Melody  [0:00]
Welcome back to the Game Master Certification Organization's interview excerpt podcast series. Hi, I'm your host, Melody Rainelle. For our next few episodes, we have the minds behind Kanka.io. Haven't heard of Kanka.io yet? Well, stick around for this podcast series and you may just be glad you did! So, who do we have here with us? Would you gentlemen like to introduce yourselves?

Jay [0:28]
Hi there. I'm Jay.

Jon [0:30]
Jay. Jon. There we go. Nice and easy.

Melody  [0:34]
Perfect! How are you both doing today?

Jon [0:38]
Yeah, can't complain. 

Jay [0:39]
Good, good. How are you doing?

Melody [0:41]
I'm doing fantastic! Thanks for asking! We are really excited to have you both here with us!

Jon [0:48]
We're happy to just goof around and enjoy.

Melody [0:52]
Wonderful! We're gonna have a lot of fun I can tell. So, would you both like to give a little more information about yourselves for our listeners?

Jon [0:59]
Jay, do you wanna go first? Go for it.

Jay [1:01]
Okay.

Hi, my name is Jay, I go by the alias "Ilestis" online. I'm a Dungeon Master, and I've been playing role playing games and, more specifically, Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition since it came out. Basically it's when I fell in love with role playing games. I've been the Forever DM since then, and have been having my own world, my own homebrew world since... uh, six years, so fairly after discovering Dungeons and Dragons. Did the starter set and then started my own adventure, my own homebrew, and been playing in that since then. And got tired of losing all my notes and never knowing what was... where was the information I needed during a session, or during my session prep so built a small tool called Kanka.io, during a weekend, and that was three and a half years ago. October 2018 posted it on Reddit, not expecting anyone to really have a look at it, woke up the next day, 200 people had created an account and were asking me how can we pay you to keep working on this. And that's kind of how I became a professional... don't want to say Dungeon Master because I'm not paid to be a Dungeon Master but this is how Dungeons and Dragons / role playing games ended up being my job. So Kanka has been growing as a hobby project since, yeah, end of 2018 and beginning of 2020, Jon joined along, cause I didn't want to have to figure out marketing, and paying taxes with the income from the company. So, that's where he comes in the picture. Jon and I have been best friends for over a decade now and it just made sense to to bring him along.

Jon [2:41]
It was a real privilege to join the project. I remember we had preliminary conversations because I was going through a transition at work, and I wasn't too happy with the way things were working out for me. And I guess, Jay was visiting. He came over for a weekend, stayed over at mine. And we had 1,000,001 conversations, and I don't know that when he left I had a clear idea of what was going to happen. But shortly after we decided that we would try and sort of evolve Kanka from a hobby project that Jay did sort of on the side to something that would, well, be a proper company and that we would try and grow and just kind of see where they would take us. And so Jay kindly invited me along for the ride, as he said, to do all the stuff he doesn't wanna do. And so here I was, and here I am today. It's been what - it's been a year and a half now. It's been a... it's been an interesting ride.

Jay [3:31]
Yeah. Flown by.

Jon [3:34]
It really has flown by. I have to say, I've worked in various sectors before, but this is by far what I've enjoyed the most. I didn't even know that this is what I wanted. I didn't have any prior experience in marketing, which is one of my main responsibilities within Kanka. And I kind of had to learn and to, sort of, you know, adapt to what the company needed. But, it's really been a true, like, gem of a job, I have to say. And I'm very happy that I'm part of this, and while I don't have Jay's background in game mastering... I've never really been huge when it comes to role playing. I, you know, played Dungeons and Dragons a handful of times and I have very good friends of mine... and Jay being one of them and my flatmate for a few years, who play quite regularly and so I've been sort of exposed to that. But I definitely come to Kanka more from the sort of a worldbuilding perspective as opposed to a dungeon master perspective. I-I've read, pretty much every science fantasy book I've ever managed to find. I have a massive soft spot for anything that's high fantasy. And that's always tied in, you know, with my hopes and my aspirations to write a book, which is where Kanka comes in, in the sense that like, I've been using Kanka to worldbuild and to sort of document, the world for the book that I will probably never publish but always aspire to publish. But so, yeah. It's been quite an interesting ride and it's been a pleasure to be able, I think for both Jay and I, but speaking just for myself, it's been a pleasure to explore that sort of nerdy side of me without any restraints.

Melody  [5:07]
Okay. Tell us about your art as a Game Master.

Jon [5:11]
I will let Jay take this one, cause as I said, I've never GM'd. I have nothing to... nothing interesting to contribute here sadly.

Jay [5:19]
Okay. Let me think what's relevant to this.

One thing I love doing is drawing maps. I spend... well, I haven't- it hasn't been as crazy recently, like in the last six months, but I will spend an ungodly amount of time drawing maps for my camp continents like figuring out - where does this river go, where does this mountain range go, where's the logical city, how big is the city based on how many trade routes flow through it, cause the more trade the richer the city usually. Would a capital city not on a port location make sense? Or close to a river... So that's something I enjoy spending too much time thinking about and then figuring out, okay, what's the name of this city, what's the name of this town, what's the name of this continent? What's the culture here, because I always try and base my areas on the real world, so I: "Okay, okay, this region, it's more- the architecture is Turkish, but the people speak Greek and, oh, Italian and have Italian names..." and kind of go from there and spend... um, I think I main world or one of my main continent maps I spent over 120 hours in Photoshop, just tweaking, over the years. So there's definitely a artistic side to me where I'll spend too much time and my players will be: "Okay, looks nice," and then just... that's the end of that.

Another thing I used to do quite a lot of music when I was in my early adulthood, a long time ago. And so for me, music and ambience is always very important during my sessions... Now that it's all online, I make sure we play through Discord and have a bot that I can control and have my own Spotify playlist and then I'll tell the bot, "Play the songs from this playlist." to kind of control the mood. I feel my players have, I added that couple of years ago and they're really, really enjoy it and I also spend too much time curating  these playlists, depending on... "Okay were in a town, and this is the atmosphere I want for it. It's a market town... it's more maybe Oriental, is it more Nordic... Okay I'll try and find music which fits." And that's all from spending too much time thinking about music and sound, sound design.

Melody  [7:25]
Alright! What do you love about games? And just to let you know, these questions are going to be intentionally vague.

Jay [7:34]
Jon, do you want to have a go at it? I'll have a sip of tea in the meantime.

Jon [7:37]
Oh.

Games. I guess like it's intentionally vague. As I've mentioned, I don't play many role playing games. I have LARPed [LARP = Live Action Role Play] a couple of times with Jay, actually, and that was quite an experience I think. But in general, if you know, if we extrapolate games to other games that I might play, so board games or video games in general, I think what I like is kind of losing myself... Well there are certain aspects of it that I like. I like the losing myself in a universe. I think I've always been sort of partial to expansive universes. Expansive law. I like, you know, if I talk about books for a second. I tend to like books that have very rich worlds and very detailed worlds. I think, you know, of course, Tolkien would be one of the bests in this, but also you know if I go back to my youth, having read through just about every Star Wars book that was available which kind of created quite a rich lore and so - what do I like about games? I like being able to lose myself within the confines of the universe that they offer. So I tend to like, yeah, that sort of escape- escape is perhaps not the right word because I'm not trying to escape from my life, but I do like being able to let my imagination free flow and I do like to be able to just kind of experience someone else's imagination, and just feel a sense of wonder. I think that's probably the key element here, a sense of wonder. That's what attracts me most about about games or about books or about everything that's sort of within that realm is experiencing that. Yeah, that sense of wonder. Seeing something new, seeing something that I hadn't ever conceived or thought of. Interactions that I had never, yeah, imagined, and just being sort of taken aback by that. I think that's what I personally enjoy the most. Creativity is just so unending, and I mean we all inspire, to take inspiration from others. I think that that's, you know, that's just the basis of how creativity works but then within the inspiration, you really sort of adapt it and mold it into something completely new and completely different, and I think just seeing what people are capable of coming up with, to me is... I don't even know what the word is, but it's something I enjoy experiencing. I enjoy seeing what others can come up with - the universes that others come up with, you know, even if we think back to a couple years ago. I have a slightly different heritage. I'm Middle Eastern as well as European, and I remember, Jay taking inspiration for some of his characters and some of his kingdoms from the Middle East, and I remember having conversations with him about it and, you know, sharing... It was silly, right? It was even sharing names of my family members. I guess if you're not really exposed to something different like that then you never really have that basis to then create off of. And I think that was something that was quite enjoyable to me just to see where Jay could take these small, everyday inputs, and create something new and something different out of it. And so yeah, that's, I think that's why I enjoy about games. Just that creativity.

Jay [10:41]
For me it's the communal aspects. I love games, like you mentioned... You've LARPed with me and I've done quite a bit of LARP. I love getting into character and creating a story with others, and I also prefer playing video games, or games in gener- well, video games with others. I remember during the first lockdown. We played a lot of games together, online. They weren't necessarily games I really enjoyed, but just the fact of playing with other people was for me - the social aspect - was really enjoyable and the same with role playing games with me and friends sitting around a table, being goofy, telling stories, doing silly voices, pretending to be drunk in a tavern... Or the same, I really enjoy board games, and again, board games I prefer most are collaborative, where everyone's kind of working together towards a goal. And so that's really what I enjoy, I guess, most about games. And sure, I like solo games, computer games, RPGs like, I really enjoyed The Witcher, but do I get the most enjoyment is when I'm playing with other friends.

Melody  [11:45]
Very nice! Thank you. Alright, here's my last question for this podcast episode. How would you describe your better self?

Jon [11:56]
This is the...

Jay [11:56]
Might be taller... Thirty pounds slimmer... less- less receding hairline.

Jon [12:04]
Yeah, this is a tough one.

Jay [12:07]
No, I- I think as every person, I have flaws and I've done introspections. I kind of know where there's areas for me to be better. I know I can be quite lazy, especially when answering to feature requests for Kanka with something I disagree. Not necessarily lazy but also very dismissive. Something Jon...

Jon [12:27]
Yeah, yes. Dismissive is the right word.

Jay [12:30]
Something Jon helps me with a lot when I think an idea is not good. Yeah, Jon helps me find the diplomatic way of saying, "Yes, but no thank you."

Yeah, that kind of interaction is something which I know as a person I can improve, especially now that Kanka is my income so I can't just piss these people off.

And yeah, just being less lazy at times like saying, "Okay, let me send out the- the calendar invitation to my friends for the next D&D game," or "Just build that feature I've been talking about for two years but never got to doing." Can't think of much else from a habits perspective... Yeah, maybe not going to bed at three o'clock in the morning as much. That'd probably help. Living more healthy lifestyle... But, otherwise... Probably read more. Yeah, that's one I wish I would read more cause I just don't read a lot and I love books. Like Jon said before sci fi books, or who have cool worldbuilding ideas or elements and they like flip your head over on a concept, like I really love China Miéville's books. Embassytown, which is about civilization, humans come in contact with aliens who have a completely different way of communicating and talking, and it just, it's really a cool concept. And I wish I read more books like that to kind of incorporate into my worldbuilding. Yeah, Jon?

Jon [14:01]
Yeah, um... my better self... We're all sort of on a journey to better ourselves. But I'm also a bit reluctant... Hmm, how do I put this... We can always picture a sort of better version of ourselves, but I think that also does us a disservice in the sense that as long as we are progressing towards a better version of ourselves, I don't necessarily like the idea of, you know, comparing who I am today to who I could be. Because I think also standards on your better version of yourself... Well, my standards of my better version of myself have changed dramatically over the years. And I think I'm a lot happier today and I'm a much better person today than I was, you know, five years ago, or even three years ago. But I think that the person from three years ago, from five years ago, wouldn't necessarily agree with that. Because I think we are as human beings, hopefully in constant flux and you know you experience new things every day and hopefully you learn from them and you evolve with that. So I think it's hard for me to say where the better version of me lies, and what that better version looks like because I don't know what I don't know. But if I was to choose sort of more standard... well, standard's perhaps not the right word, but you know, points of improvement, things that I would like to work on over the course of the next six months to a year. I think that... it's funny that you say that I'm diplomatic, Jay, and I would agree that I'm the more diplomatic of the two, but there are definitely certain things where I'm perhaps a bit too... I want to please a bit too much. I know that when we have feature requests or when some of our users want something, I tend to bug Jay every which way for him to try- to make it happen, even if it doesn't necessarily make sense because I tend to be afraid of...  um, rejection is a strong word here but you know I tend to want people to think as positively as possible of Kanka. And that sometimes comes with short-term thinking, as opposed to long-term thinking what makes sense right now, as it opposed to what makes sense as a global picture. And I think that is something that I would like to work on and I am trying to work on. Just be a bit less sort of knee-jerk when criticism comes in. You going back to  what I was saying earlier with the new UX, it has sometimes been difficult for me to just take a step back and just wait. I tend to thrive when in action. And so when it's just about waiting and collecting that feedback and having to weather the storm that sometimes takes its toll on me. I think, you know, talking about my better self that's definitely something where, where I would like to improve, perhaps, you know, accept that things take time, and that you don't have to change immediately just because someone says so. I think that would be my biggest point of improvement. I don't know what else... I would like to tinker more as well, I think. I've always liked building computers, you know it's a bit of a tangent, I know, but I'm a bit of a tinkerer in that respect, and it's something I've been doing a bit more and more lately, but it's not something I've necessarily had much time for over the years. And so I think that's another thing where I just like to- my better itself is probably happier tinkering with electronics on a more regular basis, I think. But I don't know if it's so much better as happier. Is happier, better? I guess that's an open-ended question as well.

Melody  [17:23]
Thank you to both of you for sharing that with us and letting us get to know you just a little bit better. Well, we'll wrap this first podcast episode up here. Thank you Jon and Jay for being with us! We look forward to chatting with you more during our next few episodes.

To our listeners:
In future episodes with Jon and Jay, we'll have the opportunity to learn more about Kanka.io and we'll be talking about some worldbuilding as well. But, coming up next, we'll be learning about how to handle mistakes, how to get players to start playing, and evaluating performance and improvement as a Game Master. So, stay tuned! Follow us to receive notifications when new podcasts are released. For more podcasts and information check out our website: gamemastercertification.org. If you liked what you've heard here, please hit that share button and help us spread the word. Thank you for listening.