It is only in recent years that the modern entertainment landscape has discovered the characters we create in sci-fi, fantasy, and other fantastic worlds can only be fully explored not through just literature, but also through other mediums as well. It makes sense then that this would expand into web3 and we would leverage blockchain technology and the benefits it provides to facilitate the exploration of strange worlds. Today, we have with us the co-creator and artist for one such new strange world, Forgotten Runes. Welcome to the show ElfJTrul.
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FEATURED GUEST – ElfJTrul
ElfJTrul is a veteran of the animation and video game industry in Los Angeles. He has done projects with Nickelodeon, Google VR, Disney, and created games for the iOS App store. However, he considers his latest venture, Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult, to be the culmination of his life’s work.
Magic Machine, a Los Angeles-based entertainment studio that has built the next global entertainment fantasy franchise — Forgotten Runes — by leveraging its vast IP portfolio of digital characters and extending them into TV, games, comics, merchandising, and events — and they have already done all of this, simultaneously with the partnerships and work product in place (this isn’t a “will do” scenario — they’ve already done it).
They also ran one of the largest immersive IRL events at NFT.NYC, bringing in Oliver Tree, Logan Paul, and a number of others to their event for performances — watch: 60 second post-event recap video of the event.
They’ve been covered by WSJ, CNET, TMZ, and many others.
CONNECT
TIME STAMPS
- 00:00 – Intro
- 01:00 – It is complicated to describe everything we are doing at Forgotten Runes, but it is a project about world building. The concept of world building has been going on for a very long time, but what we are doing that is new is that we’ve decentralized the whole process of world building with tens of thousands of characters, owned by our community as NFTs.
- 02:06 – Physical comic books, NFT characters, dice, games… what aren’t you doing here?
- 03:40 – Many projects declare they have a collaborative narrative construction, but it really comes down to a poll. How is your community different?
- 05:15 – The trailer on our website features many scenes inspired by things our community has created around their characters. We are providing a bridge to a larger Hollywood ecosystem for our community.
- 06:05 – The direct impact stems from contributions made to the Book of Lore. How do you manage unsavory stories submitted to the Book of Lore and franchise canon?
- 06:50 – Magic Machine has created a baseline canon narrative with political factions, a world map, and more. Preventing discontinuity between the stories isn’t a huge factor because of the magical nature of the world, the ability for time travel, and more. Every media franchise has discontinuity, even Batman, for example.
- 09:20 – The timeless archetypes within the franchise enable and create continuity even accidentally. There’s an eerie synchronicity between the stories because they’re based on ancient archetypes.
- 11:09 – You have games coming, too. A battle game, land sales, and more. What are some of the features planned for the game?
- 12:10 – What are the next few major milestones in the story with the franchise releases coming?
- 14:00 – We are developing a show with an impressive writer named Derrick Colstad, the creator of the John Wyck franchise. He also wrote this awesome film on Netflix called “Nobody”.
- 14:33 – What is this secret tower? It can’t be that secret because there’s a link on the homepage about it.
- 15:55 – Outside of the synchronicity and the individual stories, is there a single overarching narrative that defines the entire property?
- 17:00 – One of the biggest themes of the whole project is exploring the connection between the Runeverse to the Real World. It is a commentary on how meat space interacts with metaspace. It is about how we as humans identify as our avatars in the digital space. What does it literally mean, what does it mean as our real physical reality is intersecting with our digital reality and digital reality becomes more and more real in comparison to our physical reality.
- 19:03 – How can people learn more and get engaged, gain access to The Book of Lore themselves?
- 19:41 – A great resource is our weekly podcast called Wizard Wednesday at 2 PM Pacific Time; it is on our Twitter @forgottenrunes and our YouTube channel features previous episodes.
- 20:30 – Outro
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