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Armored Kingdom, The Multi-Platform, Immersive Universe Where Legends Are Created, Plus: Coinbase’s New CG Design, And More…
We have the inside scoop on the next innovative Web3 project coming from some of the most ambitious trailblazers in gaming and entertainment. This episode features Lisa Sterbakov, producer, Hugh Sterbakov, creator, and Brian Turner, co-writer and game designer at Armored Kingdom, the multimedia entertainment universe encompassing comic books, an animated series, and an NFT-based card game. The three chat with hosts Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger to share the origin story behind the game and how they’re developing it to suit the needs and wants of players in the space. Stay tuned to learn about this exciting project and learn about Coinbase’s first 3D PFP-NFT project. Plus, don’t miss the special giveaway at the end of this episode.
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Armored Kingdom, The Multi-Platform, Immersive Universe Where Legends Are Created, Plus: Coinbase’s New CG Design, And More…
NFT curious readers, stay tuned for this episode and find out how Armored Kingdom is the next innovative Web3 project coming from some of the most ambitious trailblazers in gaming and entertainment and how one of our guests’ prize possessions represent his closeness with two of his best friends in real life and find out about Coinbase’s first 3D PFP-NFT project. All this and more on this episode.
Don’t forget that we put a little soiree called NFTLA that brought out thousands of the world’s most innovative doers in the NFT space. Head to 2023.NFTLA.Live to get on the whitelist for tickets to our bigger, bolder, and better but also just as an intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles from March 20th to 23rd, 2023. See you there.
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This episode features Lisa Sterbakov, Producer, Hugh Sterbakov, Creator, and Brian Turner, Co-Writer and Game Designer at Armored Kingdom, the multimedia entertainment universe encompassing comic books, an animated series, and an NFT-based card game. Let’s hear a little bit about each of them. Lisa, since 2014, has partnered with Mila Kunis and Cami Curtis on their Orchard Farm Productions.
In the company’s first year in operation, Lisa sold six shows into the development of every project they took out to the marketplace and has since continued at a similar pace. On the cutting edge of the industry, Mila and Lisa launched three web NFT projects, Stoner Cats in 2021, The Gimmicks, and Armored Kingdom in 2022, and do not plan on stopping there. She is married to writer Hugh Sterbakov and balances her career and parenting, having two young girls.
Let’s learn about Hugh. Well-versed in the comic CCG and gaming spheres, Hugh is a multiple Emmy Award-nominated writer and Emmy-award winner alongside being a game journalist, novelist, comic writer, screenwriter, and producer. When he isn’t designing intricately-detailed fantasy worlds across multiple mediums, he’s bragging about his custom hyper-limited Robot Chicken MTG card. He is married to producer Lisa Sterbakov and parents alongside everything else in his busy career.
Finally, Brian lives for a solid and organized spreadsheet and has applied his fixation on mechanics and game design aptly while fleshing out the Armored Kingdom card game to accompany the project. Pulling double duty as a writer on the project, Brian is known outside of his Web3 work as a Humanitas award-winner writer, producer, show creator, and animation production expert. It’s great to have this wonderful crew on the show. Welcome, everyone.
It’s great to be here.
Thank you.
That’s quite a group we’ve got going here. Welcome. We’re so excited to learn a little bit more about everything you’ve been working on, in particular, Armored Kingdom. The idea here or the vision is to help shape the fabric of Web3 storytelling. You’re well on your way to that but let’s take a step back and ask, “How did this thing come together?” Give us the origin story.
We love an origin story because we are all storytellers. I was doing a burlesque show when we met. That was a huge part of us getting together. It was my burlesque show. That was many years ago. How did this come together? Mila and I have been producing traditional stuff for a long time. We came into Web3 with Stoner Cats. We’re like, “This is awesome.” We’re major nerds. Nobody gives Mila credit for being the nerd that she is.
You look at the three of us and you’re like, “They seem like nerds.” If you look at Mila, you don’t think that but trust me, she is. All four of us played World of Warcraft to an unhealthy level many years ago. We played a ton of tabletop games. It was what we have done. We have been big nerd gamers forever. When we started getting down the road of Web3, gaming seemed to make so much sense.
Several years ago, Hugh come up with this big world and storytelling universe but for a toy product. He thought of it as a physical toy product like Skylanders in that world. It sat there for a little bit. We love the idea and the story but we weren’t quite sure what to do with it. After we did Stoner Cats, he came to me and he was like, “Do you think Armored Kingdom works in Web3?”
I immediately say yes. I say no to everything but it seemed like it makes total sense. I quickly realized that in addition to the NFTs, story, comics, and animation, it also was the perfect ground for TCG. We brought in Brian who had this incredible game design. Both Hugh and Brian are new to Web3. In looking at the possibilities, I was like, “I can take all of these nerdy things that I want to do on a tabletop and make it better, cooler, and more awesome in this blockchain space.”
That’s how it came together along with their partner, Sharad, at Liquid Comics who is making our incredible comic books and animation. We’re getting into that, too. That’s the way it all came together. The vision is the story feeds the game, which feeds animation and comics. All of those things feed each other. You could be immersed in this universe. There are lots of different ways to enter.
Having done a 36-hour fast, I’m pretty hungry for all those things. Sign me up for that type of dinner. That sounds pretty tasty. Let’s give our readers a little bit more of an overview of this entertainment universe. You started to tell us about the vision but let’s unpack it a little bit more. What’s going on there?
I came up with this. I was cohosting the Activision Podcast. We were focused a lot on Skylanders. I have a wide variety of gaming interests. I looked at what they were doing with the toys to life and the way the action figures interacted with the video game. I thought I could do this better and maybe a little bit more mature. I created what would have been a toy line focused on the armor that all the different characters could wear. The armor would have various rarities and level-up abilities that would interact with mobile devices and video games. I had a whole big thing.
Being a story guy with story background, I created a whole universal mandate and all the characters. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a medieval fantasy world with the edge of this special arm of this powerful and magical armor. I pitched it to Nickelodeon. Everybody was concerned about the cost of the action figures because my idea was to fix these armor with magnets. I put it on the shelf for a while, thinking that I would come back to it someday.
When Lisa started this web thing, I looked at what NFTs could do and thought that they could substitute for what I wanted to do with the physical armor that could fit on these action figures. I suggested it to her. She loved it. It’s not all that different from Game of Thrones. It has less magic than Lord of the Rings. I love mixing genres. I’ve written horror, Westerns, and all sorts of stuff.
I wanted to add this element so that at the end of the first issue of the comic and the setup of the world, you’ve got these warring factions in this medieval world. A spaceship shows up above them. It’s not so much what the spaceship is going to do. It’s what the effect that has on the people on the ground. We’ve got these anthropomorphic jungle creatures and amphibian creatures that live under the water. They’re at war. What effect is the spaceship going to have on it?
I look at the end of Watchman. Spoiler alert, this cataclysmic event solves large problems going on in the world. It’s how our factions could scramble to handle that. I’m a story guy. I’m gung-ho with the comic book and the creation of it all. Brian is helping me co-write. Everybody is doing their thing. Lisa is the producer behind the NFT project. Brian is working on the games. We’re all working together to develop this thing and get it out there. We’re super excited about it.
I love that juxtaposition that you do of throwing these strange things together. I’ve heard before from people who are more talented than me at storytelling that oftentimes, the story evolves from putting the characters together and how are they going to react to one another. I love the idea of the aliens, the medieval folks, and whatnot coming together.
I teach screenwriting. The first thing I say is, “You’ve got to start with characters.” A premise is wonderful to start from. As soon as you have that basic premise, you’ve got to figure out your characters because that’s what the audience is going to relate to. That’s their avatar in the story. You can’t gloss over that. That’s what we’re focused on here, which is why I’m so excited to get more of the comics out there. Instead of showing the logo and talking about NFTs and tech stuff, we get people to fall in love with their characters because they’re great. We’re super excited about them.
Let’s hear about the comics a little bit more. You have several pullouts here. Issue 0 already dropped digi-physically with a little bit of nod to you wanting to do things in the physical world. You’ve got more issues in the cooker. Give us some details about the comics themselves.
When we started getting down the road of Web3, gaming seemed to make so much sense. Click To Tweet
The first issue sets the tone for the world. It ends with the Skyship arriving. We have a few issues to go into the backstory of each of the races like the Kingdom of the Horn, the Humans, and the Costraca. We come around to tell the next part of what happens after the Skyship arrives. Everything we’re putting out takes place about ten years before the main story.
The main character of the whole franchise is in the first issue as a little girl. She’s narrating it. Ten years later where the bulk of the story takes place or the real narrative, she’s eighteen. She’s the first knight of Humans. She wheels their most powerful weapon. We will talk about these armors and weapons that are the rarest NFTs you can get. They have special abilities.
Once we get all this premise building out of the way, which the comics are, we’re going to lead into this animated series, which is going to tell the main narrative of what happens from here and put together a team from each of the races. It’s like Magnificent Seven with Guardians of the Galaxy. This is a team of misfits and people who don’t belong together and don’t even necessarily like each other but they’re on this common quest for survival and the future of all of the races. It’s going to be great.
How many issues are there? Is it right that there are only five issues of the comic itself?
There are five issues of the comic counting Issue 0. There are issues 0 1, 2, 3, and 4. Is that right, Brian? Is there a fifth issue?
There’s the sixth one that’s not part of the original canon. It’s the Warri issue.
There is Issue 0, then there are 3 issues, so there are 5 issues. If the sixth issue appears, don’t hold me accountable.
They have already written all of these. I love that he’s like, “How many are there?” They have already written them. They’re in production. The next issue is already done.
It’s the Issue 0 thing that throws everybody off.
For our event, we have days 0, 1, 2, and 3. We ran into the same thing over and over again, “What do you mean by Day 1, Tuesday, Wednesday, or the 28th?”
Sometimes something sounds like a good idea, and then you can’t undo it. You’re writing issue three. Issue 0 sounded like a good idea when you put it down. Now, you’re like, “What did I do? What is going on?” That’s where I am in that regard but then I can say that about most of the things in my life except marrying Lisa.
Hearkening back to the Stoner Cats, try to communicate this zero thing to people while they’re stoned. You’re going to get even further off the deep end there.
Let me ask a little bit more about the animated show. In terms of the comics, everything is done. The story is written. What’s the game plan here for the animated series? Is that a direct reflection of the comics? Is there something more? Is it an extension? Tell us about it.
The animated show will take it off after the last comic ends. All of the comics are backstories. They’re experiencing our life. From that point, the animated series takes on from there.
The comics are a prologue in building the world for the animated series, which will be the main narrative.
It sounds as far as the animated shows are concerned that there’s not necessarily an end preplanned here for an evolutionary thing as the world develops.
I always like to say, “We know what the end is unlike maybe Game of Thrones.” We want to tell as many stories as we can before we get there but we know what the end is. We won’t betray that and fumble the goal line the way a lot of these sci-fi franchises had.
Armored Kingdom: Once we get all this premise building out of the way, which the comics are, we’re going to lead into this animated series, which is going to tell the main narrative of what happens from here and put together a team from each of the races.
We’ve got the first two seasons mapped. We’re ready to go with it, especially with animation. You need a lot of lead time.
It’s a world like Star Wars. You could go across the world and tell a different story with different characters. The setup of this magical armor or this magical ore that is setting everything in motion and everybody is revolving around it can be used anywhere. It’s a lot of fun.
Brian, let’s talk a little bit more about the CCG gaming system, which lies at the heart of Armored Kingdom. What does some of the mechanics and goals of the actual game that you designed here?
I want to start with a caveat saying we’re still in the coding and testing phase. Anything I say here is aspirational. Don’t come back six months from now and be like, “What happened to this thing?”
I want to fly around space with the aliens. That’s all there is to it.
I like to describe it as more like Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a role-playing game than it is like Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon and those kinds of games. One of the crushing moments going back to Hugh, Lisa, and I playing World of Warcraft was when The Burning Crusade came out. It’s this first major expansion. By that point, we had top-tier gear on all of our characters. We would go through the portal into this new world. We were out at midnight buying the game at the initial drop.
We go through the portal. There’s a random monster walking across the desert. We kill it. You get this green common item that has better stats than the stuff that you’ve been wearing for six months. That was like seven raids of a major dungeon to get to roll on to win. That hurt. It’s the idea that this new common stuff is better than my stuff that makes me. The Web3 aspect of this whole thing gives ownership to the players. What I wanted to do is have your equipment evolve with you.
It’s not that your flaming sword is the same as Bob’s flaming sword. If you’ve been using your flaming sword for six months, your flaming sword is different than Bob’s flaming sword so that you have some feeling of ownership. Additionally, there’s the time you put into your equipment. If there’s a secondary market where people are trading this stuff up, if you put six months into making this one sword awesome and decide to get rid of it, it’s worth more than the sword that someone opened two days ago.
Much has happened in the spaces since Stoner Cats dropped. The gaming side of this phase has evolved so much. It sounds like you’ve taken some inspiration from those before you. You’re also adding some additional enhancements. We always talk about how important is when it comes to the gaming side of Web3. It has to be an awesome game that people enjoy. Can you talk a little bit more about how you’re going to make it fun?
One of the things that people underestimate in these games is the bells and whistles that come along with the game. The core of the game has to be fun. For example, you want to earn things to show off how much you’ve played and how good you are. These are achievements. If I’m online playing a game and you have an achievement, I don’t know that you have that achievement unless I go look you up. No one looks you up.
One of the things that we wanted to put in is this. On the PVP side of things, they’re fighting in an arena. You’re head-to-head with your opponent but there’s no reason that you can’t have a pile of skulls behind you that represents how many people you’ve killed. As soon as the battle starts, your opponent goes, “This guy has got 1,000 skulls piled up behind him. I’m in trouble.” Those aspects make the game super customizable and fun. It allows you to feel like it’s you doing the battle as opposed to you controlling a character that controls an army that is doing a battle.
Brian, do you want to talk about the Simultaneous Turns?
This is one of the mechanics that work perfectly on paper. We will see. One of the things that annoy me in games like Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone, not that magic is wrong, is it’s your turn and my turn. On your turn, you’re on offense. In my turn, I’m on defense. In my turn, I’m on offense. On your turn, you’re on defense. That is not how things work in reality. I have managed to come up with a system where we’re both on offense and defense at the same time. We’re both making decisions not knowing what the other person is doing.
For example, if I’ve got a sword and a shield and you’ve got two axes, you can be pretty sure that I’m going to block one of your axes with my shield because it’s a shield. What else am I going to do with it? You have to plan your attack based on what you think I’m going to do. I have to plan my attack based on what I think you’re going to do. Once we both committed it, the game sorts out what happened. We get to see. It’s a lot more dynamic. It’s a lot more like chess where you’re playing the other player more than you’re playing the pieces.
There are elements of Magic: The Gathering in there, poker, and all that. It’s the game theory elements of it. I could see that evolving in some cool ways.
I love these alternative creative gameplay tactics as well. We had on Boss Fighters, which takes a person with a virtual reality headset and set up and makes them the boss of a game, whereas the people on their PCs playing the game get to be the players of the game. The boss gets to throw them around and do all this cool stuff. I love seeing all of these creative applications of things. Can you talk to us a little bit about partnerships? You have such deep connections in all these spaces. How does this all play into your plan coming forward?
Coming from the side of the world that we come from, partnerships are everything. In the movie that Mila and I have coming out, there are three different production companies. There’s a studio. This is how we work. You work in collaboration with other people. We have a game collaboration that we’re not announcing yet that we will be announcing probably in September 2022. That is already deep in work. That’s fun.
Are there any hints?
Mario and Luigi. We have them both.
Was it 1985?
So far.
I sold a [00:38:08] amulet.
Do you have a location in mind?
I’m looking at Idaho but who knows?
Josh is like, “I understand that completely.”
It’s a beagle.
A rambunctious beagle sounds good.
There are candy apples probably.
The apples only help to poop out the candy.
Our other guests here know Bill Murray.
I will be checking out his films after.
That’s super quick.
That’s awesome. Thank you.
It wasn’t a Stoner Cat. It was a Bat Cowl.
Thank you very much.
We didn’t make it to NFTLA.
You seem to be having a lot of fun.
That’s grunge. That’s nice.
She’s going to listen to this. She’s awesome.
Important Links
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Boss Fighters – Previous episode
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Gareb Shamus – Previous episode
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Discord – Daz 3D
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Twitter – Daz 3D
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Twitter – @Misoo3D
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Twitter – @ArmoredKingdom
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Discord – Armored Kingdom
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@LisaSterb – Twitter
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@DarkHugh – Twitter
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Spotify – Edge of NFT
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iTunes – Edge of NFT
About Lisa Sterbakov
Founder / Orchard Farm Productions / Stoner Cats / The Gimmicks