Think Like A Game Designer - Scott Morris — Making Memories Over Games, Navigating Personal Tragedy, and the Law of First Principles (#111)

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

About Scott MorrisScott Morris is the founder and CEO of Steel Wing Games, a boutique tabletop publisher focused on approachable, high-quality games, as well as the Global Brand Director for Lucky Duck Games under Goliath. A two-decade industry veteran, Scott previously served as Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Lucky Duck and President of Passport Game Studios. His latest project, Rainbow Boulevard (designed by Adam Wyse), represents a decade-long journey of patience, personal resilience, and deep human connection. In this deeply moving episode, Scott shares the origin of Steel Wing Games, the harrowing personal tragedy that put his career on pause, and why game publishers aren’t just selling boxes, they’re building lifelong memories. Plus, we unpack the mechanics of eliminating player downtime, the shift from positions to principles in design debates, and what it really takes to launch a crowdfunding campaign today. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

In this podcast, I speak with world-class game designers and creative pioneers across multiple industries. Each episode takes you on a deep dive into the creative process, exploring the nuances of game design and the extensive cultural, technological, and business factors influencing various creative fields. Tune in for practical tips and inspiring insights that will expand your creative perspective, whether it's inside the gaming realm or beyond. I have something I am so excited to finally announce. If you are serious about designing games, not just thinking about games, not just listening to the podcast and dreaming about games, but actually finishing your own designs, then I have created something for you. It is the brand new Think Like a Game Designer, Design Lab.

It is a step-by-step system that I have created and tested with dozens of other creators and other aspiring designers that includes over 60 lessons to take you from generating ideas to building prototypes to finding playtesters, refining. your core design loop all the way through publishing, running a crowd fund, and even getting hired in the industry. You'll also get access to my private design discord filled with me, members of the Stoneblade team, and other creators all actively building games. Plus, I've got some incredible bonuses for people who join right now and for long-time fans of the podcast. If you're ready to stop pretending and start actually designing games with intention, check

out the Think Like a Game Designer Design Lab at Justin Gary Design. In today's episode, I speak with Scott Morris. Scott is one of my favorite humans on the planet. He is now the founder and CEO of Steel Wing Games, an independent tabletop publisher, focused on creating approachable, high-quality games that bring people together. Scott has been on this episode before

and is a longtime industry executive. He is before launching Steel Wing Games. He was the chief of sales and marketing officer at Lucky Duck Games, and is still the global brand director for Lucky Duck Games at Goliath. We talked about that acquisition and what his role is. And it was a master class in branding the first time around. And this time, we get a master class in humanity. We learn a lot about what Scott went through and the patience that was required to bring Steelwing games and his new game Rainbow Boulevard to Life on Kickstarter, which will be launching on October 13th, 2026.

He went through an enormous personal tragedy and how he handles this and how he shows up for the world, for his family, for the industry is an amazing story. This is not where I thought this episode was going to go, but honestly, I think it may be one of the best episodes that I've ever recorded because it is real. And there is plenty of great useful tips for those of you. We talk about design principles. We talk about the challenges of principles versus positions.

We talk about how to launch a new company, what the difference between making games and making memories is. We talk about a ton of things about what makes this game Rainbow Boulevard work, different aspects of when you're trying to. to serve too many options to players. So there's tons of meat on the bone here in the traditional sense of the business and game design side, but there's also just some incredible personal stories here. Scott shares some. I share some. They will resonate with you. And if you're going through anything hard or any kind of struggle in your life, there's something in this episode for you.

So I won't tee this up anymore. Scott's an amazing human being. I'm going to let him speak for himself. So without any further ado, here is Scott Morris. Hello and welcome. I am back with Scott Morris. Scott. What's going on, buddy? Nothing. I'm good. How are you? Thanks for having you. Nothing. All right. Good chat. And next week we'll have on, no. I have Scott was on, you were on the podcast. It was two years ago, which is crazy to me. It doesn't feel like it was that long. I went back and re-listen to the old episode as a preparation for this one. And you and I, again, we see each other all the time at conventions. We always have

great conversations, but a lot has happened. And by the way, for anyone that is listening to this episode. As soon as it's over, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode. It is a masterclass in branding and in how to pitch games and a lot of your origin story, of course, but really super useful and interesting. And the way that you break down a lot of very difficult and complicated subjects and even subjects people don't have a lot of insight into, which is kind of the mergers and acquisitions and how brand and the company grows and then gets acquired and what that looks like. All this stuff got broken down in that episode. So I was like, great. Wow, that is the last time we talked was when Lucky Duck got acquired. That's right.

crazy. That feels like yesterday and 10 years ago all at the same time. Yeah, yeah. And so I was so excited when I learned about your new project, your new company, your new game. And I thought it was a perfect opportunity to have you back on because going from the part of a big company that gets acquired by a giant literal Goliath and then managing that process to deciding to go off on your own and build a system that is not. Okay. To take a high risk is a lower small independent studio, and there's a massive amount that goes into that.

And I want to understand why this, why now, why were you called to do it? And then we're going to go and bounce around into a lot of details about the game and the company and all the things that come in there. But yeah, talk to me about what made you decide this is what you wanted, this phase of your career. Sure, yeah.

So to fill in some of the. blank. So I have started my own publishing company called Steel Wing Games. It is a boutique publisher, I would say. We're focused on more on quality than on quantity. We have a very kind of direct path for the next three to five years of a small amount of games being released every year. In fact, right now it's only one game per year. The first game that we're starting with is a game called Rainbow Boulevard, which is designed by Adam Wise, who most people know from Roxley. He's a developer at Roxley. He's also designed several of his own games. He's actually designed my favorite party game of all time, which is called Gorilla Marketing, which is just absolutely

fun. But yeah, I'm still at Lucky Duck Games. I'm still global brand director for them and working through all the things we have going on there. But this has been definitely not a wake-up and let's decide to do something different on a Tuesday morning. This has been a lengthy process. Just as a side story, and this will go a little bit with the origin story, and I've talked about this a couple of other places. I don't think I ever talked about it with you. You asked a really good question and what drove you and what motivated you to get this calling and things like that. I am a firm believer after being in this industry for almost two decades. This is what I was put on the earth to do.

I was put here to make people smile through the medium of board games. And I know that 100%. After six months of working with Arcane Wonders, way back when I first started with Arcane Wonders, I met a family that informed me that our game helped them communicate with their autistic son. And it still, I get a little bit of chills when we talk about this. There's a much longer story to it, but the net net of it was our game helped them communicate with their autistic son. And I remember having a conversation that night with the team going, we are done. We are never going to get this emotionally high ever again, but we are going to chase

it for the rest of our lives. And I made a comment just completely out of off the cuff. And it has stuck with me ever since then. I looked at him and I said, we're not making games anymore. And they're like, yeah, we are. Like we need to pay rent and everything like that. I was like, no, no, no, no, we are. We make memories. That's what we're doing. And ever since that came out of my mouth, it was like the focus of my life was like, this is what I need to do. How did I start with Steelwing? That's a long origin story, actually. Steelwing, the company, Steelwing actually was formed in 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. Brilliant idea. Smart thing to do. You know, the world's in chaos and no one knows what's going on. We should start a company. Why not?

It was a good time to have to make games. So it was not a mistake from the business side on that time of it. It was. So there's actually, there's kind of two parts to this story. There's the life cycle of Rainbow Boulevard, the first game that we're releasing on Kickstarter here soon. And then there's a life cycle of steel wing games. And the two overlap, obviously, because Steel Wings releasing the game, but they didn't necessarily follow the same pathway. So I actually found the game in 2016. I was at Origins up at 3 a.m. playing games like you do at shows like that. I was actually checking out a bunch of different prototypes and just playing some games with some friends.

And Adam was there and he said, hey, can I show you a game? I was like, sure. And he pulls out this game that was God awful ugly. It was a spreadsheet. We were basically playing a spreadsheet. And I remember some of the people that were at the table were like, man, there's like, yeah, we're building little rainbow blocks. He had little tiny wooden rainbow blocks, kind of like what you would play in preschool. But there was no thematic to it.

There really, there wasn't a lot of depth to it. And the physicality of it was a prototype, right? And we've all been there in terms of being in the industry and seeing things that are homebrew or homemade and stuff. And the game itself was amazing. I remember sitting there going, there is something really cool here. I really dig this. So we had a long talk and talked about a couple things. And, of course, my first brain was like, you work at Roxley.

So this is a Roxley game, right? Like, when are they coming out with it? And he's like, no, they. So Gavin's not going to look at it right now. He said, he's working on this thing, this dice game, this combat yachtsy kind of thing. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And for anyone that doesn't know that ended up becoming dice thrown, which was I think it's pretty good life cycles.

Yeah. It's a phenomenal game, phenomenal game. I had a really good talk with Gavin about, hey, would like to be able to do it. But at the time, Steelwing didn't exist. At the time, I was actually president of Passport Game Studios, which was a division of GTS distribution. We would publish games. And I wanted to publish this game.

I thought it was a great idea. Unfortunately, my grandmother used to have a phrase that life is a four-letter word and life likes to throw curveballs at you. And the day that I was going to sit down and start having this conversation, with Adam about, hey, I want to give you a designer contract. I want to bring it in and do it at passport. The owners of passport decided that they were actually going to shut the business down. And they were going to redirect resources and focus on other things from a corporate perspective. So I basically went back to my friend and I said, hey, man, this won't work.

Like, I would love to do this, but it's just not going to work from a timing perspective. It's not going to work from a physical perspective. and his immediate reaction was, okay, how do we do it? And I'm like, what do you mean? How do we do it? And he's like, how do we do it? He's like, look, he goes, you love this game. You're very passionate about it. I would much rather be patient and work with you than just, okay, great, go find somebody else and hope it works out. We've talked about it on this podcast, and you've talked about a lot on the podcast with other guests, that there's a big value. in a designer and a publisher matching and having the same vision and having the same goals, rather than just signing a contract to get your game out there and hoping fingers crossed

that they do with it what you want to do with it. So we had a really good relationship like that, which was great. Yeah, relationships are at the heart of a lot of the stuff, but because it is, as you go through building games and putting things out there, there are inevitably amazing, huge challenges, very likely failure. Most games don't succeed, let's be honest. And having the relationship of somebody that you want to be in the trenches with, that you can make decisions that regardless of the commercial success,

the product that you're proud of the thing that you made, and you have got some joy and learnings out of the experience. That's what success is as you move from project to project and hopefully can pay your rent as you go along. Yeah, for sure. It's a big deal. And so I don't know if it was, if you were going to say, in terms of what caught your eyes specifically about this game?

What's the kind of core that said, yeah, this is a thing. I'm really passionate about it because of X. The number one thing, even in the prototype, in the early prototype, when we were playing it, it's funny. When I look at games, I get pitched a ton of games from being at Lucky Duck and where I'm sitting in the industry. When I actually sit down and play these games, I generally don't worry too much about the mechanics or what's going on.

or what's actually happening in the game, I actually watch other people that are playing the game and see what happens when it's not their turn. There are a lot of games that suffer and struggle from downtime. And you talked a little bit about kind of the failures and the things that can be challenges making the game. One of the most important lessons I learned in making my first game, Firefly Shiny Dice with Upper Deck, was the impact that downtime has on players when it's not their turn. So when I playtest a game and somebody finishes their turn and immediately picks up their phone, not to take a picture of the game, but to be on their phone and be distracted, I'm like, that's a big red flag for me, right? There's always opportunities. There's always things people

that need to pick up their phone for and stuff like that. But I really tend to look for are people actually engaged with the experience of playing the game? And that's a big green flag for me if they are engaged with it. If they're not, it's a big red flag. And when we played Rainbow Boulevard for the first time, it was a game called Lepracon tractors. It was a combination of leprechauns and contractors. And everyone, even that late at 3.30 in the morning,

when people are tired from working at the booth and just dealing with all the struggles of a convention, everybody was locked in. Everybody was paying attention because there's this simple mechanic that you can score your cards on anyone's turn at any given time. But it has to be what the game state is. So you have to pay attention of if I have a card, for example,

that scores with a rainbow that has a red and a blue piece, and I play the red piece, but you play the blue piece on your turn, I can score it immediately. But I need to pay attention for when that's happening and what's going on in the game. So it incentivizes players to pay attention. to each other. And in a way, we've had tons of table banter with that where it's like, hey,

Justin, it would be really great if you could just put a little more purple out there, maybe on the west side. Yeah, yeah. And it's just, it's such a fun experience. And that was the thing that really caught my eye. It was really special. I love that. Okay, great. Yeah. And definitely, this is one of the major design things that I also look for. So I just want to emphasize this. There's really two aspects of it. One is like, what's the emotional impact and investment of players around the table is like number one most important thing. And specifically, what does that mean when it's not your turn? How much are you?

I use poker as an example a lot of the times, right? Because your decision space and poker is often pretty limited and it's often not your turn. But man, oh man, you care about every little detail about what your opponents are doing while they're doing it. You want to know about the eye twitch. You want to know about the hesitancy and they're pushing their chips forward.

And I care so much. And so it's so super effective and it's one of the reasons that game is super successful. This one's really interesting in this model. So, okay, great. I love that. And then you've, so you've developed, you've got a passion for this game. It met your primary criteria of, man, people care and they're invested when it's not their turn. Still pretty raw at that time, but you were ready to go with it.

Business and the four-letter word of life happens and knocks this plan off and instead of the, oh, too bad, we'll go home. The plan is instead, we'll figure this out one way or another. one way or another is a story that is currently over a decade long. Yeah, yeah. That's a commitment. One, well, not by choice. Yeah, so it was late 2016, and Adam and I had talked about what it would mean for me to walk away from my day job and start my own business and kickstart the game.

And obviously, crowdfunding in general was a completely different space 10 years ago, a completely different space. I could argue and possibly write a thesis on better, but that's a longer story for a taller drink, as I say. So we started planning. We spent October to January kind of planning what it would mean. And we worked in a position where I would be starting a business investing in it. And he would basically be the lead designer of the game, but not really involved from a financial or a business perspective or an ownership perspective, which is fine because I really just needed him to focus on the game 100%. And I kid you not, Justin, the day, like the day. that I was ready to make this decision and tell my boss, hey, I'm going to leave, I'm going to start my own company.

My mom calls me, frantic, and she's telling me that my wife was in a car accident. And it dropped everything, ran to the hospital, and it was a disaster. We were living in Austin, Texas at the time. If anyone's ever been to Austin, Texas, downtown Austin is always traffic jam-packed on I-35 because it's just older roads, smaller ramps to get on and off and a lot of trucks. And she was in stopped traffic, like actually dead stop. And she was hit by a semi-truck doing 55 miles an hour. And it was bad.

It was close to, I think, 17 cars that were involved in the accident. It's a miracle. It's honestly a miracle that no one died in that accident. In fact, the first thing when I got to the hospital, I remember the police officer telling me, he said, I've been on the force 35 years. I've never seen an accident this violent or someone hasn't died. And I'm like, that's great, chief. Just get me to my wife.

I just want to get there. If you saw her physically, you would be amazed. She only had some scratches and bruises physically, but the damage was all internal. She had suffered a traumatic brain injury. She had a massive amount of memory problems at the beginning. And it was a situation where I just, I told Adam, I said, I need to focus on my family. Absolutely 100% need to focus on my family. And he was like, nope, don't even question that.

Don't even talk about it. Just go take care of it. And it was very tough. Let's put it in perspective. I've become very sensitive to people who suffer from migraines, people who suffer from head injuries, CTE, and it got concussions, things like that. I didn't realize how bad it was until we were in our first legal meeting with their, the insurance companies and things like that.

And they offered us a $10,000 settlement. And my wife broke down crying. And I'm trying to comfort her and console her. And she kind of composed herself. And she looked across the table. And she said, I have lost memories. She goes, I don't know if I'm ever going to get them back. And she looked a guy dead in the face.

and she goes, I cannot tell you how I gave birth to my boys. Go back and find another number. And it was the first time that she had ever brought that up. And we walked out of that meeting and sat in our car and probably spent the next four hours just sitting in that parking lot talking. And everything came to light for me as to what she was actually struggling with. And it was really tough. I do remember probably one of the toughest moments for me was when we went to our first neurologist meeting. And the neurologist pulled me aside when we were walking out and he said, hey, I just need to talk to you for a second.

Betsy went up to get a new appointment scheduled. And he said, I need you to be my eyes and my ears. He goes, I need you to pay attention to everything. He goes, there's no nice way to say this. Your wife has suffered a traumatic brain injury. He said, I need you to listen to everything, watch everything. She used to like country music. Now she likes rap.

She used to brush her teeth when she first wakes up. Maybe she takes an hour before she does that now. She used to like to run. Now she only likes to walk when she exercises. He goes, I need you to pay attention to everything. And my brain, like a game person, goes in like 800 directions at once. And I looked at him. I'm like, are you telling me that my wife might not like me anymore?

He goes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. I'm like, okay. Thanks, Doc. I was like, how do you, like, how do you even handle that, right? That baggage was insanely heavy. So for the next five years, literally, from 2017 and 2022, my entire focus on life was taking care of my wife, taking care of my family, make sure they were okay.

During that time, I worked at GTS distribution. I managed the board game business for them, which was great. And I cannot say enough good things about the people at GTS and how much. much they supported me and how much they helped me and my family through that time. And the same with Adam through that whole time. And I need to frame this. I never once said to myself, okay, we need to develop this game while I'm handling all my stuff as a family perspective. I presumed at this point, Adam was taking it in another direction, going in another space. And three years into that journey in like 2020, he came to me and he said, hey, he's

We haven't talked about this in a long time, but I'd really like to play Rainbow Boulevard with you. And I was like, okay, actually, leper contractors. We still hadn't gotten the name Rainbow Boulevard at that time. And he's like, I'd like to play leper contractors with you. I'm like, okay. I'm like, yeah, I'd love to. Where are you at with it? Who's doing it?

He's like, what do you mean who's doing it? You're doing it? I'm like, yeah, dude, I've been working with my family, like handling everything with this. He goes, that's fine. He goes, I'm patient, man. I'll wait. I don't care how long it takes. I'm like, holy crap.

like that that was a turning moment for him and I in terms of like friendship and alignment and just being human beings together right and he had been developing the game and he had been working on multiple different things for the game and we played it and I was like Adam it's even better like I'm amazed that this is what's been going on and this is where we are so we rekindled those fires and we were like okay let's see what we can do with this, right? So at that point, it started becoming a balance of managing family and managing an opportunity to actually build out a company and start doing this. So we started the LLC, we started stealing games. We didn't make any announcements. We didn't post anything about it or even create a website or anything. In hindsight, I can say I think we should have. I can argue that we probably should have actually made more of an effort to engage a community and tell people about what we were doing along the way. But as you said, you fail, you learn, you improve, and you kind of go forward. But Adam had spent so much time working on this and developing it and became

such a better game where it was. I was like, okay, yeah, we have opportunities with this. So, yeah, I've been talking for like, ask any questions. And I think this, I only learned about everything that had happened quite recently and to share it. I appreciate you sharing it here with you went through, obviously, one of the scariest and most nightmare situations that anybody can imagine, right? You get that phone call. I know I've had nightmares about that phone call. And then you have to go from, we're not sure what happened. She's alive, but there's these dangers to, I don't even know if she's going to be the same person. I don't know if she's going to recover her memories. And you have to face that from a day to day as well as

take care of not just of her, but of your family and keep a job and keep focused. And again, we interacted multiple times over these years when I didn't know idea what was going on and you still came across as the very positive, kind, upbeat person that I've always known you as. And we'll get back to the game side of things, but just on a personal level, like, how do you handle something like that?

Or what would you say to somebody else out there who's facing that kind of challenge and still? Because I know a lot of people that they say, oh, I wish I could be in games, I wish I could have this stuff, but I have this personal tragedy, I have this situation. It's really tough, and I can't do it.

I can't make it. And when I face various strategies in my life, I've definitely felt your physical blow that it is. And how do you get up and do that? I don't know if there's anything that you want to share on that front, but I can't just let that story go and jump back into game design. No, I understand completely. Yeah, it's obviously very different living on the inside than on the outside of that. I'm, I am a big believer after this entire experience. I should start off by saying, thankfully, she does still like me. So that has not changed, which is, or at least that's what she tells me. she has there are some small things that have changed and there was a little bit of me kind of having to learn to accept her for who she is now and accept those those small changes right which i've long said

i would rather struggle with her than without her so i'm very thankful that we are where we are yet i actually i had a conversation with a friend of mine about three or so years ago and he brought up a similar thing and he said to me he's like dude he goes i don't know how you can stay so positive amongst all just the absolute crap storm that comes your way because we've had so many little things on top of the big things. And I'm a big believer that everyone's struggling with something. I don't care who you are. I don't care how rich you are. I don't care how much you have, how much you don't have, where you are in life and your status. I think everyone is struggling with something. And a big part of it is how much you actually share and how much you are willing to talk with other people about.

I it's going to sound corny and it's going to sound silly and there's probably some people who are like, nope, I don't buy that. I don't believe that. I don't care about that. But a big part for me was my faith. A big part for me was understanding that I can't control some of this stuff, right? I can't fix her. I can't go back in time and save her from the accident.

I can't push a button or pull a lever and just magically bring her memories back. So I have to accept that this is going to be a process and it's going to be step by step. And there are going to be days where I wake up and I just want to scream at the top of my lungs and run away from everything and just fall into the pillow and yell. And then there's going to be days where I wake up and I'm thankful. And there's going to be days where I wake up and I'm just appreciative of the small details. My grandmother, she had tons of say. One of the one of the ones she used to say was don't worry about things you can't control. and as soon as you realize you can't control anything, you'll be fine.

And I do think you can control some things. I think one of the biggest things you can control is your reaction to things. I think we may not be able to control the things around us, but we can control how we react to those things. Some of my friends think I'm crazy for this. I could not. If you had a briefcase with a billion dollars in it and you said to me, who was the person that was driving the truck that hit your wife,

I could not tell you. because I did not want to know their name. I did not want to know who they were. I didn't want. I did honestly at the time, I didn't know what I would do. I was so angry. I used to call it banner mode. That's what I tell people.

I was just always angry. I was literally at that point where, and I knew, and I had a lot of internal kind of self-conversations about this, I knew I was an angry person. I knew I was very frustrated with kind of the cards life had dealt me. but I also knew that at the end of the day, most people don't care.

And I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that at the end of the day, you empathize with my position. You understand kind of what's been happening, what's been going on. But at the same time, you can't fix anything. You can be a friend. You can be there in support,

and you can be there from an emotional standpoint, and be there to be someone I can talk to, be someone I can hang out with, and help take my mind off things. And those things are extremely valuable. But at the same time, you have your life and you have your family and you have things that you're moving forward with and stuff. So I kind of took on the attitude of it's not necessarily me and mine to bear, but it's up to me to control how I react and control how I interact with people. And at times and opportunities where the discussion came up with people, I would share that information with them.

And at times where it didn't, I just didn't worry about putting it out there or anything. So a big part of it was me and my faith and putting faith in the fact that a greater power in the universe was going to help me get through this and help me move forward. And also just kind of realizing that there was no jump to the answer, right? There was no way that you were just going to wake up and be at the destination. It was going to be a process. So, yeah, I've had one friend who told me that I'm masochistically patient. I was like, okay, there's probably worse things to be. Yeah, yeah. The patience is definitely one of the themes that's come through here to get you to where you are. And that's a rare and valuable trait. One of my mantras is cultivate comfort with uncertainty and impermanence. I love that. Because it is just you cannot, you can, everybody struggle so much because they want to know what's going to happen. They want to know for sure that things are going to be okay. And they want to hold on to the way that their life is or certain things that they like. And none of those things are true. You will,

eventually lose everything and you cannot control what the future is going to break. I don't know, man. They keep telling me that everybody dies, but I've lived forever. So far so good. So far so good. It's like the turkey that's been taken care of all year by a very kind farmer. Nothing to suspect as November rolls around. We're going to be fine. Yeah. What's that ax for? Yeah. And then similarly, I think that you raised a part of this paradox, but I like to also embrace the paradox of take I take 100% responsibility for everything, even as I realize I have no control over anything, right?

It's a paradox on its face, but the world where I behave as though I have control and I can be, and I do what I can do. And that is mostly internally, do I live in accord to my values? How do I respond to things? Right. And this was a big part of why I attribute to my success in my, even my early magic career, right? I would just, most people would just be like, oh, I got unlucky. I got a bad beat.

I got a bad draw. I lost and blah, this sucks and get a rage at the world. And the opponent, and those people never got better. And instead, I'd be like, okay, yeah, that was unlucky. But if I made a different play seven turns earlier, or if I came here with a different deck, or if I just, okay, you know what, now I know that's that situation. I could set that up so the future is going to be better. Or sometimes it isn't.

You've got to be okay with that too. That's actually something from a game design perspective that I look at. When I finish a game and I don't win, if I can't look back, and understand where I've made mistakes or where I could have made better choices, that frustrates me. I want to be able to know, okay, this is what I could have done better or this is what I could have improved on it. Those same things go with life, right? Those are perfect. We're all imperfect beings and we're all going to make mistakes. I've made many of them. I've, as many people that I have in my life who tell me that they love me

and that I'm a good person, I have people who have told me that I'm an absolute jerk and I pissed them off to no end whatsoever. So I think it's a matter. of like you said, internalizing that stuff and taking responsibility and just saying, okay, what can I control and how can I get better? Yeah. And I don't really shared this publicly, but I went through a difficult time last year with my mom had a sudden pretty serious heart condition, had to go in for emergency surgery. I ended up, fortunately, I'm a nomad, so I just moved in with her, took care of her, she got through it and she survived. But it was a very tough several months that we went through. And I was not my best.

during that time, to say the least, right? There were not good days. I pride myself on how much I'm able to accomplish and run the company and do the park, and I was maybe a quarter of the hearing. I was going to say, I had no idea that you were struggling through that stuff. So that's, again, back to kind of the character

of how you handle yourself and what you do. It's taking the responsibility to help your mom while continuing doing what you're doing is that's amazing. I'm sorry to hear that you went through that, but I'm obviously glad to hear that she's in a better place. Yeah, yeah.

And I think I only really sure that story one because you were vulnerable enough to share your story here and two because I'm sure that there are people out there that are struggling with something right some loss some illness some challenge and just to have some of this to know that other people are doing it that you're not going to be your best that you give yourself grace was my that was my mantra for last year with that just just give yourself some grace like it's okay to not be your best all the time it's okay to fall try to lean on other people when you need to and ideally you're going to learn and grow from that too and you do you learn what's important you learn how to deal with that you're

that and then other challenges that have come up since then, much easier. Yes. Getting through the car. Stuff makes the easier stuff a little bit easier. It's interesting you say the grace thing. I've been saying for a while now that I feel like there's only one problem in the world. And I think everything, everything comes down to this. It's selfishness.

It's down to we're in a society. And I don't just mean the United States. I mean in general. We're in a society where people tend to presume the worst. right if you do something that doesn't align with somebody they're like why would they do that why would they make that decision or why would they go that route or why would they take that and they don't actually stop to usually ask we i'm just as guilty as anybody else we don't stop to ask of what made them make that decision right was there something that i could help them with is there

something that they're struggling with that maybe isn't making them think clearly about what they're doing and things like that i do where that we were in a society that offered more grace to people and more understanding. Yeah, there's a, the Buddha says that to know everything is to forgive everything, right? There's a degree to which if you knew enough about somebody's backstory and what happened in their upbringing and their genetics and their brain chemistry and all of the things that got them to where they are and the stories that are going on in their head, then you'd understand even some of the worst things that people do.

And I think that there is a, the other kind of principle I like to live by is to tell charitable stories, right? As much as possible, whenever somebody else is doing something, especially you're in a personal relationship. This happens all the time. Somebody does something that pisses you off and that guy's an asshole or she's whatever. And you can choose to tell a different story. And again, we talk about what you can control what you can't. And you can observe what happens in yourself when you tell that better story. It allows you to relate to them with more compassion. It allows you to have less rage and less anxiety. And so this is a gift that you're giving, not just to the person to whom you're being charitable here,

but it's a gift to yourself to be able to reorient and say that, where I've had business deals where people have just, I was recently into contract negotiation and somebody put some clauses in the contract that was clearly like a, just a, you think you're going to sneak this in here? Very selfish contract. Are you kidding me? Who do you think you're dealing with?

And then my first response was like, fuck this guy. I'm not doing the deal with them. I'm pulling the board. And I stopped and I paused and I just reflected back. And it was just like, okay, look, They're afraid, right? They are afraid about getting, not having the security and safety from having these, these things. And I can approach them with that and just be like, very clear, like,

this is not going to fly. And I want to understand where you're coming from. And we're going to work through this because I want you to feel good about this relationship in a way that is going to, we can have an agreement that's going to serve both of our interests. And we were able to get to, we were able to get to a deal. And I was able to understand where they were, I totally get where they were coming from now and we're able to have a business relationship that wouldn't have happened had my first story of this guy's an asshole he's trying to screw me been what i stuck with right so yeah if you usually ask yourself like why was that included and is there a reason that you're wanting that included that can usually start a good conversation of like you said hey i'm

worried about this okay great let's talk about that right that's a great way to approach it and to bring this back to game design because man we've gotten heavy but the same principle applies okay this podcast it's my podcast don't do what i want and i guarantee you there's a lot of people that are going to get more value out of this section than anything else. But this idea of going to principles rather than positions, right, which we just is what we talked about when it comes to a contract negotiation, exact same thing happens in a game design discussion and a game design debate. I will have many situations where I have somebody in my, you know,

we'll have a team and will be debating or a design that comes to me with an idea. And they'll have a mechanic that is just, from my perspective, just got awful. Like it's clunky, it's messy. It's just not something that we want at all. But there is something that they're trying to serve. There's a principle that they're trying to serve. Hey, I want to make sure that there's a player that is able to be supported here. And if I can get to the principle,

then we can figure out mechanics together instead of just arguing for positions. So understanding the difference between principles and positions matters a lot in game design because you end up very often, you will have heated discussions inside of a team, inside of a round of a game mechanic, around different challenges that are happening.

And if you get stuck in your positions, like, hey, I really like this dice rolling mechanic or, hey, I really like the second player getting two extra cards, that's not nearly as important as, hey, we want to make sure that players are engaged when it's not their turn. Or we want to make sure that there's a balance

and that going second is not an automatic loss in the game, right? And now once we know that those are the principles that we're moving towards, then there are many mechanisms, there are many positions, or many mechanics and tools that will get you there. So anytime I'm in a negotiation or discussion about business or any time I'm in discussion about game design,

it's always important to get back to first principles. Like what is it that we're trying to accomplish here? And then we collectively are all on the same team trying to accomplish the same principled goals instead of you're fighting for your position and I'm fighting for my position. It's a paradigm shifting way to approach anything in life, I find. Yeah, and that's not a one conversation.

thing usually, right? That's usually multiple conversations and multiple people breaking the walls down of like, okay, yeah, I am a little bit too hung on to that and maybe we need to have a conversation about it. I think there's when it comes to helping people in managing multiple different things. I would like to, there's two threads I want to pick up. And then if we have time, I'm going to come back to crowdfunding generally because you dropped the, you dropped the, I'll talk about this later over a little taller drink comment that I'm not. That's right. If we're going to crack some beers, I'm okay with that. Sure. Sure. Although it's a little later here for me.

than it is for you, but still. It's all clock somewhere. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Let's talk about what it's like to be working at Lucky Duck and at Steelwing at the same time. And your designer is working at Rocksley still? Yep, he's still at Roxley's developer. And he actually just did a lot of work for Brass Pittsburgh.

She did really well. He'll even developer with that with Gavin, and that was amazing. Rainbow Boulevard is not like Brass Pittsburgh, very different games, of the spectrum. Still both very, very fun, though, but very different experiences. Yeah. So when the company was bought, when Lucky Duck Games was bought, I was a shareholder. And part of the discussion with the CEO Goliath was that I had steel wing games already created, that I had a couple of games already signed, and that I did want to ultimately publish them on my own. And I told him, the goal was never

to become Asmoda. The goal was never to become the biggest, greatest, giant publisher in the world. the goal was to focus on projects that I'm passionate about, focus on things that I love. And he was very kind and very nice to put into our agreement that anything that I did from a steelwing perspective was separate from Goliath and gave me that space to work on both. Now, as most people probably know, because we live in a world where very rarely does somebody wear one hat, working two jobs is a little crazy and a little insanity. It's pretty tough, honestly. My day is pretty wild.

I'm actually the only U.S. team member from Lucky Duck on my team. I manage a team of people that are in the UK and in Europe. So I'm up usually really early. I'm usually up at 5 a.m. And I'm on phone calls usually by 5.30 or 6 a.m. Generally go straight to noon, maybe one-ish, doing work for Lucky duck, then usually have about an hour or two break. And then everybody who works at Goliath, who's on the West Coast, they get into the mix. So I get working on stuff in America in the

afternoon. And then in the evenings, it's stealing games. And that has been challenging, that, especially for someone who has a family, I've got three kids, I have a grandchild. That just happened a couple of weeks ago. And I'm a big family person. My priorities in life, I tell people, My priorities are faith, family, friends, and self in that order. You'll notice that work is not in any one of those four. So I tend to put those things first and foremost. I have had to put myself to the side quite a bit to help this work and help make this go. Adam, thankfully, where we are right now, the game is done. The game is designed. The rules are done. Something I'm actually really proud of and thankful for is that we're going into our crowdfunding campaign with a 99% finished product. It's not something of maybe this is an idea, maybe this is a concept, back it, and we'll get it to you at 18 months or anything like that. This is something that we're going to be going to manufacturing within a month or two of finishing the campaign, which I'm really excited about. But because of that, Adam doesn't have to dedicate a lot of time or anything to it.

And in a way, that kind of came from the space that the universe decided to give us to say, okay Adam go develop this game right because at the time that I spent focusing on betty and her health and her recovery and just a you want to talk about longer taller or longer story for taller drinks like i could write a thesis on the american health care system and the american legal system but that's definitely a different podcast yeah but the space the game had the space that he was able to explore and develop in and to give everybody an idea when the game first started and we were looking at it It was a game about leprechauns in forests building rainbows. And it was a two to four player game, and that was it.

It actually won a award in Canada at a convention in Canada for the thing that Panda does with these prototypes. And it's phenomenal. But there was nothing more to the game other than that two to four player experience. Now it's a one to five player experience. So solo roles were added. A fifth player expansion was added. and four mini modular expansions were added to the game that allow players to push and pull in different mechanics that they want to add to the game. There's asymmetrical player powers. There's a token

system that I absolutely love called the coffee breaks, which a big part of the game is you have to spend time to do an action. If you're the first person to get to one o'clock, you get a coffee for your efforts, and the coffee will give you an extra bonus token and something extra fun to do. a really cool little addition to the game. And the nice thing about that is you can really make the game your own, right? At the core, the game is draw cards, build rainbows, score points. But you can interweave all these modular expansions to make it as more advanced or as simple as you want it to be.

And I love games that give you that space and that freedom to do that and make it fit for your type of game group. Your game group may love asymmetrical player powers and you may say to yourself, we're playing with the bright ideas expansion every single time we play this game. Your group may hate asymmetrical player powers and say, nope, we're just going to leave those cards in the box and not worry about them every time we play.

And either one of those is right for you and your game group, which I absolutely love. I want to linger on that for a second because I think that's a really interesting space. And I've gone back and forth in how I feel about this because I do, obviously, I like the idea of being able to give players whatever they want and have these options to make this the game. This is a more sophisticated,

limits, right? You can't do everything. Yeah, but yeah, but that is. Even with what you've just described, there's still, there are challenges with how you market and sell that game to say, okay, no, if you're looking for this more advanced experience, oh, no, quick, come check out this version. But no, it's really actually a very simple like game, and you can play it with your kids, and it's very tough.

And I think there's an instinct. A lot of designers have this instinct, I'll just give you, I'll give you all the ways to play, and you decide. It's a cafeteria-style meal. You just pick out what you want, and here you go. But really, I think as designers, we're chefs. We're creators.

We have to be able to provide with you a meal that we've prepared largely. Maybe you can add a little salt or a little pepper or we've got to choose your side dish. But it's at the risk of straining the analogy here. How do you decide what to serve and what's on your menu? Yeah, it's a very tough one. We actually did have an expansion that we cut. And it pained me a lot because we didn't, like I mentioned, the game was originally Leprechauns.

The game actually went through multiple different thematic changes. when we finally landed on Rainbow Boulevard and coming back to rainbows, we started to get into this cozy vibe of Zootopia, this animal world and architects building stuff. And I have a phrase that people hear me say all the time where I say, in the land of rainbows and unicorns where everything is perfect, which is even funnier that I'm now making a game about rainbows. But because of that, Adam went down a road of maybe we can actually include unicorns in the game. Maybe there's a way to have a unicorn expansion and everyone gets a pet unicorn to hang out with and all this stuff.

And I remember when he first pitched it to me and I was like, in my heart, I was like, oh, that's so cute. I love the fact that you did that. And then we played with it. I'm like, yeah, this sucks. This is not good. This is a little too much and a little too complicated. And the things that I really liked about the modular expansions that he had created was they were to your point. They were the salt and the pepper.

They were the little spice. They weren't anything gigantic. They were just enough to give that base meal flavor. But when we started playing with this unicorn expansion, I was like, dude, this is a different experience. This is a completely left turn at Albuquerque kind of thing. And it's not bad. It's not that it's making the gameplay experience bad. It's just it's making it different for what our intended audience was.

And to your point, if you end up with something that is looking like. like one thing, but coming out to be another thing, it's not going to find its identity. Actually, I don't want to throw any specific game under the bus, but I was involved with a game once where I remember looking at it and the person that was showing it to me was so excited about it. He was like, oh, this game is so unique. It's so cool. It's so different. And I'm like, doesn't know who it is. And he's like, what does that mean? I'm like, you spend five minutes doing this, which is great for this type of gamer, but then you spend five minutes doing this, which is literally 180 degrees opposite of what this type of player wants to do and likes to do.

So which is it? Is it a game meant for Euro players? Is it a game meant for Amera Thrash players? Or if you can't define that, the market's going to get confused. And the consumer is going to be like, wait a minute, like, you're telling me that I do all these things, but then you're telling me I do all those things and those things don't go together at all. That's like peanut butter and oil. It's just not good.

It's just very weird. Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough sometimes as a designer or a developer to really truthfully dig into who is this game made for, right? Because not every game is made for everybody, right? One of my best friends absolutely loves War of the Ring. He thinks it's the greatest game ever made on the planet. I don't think you could force me to play War of the Ring.

And I don't not like the game. I don't think the game is a bad game. It's just not for me, right? It's not what I want to do when I sit down and have a cup of tea and play with my friends. Yeah, perhaps a different Lord of the Rings game that might be more appealing to you. Definitely. One which I backed and I am super excited to get. Again, dude, congratulations.

As a friend, watching the joy in your announcement. and talks about being able to interact with that. I could tell, I know before about what we were talking about, people struggle, I know that was not easy. That was not a wake-up Tuesday and, oh, hey, we have the Lord of the Rings license. We're going to make ascension. That had to be multiple conversations over multiple meetings. But to get to that point where you can truthfully just be like,

oh, my God, pinch myself. I'm making a Lord of the Rings game. That's amazing. So I'm so happy for you. Thank you, man. It is a dream come true. It definitely is a lot of struggles. I've shared some of those stories already on both in the podcast and elsewhere,

but I will. It's all, or whatever, the dream of when I was first reading The Hobbit and first reading the Lord of the Rings to then now get to play in that world myself and add to that lore is, yeah, it's still, it still hasn't fully settled in.

I'm going to have my hands on it on some of the components and stuff in the next couple months that are, I need to tell you a very funny story real briefly about that. So when I first heard about it and I found out that you were going to do it, I came to Betsy and I said, I am so excited. And she's like, what? Because for anyone that doesn't know me, Ascension has been a huge part of my family. It's my daughter's favorite game.

It's the game that has just centered us a lot when we play family game nights and come back together. We own literally everything that's ever been made for Ascension. It's one of our top 10 games. And when this was announced and we knew about it, I came to Betsy and I said, are you ready? She's like, yeah, what? I went, Justin Gary. she goes, okay, I'm like, he's going on an adventure. And that's all I said.

And she goes, he's making a Lord of the Rings game. I'm like, he's making a Lord of the Rings game. She just knew it immediately. Amazing. It was so good. It was so good. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I'm very much looking forward to that.

I hope to one day have the struggles of negotiating with somebody like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a dream from true. And I think all of the things that come with building a brand and building his company over time, and so again, it was 15 years of history that got us in the door to that conversation. It's become an overnight success. 10 years of hard work, right? That's right.

That's exactly right. And you've obviously put in a ton of hard work throughout your career. This company has been, this project has been 10 years in the making. As the day we're recording this, you are launching on Kickstarter four weeks exactly. So I think October 13, 26 is the date of the launch. Yeah, so that is... 20 from now. It's going to be pretty crazy.

We've got a lot coming to. Yeah, that is amazing. And so obviously we'll link to that in the show notes. And you've talked about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and how much it's changed, possibly for the worst. We won't go into the full details. But again, I've been doing this since the very beginning, right? We did our first crowd fund in 22,000...

When was it? It was like the original Soul Forge was 16, 15 years ago. So back in the early day. of it and 2012, I think it was, and 2011. Just for the record, I didn't have hair then either. And so, yeah, 100% has changed. So I have a sense of how I would have described that change. But since you teed it up, maybe you could speak a little bit to that.

And then I'm just grounded. And, okay, how do you think about launching something as effectively a new company with not people? Everybody, the people in your company have done this work, but not this is a new institution. In fact, I don't even think you talked about... We're a first-time publisher. Yeah, first-time publisher. And even you might even want to talk a little bit about the name and why you're called Steelwing because it ties into this first-time thing.

And speak about how do you approach crowdfunding today? And if we want to talk a little bit about how it's evolved, we can do that. But let's ground it in your reality. Sure, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I agree. There are a bajillion different things we can talk about in terms of how crowdfunding has changed. I think the biggest thing, in my opinion, of how crowdfunding has changed is right now, If you go and click on Kickstarter and just go to games and go to tabletop games, there's close to 5,000 plus games that are on Kickstarter right now.

That is unbelievable and amazing. And there's part of me that is so happy about that to think that this platform offers people the opportunity to explore their creativeness, come up with something. And there's no story that I love better than people betting on themselves and success. seating. That is my favorite thing. Because it takes a lot to bet on yourself. It really does. But if you go back 10, 15 years ago, I remember talking to Jamie Stegmire. He's a good friend of mine. And I remember talking to him when Viticulture happened and what the experiences were that he had with Viticulture. Back 10, 15 years ago, you were one of 500 or 400. And you had an opportunity to build your audience via crowdfunding. You could launch a project.

and start to pull people into your ecosystem and build your community that way. For now, in the current environment, that's one of the biggest challenges. It's one of the things that I think I've actually failed at. I think I could have started community building earlier than I did, talk more openly, more publicly about it, and just be giving a voice to the game to where people could identify with it and see if it was something they wanted to follow along with earlier. You're exactly right. So it's one of the things that I've talked about,

couple of times with my wife. Honestly, it doesn't matter what I've done. It really doesn't matter how long I've been in this industry. It doesn't matter the games I've been involved with. I've been involved with some pretty heavy hitting games. I've been involved with Sheriff and Nottingham. I've been involved with. There's games that I have been involved with that have become evergreens and done extremely well. And I'm very thankful for that. I'm just thrilled to have had the opportunity to do that. But the reality is most Kickstarter backers are going to look at the project and they're going to see Steel Wing games first created. and rightfully people are going to ask questions of, hey, Scott, you seem like a nice guy.

Hey, Scott, it's great that you have all these ideas. Hey, Scott, it's great that you've done all these things in the industry. Have you ever released a game on your own? Have you ever built, manufactured a game? Have you ever fulfilled a game on your own? And the answer to those questions are no. I've always done that with a team and other people around me and larger institutions around me. So they are rightfully going to ask questions, and I think that's a good thing to do.

I think I'm obviously, there's an old phrase if you were born on third base. I'm not necessarily born on third base in the situation, but I at least maybe have a ghost runner on second and I'm on first base and a little bit ahead than where anyone that's just starting today normally would. I've had a lot more experiences in that. But I'm a firm believer that the product needs to sell itself. The game needs to be the reason that people look at that and say, okay, this is the experience you're offering me. This is something I identify with. This is something I want to have on

my table. It's an experience I want to join in with my friends and my family. I think that needs to be the first and foremost thing. There was actually, there was a campaign on Kickstarter a couple of years ago. I think it was 21 or 22. It was a thing called polycade. And it was a maim machine that hung on your wall. And when I saw it, the first thing my brain said is, man, that looks a lot like Atari. It just physically looks like an Atari system hanging on your wall. And the whole scroll of the entire wall was, this is why this is the best main machine ever. This is why the buttons are great. This is why the joysticks are great. This is why all these things are amazing. And then finally at the bottom, like all the way at the bottom, there's a video of the guy who made this machine

saying, hey, my dad made Atari. Oops, lost you. Yeah, I'm back. I think I got the gist of the Atari scrolling on the wall. Yep, yep. So when you get to the bottom of that page, there's a video of the guy that made it. And he's like, hey, my dad made Atari.

And I'm like, why didn't you lead with that? That's amazing, right? But he talked in that video about, I don't care if my dad made Atari. That's cool, and you may identify with that and think, wow, what was it like growing up with your dad that made Atari? But the reality is that doesn't mean anything as to how good or effective he would be at running a business or delivering that product. And he wanted the product to be the lead and his story to be secondary. So I'm a big believer that my experience and who I am and what I'm trying to cultivate helps me build a community.

but the product and the game is what's going to deliver for the backer. Yeah. I got to tell you, I agree that the product has to be front, front, and center, 100%. I think that the idea that somebody's not willing to use their story and their background and any damn edge you can to get people's attention. Oh, no, yeah. You do. I'm like, if I got, I'd be like, yeah, I started not that different than you.

I started off in working for another company, and I learned the ropes while I was there. started off on my own and I launched my own and I used the fact that I had worked on other games that people knew like the World Warcraft Miniatures game and Mara versus a trading card game. And that I had, and I use my magic background and my pro tour success and anything I could do to get you to pay attention to me. And then you'll pay, once I have your attention, now I'm going to show you this great game called Assension and you should play it. And then if you, of course, I don't think going to succeed if the game is good. But like I noticed I looked at your Kickstarter page before we started recording.

And I noticed that you didn't talk about yourself pretty much at all. You talked to you highlighted the designers. You highlighted the visual artists. You didn't highlight yourself. Yeah, yeah. I really, I wanted to be about the team and not just about myself. The reason that I actually named the company Steel Wing games, we've had a lot of jokes and talks about this about how most board game companies,

the names don't necessarily mean something big or huge or anything like that. But the reason I called it Steel Wing is I've been in the industry a while. And I've seen some pretty tough things. I won't dive too deep into them, but I've seen people go back to the well more than not, meaning use things that they know and that they're comfortable with rather than work with new things or new people. And I really want to leave this place better than I found it. So the concept is that I want to use my experience, the steel, to lift other people up, the wing, and give people opportunities. One of the tenets that I'm trying to focus on is that every game we make is going to have somebody on the project team that has never worked in the industry before.

And that is very easy to say and very hard to do. Trying to talk to people, artists, editors, graphic designers, whoever it may be outside of the board game space, especially when they're not board gamers in general, and explain to them that you have a business that does this and makes these things is sometimes like trying to explain. to someone what the color nine smells like. It's so difficult. I'm very happy. One of the artists for the board, they had never worked in the industry before, had a conversation with them. And really, it was a lot of, can this really work? Does this really happen? And yes, it can. And I have a budget. And I'm willing to pay you and I'll give you half right now and have that conversation. And I'm really happy to say that when we did that and brought them in, we were then able to turn around and highlight them to other publishers and get them in front of other people, which I think is just

fabulous, right? At the end of the day, the old phrase is leave the place better than you found it. And that's really what I want to be able to do. I do feel that there is a space for me to talk about me and my journey. We're doing more of that on the Discord server and through our newsletters. I actually, all of our newsletters, I end with a personal note. I have all the information about new videos or new things coming out about the game and things like that. But I try to end with a personal note about this is an insight from me or something that happened with me that I want to share with everybody just so that they can start to learn more about me. I know without a doubt, right? Like you and I have been friends for decades and that didn't happen instantaneously.

We clicked instantaneously. But even back in the World of Warcraft minis days, like we had to have that relationship building, right? Same thing happens here. If people come to the Kickstarter, they get their appetite, whetted a little bit by what they see. And then they're like, yeah, I want to learn more about this and they dig in. So trying to share, I guess, responsibly is the right way to say it, not rather than oversharing things. Yeah, I will tell you, I'm happy to be part of the sharing of your story because I love you. I love your story. I love how much you have been a bright light in this community and even this company is very much about that. And so I will just, I'm going to, obviously, I'm going to be backing on day one. I encourage everybody that's listening to back on day one and

follow the campaign. And then you mentioned the Discord and the newsletter. How else can, how do people join those or how else can they find Steelwing and the other things that you're up to? Easiest thing is just go to Steelwing Games.com. S-T-E-E-L-W-I-N-G Games.com. All the information's on there. You can follow the Kickstarter from there. You can add your email to our newsletter. There's links to the Discord on there. All of our socials are on there. So that's kind of the hub for everything. Awesome. Scott, it's great to have you on. Congratulations on this new chapter. And I can't wait to have our next chat and celebrate at a convention sometime soon

and then have you back on the podcast to talk about how this all shakes out in your next major project. Yeah, I hope it's not two years until the next podcast. Maybe we should do it a little bit sooner. But I always appreciate you having me on here. I love hanging out and talking with you, whether it's a podcast or whether it's not. And I am super excited about Ascension, Lord of the Rings. I can't wait for that. We have many exciting things ahead.

Thanks. We will do one of these conversations properly. over a beer though next time, I think. Love it. Awesome. Thanks, man. Thank you for making this show possible through your pledges,

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