I'm rim. I'm Scott and I'm Epidia and we are here today to talk about Epidia's amazing new tabletop role-playing game wolf spell Let's do this All right, welcome to the show epi. How you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? You know good considered. I guess that's what everyone would say these days, right? My stock line is there's an asterisk there Yeah, exactly good asterisk All right, so, you know, we're gonna talk primarily I guess about wolf spell today obviously because that's your new your new hotness We'll talk about other things later. All right, so so wolf spell this this big Final album cover Situation here, right? So I think that what the meme is what disappeared in Swords Without Master Are worlds without master volume 2? Yes, that is correct Yeah, so I noticed that on Twitter a lot It's always like wolf spell appeared in worlds without master number two sorts of that master appeared in You know worlds without master number three, right? What's the let's first address? What's the worlds without master, right? Oh, okay. Yeah, so I'm gonna say six years ago. I don't know how old I am anymore I don't know how old anything is anymore, but somewhere around six years ago. I did a digital magazine sword and sorcery magazine for 11 issues called worlds without master which included sword and sorcery fiction and each One had a game in it because I I knew that if I if I was selling something I was more likely to sell something with a game in it than I was to just be like hey enjoy my fiction and Each one has a little sword and sorcery comic in it because I have fondness for the old dragon magazines and the the comics that are in there and Yeah, it was Something that came about when patreon first showed up Because it looked like a way to fund something like that Not not rolling in cash. So I can't just make a magazine Which is you know a dying industry anyways. I have to like somehow budget so For a while there it wasn't like a monthly or bimonthly schedule It was like whenever I get done with an issue. I get done with an issue schedule But for a while there I had this sort of pressure to get games done and put in which was good It was like a creative drive some of the games in there are not mine, but some of them are mine and The first issue had a game called into the Avenger, which isn't one of mine But I have a piece of short fiction in each one and in the second Issue I was writing a story for it called one winter's dew and this story is a It's about a group of adventurers who have to turn themselves into wolves in order to solve a problem And I wrote that story in the halfway to the story. I was like am I I Really I really enjoyed that story I really really liked that story, but I was wondering am I wasting a really good role-playing game on a Piece of short fiction or would I waste a really good piece of short fiction on a role-playing game? Like what what's and then that's I was like, well, I don't have a game for this issue So why don't I write that role-playing game and that's the origin of wolf spell That's fascinating because usually I see the opposite of someone has a game and then they write a story using the game Yeah, it was I mean it was the premise itself was so captivating to me Just this this idea that they had in the story. It's this like Problem with oaths that they've taken they have to like solve a blood debt and and one of them has taken And of these two sisters one has taken an oath not to do it and the others taken a note to make sure it gets done and So they're like well if we if we keep doing it It'll just go back and forth and these two families will keep killing each other But if some wolves happen to kill them then maybe We can and it goes downhill from there like all good adventures do yeah exactly and so yeah, I really like this idea of these adventurers who have put themselves in the bodies but also somewhat in the minds of wolves and So the game kind of comes out of that duality you play adventurers Of the sword and sorcery type of the kind that we all are familiar with in our fantasy role-playing games who are At a point in their lives where they need in order to accomplish something in order to Solve some dire quest. They have to transform into wolves.  I See human. I try to hedge my bets on human there because I like If people want to play elves that do it, I'm fine with that. Like I just I didn't even consider that yeah, yeah, I just didn't write elf rules into the game But what you need to because like you're playing the game once you're be a wolf, right? Yeah, exactly Yeah, so I like in in the text I use the word civil civilization to represent the quote unquote human mind Or it's the blood die that way if people are like We're I mean because it'd be a lot of fun to be like a bunch of dwarves who have to turn into mountain wolves to deal with something I think we know what we're doing next time So I didn't want to like step on those toes at all so Now you've done better you've shown toes I didn't even see yeah So mechanically like the game is fairly straightforward like we've played it with our group And we'll maybe talk about our first experiences with it But like what were the mechanics you really focused on to make your story work or to make the game tell the kind of story You wanted so you've got two dice in the game. You have your blood die and your wolf die They're both six-sided dice and you're gonna roll them and you're gonna look to see which one is higher and this determines For your character what side of your character is in charge, right and depending on Which die is higher it's going to limit your options to things that a human would do or be capable of doing Again, you're in wolf in the body of wolves So it's more about like how a human would look at a situation and less like having opposable thumbs or anything like that and if the wolf dies higher then you kind of embrace those instincts and You do the sort of thing that a wolf would do and in the game I did like I don't know I don't make it terribly evident But like the things that wolves do are keep themselves safe and away from harm Which is the thing that human adventurers don't right? So if you want to throw yourself at the danger Getting the human side is actually better than the wolf side But you're more likely to end up sacrificing yourself for or some member of the party doing that the wolf the human has like Like if you look at the world the human gets to ask all these analytical questions about what's going on Whereas the wolf is like, what do I smell? What do I taste? You know, it's it's more of the the more visceral side of things and So you have that duality and then to kind of Nail that home.  I went very feral, but the way things went my die rolls I had a very for the character unsatisfying ending not the player, but for the character, right? Yeah So if you notice like people playing your game like feedback you get or you playing it Do people tend to try to remain human do you find players tend to like dive into the wolf side? I'll be a wolf forever. Let's roll like how does that tend to play out? It's it's really It's a fun Metagame for me to play when I run it Because you sit down For me like my favorite moment running the game is we go through we make the the adventurers You know, which is just basically saying I'm the one that kills people and I'm the one that knows magic You know, whatever. I don't want to dismiss my mechanics, but it's very simple. It's very simple And then there's that moment in the game. I got to open my book One second the book for the listener is a record like album cover.  I didn't want to be this like or not Not the player, but like they realize that their character is like I want out of this I want to I want to get back to my the streets of humanity Get back to cheating people at cards or whatever Yeah, I think when we played I ran the game and I actually had I made sure everyone read the rules in advance Yeah, they sort of knew but I would I when I ran it I still went through everything in order, but I had to remind everyone from the beginning like you're not wolves yet You're not wolves yet. Yeah. Yeah, you're wolves, right? You know, but I could I was able to see that same thing only earlier because people having read it in advance Already had wolf on the brain. Yeah. Yeah start, right But then some of them a few of our players did died like in terms of the order I'm curious how much like how you crafted the character creation bit because it basically Assumes you don't have a character idea in mind in advance in the way the questioning worked a lot of our players Ended up with characters that were probably very different from what they envisioned coming in But then when as soon as they became wolves, they had that same sort of moment of realization And some of the people who I expected would be very down with the wolf after their character got created They described their wolf and then they really tried to become human again because they liked that character that had come out of the Yeah, I mean I love questions. Yeah, that's a That goes way back for me. It's a great way to the questions too, right? Yeah, yeah The the only Character creation mechanic and dread is just to ask these leading questions because and this serves a similar function that it does in dread where it really kind of Fits you into that character you you it you invest in it, right? It's in you've spent the time thinking about it, and then you're like, oh, no I was totally ready to throw this character away and be a good dog. Oh, but whoops And that doesn't happen to everyone obviously, but like yeah, I definitely wanted that There was also an artifact to how this is done where I wanted it open enough that people could throw it on to Ongoing campaign in another system if they want it So there's like it's open enough to you could play that character creation And it's just converting the character to wolf spell right like that's Just answering those questions and you'd have to do a little bit more work than that, but not not a ton I wanted to make it obvious, but you know, I didn't want to And the other thing is that like I don't think it's a good idea for every group to take it on Ongoing campaign and play wolf spell because you you're gonna lose characters like that's a Both both to like becoming wolves, which you know, you know, if you got an ongoing burning wheel campaign You're like well now I get to make up a wolf. Give me that monster burner. That's you know, that might be a Yeah, I I would enjoy that But also the there's a frailty to the characters that I think people don't expect until the first wolf gets injured and then you know, you read these the Rules for for harm Gotta open my book again. Yeah, we definitely saw that RK our players as soon as there was real danger for the first time Everyone backed the heck off. Yeah, I just want to point I point out this to listeners whenever there's any kind of RPG thing going on Right, it's like look here's the person who made the game checking the book already for the second time Yeah, this is not out of the ordinary in any way whatsoever. No, I I tell people like I Write these in a book for a reason. I don't I don't want to have to remember this shit Yeah, the the suffering harm when when when you suffer harm in the game there are three options One of them increases your feral It either increases or decreases it's up to you and you get like a scar One of them is that you lose a limb or an eye and then another one's you're dead And you can you pick one of those three and you can't pick that one again next time And I think the first time someone goes through that list everyone else in the group is like. Oh, oh Okay Wolves are badass, but like they're also mortal creatures So I just want to go back to the leading questions mechanic for a second Now at least for me the thing I like about it a lot is it feels like you're doing a collaborative Creation because the person asking the question sort of gets to decide something about your character And then you decide the rest so it's like it's always like a team effort You know, it's easy to see in retrospect, but there's no way I could have thought of that out of nothing Right. Yeah. So like where did that like Idea of using the leading questions like originate from so there's like two Sort of origins there one of them is running dread at conventions Yeah, I'd like that game is Uh 15 No, it would okay. I've been running dread at conventions I first started running. Let me put it this way. I first started running dread at conventions 20 years ago, so that's The game itself is like the the book that everyone knows is about 15 years old But we're running it for about five years before we published the book We ran it all the time just constantly and one of the things That started to happen is that you just get Not to knock the game. I just you just get bored of it, right? Like you you as the I'm sure this happens with musicians. I'm sure that they have songs that they just don't If they never had to play them again, they'd be happy, you know, or yeah, and I don't have a problem with dread but like having to come up with all of those questions again, so What I did was I just started to Excuse me I started to create a little demo that I could do that ran faster than normal dread and Forced other people to come up with those questions for everyone else I was just like we're just gonna go around. I mean, it's essentially what's in here in in wolf spell where you just go around and ask questions And it did I noticed that it did these these two things like it it It told me what each player wanted from the situation, right? Like I could see You could see what what they what they were interested in and then the other part that kind of solidified that is Swords of that master was published in the issue right after wolf spell In worlds, but it had been written before wolf spell and in stories of that master one of the design Edics was that no Two people no one person could decide anything like all the rules are focused on One person bringing half the equation in and then the other person bringing the other half So it had a lot of that that that duality of like I'll ask you a leading question or I will make a demand of you and you answer that demand because I find that more Oh, I just it's more interesting to me when I play like to have Even if I'm not one of the two people coming up with it It just feels more engaging to me to have rather than have like one person monologue or or whatever not to to You know, however people want to play it's fine by them. I just I design games that I enjoy playing uh, I think I would go a little a little um Little off the rails if I didn't so so how leading do you see players tend to do this because our group with those leading questions People went right for the throat with things like how did you lose your eye? Why did you murder your companion? Like they just went the first round of questions Didn't quite get it but that as soon as this, you know, I as soon as someone gives a good example Right of like a leading question everyone else goes. Oh Yeah, and every question from then on is a is a killer. I think I think that's exactly is you just need one person to just uh Dip their toes into the the forbidden waters. I mean everyone's like, oh hold on Because because we you there's a there's definitely a culture Uh that that has been like sort of handed down to role playing in general through d&d that like Sometimes is it's not evident that you can step out of side outside of certain boundaries that would You know, I feel like in a lot of d&d games You wouldn't be allowed to ask these kind of questions and go with them I didn't you wouldn't necessarily break the game to do that but I think that that's uh people would be like Oh, and but so yeah once you get a little taste of it, you're like, oh, okay. Yes. Let's let's you know It's helpful that it's usually just a one shot.  Like you're not ruining somebody's character for Again, like a campaign or anything like that Although I have played Um return returning games of wolf spell which is Uh Particularly fun thing to do when you have characters that have become wolves And now you've got those players playing new people You know what I mean? Like the the players who in the previous game Were unable to return back to human form and so they're like, oh, I'm going to make a new character And then they meet the the wolf From the previous game in the wild and oh, that's just a wonderful moment But the people who return who who turned back into non wolves are gonna wolf a second time Yeah, some of them do How bad could it be? Yeah, I know how to do this um, and when I did it the even had people change the um They're they're who they were in the pack like they like uh go from being Uh the the Shifty one the one that that nobody knows where they the the one that's good at lying and being sneaky to the one with the sword arm Because they're like no I've changed. This is a this is a different character now. And this is uh This is who I am so in terms of In terms of the scenarios like because uh you're talking about these rails to make this easy to set up Like the game sort of has a list of these are the reasons you're a wolf What you're after so how did how did you decide on that set because it's a very short list? Like how what was where were your goals in those used to be shorter, right? They yeah, yeah, it's slightly longer and um I have ones that haven't made it to this. Uh, okay, so like we Part of part of what happened was all right, so we've got the the version of wolf spell that shows up in worlds without master and uh that one Is both has like a time constraint like I had to I think I finished that one in a month and a half uh, and uh And then also like I had um So my rules for for worlds without master. I had like a uh word count and I Uh didn't let anyone go over it because I had a budget and I was like I want to pay you but a a Reasonable rate for what you're doing here. Do not go over this word count because I cannot afford anything beyond you know these words Uh, so the rules were like nobody gets cheated out of money or out of what they're owed in worlds unless their name is epi So epi could go over the word count a little bit, but I had to be very reasonable about that um So there was this that pressure and then of course when when it came to this final form this this tri-fold album cover I had again, uh There's extra material I wanted to put in here isn't there isn't a whole lot of it But a lot of it's like to kind of clarify some things. I rewrote a few of the the moves to just Uh further explain what I wanted to do with them. Uh, and I've changed up some of these spells and I did I came up with um quite a few more spells and a and a even a few more pack members but uh Ultimately it just didn't fit the the the layout and I was you know Through the mouth. There was early early days when shell and I were shell con who's the artist who who uh did this amazing cover Uh, when we were talking about it. I was thinking about putting like the pack members or the wolf spells as track listings on it Yeah, but in the end I look at that art and I can't I cannot put anything over top of it, right? Like I was it was We even left like a little space where it might you work and I was just in the end I was like no, I can't I can't bring myself to doing that. Um But I you know, uh Yeah, so I wanted to come up with I locked myself into something of a setting by naming the the game master winter and that is Because it came out of that uh that story and that story took place during the winter I don't play all my games during the winter. Uh, so we have like some games and I I play a character named winter You know, I'm the game master called winter anyways. Um, but uh I that I mean there's this thing about when you when you make a game You don't want to Make the fullest game you want to leave bits there for people to uh Kind of build their own game off of so like I was I was perfectly happy to say Stuff like we'll call it winter, but if You can figure out that you can play it, you know in the summer and you know or whatever um Do you think players get that like Some I feel like some rpg players will read the rules and follow them exactly and they set 100% like sacrosanke guardrails and some players take the rules and they see the gaps and they try to drive as hard to word those gaps as possible I mean, yeah, I think everyone's got their own thing, but like you you You it's easy to design for both if you make a complete game that works But has this this room for play, uh, and then Don't try to like uh because in the beginning Uh in the beginning back I used to be like I wanted to tell everyone all of my ideas for how the different ways that this game would work Uh, and then in the end I just kind of got to this thing where I was like if I do that It's just a list of things That people will get bored of reading at some point, right? They won't go through it and look for I mean you can give them a list of things and give them some ideas of the directions that things can go, uh, but Fundamentally they're going to come up with their own, uh, so you just kind of want to Leave leave room for that to happen, right? Like you want to let them, uh Exercise their own design minds Yeah, so speaking of winter one thing I noticed when I when I was winter was I actually had a difficult time Uh, it could be because just the way the players played applying winter's wrath I was like I'm going to get winter's wrath on somebody. It's written all over this book Right and every time I had a chance to do it someone had a thing that said no get winter's wrath And I couldn't figure out how to get the winter's wrath. It happened zero times Oh interesting. So is there was there something I'm missing or I mean like it's uh Winter's wrath is one of those to some extent is there to soak up some of those Oh, I've got an extra thing to you know put in here like, um It's it's basically A way to punish people Not punish people That's a really bad way to put it It's it's a way to create a consequence for for actions. Uh, that isn't immediate, right? Uh, so the effect of winter's wrath generally speaking is that when you face the peril You're going to be in trouble. You're you're going to have um, and I didn't want like uh Hit points.  So when the peril hits The the winter is going to focus on you um I think it's okay if nobody gets it Uh, but I also that's probably due to some pretty good rolling or maybe they were just like nobody Everyone was like, I don't want to be left out of this pack. I don't want to be Well, I think yeah, I think what it now that you talk about the the immediate versus the delayed consequence I do remember people will seem to be intentionally opting for the immediate consequence. Yeah It's like yeah, I'd go to winter's wrath But basically they suffered consequences immediately every time something bad happened Right, they didn't you know try to push them off to hold out longer We also had players very willing to sacrifice themselves for each other and we had a few like very i am a wolf Let's roll character. So we're really just like I want to stay a wolf forever. This is better than my human life And and the other thing about winter's wrath uh to Maybe make you feel a little better is that it's easy to get rid of you just groom with the pack Like, uh, which was intentional. I wanted people to just be like Oh, you know what? I'm not feeling good. Maybe we just hang out We'll pick the lights off of each other or whatever it is Deal with some pests and there's also that rule, right? I think where it's like immediate at least immediately after grooming or wrestling You can't be immediate peril to sort of force force the flow the narrative flow to not be like, you know You're hanging out suddenly a bear comes Because there's a certain Temptation to do that. I think like um, there's there's drama Of for instance, it's like in uh horror movies that happens all the time anytime people are relaxed You're like, okay. Here it comes, you know, like this is this is the thing and That shows up in action movies as well. And I just wanted to be like Hey Don't Punish the players for being wolves. Like that's why we're playing, you know, we're we're gonna wrestle for a bit We're gonna groom for a bit. We're just gonna enjoy it. And then, you know The way the game works for me Generally speaking is that like, you know, you have those things that just let the players do Wolfy things that uh are of I don't want to say of less consequence, but like because wrestling can actually have some pretty bad consequences You know, but uh are more playful and more, um Less central to your quest, right less central to you know Where the human mind is focused and then for me if I'm the winter it's all in the uh, Beholding the world move. I just like anytime somebody Like we don't know what to do. I'm like, does anyone want to behold the world because that series of questions and back and forth Usually inspires something, right? Like if I'm just sitting there going I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't and then somebody's like Uh, I'm chewing on this log. What can that tell me? I'm like, oh Oh, yeah, what can that tell you like this is interesting um That's interesting because that's exactly what scott ended up doing. You would basically Get us to behold the world and then you would sort of come up with what's going on from there And that pattern just emerged over and over and over during during play Right. Yeah, it's it's it goes back to the leading question, right? Or it's like beholding the world They're sort of asking winter leading questions, right to fill in You know about what happens next rather than what's your character like I particularly like the What am I missing style question? Like what should I have paid attention to that I did like anything like that Which you've done in this game just always seems to really ratchet the the slow tension up Yeah, when um When you roll a tie in the game, uh, so basically, uh for the listeners is you roll these two dice You look for which one's higher and you subtract the lower one from the higher. So you're The gradient of how well you do is based on the difference between the two dice If you roll a tie you pick whether you want to have like a one of wolf or a one of blood And those are some of my favorite decisions in the game. Some of them are just obvious and that's whatever that that's great You know the situation just makes it obvious, but like it's the like, oh, do I want a Bad wolf thing to happen or I want a bad human thing to happen. Like that's the Uh, I really enjoy when when that comes up because it's it's it's that exact thing where it's like What should I have noticed that I didn't or you know, how how are my wolf senses? Making me scared right now when or again checking my Yeah, uh asked the winter what sight sounds sense or tastes confuse or scare you right like yeah All right, so this amazing game wolf spell was an issue two out of you said 11 there's 11 total issues. Yeah. Yeah, so why Did this one be the one to go for a kickstarter get its own thing and not any of the 10 other Right that appeared. Well, okay. So the several of the other ones, um Are like I said are other people's games. I think, uh, Nathan D paletta did uh in um The tomb of the mummy king and I think I don't remember if he did a kickstarter for it, but it definitely has its own physical form It's out there. Um Uh, and it beat me to the punch because I'm I'm usually slowing these what happened here was um I wrote that story and I knew the artist. I wanted to illustrate the story So I contacted shell shell con and they uh did these gorgeous, uh pictures there in the story. There's like a giant owl that it takes attacks the wolves and it's like Above and beyond when it comes to like, uh, what what I was expecting. Um, and uh So like I I really really dug that and I that's when I think I mean, I can't tell you when it actually formed in my head But like I knew for a while there that I was like I'm going to publish a game on a record album and I you know, which one and Like what artist can I get like, uh, and so that's what made me I was like, I'm gonna do wolf spell and have shell do the art for it and then was up in, uh, Canada at a convention where uh shell happened to be at as well and we We were hanging out in a cafe afterwards talking about this And they just pulled out an hope pad and sketched out this Mountain wolf that's on the cover, right? So this cover is, uh It's a trifold so it's got these three panels And if you go from the left to the right, you've got a bunch of adventurers Uh out on a mountain and then you have a bunch of wolves out on the mountain and then the mountain itself turns out to be the back of a giant wolf and it was just I was like, oh, yeah Seeing a lot more than I saw the last time I looked at there are so many hidden wolves on this cover gave in and of itself There yeah, definitely seeing at least three hidden wolves. I didn't see previous Okay, it's not feeling like we gotta back up. I drove why an album cover? How long you've been stewing on that idea? Oh, I like I've been stewing on that one for for a while I the Originally I've wanted to do swords without master in that format like I was gonna have it like a book That was a 12 by 12 book until like I talked to actual printers and they were like, yeah Uh, here's the vast amounts of gold. You will need to accomplish that I was like, oh, okay. Yeah uh, so um and the I think in 2010 2010 or 11 somewhere in there. I I had done a preview of swords uh That I had public that like this it's so bad. It's so bad Uh, I did the cover art myself. It is not good Uh, there was interior art. That's great. Like I paid actual artists to do some great interior art. Um, and uh, I printed that as a square album I know it wasn't I don't believe it was album size. I was I think it was like a more reasonable like nine by nine or something that like Uh printers could do and it wasn't You know, I think I'd be surprised if it was 16 pages It was it was uh pretty small that I took to to gen con to kind of show off and and whatnot And said I'll have this done in a moment and and it took me Five years I guess is that moment to put it out in issue three. Um The other thing about worlds is that worlds without master created an excuse for me to publish games that I otherwise was like I need to make this a beautiful game and then you know The perfect being the enemy of done, you know that kind of thing. So yeah worlds. It was like, why don't you publish it here? Um So when it came around to it, I thought well, wolf spell is about the size and I went looking online to find like Places that that make these album covers And downloading their layouts and throwing it in and it did it fit Like I didn't have to like also write a booklet that I'd have to hand insert because like again All of that stuff ends up It's just more and more money and more and more, you know Either I have to hand insert them or I have to pay someone to do it or or Yeah, it just gets Uh out of control And then I thought this is going to be my first kickstarter. I wanted to make um Like I had the game already written I was going to do some rewrites and do some editing passes I did like thousands of editing passes Uh And I wanted to like get this gorgeous art for it, but then otherwise is a pretty straightforward kickstarter I didn't want to do anything complicated with a lot of stretch goals or you know, like I didn't want a lot of moving parts. So I was like, here's the thing That's it. Uh, this is what I need to fund it and let's go No stretch goal of here's a vinyl of me reading the rules to you Right. A lot of people wanted a record and I had to keep telling people I'm a game designer not a record producer. Like I'm not Like I'm going for the aesthetic and then like so now there's a there's a it's not a game. It's an adventure Uh, oh All right, I'm gonna look this up. I think it's like death jungle robot I haven't heard of it Death robot jungle. I had them in the wrong order. Okay, uh, and this is a Adventure thing Setting it so it's a it's an album cover. It comes with vinyl. It comes with its own music So that like it's this whole thing plus an album. So, uh, I just wanted to give a shout out to them I should get a hold of that game at some point. Um, maybe I should too. Yeah I guess I don't have a I don't have a turntable Yeah, that's that was that was it for me too. Like I don't and like The other thing is like, how do you Like I would have loved to have had like a bunch of bands that I enjoy on here, but also like, uh Yeah, that's just a whole lot of more work And like I said, I am not Not a record producer and nor nor should anyone be subject to my taste in music. That's the other thing I should Like actually that's that's a fun aside question. Uh, what kind of music do you like? Yeah, uh, well, I mean like I'm into metal. I'm into prog rock. Uh, I'm into uh, I do enjoy, uh, quite a bit Uh of music of you know different varieties and whatnot like but this cover is because like for me Uh metal and you know the the Old prog rock albums and things like that that hit my life the same time that role-playing games did right like The mind-expanding drugs of black Sabbath and you know Fantasy role-playing games all at once Uh, so they were intrinsically connected in my brain Uh, so that was I guess the the reason why I wanted to do like an album cover because I I You know have these old albums and just spend hours staring at the cover while listening to the music and I wanted to kind of Uh pay homage to that experience if if not recreate it So clearly, you know the fact that I have this game and I've played it Right indicates the Kickstarter is long over. Yes, right? So if somebody out there listening wants to get this game, right, how would they how would they do that today? as Kickstarter is longer an option the easiest, uh, way would be to go to worlds without master.com Uh worlds is plural I and master is singular. Don't When you make URLs Don't do what epi did And um, there's that's where you can get all the back issues in the magazine, but also I'm selling uh, both the pdf and the physical copy of this All I ask is that you're patient with me, uh Shipping these days is Is a growing nightmare Yeah, yeah And and if you buy if you buy the physical copy I will send you the pdfs as well. So bonus um Because yeah For the longest time I had sworn off physical games And just did pdfs and then I was like, let's get into this physical game thing The moment a pandemic hits and then well, I don't know Like a Everything just kind of started falling apart right then and there when it seemed like here we go We're about ready to publish. Yeah, I too was playing starting things when pandemic hit as well That's the idea we're talking about they're probably not gonna happen till next year. Yeah at the earliest It's I actually want to talk about something else unrelated Because I follow you on twitter for a long time, right? And it was a period where you're tweeting a lot of calculators Oh, yeah, right. So so what's up with the calculator? Yeah So this is this is a um All right Dread Exists because a long long time ago. I was like the problem with role-playing games is there's too much math and that That really is an oversimplification of how that happened But anyways, the point is is that I used to think that I hate it math like I went to college and Got my degree in english for the emphasis in creative writing because I was like, I'm not going to touch math I'm gonna have anything to do with math And then that led to making role-playing games which led to a small business which means you got to learn math And you got to do accounting And so I started taking some courses In accounting to kind of get an understanding of what's going on Financially speaking with the business and There is this calculator It's called the hp 12c it came out in the 80s It is still kind of considered the standard financial calculator and um, it's one of those things it's one of those moments in history when like uh, the technology hit the right group of people at the right time And when you look into what this calculator can do with the memory it has and everything else like all the technical details It's it's astounding. It's one of those like just well-crafted pieces of of uh technology And it's part of a A line of calculators. There's like a scientific one the hp 15c Which the the 12c is a financial calculator, which does like Do your mortgage on it or you know that kind of thing there the 15c is going to help you with your trigonometry and and do like integrals and things like that but uh, it doesn't work like Most people think of a calculator. Uh, it uses what's called rpn, which is this reverse polish notation. That's what it stands for Uh, and in a normal calculator situation, you'd be like two plus three equals and this one is two enter three plus You basically you have this stack and you put your numbers on the stack And then you decide the operations that you're going to do to the two lowest numbers on the stack And you just kind of go through it that way I cannot truly describe What happened in my brain when I tried that but it was like This is how I've always thought of math And this is this is different and the other thing about these calculators is that they're programmable as like keystroke Programmable like you can get it to remember the key order that you've typed things in So you could you could well you can program it to do like a bunch of interesting things But it had these great creative constraints, right? Like it's just you know, you weren't able to like uh, it's not programmable like a Well, like your computer is or you know, it's not like it's got a java running on or anything like that it's just these keystrokes and so that set of creative constraints Uh, and just enough keys on it that were a mystery to me like I didn't at the time Didn't know what a natural logarithm was or why it was important or why it was considered natural uh, and the fact that it like Came at math at a slightly different way but a way that made kind of sense to me I shouldn't say math. I should say calculations because that's what it does Uh, just triggered something and I just started learning math like I just we now uh, we have near where we live here. There's in fact actually it's the uh, the distributor for wolf spell is uh a used bookstore And they basically do most of their sales online especially nowadays um, but they they bring in a ton of well, literally a ton of books uh from Like charity shops and Goodwill's and things like that sort them through figure out what what they can sell online And then they put the rest out in these Giant bins out in front of the store and they have like a little Box that says the you know the cash register of truth 50 cents a book And it's just 24 hours a day and you just walk by these giant bins and just dig through it like little Book raccoons, right? You're just like tearing into them and it it is On a regular walk, uh that m and i do for our house So yeah You can see us late at night sometimes We're just out for a nice lovely evening stroll and we have our Cell phones out for light as we're digging through these things and I was I was like dropping A dollar or two here to bring home math textbooks, right? Like what is happening to me? Something is broken um, and it's just It just kind of opened the door and allowed me to see that like a lot of what's happening Happens in mathematics is is just a game it's just People playing with things we kind of get treated as like this super important thing because it does allow for these amazing You know all the technology we're using right now and uh, it's obviously on the financial side it's Let's say important it at least affects everyone's lives I have some qualms about that. But anyways the point is Yeah uh But anyway, it's it's it's this very powerful force But when you get down to it when you talk to actual mathematicians, they are They're gamers, right? They're just like a lot of the the high-end mathematics is like What if the rules are this what would happen and it just played into uh That that same Thing that drew me to designing role playing games in the first place and some of these old, uh math Not textbooks, but the well some of the textbooks as well actually the really old textbooks are really neat, but the um The manuals for these calculators from the 70s and the 80s are kind of neat like I actually I bought a compilation of like hundreds of them And uh, uh, just sometimes we'll pull one up on my phone and just read through it to see what a calculator can do Like this particular calculator from this particular time Uh, it's it, uh, you know, it's one of those I can go on forever. I know I apologize, but like no We asked the question because we're Fascinated by this. I was like I was like, let me throw out a little bait here. Oh, I caught the big fish There's there's a calculator the um It's another hp hp, uh, particularly in the uh 70s and 80s and 90s they they did a lot of the reverse polish notation stuff uh, and um, I have like actual feelings about Uh, what happened to make texas instrument the base uh calculator for everyone like actual angry feelings that I shouldn't have like I'm angry about a thing that that what anyways the point is, um, there's, uh There's one the um HP 41 I'm gonna, uh Bring this up to make sure I'm not telling lies about this. There's a bunch of different, uh Uh versions of this one, but it's the one with magnetic card reader and thermal printer. Yes I'm looking at the same Wikipedia page you are. Yeah, and I see the heading use on space shuttle So there's something interesting going on here. Yeah, like they would go up into space with these to double check their The astronauts would bring them into space so that they would have something to double check the computers on like these were But what's really interesting about these these came out? Um, they were long lived for a calculator they had some I think they advertised as the alpha numeric revolution because the the um The display it was still like that's uh segmented display, but it allowed for It had more segments so you can have a rudimentary English alphabet on it. Um And again, you could program it. They had magnetic card readers so you can save those programs They had a pen that was a barcode reader. So you could actually print out a barcode of the program photocopy that into little calculator zines Share them at conventions. Oh, snap. Someone else scan that in like If cell phones didn't happen it could have been this right like this could have been the thing that everyone had in their pocket That they were you know, I mean that's like the game boy had the e-reader thing, right? Yeah swipe the it's it's like There was there was a whole culture to it like a part of that You know 800 document thing that I have has a whole bunch of these zines that are are just Like sometimes they're just handwritten instructions to program your calculator to do things and all of those are windows into either other fields like like um Uh surveyors have all sorts of programs lots of uh programs for um If you're in if you're uh a pilot, you know, uh aerial navigation and whatnot lots of astronomy programs uh, but also just like yeah just like hobbies that math intensive hobbies that people had and then Games like people programmed games for these things. They weren't Fancy and then the the uh, they figured out that Uh, and I'm I'm really gonna mess up how this works because I never had a physical one. So I don't know Uh, you know, I've played with the apps of it or whatever but like there were ways to Directly address some of the memory in the calculator so you could go beyond what the calculator was actually capable of and you can do like Hacking with it so you could get it to like you could make it Overclock it and all these other things that like it just really was this whole uh universe that um I missed out on partly because I'm a little too young like But like even I've I've now since in my old age bought calculators that existed when I was in high school that if I had this in my mind uh, I would probably be like an engineer now or uh, or or um Something in that direction rather than the direction I ended up going. I don't have regrets about that I really enjoy what I'm doing.  I wanted to learn trigonometry like as a 45 year old. I'm trying to figure out trigonometry. I took A whole year's worth of trigonometry in high school. I know I remember being there I don't remember any of this or caring about any of this So Yeah, I feel like I have a similar thing with like cameras right as I get in care about photography until Much later in life and I have cameras that are older than me, right? Yeah. Yeah, but right And then I'll I'll read manuals of cameras and like look at old cameras and say like how did they work? Whoa, it's different about this one. I can't afford it. I won't buy it But you know, it's interesting that way with like weird old capital markets protocols Just basically where my career is gone and everything like oh wow Yeah The bat is the bad guy That's great. All right. Uh, okay, so I think we've gone on quite a bit. Um, yeah Is there anything like what's coming next from from epiland? What are you looking on if if anything or if anything you're willing to share? Yeah, I've got um well, okay, so There, uh, I've got several things that are like at that the I'm trying to think of like a way to describe the stage. They're on deck They're not like the the thing that you know, I don't have anything. I'm about to knock out of the park There's a game that I was working on. Um Going back to jenga and uh called it lives at wakes, which is a uh a kaiju game Yeah, it's you you would take the jenga tower and you divide it up into three towers of uh different sizes and you would Collectively make characters that either like live in this city That's about to be attacked by this giant monster or are responsible for it in some way or a part of like, uh Like a professor or some scientist or something like that and then you play out a godzilla movie, right like you and uh Depending on which character is in the scene It tells you which towers you can pull from and you take some of them come from like The smallest tower is like the house and that's the family Like you have like this family unit or these closely related people and you can take some of the blocks and put them in the other towers so you can Kind of protect some of them because when that tower falls A character associated with that has to die And so you have this whole like, um You know giant monster. I want to like for a long time. I wanted to get uh a giant monster one I I really really love all of the godzilla films Uh for a number of different reasons, but like the the element I wanted to sort of take in are those Moments like it is very evident in like the very first godzilla of each era where It's horrifying to live in a city being attacked by godzilla, right like later on that that Kind of falls out although it shows up again in in some of them But like there's that that first one where it's like Yeah, anyways, it's it's horrifying for that to have happen I wanted to kind of play into that but not obviously I wanted to also allow for all of the Um Sort of can't be stuff that happens in it, but it's a jenga based game So I'm going to wait a while. I'm gonna wait till people meet face to face Yeah, we can play wolf spell over a discord pretty well, but that would be a lot harder So the games i'm focusing on now. I have uh two games that um are sort of in my mind they're they're uh descendants of swords without master one of them is a uh That you it's called the game feel public library curious research society And you play a bunch of people the characters by the rules of the game have to be at least 45 years old Uh, they meet at a library once a month To investigate the weird goings-on in their town So you have like a town that you have and they're like old scooby-doo people and again in you Roll these dice, uh, one of the die will tell you if your hypothesis is contradicted by what happens in the narration Uh, another one will tell you if somebody suffers the peril of what's happening Uh, and it's inspired a lot by 90s horror television like uh friday 13th the series or american gothic and x-files and American gothic that's a name i haven't heard in a long time I was weirdly obsessed with that show I mean, uh, what's his name? Uh, gary coal as the sheriff who is probably the devil Yeah, he's so good so good Um, yeah And then the other one that i'm doing is my robin hood game. Um, which i've been working on for quite a while that um Finally made a whole lot of headway on it that Again, it'll it'll be A bit like swords of that master except instead of rolling tone dice you have three coins A bold a sly and a stout coin and you throw those and somebody in your narration has to have that attribute of like whichever ones came up heads So you have to be like this is a bold character. This is a sly one and Open to interpretation so you could be like he's not bold. He's full hearty or She's not stout. She's just very stubborn. You know that kind of thing so Very good. All right, uh, is there anything else? That you would like to tell us or our listeners? Uh that I didn't think of no We've covered the gamut. We've done the calculators. Yeah, this was a great time. Thanks so much for coming on the show Yeah, a lot of fun because we had a lot of fun with wolf spell It was cool to sort of hear your thoughts on where it came from and sort of why it was crafted the way it was And I think i'm going to read all these wikipedia articles on calculators tonight. Oh, yeah That's day. I I've got five tabs open. I had to stop myself from just reading them Every time somebody's like, hey, did you know that people are really into sundials? I'm like, I don't need to know Oh, no Am I gonna be into sundials? All right, well, uh, I hope you have a wonderful or as wonderful as possible Yeah weekend and I hope to see you at the convention whenever those exist again. Yes Yeah, it sounds lovely. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much This has been geek nights with rim and scott special thanks to dj pretzel for the opening music cat lee for web design and brand Okay for the logo


What are you thinking about? It's the nuclear bomb we're to explode right now. What would you choose? Live or die? Live? Yeah, because if I died, then there'll be a lot of things I couldn't do anymore. I'd never see my family again. I'd miss the sun on my face. I'd never eat my favourite food again. Never travel. Never be in love. I wouldn't live. What about you? What would you choose? Live or die? Die. Because if I survived, I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things anymore. I'd never see my family again. I'd miss the sun on my face. I'd never taste my favourite food again. Never travel. Never be in love.


The crypto industry bid farewell to 2020 with flying colors. Amidst the tumult of this unprecedented time in history, the digital asset space seems to have proven its resilience. We are Cointelegraph, the face of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Our writers, editors, and stories are the pulse that drives the crypto narrative. Here's what we have to say about the future of crypto in 2021. Think that in 2021… I think there's a lot of other players. So that's another narrative that I'm expecting to change if it hasn't already. Watch this video, tell us your own thoughts in the comments, and don't forget to share and subscribe. First, what current crypto trends will continue in 2021? So I think this trend that we've seen in 2020 of the big institutionalization of cryptocurrency, the involvement of major corporations, such as PayPal, Square, MicroStrategy, I think you're going to see more and broader adoption continue, potentially at an exponential pace of blockchain and cryptocurrency. I think that we are in 2020 going into 2021 in the place that the internet maybe was in the late 80s, early 90s, where there was a community of people that were really passionate about tech, networking, etc., that knew about this and were working on it. But the vast majority of regular people were not 100% sure what it was yet, or how it worked, or why it was important. I think it's going to take maybe only one, let's say one or two projects to really break into the mainstream, prove that they can make money, that they can shake the game up to get a lot of corporate FOMO, fear of missing out, that is. And I think that in 2021, I don't know if it'll be the year that changes everything, but I think it'll be a year that further progresses the mainstreamization, as I say, of cryptocurrency. So 2020 was a watershed year in the cryptocurrency market and for Bitcoin in particular. 2020 was the year where the digital gold narrative finally went mainstream. And a lot of these major institutions started to realize the potential of Bitcoin as a macro strategy, as a macro hedge against inflation. I know many of us have been following this narrative for many years. We've seen the writing on the wall. I know I've been personally monitoring institutional adoption for several years. And I remember back in 2018, when backed launch, and I was like, this is it. The institutions are coming. They're here. They're going to blow the roof out of Bitcoin's price. It didn't quite materialize that way back in 2018. But 2020 shocked me by the sheer magnitude by which major institutions and companies adopted Bitcoin strategically. I mean, I can just go through a laundry list, right? You had Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller. You have Mass Mutual. You have Ruffer. You have Square. You have PayPal. You have grayscale increasing their holdings, micro strategy. And then you got the major banks that have completely flipped the script on Bitcoin. JPMortigan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, BlackRock have all flipped the script and turned positive on Bitcoin. And all of them are talking about Bitcoin as a haven asset. It really is startling for me as somebody who's been in the space for a long time to see how quickly that narrative changed in 2020. And I expect that to continue to 2021. So the biggest theme for me into 2021 is the digital gold narrative. More investors, more companies, major and small, are going to realize that they're going to need an asset like Bitcoin to hedge against inflation. The monetary policy that we're seeing today, we haven't seen before. At the height of the 2008, 2009 crisis, we didn't see the types of monetary policy, the extent that we're seeing today. And all of this is going to lead to significant devaluation of the US dollar. As that happens, you're going to see more S&P 500 companies, in my opinion, adopt Bitcoin. So if you're going to ask me what I think is going to happen in 2020, or the major theme that I'm looking at, regardless of sector, is going to be the adoption trend among the major companies in the S&P 500 and elsewhere. So for me, in conjunction to that, you're also going to see the continued rise of Ethereum, because a lot of these companies, when they realize that PayPal and Grayscale are buying up all the newly mined Bitcoin every day, they're going to go to another asset. And I think it's going to be Ethereum. Now, the narrative around Ethereum, I also think is going to change or is changed getting into 2021. Nobody really talks about the Ethereum killer anymore, because that narrative doesn't really hold much water. I expect that narrative to die, if it hasn't already. Everyone now is talking about which protocols, which smart contract platforms can coexist alongside Ethereum, because the market's going to explode. It's going to be big. There's going to be a lot of potential in this market. What are some of the different protocols that can also eat away at Ethereum's market share?  So that's another narrative that I'm expecting to change, if it hasn't already, as we head into the new year and beyond. Well, here in Brazil, we had a year, a good year for crypto and blockchain markets. We saw many initiatives from the government adopting blockchain on notary offices, for example, and other solutions. So this was very important. I think the Brazilian government will improve its adoption on blockchain. And on crypto markets, we saw some important initiatives also. We had a partnership between the biggest exchange in Brazil, Mercado Bitcoin, and a traditional football club, which is Vasco da Gama. They launched a token, and I think we will have more tokenization of assets and securities in Brazil also. So far, 2021, I also think that we will see Bitcoin ETF, more big techs and big companies adopting Bitcoin payments, and also investing on Bitcoin on the next year. DeFi, I think DeFi gained a lot of steam in 2020, and I think there's a lot of room to go there. Bitcoin's price up trend. Hopefully, we haven't topped yet. Institutions buying Bitcoin is another one. I think there's a lot of other players that could get into the game, a lot of money that could come in, and regulation as well. In terms of crypto and blockchain trends and regulations, I think we're definitely going to see more major financial institutions adopting Bitcoin as a reserve asset, or at least investing it in some way. I think there's, with the incoming and Biden administration, we're definitely going to see some volatility just caused by differences in regulatory policy, particularly with the SEC and everything that's going on with Ripple, whether that's XRP, whether it's identified as a security. Hopefully, we'll see fewer examples of these pump and dump schemes just by different projects and tokens fueled by social media and crypto news outlets. First of all, it can always get worse. COVID was terrible, and I'm sure that a lot of you lost their loved ones, or maybe you were fearful for their lives. But it can always get worse, so keep that in mind. The second thing is that to be more positive, and now it is that doesn't mean that these events don't mean that the world has to change, or that there is new normal, that everything is different. I think that DeFi will definitely continue to exist and will continue to develop, and it's kind of one of the breakout trends of 2020 that I think is going to shape crypto distors for a while. Obviously, it's never quite as good as we hope, so I think that there's going to be a little bit of stumbling first, because right now in 2020, we saw this whole speculation mania and a lot of issues with the infrastructure as well, you know, the gas fees, it's basically impossible to use a DeFi protocol for an average person right now because it's just so expensive. And so, we need to kind of solve these issues, so I definitely wouldn't expect Ethereum to be kind of the only blockchain for, you know, scalability and smart contracts and stuff. At the same time, Ethereum is also having its own solutions for scalability being deployed right now, actually in 2020 months, so we're going to get better. So, there's going to be a very interesting battle of which solution will win, which was solution will have more users. Finally, there are a few trends in crypto that are kind of smaller. I think that, for example, options platforms, you know, derivatives are actually going to explode in 2021. We've seen a lot of growth, of course, but if you've ever actually used one of those, it's not really great. Like, for example, if it has to spread, it's huge. Liquidity is often small. But they are kind of great for speculation in many ways. So, I think that it's definitely going to be one of those very high growth industries within sectors within the crypto world. And I also believe that as we get into the scalability and stuff, stable coins are actually going to be very important. So, of course, you have what we have today, so you see and all that stuff. As we get more scalability for payments, and as we get maybe CBDCs as well, finally being rolled out, I expect that we may see a resurgence of cryptocurrency used for payments, especially in the form of stable coins. You know, I think that we're still kind of missing that app that, for example, uses cryptocurrency in the back end, but the end user does not know that they are actually using crypto. I think that the possibilities of using crypto on a scalable platform are endless. So, I think that this is going to be quite interesting for the average user, so to speak. I see two changes. First, the DeFi fever. With improvement of intoxication and increased market awareness of DeFi, it is hoped that in 2021, the popularity of DeFi will continue and more and more innovation will be derived. Second, we will keep winning small and more traditional forces, especially professional institutions during this market. Like great scale, it is definitely the real star in this year. Many of the verticals that took off in 2020 will continue to experience explosive growth. DeFi could sleepwalk through the next 11 months and still likely hit 100 billion in total value locked, and a quarter trillion is a real possibility. Likewise, NFTs will continue to seep into mainstream consciousness, and at least one major video game title will launch with NFT-backed item functionality right out of the box. Even social tokens will likely continue to do well despite being utterly worthless garbage. New trends that I'm excited about largely center on smart contracts taking over common real-world financial agreements, mortgages through Aave, parametric weather insurance, and experiments in tokenizing assets with tools like NFTs will gain significant traction. However, the development I'll be most excited about will be the ascendancy of DAOs. We've seen the world start to wake up to the power of decentralized ledgers and decentralized smart contract platforms, and the next step is a widespread understanding and appreciation for decentralized autonomous organizations. Many of the founders and core contributors working in DAOs that I've talked to believe them to be the future of how human organizations compose and advance themselves. In 2021, DAOs will out-compete their centralized counterparts in a variety of fields, and the wider community will increasingly demand decentralization at the governance layer as they currently do at the protocol layer. If 2020 was the year of DeFi, 2021 will be the year of the Dow. 2020 has shown us that decentralization can not only be a technological vision of the future, but also social and economic reality and necessity. What trends do you not expect to continue? So while I think that decentralized finance is here to stay, I think that it's going to, I think that the wild wild west days of DeFi may perhaps be dwindling slowly. I think the days of simply yield farming for the sake of yield farming with no real purpose other than generating more yield may be on its way out. I think that for DeFi to grow even larger, I think that it's going to become more standardized. I think that you're going to start to see insurance providers. You're going to start to see mainstream financial entities playing around with DeFi. I think you're already starting to see some DeFi platforms that are popped up that are now backed by big money, by more significant players in the financing world, perhaps even in mainstream finance. So DeFi will continue, but I think it's going to look just a little bit different. Hopefully the trend of Bitcoin going back below 10,000, there's kind of a running joke on Twitter about every time Bitcoin would go below 10,000 when it was around that mark, people would say, oh, this is the last time you can buy Bitcoin below 10,000 and kind of a running joke. So hopefully it's not a joke anymore. Hopefully it doesn't go below 10,000 anymore. I think that institutional adoption, so Bitcoin being traded by Wall Street, trading hedge funds essentially, I think that it's going to hit a snag because right now I feel like the adoption that we are finally seeing coming actually, it's going to go away together with the kind of risk-on environment we're seeing today in all markets essentially, which means that stock markets are at a multi-high, Tesla is clearly in a bubble. I mean, it's just a valid way too high for it to make any reasonable sense. And eventually this is going to stop. And when that does, I think Wall Street is actually going to lay off crypto for a bit because they can definitely be useful in certain aspects, but they're not useful on permissioned blockchains. You have to trust not to be corrupt because in that way we're at square one essentially. So yeah, I don't think that's going to continue 2021 in that case. I would say like the sale of E-March this year during a period with the pandemic going all crazy and the collapse of the micro-environment. Cryptocurrency will not spread in 2021. We're wishing and also believing that the world will return to a normal state and the panic sale of like the last one will not be repeated. What trends will we see in 2021 that we didn't see in 2020? One of the first things I can think is about Bitcoin mining in Brazil. We don't have a big market yet here, but I think in the next year we will see the government taking action and bringing companies to mine Bitcoin in Brazil. I think this will be a trend for the next year. And the other thing is that I can see the stock market more open for the crypto markets in the next year. So I hope that this market will have more products of investments here, national products, to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether or Ripple. So in 2020 DeFi was pretty complicated with all the yield farming and the meme coins and all the ways you can make profit. So I think we might see that simplified a little bit. I think some critical piece of technology, some new take on projects, some new blockchain is going to arise that just completely revolutionizes the space. As big of a claim as that is, like they said, the same thing about Ethereum and look where that is now. So hopefully all this will make good bullish news for crypto in the coming year. The things they say about Facebook's Libra or DM that currency is the domain of governments, all those things they say about Facebook's projects, it applies just as well to crypto. And the thing is that so far, Facebook is definitely much stronger than the crypto moon as a whole. So that's kind of why they've been focused on Libra. But I think that we're going to face this kind of challenge period where they will try to diminish or to kind of take control of the crypto ecosystem in some way. It's kind of like we've been flying below the radar for the most parts so far. But they think that the elites, government officials, they're not really going to appreciate that, appreciate it that much. Not saying that it will necessarily be sector breaking, but at the same time, I feel like we're going to have to stand through this test. We'll see where that leads us. Over time, we'll see more and more of these solutions. Some of them exist already, but I think that digital identities are going to be a big thing in the future. Maybe not exactly in 2021, but it's definitely going to be a kind of growing and growing adoption layer. Maybe Bitcoin go over $100,000. Yeah. What lessons have you learned this year? 2020 was a year of hard lessons. For example, I learned this year that working from home and being have to work from home are two very different things. But now we are looking at new hopeful promising numbers, 2021. So what I learned is that I love working for a decentralized company. I love the flexibility of being able to work wherever I want. I love working with people from all around the world. But what I learned is that it's not quite as fun during a pandemic when the entire city is shut down. I don't enjoy not having a real way to separate my professional and personal lives because my professional life is taking place in the same place as my personal life, because I can't go anywhere else to work, because everything's shut down. That part of it I'm not a huge fan of. Chaos is a ladder, that's the truth. This year, whether it is the crypto market, the micro environment, or us individual, or experienced many ups and downs. But as we come to the end of 2020, in retrospect, you know, we will find that there are always opportunities being side with crisis. So before we add 2021, I really want to say that in the face of unknown coins, we need to keep an optimistic attitude and rational thinking. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the video, don't forget to like and subscribe. Stay with us.


Now, when you don't do this, then you kind of get to the big scary plagiarism word. You can kind of stray into that territory. Now, a lot of plagiarism is not actually malicious. It's not something where somebody has necessarily done it intentionally. There's plenty of accidental plagiarism that happens, and you could have a whole discussion about plagiarism if we wanted to. We're not going to do that right now. But it comes from the Latin plagiarist, meaning, and I probably did not pronounce that correctly, but it means kidnapper. If you think about the definition of plagiarism, copying or closely imitating the work of another writer, composer, or etc., without permission and with the intention of passing the results off as original work, then, and by the way, it comes from Reitz. I have the source quote cited down in the lower right-hand corner. It's like stealing the ideas that others have nurtured and brought into the world. It's really much like stealing their baby, their idea, the thing that they have kind of worked on. You kind of think about it as you wouldn't want somebody else to kind of kidnap your ideas. In turn, you want to make sure that you're not going to be kidnapping anybody else's ideas.


Welcome everybody, so the weekly Evergreen open planning meeting. This week we are going to make as usual for people new coming here, basically doing a status call about the Evergreen, 10 kids Evergreen initiative status. So right away I'm going to give the stage to Adrien because Adrien is a new member of the team at least for a few some time and Adrien is currently exploring, by the way he already started working on this, about what it would take to actually make Evergreen work on JDK 11 so it would both I guess respect the tagline of Evergreen or having a lot of things already up to date, you know a very short feedback loop and at the same time it's likely to be something very interesting to also provide some interesting feedback with regard to the whole JDK 11 upgrade work so yeah Adrien can you update us a bit on where you are and about that task. Yeah so at the moment I'm looking at the code what create the current flavors and how I can create a new one adding a new using the process to include Java 11, it's really early stages so I have nothing really to show or to say about it quite yet but Yeah it was started this morning for people watching so yeah. Yeah exactly so it's still early stage for me but I'm pretty sure that you have something relevant for the next meeting. Great and so just for people watching and for Mandy who knows more about that in general that the path we are following right now is to introduce a specific flavor for this because then you know we'll be able to for instance have specific plugins for that flavor specific JDK because you know it's a specific Docker image and many things like these that would actually allow us to deploy even up to production without you know having some kind of specific backend or whatever to run this so that's that's going to be interesting I think. So and so I don't have anything in progress because this morning I actually closed a lot of things and actually implemented a very low small one which is so Amanda if you have a look at the code you'll see that I renamed the environments into flavors directories so that it's slightly less you know lowering what the fuck per line ratio basically because there was places where we would call things environments where we actually you know were calling it flavors you know by voice or while explaining that to people so I felt it was the right time and and yeah very important to do it right now as Adrienne and possibly others are going to have a look at those things and start wondering what the hell those things mean so that's it and I hope to be able to get back to more things in the next coming time but not sure in that at least the next few days that's for sure I think those things we're already here for since quite long so there's nothing I guess apart from this nothing much to say about that too far today at least maybe just a later later upgrade there was so the only thing about evergreen in general so the talk I gave in Copenhagen code com was recorded and published recently so I think it's around here let me see and more I thought it was published here so anyway I will probably post that somewhere we probably should put that in the repo in the git repo links to presentations about the vagrin I think it would make sense indeed that makes me think right now so I know the video has been recorded and published but possibly not yet publicly because you've been reviewed I received a mail recently from track map basically so let's take that aside so I think that's fine and I guess we can probably move to closed closing anything else Adrienne or Mandy no I just saw something about the environment to flavor renaming and I will update the ticket because I think we forgot something right about that maybe if you're talking about for instance the essential that jamal that's normal to keep that environment because this is so this is something I actually talk about I thought about yeah so let me see environments if I find it right okay right that's the one so yeah there's a place where basically you know in our and in a central document so what I'm talking about is that and so that I consider renaming but I don't think it's it's a good thing at least to remain to rename it right now because it's not a format only used in it's a more standardized format I would say if not if even if right now there's no real programmatic check or right there but yeah this is coming from the JEP 309 I think just a bit of material so basically this thing is used so by evergreen but it's also used by the custom warpackager that tool that creates that is able to create given that kind of file a specific you know prepackage instance of a war with included plugins and everything that's already used for instance in the Jenkins FireRunner tool and many things like these so you see here it's used in many many places right now and so it's also used I think for the testing in a PCT and essentials test that's been written by Rao already some months ago and many things like this so that's why we can really rename it like this but yeah maybe I don't know if it would make sense to consider renaming it upstream I tend to guess not well but yeah I understand where what were your where your question was coming from and I'm pretty sure actually our parser would need an update or some improvement because it's basically removing comments so that's why I didn't bother I'll try to add a comment there because I knew it would be removed by the make Generate Essentials targets so yeah that's a waste anyway anything else nope I did it thanks yes that's that's one of the things that probably not really are kind of ambiguous from the ground up so yeah sorry about that anything else Mandy nothing new for me cool thank you so everybody thanks for watching and see you next time bye


from New York, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Spark Summit East, brought to you by Spark Summit. Now your hosts, Dave Vellante and George Kuehlberg. Everybody, this is theCUBE. theCUBE goes out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. Ashish Tussou is here. He's the CEO of Kuehl. Kuehl's been on theCUBE before. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Actually, personally? Actually, this is the first time. Oh, great. So you are Kuehl, but Kuehl has been on.  So it's when I first met you all. It was a while ago, pre-Spark. So what do you think, Spark Summit?  It's a fun crowd. It's a different crowd. So I think over the years, Hadoop obviously started with the developer revolution and then started becoming more business-like. And here we see a lot of grassroots people, machine learning crowd, data science crowd, developer crowd. So it's fun to be here and be a part of this movement. Yeah, we love it too. theCUBE loves the early days. We were there at the Hadoop World early days and then the suits came in. I should talk and so they took over. But I'm always in a suit in these things. But so, Cubol, tell us kind of what it is, how it works, why it matters. So Cubol essentially provides big data as a service to a cloud-based platform. We run a SaaS platform on the three primary clouds, whether it's AWS or Azure or Google Compute. And the big value proposition that we bring to our clients is that once they get to Cubol, they can find all the technologies that are needed for a modern-day data team, whether it's Spark or Hadoop or Hive or SQL, for different workloads. Whether it's machine learning and streaming workloads at Spark or analyst workloads, SQL analyst workloads at Presto or Hive, they can do all of that in Cubol in a turnkey manner through a SaaS platform. And what the Cubol platform does is, provides full automation of the infrastructure at the backend and provides a unified access panel for access to all these technologies, thereby making it very easy for a data team to enable the adoption of these technologies inside their companies. So the idea is they don't have to worry about all that heavy lifting. You guys provide that as a service, and then they can spend their time doing more value-added stuff. That is correct. We essentially make big data self-service within the enterprises, and that has huge implications. That has implications around opening up a lot more use cases around big data within the enterprise. And that has implications in terms of also the support that the data team can provide to their enterprise users. And before Cubol, we were at Facebook, where we had built a very similar technology internally, and we saw it very close hand as to what implications that model has, as opposed to a model where there is data infrastructure and there's a data team sitting between the infrastructure and the users. So through a self-service platform like Cubol, essentially you take away that bottleneck, you make big data self-service, whether it's the analyst in the company, whether it's a data engineer in the company, or a data scientist, they can go to the same platform and essentially run their workloads, different types of workloads, and all of that is provided through a SaaS platform based on the cloud. So your mission is your why, if you will, similar to Databricks, but in a different context. That's correct. Simplifying big data. That's correct. I remember one of the early Hadoop worlds we were talking to Jeff Hammabacher, and he said my mission when I was at Facebook was to obliterate the storage container, lower the cost of storage. That was kind of the early days. That's right. And then it became, okay, George talks all the time about the data lake and how it became a lower cost alternative, but it still seems a really long way to go. So as you simplify big data, what are the business problems that you're now seeing people attack beyond reduction of investment, attacking that storage container and dealing with massive amounts of information, eliminating sampling? What's the real business problem that they're trying to solve? So I think you're right. Time has changed. Initially it was, hey, store all your data. Now I think a lot of people are asking about, I have all this data, what do I do with this data? What kind of business problems are you going to solve? We see a lot of those. Some of the verticals that we see in Cuba is around marketing and ad tech. So the real world applications that are analyzing clickstream data, analyzing impression data to do user modeling to figure out what kind of campaigns work well, what kind of campaigns don't work well, what kind of users have a better propensity for certain campaigns and so on and so forth. We see use cases in product analytics where companies like Pinterest and of the world are essentially analyzing a lot of what their users do with their product and how they can improve the product. We have started seeing applications in the IoT space, essentially the companies who are gathering data from set-top boxes and doing analysis on that. Again, the common theme here is either it's user-generated data or machine-generated data. The common theme here is that they are using that data for optimization of existing business processes as well as using that data to create recommendations and newer products out of that. So I wonder if I can ask you Ashish, we've been working on this premise which is that over the last couple of decades, information has become so widely available to consumers. And the access to that information has leveled the playing fields with the brands. The brands used to have proprietary information that nobody else knew, they had pricing power and that's gone now. The consumer has all this pricing power. It seems like one of the big opportunities with big data analytics is to kind of regain that asymmetry in pricing information or information about the consumer. Get a competitive advantage. A lot of times brands know more about me than I know but you know when I run out of paper towel is my latest example. They can predict. They can predict it. I don't like that, I don't log this stuff. I just know it's gone, okay great. And so are you seeing that as driving competitiveness? We're certainly seeing it with Google, Facebook, maybe Uber, Netflix, some of the big leaders but is that hitting mainstream? Is that a valid premise on our part, that asymmetry sort of trying to get that back? I think it's become a very competitive world. So essentially what most companies are trying to do is use their data assets to gain that competitive edge as you mentioned. So that is certainly happening. Has it happened at a very wide scale? No, I think it's, we are still at the very beginnings, beginnings of that revolution. But people are thinking in those terms. People are, in certain cases we have seen deployments similar to that, not exactly that. We're trying to target some of those things. What happens with big data technologies is that now for the first time, well not for the first time for the last few years you have access to technology that can help in enabling those use cases. I think people have been talking about, brands have been talking about these use cases for ages but now you have access to technology at a price point where you can, those use cases can be enabled. In addition to that, with the advent of the cloud, not just the access of technology is there but also the access of the operational ability to operationalize the technology is there. Also there's now with the cloud you also have access to a self-service platform like that. So I think when you combine some of these trends together you are essentially reaching an inflection point where it becomes much easier for applications of those sorts to become more and more widespread and I think that's what we'll see going forward in the future. A question related to that, this inflection point. We had Ken Sai of SAP whose VP of cloud platform and data management, he's responsible for the Vora product that runs in conjunction with HANA, anyway it's for accessing the non HANA operational data and he used this example of predictive maintenance which we've all heard as this great big data application but he said he took it a step further which was to tie it into the whole MRO process that's already in SAP so that you know how to coordinate all the resources related to that business process. Are you seeing any of your customers tying these these functions into something that's part of a larger process or are their own sort of applications sort of not repeatable enough? Like is everything still custom built? So I think in certain areas you have started to see the emergence of repeatable templates. But in broader areas I think things are still very custom built. And so where are the repeatable ones and where is custom? So again I think the segments that have been using big data for the longer, you have started to see repeatable templates and I would say marketing is one big segment there. And in fact there's a plethora of marketing applications that have come up. All of them at the back end are using big data for various different reasons. For better scoring of leads that go off to sales. For prediction of whether a certain lead will be a better sales prospect and stuff like that. So there's a plethora of these applications that have come up and all of them fundamentally at the back end are using big data technologies to power that. Now as you go towards newer cases around big data that you've started to see in more emergent IOTs is a big use case. There I think it's still those, some of the architectures have started to emerge. Certain template architectures started to emerge. But I think template applications are still emergent. There you would start to see a lot more custom built things. Similarly in some of the other business processes that have not typical in a standard enterprise that have not typically used big data. I think that there's also an emergent pool there but template applications as such haven't emerged. But I think in the next five to 10 years essentially that would be a strong area. And that would be one of the reasons, one of the ways in which big data power gets more and more democratized to end applications in themselves. You know it has to happen, right? I mean when we first started covering the big data market, we're the first to quantify it. And we noticed that the predominant revenue source was from services. So I was like, oh, because it's so hard. Okay, and it sort of dawned on us, well that's not sustainable. So either humans have to get smarter, well it can only get so smart that data is growing faster than we can get smart. Or we have to train a gazillion data scientists, which everybody's trying to do. We heard Databricks today, started a MOOC last year, trained I think 20,000 was the number. Okay, but it's still a brute force approach. Software seems to be the only way. Yeah, to get the scale. We're going to be able to get that scale. So we see it coming, maybe not as fast as Mike Olson predicted five years ago, but you're opportunistic. Optimistic I should say. And opportunistic I hope. But optimistic about applications, actually packaged applications versus custom pieces. Look, I think we have seen that happen already in certain fields. Like if you look at- Some examples. In marketing you have a lot of new age companies that have come up that are putting big data to use. There's certain innovative companies who are actually crawling the web to look at job sites and stuff to predict that certain accounts might be more favorable for a certain solution. Are you talking about spider- Spider book is one. Yeah.  So it's already happening. Already a customer? No, we use them, they're not a customer. But these are, in fact, actually they're a customer as well. They also use us. But these are emergent trends, which you're already seeing that happen in verticals that have been using big data for the longest. For a long time, big data was very used for data collected from consumers. So there you're starting to see emergent. So I'm very optimistic about it and I think it's happening. And they're kind of stealthy apps in a way. I'm stealthy in the sense that Peter Burst talks about how he predicted years ago that there would be more SaaS platforms developed from non-tech companies than tech vendors. And that's kind of what's happening here. And they're all, they're all database digitization, digits are data. Yeah. And so you're starting to see these apps emerging maybe in ways we didn't expect. Yeah. And you know this has happened in the past also, right? In the past, the 90s was all about creating templates around business processes. Transactional, transactional systems came in place. And on top of that, why did databases take off? Because a lot of business process applications were built on top of that. And that was all the focus of the 90s. Then now we are seeing the systems which do interaction data very well, which is these big data systems. Those systems have reached a level where now it makes a lot more sense of these analytical applications to emerge, which are essentially, these are different from the transactional applications of the 90s. But I think the trend is the same. So I don't think there is, it's an emergent trend. It's going to happen. And that I think would be a very powerful driver of the adoption of big data technologies in your day-to-day needs, not just some data science person or some advanced user doing things. So we only have about a minute, so we'll give you the final word on Q-Ball, the company, what we should be looking for, what's going on in the valley, you guys are in the valley, we're not, but people want to know, say we hear B rounds are tough, we're hearing about flat rounds, but so give us the update on sort of what's happening company-wise. So company-wise, Q-Ball is essentially charging to our vision of using cloud, the power of the cloud, true clouds, dynamic infrastructure and so on and so forth to simplify big data, both from access perspective as well as operations perspective. Company-wise, we just talking about rounds, we just closed as you see in December, so now we're putting that money into use in order to make that vision more and more successful. We are also heavily focused on making sure that our platform is a complete platform and not just a single technology platform. So we are, you will see in future more engines being part of Q-Ball, so they can be a single data platform which a data team can rely on for multiple different use cases. And then of course, as cloud becomes more and more mature, as cloud adoption becomes increases, and as cloud vendors, my prediction is that the cloud vendors will also diversify. Q-Ball will be provided as an option in all those, in all those clouds. So that's what we are running towards. Excellent. All right, well good luck with that and thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, we appreciate it. Thanks for having me, glad to meet you. All right, you're welcome. All right, keep right there, everybody. George and I will be back with our next guest right after this. This afternoon, George will be releasing his first ever Spark forecast, first look, all right? Not the final one, but keep right there, everybody. This is theCUBE, we'll be back. We're live from Spark Summit East.