On our very first episode of the Game Masters Book Club our discussion revolves around the intricacies of Stephen King's *Fairy Tale*, a modern fantasy that weaves elements of horror and adventure with a twist of the classic fairy tale narrative. Eric Jackson, along with seasoned game masters Chris Grannis, David Clarkson, and Sam Liberty, explores how the novel's unique settings, characters, and scenes can be translated into captivating role-playing game experiences. They delve into the book's dual worlds, highlighting the protagonist's unexpected journey from the mundane to a magical realm filled with peril and wonder. Their conversation is peppered with insightful observations on character dynamics, particularly the tension between heroes and their darker counterparts, and how these themes can enhance gameplay. Listeners can expect a blend of creative inspiration and practical advice on adapting literary narratives into engaging gaming sessions, ensuring that the essence of King’s storytelling translates seamlessly into their own campaigns.

In our inaugural episode, talented Gamemaster's Chris Grannis, Sam Liberty and David Clarkson discuss the World of Empis and its denizens from Stephen King's mediation on the fairy tale. For more information be sure to check out the website at https://emu-bugle-p6xh.squarespace.com/gmbc

Links referenced in this episode:

• k-squareproductions.com
• risingphoenixgamecon.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• K Square Productions
• Changeling the Dreaming
• Changeling the Lost
• Urban Shadows
• Powered by the Apocalypse
• White Wolf
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Cortex
• Genesis
• Star Wars
• Talisman
• The Gunslinger
• Eyes of the Dragon
• Narnia Chronicles
• In Other Lands
• The Long Earth
• Forsooth
• Swords Without Master

Takeaways:

• In this episode, the hosts explore how to translate Stephen King's unique storytelling style into engaging role-playing game scenarios.
• The discussion emphasizes the importance of character depth and setting in creating memorable gaming experiences, particularly in fantasy realms.
• Listeners are encouraged to consider the duality of modern and fantastical elements when crafting their own narratives in role-playing games.
• The hosts suggest that the mechanics of a game should serve the story, enhancing the emotional stakes rather than merely focusing on combat outcomes.
• A recurring theme in the conversation is the value of creativity and inspiration derived from existing literature, which can enrich the gaming experience.
• The episode wraps up by highlighting the collaborative nature of role-playing games, encouraging participants to draw from various sources to enrich their campaigns.

Links referenced in this episode:

• k-squareproductions.com
• risingphoenixgamecon.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• K Square Productions
• Stephen King
• Changeling the Dreaming
• Changeling the Lost
• Urban Shadows
• Powered by the Apocalypse
• D20 Modern
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Blades in the Dark
• Cortex
• Genesis
• Ravenloft
• Worm the Legacy
• Stephen King's the Talisman
• The Gunslinger
• Eyes of the Dragon
• Narnia Chronicles
• In Other Lands
• Terry Pratchett

Mentioned in this episode:

She Kills Monsters, on stage in Concord Mass

Concord Player's is putting on a production of She Kills Monsters in Concord, Massachusetts running from November 7-22. She Kills Monsters is a play about a woman coming to terms with tragedy through second edition D&D. It'll tug your heartstrings & be rad as the nine hells. For more information & to buy tickets, check out concordplayers.org"

Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great.

Role playing game experience.

I'm your host, Eric Jackson of K Square Productions.

And today I and three talented game masters, Chris Grannis, David Clarkson and Sam Liberty, delve into Stephen King's fairytale.

We'll examine how to use the settings, scenes and characters of the master storyteller, Stephen King's meditation on the fairy tale in your next role playing adventure.

Let's start the conversation.

For the listeners.

We're going to discuss this lovely book by Stephen King in order to give you some gaming material out of it because there are hundreds of thousands of books out there that don't have games written for them and they all have really great material in them that's fantastic for game masters to use in their campaigns.

And until the mind police track us down and nail us for copyright infringement for running role playing games, we could continue to steal as much of this as we possibly can.

So we're going to talk about what setting if we decided we were going to run a game in this world of Stephen King's fairy tale.

And then we'll talk about some other options around the setting, both mechanically and possibly stylistically.

And then from there we'll talk about pieces of the setting, characters, particular scenes, particular monsters or magic items or characters or whatever it is that we found that would be the most useful for our games.

And at the end of that, if anybody's got any recommendations for stuff that's similar to this, like, oh yeah, if this is your jam, you should try this.

And that could either be a game system or a book.

Creativity is hiding your sources.

We're breaking that rule right off the bat.

We're here to talk about Stephen King's fairy tale.

It's gotta be, I'm gonna say this is definitely modern fantasy.

Yeah, yeah, I think we could definitely say, yeah, it's a modern fantasy.

Slash paranormal, dips into horror, but not as much as most Stephen King books.

It starts off, you know, young boy meets mentor in unusual circumstances and then learns about secrets and inherits the responsibility to protect and understand those secrets.

And then those secrets lead him to a fantasy realm where he finds himself in the role of the reluctant hero.

First, of course, he doesn't expect to be, but then he ends up finds out he is and he performs that duty of saving thing and bringing it to a conclusion.

Dave Mist is also a story about a boy and his dog.

It's also kind of a meditation on fairy tales as a form and kind of like what makes Them what they are.

And there's even a like this kind of like philosophical element to it represented by this book about like the collective unconsciousness or fairy tales or some combo of that stuff.

And like he's wondering if fairy tale world is like this metaphysical kind of Plato's cave and like all of our imagination springs from it.

Stuff like that.

Which definitely gave me vibes of certain role playing games that we'll talk about later.

Yeah.

Gentlemen, you are all experienced game masters for a variety of different systems and backgrounds.

So if you wanted to do this as a role playing game, what system would you use and why?

Well, can I.

Can I start by asking a question?

Of course.

I would like to talk a little bit about what makes this book an interesting setting in the first place and what's interesting about it.

And if you wanted to make a game of it or set a game in this world, do you think you'd rather do the.

You're a human on earth and you've discovered this portal to a fantasy world and that fantasy world can be whatever.

Or would you rather say no, I want to set my game in the world of Empus, which is this specific, like fairy tale amalgamation.

Which half of it is interesting to you?

The journey below to a new crazy world or the idea that it's a fairy tale?

Personally, I'm happy with both for my setting, you know, surprising only the listeners and not the people on here.

I think Changeling the Dreaming or Changeling the Lost are both perfect settings for this.

Changeling the Lost more than Changeling the Dreaming, though, I don't like that one as much.

It is the journey of discovery.

It is the urban fantasy setting of it.

And even though this is really suburban fantasy to begin with, this book is two halves.

The whole first half of this book is all the real world.

It is all, you know, there's some feeling that there's something going on there.

But the second half of the book like totally flips everything.

Although there are echoes in Empus of our real world, these two feelingly separate books that just combine there.

I like the whole duality in the White Wolf's changeling books.

You know, you're half fairy, half human.

I thought a lot about changeling as well during this.

The fact that you are normal people kind of.

But there's this magical world kind of In Changeling there's like these things called trods that bring you to the dreaming, which is a world of fiction and fairy tale.

So like the connection is very one to one between that and fairy Tale, I would say what will be lost, pun not intended, by putting it in Changeling is.

This book is about a normal human who's totally flabbergasted by discovering that there's a well, he can climb down into a fairy tale world.

Whereas all the changelings who are the PCs of changeling are the only ones that know that there is this fantasy world layered over the original.

So it's not surprising to learn that you can travel to the dreaming, for instance.

So you would have to think about how that, how that plays.

Oh, entirely true.

The fact that, you know, it can be a fantasy or it can be an urban fantasy where someone is in the real world.

Definitely wasn't lost when I took a look at it.

But I do feel like there's been a lot of attempts to do the I'm out of my element.

I'm a normal person in the fantasy world.

So when I read it, I know that I looked at it and I said, be interesting to see the fantasy elements dealing with the modern world.

I would take the story a little bit beyond the confines of the book and be inspired by it and maybe taking the inhabitants of Empress and coming into the modern world through gates, through the trials, whatever you want to call them.

That's interesting.

And as you talked just now, I was also thinking, like, okay, if you're an inhabitant of, emphasis, fairy tale world, and then humans from Earth come through, like, how do you react to them?

How do you respond to them?

That could be, yeah, kind of the.

Problem that we have and we're going to have with a lot of these, you know, single protagonist books is how you bring that into a group that's a.

That's always a, you know, it's like the one person going down there, or is it, you know, six people going down there on their own, how would you do it?

Chris?

I think the going into the fairy tale world is more interesting typically than coming out of it.

Might want to have a mixed group started at, you know, the entrance to Empire, so one or more humans discover this fairy tale world and the fairies or the people of Empis are also players.

So you have a mixed group going off to solve the problems.

We did actually have that when we were moving from the arena and escaping.

We had that whole group dynamic that was happening there.

And obviously we had Charlie, who was our fated prince from another world, and then everyone else.

But there were people who did have recurring roles and were with him the whole time through the journey.

At least from that point forward, I.

Was gonna Say is it Urban Shadows is one of the games that I think might work with that.

The Powered by the Apocalypse.

Yeah.

I would want to modify it a bit and make new playbooks for it.

But because like that's like, I'm a vampire, I'm a werewolf.

I'm like a paranormal investigator in the underworld of this.

Like literally like the movie underworld.

Yeah.

I couldn't fail to recognize the fact that Changeling was a thing that would be associated with this story.

And I knew Chris was going to be talking and I knew that was going to be the first thing he would be thinking of.

But I also did think of Powered by the Apocalypse.

I started looking at mostly when they were in Impus and particularly in the arena and thinking, wouldn't this be cool if we kind of did a party like game and we used the lens of Powered by the Apocalypse to kind of translate the ideas of the book.

I even wrote down if I was going to do attributes I was thinking of action, hope, wonder and influence kind of came through when I started reading it and thinking, wouldn't that be cool if you could play a bunch of inhabitants of Empas and maybe one of the character playbooks could be person from the other world or whatever you might want to call it.

And then everybody else could be this sort of fairy tale character.

That sort of fairy tale character.

And then going on adventures or even maybe going to the modern world to try to restore him.

It'd be cool.

Yeah.

Gonna jump in because I haven't said anything about it.

I actually am just like Empus all the way when I think about it.

I think about it as like I want to run the game that's a hundred years down the road after this has happened.

Because I like the idea of having a previous civilization.

When I'm building a campaign and I wanted to confirm my basic status, I would run it in 5e.

I could see having that sort of ancient civilization, a very Barrier Peaks kind of feel to it.

Except the technology wouldn't be space aliens.

You know, I think that'd be.

I think that could be a really fun piece there.

Yeah.

To jump on that.

D20 Modern is made for this as well.

Sure.

The themes of those games, although I kept going thinking of those games that I know better than some of the game.

Newer games.

Newer being like Powered by the Apocalypse.

And after that, one of the things that struck me is combat in this book was always subservient to the plot.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

If something was going to happen.

It wasn't like, oh, roll, miss, roll hit.

You know, the combat only mattered for the purposes of moving forward plot along.

And that's what made me think exactly like.

So there's this long sequence, like the most combat heavy sequence, when the prisoners and Charlie are escaping from the arena and there are all of these electrified undead monsters that they have to get by.

And like running that in 5e, no offense to basic Eric over here.

Rolling to hit and then seeing if you do damage and then seeing if it hits you and then rolling to hit and seeing if you did.

Like, it just wouldn't fit the mood of that whatsoever.

Like all of the moves that the characters make are all about like changing the stakes and like what do you lose and what goes wrong as you go through this sequence.

Even the arena of combat is all, you know, it's.

It's hyped up in there.

And you hear the aftermath of the arena combat, not the combat itself.

This can also be done in cortex.

I just thought of, you know, cortex has a very malleable system, much like that, that you just kind of build the characters and the mechanics themselves based on what you need for the story.

Or the Genesis game.

The Star Wars, Age of the Rebellion, Edge of Empire kind of thing.

They have their own generic system.

And with the funny dice.

Funny dice.

I said I would totally play Dungeons and Dragons set in Empress.

Like that does sound fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The setting is nice.

Yeah, I like the world.

Just thinking about like how the stakes keep changing and things are moving along and there are consequences.

I was thinking Blades in the Dark, which might also be good for those sort of combat sections.

Yeah, that's a pretty cool thing to jump up on.

And we can talk about what we would steal, the stealing part.

If we're not going to run a game that is all about Charlie Radar or even Empus as a whole, what parts would we want to steal outside of the hole?

I know, I know.

What I wrote down.

I said, I wrote down the curses I'm a sucker for delving into the dark.

Magic has a price.

You know, when I liked his invention of the curses that were bestowed upon the royal family.

And it was interesting, the gray that was, you know, spread across the land.

I'm someone who loves Ravenloft, so it certainly spoke to that part of my interest.

So I liked the darkness that was used.

What were the curses that the royal family had?

The goose girl had.

Had no mouth.

She had that horrible sore that she had eat through Claudia.

She was deaf, so she spoke In a very loud voice constantly.

The.

I think it was Woody.

Woody, yeah, Woody.

He was, he was blind, you know, so was.

They were physical curses bestowed upon them because they couldn't be transformed by the gray.

But they still took away whatever it was that was important to them or that was a real big factor to them.

The goose girl was a princess and she certainly had a good strong voice.

Yeah.

She also had the most time devoted to describing her and like the weird way she has to eat and the weird way she talks through her horse's mouth and stuff.

Yeah.

That was definitely the part that when that happened between that and the gray, I was like, yep, we are in a Stephen King world.

Yep.

I did like the electric skeleton monsters, the night soldiers.

I thought they would be there.

They make a cool antagonist with a very cool weakness.

They're particularly good for a low level campaign, low power.

They're practically unstoppable until you figure out the thing and then you're like, ah, now we can get past.

And you get past it and you take damage anyway because.

Because as Dave pointed out, there's always price.

Right.

You can get past it, but there's always a price.

The whole way that they're set up too just like is very easy to mechanize.

Yes.

Like, oh, I know exactly how I would do this in dnd.

I know exactly how I would do it in pbta.

I know like all of this.

Like it's so clear.

Right.

The fact that they're almost unkillable, like they have an aura that weakens you and, and knock you out and then when you trigger their weakness, they explode and they do self destruct damage.

Literally bone shards in a radius.

It's very well describ.

Someone could put it into, into a Dungeons and Dragons game.

It made me almost miss the, the old days when undead had a bigger consequence where you know, level loss when you touch them.

It made me think of that type of monster.

I like the dynamic between the princess in distress and her brother who is the big bad.

I like that whole abdication of responsibility.

It can't be him.

Yes.

And I'm not going to go and solve this the way only I can solve this.

If I find out that it's him, it's going to ruin my world.

I like that as a call to action for a hero or a group of heroes.

It's the.

Well, we're not rescuing the princess, but we sort of are because she has to confront her own darkness and the darkness of her family.

Yeah.

It was a Modernization of that.

You know, we're not physically rescuing her, helping her with her barrier, her mental barrier.

I was going to say one of the things I like about this, and I sort of said it in maybe a complaining way earlier.

The first half of the book is completely different than the second half of the book because it deals with the mundane I like and want to bring from it.

And I try to do this in my games.

The sense of here's your normal.

There's an adventure in the normal as well as an adventure in the.

In the paranormal.

I like having that basis.

So you can see the difference.

So you can see the growth, really the sense of beginning a game in the mundane.

I like that.

Well, that's your whole Rumpelstiltskin character who appears in both places.

I mean, that really helps draw that dichotomy.

Totally.

I was gonna say something about back when we were talking about going down into the Final Encounter, but now I want to talk about, about Rumpelstiltskin, so I'm gonna do that.

So one of the things that Stephen King is really good at writing is and setting up like cool scenes of suspense and situations.

And he does that with this Ripple Stiltskin character twice.

Once in the real world and once in the fantasy world.

And there's two versions of this Rumpelstiltskin character.

The first one is what Christopher Pauly, I think is his name.

And he like Chris mentioned the first half of this book is very different than the second half.

And the first part like almost verges on like hard boiled, like Blue Velvet or something like a crime story.

And he has this big bucket of gold in a safe that he, Charlie is caring for.

And Christopher Paulie knows that it's there and like, you know, he showed up and tossed the house and couldn't get to it.

So we end up in this situation where Paulie shows up with a gun and holds Charlie at gunpoint.

Charlie's a 17 year old boy at gunpoint and forces him to open up the safe.

Like that scene is very tense.

Like we know that he survives it because he's the narrator.

But like, how is he gonna get out of this?

He has a gun in his back.

I think that scene.

And like how would you play that out?

If you were a PC and you were having a spotlight moment and you were in a very deadly system and had a gun in your back and you were being ordered to open the safe, you knew that it could go very wrong.

How would I, as a gm, write that scene so that it was Impactful to the player.

There's a lot of juice there.

Yeah, I would love to do a scene like that, but I think it was very easy to get wrong.

Absolutely.

I've seen that tried a number of times.

And unfortunately, most players then say, I'll take some damage, but I can survive it.

And then so I'll just turn around and beat the guy to crap.

And I'm like, that's very unsatisfying, not very thematic.

Yeah, that's.

That's where the.

The Dungeons and Dragons thing falls down.

How many hit points is he gonna do?

Yeah, and I wish I could, you know, come up with an easy way to.

Some systems, they have straight.

You get shot so you go down type of consequences, but it is hard to break out of that.

DND thinking that is pre.

Yeah.

The PBTA model, I think works best for that kind of thing in my experience, because, you know, you could succeed, but most likely you're going to succeed with a consequence.

You're, you know, or fail.

Fail badly.

Exactly.

And like, I don't know if you want to do PBTA exactly or some version of it or some version of that mechanic.

But yeah.

The other scene that I want to talk about with Rumpelstiltskin is in the fantasy world and Rumpelstiltskin and this is this dwarf, but he's like this.

Just this, like real screaming asshole.

And he gets, you know, put in his place by the protagonist.

Then later, when the protagonist is going through this maze like city that he has to get through fast, this dwarf erases all of the markings that he was following.

Like the birds eat the breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel.

Right.

And now all of a sudden he.

He's lost.

So, like the feeling of traveling through a dangerous place but having guideposts and then having those guideposts removed and now you're stuck.

I think it's also an interesting dynamic.

I agree.

That was actually on my list.

Love the idea of having a previous adventurer's journal to sort of guide you through things and to let them know they're traveling in the right connection.

It's a great way to not railroad, but to point to the road and say, there's the road.

If you want to go to the road, it's right there.

But I agree that it's.

It also gets really interesting when all of a sudden you also can erase those or get rid of those markings.

That was what I was going to say.

I was going to point out again.

Yeah, I like that whole that was a really neat thing.

It's like, here's the path in.

Path out's not there anymore.

You know, that same, same, same way out doesn't work anymore.

Yeah.

Which is also like.

It's funny, normally in a game you do the opposite, Right?

Like, you have a hard path there that you have to navigate and really, like, you know, bushwhack through.

But then once that part of the story is over, you hand wave the.

Way back because you've cleared the dungeon.

Exactly.

So I have a question for you guys, because this is one that escaped me.

I kept trying to think about it, but what I really liked.

He took a long time to talk about both the mermaid and the snob, the really cool giant red grasshopper that they only can speak to you if you can really listen to the story.

And it's like the most writer thing I've ever heard.

If you would just listen to the story.

Yeah, no, maybe that could be an attribute, kind of like tuning into the magic type of attribute.

And the stronger it is, the more you can get out of it or more communication.

You can have something like that.

You know what it reminds me of, Chris?

It reminds me of the playbook you wrote for the Slua and the changeling PVDA hack you wrote.

That's one of them.

And you know, the other thing I was gonna say, you know, one of the arts that I have in Changeling is the art of song.

One of the levels of that is you can hear the background music playing during your scene.

So you can say, oh, wow, there's that.

Dun, dun, dun, dun.

I'm in trouble.

I'm going to go the other way.

Yeah, yeah.

I can hear the bad guy coming.

Or here comes.

Here comes Vader.

Wait a second.

Everything's silent now.

Oh, oh, where did all the birds go?

Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, you can hear.

That'd be great.

The slasher movie, the Slew, is nice, though, because one of the moves is just that you can see and talk to ghosts.

So, like, if if ever there's there's ghosts around, like, you'll be able to see them and talk to them.

And it, like, creates this extra layer of depth for you.

And it's cool, you know, one of those spooky folks who just loves spooky.

Folks, it always is trouble.

The cool thing with the Slua mechanic is, you know, they have to talk in whispers, and so no one else can hear them most of the time.

So.

But they can talk to the ghosts and find out what's going on and, you know, if you're a good slua, you'll say, oh yeah, there is a ghost there, regardless of whether there is one or not.

Yeah.

I could see like a similar move on a playbook in an Empus style pbta where if there's a magical insect or being around that, like you're attuned to that and you can hear and talk to them, I think that would be a cool and appealing playbook move.

If you had to pick another fantasy, either setting in a game that was close to this, or if you had to pick a.

A book that you could also, you know, that you might also want to recommend, what would you pick?

I don't have a book, but I definitely thought of an alternate way to tell the story.

Okay, well, go ahead.

Okay, well, this is going.

And Chris will chuckle because this is going back to my days as a White Wolf GM.

But yes, I wrote down Worm the Legacy, Mr. Bovich and Charlie.

I start imagining them as dragons.

A young dragon, new hatchling or whatever just coming in.

And of course we're talking urban fantasy.

So they're hidden dragons, they have powers to look human, that type of stuff.

And Mr. Bowditch being an ancient dragon, the Bucket of Gold, certainly spoke to that theory.

So what about a setting where you are characters that are serving these draconic forces and you're caught up in their machinations, you're caught up in their attempts to take advantage of the fantasy world and the resources they have there and influence the modern regular world.

And you're not dragons, you're people that serve dragons.

You have some magic powers, you have some connection.

I can think of all these different types.

Just like in White Wolf, you have all these templates that you apply to your, you know, particular draconic servant race.

That's what came through when I was thinking of it.

I was thinking that that would be a cool way to tell the story different.

So would there be counter dragons in the fairy tale world or are the dragons only over here?

Yes.

No, no, actually, I hadn't thought that far.

But you're, you know, you got a good point.

Saying there would have to be dragons would have originated from Empis.

And maybe dragons are in their natural form, they're an Empus and they are in their, you know, human form in, you know, in the regular world.

And they're, they know the passageways and they have their own purposes and they're, you know, trying.

It would be a game that would take place in dual worlds.

There would be time, you Know, much like a changeling game where you'd have to go into empus to do some things and then come back to the modern world.

You'd have to have a reason to always care more about the modern world to kind of tell the story that way.

Just to tie it to another book, you know, obviously.

Well, Stephen King drop name drops his own books throughout this book just crazily.

Just to put Stephen King's the, the Talisman, the one that he wrote with Peter Straub, that also fits into this genre, fits into this, this theme perfectly.

And isn't the gunslinger.

Gunslinger is also very much the same, although the gunslinger does it in the reverse.

In the reverse is before you know, it's the gunslinger is from the fantasy world and comes into ours.

Another student King book that I read recently is called Eyes of the Dragon.

And that one is a straight fairy tale.

There's no magical border between worlds.

It's told just in the fantasy world.

And the tone of it is also really nice because it's like a storyteller tone.

Like there's.

The storyteller is almost a character who speaks to you in first and second person.

Like this is a story he heard from his grandmother or something, but it's also a true story.

Or like maybe you are a person in that world, like hearing something that happened 100 years ago or whatever.

It's.

It's a very nice book and like a very mature fairy tale.

He like turns phrases like oh, and I'm very sorry I have to tell you that like XYZ or like you probably already know that xyz, it's a very like spoken like oral tradition kind of storytelling.

My first thought is to call on the absolute classic of the portal fantasy genre, the Narnia Chronicles by C.S.

Lewis.

The first book of the series is.

The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

And then the other one that I really like, just as a great portal fantasy is in Other Lands.

And now I'm going to forget the author's name even though I just looked it up.

Or you could go completely anime and go for any of those isekai shows.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

But yeah, Sarah Rhys Brennan In Other Land, great young adult portal fantasy.

Very sassy young adult book.

So if you're, if you have family, if you're recommending it to family members, be sure they're cool before you give it to them because there's like off screen sexy times and stuff.

You just reminded me, Eric, when you were talking about portal fantasies and that reminded me of a Terry Pratchett book he wrote during the end of his life with a co author called the Long Earth.

And this is a science fiction story, not a fantasy story, but it's definitely a portal story where the premise is that one day somebody discovered a very cheap, easy way to dimension hop.

And now everyone can just dimension hop at will.

They hop, and then there's another Earth that's totally unspoiled right next to it, and it starts a gold rush.

But there's infinity of them.

The book centers around this party who goes up in an airship equipped with one of these hoppers.

And they want to see, like, is there an end to this?

So, like just hop a million times and see what happens.

And then this party ends up, you know, seeing all these different worlds and one where a lot of action happens and like, they.

They meet these other.

Other creatures who can innately dimension hop without technology.

And it's.

It's a cool book.

The setting is, I think, better than the story.

When I read that one, I was definitely like, oh, that's.

That's one to steal.

All right, gentlemen, I think we've covered all the bases.

Unless there is anything last minute you want to throw in about this, this.

Is where we plug our work, whatever we're doing.

Yeah, totally should.

I could plug my con.

It's in April.

Rising Phoenix Gaming Convention in Milford, Mass.

I'll be running a game at that.

At least one.

I'll be running two there as well.

Me too.

You can come and play.

Yes, come play our games.

Maybe some of them will have these ideas.

And then you can be like, ah, I knew it.

It's these guys.

Sam, I know you have a game out, so you should plug that.

I have a game out.

I guess it's been out for a long time.

You could all.

You can always go play Forsooth.

That's a game about Shakespeare that's available on my Itch and also on Amazon.

And I have a free game.

Oh my God, a free game.

It doesn't cost you anything.

You can download it and play it.

And it's a Steven Universe fan game that's a hack of Swords without Master.

It's another great game.

And that's our discussion on Stephen King's Fairy Tale.

Thanks to our contributing game masters, David Clarkson, Chris Grannis, and Sam Liberty.

If you're interested in the Powered by the Apocalypse hack of Changeling the Dreaming by Chris Grannis that was mentioned in the the show, check out the show notes at k-squareproductions.com GMBC for a link to the document.

Also, as mentioned, all of us will be running games at Rising Phoenix Gamecon in Milford, Mass.

On April 25th through 27th.

Also, special thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our theme music.

You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club, the place where great fiction becomes great role playing experiences.

The Game Masters Book Club is brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions, later gamers and to paraphrase the amazing Terry Pratchett, be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.