Author: Beau Jágr Sheldon

Brie is Bad at Video Games Alien: Isolation Episode 1

Discovery Playtest Video

Check it out!

Discovery is a project I’ve been working on since last year. Part of my requirements for it was that I could describe the game in less than 10 minutes, on a video, have no book, and use only a single character sheet. I think I succeeded!

Hi, I’m Brie Sheldon, and this is Discovery.

To play Discovery you need one six-sided die per player, six different-colored markers, up to six players, and a guide.

Discovery starts with an accident. It might be small, it might be big, but most of all, it’s important. This is the moment when lives are changed.

Players define the accident through discussion. It must affect all characters, and they need to give reason enough to the guide that this accident might have the desired effect: to give them all super powers.

Once the accident is defined, character creation begins.

The players will write the name of their character in the center of their sheet. They will conceive a character and physically describe their characters to other players.

The players define the six emotions available as a group. This helps set the tone for the game. Players will discuss which color marker or which pattern will represent each emotion for their character and mark it on their sheet. They will choose a six-sided die to be their own.

To begin play, the guide describes a situation where the characters can encounter challenges or have interesting interactions. Players interact by asking questions, taking actions, or experiencing emotion.

When players encounter a question they cannot answer or challenge that seems difficult without effort, they will choose an appropriate skill. There is no skill list because the skills are created as they are discovered. Skills can include simple things like talking, or complicated things like telekinesis. When the skill is named, the player will write it onto their sheet in one of the hexes with either a plus one, minus one, or zero.

Before proceeding, the guide will ask the player how their character feels. The player will respond with a description of their emotional state, and then draw a line from the center hex to the skill hex with the appropriately colored marker. When rolling with this skill hex, if this emotion is active in the character, a plus one is added to the roll.

The player will roll a six-sided die and add the number in their skill hex to the die roll. If the result is zero, the guide will describe a result that makes things worse. If it is one or two, the guide describes how they fail. If it is three to five, the action succeeds at a cost, defined by the guide. If it is a six, the guide describes how the character succeeds. If it is a seven or above, the action succeeds with dramatic results, as defined by the guide.

The story continues as led by the guide until at least one character has filled their grid with skills. Play may continue past this point. However, at that point, the characters have been discovered.

Brie Creates Religion

Hi all!

I wanted to talk a little bit about some work I did in the past on a game setting called A Deadly Affair. It was a game run by my husband +John Sheldon, originally in a modified D&D 3.5 system, then later a modified Pathfinder system. One of the biggest elements of the game was that players were able to build parts of the setting – species, religions, cultures, historical events. It was really cool! I got to be really involved in setting creation and John allowed me to build one of the religions for the game.

The religion was called the Nord. You can read some about it on the Deadly Affair wiki page on Obsidian Portal. In the religion, there are five gods. “Norric the cruel god of ice and cold, Eitne the chaotic god of the winds and herald of change, Shima the benevolent lord of the earth representing growth and life, Raer the demanding deity of fire and warmth, and the Unnamed – a treacherous god of magic, spirits, and deceit.”

I spent a long time while I was growing up reading myths and legends about Norse and Greek polytheistic religions. I was a huge fan of them. This is part of why I wanted to create a religion specifically for A Deadly Affair.

One of the first things I did was determine whether I wanted to do a polytheistic religion, or stick with a single god, or something different. I was most familiar with the myths of polytheistic religions, so I picked that. I then wanted to pull from something recognizable to begin the definitions of the gods, and I picked a compass. Norric was the North, Raer the South, Shima the West, the Unnamed the East, and Eitne as the center, ever changing.

Once I had that down, I spent a lot of time on my own just thinking about it. I wish I’d taken the time to write down everything I thought of. Hindsight, you know? If I had written it down, though, there would have been a lot about the behaviors of the gods, the rituals of the priests, and the habits of the followers. There would have been descriptions of the avatars of the gods, and of the symbols carried by the followers.

I guess, I regret not writing them down. And I’m hoping to play the game again, so maybe I can get my stuff together and write down some new information to put in the Wiki, or on here. I hope that people enjoy whatever I choose to share when the time comes.

<3

Five or So Questions with Ryan Schoon on Edara: A Steampunk Renaissance

Here is a link to the Kickstarter! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edara/the-travelers-guide-to-edara-a-steampunk-renaissan

Tell me a little about your upcoming Kickstarter. What’s exciting about it?

It is a follow up to the successful launch of Edara: A Steampunk Renaissance. This campaign companion delves even deeper into the world we created, offering more maps, adversaries, background and historic information, NPCs, and plot hooks so that GMs can bring their parties deeper into the world.

What did you do to develop this new material – what kind of preparation did it take?
Well it took a lot of work to develop, honestly.

We had to really study the cultures we wanted to base our world on. We worked with an Economist to figure out how money would work passing between nations in a world like ours. I teamed up with a latin and classical cultures major to fully flesh out the details of the culture, down to the histories, traditions, politics, and day to day lifestyle.

But mostly I studied the Renaissance. One of the biggest criticisms of the Core book is that it didn’t dive fully into the Renaissance themes that are present in the world. I wanted to closely resemble the movement in Edara to that of Italy during the Renaissance so it required a lot of intense study and reading, and I learned more about Renaissance italy than I ever would have 🙂

Tell me a little about the plot hooks. What were you looking for in the plot hooks?
So this ties in a lot to the plot hooks. The biggest themes of our game are the conflict between science vs religion, renaissance vs steampunk, and the inherent racism that comes with a mult-racial fantasy world. In the corebook, we basically said here are the themes, you can build your games around these. But the plot hooks dig deeper into that. We focus on each realm individually (and some of the bigger realms are divided into regions, or even down to cities) in order to provide these hooks. They aren’t fully fleshed out ideas or adventures, just hooks to help the GM build a campaign. The types of adventures that one might go on. For example, in the human kingdom of Kuria, which is broiled down in political disputes, the plot hooks have to do with one house playing the party against the others. There is also a racist movement inside the kingdom that might attempt to use the party to act out against the other races, which puts the party in a tough position as they have to decide what is more important to them: appeasing their employers or breaking the cycle of racism that has built up in the kingdom after years of war. Meanwhile, in the Dwarven kingdom, the plot hooks are more adventurous; exploring new tunnels and ruins to find lost dwarven treasures, or escorting merchants while they sell their wares above ground.

Tell me more about the cultures you based the world on. What kind of characters and cultures will we see?
Well we have several cultures spread across the world. The humans are actually based on medieval culture with Italian Renaissance flavors. Then we have the orc mountains which is based more on nomadic Mongolian aspects with a high focus on honor. The elves are rooted more in Tolkienesque fantasy and an almost pure socialist society. So there is a lot of variety!

Is this the last we’ll see of Edara, or is there more to come? If there is more – what should we be excited for?
And no this is not the last! We plan on offering future books in this line focusing on parts of Edara that we haven’t seen yet. There will be this same amount of focus and death on the areas beyond the mountains and forests, which we will talk about more as time goes on! This book will lead right into the future timelines of Edara.

Five or So Questions with Fraser Ronald on Nerfertiti Overdrive

The Nefertiti Overdrive Kickstarter hits today! Keep an eye out.

Tell me a little about Nefertiti Overdrive. What excites you about it?
While I can sometimes be more interested than is good for me in the specific details of a historical setting, I can also really appreciate a story that purposefully disregards the facts and focuses on the fun. I am unapologetic in my love for the movie the 13th Warrior and happily sit through the Scorpion King. These movies take historical settings but then don’t sweat too much in favour of presenting a fun and exciting story.

That’s what I’ve done with Nefertiti Overdrive (first clue: it’s not even set during the time of Nefertiti, I just though the title sounded cool). Then I added physics-defying action with mechanics that reward exciting and detailed narratives of character actions. In Nefertiti Overdrive, you can still say “I punch him in the face,” but you won’t get rewarded for that and could easily fail. If you say “I leap up, flipping over my opponent and landing behind him. I then swing back with my elbow, cracking him in the side of the head.” That will not only make it easier to succeed – because it’s pretty cool – but you can also earn Luck – a kind of Hero Point/Plot Coupon/Benny – from other players if you do something they really enjoy.

This all excites me because it amps up the energy at the table, players trying to outdo other players with their descriptions. It rewards creativity and creates a really strong, cooperative table dynamic that has always led to a really fun game in my experience. This is the kind of game I love to run or play.

What sort of mechanics do you use in the game?

Any time the dice hit the table in Nefertiti Overdrive, it’s called a Test. PCs have four attributes that provide dice. Each Attribute has two Qualities – a descriptive word or short phrase like ‘Protector’ or “Loyal to the House of Kashta.’ Each Attribute also has two die-types associated with it, the lower being the base die and the higher being the max die. If you can apply one of its Qualities to the scene, the Attribute provides its base die. If you apply the Quality in a narratively exciting or interesting manner, you can use the max die.

Dice are compared for Initiative (which character is active and which is passive), Target (does the active character overcome the passive character for a Triumph), and Effect (can one of the character’s impose a penalty – known as a Condition – on the other). Each Challenge has a number of Triumphs required to overcome it.

Tell me more about Luck. What can you do with it?

With Luck, you can add an extra Quality – meaning you can roll five or more dice in a Test and use them all – re-roll a die, or remove some or all of a Condition – a penalty that can be imposed during a Test. Luck is provided by players to other players, and there is a limited supply. When a player uses Luck, it goes to the GM, who can use it to buy a natural 1 rolled by a player and add that die-type (though not the die itself) to a Threat Pool. The GM can add any die from the Threat Pool to any Test, but it can be rolled only once and is then removed from the Pool. When the GM spends Luck, it returns to the pot, available to be distributed by the players to other players.

When a player or GM has extra dice, she can apply those in whatever fashion she feels is best, to increase Initiative, Target, or Effect. This generally means an amazing result, which might lead to more Luck from players. It’s the circle of life!

How are you preparing for the Kickstarter, and what kind of cool stretch goals will we see (if any)?

The Nefertiti Overdrive Quickstart rules are already available (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/137307/Nefertiti-Overdrive-Quickstart-Rules) and were released in the hopes of creating some interest in the Kickstarter.

I have an agreement with Magpie Games to facilitate shipping, which takes a huge load off my mind. Magpie Games fulfilled my last successful Kickstarter, Centurion: Legionaries of Rome, and it makes a huge difference in regards to the period between having the book printed and getting it into the hands of our backers.

The text for the game is 75% finished, and we have about half of the artwork in hand.

The first stretch goal is going to be maps for the included adventure. I’m trying to present a very realistic goal for the Kickstarter, but that means I won’t be able to afford maps. The plan is similar to what was done in the Quickstart – suggestions for image searches and a link to an existing map or illustration available on the internet at the time of publishing. I would really like to provide maps for the included adventure, but I believe $3,000 Canadian is more realistic than $4,500, but if I can get the latter, the adventure will get maps.

The next stretch goal is a port of Nefertiti Overdrive to Fate Accelerated written by none other than Jason Pitre of Genesis of Legend Publishing, the man behind Spark and Posthuman Pathways (and a pretty awesome guy – but let’s keep that between us, it might go to his head). I am a fan of Fate Accelerated but did not feel comfortable hacking Nefertiti Overdrive. Thankfully, Jason is more than ready to oblige. This would happen at $6,000

After that, at $7,500, we’ll include another setting I’m calling Daredevils of the Water Wastes. Part of Nefertiti Overdrive is a scenario creation system that can either be done as a kind of game or just as a framework for brainstorming. It allows the players to create the kind of campaign and setting in which they want to adventure. Daredevils of the Water Wastes is a product of that system, and uses the same mechanics as Nefertiti Overdrive, but with slightly altered Attributes for the player characters.

We have other stretch goals planned, and will reveal those as we knock these one’s down.

Yes, I am exactly that insanely optimistic. It could happen!

What is Accessibility?

Lately I have been working on a project called Discovery. It’s a teenage superheroes game. It’s pretty simple, system-wise and concept-wise. The dilemma for me is my intentions for the game.

I want the whole game to be able to be explained in a less-than-10-minute video and be supported by a single-page character sheet. I mean, so far, not so hard, right? If it’s super simple, someone can explain a game in 10 minutes (Archipelago, The Quiet Year, etc. – good examples of super low social footprint games with easy explanations – even Apocalypse World is pretty easy to explain in a few minutes). However, I have a combination of problems I’m working on.

It has to be a video with sound. Why? Because some people can’t see. The video has to have subtitles. Like, absolutely has to. Why? Because some people can’t hear well or process audio well. There has to be an accessible transcript so that people can translate it easily. These are all things I can easily manage with the help of my in-house video editor.

The character sheet has to be available in an easily-downloadable format. This is not an issue. However, the BIGGEST problem I have is the character sheet itself. It’s purely visual. It requires someone to explain it. It can’t be used by someone who can’t see. I have no means of getting around this roadblock. I was tasked with finding a way around colorblindness, and I figured that letting people use their own color markers would work. However, I have not found a way around having a visual character sheet for a game that is about making a visual presentation of skills and emotions. Is it even possible? Is this a way I will fail in making my game accessible? Is it even failure?

One of the keys of this project is also for it to be free. This means that I can’t do anything with it if I don’t have +John Sheldon able to work on the video, which means I have to work around his schedule. It means I need to make sure to have a place to host it where downloading it for free is not an issue, where you don’t have to sign up for membership.

So, I guess, my question is: where do we stop on accessibility? How much responsibility does a designer have to their consumers? How can we make games more accessible, and what does accessible really mean? There are boundaries that some people cannot cross due to accessibility issues, including comprehension issues, physical disability, and even financial limitations. How do I make my games meet those expectations?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments or on G+. I look forward to hearing them!

Five or So Questions on Standard Action Season 3

Season 3 of Standard Action goes live TODAY! Check out the webpage at http://www.watchstandardaction.com/.

Sorry for posting so late – illness and such got in the way.

Tell me a little bit about Standard Action Season 3. What excites you about it?
Answered by Rob Hunt, director, cinematographer and editor for Standard Action:

Season 3 joins our heroes a few months after season 2 has ended. First and foremost we answer the question everyone has been demanding to know.. What happens to the Efreeti head in a bucket after the party abandoned it in the forest?

Season 3 has a lot of interesting things going on in it. We can look forward to many guest stars from other web series including Transolar Galactica and Journey Quest. We will get to see a few old faces from season 1. We also get to find out more about Ikosa and who she is. The Rogue, Gary joins the party to help them on their quest to find Martin the Druid as he has been lost in another realm of existence.

I’m really excited to be launching the card game and Pathfinder module for Standard Action. Both projects help expand the Standard Action world and are part of our season 3 Kickstarter. The card game is a simple party building game where each player builds a party of heroes and goes on adventures. Torvel can betray his party every round! Slay baby eating kobolds! The Pathfinder module explores the adventures of the party between season 1 and 2. As they try and identify a magic bracelet and how it ended up becoming a taxidermied squirrel by season 2. Take your role playing to new heights with encounters like, the fashion show! A taxidermied zombie shark with a wand of magic missile on it’s head! Kobolds!

Finally, as post production guy, I really enjoyed doing different looks for some of the different alternate realities they visit. I started that a bit with the office portions of season 2 being silvery and desaturated. I got to do looks for a dream world, a musical world and a science fiction world. It was a lot of fun working on that.

What characters are we going to see the most of this season, and why?
Answered by Joanna Gaskell, producer, writer and actor for Standard Action:

Well, we ended Season 2 with Edda, Fernando and Wendy whizzing off into the planes to go looking for Martin, and taking a very surprised Rogue with them – Gary, played by David Pearson. We’re definitely going to be seeing a lot of those four characters, but fans will be pleased to know that they certainly haven’t seen the last of Martin the Druid, who has been with us since the beginning. We’re also coming full circle a bit on this season, so fans will see a lot of the faces they saw back in first season reappear. Jaina the Bartender will show up again, for instance, as will Cedric the Wizard, who has always been a fan favourite.

What did you have to do to prepare for the new season using the Kickstarter funds?
Answered by Joanna Gaskell, producer, writer and actor for Standard Action:

This season has certainly been our biggest yet. The script was a little more ambitious, including five different sets that had to be built in the same small space. We had a lot more cast to deal with as well, all of whom had to be costumed, and some of whom were special guests being brought in from out of town. We upgraded equipment and added a slider and some better tripods to the mix, as well as a better sound recorder. The musical carried a few of its own expenses, developing the songs and lyrics, and booking the studio time needed to record. As always though, our biggest expense is labour, so we put aside a lot of that Kickstarter money to fund the actual production. We had to bring a few more people to set this year to deal with the complexity of our stories, and we try to pay everyone as best we can.

Tell me about the music for this new season. Who all do you have on the project?
Answered by: Kersten Tennert, sound and music for Standard Action –

The music for the new season is a wonderful concoction of both effects-driven samplers & synths with big delays, reverbs, and even reverse effects, and recordings of acoustic instruments. The fantasy element of “Standard Action” allows us to bend the rules of classical orchestration, leaving the opportunity to build an assortment of instruments that are processed in unconventional ways, such as tribal drums, glockenspiel, or celeste with heavy reverse delay & reverb, or even ring-shifters.

That being said, it is still important to incorporate acoustic elements that play an important role in the show’s setting, and overall mood. I’m using a fair bit of mandolin, acoustic guitar, acoustic-slide guitar, and even banjo for this season’s score. Yes, even banjo! It is also important to change orchestration based on setting, and circumstance in a scene. For example, in Episode One, the team is aboard a space vessel in another plane, in a galaxy far, far away. So you’ll hear that classic, familiar sound of a theremin in there. In more-comedic scenes with Cedric, for example, staccato notes, chromatic runs, and instruments with short decay may help push the goofy mood along. The writing is strong, and a huge part of the score is also knowing when the dialogue can speak for itself, and not being too obvious or suggestive that the audience “should” feel a certain way, by shoving music in their face.

Lots and lots to consider with score! This season’s post-production schedule has been arranged to have enough time to really polish each episode off, down to every last little detail, so I’m really thankful to be granted the opportunity to experiment. Joanna has been pretty good about making sure that I’m on the right track. Like with any collaboration, things can be up for interpretation, so it’s fun to find out that we’ve had different takes on what certain scenes might need for music. For example, the first scene of Episode Two was intended to be dramatic with a darker tone, but wacky, maniacal, lighter music actually really sold the scene.

There is a musical episode this season! Our cast did vocal training with Camille Johnson, who wrote a number of songs for the musical episode. She laid down a piano scratch-track and we worked out what the tempo would be for each section, and where all the pauses would be, and then we brought everyone into the studio for one massive vocal session. It was amazing. Everyone had such a fun time and really shone. Some of the cast came from a musical background – even opera trained! – and others hadn’t had much experience at all. Camille & and the cast did SUCH a great job. After all the vocals were edited & mixed, the scratch tracks were then built into these large orchestrations to sound totally Disney-esque. That episode is a standalone, for sure.

This season is the biggest, by far. Everyone has grown, professionally, and people are constantly upping their game; more complex writing, more elaborate costume design, more sophisticated visual effects, longer episodes, more tools and toys. It is so amazing to be part of a team of such eager, hard-working and friendly folks. Joanna is such a strong leader who fully understands that this is entirely a team effort. She knows how to step back and trust people to handle things, and allow them the space for their talents to shine, while also being able to pull things together and be our general.


Season 3 Episode 1 launches on Nov.18th – Get ready for it.

Rock on, Indie Filmmaking!

Five or So Questions with Rafael Chandler on The Astounding Antagonists

What was your inspiration for The Astounding Antagonists?

In comic books and films, people with superpowers commit violent acts in the name of justice. A while back, I started thinking about heroes, and how they might be designated as criminals or villains if their idea of ‘justice’ differed from the status quo. And the novel emerged from that idea.

Are these characters antiheroes, true heroes, or just freakin’ awesome superheroes, and why?

In the novel, they’re referred to as villains, and they embrace the term, because they steal, destroy, and kill. However, they believe that their actions are justified, so they do see themselves as heroic.

Tell me a little bit about Helen Damnation!

She’s an blue-skinned extraterrestrial who wears a suit of high-tech armor developed by Dr. Agon. It turns out that the armor doesn’t do what everybody thinks it does. Helen is somewhat contemptuous of any society that values material wealth. She likes dogs. She enjoys sweets. She’s fiercely loyal to the people that she loves. Though she will not kill, she enjoys combat, and is quite proud of the scars that she has earned.

Your RPG work is known for being a little gore heavy. Is it the same with this work?

It’s not particularly gory. Like my previous novel (Hexcommunicated), this is a fast-paced adventure. There’s some violence, and if it were a movie, it’d be rated R — but it’s nothing like the splatterpunk work I do in RPGs.

What’s up next for you, post-Astounding Antagonists?

I’m working on the second book in the Agent Tepes series; it’s called Hextermination, and it features shoggoths, ghouls, and witches. Should be fun! Also, I’m nearly finished with my kickstarted monster manual, Lusus Naturae. Very excited about that.

Thanks so much for the interview, Brianna! The Astounding Antagonists is available here:

Amazon (Kindle):
http://www.amazon.com/Astounding-Antagonists-Rafael-Chandler-ebook/dp/B00OOXZGRQ

Amazon (print):
http://www.amazon.com/Astounding-Antagonists-Rafael-Chandler/dp/1502894548

Lulu (print):
http://www.lulu.com/shop/rafael-chandler/the-astounding-antagonists/paperback/product-21858531.html

Five or So Questions with Steve Wallace on No Country for Old Kobolds

Tell me a little bit about No Country for Old Kobolds. What excites you about it?
No Country For Old Kobolds is Dungeon World hack that focuses on the lives kobolds lead in most rpgs. Basically, they’re constantly being wiped out by first level adventurers and that has to have a negative impact on their day to day lives. The game is built to explore that situation. I’ve modified basic Dungeon World to better model this sort of thing so there are unique components like a shared village character, leveling by dying and mechanics to allow you to continue to affect the game after death.

I’ve started different games and hacks off and on throughout the years and this is the first time I’ve really pushed one through to completion so I’m really excited by that! I’ve also been pretty blown away by the positive feedback I’ve gotten throughout play testing, it’s really humbling to see people enjoy something you’ve created.

I’m really amazed but the themes that players have brought to the game as well. Throughout play testing I’ve had some really great conversations with players about racism, colonialism and poverty and I think if nothing else that’s worth it!

What made you choose Dungeon World as your system for hacking?
I had the idea of running an all kobolds campaign for a while and DW was/is my preferred system for fantasy based games at the moment so it seemed like a natural fit. As brainstorming went on I realized I needed to make some pretty heavy modifications to the system to get it where I wanted so in the initial rule set I used John Harpers World of Dungeons. I think WoD is a great system to start hacking because it’s already so stripped down, as work went on it ended up somewhere in between – or beside – DW and WoD.

You mentioned conversations about racism, colonialism, and poverty – what about this specific content do you think spurs those conversations?

The way the game is built the players create all these external forces that push on the village and kobolds. It’s given that the rest of the world hates you and wants something from you. The players tend to gravitate toward things that are familiar so I often see pressures like ‘they want our land’, ‘they want our resources’, ‘they want us as slaves’ etc. and those naturally bring up these conversations.

What modifications did you make to Dungeon World to make it work for the game?
A lot. Basically I kept the base AW roll mechanic and the DW XP by failure mechanic. I took the skills and some of the abilities from World of Dungeons but I’ve heavily modified just about all of them. Every ability is now basically a move and skills just add +1 to related actions. I added a shared character, your village, which is the thing that actually gets XP and advance moves. All kobolds level by dying so you actually play a few generations of your kobold family during a session – on average players run 4 generations per session. I added in death tokens which allow the players to affect combat after death – because there’s near 100% chance at least 1 player will die every combat. The tokens allow you to put other characters over on their rolls – bump them up to the next tier – or they can be turned in at the end of combat for village XP. The game is also more mission based than normal DW, you have these wants that you have to fulfill for your village or risk losing population – basically it mechanically enforces the fragility of your village. The players also create all the kingdoms that surround the village so the GM doesn’t get involved there, they just extrapolate off what the players provide. I also added in unit combat based on Sage & Adams Inglorious work, I think it makes swarm style combat easier and it really helps to drive home how much more powerful everything in the world is. Throughout the game you can take advance Village moves that will give you new units like homonculi, trolls, wizards and even a dragon.

Once you’re done with No Country for Old Kobolds, where do you think you’ll go next?
I haven’t quite decided but the thing that is interesting most at the moment is a game that would model the in fighting between the great houses in Dune. I really like the idea of an intrigue based role playing game where you – as the leader of your house – have abilities that are more high level than a player character in most rpgs. You can send armies to a planet or hire assassins or the like, basically you set the wheels in motion instead of being the wheels.

Five or So Questions with Matthew McFarland on Chill

This post is remaining live for archival purposes only. Thoughty does not endorse Matthew McFarland as detailed in the Official Statement on Perpetrators of Harm.
Don’t forget to check out the Kickstarter!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playattentiongames/chill-3rd-edition-a-horror-roleplaying-game

Tell me a little bit about Chill. What excites you about it?
Chill is a horror game in which the players take on the roles of members of SAVE. SAVE (the Eternal Society of the Silver Way) is a secret organization dedicated to protecting people from the Unknown. SAVE members (called “envoys”) aren’t necessarily highly trained, deadly Special Forces types. They’re just people who encountered the Unknown and couldn’t stomach the idea of other people getting hurt.

That, in a nutshell, is what I find exciting about the game. SAVE envoys aren’t well-funded, and most of the time they don’t know what they’re up against. The organization has had a rough time of it (one of the things we’re doing in 3rd Edition is updating the SAVE timeline; it’s been 25 years since 2nd Edition and a lot has happened!), but they soldier on, because the Unknown doesn’t slow down. The Unknown isn’t a directed force – there’s no “big bad” at the head of it all, as much as some SAVE envoys would love to think otherwise – but it’s relentless and it’s hungry. SAVE probably isn’t going to win the war, at least not any time soon. But what they can do is save this neighborhood, banish this ghost, destroy this vampire. It might not turn the tide of the war against the Unknown forever, but it makes a hell of a difference to the people who would have otherwise been drained of their blood in an alley or frightened to death.

What made you decide to pick up Chill for a 3rd edition? What makes this game special?

I played Chill in college. It was my first horror game and it’s what made me fall in love with the horror genre in general. I probably ran 200 sessions of it over the course of my freshman and sophomore years, and it was responsible for me learning how to handle horror as a GM, as well as getting a lot of people who weren’t nominally gamers into roleplaying.

But apart from the nostalgia factor, the humanist angle that I mentioned above is a big part of why it’s special to me. SAVE envoys don’t have superpowers. Some of them have some low-grade psychic ability, but it’s not the kind of thing where they can just roll in and solve everything magically. The game is about investigation, attention to detail, courage in the face of evil, and teamwork. As I’ve been running playtests, one thing I’m hearing consistently is that SAVE groups have to work together and play to each other’s strengths, or the Unknown wins. And that’s exactly what I want.

I love RPGs that encourage cohesive, interactive roleplaying. I want everyone to know everyone else’s characters and their abilities and strengths, so that the group works together. In Chill, you have to work together, or else no one gets out alive.

What kind of research did you have to do for your diverse character backgrounds in the pregens?
Four of the five pregens were taken from Chill 2nd Edition books (BB, Thomas, and Jennifer were in the Chill core and Maria was in Horrors of North America). The plan initially was to take all five from the 2nd Ed material, because it would give people familiar with that edition a point of reference for the changes we made. The diversity spread in 2nd edition pregens isn’t bad; it’s fairly close to even between men and women, and while it’s not as representative of people of color as I’d like, it’s not completely devoid of them, either. It is, however, devoid of any LGBTQA+ characters. Rather, the only characters for whom sexuality is ever mentioned are characters that have spouses, and always the opposite sex. So while nothing says that, for instance, BB is straight, none of the pregens are explicitly referred to as non-straight or non-cis.

I wanted a character in the quickstart that wasn’t straight or cis, and in thinking about how to do that, I came up with Rory. Now, I’m a cis man, and so writing the character was a little outside of my comfort zone, which is why the dynamic with his ailing father is in there; that was something I did understand, and it gave him a point of conflict that wasn’t centered around his father not accepting him – his father does accept Rory. The point of conflict comes from his father’s dementia, and the difficulty he has understanding his child now, post-transition.

Tell me a little about the mechanical system for Chill. What mechanics really show off the game?
Chill 3rd Edition uses a percentile system, much like previous editions. Players make rolls against a target number (T#). Players make two kinds of checks, general checks and specific checks. A general check either succeeds (the roll is lower than or equal to the T#) or fails (the roll is the higher than the T#).

A specific check has five possible results:

  • Botch: The roll is a failure (higher than the T#) and the dice come up doubles. If your T# is 60 and you roll 88, for instance, that’s a botch.
  • Failure: The roll is higher than the T#, but not a botch.
  • Low Success: The roll is equal to or lower than the T#, but higher than half the T#. If your T# is 60, and you roll anything from 60 to 30, it’s a low success.
  • High Success: You roll less than half your T#. If your T# is 60, anything lower than 30 is a high success.
  • Colossal Success: You roll any success and the dice come up doubles. So, if your T# is 60 and you roll 55, 44, 33, 22, or 11, it’s a colossal success!

In addition to the dice mechanic, Chill uses a set of tokens (coins work just fine, as long you can tell one side from the other – one’s “light” and one’s “dark”).

Players can “flip a chip dark” (turning a light chip to the dark facing) to add to their target numbers (before or after a roll!), to sense the Unknown, to use their training in the Art, and, in truly dire straits, to save a character’s life.

Of course, once a chip’s dark facing is showing, the Chill Master can flip the chip light to activate a creature’s Disciplines of the Evil Way, to hinder the characters in minor in-genre ways (“I’m not getting any reception!”), or to add to a NPC’s target number.

Who do you think would like Chill most, and how would you suggest introducing it to a new group?
I think anyone who’s a fan of horror gaming with a personal, immediate feel would enjoy Chill. This isn’t Lovecraftian horror, in which the only “victory” is survival and retaining one’s sanity. In Chill, you can actually defeat the Unknown, it’s just hard. Gamers who enjoy investigate RPGs, and exploring a world that is, at points, hostile and dangerous, should check it out.

The way that I used to pitch Chill to new players back in the day (and I think this still works) is: The world of Chill is much like ours, except that the supernatural is real. It feeds on misery, fear, and death, and at some point, your character saw it. Maybe your character was attacked, maybe they just witnessed something inexplicable, but sometime thereafter, a group of people from an organization called SAVE showed up to ask you about it. You chose to ask them what was really going on, and when they warned you that digging deeper was dangerous to your health and your sanity, you refused to let it go.

Why? What brings your character out into the dark to fight monsters?