Hi all!
I recorded this recently and had to make some updates, but now it’s a new video on a new URL: https://youtu.be/Uluvyh64_P8
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My friend Caitlynn Belle has an excellent game, “you must break up with your werewolf boyfriend” and I have hacked it!
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Hey all, got together with Fred Hicks real quick to ask him a bit about the Fate Accessories Kickstarter that’s currently running. See what he had to say, and check out the Kickstarter too!
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| Dice with matching Fate points. |
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| Infernal dice style. |
So we looked at the most popular ones based on the last few years of data and made sure to get reprints of those rolling. Our Core Dice had already sold out, but the iridescent material we use there is a bit more difficult to source, which increases the minimum print quantity, so we decided to leave that one be (especially given something I’m about to get to below). We also decided we’d let our two licensed sets, Winter Knight and Atomic Robo dice, run their course without a reprint. I love the sets, but I also like the idea of not needing to pay royalties on our dice sales. We’d already brought back the Antiquity one, so that meant Vampire, Centurion, and Eldritch Fate Dice needed the reprint.
Of course that meant that the dice money we could have spent on developing and releasing new sets was spent on reprints… which brings us to our first Kickstarter of the year. Given that it had been four years since our first Fate Dice kickstarter, we felt it was a good time to turn to our fans again and ask for some help funding an expanded line.
Creatively, tho, man, that’s the more difficult part of all this. There are only so many materials styles and distinctly-different colors you can offer before there starts being some kind of overlap. And honestly that’s not something we came to terms with as much as we should’ve before we launched. We faltered a bit in our first week of the Kickstarter because we didn’t make a good enough case that we were offering enough new and different, despite it feeling really obvious to us how things were different even if they fell in the broad categories of “green” or “blue” or “purple.” But recently (just yesterday at the time I write this) we started off our second week of the KS with a reshuffling of our stretch goals to put the new and different more visibly and more close at hand, which seems to be working as we’re getting a new surge of interest.
This was made possible in part because we’re bringing a new dice construction method to the party: layered dice, where different colors of material are injected in sequence, letting you produce dice that have a striped or gradient effect depending on what colors and sequence you choose. Of course, that triples the difficulty in color selection, but does let you produce some dice that definitely don’t look like any others we currently have.
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| Malachite dice design. |
We knew we wanted to get into the Fate Point token space. Campaign Coins did a great set of metal Fate tokens, and those are still out there if you can find them, but we didn’t want to get into metals manufacture. That left us with the idea of creating a line of Fate Points tokens that use the same material as an associated set of dice; if we get the chance to expand the line further, we’ll do more tokens in more styles to match other sets we’ve had done (or will have done). That’s the other baseline goal of the Kickstarter, to make a new accessories line of Fate Points possible.
We’ve also prior to the Kickstarter begun an effort to make sure there are single player packs of Fate Dice out there — ones that contain 4 dice instead of 12 — as we’ve been hearing over the past few years that there are folks who want to buy a specific, single style of dice rather than a 3-style pack. As a dice addict I don’t really understand that line of thinking, but I know my biases are not universal! So that’s what gave birth to our Fire and Midnight Fate Dice single-player sets at $6 each. Our layered dice will also come in that kind of packaging, in part because they’re a little more expensive to make, so that lets us price them at $8 per set — a 12-die set of all layered dice would need a price a lot higher than the $15 we normally charge for 12-die sets.
New materials styles and new construction methods tend to play into our choices of what to develop as well. Another set we had made without Kickstarter backing is our Frost Dice 12-die set that we released a year or so back. That came about because our manufacturer told us about a “matte” finish that could be applied to translucent dice, which give them a frozen-liquid appearance. It’s an attractive set. Obviously the layered dice from our Kickstarter stretch goals also arose from access to a new construction method. To a great extent what can be done in manufacturing tends to drive the creative side of this more than the reverse — what methods can be used act as a fruitful constraint on the creativity.
As far as what I’m most excited about from the Kickstarter? Besides the Fate Points, it’s definitely those layered dice. Have a look. 🙂
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| Aquatic dice design. |
Thanks, Fred, for a great chat! Make sure you all check out the Fate Accessories Kickstarter to see what Fred &co have to offer!
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I wrote this for school, but I wanted to post it here so others could use it, also, example of how I’d like to use games to explain concepts of leadership and development. -Brie
The illustrations on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by John W. Sheldon.
The best way for me to understand the different types of power was to put it into perspective of a fantasy roleplaying game. This might sound lazy, but it helps me remember it better and gives me perspectives.
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| Did I list druids here? Of course not – their power is more fluid in nature and depends on their interpretation of their magic, at least partially. I would consider them to have something like reward/referant. They’re a weird cookie. |
Paladins have legitimate power. Legitimate power is “the authority granted from a formal position in an organization” (Daft, p. 370). Paladins are typically given a role of power from their chosen deity, and can occupy a position in a church, as well. They are literally assigned power. With this, they can take actions themselves, as well as call others to action. To use this power, a paladin (or someone in real life) could call back to their own authority and speak to how their actions reflect the intentions of that authority.
Clerics have reward power. Reward power is “the authority to bestow rewards on other people” (Daft, p. 371). Clerics are also religiously-based, and can give people healing or blessings with deific magic. They have the ability to reward people for heroism through those blessings and through healing and recovery. A cleric (or someone in real life) might use reward power by promising that if a certain goal is met, there would be monetary, emotional, or needs-based reward.
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| Sassy fighter is sassy – and coercive. |
Rangers and wizards have expert power. Rogues also have this power. Expert power is “the authority resulting from a leader’s special knowledge or skill” (Daft, p. 371). Both wizards and rangers are experts in their fields, with deep knowledge of whatever it is they do. Wizards are academics, while rangers are more on-the-ground and experience based, and very skilled. Rogues have many skills but are more jack-of-all-trades in a lot of cases, which makes them have a lot of generalized authority because they know at least a little bit about almost everything. These type of archetypes (or people in real life) can use their power by explaining the facts and support behind the requested actions and goal-focus, and use their knowledge to propel action.
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| Rogues know where it’s at (in your safe, that is). |
Legitimate, reward, and coercive power are hard power because they are all about control. If you do this, I give you or take away this. If you don’t do this, the whole authority will know you defied them. They are concrete things that immediately threaten or promise things, or simply force authority on people, and that makes them almost immovable. Soft power like expert power and referent power are explanatory and guiding instead of forcing, and therefore can lead people towards success or goal-meeting without making them feel like they have no choice or making them feel like they have to do something instead of wanting to do something, because it makes sense or satisfies some higher-level need.
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| What kind of power would a dragon have compared to a barbarian? It depends on the dragon, frankly. |
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Hi all! Today I have an interview with Shannon Campbell from Astrolago Press about the new bestiary currently on Kickstarter, Faerie Fire, which is compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Shannon is the creator alongside Dillon MacPherson and Malcolm Wilson. The Kickstarter runs until the morning of February 7, 2018. Check out Shannon’s answers below!
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| The Conglomadog by Kory Bing |
What was the inspiration for Faerie Fire, and how did you start compiling and creating all of this content together?
Right away it seemed clear to me that we should do something aggressive and bold–that it wasn’t enough to just produce content that was the same flavour as the vanilla stuff already widely available. We were spending a lot of time in the fairy realm in a campaign that Malcolm was GMing and it seemed like there was a lot of content there to explore and develop–and it quickly became clear that anything we made for the Wilds would be anything but vanilla.
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| Pox and Pilfer by Amy T. Falcone |
One of the things we’d really like to do with Faerie Fire is make it Fate-compliant as well (I’m a huge fan of Fate Accelerated)–whether this is done as a stretch goal, or as a side hobby over the next year, is hard to say. We think that the style and aesthetic of Faerie Fire would readily fit into a lot of systems and worlds–though the mechanics would obviously need to be adapted a little. And, of course, the fast-paced, glamorous, brilliant setting of Faerie Fire would make it a perfect fit for one of my favourite impromptu systems: All Outta Bubblegum.
The vision was for Faerie Fire to be vivid and stylish and bold and glamourous, but I also wanted it to be non-binary and queer. It seemed to me that if we approached it as an art book as well as a supplemental, then it might provide an opportunity for people who have otherwise felt excluded from gaming to discover how incredible these worlds could be. To that end, we wanted to collaborate with diverse creators. My own connections were very LGTBQ+ representative, and feeds like @sffpocartists on Twitter and the #drawingwhileblack and #latinxartists hashtags provided a bounty of skill & talent that made it incredibly easy to discover new names I might not have been introduced to otherwise.
Tell me a little about the design process. How did you flesh out the creatures? What did you do to make sure everything was consistent thematically and mechanically?
Making sure that each monster is unique involves, basically, a lot of spreadsheets. We have cross-references for creature type, whether they’re humanoid or not, sentient or not–whether they have damage resistances or vulnerabilities, whether they can be used as a familiar or a mount. The book runs the whole gamut. Dillon and Malcolm design the stat blocks between the two of them and each of them reviews the other’s work–I come in at the last to give the final review, whip up the lore, and make sure everything looks hunky dory from there. As the art comes in we review it and, if there’s anything that doesn’t quite sync up with the lore & stats we’ve developed, or if the artist has surprised us with something we weren’t quite expecting, we’ll tweak the written content one last time to make sure it gets the most out of the art and doesn’t introduce any confusing inconsistencies.
The book is designed around the a chaotic Fairy plane, home of the fey. While not all the creatures originated there, they’ve all been affected by it, and that shapes their powers and design. We’ve also introduced the Plane of the Living Light, a neon-inspired plane that kind of bumps up against the Wilds–those with special sensitivities can see into it, and certain creatures can channel its living energy through them. Everything in the book, therefore, has been touched by one of these two things: either chaotic fey magics, or the pulsing, energizing Living Light.
Because the aesthetic ranges from the cyberpunky Neon Noir to the fun colours and friendly animals of certain beloved 90s stationery, there’s a wide range of creatures: some are monstrous, some are sexy, some are friendly–some are just plain weird. Each and every one of them is an original creation.
To finish off, what are a few of your favorite items and creatures in the text, and why?
Jesse Turner is drawing all our items as we speak and each time he turns in a new one, it’s even more fantastic than the last. I’m most looking forward to seeing the finished art for the Comet’s Tail: a magical flail that looks something like a glowing comet, and allows the wielder to cast Minute Meteor.
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| The Wayfarer by Jesse Turner |
Thanks so much to Shannon for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and will check out Faerie Fire, a 5e supplemental on Kickstarter – don’t miss out, the Kickstarter ends February 7!
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| Dice by John W. Sheldon |
I’m going to try to make this brief, but I wanted to express something that has been sitting with me a while, and that’s about what games we play and why we play them. This stemmed from discussion of Dungeons & Dragons, but it applies to many, many games and all types of players and GMs.
Why do you play RPGs?
I want you to ask yourself this question, dig down. Ask harder. Listen to your first response and dig deeper and ask harder.
Why do you play RPGs?
Now you have an answer, I would hope, that feels right. Now look at the games you play right now.
How do those games meet your reason?
How do they question your answer – are you sure you want to do that? Can you even do that?
Do all of the mechanics support your type of play?
Do any of the mechanics reject your type of play?
Do you play around any mechanics to enjoy play?
Do you ignore sections of the rulebook to play?
What mechanics do support your play, your reason for playing?
Are the games intended to play one way, while you play the other?
What about this game makes it valuable to you?
Is that valuable thing mechanically in the game, or is it something you’ve introduced?
From here, ask yourself about the awareness you have of games around you that you aren’t playing.
Do you know about other RPGs?
Do you know how to play them?
What games allow you to play comfortably without ignoring rules, if any?
Do any of them meet your reason?
Have you tried playing other games that meet your reason, if there are any?
I ask these questions because I want to see us play with purpose, and that purpose is play, an activity that is enjoyable and entertaining (even if that enjoyment is not gathered through “fun”). There are so many RPGs that it is just super unfortunate for people to be stuck playing a game that they aren’t enjoying, that isn’t meeting their needs, that doesn’t fit their reason, that questions them in an unproductive way. I want to see people play games that hit the right spot for them.
This comes to mind because people play around rules so much, and that shouldn’t be necessary! If you play a game and it feels like work, or it feels boring, or you feel exhausted afterwards in a bad way, ask yourself these questions. Take a deep breath, and consider your options. There are hundreds of RPGs out there! Some of them are free, and plenty of them can be learned easily if you look for simplicity, while others are crunchy and mechanics-heavy in ways that some people find delicious.
If the fiction doesn’t work, ask the world for more options. If the mechanics don’t work or seem extraneous or seem too minimal, ask the world for more options. The options are there. Don’t suffer in play. It isn’t fair to you, it isn’t fair to those you play with.
Why do you play RPGs?
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This interview turns Five Or So Questions upside-down, with the usual interviewer as the guest! Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games talks to Daedalum Analog Productions’ Brie Sheldon about their new collection of games, Let Me Take a Selfie.
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| Cover by John W. Sheldon, 2017 |
Can you tell me about the genesis of this collection? What prompted you to make a series of games focused around this particular tool, and what was your process for discovery and creation?
I take a lot of selfies, like a really lot. They mean a lot to me! Cell cameras are a vital advance in modern communication and our ability to share our identities and emotions with people around the world, even if we don’t speak the same language. Part of it is also just that I like trying new ways of telling stories and exploring game experiences.
I love dice but it’s fun to take different mechanics from weird things we do. In Literally, I Can’t, one of the games in the collection, you use the MASH (mansion, apartment, shack, house) game that I played as a kid to build characters. That is the kind of thing I want to explore in games!
I also design in response to things. I saw a few games using phone cameras that I felt didn’t do what I wanted. I have had to learn a lot about selfies and myself to use this technology, and needed to apply it to games to get the experiences I wanted.
To make games, I honestly just took selfies. A lot. And I remembered how selfies have been relevant to my life. They are instrumental in my long distance relationships, and a part of how I feel connected to others, but also are ways that I know I can appear to not measure up to expectations or fade into the background if I’m not interesting enough. All of that came through in the collection! Every game has my heart in it, somehow, just with some “how to break it” instructions included!
Using mobile technology as a play aid and intermediary is such an interesting area to explore. Obviously this offered enormous design inspiration, but I’m wondering what challenges it also presented. Does it complicate aspects of design or play?
It certainly does! There are a lot of elements that are challenging. The first, one I’m very aware of, is that not everyone can afford a cell phone with a camera. I hated this, because it’s a reality I wish I could fight, but to make games with this element I had to accept that loss. I am trying to figure out a way to make up for it, but my own financial status isn’t awesome either.
Second, not everyone likes to take selfies, and not everyone even really knows how to take them (there’s not really a wrong way, though, honestly). When I playtested Who Made Me Smile? at Big Bad Con this year, most of my table was people who either didn’t take selfies, or didn’t take them often, and most people approached it with some anxiety. Thankfully, we talked about it and I encouraged them and it went great! I don’t know how it’ll go with others, though.
Third and final so I don’t write ten paragraphs, privacy and safety are huge concerns. For some of the games you’ll pass your phone to other players or share your phone number, for others you’re alone outside, and for some games you’re dealing with emotionally trying things. All of these have their own measures. For sharing contact information and phones I tried to give strong reminders about respecting safety and deleting the other players’ numbers unless they permit otherwise, and I also require that people hide NSFW pictures and content to avoid any consent violation. Being alone during game is risky, so I ask that people have an emergency check-in contact – and I also ask that for the emotionally intense games to help people get support. I also recommend Script Change for all of the games.
It’s all complicated, I think, but it is worth it, I think.
I love the way this collection blends analog and digital and subverts expectations. The four group games imply that the participants will be together physically rather than distributed, and I wonder if you could talk about this choice.
One of the most troubling things I’ve seen with selfies, and one of my secret goals to target with the games, is the negative perception of taking selfies in front of other people. People regularly shame young people for taking selfies in public, and mock tourists who get selfie sticks to take pictures in front of huge landmarks. We don’t mock people who have strangers take their pictures, or people who take pictures of other things or other people. Only people who dare recognize their own existence in public. I struggle, personally, with embarrassment over this – and I wanted to poke at it and prod it to see if I could fix that a little. In the games, you have to take selfies in front of people – sometimes making weird expressions or while feeling complicated feelings. I want to normalize that.
It’s also important with Don’t Look at Me, a two-player selfie game in the collection about my personal experiences in a long-term relationship with my husband while he was deployed in Iraq. The purpose of being together, but not facing each other and only able to see each other through selfies, is to create the emotional tension of knowing the person is there, feeling them just out of touch, and not being able to see them except through these constrained circumstances. John and I were, and are, very close, and I always felt like he was with me, but I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t look at him face to face – everything was through lenses and bytes. I cry every time I think about the game because I know that tension, and it was important to me to make sure that the people playing it could experience it too. In Now You Don’t, it’s important to be around other people to create that experience of physical closeness and emotional ignorance. Surrounded by a crowd, but invisible – almost palpable.
Well, honestly, first I’d ask them how they feel about Van Gogh’s self portraits. Maybe those are narcissistic, too, I guess, but I don’t think that would be the majority opinion. I could direct them to the interview I did alongside a professional fine artist where I talk about the use of selfies as a grounding element in life, and where the artist (Robert Daley) says that selfies are simply modern portraiture.
You write in your introduction how important selfies are to you as a way to present yourself to the world in images you control. Do you see ways to incorporate either selfies as artifacts or mobile phones and their liberating ability to document a person’s personal vision more generally in other games, old or new?
I would love to see some larger scale larps use selfies for storytelling – specifically, in larps where there are mystery elements or similar things that they could use a selfie to identify a character not in a scene, and distribute it to players. This would be excellent for games where there’s reason to be suspicious of specific individuals. Using selfies that you either take in costume or alter to represent your character in game would, I think, bring a level of personal identification with the character that isn’t often had. It also lets you record the experience of a game from the viewpoint you choose – you frame the moment, not anyone else.
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| (by Brie) |
I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll share this interview and the DriveThruRPG link with all your friends!
[From Brie: Thank you to Jason so much for this, it was a really fun experience and I’m so glad to talk more about LMTAS!]
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In case you’re interested in what I’m working on or looking for something to playtest!
Turn is a slice-of-life supernatural roleplaying game set in the modern era.
Players in Turn are shapeshifters in small, rural towns who must balance their human lives and habits with their beast needs and instincts. Their baser natures will challenge them as they strive towards goals from everyday tasks to life-changing experiences, and they will need to find comfort in one another to make it through without becoming stressed out. The system uses player discussion and a set of d6 rolls for resolution.
Turn is slated to be a complete draft by the end of 2018, potentially pursuing crowdfunding.
EDIT: The Turn Beta is no longer available but you can find the game at any of these links:
https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Turn.html
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/281964/Turn?manufacturers_id=10592
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.
