Brad Ellis and Westley Walker of Wyvern Gaming answer your questions LIVE surrounding the upcoming Stargate SG-1 Roleyplaying Game! Visit the Kickstarter link below to contribute!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:39 – Welcome
1:27 – Call to Action
2:16 – Announcement Trailer
5:17 – Guest Introductions
7:05 – Wyvern Gaming Overview
10:40 – Is Stargate out of left field for your team?
12:00 – Were you expecting the Kickstarter response you got?
13:44 – Stargate Cast Member Playthrough
14:57 – How long have you been Stargate fans?
18:16 – What makes Stargate good for adapting to a game like this?
20:44 – How long have you wanted to do a Stargate title?
27:18 – Rolling Moxy Instead of Initiative
30:09 – Moral and Ethical Issues In-Game
36:06 – Core Rulebook and Stretch Goals for Missions/Episodes
41:30 – The Importance of Maps
44:24 – Any unexpected issues designing the game that you didn’t expect?
48:23 – New Species: The Aturen
54:53 – Other Plausible Off-World Sites
58:21 – How many players are optimal?
1:00:53 – Is there going to be a digital version of the game?
1:03:32 – Do you intend to feature the Ancients in some way?
1:04:57 – How much SG knowledge do you need?
1:07:11 – Future plans for other Stargate games
1:11:36 – Would this game tie into the series Brad Wright is developing?
1:12:33 – Are non-English translations planned?
1:13:50 – Will there be a space battle system in the core rulebook?
1:16:16 – Physical miniatures
1:21:19 – The Benefits of Gaming
1:24:18 – Guest Wrap-Up
1:25:38 – Fan Art by Hito
1:28:25 – Next Week’s Guests
1:29:37 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read
Hello everyone and welcome to – are we at Episode Five already? My goodness, we just started last week! – of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read and I do have my sound on this time, so I apologize for the Joe Flanigan interview I started without my sound. That was fun. We have a couple of very special guests, some friends of mine who have been working tirelessly on developing the Stargate SG-1 roleplaying game. Brad Ellis and Westley Walker of Wyvern Gaming are joining us now to answer some of my questions and take a few of yours. So we’ve got Sommer and Tracy in the chat. Please submit one question for Brad and Wes regarding the roleplaying game, regarding the science fiction, life, the universe and everything, preferably the roleplaying game. But before I bring them in, let me let you know how you can help the show. If you like Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it means a great deal to me if you click that Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops, and you’ll get my text notifications or video notifications – more than likely – of any last minute guests changes. This is key if you plan on watching live. And clips from this livestream will be released over the course of the next several days in both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. Not trying to spam y’all, just showing highlights of the show so you can share the more specific bits with your friends. I want to show you something extremely cool. Wyvern Gaming has published this announcement trailer for the upcoming SG-1 roleplaying game. Roll tape!

Narrator 1
You’ve come from all over the galaxy. You represent the best of your people: Jaffa, Tok’ra, Tollan, Unas, Langarans, Aturens, and the men and women of the United States Air Force. You’re here for reasons all your own. Some of you are inspired by the heroes of the Tau’ri, some of you to uncover the past or explore the future, and others finally having that chance to fight for your freedom. Whoever you were, whyever you’re here, that’s behind you now. We rise up against a common enemy, and that enemy has made us brothers and sisters. Any differences your races may have? Put them aside. You’re all members in Stargate Command, and you are Phoenix.

Narrator 2.
The Stargate SG-1 roleplaying game is a sci fi tabletop game where you assume the role of an SG team member for a top secret offworld Stargate command labeled Phoenix Site. As a member of Phoenix Site, you and your teammates will go on missions guided by a Game Master to explore new worlds and cultures, obtain new technologies and fight to preserve freedom across the galaxy. The Stargate SG-1 roleplaying game is currently under development and the game rules are based on the Fifth Edition Open Gaming License. Backing this project will make you among the first to join the Stargate Command at the Phoenix Site. The Galaxy needs you. Join now.

David Read
Brad Ellis, West Walker, Wyvern Gaming. Welcome, fellas.

Brad Ellis
Thank you, glad to be here.

Wes Walker
Hello!

David Read
Very nice. So I didn’t even know that you were producing that, that’s how out of the loop I’ve been, you know, I helped with with the editing, I did the foreword, and then you guys produce this thing, and I was like, “What is this? This is so cool!” It’s one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen for a Stargate property ever. And I’ve seen a lot of that content. So bravo, golf claps to ya’ll.

Brad Ellis
Appreciate that.

Wes Walker
We’re sly like that.

David Read
It was so cool!

Brad Ellis
Well it’s actually, this is part of the the superfan group that we’ve got with the Stargate game. This community has really come together. The group that actually put that video together is called The Opposition Party. Plug them real quick there: Noah, over there at their team help us put that together. So we really appreciate the work they did.

David Read
I love that the the approach that you took for it was because it’s a static model in front of you if you get to play with people in person, and the video has a little bit of movement, it has the camera’s movement, you know, just like our eyes are moving over the board when we play. So it kind of does a little bit of both, you know, it kind of sets up an expectation of how the gameplay will be if you’re lucky enough to be in person with someone, when this disaster is all over with, playing with physical models, as opposed to also playing online. So it’s very well done.

Brad Ellis
Thank you. Thank you and a little little behind the scenes stuff: Each of the scenes that you see, kind of snippets with the different characters, they all have backstories

David Read
Wow. So I want to I want to talk about some of those. So gentlemen, can you introduce yourselves?

Brad Ellis
Sure. So first of all, my name is Brad Ellis, I’m CEO of Wyvern Gaming. I kind of do a lot of the sales, marketing and project management, those kinds of things. It’s my role.

Wes Walker
Wes Walker, I’m the COO, and I pretty much do everything else. I’m the jack of all trades in the company.

David Read
How long has Wyvern been around?

Brad Ellis
Since 2015, was when we first started our first game,

David Read
And what was that?

Brad Ellis
So we did a Cthulhu deck building game. So it’s a one to six player cooperative card game where you play together to try to defeat the Elder Gods.

David Read
Okay, so we’re talking like, what are Elder Gods? Sorry, are we talking like, I don’t know. Like God, God? Are we talking like Egyptian gods? Cthulhu like the sea monster?

Brad Ellis
Yeah, it’s Cthulhu, the picture you always see with the monster coming out of the sea with the tentacles coming off his face?

David Read
Yeah. Especially associated with 2020, right?

Brad Ellis
Yes, yes. I think I have them in December.

David Read
I have Aliens for November. So all right. So Wes, what do you got?

Wes Walker
I’m good for now, I’ve dealt with enough.

David Read
Ain’t that the truth? All right. And how was that first one received?

Brad Ellis
Very well. It was our first game out of the gate, and it it did really well, actually. And there’s a lot of following for Cthulhu Mythos things in particular HP Lovecraft and in that genre, kind of the cult horror, cult horror if you will. And it went off really well, that really set off our company, if you will, to go where we started going. That first year we made a stint at Gen Con. And from there it’s been a wild ride ever since. The company’s really taken off.

David Read
What other titles…no, go ahead.

Wes Walker
This stems from our from our extensive backgrounds as gamers. We wanted to build a card game. We grew up… There are members of our team that aren’t in this call, notably Philip Loyer. He’s no longer with us. But he was the main foundation of the company at the time. And we gamed as kids. I mean, we’re in our 40s now, but as kids we all gamed together with each other, and we had games that we loved, and we knew how we would like to make it in order to make it better, or what kind of games we could make that people would like. And that’s where we came up with the card building game. So the mechanics, we had strong foundations when it came to the mechanics of the game because of the games that we’ve played before.

David Read
Well you know what works, you know, you’re a fan, and that’s the best kind of of product as far as I’m concerned, because you care about the product. And it’s not just something that you’re doing for a paycheck. And it’s something that you know that other people who are of similar caliber of you will probably enjoy it, because you enjoy it.

Wes Walker
Exactly, yep.

David Read
Does Stargate fit comfortably into these titles? The other titles that you haven’t mentioned that you’ve done, or is this kind of out of left field?

Brad Ellis
I…go ahead.

Wes Walker
It’s…first of all, it is out of left field. But on top of that, we have ways of tying them together.

Brad Ellis
Oh, really?

Brad Ellis
Yes, we do.

David Read
Interesting. All right. I know, General Loyer…

Brad Ellis
That’s the one.

David Read
He very much has a presence. So Philip does. That’s really cool. I didn’t even know that until we were on a call recently, and I was like, “P.K. Loyer that’s very specific. Is that named after someone?” And then I learned about the history of the company. And that’s really a cool nod.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, General Loyer is an homage to our late friend who passed away. And he’s actually been a character in I think just about all of our games, all except for Onami.

Wes Walker
And Short Order Hero.

Brad Ellis
And Short Order Hero, yeah. He wasn’t in that one, either. But he’s got a through line of some backstory that one day, we hope to do a really fun game with.

David Read
Well, absolutely. And congratulations on achieving your goal on Kickstarter in what, three hours, was it?

Brad Ellis
Three hours and 45 minutes.

David Read
Something absurd. Were you expecting that kind of response?

Brad Ellis
Hopefully…we were hoping for that kind of response. But obviously, very pleasantly surprised that it actually came through. And it’s still going, I mean, every morning I wake up, I go to sleep at one number and I wake up at another number. I’m like, “Wow, wow, I can’t believe it moved that much.” As you’re watching it throughout the day, because I’m always on it right now, it doesn’t feel like it’s growing as fast as it should. But then when you go away from it for a few hours and come back, it’s like, “Wow, I can’t believe that this is going this well.”

David Read
Helps put things in perspective a little bit. What what are we at now, guys?

Wes Walker
116,800.

Brad Ellis
And we’ve unlocked five stretch goals already.

Wes Walker
We’ve got 1847 backers.

Brad Ellis
And we know there’s more Stargate fans than that.

Wes Walker
For sure. We have about 10,000 signed up on our website.

David Read
Come on, guys. Where are you?

Brad Ellis
Where are you?

David Read
Do your part for the team for the Phoenix site. Absolutely. Well, that is still stellar. And is it the 28th that’s the final day.

Brad Ellis
I believe the 29th.

Wes Walker
The 29th, yeah, I think we have 18 days to go.

Brad Ellis
As of the recording of this.

Wes Walker
Correct.

David Read
Well, a lot of the folks who are in here, I’m hoping have never been exposed to this type of entertainment before. And we’re going to talk about that in the interview that we’re about to do. We’re going to talk about the absolute mayhem of fun that we’re going to be having exactly 144 hours from now – however long a week is, I think it’s 144 hours – next week, next Sunday at 2pm Pacific Time, we are going to have six amazing Stargate cast members to sit down to do a playthrough of a Stargate SG-1 roleplaying game experience. And I was going to bring this up later, but I think it’s just important to get it out of the way now how cool this is a thing that’s coming. We’ve got David Blue, David Hewlett, Julie McNiven, Simone Bailly, Rainbow Sun Francks, and Alexis Cruz from the feature film. This is an insane lineup, and they are going to simulate an offworld mission. Is that right?

Brad Ellis
That’s right.

Wes Walker
That is correct.

David Read
Can you preview it for us?

Brad Ellis
I really don’t want to, I don’t want to give away the story. But know that they will be visiting things that probably are a little familiar to them.

David Read
Oh really?

Brad Ellis
As people, not as characters.

David Read
Well no, I mean, they’re not going to be playing necessarily anything like their characters. I mean, David Hewlett, for crying out loud, played an Unas.

Brad Ellis
I know, which was hilarious!

David Read
So I’m interested to see if he brings the Unas back, rolling into every situation.

Wes Walker
Oh, I’m sure! I’m sure he will.

David Read
That was true. Absolutely. How long have you guys been Stargate fans? And tell me about your fandom experience.

Wes Walker
Wow. Well, I was not fortunate enough to see the motion picture on the big screen. But – I’ve told this story before but -so my aunt was a big Blockbuster fan, back in the day when there was Blockbuster Video. And anyway, it had come out for sale at Blockbuster video, and she bought it. And I took it and watched it numerous times that summer. And at that point of time, I was kind of hooked – I loved this film. And then we did not have Showtime, so I wasn’t able to watch the original run, but when it came on SciFi, I mean, I was just hooked. I was hooked. And of course, when Atlantis came out, I was waiting for it, I was waiting for that premiere. And when it hit, I mean…every week, Phil and I, we would call each other and we’d kind of talk about the episode and what happened, and it was just our thing. So for for Phil and I, when we talked about going in to making the game for Stargate, it was like, wow, you know, would we really be able to do this, give it justice? And, you know, I still struggle with…I feel like we’ve given it justice, but you know, it’s just it’s such a high bar. But yeah, forever.

David Read
I didn’t realize the General himself was a fan of this property. You guys aren’t just placing, you know, a friend and colleague into this game, into part of this world, you’re placing a Stargate fan in there as well.

Brad Ellis
Oh, yes.

Wes Walker
Absolutely.

David Read
That’s really cool. Brad?

Brad Ellis
Yeah, so I did see the motion picture in theater, and I loved it. It was all “Star-thing” when I watched it. It was up there with all the other “Star-” named franchises in my mind. And likewise, I didn’t have Showtime. So I missed the the first run of the first part of that, but then I caught up to it later. And I’ve loved it ever since. I think Richard Dean Anderson just plays a wonderful Jack O’Neill. He’s probably my favorite character.

David Read
He made it his own.

Brad Ellis
For sure.

Wes Walker
Oh, yeah.

David Read
Absolutely.

Brad Ellis
He had to follow up Kurt Russell, which I mean, that’s a pretty tough thing to do. But he did it.

David Read
Children of the Gods, there’s a…you definitely see the Kurt Russell-like mentality there. And then he’s beginning to morph the character as he moves forward. So yeah, it was pretty successful. Wes, any particular character was your favorite?

Wes Walker
It’s still a runoff between McKay and Carter. I’m leaning toward McKay. But it’s still like 50/50. It’s always gonna be that way, probably from here on out. I mean originally, I was a Jackson fan. And, you know, it just kind of graduated into the more sciency type of area. So yeah, I really attached to those characters.

David Read
What makes Stargate good for adapting to a game like this?

Brad Ellis
The gate.

Wes Walker
Definitely, the ability to be able to walk through… So usually in a game, you’re stuck in whatever realm that particular game is held in. So if it’s a Middle Ages or Dark Ages period, or a Renaissance period, you’re always stuck in that period or that setting. The gate gives you the opportunity to be able to go to different areas and different timeframes and settings. And, you know, you can be in a medieval setting, and all of a sudden step through the gate, and now you’re in a futuristic setting. So for roleplaying, that just opens the doors. Opens the gates!

David Read
Absolutely. Brad, can you add to that?

Brad Ellis
No, that’s really close to what I was gonna say. And also, the modern sci fi world is a really fun thing to put yourself in. And also the fact that they’re cohesive teams that are formed as part of what is in the Stargate Program. I mean, when you form a Stargate team, that’s your group. So just like that, you’re a gaming party going on adventures. So it’s very easy to translate that from the show to the game itself.

David Read
I think that… Yeah, Wes, go ahead.

Wes Walker
It’s almost like when they created Stargate, they thought about the game first.

David Read
You know, I was talking with Joseph Malozzi yesterday, and he revealed – I’d never heard this; I’ve known the man for years – and he revealed that he and his writing partner, Paul Mullie, were playing Dungeons & Dragons years before they ever started writing on Stargate. So the core of that experience… I couldn’t believe it, I was like… But why can I not believe it? Because that makes sense. That adds up: the team dynamic, you have a group of people working together, who drive each other nuts, to achieve a goal for the greater good, to save lives, to save themselves, to save one of the team. You know, there’s a lot…

Brad Ellis
To save the earth!

David Read
To save the earth, you know, to save us all. And it just really makes sense. How far back were you guys talking about doing this? Is this something you’ve wanted to do, a Stargate title for a few years now? When you approached MGM, when was the impetus? And take us forward.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, I’ll take it. So yeah, we’re both looking at each other, like who’s…

David Read
Sure, of course.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, so we knew that we wanted to do a roleplaying game. It actually started there. We knew from the titles that we had done so far. Phil really wanted to go into actually a deep roleplaying game. So we started thinking about, what are the properties that make sense? And we literally, we were looking at each other, and we just turned all of a sudden, and said, “Stargate.” And it just made sense, right from the start. And so we put our business proposal together, and we submitted it, and we were blessed that it actually got got accepted. And here we are.

David Read
Wow. And Wes, you were saying that do everything that Brad doesn’t in this process? What were…

Wes Walker
That was a little bit of an exaggeration, there are other folks. We have Sam Loyer. She’s Phil’s wife, and she basically heads up our customer support and customer service. Big, big role in the company, actually. I mean…

Brad Ellis
She’s a gamer too.

Wes Walker
Kudos to her. Yeah, she’s a gamer, too. But anyway, so yeah, like, are you asking what my other roles are?

David Read
So you get the license to move forward. Wes, what was your next step?

Wes Walker
Oh, wow, development. You know, going in and trying to make sure that we’re accurate with what we’re… Because there are a couple of us that are the knowledge-based portions of the team as far as knowing the Stargate…

David Read
The lore.

Wes Walker
The lore and all of that, and a lot of mine was lore-based.

David Read
Got it.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. And unfortunately, right when we got the license, that’s when our friend Phil passed away.

David Read
Oh really? It’s that recent?

Brad Ellis
Yeah it was. And we were fortunate enough to have some good contacts, and we got Mack Martin, who’s had… He’s got a lot of roleplaying game development experience. He’s worked on Malifaux RPG, he’s worked at Fantasy Flight Games. He’s worked on some other star- type properties we won’t be naming. So we brought him in on the project, and then we started looking at all the different ways we could go. And we looked at, what’s the game system we actually want to use under the cover? And there’s lots of different roleplaying-type games out there. There’s Fate, there’s D6-type systems, and obviously D20, which is used in Dungeons & Dragons.

David Read
These are different modes of playing tabletop games? With different rules?

Brad Ellis
Right, different base rule sets, if you will. So we knew that we wanted to go down… After some analysis, we decided that D20 was the best one for us. One, we’re most familiar with it as an internal team. And we’ve had many years of experience playing it. And we knew the things that really excited us about playing that particular type of roleplaying game. So we went down that road, and we started bringing in other mechanics from other game systems that we really enjoyed. And Mack Martin has done a wonderful job just really getting those things melded together. And I’m just so excited about the product, and I can’t wait for everybody to see what it is, and how well it works together. Because we really scooped out… So D&D, it’s got magic in it right? But we know Stargate is more about technology. So having to replace magic with technology is kind of a big, it’s a big thing, right? Because if you look at the Dungeons & Dragons rulebook, a good portion of it is spells. So we had to reimagine how that would work in a modern sci fi-type setting. And I think we did it. I think we pulled it off.

David Read
How tricky was that conversion?

Brad Ellis
Well, Mack would be the one to talk to in detail about that. Maybe one day we can have him on.

Oh, certainly, yeah.

Brad Ellis
It was a lot of testing, a whole lot of testing. Times we would tweak something, go play a game. And you know, playing a game, it’s like a commitment, it’s like a three hour type of stint. So every little tweak and test, it’s a lot of time to go back and forth. So there was a lot of that that happened, we would add new rule systems in, we would replace things with others. And eventually, we came to the place that we got there. And at some point, we – I believe it was last November, or October – we opened up the private beta. So we had a great opportunity to bring in some some Stargate fans, some roleplaying fans, and bring them into the project, into our Discord channel server. And that community is just wonderful. I cannot say enough good words about the folks that have joined us on this journey from way back then, to really help mold a game that is what we’re producing.

Wes Walker
Yeah, this is a game that’s, essentially it’s a game that’s made by fans and gamers, for fans and gamers. And like Brad said, if it was not for our Discord folks, like those guys, all of them are, they’re gold. They’ve helped us mold and fine tune and tweak, I mean, just absolutely the best game. And on top of that, you know – Brad was also saying that we’ve taken the best parts of other games – we’ve also added some new features that are not in other games, as well. This is just totally new stuff.

David Read
Can you give me an example?

Wes Walker
We’ve gotten a phenomenal response on that.

Brad Ellis
Moxie.

Wes Walker
Moxie. Moxie is probably one of the biggest things. So usually in a roleplaying game, when you come into an encounter, you will roll Initiative. This is basically telling you what turn order you’re gonna take, depending on your skills.

David Read
And this is with a 20-sided die.

Wes Walker
Yes, it’s got the 20-sided die.

Wes Walker
To determine that.

Wes Walker
Correct. So, usually, this is gonna say it’s like a Dexterity-based thing. Well, you know, when you’re in a negotiation, Dexterity has nothing to do with a negotiation (unless you want it to go south!), so you’re going to be looking for Charisma in, say, a situation of negotiations. So Moxie, so that person that’s better at negotiating actually will have the ability to try and go first now, because they should have a better roll with this Moxie roll. So basically it’s Initiative, but for social encounters.

David Read
Interesting.

Wes Walker
Now, we also – I know, Brad was talking about Mack on the game development, but one of our main artists, Wayne, he’s a phenomenal artist too ,and…

Brad Ellis
Wayne Miller.

Wes Walker
Wayne Miller, he’s going into the the inspiration of the project. Phil used to ask for a piece of art first to inspire him on how to make a certain mechanic in the game.

Brad Ellis
Which is not the right way to do it from a cost perspective.

Wes Walker
Yeah, from a cost perspective, definitely not.

David Read
“Inspire me, folks!”

Wes Walker
But really, like it does help, you know, having a good artist helps the project for its mechanical development. So usually it’s in reverse, but yeah, anyway,

David Read
Did Wayne create the background behind you?

Wes Walker
No, actually this is one that I created.

David Read
You did this?! That’s very cool, man! I may have to have you create some stuff for my show.

Wes Walker
There’s plenty of.. Go ahead, Brad.

Brad Ellis
Because we’re kind of a small company, we do have, we have some good skills amongst the team, I would say. Wes’s ability to do 3d renderings is one of his strong points. I also do a lot of the graphic design, so a lot of the layouts and things like that, that’s usually coming from me.

David Read
You do wear a lot of hats, guys, wow. Well you have to, to make the project work.

Brad Ellis
Absolutely.

David Read
What are the franchise’s more thought-provoking dilemmas, story wise, that they have tackled, which really resonate with you? The moral ambiguity situations the team are placed in? The internal conflict between characters, maybe between governments? What really resonates with the two of you?

Brad Ellis
Wes, you wanna go first?

Wes Walker
Nnn…

David Read
That you managed to insert into the DNA of the game?

Brad Ellis
Gosh, making that even harder.

David Read
Oh, I hoped to make it easier! Okay, for instance.

Wes Walker
Okay, yeah, give us a an example.

David Read
So we played, for San Diego Comic Con, a situation where there was a child that was in trouble on this alien planet. But also, there was a situation that I was placed in while we were playing, where I had a friend, one of my peers, who got injured. And I can either – “waste” is not the right word – I expend my turn on helping the friend or helping the child who’s in danger. That is a macro or a micro example of similar situations that carry themselves out in Stargate all the time: you have a limited amount of bandwidth, you can only save one person – it may be like with the Enkarans and the Gadmeer in season four. Which species do you save? It’s situations like that I found myself placed in, and I was like, not only am I surprised to be having this kind of an encounter, but I was like, that’s kind of cool from an existential perspective, when you pull back.

Brad Ellis
Yeah for sure, and that’s really what a lot of roleplaying games is about, is putting your player characters in those types of situations. The reason we were struggling with answering that question is because mechanics-wise, it’s – the book is, you know, got a good portion of the book – we were thinking of the mechanics of the game, how it may have been [sic] done that, but really the portion of the book that you’re talking about is our Gatemaster chapter. So this is talking to the people who are creating the stories, who are who are molding the adventures that the teams are going on. And it really speaks to one of the… Mack was like, when he came presented this to us, this was like, “Oh, of course, we should do it this way.” So the Gatemaster chapter, we present in a way where we give the advice to the Gatemaster that you should make up your stories like you’re making a TV show. So you are making a season of episodes that are going to play out over a season, and each of those episodes have scenes. So you think through how you would make a TV show, essentially, and putting your characters in those moral type situations, where they need to make those hard choices. If they’re going to save the planet, or they’re going to save the child kind of thing. Those kinds of things are…that whole chapter gives advice on how to create great TV shows.

David Read
Suspense, and it’s like McKay brings up the railroad track dilemma. You know.

Brad Ellis
Yeah.

Wes Walker
Now see something too, is we have our Living Series. And we have our writers for a Living Series. And this is throughout our season arc of our series. We’re actually on development of season two. But there’s all sorts of these moral dilemmas in our season arcs.

Brad Ellis
So just to be clear what he’s talking about, the core, the thing that’s on Kickstarter right now is, is we’re Kickstarting the core rulebook. So this is the base rules that you need to basically be able to create a character, it teaches you how to be the Gatemaster, like I was just talking about. So it’s all the base rules that you need to play the game. And then the Living Series is episodes that we are producing as Wyvern Gaming that’s going to be over the course of seasons and episodes. So there are going to be little adventures that we put out there, that allow your characters that you make from the book to play through. Now, you don’t necessarily have to play it that way, through our Living Series. You can also just take the book and play it as a home campaign, meaning you have you and a group of your friends that show up to your house every week – or virtually, online in this day and age – and you play with that same group week after week, and there’s one Gatemaster who’s telling the story through that season. With the Living Series, what it is, is you have stories, and you may have a different Gatemaster from week to week, depending on which table you show up at.

Brad Ellis
Wow, okay.

Wes Walker
It allows you…it’s a campaign setting for organized play. So it allows you to go from not only switching up your homebrew team as the GM, but also you can go from state to state, convention to convention, sit down at a table, and if you’ve done everything correctly, your character sheet, equipment, skills, everything will be honored at that table. It’s not just, “Oh, well, last night I created a little five character and, you know,” no. You actually have proven that you’ve gotten to this progress, that you’ve put these years into this character to get to where it was.

David Read
Okay, so the the core rulebook that’s coming out, are there missions in it?

Brad Ellis
Not directly, no. However, there is a stretch goal…I believe it was unlocked last night.

David Read
So it’s already done. And what’s that goal?

Brad Ellis
We were producing the Phoenix Site Side Mission One. So this is going to be an actual episode that we’re giving free to our backers who have done the SG-2 reward level or higher.

David Read
Is this physical?

Brad Ellis
That particular adventure will be sent out as a PDF. Obviously the book itself is physical.

David Read
Okay, so the book itself, is that intended for Game Masters specifically? Or is it intended for anyone who’s wanting to make a character?

Wes Walker
That’s for our players and Gamemasters.

Brad Ellis
Both.

David Read
Okay.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, in D&D they do split them up. There’s a Player’s Handbook and then there’s a Dungeon Master’s Guide. This is essentially both of those things squished together.

David Read
So I buy the…

Brad Ellis
Oh, and a bestiary. It’s got the life forms that are in it as well.

David Read
Oh, that’s cool. All right.

Brad Ellis
So it’s got all three elements there.

David Read
I actually know some of this, folks. But I’m just feigning ignorance for your education. So I get the book, I study up, you know, I get my friends together. We want to pick a mission, where do we go to do it? When everything’s rolling.

Brad Ellis
So if you back the campaign, you’ll have this side mission in hand. So one of your friends, probably the person that backed the campaign because you’re the one interested in it, will get their players to create a character and then they’ll take that episode that is coming with the Kickstarter, and you can just you can start, sit everybody down at the table and start reading. And what you will have is an episode that will put the characters through a test, so to speak.

David Read
And future episodes: are they going to be available on a specific website where you can log in?

Brad Ellis
Absolutely, yeah, so stargatetherpg.com.

Brad Ellis
stargatetherpg.com

Brad Ellis
That’s right. So you can go there now, sign up, you can actually create a character there already. It’s really basic right now. We did unlock – one of the other stretch goals we unlocked was a digital online character sheet. So it’s going to let you actually build your character on our website as well. So you’ll actually be able to choose your class, your race, and your abilities through that tool, and that will be the character that you can use in your gaming.

David Read
I did this for a Star Wars character. I unlocked, I developed a Droid and boy, was I happy that such a document existed. So I’m really glad that was unlocked.

Brad Ellis
It really helps.

David Read
It’s a big deal.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, there’s one thing about having a book and reading it and understanding what it is, and taking paper and pen and creating a character versus…

David Read
There’s something to be said for that.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, it really helps.

David Read
Wes?

Wes Walker
Now we’ve also got our… On Roll20 we’ve got a creation of a character sheet there as well.

David Read
Now Roll20 is a separate website, is that correct?

Brad Ellis
It is.

David Read
Okay, now we’re not just talking about when you say “roll 20,” that is slang for rolling a die, right?

Wes Walker
Well, because of say, COVID… Now, we’ve been using Roll20 for years.

Brad Ellis
He’s asking what Roll20 is, basically.

Wes Walker
I know, but like, because of COVID the popularity has become stronger and the need for social distancing when it comes to roleplaying and gaming. It’s online gaming, it’s the ability to play this game online.

David Read
So okay, and the online environment that we were using with the map view of the planet, where will that be found?

Brad Ellis
That was Roll20.

David Read
That was Roll20, okay, understood. So you have an account there or how does that work?

Brad Ellis
Yeah, so you go to roll20.com…or .net, I think, maybe?

Wes Walker
It’s .net, I think.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. So you go there and you sign up and you log in, and it’s actually got a video feed and a…

David Read
.net

Brad Ellis
…voice feed and everything.

David Read
Okay. And so on that space, will the Wyvern Stargate maps be held? Or will they be available elsewhere?

Brad Ellis
No, no. So as a Gatemaster, you would create the game within the roll20.net interface.

David Read
Understood.

Brad Ellis
And you would upload the maps and things for your players to play.

David Read
So those were just a demo?

Brad Ellis
Yes, correct.

David Read
Understood, I did not know that, okay.

Brad Ellis
Now, I’ll say that we do have a stretch goal. When we reach 150 in pledges we’re going to unlock…

David Read
When, not if!

Brad Ellis
When…we’re going to unlock the Phoenix Site map tiles. So this is going to be a PDF of full color detailed playable grid of maps that you can use to go on episodes with. And those particular things in particular, you can upload to roll20.net, and use for your backgrounds for your characters to play on the interface,

David Read
Guys – not you guys, but guys out there in the viewing audience – I cannot think of a better reason to hit that stretch goal right there. Because when we were playing, it’s important to be able to imagine, to use your imagination when you’re playing. At the same time, because we’re all spread out in many cases, just like the characters did in SG-1, it’s so handy to be able to see on a map where the heck you are in relation to everyone else. It saves those precious seconds that you’re using in your moments of gameplay, and in planning before it’s your turn to help you determine how you’re going to move next. So that’s a just goal to unlock. Absolutely. That’s a good reason to go to Kickstarter and hit that goal. Because if you plan on playing it will help immensely.

Wes Walker
Yeah, we prefer to play with maps. There are a lot of pro players that don’t use maps, but we prefer to play with maps.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. And the game was designed from Fifth Edition Open Gaming License, which is D&D. The Wizards of the Coast put out this Open Gaming License, which is basically a license to use their product in a basic way. It was built to be theater of the mind, which is without maps. And you can totally play Stargate that way. In fact, it’s actually a really good way to play it as well.

David Read
Before this year, I had never done anything like this. And Kieran and I, you know, when Kieran was still at MGM, we were talking with you guys about launching this project, developing it together. My only familiarity was a series called Community, there was a season two or season three episode called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. And I was captivated by it. They don’t necessarily use the game configuration that we do – it’s much more one character is just rolling a die and he’s carrying out the whole story – but I cannot recommend enough. There’s a sequel to it – don’t watch that one. But watch Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first, but you will see the experience of a group of people who had never played before sitting down and bringing an event and adventure to life, in this case, a Stargate adventure. So I cannot recommend that enough, if you’re interested, to see just how much fun you can potentially have. And in that case, they give you sound effects.

Wes Walker
Well, I’m really, really looking forward to this next weekend to see that group of players playing. There’s so much personality that’s going to be in that play test, it’s gonna be…

David Read
Oh God yeah, it’s gonna be like herding cats, and they’re gonna be all over the place like, “It’s your turn.”

Brad Ellis
I’m wondering how much gaming will actually take place?

David Read
I don’t know. But one way or another, it’s gonna it’s gonna be a hoot.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, it’ll be fun.

Wes Walker
Oh yeah, it’s gonna be great.

David Read
Any unexpected issues that came up with this particular title, in terms of game development, that you did not expect? Or was it really, you know, systematic, beginning to end? You know, “This is pretty straightforward.”

Brad Ellis
Well, I will say that we kind of expected this, but we’ve worked hard to try to mitigate it. And that’s the kind of the hitpoints problem with a modern sci fi game. So when you have a team that’s carrying around guns and shooting them at each other, when you get hit with a gun it really like, does damage right?

David Read
Yeah, it could kill you.

Brad Ellis
It basically could kill you. So…

David Read
A graze – how often do you get a graze?

Brad Ellis
Having to deal with it, like having a pool of hit points, where you you kind of lose it over a period of time after you’ve been hit a few times, it’s really hard to put your head around, because typically in the real world once you get hit with a bullet once you’re going down. So the way Mack Martin has kind of put it – and I think it’s really a great way to put it – is that your pool of hit points is not necessarily you getting hit, like shot in the arm twenty times. It is, you’re getting near grazes, you’re getting dust blown in your face, you’re having all kinds of things. Until you get down to about half your hit points, you’re just “scuffed,” meaning you have, you know, TV movie magic…

David Read
Right. You have plot armor. But yeah.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, and then once you get to half and below, you’re “wounded,” so you may have been actually shot in the arm or something. And then when you get to zero, that’s when you actually take that fatal blow. So if you put your mind around it in that particular way – and this is advice that we give in the book and how to Gatemaster a particular game – but that particular power curve of how much hit points certain characters should have, and the non player characters should have, was a challenge. It took a lot of testing and tweaking as we went.

David Read
And some people may be asking, like, “Fatal blow, you know, can’t you just respawn?” Depending on how faithful you are to the mechanics of this type of a system while you’re playing, and how honorable you are as a human being, your character can be killed.

Brad Ellis
Yep.

David Read
You bet.

David Read
I’m just saying it. So there are consequences to actions, you know, if all of you are playing the game in the spirit in which it is intended. So then you have to go off and make a new character.

Brad Ellis
So the way…go ahead

Wes Walker
I was gonna say, so something, too, that Mack has added is the Tension Die system. So with the Tension die, it is a D12 system. It ranges on, say, D4 being a more comical episode. There’s not going to be any fatal blows. And then you have your D12 system, which would be like a series finale, where there’s a possibility that you’re not going to make those deaths save throws.

David Read
The stakes are real. Realer.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. So each episode the Gatemaster sets what Tension die it is, and tells the players at the beginning of the adventure, so they know what to expect. So are you going to have, you know, Episode 200-type episode? Are you going to have, you know, the season finale of season six, or whatever. And that dice is also used by the combatants that you’re fighting against, or in negotiations and things like that. It’s a dice that’s actually rolled by the players and the Gatemaster. So it can really level up the game, if you will, depending on what’s going on.

David Read
Wow. Tell us about some of the new species that you’re introducing.

Brad Ellis
Sure!

David Read
We went round and round on this, what was it, like 18 months ago, 16 months ago, about this, this one species in particular that I’m thinking of, but go ahead.

Brad Ellis
The Aturen?

David Read
The Aturen.

Wes Walker
So we really liked some of the higher-up races: the Nox, the Tollan, the…

David Read
The Tok’ra.

Wes Walker
The Tok’ra, the…oh my gosh.

Wes Walker
The Langarans?

Wes Walker
I’m like at a blank.

Brad Ellis
Asgard!

Brad Ellis
The Asgard.

Wes Walker
The Asgard. So mainly, say the Nox and the Asgard. So these races, they would not make a equal playing ground for everybody, because of the way that they’re so advanced. Well, we felt that we liked the Nox enough where we could go ahead and make a similarity to the Nox, maybe a race that was raised to be peaceful, but they’re curious, they’re still young. So we wanted to go ahead and create a race for that. So we created the Aturen. And the Aturen have been basically nurtured by the Nox. They were a warring race. They were on the verge of self-destruction.

David Read
“The very young do not always do as they are told.”

Wes Walker
Exactly, exactly. So they were nurtured, they were taught how to respect their planet, to respect each other. But again, still young, still curious. They wanted to go out and explore. They didn’t want to have a passive perspective, like the Nox. Because there’s more to learn. There’s more to the universe than just hanging out at our planet.

Brad Ellis
Well, there’s factions, there’s houses within the Aturen world, and each house that they have has different looks upon their base code, moral code. And each house has a slightly different take on… Some of them are very staunch, “We are not going to…, we’re very much pacifist.” And then there’s others that are like Wes was saying want to adventure and want to get out there. And people are probably wondering, like, why haven’t we seen the Aturen in the TV show or anything like that as of yet? Because we really wanted it, it was really important to us, that we stay true to the canon of Stargate SG-1, right? And so when we… There’s some very core elements, story elements that are explained in in our core rulebook. There’s a whole settings chapter within the book that talks about the Aturen in particular, where they’ve been, why they haven’t been discovered up to this point.

David Read
It’s a fair question.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. So we haven’t covered this yet, but the setting for the book, we started it at season six, episode nine, basically.

David Read
I think it’s “Allegiance,” if I’m not mistaken.

Brad Ellis
Allegiance, that is correct.

David Read
Okay. Whew!

Brad Ellis
That was good! It’s the point when basically the Tok’ra and the rebel Jaffa are starting to come together with the Tau’ri, and they’re really starting to form these alliances. So, at that point, what the United States government decided – this is where our story picks up – the government decided that we needed another base, that we could bring together all the freedom fighters from across the galaxy to go on Stargate missions, similar to SG-1. But with this coalition, because we didn’t want to bring them back to Earth into Cheyenne Mountain, because that would be just, aliens on earth…

David Read
They’re already busy.

Brad Ellis
That’s weird. And aliens on earth, ah! Don’t want that.

David Read
Right. We’ve already got a couple – Martin Lloyd, Teal’c, absolutely.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. So the Phoenix Site was created, and our team of Phoenix-1 – which is our iconic characters that are part of the game, in part of the setting chapter as well that’s out there – is made up of the various races, the Tok’ra, the Jaffa, Tau’ri obviously, but humans in general. So it’s not necessarily just humans from Earth, but it can be humans from all the other human void…worlds. We have Unas, which was a really, really fun one to to to add as a playable race. And then of course, this one that Wes was just talking about, the Aturen, was added to the mix.

David Read
The Aturen. I originally, in our first podcast, had brought up to Darren that it was a human race, and that was incorrect. They’re pointy-eared, right?

Brad Ellis
Yes, correct.

David Read
And they are their own species. And they are, kind of, more or less, safe to say, your answer to the, kind of, elf kin. Is that correct? In terms of the direction that you guys are wanting to take?

Brad Ellis
Yeah, they’re more the nature type character that is obviously peaceful. That’s why having them nurtured by the Nox made so much sense, because that’s kind of the direction we wanted to go. And there’s there’s a little Easter egg in the name of the Aturen that I’m wondering if anybody will catch at some point. Try spelling it backwards. I’m sorry, it’s not backwards.

Wes Walker
Yeah. Grab the “n” to the front. Push the “n” to the front.

David Read
Oh, for Pete’s sake, you guys are bad. I’ll let everyone else online do that on their keyboards as well. It didn’t occur to me one bit. And good for you to sticking with canon in that, you know, you can’t have a Nox. They wouldn’t do it. Unless you had a rogue Nox. And even then, I mean, they’d still be so powerful…

Wes Walker
Yeah, it wouldn’t be playable, there wouldn’t be hundreds of them.

David Read
Right. And Brad Wright argued that it was his personal opinion that the Nox were the most powerful species in SG-1.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, they could raise from the dead. Exactly. Absolutely. They

David Read
Exactly, absolutely.

Brad Ellis
They can be invisible.

David Read
Yeah, the Asgard could on a couple of occasions as well. But yeah, I’m not gonna get into the minutiae there, the weeds. But it’s really cool to have that species along. And a lot of people may be like, well, if this is as big as you guys say, why didn’t we hear about it? And if you look at a season three episode of SG-1, where – it’s called Shades of Grey – and Jack is talking to Daniel. There were other sites out there besides Alpha site, and Jack was supposed to command one. And it was going to be a big deal. And it was his excuse for leaving the SGC, to find the moles in their midst. But we were talking, a fan brought up with – yesterday with Joseph Malozzi – all these different patches for the F-302, all these different groups, squadrons for the F-302s. There was a ton of stuff going on that we don’t even know about. We’re just seeing the top level of this operation. Millions and tens of millions of dollars spent annually on these things. It’s entirely reasonable that this could be going on right under our noses, and they never brought it up.

Brad Ellis
Speaking of patches, that’s another one of the stretch goals that was unlocked. We have a Phoenix Site patch that you can use for your roleplaying outfit.

David Read
Wow, that is terrific. Is it a sew-on, or is it like Velcro?

Wes Walker
It’s just a standard patch. I do believe that we’re going to try and make it iron-on. I mean, you could sew it on, you could have Velcro backing on it. But yeah, we’re…

David Read
That’s extremely cool, guys.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, we’re excited about it.

David Read
Will any show characters appear in any of these missions at all? Is there even a chance of that? Can you not do that based on the license? Can that even be a thing?

Brad Ellis
So again, the core rulebook itself, it’s not necessarily about you know, Jack O’Neill, Samantha Carter. It’s setting up the rules for playing a roleplaying game in the SG-1 universe. And so you create the characters, it’s up to you to create the characters, and if everybody created Jack O’Neill, that would be, you know, kind of – it doesn’t make sense. Head-canon wise, it doesn’t make sense, right? Because you can’t be Jack O’Neill. Jack O’Neill’s Jack O’Neill, and he’s already in this universe running around. So it’s up to you to build, you know, to go to the core rulebook and make a character that is an SG team member to play.

Wes Walker
By all means, if you’re at a homebrew, and you want to create SG-1 as your team for our game, you can do that. If you wanted to create a story or a mission, where Jack O’Neill is…you’re having to escort SG-1 through a forest or whatever, on a mission, then you can do that for your homebrew. It’s however you want to create it. However you want to run it.

David Read
Understood.

Brad Ellis
But as far as our published missions, our episodes are going, there very well could be some some known people show up.

David Read
There’s my answer.

Brad Ellis
Yes, yes.

David Read
That’s awesome. Reason enough to join in. How many players are optimal? And what’s the minimal number?

Brad Ellis
So you need at least one Gatemaster, so that’s one person. And then at minimum, I feel like you need two players.

Wes Walker
Yeah. It would not be great to play one. You could play one, don’t get me wrong, but that’s…I’ve done it before.

David Read
“I am God, you do what I say.”

Wes Walker
Right, I’ve had that before. But yeah, optimally, it’s two as a minimum, and six as a max. Five I feel like is just a good table? So five is probably the optimal number.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, five players and one Gatemaster.

David Read
Very good. Wow. And a typical mission takes…we did it in two and a half, three hours.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. To really get into it and get into the story and things like that.

David Read
And we also created characters in that timeframe, too.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, about three hours. And then from week to week, you can continue the same story, right?

Brad Ellis
Absolutely!

David Read
The first week is one episode. The next week you can have episode two and etc. And it carries on the entire season of your version of your Phoenix Site team.

David Read
Absolutely, guys, this has been such a treat. I want to bring in some fan questions from the live audience. We’ve got 86 concurrent viewers right now. Thank you so much, everyone who’s tuned in to listen to us yap. This is a truly outstanding product. And I’m not just saying that because I was involved in editing and – thank you – I got to write the foreword for it. Thank you so much, that was such an honor. But it’s a really cool product, and I highly recommend going to the Kickstarter page for the SG-1 roleplaying game and checking it out. The link will be below after the show. So let’s get into some of the fan questions here. I think some of them have already been covered. Will asked, “Did you get a license from MGM to make the game?” That’s kind of necessary!

Wes Walker
Absolutely.

Brad Ellis
That’s step one.

David Read
Step one, we don’t want it to get shot down.

Wes Walker
Right. We’ve been in correlation with MGM, I feel like it’s been daily. From the beginning, so yeah, we’ve been working with MGM with this, definitely.

David Read
Scotty 0709: “Is there going to be a digital version of this game?” So we’ve already established that the episodes are going to be digital. But I think they’re talking about the the core rulebook as well, can you obtain it digitally?

Wes Walker
On the Kickstarter, there’s a pledge level that will give you the PDF version, the digital PDF version.

Brad Ellis
I think maybe he might be referring to if we’re going to do a virtual tabletop adaptation of the miniatures and stuff like that. It’s entirely possible. As we produce the missions, the episodes that we have, it’s very likely that we will publish them on to some of the more famous or well known virtual roleplaying game sites.

David Read
Okay. But this isn’t necessarily something that you would have in house to build up on your own website with your own code and everything else.

Brad Ellis
No, the actual play, the online tabletop things, that’s well done by many other companies. And that’s not what we’re going to be building.

David Read
Makes sense.

Brad Ellis
We will build the online character sheet builder, because it’s core to our game. And the hope is – and don’t hold me to this – is that we will have some export features that allow you to bring those into those other game systems.

David Read
Very cool. Teresa McAllister: “What would you see is an ideal number of people to play?”

Wes Walker
So like I was saying earlier, five would probably…well, six: One Gatemaster and five players.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, that’s ideal. And those of you who are worried about, you know, maybe getting the game and you can’t think of anybody that you would play it with, there is an online community that is thriving, to play these games online. If you go to stargatetherpg.com, we have forums of lots of people looking for players. And just going to roll20.net, there’s places, people looking for players.

David Read
Make some friends!

Brad Ellis
Make some friends.

David Read
Some digital friendlies.

Wes Walker
You can go to our Discord, there’s plenty of people on our Discord. But also, like Brad was saying, on the website we have our groups, and you can go join a group, a gaming group.

David Read
Discord is like a messaging service, like game integration system. It’s a really cool feature. It allows some chat and things like that. So there’s an app for that.

Brad Ellis
There’s an app for that.

Wes Walker
Exactly.

David Read
Jonas: Do you intend to feature the Ancients in some way?

Brad Ellis
So in our Life Forms chapter, or it could be in the Gatemaster chapter. I can’t remember exactly, we definitely do cover the Ancients or the Ascended, and also the nearly-Ascended type beings. Those are mechanics, or advice on playing them. Because truly they’re kind of like gods, if you will, they can do anything. So how do you write a mechanic for a god?

David Read
It’s all about boundaries, you have to establish some boundaries.

Brad Ellis
Yeah. I mean, obviously, they have the non interference thing that they have. But beyond that, you know, writing rules for ascended beings is kind of, “Can’t go there.” But we do give some advice in the book about how to how to run those as a player and also as a player – if maybe that’s your path, maybe you’re trying to become Ascended. That’s a path that you may go on.

David Read
Talking about writing your character out of the game, though. But still, I mean, what an arc! And you know, look at Daniel Jackson.

Brad Ellis
Daniel Jackson did it!

David Read
And then he fell so that’s true.

Brad Ellis
And he fell.

David Read
And they took all his clothes off and threw him on a planet. Spooky Trixie: How much SG knowlege do players need? I am a huge Stargate fan, but many people that I would want to play with me or not? That’s a good question. Thank you Spooky Trixie,

Brad Ellis
Wes, you want to take that?

Wes Walker
I would have to say, you don’t need any. If you get our core rulebook, you won’t need any SG knowledge at all because everything that you need to play is in the book. It’ll give you that background, it’ll give you that knowledge, it’ll give you new knowledge from our story chapter. So you don’t really need to bring anything with you. But by all means, go watch the series. Because it will definitely give you a better perspective and better idea of the game style you’re going to be representing.

Brad Ellis
Yep. And also want to say the opposite too. If you have no game knowledge, like gaming knowledge, at all, and you’re just a Stargate fan, the book is also just…it’s got a ton of information. It’s got a settings chapter that’s going to be really fun to read. And the mechanics for… One of the core reasons we chose 5th Edition was that it’s very easy for new players…

David Read
User friendly.

Brad Ellis
Very user friendly. One of our core tenants as Wyvern Gaming is approachable games for everyone. So when we make games, we try to make sure that you can sit down and start playing within 15, 20 minutes. But it can be a complex game as it goes, but the rules are simple. And that’s kind of like what 5th Edition is: It’s simple to get started and get going, but then it can be really complex, if you want it to.

David Read
It grows with you. Yeah, I mean, you never have had to have done anything, Dungeons & Dragons or anything like this, before to make it work. I can attest to that reading through the documentation. It’s like, I could sit down here and pick this thing up within like a half an hour or so. You’re learning as you go with the people, your peers, as you go. So that’s really cool.

Brad Ellis
That’s a great thing about a cooperative game, is if you have at least one person at the table that’s played, you know, a D&D type game before, it’s gonna be really easy for everybody.

David Read
Ákos Tamás Nováki: Do you have plans in future episodes, to expect later campaigns to cover season seven or eight, or perhaps, in a few years, the Ori crossover with the Icarus Base, things like that?

Brad Ellis
So our hope is, obviously, that this thing goes really well. And it has been so far. So it’s been our plan all along to continue down this road with expansions and continued seasons. Wes has already mentioned that we’re already planning season two of our Living Campaign. So we’re starting at season six, episode nine. We’re going to progress the timeline as we go. So as the season goes… I think we’re doing half seasons in our makeup. I don’t want to give too much away, but…

Wes Walker
Yeah, I wouldn’t give too much away.

David Read
Let’s be safe. Absolutely. And Bomber Whites: Could there be a potential expansion for Atlantis as well, in the future?

Wes Walker
Yeah, yes. There’s a potential. There’s a potential there.

David Read
We have to get this one off the ground first though, folks.

Brad Ellis
That’s right.

David Read
Angie: Will there be any solo missions?

Brad Ellis
Solo missions, so you mean you’ll be able to play it by yourself?

David Read
Yeah, I mean, if you want to just sit there and imagine a story for yourself?

Brad Ellis
Okay, so I guess the best way that I could state this would be, so this is Stargate. In many missions, and in many episodes of Stargate, you see where the team gets split up, the party is split. So I could see where a GM could create a mission where his whole party – even though you’re sitting, having a table of five people sitting in front of you – every member of the party has been split. So they’re running their own solo mission for that particular mission at one time. I could see that.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, and splitting the party was a really cool thing.

David Read
It’s not normally done, right?

David Read
Yeah.

Brad Ellis
In Dungeons & Dragons that is like a big no-no, you do not split the party. But in Stargate, they do it all the time. You know, the scientist people go and they solve the problem while the warrior guys go and hold off the Replicators, right? And so we wanted to make sure that we had a game that could support that. And it was really when we had the aha moment of, “Oh, everybody has radios. They can just talk to each other like normal.”

David Read
That makes sense.

David Read
They can all talk to each other over comms.

Brad Ellis
They can, just like they would normally be at the same table in the same group. You’re still playing together. It’s just that physically, your characters have split up. So it works out really well, and it’s really fun. Especially in a GM situation, being able to run those two different things back and forth, and setting the mood and setting the pace of things. And we’ve got advice for this in our Gamemaster chapter as well.

David Read
I can attest to the mechanics of that, having played the one for ComiCon. And the soldiers are busy dealing with this creature that exists in some kind of spacetime continuum that’s dealing blows to our people. And that’s clear across town, and I’m in the local library, going through books like Daniel, just trying to find a solution to what’s attacking these guys. But then once I find the solution, I have to get to them, you know, so that was a separate issue entirely, too, because there was something that I had that they physically needed.

Wes Walker
But in the meantime, you could relay – as soon as you find that information in that book – then you could relay it to the team. “Hey, guys, you’ve been doing it all wrong the whole time. This is this is the catch with this guy, how to get him.

David Read
Right, I can’t remember what the situation was, but I had to be…they needed me for something. And I ran and ran.

Wes Walker
I think your team actually needed you to help drag some people out.

Brad Ellis
By the way…

David Read
That’s right! They were falling like, left and right.

David Read
Only fools rush in.

Brad Ellis
Yes, only fools rush in. If people want to watch that episode, it’s still available on our YouTube channel.

David Read
We are linking it below.

Brad Ellis
Wyvern Gaming’s YouTube channel.

Wes Walker
And that was the play test that David Hewlett was in, too.

David Read
That’s exactly right. He was rolling around as the Unas. That was so funny.

Wes Walker
Yeah, taking a few blows for the team.

David Read
The Cancer Man: Would this game possibly tie into the new series Brad Wright is developing? So you guys are a license.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, we’re a license. So we’re licensed as Stargate SG-1 currently, so everything that is in the book today is from content for seasons one through six of Stargate SG-1. Does that answer the question?

David Read
Got it.

Wes Walker
Anything new that’s coming out, we would love to be able to partake in it.

David Read
Perfect. Well, I mean, if this is successful, why the heck not, you know? But I think the Atlantis fans would cry foul if you skipped over. The Pegasus Galaxy is rife, and the Wraith I can only…I mean, the Wraith are a very potentially Dungeons & Dragons-oriented species. You know, for that type of game mechanic. I can think of all kinds of things. Reduction of life, this and that. Jorge Aries: Spanish translations, other language translations for the book?

Brad Ellis
So we’ve been getting this question quite a lot. And we know that global audience fans are everywhere. And it’s not currently planned to do a translation; however, it’s definitely something that we’re strongly considering.

Wes Walker
Again, this relies on the success of this Kickstarter.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, it really does.

David Read
Okay.

Brad Ellis
So right now, the only thing we have planned is the English version.

David Read
Okay. So not beyond the realm of possibility, but right now we’re getting our ducks in a row for this.

Wes Walker
Oh yeah, definitely not beyond the realm, though. We’re teeter tottering on whether to push that button, it’s just that we really, really need the push.

David Read
Right. And then what language do you pick? I mean, there’s a huge German audience, there’s a huge French audience.

Brad Ellis
We may even just do a Kickstarter just by language.

David Read
That’s not a bad idea. See if the audience is there.

Brad Ellis
Yeah, just to see what the audience size is. Because if it’s… You know, we can’t create a book for, you know, a small set of people.

David Read
Yeah.

Brad Ellis
It’s got to be a decent number of people in order for us to…

David Read
Right, you have to reach a certain critical mass.

Brad Ellis
There is.

Brad Ellis
Yeah.

David Read
That makes sense, just to make it viable. Indie Warners: Will there be a space battle system in the core rulebook? This is all ground based.

David Read
Is there?

Wes Walker
There’s space.

Brad Ellis
There’s a chapter called Encounters, and it’s split into two groups: There’s plot encounters, which are kind of your social kind of encounters, you know, convincing people and interrogating people and things like that. And then you have your action encounters. And there’s some really cool ones. The one that you would normally think of is – in D&D – is what we call skirmish. So it’s played on the grid map, and you move your miniatures and you play within one-meter squares. We have one called firefight, which is played on 10 meter squares, and it’s more of a macro, top-down view of the board, where you’re shooting, you’re having a firefight from a long distance between two set of combatants that…

David Read
Kind of like Battleship?

Brad Ellis
No, no, this is ground battle.

David Read
Okay, got it.

Brad Ellis
I’m building to that. And then we have we have aerial combat, which is rules that…how to have space…not space battles, but…

David Read
Death Gliders and things like that.

Wes Walker
It’s how to fight in a three dimensional space, not just the two dimensional plane, so it works for both within the atmosphere, and then also in space. That’s the mechanic.

Brad Ellis
Well, I would say that what the rules that we have are more for in-atmosphere stuff, simply because really where we are in the show, space battles have not really come about.

David Read
Exactly!

Brad Ellis
So in perhaps one of our expansions, we will expand on that for space battles, but space combat…

David Read
So the mechanics of that exist out there for you to adapt.

Brad Ellis
Right.

Wes Walker
So the mechanics are there; however, the ships aren’t necessarily there yet.

David Read
Well they weren’t, we didn’t even have Prometheus off the ground yet.

Wes Walker
Correct.

David Read
Just the X-302. So it was just an experiment, and it failed.

Wes Walker
So while the mechanic is there, it’s just that you won’t be able to – unless you create your own Prometheus then you know, that’s…

Brad Ellis
Yeah, and space combat acts a little different than in-atmosphere combat.

David Read
Okay.

Brad Ellis
Just slightly.

David Read
Benjamin Shrank: I’m on Kickstarter, and I noticed it said the gamers bundle does not include the physical miniatures. Where’s the option to include those miniatures?

Brad Ellis
Great question. So that is a stretch goal that has not even yet been revealed.

David Read
But you heard it here first on Dial the Gate, folks.

Brad Ellis
Yep. So as we unlock more and more stretch goals, we reveal the next set set of them. And we do have some stretch goals lined up planned for physical miniatures. We had a lot of backers who were asking for kind of a bundle, if you will, pledge level. So there was some things that we had to make sure that it made sense economically, for us and for everyone. So we created the bundle, but we had to put in some caveats in it. And it’s that there’s the Phoenix Site season, the – I’m sorry, the Living Series Season Pass – and physical miniatures, if and when they get unlocked, won’t be in the bundle that he’s talking about.

David Read
Okay, yeah. I mean, if you’re gonna do a physical game, you got to have yourself a, you know, you got to have yourself a Stargate. So I mean, come on.

Brad Ellis
But speaking of miniatures, there are some stretch goals that we have on here for digital STL files, which, if you know what those are, those are the files that you need to get things 3D printed.

David Read
Yes!

Brad Ellis
So you can take those files and there are services online, or if you have a 3d printer at home, you’ll be able to use the files to print. We have our iconics characters that is currently revealed, and there could be more, maybe.

David Read
Very cool. Guys, that is, I think, everything from the fan base. So do you have anything else that you would like to add before I cut you loose? Is there anything that you want to covered?

Brad Ellis
I just want to say thank you to you, David, you’ve been with this project since the very start, like really the very start. And you’ve been always a voice of reason. Anytime we were like, “How do you spell the Tac gun?” you’re like there for us.

David Read
Tacluchnatagamuntoron, yeah, absolutely.

Brad Ellis
So and as he mentioned before, David was gracious enough to give us a foreword for the book. So be looking forward to reading that as part of the game.

David Read
Wes, go ahead.

Wes Walker
I just wanted to thank all of our followers and our fans and our play testers. I mean, it’s just…the Stargate fan base is just a wonderful fan base. I mean, I haven’t met or come across anybody that I haven’t enjoyed talking to.

Brad Ellis
Yup, for sure.

David Read
I cannot speak highly enough about you guys in terms of how much you care about the IP and the integrity of the IP as actual fans yourselves. You get it. It wasn’t just like, “Let’s just throw in the Nox.” Or, you know, it wasn’t that the power of the Nox kept you from using the Nox. It’s that who the Nox are made it not well suited for the game. And you could have done it anyway – I think probably MGM would probably stopped you…

Wes Walker
But by all means, like you said earlier, we could have made a rogue faction of the Nox.

David Read
Right!

Wes Walker
But that’s not, you know, that…

David Read
It doesn’t make sense! And that level of detail that you have been giving the project, and coming to me with those like kinds of questions like that, like the name for the staff, the Ma’tok staff weapon and little things like that, and we’re going back and forth over those conversations, and weighing the pros and cons about, “Okay, what actually exists on screen? What is it that the novels or any of the other ancillary content has done? What is it that the fans don’t even know about and wouldn’t really care about, and just balancing out a good game.” I’ve been really impressed. And I am so excited that the project has come as far as it has on Kickstarter, in the short time that it’s been online.

Brad Ellis
We are too, and thank you to all our backers. And if you’re listening to this, please share our project to other Stargate fans you know. I know there’s more of you out there that would love this game. If you have a gamer friend that kind of might like to watch Stargate, I think that they would really enjoy this game. So please share it with your friends, I think they’ll get a real kick out of it.

David Read
And we have no excuse now, with tools like Zoom and everything else, these free services that we have. We’re at a point right now, where the stratospheric levels of depression and anxiety and everything else that’s going on, and where there’s a will, there’s a way. We have the tools available now to communicate with one another online, to provide ourselves a little bit of entertainment. And, you know, it can make all the difference. Absolutely. And yeah, I look forward to playing this with my friends.

Brad Ellis
I can’t say enough good things about roleplaying games in general. It really takes people who might normally have trouble communicating with others, and it really opens up their imagination. And a lot of times it is the foray into having a better life, having friends, having different things that you’re not necessarily used to doing. A roleplaying game really is just magical. And combining it with sci fi, it just makes a lot of sense.

Wes Walker
Yeah, I’ve seen some huge transfer transformations on a table. You would know a person for years, that have never played a roleplaying game. And then they go through and they create this character and like, wow, they just created this character that is totally not like them. And then to see them actually play this character, it’s like, “Well, I never knew you were like that,” and they didn’t know they were like that either.

David Read
An aspect of themselves that just doesn’t get exercised.

Wes Walker
Exactly!

David Read
You know…

Brad Ellis
Some people may think roleplaying is acting. I just want to also make this clear: You don’t have to dress up, although that’s fun. You don’t have to speak in character, you don’t have to do any of that stuff, unless you want to. It’s a really fun thing to do at the table. But it’s not necessary. It’s an optional thing. You can just play your character in third person, and a lot of people do that. But you can play it in a first person type of mindset. And it’s really up to you, however you want to play it. You can even have a mix of players at your table that’s doing it in different ways, and it’s okay, it’s perfectly fine. So if you’re just afraid of playing the game, because you think that it’s kind of weird, or it’s like kind of a LARP-y kind of thing, that maybe it’s not something that is something – a style that you could you could adapt – you can still try this and do what’s comfortable to you. And you’re gonna have a lot of fun with it.

David Read
Absolutely. As long as you’re willing to follow the same rules that are laid out in the mechanics, and are willing to share a theater of the mind space, you can do anything that you want with it. It’s imagination.

Brad Ellis
Imagination.

David Read
And that we can all do that. Because we were all once children.

Brad Ellis
That’s right. It’s like playing army man on your…

David Read
Absolutely. Brad, Wes, thank you, this was fantastic. I appreciate you guys being on. All the best success. I think it’s going to do gangbusters. And I think that the folks in here are going to definitely help us spread the word. And I look forward to talking with you guys… Wes, are you going to be talking with us next weekend?

Wes Walker
I’ll be with you next weekend, yes. I don’t want to clutter up the Zoom too much, but it’ll be cool to be there.

David Read
It’s gonna be crazy! I’m not even playing now. It’s like, if I can trade myself out for a Stargate actor, I’m sorry guys, but I’ve got to do it, I’m gonna take one for the team. So it’s gonna be so cool to watch them play.

Brad Ellis
For sure.

Wes Walker
Yeah, it’s gonna be a blast.

David Read
All right, folks. Brad Ellis. Wes Walker. Wyvern Gaming. Go to the kickstarter.com website and search for the Stargate SG-1 Roleplaying Game, or look for it in the link below. I’m going to have the…

Brad Ellis
The easiest way to get to it, go to stargatetherpg.com, and there’s a link right there, right at the top of the page.

David Read
Okay, very good. And I’m going to add that as soon as we hang up from this call, so perfect, guys. Thank you so much, blessings, stay safe, okay? Be well, gentlemen. Bye, bye.

Brad Ellis
Bye.

Wes Walker
Bye.

David Read
Brad Ellis, Wes Walker from Wyvern. Thanks so much for hanging on, folks, I really appreciate you being there. And I have a little piece of fan art to show you before I let you go. This was submitted by Hito. She provided us the artwork for our first show. And this was the other piece that I really wanted to share. This is an amazing work of art. And I love the wonder on each of the characters’ faces. If you go to Hito’s website, and you take a – I’ll share the link in the video below – and you take a look at all the images of SG-1, you see Jack watching over Sam. He’s always looking at her. And there’s just something that I really love about that. This art is absolutely magnificent. And I just really want to thank you Hito for allowing me the opportunity to show this to fans. Before we go: If you like what you’ve seen in this episode, I would really appreciate it if you’d click that Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm, and it will definitely help the show grow its audience. We’ve grown over leaps and bounds this weekend, and I think we’re just getting started, so please consider that. Also, if you’d like, share this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe button. If you plan on watching live, I really recommend giving the bell icon a click. So you’d be the first to know of any schedule changes, which are going to happen now and then. And clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on both the Dial the Gate and gateworld.net YouTube channels. The clips are designed to relay specific moments from the specific episodes. That’s all I’ve got for you guys. It has been a whirlwind of a weekend. My thanks to Mr. Tony Amendola, Mr. Joseph Malozzi, Mr. Joe Flanigan, and Mr. Brad Ellis and Mr. Wes Walker. You guys were fantastic. I cannot thank Jen, and I cannot think Gate Gabber enough for my help, for the help that they’ve provided me as production assistants. Sommer, Keith, Tracy and Ian, you guys are the best. This team has come together so quickly. I really want to use this platform to show MGM and those like them that the Stargate fan base is thriving. And what this past week has shown is that that is indeed the case. We’re not going anywhere. In some ways, we may just be getting started. So I appreciate your time tuning in. Thank you so much for being here. We’re going to be back next weekend. And I don’t have the the guest list built yet. I was going to show it here. I’m going to post it momentarily. We’re going to be starting off next weekend with Mr. Paul McGillion himself, Dr. Carson Beckett from Atlantis. And he is going to be on at 12 noon Pacific Time on Saturday, October the 17th. Then, cowriter and producer of Stargate the feature film, Mr. Dean Devlin will be joining us. This is going to be a fantastic hour and a half. Bring your questions. October the 18th, Sunday, we’re going to have what we’ve been mentioning here: the Stargate SG-1 Roleplaying Game gameplay featuring Rodney McKay, David Hewlett; Skaara/Klorel, Alexis Cruz; Aiden Ford, Rainbow Sun Francks; Ka’lel, Simone Bailey; Eli Wallace, David Blue; and Ginn, Julie McNiven: six fantastic actors who have agreed to take part in a simulated Stargate mission. It’s gonna be pretty cool. I’m gonna let you guys go. I’ve got to get some rest for the weekend. Not sure how often I can do that. But I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and I hope it was time well spent. My name is David Read. Thanks for watching Dial the Gate. I’ll see you on the other side.