Rolling the dice

Hi folks,

Wishing you the very best for the coming week from everyone here at Rusty Towers!

Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who supported Monte Cook’s amazing campaign for The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game. Both the team here at Rusty Quill and the team at Monte Cook have been blown away by the support shown. Thanks to the incredible support, Monte Cook raised an incredible $2,027,997 and in the final few hours unlocked recorded statements from Jonny Sims for all of the investigations included in the corebook, in-universe props and papers to bring your games to life and so much more. Monte Cook now have opened “late pledges” meaning that if you missed the main campaign, you can still back now and get your hands on the game and add-ons. Head over to Monte Cook’s BackerKit page to find out more.

Next up, it is less than a month now until the digital premiere releases for The Magnus Protocol. As a reminder, anyone who backed the Kickstarter at Archival Assistants level and above and Patreon supporters at the Knights and Nobles tiers will receive the digital premiere on 22nd October. As part of the digital premiere, Jonny and Alex will be answering some fan-submitted questions. If you have any burning questions about The Magnus Protocol (though of course, they won’t be able to discuss any potential spoilers for the show), please submit them using our Q&A Submission Form. The form closes tomorrow.

Staying on the theme of The Magnus Archives, today we have a very exciting new merchandise item to announce. This has been in the works for a very long time now and, after the success of our beautiful Rusty Quill Gaming dice and our partnership with the incredible team at Dice Dungeon, we decided that now was the perfect time. That’s right, we will be releasing a The Magnus Archives dice set!

(Image description: A photo of a set of dice and a large black presentation box on a white background. The dice are dark green. As well as a standard polyhedral set there is also a much larger dice with icons on, such as a a mask and a web. The design on the box mimics a tape player at the top, with a green web on the front and the words “The Magnus Archives”.)

Once again produced by the team at Dice Dungeon, the dice feature a standard set of 7 polyhedral dice as well as something rather special. The oversized, D16 entities die features icons, designed by April Sumner, for each of the fourteen fears referenced throughout The Magnus Archives, plus the theoretical fifteenth fear. It is made from resin, and is hand poured, sanded and polished, giving it really crisp, sharp edges. This chunky dice is perfect for home-brewed games, rolling for characters or just looking really cool. Dice Dungeon have also absolutely smashed it once again with the presentation box. Instead of a bag or a tin, their suggestion to create a box fans would want to keep and have on their shelves makes the set really special. Anyone who received the Rusty Quill Gaming dice sets will know just how nice the dice are in person, thanks to the team at Dice Dungeon. You can find out more about the sets – which include a bundle with the Rusty Quill Gaming set – on Dice Dungeons webpage. There are also a limited number of both the Rusty Quill Gaming dice sets left – however stocks are very low.

Pre-orders for The Magnus Archives "The Entities" dice set begin on the 2nd October at 4pm GMT for Rusty Quill Patreon members and Magnus Protocol Kickstarter backers at a special exclusive super early bird price. Pre-orders will then go live for everyone else on the 9th October at 4pm GMT. We’ll be sharing a code next week to get an extra £5 off the pre-order price.

Staying on the theme of horror, we have some fantastic news from one of our network shows. Tiny Terrors, created by Cole Weavers, will be sharing thirty-one new episodes in October, one for every day of the month! This will feature both canon episodes written by Cole, and canon adjacent episodes written by a very exciting host of guest writers. If you haven’t listened to Tiny Terrors yet, it’s a great time to get started. You can find out more about the show on the Rusty Quill website.

Staying on the subject of the RQ Network, today we are delighted to welcome a brand-new show onboard. Hi Nay – which literally translates to “Hi Mom”, is a supernatural horror fiction podcast about Filipina immigrant Mari Datuin, whose babaylan family background accidentally gets her involved in stopping dangerous supernatural events in Toronto. We managed to speak to one of the creators, Motzie Dapul, to learn a little more about the show.

Tell us who you are and a bit about Hi Nay.

Hi Nay is an analog-style horror audio drama that was inspired in part by the horror movie trope where this mystical person - usually BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) - appears for a brief scene before immediately being shuffled off to the side. Not only are they often more interesting than the main characters; it’s also like if you introduced a firefighter to put out a fire and the firefighter just gave advice then left, leaving amateurs to deal with the fire instead. So we wanted to make that mystical side character into the protagonist, responding to supernatural crises with an unexpected amount of experience from her Nanay (mother)’s role as a babaylan (a sort of shaman or healer) in the Philippines.

It’s definitely grown from that premise - following a sort of “Scooby Gang” of people trying to stop an overarching threat, but we’re trying to get back to basics with spooky supernatural stories set in Toronto and Ontario at large, mixing in backstory episodes featuring Filipino folk horror and unique Filipino themed supernatural horror. We’ve got body horror, we’ve got creature horror, we’ve got ghosts, we’ve got evil rich people, we’ve got historical horror, we’ve got… more body horror.

We also want the story to be diverse in a naturalistic way, adding different cultural elements to reflect the setting of Toronto, one of the most diverse cities in the world. I’m a queer Filipina immigrant surrounded by queer BIPOC, so I write what I know and I have fun with it. The biggest theme I want to explore in Hi Nay is that despite how spooky the supernatural horrors might be, there’s something comforting about them, when compared to the real world horrors experienced by the protagonist Mari (based on very real, very political horrors experienced by many Filipinos).

We’ve been described as both “too terrifying to listen to” and “a comfort podcast”, so make of that what you will. We don’t set out to discomfit people for discomfort’s sake; we aim to make a story and characters who are compassionate and kind in the face of extreme pain and suffering.

We’re a very small, perpetually busy indie team that makes this podcast inbetween our day jobs, and we’re just now getting our footing in terms of production, but the story’s gotten a wonderful and dedicated audience, and we’re happy to grow our community and welcome new listeners.

What got you into podcasting?

We don’t hide the fact that we were inspired primarily by The Magnus Archives, specifically because it helped get us through the pandemic. Myself (Motzie Dapul) and my co-creator, Reg Geli, would call every day and listen to it in tandem on Discord when season 5 came out. We wanted to do our own unique story, but our lo-fi sound, using in-universe phone calls and recordings as our medium, is probably very familiar to Magnus Archives listeners. We were also heavily inspired by some audio drama greats, such as Night Vale and Wolf 359, and when we first created the podcast, we got a lot of wonderful support from fellow creators such as The Night Post.

Podcasting is such a wonderfully accessible medium with a fairly low barrier for entry. The tricky part is keeping it going, and we credit our amazing listeners for that.

What are you most proud of about Hi Nay?

The community we’ve cultivated around Hi Nay is one of our proudest achievements, and we can’t even take credit for it really (and we wouldn’t want to!). The enthusiasm and energy from the idea alone is what pushed us to make this show, and 3 years in and we adore our listeners and fans. We’ve done a few things we’re proud of for Hi Nay, but our (sometimes silly, sometimes thirsty, and always supportive) community is what we’re proudest of.

You can listen to Hi Nay wherever you find podcasts, or on the Rusty Quill website. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a rating or a review as this is the best way to spread the word about a show! Hi Nay are currently funding for Act 3 of their first season – if you are interested in supporting them, you can head over to The Hi Nay Podcast Ko-Fi page.

Finally, this week in Cry Havoc, Gaius and Mark must deal with the fallout from the failed assassination the previous week. As we mentioned last week, we're ramping up to the finale of the series at the moment, and tensions are getting high. Meanwhile on Friday, join Lowri, David and Grace as they discuss writing fictional versions of real people.

Here is our full schedule for this week:

Tuesday 26th September

ROME 17 – To Summon a Queen (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Thursday 28th September

ROME 17 – To Summon a Queen (Public) (4pm BST)

Friday 29th September

KNIGHTS+ bonus – Backstage: Writing Fictional Versions of Real People (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team