works because you do, it's also opportunity. So just looking at Riam's Tears, which will be in the preview...they came from somewhere really inhospitable. It wasn't necessarily a specific threat. It was just, this was a better place to be. So they're much more interested in going back across and seeing what resources they can find, seeing maybe who they can meet. Whereas somewhere like Periphery are terrified of whatever is going to come out of the Abyssal Wastes. Or, you know, in Maywood, where the fairies are, there might be reasons or, like, special groves or places that fairies want to pilgrimage back to. So that makes going through the gate attractive, but they're also probably terrified of whoever they ran away from. You know, I think it was the Lady of Then and Tomorrow, a sort of fairy queen, much more in the sort of Pratchett style of things.
So yeah, that's basically the thinking. It's controlled because it's a source of opportunity and threat. But I think I mentioned in the text that, you know, you can still travel through other means into the city. There's just a police force whose job is to watch for that kind of thing. Because we're very aware it's Draw Steel at some point. Your fury is gonna be tearing through the fabric of reality. So, you know, they can do that, but there might be someone on the other end waiting to give them a beating.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) I forgot to mention when we talked a bit about the crowdfunder itself, are you planning on doing any physical products, or is this digital only?
Subharup Roy: So let me take that question. So no, it's PDF and print-on-demand.
Jon de Nor: Ah, interesting.
Subharup Roy: So whoever backs it will get the PDF and a DriveThruRPG code to print at cost. So they don't have to. If they don't want to, they don't have to print it. But if you back it, at any level, you get the access code to print it at cost, which, estimated as of this day, which is, in November 2025, is approximately ten bucks, the print cost. But obviously, we don't know if things are going to change by by the time we're releasing.
Jon de Nor: Right, right.
Subharup Roy: So if you back it at any level, that comes with it. And one of the things — and this was kind of personally important to me, in the top tier, if anybody backs in the top tier, we give away two free community copies to the MCDM community.
Jon de Nor: Nice.
Subharup Roy: Both PDF and at-cost print-on-demand codes. So somebody who might not be in a position to be able to spend money on this gets it — or be, are able to get it. And this was, like, Matt's community video, I was listening to that where, like, he mentions that sometimes people are just not in a position to spend money on their hobbies. And I very vividly remember that time, especially when I had first moved to the US as a student. And I knew that...sometimes it, like, yes, there's [inaudible 41:58], but sometimes — it doesn't feel good. Specifically when you believe in a company. So here's an option of like, someone who is in a position — like me! I can afford the higher tier. So that someone who's not can get a copy, and not feel bad about it.
Jon de Nor: Excellent. I love the inclusion of community copies. My first experience with that was with Gryzmithrak Spire.
Subharup Roy: Oh yes yes, yes.
Jon de Nor: They have community copies as one of, like, an add-on, I think. And they ended up with a bunch, which I really, really appreciated for people that aren't necessarily in a situation, as you say, to spend too much money on their hobby at this specific moment in time. So two big thumbs up for me for community copies. (laughter)
Subharup Roy: Thank you so much.
Jon de Nor: We are kind of closing in on the hour. We're saving a bit of time towards the end here, especially since I have two guests on this time. I always ask my guests to bring a recommendation of some sort. It can be anything, like a book or a TV series, a game, a supplement, or just like a hobby to try out. We can start with Sam. What did you bring as a recommendation for the listeners?
Sam McGurran: I thought about this a lot and it's not something that I'm currently, you know, watching or playing. I would recommend the movie The Commitments. I'm not sure if either of you have seen it?
Jon de Nor: "Commitment"?
Sam McGurran: The Commitments.
Jon de Nor: I don't think so.
Sam McGurran: It's about a band in Ireland, in Dublin. Basically just, the sort of rise and fall of this band that — people from the local community come together, you know, get support, build a band, and what happens to bands? They blow apart. And not to spoil the ending, but the, you know, the journey of how they do so is quite entertaining. And it's just got a really sweet message. And some good music, it's all covers of songs. So that's probably my recommendation. Check it out.
Jon de Nor: "The Commitment". Is it the movie from 1991?
Sam McGurran: Yes.
Jon de Nor: Yes! I looked it up. (laughter)
Sam McGurran: I remember watching it and then said to my parents, "Oh, I saw this amazing movie." They were like, "Yeah, we all — we saw at the cinema." Like, it's just the movies you don't think your parents will have seen. But yeah. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: And Shuv, what have you brought as a recommendation?
Subharup Roy: Well, I brought two.
Jon de Nor: Nice!
Subharup Roy: Or, actually, more, but in two categories. So one is Satyajit Ray movies, who is an Indian filmmaker. And I think one of the most amazing films character-driven storytellers. So specifically, as many of us are Directors, if you watch his movies, I think you will learn a lot on what Matt talks a lot about how conflict comes naturally out of how the characters behave. They're available all over the place with subtitles. I mean, even Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese have — constantly pay him tribute. So you don't have to take my word for this as being a good filmmaker. So that's one thing because I learned a lot about character-driven storytelling from that, which I use all the time. Like I pick elements from those all the time in my game.
And the other category is, and this — I had this realization a couple of years ago after I was, I was finished reading The Banewarrens, because I think there are three modules in the history of TTRPGs that if any Director reads them, I think they will learn a lot. One is called Murder on Arcturus Station, which is a Traveler adventure from 1980-something. It is quaint in the sense that it spends half a page explaining what a computer password is.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Subharup Roy: But that is one of — I think that is the best murder mystery adventure I've seen. But it shows you how to run a mystery adventure. The other one I would recommend is Masks of Nyarlathotep, which is a Call of Cthulhu epic saga. And anybody who — I have never run this one. I've run Murder on Arcturus Station, but I've never run Masks of Nyarlathotep. But just reading it is amazing. It shows you how to run, like, a globe-spanning campaign and not lose the plot. Keep the players motivated, and the struggles that one faces.
And the third one is Monte Cook's The Banewarrens, which is a huge megadungeon set in Ptolus, which is Monte Cook's city, and that one teaches you how to do a good megadungeon, because it's not just, "I go to the next room, kill the monster, take its loot, go to the next room," no, no, no. It's a lot more. So I think these three combined will equip any Director for many, many, many, many different scenarios.
Jon de Nor: Interesting. It's bold recommending an adventure from the 80s, considering how different people played (laughter) in some sense back then, especially Traveler.
Subharup Roy: Yes! Yes. But I think...I mean, there are problems in almost any product from the 80s, and we have come a long way from TSR's Oriental Adventures, but...
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Whew!
Subharup Roy: But just the structure of that adventure was — blew my mind when I first read it. I was like, wow, okay.
Jon de Nor: It has been a delight to have you both on. I'm really looking forward to the crowdfunder going live. I have to admit, I was — as I read through the preview thing, it worked on me. So I'm more excited for it now than ever before. (laughter)
Sam McGurran: I'll take it. (laughter)
Subharup Roy: That's very good to know, yes.
Jon de Nor: I just found the city really intriguing and it felt like something different. And especially for me, it feels very different from where my mind goes when I try to kind of build a society or a city. It feels like there's going to be a lot of new stuff that I can use in it for myself, which I really appreciate.
Sam McGurran: That is good to hear.
Subharup Roy: Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here, Jon. I have been listening to the Goblin Points since pretty much the inception. Feels a little bit surreal to actually be here.
Sam McGurran: Yeah, absolutely.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Thank you so much for coming on. This has been great.
Subharup Roy: Thank you.
Sam McGurran: Thanks for having us.
Outro
Thank you Sam and Shuv for coming on. It was a pleasure to have you both on. As I said, I'm really looking forward to see more from Nomas, if only to drag and drop some of those districts into my own world. Sam also posted snippets on Bluesky how they imagine wealth and renown affects the heroes when they're in different districts. Without the proper amount of renown, a district might not allow you in.
I want to thank Ananam, Antan Karmola, and FoxTrick for submitting questions for Sam and Shuv.
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 everything, including this script can be found in the show notes, and on goblinpoints.com.
If you want to support my work, you can become a Patreon supporter. As a paying member you can submit questions for upcoming guests. You also get access to premium features on Stawl. Stawl is digital tool set for playing and running Draw Steel: digital hero sheets, looking up monsters, or read the core rules. Go to Stawl.app. S-T-A-W-L-dot-app.
Next episode is on the 25th. Christmas Day! For those who celebrate. I'll be joined by Matheus Graef. He's an artist who's contracted for MCDM since Kingdoms & Warfare, and if you've looked inside any MCDM product since then, you will have looked at Matheus' pieces.
See you next time. Snakkes.