Transcription - Social Links - Links to projects

In this episode, we are joined by Rich or the HatchlingDM of the Inspirisles RPG. We dive into being inclusivity, accessibility, and working with kids in TTRPGs.

Be sure to head on over to www.thebardpodcast.com to check out our other shows, tabletop products, and some sweet merch!

Guest Links:
https://twitter.com/HatchlingDM
https://www.hatchlingsdm.com/inspirisles

Transcription:

Dev: [00:00:00] All right, welcome back listeners. Today. I have Rich of the Inspirisles RPG, and we're going to be talking today about accesibility in games, and I'm just going to let Rich lead the way Rich, how are you doing today?

Rich: [00:00:16] Pretty good. Nice to meet you. Nice to be on the show.

Dev: [00:00:18] Happy to have you! So, Just dive right into it? What is, what is Inspirisles? What is hatchlings? What are you working on?

Rich: [00:00:25] Um, so actually started about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. I was running a local tabletop role playing game group for local teenagers in my area. And I wanted to establish something like, you know, that's solid and kind of it's reliable and it will work.

I'm working with a charity at the moment. So I wanted a name for myself. So I sort of established Hatchlings, I thought it was quite a cute name for like a kid's role playing group. We basically played Dungeons and Dragons essentially for a couple of years. Within this group and some way along the way along the way, I kind of thought, Oh, I want to really want to make something and then get their teeth into something they can contribute and develop with me and play test.

And it's something I can share with the wider tabletop community. Which I was kind of building up at the same time. I was on Twitter, very actively. And I met a lot of people like minded people and like my peers, and they're starting to form connections with people and it just escalated from there really.

And it's led to this Kickstarter, which was largely funded by my Twitter community in the first three days, which has a bit of a shock to me because I was only after over a thousand pounds. From the whole project and it's now on 16 and a half thousand. So, uh, yeah. Had a lot of momentum initially and it just built from there.

Dev: [00:01:43] That's awesome. You mentioned DMing for, for kids, for teenagers. How did you get into that?

Rich: [00:01:49] So me and my wife and my child, we moved to a new place in the local area, a new house, and I'm quite, I'm quite a confident person. I say, you know, I went straight into a community outreach building that ran. Sort of like, uh, classes, you know, like day classes, evening classes for the community.

And I've got a background in creative writing. I've got a master's degree in that and I decided to, um, approach them with some, getting involved as a volunteer. Place called Community at 67. It's in kingdom, in my local town. And I started running creative writing classes with them, all I, to like establish a role playing group.

With children, because I've always wanted to do that. I was working with children and working with young people and that's how I established that group. Basically. I just put it to the local community on Facebook. They've got a huge Facebook site and I had about, I don't know, 12 or 10 or 12 parents coming to me.

Oh, that sounds amazing. How do I sign my child up to it? And that's how it was established. At the same time, the reason for inspires and the white, the way it uses sign language as like key concept is bizarre. My, my day job is working with the deaf community as a support worker for over about 11 years now.

Yeah. So it started as a BSL thing just for the UK, obviously. Cause I wouldn't, it wasn't expecting it to grow this much. And I thought, well, you know, we're, we're sort of corner cornering the market here. We're sort of calling ourselves really. I just not opening up to the U S so we thought we've got, I've got colleagues that do American sign language.

I know a prominent tutor of the American sign language. So I thought, well, why not just open up to the people abroad? And that was obviously a good move.

Dev: [00:03:27] I love when a creator can take two of their passions and combine it into a product, especially one that is, is direly needed within the tabletop community.

Have you found that the use of sign language because you have ASL and BSL in there, right?

Rich: [00:03:44] Yeah. So it's worked out really well and it's not taking a lot more resources to produce a second version. However, we need to pay these professionals, the money

Dev: [00:03:54] Thus the Kickstarter. So within the Inspirisles, what. What specifically does the sign language facilitate? Is it the spell casting? Is it just the whole role play altogether?

Rich: [00:04:07] No. It's specifically tied to the spells, the items and the abilities. So when you have to, when you use any of these things, you have to use, you don't have to use sign language. It's an optional, it's an optional thing within the game, because we don't want to exclude people.

If people can't get grasp of it, then it would ruin the game for them. Obviously it's quite hard discipline to get hold of, especially as it moves up to high levels. Like any, any language would be some don't want exclusive. Yeah. Is optional, but we were still integrating it very like intuitively within the game.

So you start with spells item abilities and you have to use the app as the first level. You have to use the alphabet to sort of cast spells so you do  finger spelling for you alpha sheets, reference sheets. that come with a game. And it moves all the way up to, I don't want to give too much away about all the steps because it will reveal too much, but you end up as we're about, we're about to hit 20,000, the kickstart, which unlocks the American sign language Lexicon, which means that we working with an American sign language, deaf tutor to develop a specific language for the game. So I'm not talking about American signings and talking about stuff for the gods. The names of the gods did the sort of underworld. Terms that would only be specific to the Inspirisles so that's yes, we worked up to, yeah.

Dev: [00:05:19] That's my next question was going to be it, has it been difficult trying to, I mean, in some of the fantasy worlds you get, you know, very creative and interesting names for items and spells. So has it been, has it been a challenge trying to combine, sign language, concepts, and then words too portray a fantasy world and setting,

Rich: [00:05:40] there's not a challenge yet, but I suspect that there'll be certain words or terms that will be difficult to translate, but that's why you hire someone at the top of their field. You know, they, they almost, they almost think they almost do daily. They sort of contribute to like new types of sign language within the BSL and ASL format.

So it's not much of a stretch for them to come up with inventive ways. For new terms. When we started, we consulted with some people and they came up for signs for the beholder like and that people can't see on the camera, but it was like a fist with like the eye stalks, on the top. But as a sign that as a British sign language version, Yeah.

So it's not much of a stretch for professionals to do things.

Dev: [00:06:22] Right. So are you looking at opening up to additional lanuages?

Rich: [00:06:28] It's funny. You should say that. Its very funn that you should say that I got an inbox message today from a Polish business and he says he wants to localize it for Poland. He's very interested in the, and he also, he said, he's got the resources to spread it across a Europe, so I'm not sure.

I'm not sure how. How genuine he is or how much he can deliver. But, um, but yeah, it was with our intention to maybe localize it because there's a lot of people from Australia,the Ausland version of sign language there that are calling for the game. But it largely depends at the moment on our artist. Who's doing all of our sign language symbols.

So originally we had, we were using the British sign alphabet and we had to put their logo on it and the advertisements and everywhere, everywhere was put. And we couldn't separate the signs from the sheets. There could be, I couldn't take an, a letter, a B from the sheet and put it on our own system. So Ashley.

Our artist is now creating our own bespoke alphabet sheets and signing sheets.

Dev: [00:07:25] That's interesting. And that's it. It's always cool when you're doing these kinds of Kickstarters, those new hurdles that present themselves, when you reach those levels of success, having to make that separation between the, the corporation, the company that produces it and having your own, I love the, the sheets that you guys have been teasing out on social media, I'll make sure to link those in the, uh, in the show notes. Everybody can, can get their eyes on those.

Rich: [00:07:50] It's absolutely wonderful to feel like you're getting your own versions of sign sheets because I've, you know, I've worked for in a, in a deaf charity for that charity for over 10 years.

And they see these sheets every day. And I see any sign, these visual signs every day, and the instinct that some artists is producing our own ones is incredibly, uh, It's incredible gift right

Dev: [00:08:11] now when you were doing the play testing for the system and how it all interacts and works. Did you see a new level of excitement and engagement with the kids when it came to utilizing the BSL ASL?

Rich: [00:08:24] For sure. Yeah. I mean, the utilization at the table is incredible as the social function adds to the kind of collaboration and not again, not to give too much away, but as you get to a certain rank or level within the game, You start introducing a collaborative sign in aspect. So it would be, there would be, the cards are separate into three systems, but they're very broad strokes in terms of like their utilization.

So instead of, yeah, instead of it, instead of having a fireball spell it conjure flame, and you can use flame in all sorts of ways, but then someone could bring over like manifest water or something and then they can counteract that the fire elementals. So it's quite broad strokes, the different, the different systems working, but eventually one character, one player can lay down the conjure flame.

Another person can say, um, you know, like a thousand daggers or something, and then they could take down like a wall of reeds or like sharp brambles or something together. So they're using the cards in insist, systematically as, as a group.

Dev: [00:09:27] And it's, it's, it's interesting to me that it has taken this long for.

Any kind of sign language to be integrated into RPGs, because I mean, you even just look at Marvel properties with, with dr. Strange, and they did the finger tutting to represent spell casting and then, you know, D&D Pathfinder, they have physical, verbal somatic. Hand movement components, but there's never been a representation of any of that.

Rich: [00:09:53] Yes, I think it's just, I think it's just very lucky. Yeah. I'm in a unique position that I love tabletop role playing, i've been doing it for a number of decades, but I also worked with the deaf community for over a decade. It's just a coincidence. I always wanted to use my job as a support worker in a, in, in an artistic way.

And it turns out that there was a way to do it. So, yeah, it's just a wonderful, wonderful coincidence that I could combine those two passions. Like you say,

Dev: [00:10:19] especially on the tabletop RPG, Twitter lately, you see a call, a cry and demand for accessibility, for neurodiverse, for, you know, deaf and for blind individuals.

And I'm, I'm loving all the products that I'm seeing. It's why I reached out to, to talk to you because I wanted to learn more about the system. So for everybody listening in, can you just kind of run us down over the basics of the system? How does it work? You mentioned some cards and then we have the signing aspect

Rich: [00:10:52] At the core of the game, which is what we started with.

It was kind of like the heart of the idea is, is the, is the, is, is a system of belief and an adversely disbelief now. I don't know if you probably have seen a Neverending story or read the book from the eighties as well. It's very, very much influenced by that, that film, essentially in that book, in that film and book the, um, the main character Bastion.

And he has to believe in the Neverending Story in Fantasia for it to survive, basically stop it from crumbling and becoming the nothing, you know, this big void and the same thing with the really kind of lands crumbling and the, the players. Uh, the distant ancestors of a group of humans that made a pact with the fae of the Insipirisles.

And they said that if they needed help, they would send their ancestors over to heal the land. Now the only way to heal the land is by collecting belief or earning belief. And there's so many ways in the game that you can do that. It was almost a multitude of ways. You can do that with, for instance, the big areas would be through the arts, through craft through performance through battle through conversation, through friendship, through helping people, through supporting people, all these things, these elements of empathy, empathy, and kind of, um, we're trying to get across with whether it's from the team players or through the adult players playing the game. Now you could spend belief on leveling your character, or you can sort of, you can do one of three things.

One of them is a pilgrimage where you go to the world tree. And you poured belief over the roots and therefore it actually heals the land. If you do that, you unlock abilities from the Avalon Court of Avalon. So you're kind of trained by the Spirits of these old Knights of the Roundyable to learn abilities.

If you. Patronage. If you use patronage, you go to one of the four gods of the world the Inspired they're called and they give you, or gift you have spells or shapes, and then you were taught by the dragons of the world how to use essentially use sign language and cast spells. And the third one is. You go to your community, that you kind of, you were kind of trained by which one of the eight races of the world, and you offer belief to that committee and they give you essentially like store cards for the, uh, for the items.

So that's essentially how the system works. So everything's about belief at an either levels or. Unlock these different system cards.

Dev: [00:13:25] You mentioned a lot of the inspiration comes from the neverending story. It's a kid's film and doesn't necessarily represent the gratuitous violence and combat that most people find within Dungeons and dragons, Pathfinder, Starfinder and stuff like that. Do you have a combat system? Within the Inspirisles like sword to sword.

Rich: [00:13:48] Yep. So, so one of the reasons that I, I made I made Inspirisles was because  the kids in Hatchlings were quite often uncomfortable with this sort of, this sort of violent aspect of Dungeon and Dragons. There's a lot of it didn't often force them into these situations or lead them down to situations where that's a slay goblins or creatures, but it just inevitably that some of the kids were a bit more.

I suppose a bit more, less empathetic towards maybe some of the more evil perceptively, evil races within the game. So, so the idea for Inspirisles is, is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's the belief and disbelief. There is no death in Inspirisles there  is only disbelief and surrender. There's also no weapons or armor in the game.

All attacks, all combat is used through spell casting, and none of it is like fatal spell casting. So you can't burn a creature. You know, alive, they would just be like, it would just be fire damage against enough elemental water damage against a fire element. So it's very much like, I suppose, Avatar the Last Airbender a little bit.

There's no, there's, doesn't seem too much death in that, in the animation seems to be like combative, but like kind of, um, yeah,

Dev: [00:14:58] I got you. Yeah. So it's more about the journey than the combat, which I, again, I enjoy that. That's that's good. It's smart. Especially when you're working with kids within the system.

Rich: [00:15:08] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you haven't got the option to slay things or damage things. Cause we were thinking, let me and my system design Liam, we're thinking like, um, you know, how do you represent combat without having some, to take chunks of each other and like injuries and all this, you know, bloodletting and it's like, well you just have the spouse, the elemental spells doing damage and defeating someone and, and causing disbelief in that person, but not slaying them out.

Dev: [00:15:38] Right.  So they is August 4th. How many days left do you have on the, uh, the Kickstarter?

Rich: [00:15:46] 12

Dev: [00:15:47] 12 more days. And then are you guys going into like a Backerit or  CrowdOx, post Kickstarter, kind of a thing?

Rich: [00:15:54] Nope. We're just going to let it run its course as our first Kickstarter. It's our first project, we've already raised enough to fund the whole book.

I don't wanna get greedy. It's going to let it. Gonna let it run its course and see what the budget is at the end. I've already, already worked out the distribution to the artists and the, and the, and the layout designer and our other contributors. So it's, it's really, really comfortable position right now.

It's lovely. You know,

Dev: [00:16:19] that's fair. Now, do you have any plans beyond the Inspirisles? Working with other systems to incorporate sign language in their systems.

Rich: [00:16:29] I would like  to make the system more open source. Definitely eventually, but only after maybe a couple of years, because I have a really big ambition to, to develop a game for even younger children, you know, almost preschoolers, which would use Makaton, which is another form of a simpler form of, of sign language.

With them and create a whole another game. And that would, that would also mean that actions would become hatchlings first flight. We should be for younger children. So it's like an offshoot of the, the main company. Yeah,

Dev: [00:17:02] that's awesome. And especially in this, uh, you know, current pandemic world, having things to do with especially younger preschool children, I've got a five year old myself.

Um, you know, just having those things to engage and to to bring them into our hobbies. I love tabletops. I've been playing for years and she likes the little, little clacky dice, but, you know, having being able to play would be awesome. So it's cool that you're, you're thinking in developing that.

Rich: [00:17:29] Yes, yes.

Yeah. I'm thinking of branching out to different age groups. I think that'd be really, really, really good. And maybe even, maybe even an adult game, you know, where it uses so much more depth, much more depth than sign language and you actually learn it maybe to it even, even level two. It's quite sophisticated.

You could go quite sophisticated with it,

Dev: [00:17:48] having this be your first Kickstarter. And you mentioned, you know, developing your Twitter audience. Have you found any resistance or hurdles or just real challenges when it comes to producing kick-starting and marketing the product?

Rich: [00:18:04] In terms of kickstart? Not a single, sorry, not in terms of Twitter, not a single issue.

I've got a very, I feel like I've got a very loyal. Following there, and people are really enthusiastic about the idea of it in terms of that sort of kickstart quite a number of issues. One, it feels like a full time job, even though I've already gotten nearly a full time job and I've got two children similar to yours.

So keeping an eye on that, answering the comments, like the feedback that continuous promotion is very, very draining, but there's a lot to learn from it. You know, this is your first experience. There's a heck of a lot in hindsight, that would have changed, but. I can't be too hard on myself cause it's raised or a lot of wasn't accessible.

I expected. The main issue we've come across is that people from the U S are a bit uncomfortable with paying a bit more for the version, but the trouble is that we had to unlock the stretch goals quite high before we made that version for the U S market. So it's kind of like a. Kind of like a double edged sword, really.

So, so recently we reduced the sort of tier level in price a little bit for the U S market. So it's a bit more in line.

Dev: [00:19:11] And then what are the remaining stretch goals that you have on the Kickstarter?

Rich: [00:19:14] The next one, 20,000, which I'm sure we'll hit is, is the ASL lexicon, like I talked about earlier. So it's like working with a deaf tutor on specific language for the game.

And that will come with the people backing at Gwenivere or Arthur or above, um, a standard. And, um, and after that, there's a, there's a dice, which is going to be a D6 Dusting dice, which is part of the game. Cause as a player, you go back to Earth. You're the only creature able to go back to earth through this portal.

And you've got to convince your peers, whether they be teenagers or adults that magic still exists against about this belief, collecting belief. It's a bit like Monsters, Inc. You know, collecting screams, and then laughter it's a similar idea. But as part of this mechanic, a dice with six symbols on it, which, which leads the Grail Guide, which is our dungeon master or GM gives him a prompt or a storytelling prompt.

And then Josh, Summerville our knot artists. I presume you've seen some of the stunning art that he does for the game. And he's gonna, he's kind of going to kind of decorate the dice as well, and then we'd get a 3D printed and sent off.

Dev: [00:20:19] Yeah. So now you've mentioned a lot of inspirations from Arthurian Legend.

Was there any particular reason diving into, into that specifically just, you know, local folklore or a love for the legends?

Rich: [00:20:32] Well, I love it. I grew up in Cornwall in the UK and it was just ingrained in me and my father was incredibly into More Darth and all these, all these books that you read as a, as a young, as a young kid.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or the, all these, all this mythology and I'm really into mythology. Anyway, I was really into Japanese mythology and Celtic mythology and all these different world myths. So it's just the natural thing for me. I've always wanted to do some sort of mythological game, you know, I was considering doing in Japan, but again, I feel like you should produce or write or the things.

From a place where you know about stuff, you know, where you're familiar with it. Otherwise you've got, as I tried to write a Japanese novel for young adult novel. The amount of problems or run into with that, you know, like the idea of the local customs and kind of what the reality of things. It was just, it was just a minefield.

Dev: [00:21:23] Now, have you gone out and toured any of the castles and everything like that for, for Inspirisles, for inspiration, for the inspire Isles?

Rich: [00:21:31] Yeah, of course. Yeah. I've been watching loads of films, actually loads films, loads of documentary loads of it, even though I think a lot of time team. So, yes. hundred of sources to pull upon and enjoy upon?

And yeah, there's, there's no end to the amount of sort of inspiration around and it seems to be, it seems to be a big wave of kind of Celtic metaphor theory and kind of programs. And a series is coming out and films. I think people are still quite, quite into it, quite buzzed by it.

Dev: [00:22:02] Sign language can be, especially when you're going from a reading to.

Conceptualizing and executing. It can be a little difficult to wrap your mind around, especially if you've never worked with it before. Do you guys plan on producing any YouTube video content on just how to do different signs or are you going to like within the book refer out to, to, you know, video and resources and things like that for, for people like me, I'm a very visual learner.

Rich: [00:22:31] Yeah. So we've covered all that. I mean, this is what makes it quite unique. So you've got the uhm as a standard book, whether you buy the BSL version or the ASL version, you get the, you get the sign sheets within the book, the alphabet sheet. So even if you don't have the full content as an American sign language user, you can still start yourself off with the language and incorporate a little bit within the game.

Also, those, if you back back here as a PDF, even you get a video with it, the video tutorial done with my colleague, Rodney, who's obviously a deaf colleague and she's going to go through it all. And we're going to get a proper production company to produce this. We've already set this up, but unfortunately, as COVID hit, we had to cancel all the filming sessions.

Cause their studio shut down. But I am hoping, obviously I'm hoping that they will, they really open around October time so we can rerecord stuff, but these would be quite an, again, the tutorials will reflect exactly the level of the players. So you start off with the alphabet, finger spelling, learning the alphabet or the signs that way.

And then as you move up ranks, you go to different elements. I'm not talking about and all the way up to a lexicon. And that will be visually on the video.

Dev: [00:23:38] Yeah. It's, it's, it's cool that you, you know, you thought about all these, these different little things. Um, cause I know, especially when it comes to new concepts in, in table top, there can be, again, people like myself who are very visual learners and you know, can run into hurdles there.

So working in accessibility and working in the field that you have, do you have any other aspirations for the tabletop community as a whole, when it comes to accessibility. Things you'd like to see in other rule sets and guides and settings and systems?

Rich: [00:24:09] I think, do you know what maybe a couple of years ago I would have said yes, there's aspirations, but I think people are really, really demanding it and, and kind of, um, needing it in their, in their experiences.

And, and every game I'm seeing at the moment has got, um, safety tools and it's got. You know, autistic spectrum disorder, kind of low tool sets and things like that. Accessibility they're inclusivity elements, you know, all sorts of things that people working on. You know, we we've got which one, I have a dyslexic dyslexic, friendly fonts throughout, and I've been speaking to a person online about and showing them samples of the pages from the book and seeing how can we adjust this to make it better?

They talk about using different colors, but also incorporating people that are color blind. Into it and not excluding them. There's a lot of things you can do, but we've also got like a safety tool, which is, which is happening more and more at a table and the kids or the adults can pick it up and flip it over and say, look, I'm not happy with this, by the way, this is the session's going, you know, can we talk about it afterwards, but a can we move on to a different area and something I'm more comfortable with.

So I think honestly, if you're a modern producer yeah. You'd be able to get away with it. Anyway, I think you need to introduce these things and these accessibly tools or people are not going to buy into it. No, they're not gonna accept it. So, so yeah, a couple of years ago. No, but now I think everyone's on board and I think the tabletop community is very, it's got a strong voice about accessibility and inclusivity, and I think we're working towards the same goal and it's wonderful to see, to be honest,

Dev: [00:25:43] I agree.

And it's like, like you mentioned, you know, as a, as a creator, as a producer, uh, just being able to set your baseline. There's so many resources out there for inclusivity, dyslexic, neurodiverse. Just being able to, you know, reach out, especially on Twitter and just, Hey, do you mind just doing a, read my book and yeah.

Rich: [00:26:02] Yeah. Hundred percent. A hundred percent. And it's amazing when to know that I've got the budget now to hire someone professionally to go, you know, look through all the things we've written down, it's just, is this accessible? Is this inclusive? Is this, you know, cause people make mistakes. People make mistakes with the way they write too much stakes with the images they put up.

And so to have someone to pay for it. I mean, I'll give an example. I had a big conversation as I launched a Kickstarter with people that were offended by the adoption thing. So I originally had the players being taken to this world and adopted by the races and brought up  by them. And there was a lot of people that were, were not a lot of people, but a few people can turn into many people, can turn into loads of people.

And I thought I'm gonna have to change this. And I did this and they, they go back to me and I said, this is amazing. You changed this for us, for our system, you know, for, for our culture and for our kind of. We found it a little bit offensive. And, and the fact that you've changed, that means that we're gonna, we're gonna really support you.

And they spread it all around community and said like, this person has done this big gesture. You know, it didn't have to do it, but like, to be more accessible to more people and more cultures is the way forward. Definitely.

Dev: [00:27:11] And, and especially when you're coming from, you know, the writer, the producer, to them, to those communities, it's, it's huge, it's profound.

They're being seen, they're being included, they're being brought in, but you, the writer, it was just one of those, you know, you sat down, you reread your document and you spent some time editing and tuning and reproducing and it's it. It just blows my mind when you have larger systems that have hundreds of people writing these documents in these manuals, And, you know, they can't is the font dyslexic friendly?

Is, is there some kind of safety tools? I mean, I think D and D has a paragraph. If someone feels uncomfortable, please remove them from the table kind of commentary.

Rich: [00:27:55] Yeah. But eventually, you know, they obviously had a massive Renaissance, but eventually there will be archaic, you know, it'll be archaic thought patterns and it went, people will not accept it.

People have moved on, you know, people are moving on. The, in the indie, the indie scene is growing more and more and more. It definitely is having the same Renaissance I feel. And Kickstarter is a fantastic way. If you have that base support and that kind of passion from, especially on Twitter, I've found. Is that you have that base support and people will fund your project if it's, if it's coming from the right place.

Dev: [00:28:30] Right. Do you have plans to, to push the book to local game stores or just kind of the Kickstarter and everybody that supported it there?

Rich: [00:28:39] So be kickstarted, it will be on Drivethru, um, afterwards as a downloadable or, um, you know, a publishable book. Yeah. The other stretch goals will be on there as well.

There's an MP3 track that my, my father-in-law and his wife are producing there. They're quite, they're quite great magicians, musicians. Magicians? Musicians. Well, they all that as well. And, uh, so that will be on the, on the site as well. And then obviously we'll our main aim before the whole project was to, to approach schools, colleges, and community things, and to have it as an educational tool, as well as like a fun RPG.

So that will be our main aim. Really. We're going to hit that really hard and, and try and get this in working to run summer camps for instance, next year for a couple of months, teach him BSL and ASL. Over the summer. So, yeah, so that was, that was the intention of, I feel like that's a very real possibility now.

I wasn't certain at the beginning, but now that I could see the amount of passion for this project and, uh, it's obviously that I think we can bring it to educational settings across the country.

Dev: [00:29:41] That's awesome. And I hope, you know, it goes as widespread as possible. I hope as many, you know, universities and colleges and high schools and stuff like that will, will incorporate this in some degree, you know, even just having it at the school and available. Uh, in the library or whatever have you would be, would be awesome 

Rich: [00:29:57] I mean, there's a wonderful coincidence. Um, in that, uh, a mother and a son fought to have British sign language as a GCSE, subject, they were talking to the education minister, they were appealing, appealing, and appealing. And it sounds like next year that BSL will be a GCSE subject from September.

So it's just an amazing coincidence that our game could provide a lovely bridge or introduction to the language for all these teenagers. That would actually, they might actually be more inclined to pick it as a subject option, which is obviously incredibly humbling for me.

Dev: [00:30:31] So that's really all the  questions that I, that I had.

Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about or highlight about yourself, your background or the system?

Rich: [00:30:40] I think we've covered a lot pretty in depth. Yeah. Just, uh, just, you know, there's 12 days left. Just support, support, hatchlings and, uh, and the passion. No, we're cutting into it and the project, and we're going to put all the money into the paying the professionals to make the book as good as it can be.

And then deliver that really kind of intuitive learning system into the game.

Dev: [00:31:01] That's awesome. So other than that, where can we find you and the Inspirisles on social media?

Rich: [00:31:07] My, um, social media through Twitter at hatchling DM, I've got a website, hatchlings, dm.com, but Facebook. Is hatchlings tabletop for teens, or you can find the Inspireisles page on there, which has got a lot of following now, a lot of community backing and the Kickstarter is kickstarter.com forward slash projects forward slash tattered bear forward slash inspires.

Dev: [00:31:32] Awesome. And then just so you know, we do transcribe all of our interviews and episodes. To include and make it as accessible as possible. So when the episode does go live, I will make sure to also link out towards the transcription, just so we have both of those going out at the exact same.

Rich: [00:31:50] That's wonderful. I'm so glad to do that.

Dev: [00:31:53] It's again, it's just one of those. It takes me 15 minutes and can make somebody's day. So

Rich: [00:32:00] yeah, 100%.

Dev: [00:32:01] So thank you so much for jumping on the call with me and talking to me about Gibbs trials and actually. And I hope we can stay connected on the Twitter verse. I'm going to follow in the project as close as possible in signal boosting and we can, so, you know, good luck on the last 12 days, I got to smash the rest of the stretch goals on that.

Rich: [00:32:19] Thank you so much. Lovely talking to you and you as well. Take care.

Bri: [00:32:26] Thank you for tuning into this episode of Bardic Babble. Bardic Babble. is a part of the Bard podcast networks, family of shows. You can find Bardic Babbel and all of our other shows at thebardpodcast.com. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe for updates on new episodes. We can't wait to share the next story with you.