“One thing about people who say they hate history is that it’s impossible because literally everything that has ever happened is history. Whether it’s military, cars, sports, or video games, there’s a story that connects us to the past, and that’s what makes it so cool.” – BEN THOMPSON
“We wanted our (D&D) adventures to feel old school—like a low fantasy world where you’re scraping mud off your armor and scavenging for food. That grit is part of what makes it relatable and exciting for players.” – BRIAN SNODDY
Ben and Brian vending at Emerald City Comic Con, on February 24, 2024, in Seattle, WashingtonI
n this electrifying episode of BOOM’s TRANSMISSIONS POPcast, we journey into the fantastical realms of “99 Cent Adventures” with its visionary creators, Ben Thompson and Brian Snoddy. From blending historical grit with imaginative storytelling to designing monsters born from folklore and the mind of a three-year-old, Ben and Brian share how they’ve redefined Dungeons & Dragons modules with their signature low-cost, high-creativity approach. Together, they reveal the secrets behind their Kickstarter successes, their love for old-school fantasy, and the artful synergy that keeps their adventures thrilling for players worldwide.
Discover how Ben and Brian are redefining D&D with creativity and grit in this badass interview!
Welcome to another episode of BOOM’s POPcast, full of pop coolture fun to get your circuits buzzing with excitement. Today, we have two incredible guests: Ben Thompson, the mastermind behind the “Badass of the Week” podcast, who spices up history with epic tales and humor, and Brian Snoddy, a renowned artist known for his stunning illustrations in role playing games and deep interest in Japanese artifacts. Together, they’ll share insights on D&D story development, comic conventions, and the fascinating world of artful story creation. Get ready for a humorous dive into creativity and gaming that might just short circuit your imagination.
Without further ado, please give a warm welcome for the sole survivor of the aPOPalypse and TRANSMISSIONS POPcast host, BOOM.
BOOM: Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello, Ben and Brian, thank you for joining me!
Ben: Thank you so much for having us.
Brian: Yeah, thank you.
Ben: Yeah, we really appreciate you guys having us on the show. We’re happy to be here.
Brian: Yeah.
BOOM: You’re welcome. I appreciate you being here to talk about D&D story development, comic cons, monster illustrations, Japanese artifacts, and historical storytelling, among other topics. I am curious! What sparked the idea for you to dive into the magical world of role playing game development with “99 Cent Adventures”? Which games tickle your circuits the most, and why?
Brian: Well, both of us are huge Dungeons & Dragons fans already.
Ben: Yeah. And we’ve been friends for like, I don’t know, what, 10 years now.
Brian: Yeah, it’s been a long time. Ben puts up with me for 10 years now.
Ben: And we’ve talked about it for a long time. So I have been writing history books since 2006. I was writing books about various historical figures and Brian does the illustrations for them. And we had been talking for a long time about what if we got together to do D&D stuff, because that’s something that we both like. And honestly, we’ve had a D&D game for years, and eventually we’re like, you know, we should just write some of these down.
Brian: Yeah. Because we were making up these adventures to play, and Ben said, “Hey, why don’t we make some modules?” I think it was your idea, actually.
Ben: You were illustrating them. You were drawing pictures of the stuff that was in the thing. I was like, “Man, we should just print this.”
Brian: We should print it. And Ben’s good with rules. He writes all the rules and stuff too, so I’m not so good at that. I mean, I can wrap them around my brain, but as far as sitting down and writing stat blocks, I just. I can’t do that.
Ben: Yeah, that was a… That’s a…That’s a thing that I like.
Brian: But Ben’s good at that.
Ben: And so our power synergized and we were able to come together, and I think we ended up putting together something that was really fun and that people are gonna like, and the feedback we’ve been getting on it is really good.
Brian: Yes.
BOOM: Love that! What sources of inspiration do you plug into when designing characters and monsters, and how do you ensure they are engaging and relatable for players?
Brian: I use a lot of historical figures, a lot of gangsters and motorcycle gang type dudes as my NPCs.
Ben: Yes, absolutely. We do some of that. And for the monsters, like, we have a Kickstarter. We just closed it, but it’s gonna be coming out soon where we designed 20 new monsters; wilderness style monsters. The Kickstarter is called “Hinterlands“, and the idea is that it’s an adventure into the wilderness, like a Lewis and Clark adventure, except it’s D&D, so it’s full of monsters that are trying to kill you. And so the idea is the book will be designed as though it was an adventure journal like that somebody was keeping while they were on this trip into the unknown wilderness, be written in character as like, “Ah, then we went down this river, and we discovered this monster, and we don’t know what it was. It had the head of a bear and the body of an alligator or whatever.” An uh…
Ben: Yeah. The bear alligator is actually a gator head on a bear body. Yeah, sorry I missed that.
Brian: And Ben’s three-year-old son invented that creature.
Ben: Yes. Yes. He was getting annoyed. He was like three and we were trying to get him to say like, “What’s your name? What’s your favorite color?” And he was getting annoyed with the stupid questions. So when you ask him.
Brian: Yeah, he’s pretty bright.
Ben: Yeah. And so when you ask him what’s his name? He’d be like, “I’m a bear alligator.” And so I texted Snoddy, I was like, “We gotta do that.” But yeah, we have, like, some fun, some fun ideas for monsters. Whether it’s combining existing creatures like the bear alligator, coming up with some interesting new stuff, or just trying to find a take on something that hasn’t been done a thousand times.
Ben: So one thing we love to do is goblins. And you’ve had a couple of really good takes on goblins.
Brian: We throw goblins into everything because they’re just so much fun.
Ben: Yes.
Brian: And also, we have two new creatures that are from Brazilian legend.
Ben: Yes. Yes. So my wife is from Brazil, and I go down there a few times a year to spend time with my son’s grandparents and my in-laws and stuff. So I’m down there for a long time, and there’s a really interesting folklore and history in Brazil that is kind of untapped in Dungeons & Dragons. So we wanted to bring some of those guys in as well. There’s a little creature called the Curupira that, he’s like a forest protector, and so all the creatures of the forest, like, come to his aid. So, you know, if you’re in the forest, you’re not supposed to be there. Like in this Lewis and Clark thing, he’ll, like, send little creatures, like, just skunks, and badgers, and parrots come running out of the forest and swarm you and try to attack you because they’re trying to do his bidding. So that’s kind of a fun, a fun thing. Yeah. Yeah! So just trying to find new takes on things, new types of monsters and things that haven’t been done before.
BOOM: What top secret methods do you use to create compelling adventure hooks that draw players into your stories?
Brian: I don’t know if they’re secret methods, but we used… Was it Joseph Conrad, I guess, who wrote the “Heart of Darkness“?
Ben: Yeah, yeah.
Brian: He basically has like an adventure style, and if you can follow kind of things like that, like movies like “Indiana Jones” and things like that, kind of follow that adventure style, I don’t think that’s a secret.
Ben: Yeah.
Brian: And that’s kind of what we do.
Ben: Yeah, yeah, we like the idea. So we… Our first series was called “The Lost Crown of the Lich King“, and we’re very happy with the way that the first part of that book opens. It was something that you played in a D&D adventure a long, long time ago.
Brian: My buddy Bill Stewart from high school came up with this idea, and I called Bill and I mailed him a copy of that book when it came out. Yeah. I put his name in the credits too.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. And so it was one of the greatest beginnings, I felt like when you were describing it to me. We adapted it a little bit for what we wanted to do with our adventure. but the first book in the series is called “Fangs in the Dark” and you are level one characters with no armor, weapons, or equipment. You’ve been captured by gnolls and they are carrying you off to kill you and eat you, but the wagon they’re transporting you in breaks a wheel, and tumbles over down a ravine, and drops you out. And so the adventure begins. Not like, “Hey, you’re in a tavern. Do you want to say hi to the elf over there?” It begins with, like, “You are all prisoners who have been transported here to be killed and eaten, and the wagon breaks. You have no weapons or equipment.”
Brian: You’re pretty much booty ass naked too.
Ben: Yes. And you’re surrounded by gnolls that are trying to kill you. You take off running into the forest. For the first part of that adventure, you are making weapons out of sticks and rocks. Gnolls are sending dogs after you. You’re trying to fight them off. And that is just, like, that’s a hook that gets you right in. And you know, because you don’t have to pick equipment and all that stuff, get the game started faster. And you know, that’s the thing where you just throw them right in. Like what you were saying, like a movie, right? That’s a good beginning to a movie. It’s a good beginning to an adventure quest. You don’t have the party sitting there being like, “I don’t understand how we’re supposed to start this thing.”
Brian: Yeah. Or picking out equipment and taking forever. You’re in it.
Ben: Yeah.
Brian: Here you go. Strap your seatbelt on.
Ben: Yeah. That was another thing. That’s another thing that we recommend in the module is, like, you know, maybe if you just want to roll characters up for your players, because that’s one of the things that’s really a barrier to new people getting into D&D is that the first three hours of playing Dungeons & Dragons, you don’t want to have your players sitting there being like, “Well, wisdom is like your street smarts and intelligence is your book smarts. So, like, which one you want to put the 13 and which one you want to put the 12?” That’s not fun, and you just got to get into the game. So the sooner you can get into the game.
Brian: It’s not even fun for the Dungeon Master.
Ben: No, it is not.
Brian: Let alone the players.
Ben: Yes. The sooner you get into the game, the better. And that’s what we were trying to do, all of our adventure hunts.
Brian: Yeah. And I think it works. It’s really fun. We haven’t had anybody complain about it. Everyone seems to really like it. And, you know, you start out and hijinks ensue.
BOOM: Love that! Do you have a special algorithm for deciphering the trends you see emerging in tabletop role playing games? And how do you plan to adapt your designs to meet those trends without short circuiting your creativity?
Brian: Ben and I do not follow trends.
Ben: Yes. That was kind of what we were looking for with these books. Right. So for “Lost Crown of the Lich King”, what we wanted was for this to feel like a first edition module. We wanted it to be low fantasy, dirt, grime. You’re cleaning mud out of your armor. You’re trying to, like, find food and water, you know. We wanted to make it for 5th edition, like you said, because when we… when we were coming out with the idea, that was the main thing everybody was playing. So we’re like, alright, we can release this. It’s compatible with OSR, and we have OSR rules in the back. But a lot of people are playing fifth edition. A lot of people that we meet at these conventions are playing fifth edition. So we needed to make the adventure for that. So we wanted to update it for that. But we wanted it to feel really old school rather than trendy and new. We wanted it to…
Brian: And that’s been a selling point, too. When we go to comic book conventions and we have our printed copies here, people go crazy for it. They’re like, “Hey, this looks like the old stuff.” “Yes, you’re right! It does! That’s why we did it.”
Ben: Yeah. The art, the writing, the style, everything about it. We were trying to make it feel like a “Conan the Barbarian” adventure more than what’s coming out now, because there are people who are… who are more juiced into the trends than us, right? And they are doing the thing that is trendy right now. Rather than chasing that, we were gonna try to get back to basics and get back to D&D roots and do a real old school adventure for people who think that sort of thing might be cool.
BOOM: Can you walk us through your typical development process, from the spark of inspiration to the glorious moment of a successfully funded Kickstarter. Are comic cons the most successful way to gather people for a successful gaming crowdfunding campaign?
Brian: Ben and I like to sit down at local watering holes and have adult beverages…
Ben: Yes.
Brian: and just talk about stuff. That’s kind of how we do most things.
Ben: The story of “99 Cent Adventures” is an interesting one because I was doing a comic book show for my first book. I wrote a book called “Badass” about, like, great badasses from history. And I was selling it at Emerald City Comic Con, in Seattle, and Brian came up to my table, and he was like, “Hey, you know, I’m one of the artists for the book. I did a bunch of art for your book.” And it turned out he lived, like, three blocks from my house, at the time. Yeah, and he lives across the street from this bar. This, like, Hawaiian bar that’s awesome, and so we just started meeting there to talk about what was gonna go into future books, and other projects, and all this stuff. And so, I mean, while “Lich King” came out a year ago, we started the idea for this, like, 10 years ago.
Brian: Yeah.
Ben: I mean, we started talking about doing like a character class for a Thracian gladiator a long, long, long time ago.
Brian: And we did a video on it like four years ago or five years ago now.
Ben: And so we’ve been kind of kicking this idea around forever. We’ve been playing D&D together for, I don’t know, probably 10 years also.
Brian: Pretty close to it.
Ben: Yeah. And, you know, over time, eventually we kind of started to put this into form. And I remember I went to Brian’s house like a month before Emerald City Comic Con, and I was like, Emerald City Comic Con.. I guess 2023. And I was like, let’s launch this thing at the show.
Brian: Yes.
Ben: Let’s just do it. Right. Because we’ve been talking about it for years. We’ve got all these plans together for it. Let’s just sit down, figure out how much money we need, how we’d want to spend it, what we want to do, and just do it. And so we launched it at Emerald City that year. And, yeah, we were able to get a bunch of people signed up at the show.
Brian: Quite a few. Yeah. We had some sample pages, and we had some artwork there, and Ben and I were just talking it up.
Ben: Yeah, we had some flyers with a QR code.
Brian: We had a lot of people sign up.
Ben: Yeah, that show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot. We funded it during that show.
Brian: Yes, we did.
Ben: Because it was a four day show and we were handing out flyers like maniacs and grabbing everybody.. And, and by the end
Brian: And before the show ended, we had reached our goal.
Ben: We dressed my wife up as a character from the game, and had her running around trying to get people hand out flyers and stuff. We were shameless. We were doing everything. “Hey, you! You’re wearing a D&D shirt. Get over over here, here!” Get yeah. “Scan this QR code with your phone.”
Brian: Yes. But people were happy and they were, you know, they were into it. Yeah, it was fun for us and it was fun for the fans. And then the next year, we went to Emerald City Con. We were handing out the artwork and stuff that they had bought.
Ben: Yeah. And we had the books.
Brian: We had the books there and people went nuts! Yeah, they loved it.
Ben: Yeah, it was awesome.
Brian: God, what did we sell, 77 books or something?
Ben: Something like that, yeah
Brian: Oh, it was Crazy. It was wonderful. Thank you, fans.
Ben: Yes, thank you.
BOOM: I know you are currently finishing the development of your successful Kickstarter for “Hinterlands“, a detailed accounting of the flora and fauna of Western Cyzica. What does that entail, to get the art and stories into your funder’s hands?
Brian: We have to actually produce the book.
Ben: Yes.
Brian: Then we have to print it.
Ben: Yep.
Brian: It has to be published online first, and then the printed copies will come out that we have for shows, because we don’t sell printed copy. Well, this… We’re making an exception this time.
Ben: Yeah, we’re doing printed copies for this one. Sold about 20 of them, I think.
Brian: Yeah, that’s pretty good. But we don’t like to mail things because it’s a big hassle, and it’s expensive, and mail gets lost and gets jacked up.
Ben: But, yeah, we had a lot of the stuff done, so I think part of the thing for people who want to do Kickstarters is like, we had a lot of the work done already. Brian had a lot of art done.
Brian: for it. About 80% of it.
Ben: Yeah. We’d been playtesting it for months when we released the Kickstarter.
Brian: Almost a year.
Ben: Yeah. And friends come over and playtest it and be like, “Alright, you know, we’re gonna play it, and then we’re gonna play it again. We’re gonna play this encounter again.” And, you know, playtesting. The first run is like “Hey, let’s have the adventure, and let’s all play D&D together.” And then the second one is like, “Alright, forget that, like, sit down, here’s the monster. There’s the encounter. You go, you go, you go. You go. Like, let’s go. Let’s run this encounter over and over again.”
Brian: We did all the fight scenes about two or three or four different times to make sure everything was balanced.
Ben: Yeah, it’s work, you know, it’s work. It feels like work when you’re doing it like that, but…
Brian: It’s fun work.
Ben: It’s fun. Yeah, it’s great.
Brian: But it’s still work. You still have to do it.
Ben: Yes. And so kind of having everything in place, you know, not only helps your Kickstarter fund, because you can show all of that stuff on your Kickstarter page. Look at what this is gonna look like, right? People aren’t gonna just give you money for a theoretical idea. And even, like, the Lewis and Clark thing, it’s gonna be like Lewis and Clark journals. Okay. Maybe you can picture what that looks like if you have some of the artwork done and you can put it up on the Kickstarter. This is what it’s gonna look like.
Brian: People can see people are a little more excited about it. They’re really into it then.
Ben: Yep. And then the other trick with it is setting a realistic goal. We set a goal that, you know, is very comfortable, and that we think we can beat. We’re hoping to beat by a decent margin.
Brian: We have internally moved our clock up a little bit to get it done for the convention season starting next year. That’s what we really want to do.
Ben: Right, Right. But you can’t over promise. You got to promise a reasonable date, and then you got to do it.
Brian: Yeah.
Ben: Sit down and do the work. Right. I get a lot of questions from authors and stuff, and they’re like, how do I sell my book? How do I get my book published? Or whatever. And the first step is, you write it. You got to finish it. That’s the first thing you gotta do. You gotta finish it. And that’s the Kickstarter. That’s everything else, right? The first… First hurdle is finish the thing.
Brian: Yeah.
BOOM: Are there any other upcoming projects or releases that you are planning after “Hinterlands” is completed?
Brian: Oh, we have a whole bunch of stuff.
Ben: Yeah, we do.
Brian: Strap your seatbelts on, kids, because Ben and I are just getting started.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. We were just talking about having this stuff done. Here’s a little secret. Is that, like, we’ve got artwork done for the next thing that we’re gonna do after “Hinterlands”.
Brian: I have… Let’s see, I dropped off last week, what, six pages of sketches of stuff I’d already planned.
Ben: We have the whole next campaign, like, outlined.
Brian: We have it all outlined. Yeah, roughly. And we did this at Bellingham Comic Con, the day before it started, in the local watering hole down the street.
Ben: Yeah. The Main Street Pub. We went there and we just ordered a few adult beverages and sat there with, like…
Brian: Hamburgers…
Ben: and hamburgers, and we sat there with… with a clipboard and a phone and some pencils, and we just. We went to town and we outlined the whole thing. Yeah. So we’re excited about that. That’s the other, like. That’s the other thing where it’s like, oh, I want to start working on that, but we got to finish this other thing.
Brian: But we have to finish this first. So let’s…
Ben: It’s so close to being done. Let’s knock this out and get to the next thing.
Brian: So the answer to that is yes. We have a whole bunch.
Ben: Yeah. We’re not going to run out of ideas anytime soon.
BOOM: How many years have you been vending at cons? How do you pick which cons to vend at? Do you have a secret formula or is it more like I will go wherever they have the best snacks?
Brian: We bring our own snacks, actually.
Ben: We do. We do. You show up with a bag of… a bag of beef jerky sticks.
Brian: Yeah. Which we nickname goblin wieners.
Ben: Yes. And we go to town on those.
Brian: We pick local shows for the most part because they’re easy to get to.
Ben: Yeah.
Brian: If you’re hauling around a lot of books and stuff, I mean, that’s a lot of stuff to drag around.
Ben: There’s a bunch in our area, right? So we’re in the…
Brian: We’re lucky here, in the greater Seattle area, there’s a lot of comic cons.
Ben: Yeah. There’s a lot of comic book shows around here, and we love to go to them. But you do have to kind of balance the… you know… if it’s airfare, that’s expensive, right? Airfare, hotel, food, lodging, shipping, like you said. Shipping the materials and stuff.
Brian: Oh yeah, it’s insanity.
Ben: You have to sell a lot of books and make that back. right? So say you wanted to go to a San Diego con. You’ll sell a lot of stuff, but will you make your money back? The table down there is expensive, and the hotels are expensive. Like, you got to sell a lot to make your money back. Although there is some exposure stuff to that, too. You have to weigh that. If you’re willing to, like, lose money to go and get more exposure, maybe that’s a good way to build your brand. But at a certain point, you know, for us, the shows we like to do are the ones that we can drive to, and we’ll spend one night in a hotel. Everything fits in our car. So we’re not paying somebody to ship it, or we’re not stuffing it in suitcases and paying $50 a suitcase to put it on an airplane. So, yeah, you have to manage that. Like, how much are you going to make versus how much is this going to cost?
Brian: Because we go to shows to make money. Yeah. Advertising is good, but if we can’t make a profit, we don’t want to go to the show.
Ben: Yeah, yeah.
Brian: Because we can’t sit there and just lose money. This is what I do for a living, full-time.
Ben: Yeah, same here.
Brian: Yeah. So I need to be able to make money.
Ben: Right. What’s the answer to how long you’ve been vending? For me, my first show was 2009, Emerald City Comic Con.
Brian: Me, it was probably 1992 or 91, maybe 93.
Ben: You’ve been vending since the 20th century?
Brian: Yes, since the 20th century. Yes. I used to be a background artist for a very popular comic book guy, and we started doing shows together, and that’s when I started selling things and getting tables. And that was in. Yeah, probably 92 or 93.
BOOM: I am curious! For “99 Cent Adventures”, Ben, how do you decide which characters or themes to focus on in your work? Do you throw darts at a board or consult a crystal ball?
Brian: Yes.
Ben: Yeah, I think both. I think both. There’s times where you’ll be like, “Hey, I drew this thing. Like, let’s use. Let’s do something with this, right?” Or you’ll draw this cool, like, even just a piece of scenery, and it’s like, “Alright, how do we build an adventure around this piece of scenery? Because this is cool.” There’s other times where it’s like, “Hey, we need a magic weapon. I came up with this cool idea for a magic wand that looks like a rose bush thorn, covered with thorns and stuff. Can you draw that?” And he’ll draw that. And, you know, so we go back and forth just like, with coming up with the stories. Sometimes he’ll draw a piece and it’ll be like, “We gotta use this for something”, and sometimes I’ll have an idea and he’ll be like, “I gotta draw that.”
Brian: Yes.
BOOM: For “99 Cent Adventures”, which comes first, the art or the stories?
Ben: So, for “99 Cent Adventures”, I don’t come up with all of the stories. We come up with the stories together, and I write them down, and I have ideas, like, for sure. But it’s generally a creative process between the two of us. And a lot of what it is is, like, we take our favorite D&D adventures that we’ve played over the last 10 years, and are like, “Oh, this was a cool piece. Can we put this in here somewhere? How do we put this in this part?” Or, like, you know, you’ll come up with an idea, Brian. Where it’s like, “Hey, we’re gonna call it “Garden of Terror”, but I don’t quite know what that means.” And then I’ll be like, “What if it’s like an old garden? Like this? Oh, no. What if it’s like a city park?” And then we kind of sit there and we talk about it together and we come up with ideas.
Brian: Yeah, that’s exactly the way that module was constructed.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. And I’ll be like, “Well, what’s in there? Ah. Would it be undead? No, maybe not undead. Maybe shadow guys okay. Shadow guys. Oh, yeah. I could draw this little demon like this.” And now we’re sitting here, and we’re talking. We’re going back and forth, and we’re coming up with these ideas together. I sit down and write them out, but by the time I’m sitting down to type stuff up, we already know the story.
Brian: And also the troll, the mini troll adventure at the beginning was something that we had already played a couple of years before.
Ben: Yeah.
Brian: And Ben’s like “Let’s put that at the beginning as an intro into the…” and I said, “Oh, that’s a great idea.”
Ben: Yeah. There’s a troll that’s got this knight upside down by a foot, and he’s shaking him. And you’ve gotta decide whether you’re gonna rescue this knight or just pay the five gold to cross the bridge, right? Yes.
Brian: And then when you open up the cover, that’s the first illustration on the splash page, right? And what an introduction. Like, “Wow. Okay. This is gonna be fun!”
Ben: Yeah, this is gonna be interesting.
BOOM: Brian, you work at Flying Frog Productions as an illustrator and concept artist. What was your favorite game to work on so far, and is it also your favorite game to play?
Brian: Okay, so I worked at Flying Frog. I left a few years ago. I worked there for a little over five years because I knew the two kids that created Flying Frog. So here’s the moral of the story: always be nice to high school kids because you may work for them someday. And I worked on a game called “Shadows of Brimstone“, and it was a really fun game to work on. It’s basically Cowboys meet Cthulhu monsters and stuff, and it’s a really fun game to play, and I was very happy to be able to work on that.
Ben: I got it for Christmas one year.
Brian: Yes, you did. And, as far as my favorite game to play, I like Dungeons & Dragons. That’s kind of my favorite game to play.
Ben: You’re on the cover of a Flying Frog game, aren’t you? Aren’t you dressed up like a pirate?
Brian: Yeah, I’m dressed up like a pirate on a… yeah, because they were using photographs and stuff, and I had to dress up like a pirate. They said, “You know, we need somebody who looks a lot like Brian. Why don’t we just give him a call?” Right? That was my first project I worked on as I was a… I was a model, I guess, dressed up as a pirate. I got stuck on the cover with some other people.
Ben: You didn’t work on that game?
Brian: I think I did a couple drawings for that game.
BOOM: Ben, you have an IMDb. It looks like you were a writer and historical analyst for TV shows and podcasts about heroes. Is that what led you to your podcast, “Badass of the Week”, and then to write the three series, “Epic Fails”, “Guts and Glory”, and “Badass“? Am I glitching on the order of these events?
Ben: So, I started a blog called “Badass of the Week” in 2004. I was working a desk job that I had a lot of free time. This is like pre-Facebook, pre-YouTube, pre-Twitter. Any of that stuff. I was just writing, like, about historical figures in HTML, using Notepad, and posting it up on this website that was just like white text on a black background, and people started checking it out. And then, that ended up becoming pretty successful and popular to where I was getting millions of hits a month on my little… it was basically a glorified GeoCities page. And, so that became really successful, and in 2009, I published a book off that material from the website. It was just like, cool stories from history. Tell the story of a badass from history in four or five pages and just tell the good parts, the violence, destruction, mayhem, all that stuff. And that became pretty popular. And in 2009, I turned it into a book. And then that sold really well. So there were two more books in that series. And then a few years after that, I had some librarians, and teachers, and stuff be like, “Hey, you know, “Badass” is great, but I need a version that’s, like, toned down just a little bit so that I’m not going to get dragged out into the street by the PTA and beaten with rods.” And so that was where “Guts and Glory” and “Epic Fails” came from, where they were kind of “Badass” junior, where I dialed down the… the dick jokes, but not necessarily the violence. And yeah, just fun history stuff, and told in a way that is relatable and approachable, not just the way history is taught by a lot of people, which is “Here’s a bunch of old dead white guys and you have to memorize their birthdays.” And so, you know, that’s… people have fun with it, and that led to being on TV and being… and to the podcast. I do a podcast now instead of the blog because I wanted to try to move into a new format. And yeah, it’s going really well! So if any of that sounds interesting to you, you can definitely check out the podcast. It’s called “Badass of the Week”. And every week, I’m partnered with a woman who is a PhD historian, and I’m just kind of this nut bar guy who tells these crazy stories from history, and she helps me, and it’s really fun. But, yeah, that’s what I have been doing for going on, like, I guess, 2004. So, yeah, 20 years now I’ve been doing that.
Brian: That’s a long time.
Ben: That’s a long time.
Brian: Yeah.
Ben: And Brian illustrated all three of the badass books too. So…
Brian: I wasn’t the only illustrator, but I worked on all three.
Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a lot of art, especially in the third one.
BOOM: Brian, what fascinates you about Japanese helmets and weapons? Do they hold mysterious powers or do they just look really cool on a shelf?
Brian: They’re cool. And for the most part, they’re affordable. I don’t really make a lot of money, but if you save up, you can get a pretty nice helmet for like, $3,000.
Ben: Really?
Brian: Yeah. I mean, it’s not gonna win awards or anything like that, but it’s gonna be a nice piece. Probably from the early 1700s. May even be signed. Last night, I got an online a Japanese artifact like, catalog a few times a year. It’s about once every two months. And I just got the one yesterday. It’s from Kinokuniya. Not Kinokuniya Bookstore, but Kinokuniya armor dealers. Right? And I’ve even been to their place in Japan. I went there one time, and looked in their store, and met the owners, and they were really nice to me, and I like that stuff. I’ve been buying swords and armor and stuff since I was 19. I bought my first sword at 19. And I like it because I’m fascinated by Japanese culture, and I like this stuff. It’s just. It’s super cool.
Ben: Brian’s house is like a samurai armor museum. Like, he has, like, I don’t know, a dozen suits of samurai armor, a bunch of helmets, armor pieces, weapons.
Brian: Yeah.
Ben: He’s got a naginata from, like, the 1600s.
Brian: I got three naginatas… now. I bought two more later.
Ben: A big Japanese war club. Like a spiked war club.
Brian: Yeah, it’s like seven feet long.
Ben: Yeah. There was a story where the Seattle Art Museum contacted Brian and they wanted to put some of his armor in their museum. And they set up a couple pieces in his museum and…
Brian: Yeah, two whole suits of armor that I had.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. So they were on display in the museum. I mean, you should. We should open the Seattle Samurai Art Museum. Like, that’s the thing we’ve talked about
Brian: for a long time.
Ben: But, yeah, my wife and her friends went to some event, some black tie event at the Seattle Art Museum, and they were like, “Let’s all get our picture taken with the armor.” And so they climbed up into the display and got their picture taken with it. And there’s this great picture of all of these women getting their picture taken with the armor. And then, like, the security guard coming over being like, “You can’t do that.” And I was like, “No, no, I know the guy! He comes to my house for Christmas every year. It’s fine. He’s gonna be happy with this. He’s gonna like it. It’ll be fine.”
Brian: One of my favorite pictures.
BOOM: Ben, why is it important to make history interesting? How do you jazz it out for the reader?
Ben: Well, you know, I feel like people who love history have had somebody at some point in time make it more than just a bunch of dates and names that you have to memorize. So, you know, for me, it was my dad. He collected, like, Brian has with the samurai armor. He collected armor and equipment and weapons and stuff like that. Here’s an old Civil War revolver. Here’s how you would have loaded it. Here’s how you would have carried it. That’s cool. It makes you kind of connected with that piece of history, right? And then when you start to realize that the people from the old days weren’t that different from us, right? You think of, like, Thomas Jefferson, for example, right? You picture the guy on the nickel. You picture that portrait that you always see of him, right? But, like, you know, he’s famous for writing the Declaration of Independence. But, when he did that, he was, like, 22 years old. He was at the Continental Congress. And they were like, “Okay, we’re gonna make this Declaration of Independence. This is gonna be this thing. We’re gonna say that like, we don’t want the king anymore. Everybody who signs this is probably going to be hanged as a traitor if we lose this war. This is treason, what we’re doing right now.” And then they were like, “Alright, Tom, you write it. You’re a lawyer. You’re a good writer. You’re gonna write this.” And then he just, like, ran across the street to the bar and started drinking. Because he was like, “Okay, I’m gonna do it.” And he ran over there like… like…
Brian: He wrote half of it in a bar. He was upstairs.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. So he went over to this bar, he starts drinking. John Adams and Ben Franklin have to go over there and be like, “It’s okay, man. You can do this.”
Brian: Yeah. They gotta talk him off the ledge.
Ben: They’re like, “You’re good, man. You can do this.” And so he’s like, “Alright, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it.” And so he buys a room up above that bar that he was just drinking at, goes up there, locks himself in there for, like, a weekend, and writes the whole thing. And that’s like, okay, I can relate more to this guy now than I could to that portrait of his guy.
Brian: Yeah, he’s not just a portrait on a nickel anymore. He’s like a real dude.
Ben: He’s a real guy who had, like, real problems, right? And so if you can make these people human and real, maybe there’s more of a connection to that, right? And one thing about people, like, when they say they hate history, I think that’s impossible, right? Because literally everything that has ever happened is history. I mean, maybe you don’t like military history, or political history, or whatever. Maybe you like history of cars, or sports, or video art, video games. There’s all kinds of stuff, right? Anything that’s ever happened. Music. The music you like right now, that guy was inspired by somebody who came before him, who was inspired by somebody before him. And maybe it’s cool to go back and listen to who inspired your favorite musician. That’s history, right? And, yeah, it is approachable, and it’s cool. And it’s… there’s a lot of good stuff back there that, you know, maybe you’ll find a new artist or a new… a new musician, or somebody else that you like, or a new historical figure that you didn’t know about before, but they had a cool story.
Brian: That’s very inspiring, Ben.
Ben: That’s what I do, man. I write inspiring stuff about history. That’s my job.
Ben: Yep. If you’re interested in any of these D&D things we’ve been talking about 99centadventures.com, you can download any of our modules for 99 cents.
Brian: Yes.
Ben: $1. You can check out a module. There are 64 pages. They’re fully illustrated. Even if you don’t run the module, you find a couple good things in there. You use the random encounter table for the swamp or whatever. Like, maybe that’s worth 99 cents to you. We think so. You can also find us on DriveThruRPG if you search “99 Cent Adventures” on there.
Brian: And, Ben, you have a website. It’s badassoftheweek, isn’t it?
Ben:Badassoftheweek.com you can find me. You can search any podcast platform for “Badass of the Week” podcast. If you want to search my name on Amazon, there’s several authors named Ben Thompson. But you’ll find “Badass” on there eventually if you scroll down enough.
Brian: I have a website too. It’s briansnoddyart.com. Also, you can get a hold of both of us on Facebook too. Yeah. You can me anyway.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. You do a lot of communication through Facebook.
Brian: Yeah, quite a bit, more than I would like.
BOOM: It’s time for a shout-out! Who would you like to acknowledge and thank today, and why are they receiving your kudos?
Brian: Well, that’s gonna be a long list for me. I mean, there’s so many artists that inspired me to become an artist, you know, and my family supported me going to art school. So I have to thank my family, other artists that inspired me, you know, like Bernie Wrightson, Frank Frazetta, the list is endless. Barry Smith.
Ben: Yeah. And then for the… for the D&D adventures, we kind of lean on Robert Howard a lot.
Brian: Yeah.
Ben: and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and that sort of thing was the style we were going for with the writing. But I guess our big shout-outs are to our fans who backed our Kickstarter.
Brian: Yeah, our fans, because let me tell you something, if it wasn’t for you guys, I’d be sweeping floors somewhere.
Ben: Right, yeah. I’d have a real job, right? I’d be sitting back in that cubicle, doing data entry in Excel.
Brian: I’d be working in advertising again, which is… should never happen to any human being.
Ben: Yeah. So without you guys, we can’t do what we’re doing. We appreciate you always kind of being there for us and back in our projects. And it really matters. Like your… your support, your 99 cents, kicking into our adventures, like that matters to us. It does make a difference.
Brian: Yes, it does, and we’re thankful for every penny.
BOOM: Last question. How can we make the world a better place?
Brian: I’m afraid that I will get in trouble if I answer that question truthfully. But I will give a politically correct statement. How about just be a more positive person?
Ben: Yeah.
Brian: How about instead of a glass is half empty, it’s half full? I think if you have that attitude, you are making a difference. A positive one.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. The way I see it. That’s the message, right, of like, you know, things can get better, right? You can always… can always improve where you’re at, and, like, you know, a lot of what we’ve been talking about today has been, you know, advice for people who want to get into doing Kickstarters and stuff like that. And like, that’s the advice. It’s like, have that glass half full. Like, you can do it. You know, we’re just two guys, right? We’re not. We just. We got out there and we did a thing, and now we’re both doing this for a living, is to make D&D adventures, and to write books, and to do art. It’s possible. You can do it, you know, and it’s the piece of advice that we said earlier. Like, how do you sell your book? You write it, you get out there and you finish it. You could do it. You’re just some guy too, or some girl or whatever. Like, you can get out there and do this thing, and just make it. Make the thing, and sell it. Yeah.
Brian: No one’s stopping you. For starters, it’s simple to do this. It may not be easy because it’s not easy for Ben and I to do this.
Ben: It’s hard work.
Brian: It’s a lot of hard work. But it is a simple formula, and you do have to sit down and do it, and you can… you can have a good time when you’re doing it.
Ben: Yeah.
Brian: I mean, our D&D play testing is so much fun. We have a good crew of people with us, and we both enjoy it. We love doing it. Even when it gets to the… you know, the deadlines are coming up to us and we’re like, “Oh, my gosh.”
Ben: I’m like, “Somebody’s gonna kill me if I don’t get this thing in by Friday.”
Brian: If I don’t get this. If we don’t get with the comic book place with this print thing, we’re dead.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. There was that one comic book show where we were standing outside the printer the night before the comic book show, being like, “Can you hurry this up a little bit? We need to get these books.”
Brian: We had to pick it up the morning of…
Ben: We gotta sell them tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. We had to go pick them up.
Brian: We had to pick them up the morning of the show.
Ben: That’s right. That was stressful. But yeah, that’s it. But like, you know, there’s so many stories of people who got rejected several times and then ended up publishing a thing that became super popular, right? And like, you know, you just write the thing, and you catch the right wave at the right time. You know, I was working at a cubicle, you know, doing data entry, when “Badass” took off and became a best selling book, right? Like, you can do it! Just try it! Just give it a shot because the glass is half full, and you can do it.
Brian: Yeah, I agree.
BOOM: Before we power down for the cycle, are there any final nuggets of spectacular wisdom, outrageous shenanigans, or side splitting mishaps you’d like to share with our listeners in this glorious wasteland?
Brian: Do we have a blooper reel that we could give them? “Here’s when Ben and Brian say super inappropriate stuff and get canceled for life.”
Ben: No, no, no, we’re not doing that.
Brian: We’re not going to do that.
Ben: No.
Brian: When can we come on next?
Ben: Yes.
Brian: When are you gonna invite us back?
Ben: Yes.
BOOM: It’ll be at least a hundred years before that happens. Thank you for your time and insights, Ben and Brian. I am excited to see the final “Hinterlands” Kickstarter project and any future projects you two cook up.
Ben: Thank you so much. Thank you for having us on the show. We were really happy to be here, and we really enjoyed talking to you. Yes.
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