Kabouter Games: RPG Design, OSR for All, and Shadow Dark

Kabouter Games RPG Design: OSR for All, Shadow Dark, and More

 

Welcome to OH!CAST for a fascinating interview with RP Davis (Bob), who is the creator behind Kabouter Games. This week, we dive deep into the philosophy and process of creating tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). To begin, Bob shares the origin of Kabouter Games. He explains how the company grew from uploading homebrew content to the DM’s Guild. Now, consequently, it is a recognized brand creating its own systems like Spears and Spells. The primary goal of Kabouter Games RPG Design is always to create highly usable, fun content that game masters (GMs) can drop directly into their ongoing campaigns with minimal effort.

This dedication to quality and practicality has earned the company a loyal following. Bob emphasizes that the journey from hobbyist to independent publisher was driven by a passion for the mechanics and storytelling that define the best TTRPG experiences. He views game creation as a service to the community, aiming to fill the gaps left by larger publishers and focus on niche, high-quality supplements.

 

The OSR for All Philosophy and System-Neutral Content

 

Next, the discussion quickly moves to Bob’s core design principles. In fact, much of his work is designed to be system-neutral. Therefore, this conscious decision broadens the audience for popular products. These include Legendary Locations and The Drowned Valley of Gorth. By avoiding ties to a single, proprietary game engine, the team ensures that a GM running D&D 5e, Pathfinder, or even an Old-School Revival (OSR) system can benefit from their products. This versatility is a hallmark of the Kabouter Games RPG Design philosophy.

Bob strongly champions the “OSR for All” movement. He explains this movement strives to make the TTRPG community more inclusive and welcoming. Specifically, it pushes back against gatekeeping in the hobby, a problem that often surfaces in discussions about older editions of role-playing games. The idea is simple: embrace the best parts of OSR—deadly dungeons, creative problem-solving, and a focus on player skill over character stats—without the exclusionary attitudes. This core philosophy drives all content released by Kabouter Games, ensuring their designs are accessible and friendly to newcomers while still challenging veterans.

The “OSR for All” approach is visible in how they structure their adventures, focusing on sandbox environments where player choice truly matters. This often results in organic and memorable campaigns, which Bob believes is the true essence of role-playing. He spends considerable time explaining how this inclusive vision informs every element of Kabouter Games RPG Design, from layout to thematic choices.

 

Favorite Systems and Deep Design Insights

 

Furthermore, Bob reveals his current favorite systems. He expresses a love for Shadow Dark, noting it’s how he “wanted 5th Edition to be.” Shadow Dark successfully marries the familiarity of modern rulesets with the dangerous lethality and streamlined gameplay of the OSR tradition. He appreciates its balance, which avoids the power creep found in many high-fantasy systems.

Likewise, he shares his love for Chaosium’s basic role-playing system (used in games like Call of Cthulhu). He prefers its bell curve multi-die resolution over the “too swingy” D20 system common in other major fantasy RPGs. He argues that the bell curve provides more predictable and less random results, offering a more stable foundation for tense, narrative-driven moments. This mechanical preference directly influences his own work in Kabouter Games RPG Design.

Moreover, we get an inside look at the creation of specific products from Kabouter Games. For example, Bob explains his map-first design process. Here, a map inspires the location’s story, rather than the plot dictating the map. He details how the contours of a drawing can suggest forgotten temples, hidden passages, or the path of a treacherous river, providing a geographical realism often missing when plot dictates everything. This method ensures locations feel authentic and ready for exploration.

Finally, we hear the hilarious origin story of the infamous NPCs, Jay and Bob the Un-Speaking, who are featured in Legendary Locations. These two characters, who communicate only through elaborate pantomime, highlight the lighthearted, creative side of the Kabouter Games RPG Design team.

If you are a TTRPG player, a game master, or a designer, then this episode is a must-listen for insight, philosophy, and community building! Tune in now!

Full Transcript Outline (Quick Jumps)

00:00 Introduction and Background

03:05 Creating Content for Fantasy Role-Playing Games

05:50 The Appeal of System-Neutral Products

09:36 The Inclusivity of the Gaming Community

13:12 The Role of OSR for All

18:09 The Humor in Tabletop RPGs

24:04 The Dungeons and Dragons Movie: Honor Amongst Thieves

27:55 The Importance of Tropes in Fantasy and Sci-Fi

32:36 Influences in Literature and Film

38:46 The Drowned Valley of Gorth: A Richly Detailed Adventure Module

41:30 Legendary Locations: Bringing Unique Settings to Life

49:33 GM’s Toolbox 2: Empowering GMs with Tools and Resources

Full Transcript

Cal & Mostly Hereward (00:03.876)
Hello and welcome to OH!CAST. My name’s Herriwood. I’m joined here with Cal, who claims he’s going to be quite quiet this evening, doing all the technical stuff behind the scenes. And I am absolutely thrilled to have as our guest here today, RP Davis from Kabouter Games. Do you want to introduce yourself?

R P Davis (00:30.528)
I suppose I could, yeah. You can call me Bob. Bob is fine. RP is just, it’s pretentious as hell, but we all have to have our pen names. I am an American, as you can probably tell by my accent. But I live and work in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. And that probably goes a bit of a way to…

explaining the name of Kabouter Games because Kabouter’s have to do with myth and legend here in North Brabant. They’re the… Kabouter’s are the little guys with the red conical hats that live in mushrooms.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (01:12.506)
Kind of like a gnome. Are we talking?

R P Davis (01:13.856)
Yeah, kinda, kinda. they taught, according to legend, they taught people how to make wooden shoes. So it’s, which is about the Dutchest thing possible.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (01:24.826)
That is pretty, yeah, pretty Dutch. So, Cabal 2 Games, tell us, tell us a bit about it.

R P Davis (01:35.886)
Well, it started in 2016 when Dungeon Master’s Guild, DM’s Guild went up on DriveThru RPG. Wizards of the Coast did a licensing deal with DriveThru to allow a community content program on the DriveThru platform so that people could upload their homebrew stuff. And it very quickly got out of hand.

Like, I was always running games and I’ve been playing since 88, something like that, back in the before times. And, you know, I’m always writing things. I’m running games, I’m playing games. And my wife said to me, why don’t you, you’ve got all this stuff that you write all the time. Why don’t you upload some of it? Maybe people will like it. And, you know.

By like 2020, I had something like 300 titles that I did work either written or I’d help other people work on and stuff like that. And then I started Come Outer Games because I wanted to branch out. I wanted to create my own games, my own content for 5e and other role playing, other fantasy games. And that

Yeah, that’s pretty much it now. But that’s how it started. And Lord knows how it’s going to end.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (03:15.074)
It’s, you mentioned drive -through RPG, it’s where I stumbled across your products. And I’m gonna sort of take a bit of a deep dive into some of the products that I have here with me. I love having them in my collection. think they’re really, particularly when you get the print on demand copies, they’re really nice, nice products that look good and read well and yeah.

certainly beats the hell out of a lot of the stuff that is just sort of casually uploaded into the ether. But I’m going to ask a couple of questions. You mentioned you’ve been gaming since sort of 1988. What are your favorite systems? What have you played? What do you play?

R P Davis (03:47.874)
Well…

R P Davis (04:04.13)
Right now, I am super into Shadow Dark, like virtually everyone else, I guess. They just won all the annies for all the things, and well -deserved. It’s a fantastic game. It’s how I wanted 5th Edition to be when 5th Edition came out. And yeah, I’m totally in love with it. I’m usually playing my own game, Spears and Spells. That’s when I run most.

Because for me it’s reflexive these days, know, it’s easy for me to run it. But I think my favorite system, this might be shoot myself in the foot here, is Chaosium’s basic role playing.

It the first game that we did was actually a fantasy game when they they did an OGL. 21, 20, 20. Anyway, I happened to have a game I’d been running using basic role playing a fantasy game that I’d been running using basic role playing for something like 10 years off and on. So I, you know, lumped it all into a book with all the setting notes.

and toss it up on DriveThruRPG. But I love it. It’s just such a versatile system with enough crunch that people who are into that metagame, like the character build metagame, can really sink their teeth into it. And it doesn’t use the… Am I allowed to curse?

Cal & Mostly Hereward (05:40.312)
I don’t know, Callum, are we allowed to curse? I can bleep it out. You can bleep it out.

R P Davis (05:44.75)
Okay, it doesn’t use the bleep bleep d 20.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (05:50.135)
Are you not a fan of the D20, Bob?

R P Davis (05:52.288)
Not anymore, not anymore. It’s too swingy. Even with 5E’s bounded accuracy, which I like, it’s too swingy. I like a bell curve. I like a multi -die bell curve.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (05:58.426)
Yeah.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (06:04.27)
Yeah.

I hear that. I recently fallen head over heels in love with lasers and feelings. I don’t know if you’ve come across this one. It’s for those that don’t know, it’s a single sheet of a four. It’s open source so anyone can download it and hack it and do what they want with it. And there’s loads of different hacks of it out there. But as a system, it is each character has one stat.

R P Davis (06:16.748)
I’ve seen it, I have not read it.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (06:37.274)
I mean, it is ridiculous. Character creation takes about 35 seconds if you’re doing it. And it really pushes storytelling and improvisation to the forefront. So it’s really low on number crunching. But I’m hearing you like a bit of crunchiness of rule sets?

R P Davis (06:43.529)
I love it.

R P Davis (06:54.924)
Right, that’s great.

R P Davis (07:01.75)
I like a bit of crunch. I like intersectionality. I like the unpredictability of how things like character traits interact. one of the things that when I was working on Spears and Spells is that everything is based on character talents. All the stuff you get on a 5e character, you level up, get this new little thing you can do, well…

Cal & Mostly Hereward (07:10.339)
Mm

R P Davis (07:28.29)
There’s just a big old list in the Spears and Spells games that you just pick a talent. You want to have scaly skin, okay, your armor increases. You want to, I don’t know, be able to bite people and regain health. You can do that too. Because there’s nothing like, there’s no races or species or anything like that. Just whatever you want. Whatever you want that makes sense in the world you’re playing in.

And I want, but I wanted it to be simple in that regard, but I wanted it to be complex in that, in how the different character things intersect. And one thing we discovered in play testing was sometimes when the characters, Spears and Spells characters get to a high enough level and they’ve amassed all of these talents, because you get a new one every time you level up, that suddenly things almost got to like a fourth edition D &D gameplay loop.

where you’re like, well, no, my talent for this interrupts that and triggers this other talent at the table. And it just gets really, really fascinating with the intersectionality. And I love that. But at the same time, resolution is just a few D6s.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (08:43.355)
I mean, complexity of games is an interesting thing. I’ve been reading up, obviously, with the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons, I’ve been reading up about the history of the game and how it sort of developed. And D &D has all this crunch and stat -heavy stuff because it’s evolved from war gaming, which is all about the numbers and the crunch and how far you can run when encumbered and stuff.

R P Davis (09:05.208)
Yeah. Yep.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (09:12.014)
but a lot of modern role -playing games are really dropping all this stat -heavy things. This weekend, I’m going to have a go at running a scum and villainy, which is based on the Blades in the Dark system. And I’m terrified because I’ve been playing old -school D &D and basic fantasy is like my system of choice. Chris Gonneman’s basic fantasy is just beautiful.

R P Davis (09:17.836)
Yeah. Yeah.

R P Davis (09:26.658)
Mm -hmm.

R P Davis (09:34.06)
Yeah.

yeah, I love basic fantasy.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (09:40.462)
And I’m so used to running it. I’m so used to just like stats and numbers and loads of dice. And we’re gonna go down to this sort of much more paired back storytelling experience that’s, I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also terrified.

R P Davis (09:57.315)
Yeah, running a new system is a surefire way to increase the pucker factor. That is very true.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (10:07.706)
The pucker factor, I like that. I like that. I don’t know how I’m gonna follow that one up, actually. So I’m gonna ask the next question. So a lot of Cabal 2 Games products are system neutral or appear to be, as far I’m aware, I’m aware quite system neutral. Is that a conscious decision?

R P Davis (10:29.26)
yes. Yes. Because a lot of what I do, it well, first of all, I got into the I never really I hesitate to call it the old school Renaissance because we never stopped playing.

the old school. I still have my first edition AD and the books on a shelf in my living room. I keep them out there because they look prettier than in here. now it’s it. But anyway, there are a lot of them pretty much interchangeable. You know that there are six stat D 20 based games, so you can present like adventure content in a way that will

it can be usable by literally any six -step adventure game. know, so if you’re running 5e, okay, you know, maybe old school stuff isn’t exactly your cup of tea, but hey, here’s a copy of Five Torches Deep or a copy of Shadow Dark. And let’s, you know, bring you to the dark side, you know. But anyway, the system neutral thing is very much deliberate.

And from a craft marketing standpoint, it broadens your audience, your potential audience. It’s a challenge because that which works for fifth edition doesn’t always work in an old school context, surely because of the power factor of 5e characters. it’s a balancing act, but it’s one that I enjoy playing with.

A lot of the stuff that doesn’t really involve mechanics like legendary locations, why would I dedicate it to a particular system? It’s just not necessary.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (12:26.158)
One of the things that first attracted me to Cabauta Games products, I bought the Drowned Valley of Gorth, which I have to say my players just absolutely adored. But it was the OSR for All logo that you had at the bottom. that the OSR for All, was that your thing or is that a logo that’s a…

R P Davis (12:38.164)
Love it.

R P Davis (12:45.246)
No, no, that went across social media several years ago to counteract. There’s a certain very loud, very unpleasant bunch of crusty jerks in the OSR space that tend to frighten people off. know, anyone that isn’t, you your classic

Cishet white dude probably still lives in his mom’s basement You know if you’re not that go away, and I I really strongly disagree with that So I found and this OSR for all logo came I found it You know with the create and the creators basically said here take it use it spread it far and wide go forth you know

Cal & Mostly Hereward (13:35.588)
Brilliant. Yeah, it has the rainbow, the rainbow coloring. is. Yeah, I mean, I have to confess, I’m not a fan of fifth edition at all, but I’m not one of these people that moans about the wokeness of it. I just don’t like how overpowered the characters are in fifth edition and the fact that it takes like two and a half hours to make a character. So I consider myself a big fan of the old school Renaissance and OSR games, but

R P Davis (13:52.204)
Yes.

R P Davis (13:56.886)
Yeah.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (14:05.634)
I’m also incredibly woke. So I like the fact that actually D &D and role playing games now are a much more, it is a much more inclusive community. It is a much more welcoming community. It is no longer the complete sausage fest that it was back in the late seventies and eighties. Well, we only need to look at what we’ve done recently, OTT, a local tabletop event.

R P Davis (14:09.218)
Yeah.

R P Davis (14:19.253)
Absolutely.

R P Davis (14:29.463)
you

Cal & Mostly Hereward (14:35.79)
we got started and the last session was, I think was three quarters. Girls are not just that, quite young girls as well. Yeah, predominantly female role -playing event. teens as well. Brilliant, exactly. Never seen that before, I think. I’ve never seen it before.

R P Davis (14:52.15)
Now most of the spaces I’m playing in now, you my home game is, let’s see, there’s six of us, three of us are your standard, you know, nerd boys. And my wife isn’t one of the players. She’s been playing as long as I have, if not longer. think maybe she was, well, she was playing role master.

So yeah, you want to talk crunch. that’s still her favorite system, which boggles my mind, but anyway, and, yeah, we’ve got, yeah. And it’s, we’re evenly split and we have a great deal of fun. It’s just, I really don’t care what you look like, what

how you identify what your plumbing is. But we need to be able to bring more, just be a nerd and come and play games, you know? So yeah, that’s where OSR for all comes from to try and push back in a small way against the people that I won’t name because why give them any publicity?

Cal & Mostly Hereward (15:46.404)
Yes.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (15:59.012)
Bob, that’s beautiful. And I couldn’t be in any greater agreement with you. To be able to create communities is what we’re about with Ocon. And to be able to help people embrace their nerdy side and not hide it away and get out there and enjoy the games and things is so liberating.

Kabouta’s catalogue, I’m going to ask another question now, is primarily fantasy themed things. Do you have any desire to branch out to other genres, know, sci -fi products or?

R P Davis (16:32.611)
Yes, sir.

R P Davis (16:36.077)
Yes.

R P Davis (16:41.696)
I haven’t yet. I mean, have stuff in, I I’ve got three ring binders that are just full of stuff. And, you know, eventually maybe I’ll get to it, but I haven’t exhausted the fantasy genre yet. And that’s where my love, that’s where my true love lies. And I feel like if I get, if I like kind of switch gears and do sci -fi stuff that because it’s not,

my one true love that I fear that the quality won’t be there, if that makes any sense. And you know, I try to do things like the one of my books has, I don’t know how many hundred adventure seeds and story seeds and adventure hooks in it. And

Cal & Mostly Hereward (17:19.637)
makes sense yeah

R P Davis (17:34.218)
really with minor tweaking, was because I’m working on another one right now. I was just doing some layout tweaks today on GM’s toolbox to excuse me. I realized it like half of the hooks that I’ve come up with for this one. It they’re not just system neutral, they’re setting neutral. mean, there’s genre neutral, change one or two words and you can put it in space if you want.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (18:01.848)
Yeah.

R P Davis (18:02.444)
or in post -apocalyptic or anything like that.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (18:06.394)
Are you talking about the 101 adventure hooks? I’ve got that in front of me. And actually that’s really interesting because that brings me onto my next question. I think I bought the 101 adventure hooks and kind of printed it off and sat reading it. And it made me laugh out loud on several occasions. In fact, more than several occasions. There was one adventure hook that was just, I it just said the bees, they formed a union. And I was just like.

R P Davis (18:09.568)
Yes. Yeah, that.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (18:34.948)
That’s such a brilliant idea. And a bit of an observation I’m going to make here. I’m wondering if you’ve experienced the same thing. Every time I run an adventure and particularly, as I said, basic fantasy is my main system that I run. And I’ve been running a campaign now for four and a half years ongoing in it.

R P Davis (18:57.312)
I will tell Chris Gonnerman when I talk to him tomorrow. No, I’m not meeting him tomorrow. We comment on each other’s posts on Facebook all the time.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (19:00.429)
you’re meeting him tomorrow? That’s lovely. I actually…

Cal & Mostly Hereward (19:07.232)
I interviewed Chris last year, sometime before the last con and had a lovely chat with him. a big fan of his work and he’s another guy that just seems just so nice and so open and welcoming and keen on building community and not shutting people out. And I think that’s so important. It’s astonishing. I mean, the basic fantasy community is, you know, when the

R P Davis (19:11.668)
brilliant.

R P Davis (19:17.154)
He’s a great guy too.

R P Davis (19:25.228)
Yep. gosh, and such a community he’s built.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (19:37.118)
Wizards of the coast started being naughty last year or how naughty they were greedy greedy wizards of the coast and tried to Pull away the OGL and stuff like this. I mean watching the basic fantasy community mobilize and completely Just bring out the fourth edition of basic fantasy in it seemed like a matter of months they’ve done it

R P Davis (19:45.932)
Yeah.

R P Davis (19:49.59)
Mmmhmm.

R P Davis (19:57.012)
Wasn’t it wonderful?

R P Davis (20:04.908)
Yeah, yeah. And Chris will downplay that like, it wasn’t that much. We just had to tweak a little bit here and a little bit there. Bullcrap. They, they worked their fingers to the bone on that. So.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (20:05.944)
I think it was six months or maybe less. It was astonishing.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (20:16.74)
you

Cal & Mostly Hereward (20:20.462)
Yeah. And, and, you know, and now they have fourth edition basic fantasy, which I think is just, it’s going to be timeless. mean, they’re not necessarily going to have to do another edition after this one. That’s it. They’ve got it. but, yeah, it’s, it’s absolutely brilliant. But as I was saying, a bit of an observation here, when, we play these games, no matter how much I plan and I try and make it, you know, dark and moody.

R P Davis (20:30.224)
yeah.

R P Davis (20:33.784)
Yeah.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (20:48.78)
and Diablo inspired grim dark elements and stuff like this, bring in a big bad guy that rips hobbits in half and all this stuff that you want in a dark fantasy setting. No matter how much you plan it that way, there’s something about these games that always ends up being humorous. I don’t know whether it’s the players, I don’t know whether it’s me, we always end up just laughing and my…

R P Davis (21:08.91)
yeah.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (21:18.712)
my campaign that I’ve been running for four and a half years. know, they’re adventurers, they’re saving the Western lands, uniting the Western lands against this great big evil. But simultaneously, they have a cheese trading business that they insist on doing wherever they go. And I’m just wondering, have you experienced this? No matter what you do, does humor always work its way into your games?

R P Davis (21:33.73)
Yep. Yep.

R P Davis (21:42.932)
always there’s that that timeless meme where it’s where it has at the top the Fellowship of the Ring and that’s how your campaign starts and at the bottom it’s Arthur and his Knights from the Holy Grail and that’s how it ends and yeah yeah I mean we the game I’m my weekly game that I’m running for the the part the composition of which I described for you earlier is a fairly dark

Cal & Mostly Hereward (21:57.7)
Yeah.

R P Davis (22:12.462)
campaign, like they know that there are no good decisions. I should say there are no good options. No 100 % I’m not never going to present them with an option that is 100 % good. There’s always going to be a catch. So it gets kind of grim. But then they just because I know I can rely on them to eventually go off the rails.

and you know they’ve now burnt down one village and they’re threatening to do that to the main settlement so I have to that was the last session I have to adroitly think my way out of that one but yeah because they’re a bunch of they’re a bunch of loot and pyromaniacs so

Cal & Mostly Hereward (23:00.478)
I trust you’ve got a wizard that just insists on casting fireball every opportunity.

R P Davis (23:05.28)
no, no, they just, we don’t have a wizard in the party. There’s one, the one character that can cast spells is the heal bot, but they have flasks of oil and they’re not afraid to use them.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (23:19.054)
Beautiful beautiful old faithful. That’s it. If all else fails burn the town down. That’s

R P Davis (23:21.836)
Yep, what are you gonna do? But yeah, it can get funny. well then, drop of a hat too. And it’s good, I think, because you can have a really tense emotional scene. And then someone will just one line it and we’re falling out. We’re just falling about. It’s just the way it works.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (23:32.824)
Yeah.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (23:46.114)
Yeah, it’s just the best as well. it’s one thing I’m wondering if you felt this way, the Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Amongst Thieves. I think, you know, one of the criticisms people leveled against it, it was a bit too funny. And I was like, are you for real? That was spot on.

R P Davis (24:04.972)
Have you never played? you? Tell me how you’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons while not telling me you’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons. You know?

Cal & Mostly Hereward (24:10.317)
Yeah.

The humor in it, the warmth in it, you could tell that it was written by people that have played a lot of D &D.

R P Davis (24:21.46)
The only thing that I think, the only change I would make to it is if, I can’t remember the character’s name, the character that died.

that they brought the barbarian they brought her back. Holga. The only thing I would change is that the magic didn’t bring her back like she died and everyone is distraught. But then walking walking on from like stage left is her maybe wearing a different color. Like, hello, my name is Volga. And I’m here to avenge my sister’s death.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (24:34.444)
yeah holga holga

Cal & Mostly Hereward (24:57.643)
You

Cal & Mostly Hereward (25:01.336)
New character, yeah, that would have been beautiful.

R P Davis (25:02.996)
Exactly. They missed a trick there. Otherwise, it’s a truly authentic D &D experience in my opinion.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (25:11.226)
Okay, I’m gonna ask, you you said fantasy is your first love. Tell us some of your influences, film, literature.

R P Davis (25:24.396)
God. It’s a lot. Much of it is classic. know, Tolkien, Lewis, David Eddings, Loom’s Large, like the Belgariad, Sapphire Rose, all that stuff.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (25:31.042)
Okay, how classic are we talking?

R P Davis (25:47.758)
I just started and I’m really gonna out myself as being behind the times, but I just started the first book in Sanderson’s Way of Kings. So that’ll keep me busy for the next 10 years or so. know, George R .R. Martin’s stuff. I tend to go back and reread things. Like I read Tolkien from start to finish every year.

But I also read a lot of sci -fi. Like I have the Expanse box set, which is chock full of stuff that I pull into my games all the time. know, Dune looms large in, I won’t admit to owning the prequel books, but.

R P Davis (26:43.163)
And so yeah, but you can pull elements of that into everything, you know, I read a lot of murder mysteries too. So I’m just going down, just remembered I have, know, Susanna Gregory, I just found Susanna Gregory, how I missed her I have no idea, but you know, it’s 14th century at Oxford, Cambridge, anyway.

They’re murder mysteries, they’re fantastic. like to pull little bits of these different genre -specific things, file the serial numbers off of them, and slap them into my games. And no one ever knows.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (27:22.159)
Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I think that’s part of role playing is that, know, you there is when you when you play fantasy or you play sci fi, you’re drawing on such a rich vein of of of of a genre that everyone has to be familiar with. And fantasy and sci fi, the reason it’s easiest, I think, to run fantasy games and sci fi games is because everyone knows what Star Wars is. Everyone knows what Lord of the Rings is.

R P Davis (27:51.17)
Yeah. Yep. You can mine those tropes. I think

Cal & Mostly Hereward (27:55.09)
And that’s, yeah, yeah. And then it’s messing around with those tropes, which is what I think you do quite a lot in your products. Yeah.

R P Davis (27:59.811)
Right.

R P Davis (28:03.406)
Yeah, I lean heavily into tropes for a couple of reasons. know, twisting them around is fun. But the main reason is that for every one of us who’ve been doing this so long, had to, when we started, we had to hammer our own dice out of the magma still welling up from the earth’s core, you know, for every one of us, there’s like 18 people.

who’ve never sat down to play a game like this before. They have never experienced rats in the basement. And who the hell am I to look at that scenario and go, well, that’s tropey. I’m not gonna do anything about that. I think that’s arrogant.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (28:51.15)
Yeah, they’ve got to enjoy those daft little goblin hunts and stuff that we all start with, we all cut our teeth with, then it’s playing around with them. Yeah.

R P Davis (28:57.251)
Right?

R P Davis (29:03.308)
Yeah. So I tend to lean heavily into tropes. It’s a…

Cal & Mostly Hereward (29:08.984)
Yeah. There’s two products that I’ve got of yours that I’m really, really fond of. So that I want to do a bit of a dive on if that’s OK. So the first one is, as I said, the Drowned Valley of Gorth. And the other one is more recent. It’s a more recent product of yours, Legendary Locations, the collection. Which do you want to talk about first? Which one should we look at first?

R P Davis (29:20.248)
Sure. Yeah.

R P Davis (29:25.037)
Right.

R P Davis (29:32.898)
right.

R P Davis (29:38.242)
Let’s do Gorth because Gorth is shorter.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (29:40.748)
Okay, so Gorth for what this will be a podcast, but we are streaming it so people can see the book there. Drowned Valley of Gorth. Yeah, copies you can get from your website and also drive through RPG. Tell us a bit about the Drowned Valley of Gorth. How did it come about?

R P Davis (29:47.916)
Right.

R P Davis (30:02.156)
That was one of those what if things that kinda, when you’re reading something else and you have this, well, if I, what if this happened in this way? And I really, okay, one of the things that I usually do, my process is a little different.

than many people who write adventure content. They’ll start writing the adventure, they’ll have their plot, their story, all of that ironed out, and then they’ll go looking for maps. I am an inveterate map hoarder.

because I find a map that, know, one of Dyson Logos’ maps, I don’t know if you’re familiar with his work, but he does a lot of the black and white, you know, hatching on the outside, classic style dungeon maps. And he has a raft of them up for commercial use that you just give me a credit, he says, and you can use my maps. That’s great. Well, I get these maps and I look at them and go.

lives there.

Who lives there? Why? What are they after? What are they thinking? And then I don’t write so much an adventure as a location that’s populated and has something going on. give the GM a few options as to how the players might interact with it and where it might end up. So.

R P Davis (31:37.378)
Because like many people, I don’t like to play adventures that are very linear and railroad -y. It’s impossible to avoid that entirely with a published adventure. But I work pretty hard. And you can tell me if I’m anywhere near approaching successful at avoiding the following things have to happen in the following order in order to succeed. Now, here’s the place. Here’s the people. Here’s the win condition.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (32:04.76)
Yeah, I think that was what struck me about about Gorth was it was it was wonderfully planned out as a as a location, you know, this this keep or the ruins of a keep in a kind of valley that had been flooded and the potential treasure beneath it and stuff like this. And then you throw in a couple of characters as NPCs as Lord Follix and and mail.

She’s the kind of, she’s wizard wasn’t she that accompanies the group and I just thought they’re just brilliant characters and yeah they sort of actually took on a bit more of a role in my campaign. I sort of tweaked them and added to them and stuff like that and

R P Davis (32:41.517)
Yeah.

R P Davis (32:52.37)
cool, cool. Yeah, when we were playtesting it, my players just slaughtered them.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (32:58.074)
Yeah, and it’s just yeah, it actually it was Lord Follix did die in in our run through of it, but then his sister who turns out to be even worse than him, you know, hired a killer to chase them out of town and stuff like this. So was it was kind of building on on what was there. But just as a product, I was one thing that really struck me with Gore straight away was just how beautifully laid out it is, how well written it is.

R P Davis (33:27.416)
Well, thank you.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (33:32.173)
It’s a really wonderful product. The art in it is all absolutely first class. And then again, you’re providing some of the stats as if it’s a fifth edition, but then you also provide like some OSR stats as well. And you can see the difference between them.

R P Davis (33:48.972)
Yeah, because I’ve played it with all the systems. I’ve played it with basic fantasy, with our Spears and Spells, and with fifth edition. And it plays pretty much the same, but it’s the kind of thing that it’s really dependent on the GM to pull it off, especially in a 5e context.

5e player characters tend to be so powered that they either just breeze through it or they don’t have a party because I always design when I design adventure content I design for like the core five roles your fighter, cleric, wizard, thief and face and you know the face can be a bard it might not be anyone with a high charisma so it

if you lack any of those roles, it’s going to make it harder to successfully complete my adventure content. So I try to make that clear up front. don’t remember if I put that that warning text in Gorth or not, but I used to put it in all my adventure content. So I should probably start doing that again.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (35:10.902)
It was such a delight to run and I have to say I’m not one for doing extensive amounts of prep. I always find if I prepare and prepare and prepare my players inevitably do something completely different. Today I was playing with a group of students that I worked with at the local college and

They were due to go into a city and they arrived at the city. Within three minutes, one of them had failed a pickpocket role and they’d all been arrested by the city guard and then brought up in front of the captain of the guard. It gets worse. It gets worse. The same thief, Scarlet, you know I’m talking about you now, the same thief then decides to try and

pickpocket the captain of the guard whilst he’s interrogating them and fails again and it was just it I mean this it was hilarious but it could not have gone any worse so it was like okay you guys aren’t going in the city you’re going to prison

R P Davis (36:26.498)
Yep. And suddenly everything you’ve laboriously prepped is shot straight to hell.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (36:30.412)
exactly yeah yeah so i i’ve always said what’s the point in prepping to i but what i loved back to back to gorth what i loved about it was it was just there was just enough stuff to to give you the kind of germs of ideas but knowing if your characters went off route you had the materials there to deal with it it was

R P Davis (36:51.692)
Yeah, it’s the kind of thing too that you know your characters best. You know what the players at your table, you know if they’re more of a player skill focused group, a more old school group or a more modern game group where they really only know what to do if it’s on the character sheet. But you know, I do my best.

not to put like hard and fast DCs for checks in things because I don’t know, DC -18 might be a walk in the park for a year 5e thief at your table to disarm a trap. But for a group that doesn’t have a trap monkey, DC -18 could be a snowball’s chance. So I’d rather put hard, you know,

easy or normal medium hard sheer folly absurd you know that kind of level thing in there because that makes more sense to me as a designer because yes it puts a little more work dumps it back in the lap of the gm but let’s face it any competent gm is going to know what the the characters at their table is capable of so

Cal & Mostly Hereward (38:14.722)
Okay, let’s talk for a bit about legendary locations then. this is, is this the most recent release from Kabouta Games or? it’s not. I’ve missed something.

R P Davis (38:18.232)
Yes.

R P Davis (38:23.072)
It is not. No, I ran, yeah, there’s a, I did a Magic Items book for 5e and Shadowdark. That is, I don’t have a copy of it here. Vaults of Tanabras is what it’s called. That was the last Kickstarter we ran.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (38:33.626)
Huh.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (38:42.664)
Cal & Mostly Hereward (38:46.148)
Right, okay, I’m gonna have to check that one out.

R P Davis (38:48.494)
So that came just because I a metric crap ton of magic items, because I do. I have a Google Drive, and I’m self -employed. So if I have an idea, just, diddly -diddly -dee, and next thing you know, I’ve got 100 pages that I can make a book out of. ADHD.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (38:54.394)
you

Cal & Mostly Hereward (39:00.185)
Hahaha

Cal & Mostly Hereward (39:09.348)
brilliant.

R P Davis (39:14.176)
But yeah, Legendary Locations was one of the first things I started doing with Kabouter Games, because I would find a map and wonder who lived there and what they did and what makes it different than any other bog standard, you know, pseudo medieval world lit only by fire fantasy thing. And then I decided I was going to hire some of my freelancer friends to create some

for me and they did and it was awesome. And then I looked around one day last year and went, wait a minute, an awful lot of these things laying around. Hmm. And I wanted an excuse to use that cover art. Okay. Englishman called Dean Spencer. He, it’s stock art.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (40:03.178)
I want to get to that in a second. Where did that come from?

R P Davis (40:13.748)
It’s not something I had commissioned for the book and Dean sells stock art through DriveThruRPG. And I saw that piece and I thought, I’m going to use that for something. And so I bought it. And, you know, months and months and months go by and I was looking around in my my drop box for art that I could possibly use for legendary locations. And I went,

That’s the one. And I wrote to then I wrote to Dean and said, Do you have a grayscale or line art layer of that that I can buy from you, which is how I got the line art that’s on the inside. So

Cal & Mostly Hereward (41:01.348)
Yeah, so for those who haven’t seen it, the cover, getting a bit of glare for legendary locations, it is absolutely beautiful art. And it introduces us to two characters who you have then gone and NPC’d up beautifully, Jay and Bob the Un -Speaking. I don’t think we can finish our talk today without talking about them. I cannot wait.

R P Davis (41:21.868)
Yes.

R P Davis (41:28.035)
you

Cal & Mostly Hereward (41:30.5)
to bring them into a campaign. I think they are fantastic. Tell us a bit about them.

R P Davis (41:35.082)
I have used versions of these guys since Clerks came out. Listen, I grew up in the United States not terribly far away from where Kevin Smith grew up. So these characters are second nature. I’m like, sure, they’re believable. Because we all know.

We all know these guys used to hang around the, I guess you would call it an off license. Like bum smokes off of people and just be generally annoying. yeah, Jahe the weed elf and Bahab the unspeakable have been recurrent characters in many of my campaigns over the hell since yeah, Clark said so. Yeah, that’s back in my uni days.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (42:05.967)
Yeah.

R P Davis (42:29.228)
But yeah, saw that as soon as I saw that painting, I’m just like, I now there I’m going to make them canonical in my universe, at least. And so, yeah, it’s a lot of fun and I enjoy them. And like I try to give in each legendary location, there’s going to be, you know, NPCs and story hooks and stuff like that that involve the NPCs.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (42:38.116)
Yeah.

R P Davis (42:58.604)
So, and I tried to come up with some new ones for Jay and Silent Bob that were at least entertaining and true to the inspiration for the NPCs. So, yeah. I need to send a copy to Kevin Smith and Jay Muis and see what they think. No, but Jason did when…

Cal & Mostly Hereward (43:13.784)
Yeah, I think you definitely should. Is he a gamer? Surely he is.

R P Davis (43:26.742)
The artist posted it to Twitter, I think, when it first came out a couple of years ago. Somebody pointed it out to Jason, who immediately shared it to his bajillion subscribers. And Dean was over the moon about that. But it was a…

Yeah, so put a little bit of that J poetry in there and, you know, work it up like that. Make him incredibly rude to any of the female presenting characters in your party.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (44:03.964)
Isn’t a spell that he has is that he can be incredibly rude to people but it just doesn’t, no one’s bothered by it, no one responds to it, yeah.

R P Davis (44:11.384)
Yep. Yep. That’s his superpower.

Like he could say all this all this fantastically rude stuff and nobody punches him in face.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (44:22.65)
That’s absolutely, it’s brilliant. I’m so looking forward to using it. And yeah, when I saw, I think I had a few of the legendary locations just as kind of single downloads and stuff. And then when I saw it was all packaged together in this, I just thought this is stunning. And it is a beautiful, beautiful book. I see, you you’re the sole employee of Kabauter Games.

But I’m guessing that works like this is not a sole labor of love. There are other people you collaborate with.

R P Davis (45:02.668)
There are, generally speaking, the only person I collaborate with is my editor, who also, she’s, I think, about five meters over there. And so she makes sure that all the T’s are dotted and I’s are crossed. And we always miss something. But in terms of like, I work with a bunch of different artists.

And I have worked with other writers in the past, but I’d say about 95 % of the output comes from here. I do all the layout because I can and I used to do it for other people and still do when I have time in my schedule. So I have the software, I have the computer, I can make it go. But yeah, it’s about

95 % just me. Just a old me. I just send the words out to get not bad. Because sometimes I don’t word good.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (46:11.268)
Well, is, they are brilliant products and I’m so thrilled to have you here to talk about them. As I said, I’ve been, you know, running a campaign for four and a half years and some of them have been absolutely invaluable. But also, you know, I think I can see using so many of the things from legendary locations over the next few years as well. So.

R P Davis (46:29.527)
good, I’m glad.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (46:40.11)
Thank you so much. yeah, you’ve been an absolute pleasure to have on today. is there anything, do you want to share with our listeners the website for Kabata Games?

R P Davis (46:41.421)
sure, sure I did.

R P Davis (46:53.524)
Yes, KabouterGames .com will get you everything. A thing will flash up when you first log on that asks you to sign up for my newsletter. And I apologize for that, but it is what my guy said needs to happen. So it’s there. And I send infrequent newsletters.

When I amass enough cool things that I want to share with the people who are subscribed, I’ll send one out. But one thing that I am going to plug is my next Kickstarter will be running starting sometime in November for GM’s Toolbox 2. We did GM’s Toolbox last year, which is basically me going through all my old three ring binders and going, this is cool.

and my Google Drive and about 17 thumb drives, USB thumb drives, and finding cool stuff that I think people would like that are things, you know, for a GM to have in a handy volume. Like you need to, you want to seed some rumors? Here you go. You want some weird quirks for an NPC? Yeah, over there. All that’s in GM’s toolbox, the first GM’s toolbox that’s available on my site and DriveThruRPG.

But GM’s Toolbox 2 is going to be kickstarting probably in November. And that’ll have things like, I think I’m up to 400 adventure hooks. Maybe a little less. Sorry, a little fewer. As my editor wife would immediately correct me. But NPCs, some well -realized, think, NPCs.

that you can just drop right in. Factions, complete factions in which those NPCs can swim. Naming practices, because nothing drives me more up the wall than someone sitting down with a character named Dave or something like that. You’re trying to have, you’ve got Legolas and Gimli and Aragorn. Yeah, this is Bob. Get out. So.

R P Davis (49:09.898)
There’s charts and tables you want to roll completely random Phonemes into a name. There you go. That’ll be in there and more I’ve got the whole list, but I can’t I can’t be bothered to change the the tab in Chrome. So When you sign up for the newsletter, you’ll be notified when that goes live So you can stay informed on that kind of thing and if we run the sales and stuff like that

Cal & Mostly Hereward (49:33.902)
That is awesome.

R P Davis (49:38.956)
that’ll go out to the newsletter subs too. So yeah, drive through RPG, just search Kabouter RPG and we’ll come up. And yeah, that’s about all I can think of.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (49:53.946)
Well, that brings us to about the time we were looking for. We’ve been going on for close to 50 minutes now. So I think that’s time to wrap up. So Bob, thank you so much for your time today. And as we say to all of our guests here, if you ever fancy coming to Comic -Con, the most northwesterly Comic -Con in the British Isles, the next one is on the 12th of October.

R P Davis (50:01.122)
Wow, yeah.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (50:23.896)
But I imagine given the success of the last two we’ve done there will be more. So we’d love to see you here if you have a fancy coming over.

R P Davis (50:32.492)
I would love to come. I would love to come. Okay.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (50:35.723)
We might well be in touch then. Thank you very much, Bob. Thank you so much.

R P Davis (50:41.46)
No problem. Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it.

Cal & Mostly Hereward (50:46.392)
go. And we’ve stopped recording now, I think. So that was brilliant, Bob. Thank you so much for your time tonight.

R P Davis (50:54.144)
Absolutely, it’s fine.