Category: Archive

Archive of all posts prior to October 2021, including the interviews, reviews, and theory posts about tabletop roleplaying games.

Con Bags with Rob Donoghue and Monica Speca

I don’t normally do multiple posts in a day, but I am so hyped about Origins next week that I couldn’t wait to post this interview with Rob Donoghue and Monica Speca about their favorite con bags and accessories!

FROM MONICA:

Tell me about your favorite bags. What do you like about them?
I travel with a Samsonite Tectonic Large Laptop backpack. It is the best damn thing I have ever purchased for travel. The bag is big enough for up to 4 days’ worth of clothes, (maybe even more if you’re good at packing efficiently) has well-cushioned pockets for your laptop and tablet, and a number of sizable pockets good for stashing all your stuff. It fits nicely into overhead compartments, so is good for a carry-on, but is also small enough that you can cram it under the seat in front of you. When I get to the con, the backpack then doubles as a vehicle for, say, gaming supplies, or carrying a spare pair of shoes along if I’m in costume.
When I cosplay, the backpack is usually for my street clothes, my computer, entertainment for the plane (if I’m flying) and anything I don’t need to check.

What about bag accessories – water bottles, detachable pockets, organizers?
I don’t use many of these, but maybe I should! Usually I carry any personal effects (wallet, keys, phone) on my person in my pockets as much as possible.

When I cosplay, it’s not uncommon for me to carry a small purse or to bring along the aforementioned backpack… and foist it off on a friend of mine who isn’t in costume. This is often the Significant Other’s job. I also keep all my makeup in a little bag that goes in my checked suitcase if I’m flying. There’s nothing particularly special about it. It has a zipper and enough space for me to cram all the cosmetics I’ll need for the weekend in there. Note to self, though: look into getting a water bottle – staying hydrated is incredibly important when cosplaying.

Any must-have con tools of the trade?
For a gaming or general con-going, I highly recommend a solid backpack (you don’t say!) or a messenger bag – depending on what you find most comfortable. I have a bad habit of losing purses or wallets, but I’ve never left something like a backpack or messenger bag behind.

For a cosplaying, I must say that the most valuable thing you can bring with you is a buddy! It’s a good idea to have a partner around to help carry your stuff, touch up your wig and makeup and make sure that nobody walks off with your personal belongings while you’re posing for pictures – especially if your costume is popular. Having a friend along can also help you to feel safer and more relaxed in really crowded spaces.

FROM ROB:

Tell me about your favorite bags. What do you like about them?

I currently have two favorites. For a sling bag, I love my Redoxx Gator. It’s blocky and smallish, but it holds a ton with a lot of protection. It’s designed to carry a very flexible kit, including a big camera, which makes it very versatile. My backpack of choice is the Timbuk2 Q-Laptop bag. In addition to one of the best laptop sleeve designs I’ve ever seen, it’s the perfect balance between storage capacity and staying slim. Honorable mention goes to the Timbuk2 Slate backpack, which is amazing, but it can actually hold too much stuff, which is a problem.

The biggest danger you’ll run into with a con bag is that you *will* fill it to capacity, and if that capacity is huge, then you will *kill* yourself walking around. So whatever bag you like, try to go as small as you think you can manage.

(And if you’re uncertain, get a backpack. Your back will thank you. There are a million great brands these days, but don’t buy based on reputation or what works for other peoples. A good backpack is like a pair of shoes – you need to try it on and choose for comfort. Bring your kit to a sporting goods store and load up whatever bag you’re looking at, load it up, and walk around. The folks at the store will understand what you’re doing, and you’ll find something that actually suits you.)

What about bag accessories – water bottles, detachable pockets, organizers?

I have a few bags that use the MOLLE system of tactical loops, but I mostly just use them to hold pens. I know some people swear by them, but I am very nervous about having things clipped on the outside of my bag in any crowded venue. There is simply too much jostling and bumping for me to feel comfortable.

Instead, I am a huge proponent of using smaller bags and containers *inside* my bag. Exactly what kind doesn’t matter – get what you like and what you can afford, and the distribution depends on your needs but, for example, I have in my bag:

* A very durable pencil box with all my writing utensils
* A zipper pouch with all my cables
* A dice bag
* A zipper pouch for index cards and tokens

This means that it’s easy for me to change bags if I need to, and also makes it easy to find things, since the only things knocking around loose in my bag are books, notebooks and other easily grabbable things.

If you have a water bottle pocket in your bag, then use it, but do so carefully. Make sure that the size of the bottle matches the size of the pocket well enough that it won’t EVER fall out, even if upside down. If it’s not that snug, then don’t carry it full – just use it to drink from when you find a water source. Similarly, use something that can take abuse. A leak is a real problem at a con.

Any must-have con tools of the trade?

* At a big convention, check the convention swag and see if they’re selling branded badge holders. if so, take a good look. Sometimes they’re cheap and decorative, and you can ignore those, but sometimes they’ve got enough storage to serve as extra pockets. If you can find one of those, BUY IT. You can often run an entire con out of one of those things.

* Bring a travel power strip. Your hotel room is not going to have enough outlets for all the nerd to charge all their toys, to plan for this.

* Poo-Pourri works. I will not delve into the details of this, but if you are sharing a room, your roommates will thank you.

* Bring quarters. A lot of randomly useful things, like lockers and carts and vending machines can be real lifesavers, but only if you have quarters to use them

* Inexpensive business cards are trivial to make these days, so feel free to bring some, but if you do, think about how you want to use them. There is a difference between “Find out more about me and my brand!” and “You are awesome, we should be friends”. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need 2 cards, but it does mean you need to think about how you USE your cards.

* Bring handi-wipes. If you don’t need them, great. But if you do, then you will *NEED* them. Little pump bottle of hand sanitzer is less dramatic, but equally useful

* If you pack anything liquid (like hand sanitizer) put it in a ziploc. As noted above: Leaking is for the birds.

Thanks to both Rob and Monica for their answers and info! Super cool!

Five or So Questions with Joel Sparks on Call of Catthulhu

Check out Call of Catthulhu at http://catthulhu.com/ and Book 1 available here.

Tell me a little about Call of Catthulhu. What excites you about it?

I never play RPGs any more. That’s a big deal for me, because I’ve been in this hobby for ages. Yet when it comes time to crack open a big thick book, fill out a lot of fiddly bits and math on a character sheet, and spend several hours arguing about rules with my closest friends, somehow I can’t muster the energy. With “Call of Catthulhu,” I set out to make a game that honestly appeals to the most lazy, fun-loving, commitment-averse part of my mind. To my cat brain, if you will. It takes about five minutes to make a “catventurer,” and it doesn’t use any numbers, because cats don’t do math. You just describe your cat according to a few guidelines, and then you get to fight the secret plots of Lovecraftian Chaos cults led by other animals. The Cat Herder sets up a series of Challenges, and the players meet them by acting like cats. Everything depends on player cleverness and a bit of luck. You never know what will happen, and a session wraps up in a just a couple of hours. That’s the game I get excited to play.

How do Challenges work in Call of Catthulhu?

Very simply! Most of the time, cats can do what they like without any rolling. They’re cats: They jump up on things or dodge out of sight or walk on a fence, no problem. But bouncing dice is fun too, so we have special Cat Dice. Each one has four Happy Cat faces and two Sad Cats; you could use regular six-siders instead. When the Cat Herder wants to randomize a little, she calls for a roll of two Cat Dice. They can only come up three ways: Two Sad Cats, two Happy Cats, or one of each, and the odds are weighted toward the positive outcomes. The Herder declares results based on the dice roll and play moves on. She could also declare a Difficult Challenge, which requires both dice to come up Happy Cats to succeed. The game offers a few optional wrinkles, like what happens on Snake Eyes, but that’s basically it. Oh, and each cat has a Treat or two; you can trade in one of those to try again if you don’t like the roll. In the Boxed Set we provide little wooden fish tokens for the Treats.

Tell me a little about the ashcan model you used at Gen Con, and the subsequent Kickstarter. What experience did you have with those?

First of all, I would warn anyone against going from game designer to game manufacturer in a few short months without a lot of good help. I had experience in publishing before, yet I had no idea how complicated the logistics would get! But I learned a ton and my next Kickstarter will run a lot more smoothly.

The ashcan was a way to kind of test the waters. I had this crazy idea about ordinary cats in a world of cosmic conspiracies, where all the animals except humans understood that civilization was the cats’ idea and that it’s incredibly fragile and vulnerable to disruption. I wanted to combine that with my ideas about game design, finding a new sweet spot between purely narrative storytelling games and the logistical farragoes of the big-book systems. But would anyone else want to play it? So in about a month I wrote the first version of “Call of Catthulhu” and had a real short run printed up for Gencon 2013. I knew that I’d want to do a lot more with it if people were interested, so I sold the 24-pager for five bucks and collected email addresses. Well, the thing took off, totally out of my control. I was running the con around getting photocopies just to be able to hand people something. For the next printing, I put the Kickstarter address in the back of the book. I took those to a couple of local conventions around DC and then to Spiel Essen in Germany, the world’s biggest game convention. I was fortunate to get some press and video interviews there and collected a lot of names. Still, the response to the Kickstarter staggered me, with far more backers than I had anticipated. Since then it’s been non-stop, ordering game pieces from all over the world, getting custom sketches and painted minis done, staying in touch with hundreds of backers, and trying to find time to actually write the game!

What kind of cats can you play in Call of Catthulhu? How did you make sure there was enough variety to keep people interested?

This is trickier than it sounds, because cats shouldn’t be all the same, yet I did not want to create a whole mess of character classes or skill trees or spell lists. There’s nothing wrong with those things, but people who want to play a game that complex have plenty of choices already. And not everyone wants to. So I came up with a different solution. First off, everything about your cat is descriptive. It’s all words; it’s against the rules to even use any numbers on the character sheet. But the description isn’t totally freeform. That would make game mastering either purely arbitrary or else impossible. Instead, the book walks you through a few choices. You pick one of five archetypal Roles for the cat, like the Scrapper or the Two-Footologist. You decide whether the cat is a Mixed Breed or a Purebred—doesn’t matter what breed—and then whether her background is Feral, Housecat, or Show Cat. Cross those five Roles with the two types of breed and the three backgrounds, and you get 30 different Stories to use as the jumping-off place for describing the cat’s life so far. Start there, customize the details, and add as much physical description as desired, and you’ve got a unique cat, described in just a few sentences, ready to play.

The complementary part is the simple mechanic called Right Cat for the Job. Whenever a Challenge comes along, the player can use anything in the cat’s background and description to claim that she’s got what it takes to handle this particular task. If the Cat Herder agrees, then the cat gets better results on the Challenge roll, including counting one of the dice as an automatic success. The RCFTJ can also attempt Dire Challenges, the really scary stuff that a less appropriate cat just shouldn’t even try.

What’s up next for Call of Catthulhu and you?

I’m still in the middle of it! I’ve got the two new books to bring to Origins, and the super-fancy Boxed Set with Cat Dice and mini figures and lots of bonus bits, and some special Rewards still shipping to some very patient Kickstarter folks. It’s been crazy. But there’s definitely more in the works. One of our great stretch goals was to get a bunch of the best indie RPG authors to write their own take on a setting for Catthulhu, and those will be compiled into a third volume called “Whirls of Catthulhu.” You should be able to get your paws on that, and maybe some other secret stuff, no later than Gencon 2014, which brings the whole game full circle. Quite a year.

Five or So Questions with Moyra Turkington on Fastaval

Tell me a little about Fastaval. What’s got you excited about it?
Fastival is a roleplay and boardgame festival that takes place yearly on the Easter weekend in Denmark (since 1987). New scenarios and board game designs are premiered there, and it is also a friendly competition. This year there were about 700 participants in attendance, playing 34 scenarios and 13 board games that were making their debut.

It was very exciting to have our own game on the program, and to travel there to see it live. They have a phenomenal culture of service and feedback happening in the Fastaval community – I’ve never seen anything like it. Every single person who lays eyes on a game – from the players to the GMs to the Jury who select the nominations for the Otto (Fastaval’s golden penguin equivalent of the Oscar) take the time to provide plentiful, constructive and really remarkably articulated feedback to the designers. They have whole subcultures of support staff that work tirelessly to make the venue happen: maintenance crews, Food and logistics volunteers. informational squads, and a fleet of translators for us international folks.

And the games were phenomenal!

What did you find most valuable about Fastaval’s feedback process?
So many things! Because it is a place where giving feedback is an integrated part of the process, a lot of the feedback was extremely articulate and thoughtful. Because there was so much of it at once we could easily identify trends that would indicate a systemic issue vs. a place where one individual play style didn’t work with the game. Most importantly because there were so many runs happening in so short of a time, it really allow you to measure the breadth of the game and understand how many different stories it could tell, and how reliably. It’s definitely a design process that gets me excited and that I would like to explore again.

What game did you take to Fastaval? Tell me all about it!
Run Them Again is a scenario for five players and a GM. It’s a science fiction space drama about the indifference of the systems we live under, and the cold equations of life within their grasp. Essentially, it is a labour drama; It came out of a conversation Brand and I had when driving through rural Newfoundland, a place that was devastated in economic collapse once in the 70’s and again in the 90’s when the Atlantic northwest cod fisheries bottomed out.

We talked about fishers and farmers and miners and labourers. We talked about my dad working high steel and his dad having to pick up work as a janitor for a while. We discovered we both had mining in our blood: one of his great granduncles died in a cave in. My grandfather went into coma after three tons of rock ruptured his spleen and stayed there for three days till he was dug out. My grandfather’s cave-in resulted in safety reviews, Brand’s granduncle’s death resulted in union strikes and a resulting massacre. We talked about how random that felt. And we made this game.

The characters are long haul space miners, working much like deep sea crab fishers do… going on long dangerous runs to mine valuable minerals from asteroids on ships that have seen too many runs for wages that are shit but the best they can hope for. They wake from cryosleep to find something has gone wrong with the ship, and they have four hours to help right the course and save their lives as the universe gives not one fuck about them.

I was very nervous about designing a new style of game (Danish freeform) for an audience that I had never met before. It was also the first fully co-operatively designed game together. I was worried with all those unknowns that the Fastafolk might look at us like crazy North Americans (that we are), but the game was a hit! The players really enjoyed it, we scored two nominations (Best Storytelling and Jury’s Selection), and took home an Otto (Fastaval’s answer to the Oscar)!

I’m still blown away.

What did you find useful about the logistics at Fastaval?
It was a well run machine – there was always an answer in support of a game or event… and it seemed that no one minded pitching in on the work. Some came just to be part of the work! A side note on our logistics is that the Østerskov Efterskole made itself available for people to stay and we got to take a tour. This is a high school who’sentire curriculum is based on roleplaying! They play everything from steampunk to historical re-enactment to crime dramas and learn all of their math, natural sciences, languages, ethics, history… all of it through larps. They have a full medieval town on the school grounds! It was phenomenal. I can’t imagine what life would be like now had I been able to attend a school like that.

Are you planning to go back? What are you looking forward to doing next time you’re there?
Yes! I hope so. It was amazing fun and full of creative energy and I met so many amazing people doing so many amazing things. I’d look forward to seeing them again, and having the chance to be part of that community for another glimpse in time. I didn’t feel like I had enough time to talk to anyone!

How do you decide what projects to design?

How do you choose what projects to design?
That’s a toughie. I could say something trite like “the designs choose me!” because it’s kind of true. If I have an idea, I try to take it to execution. I might put stuff on the backburner but I always try to work on things periodically, keep old projects in mind, and take notes. Google Drive is a huge tool for this. I have loads of unfinished ideas lurking in a folder on Google Drive where I will take notes and log ideas.
Here are the major things I think of, honestly, when it comes to deciding whether I proceed with a project.
Do I have ideas for it?
If I don’t have ideas for a project, there’s no point in working on it. If I’m in a rut, I can dig at it, but often that just keeps me digging deeper instead of finding my way out. There’s a lot to be said for having inspiration and enthusiasm for a project, and without those things, it’s just toiling, and I don’t design to toil. I design to create things people will enjoy, and if I don’t enjoy making it, it’s not my best work.
Now, it’s one thing to design something that is hard or tedious, but I’m talking complete lack of interest. If you ask me to design something based on politics (like bureaucracy) or something with strict history guidelines, I probably will have a lot more trouble and enjoy it a lot less unless it’s something I find fascinating.
Do I have an audience for it?
I have loads of ideas just hanging out and waiting to see if there is someone who wants to play it. With Girls’ Slumber Party WOO! I am anxious because it’s kind of a niche game. I have ideas and enthusiasm for it, but I don’t know whether there’s a big enough audience to sell it, which is why it may end up being a free release once it’s done. One of the keys with having an audience is having playtesters, and we all know that having playtesters is a struggle for designers. If you can’t playtest a design, you put yourself at risk of having design flaws. Yeah, it can be done, but I’d rather find obvious design flaws before I put my games in the hands of people who paid for it. This is why development for Clash and Tabletop Blockbuster have taken as long as they have – we playtest, we find flaws, redesign, and playtest again. Rinse, repeat.
Is there interest in it?
It’s one thing to have an audience. Having an audience means there are people out there in the demographic and with preferences that means your game might appeal to them. Having interest is a whole ‘nother deal. Interest means that there are individuals or groups out there that receive your pitch and say “YES. Let’s DO this.” You don’t want to be putting something out there and have people bored to tears or uninterested because you didn’t design it to appeal, or because there’s just not interest in what you’re selling. You want people picking up what you put down, right?
Can it make money?
This sounds shallow, but frankly, I like getting paid for my work. To put it in perspective, I was not going to sell Clash. I was going to print it out and give it out for free. Then a few IGDN members went “Oh, no no no!” and gave me what-for about it. They showed interest in the game (see the last question), and gave me reasons for why it was a money-making possibility. Subsequently, I invested tons of time and some of my own money in getting it to ashcan state over six months, including taking it to cons, paying for scenarios to be written, etc. I still think free products are great, but I also think that models like Patreon are appropriate for people making “free” games because I think it’s fair to pay people for their efforts. As much as it would be great to just create and be free of societal expectations of financial responsibilities, we still live in a world where living – just living – costs money. Design work isn’t magical. You still have to eat while you’re designing, and keep the internet and power on. When I’m working on design, I’m not working at my day job or doing freelance writing, but I’m still using power and burning calories. Something’s gotta pay for that. This doesn’t mean that I’ll never release something for free, it just means that I’ll try to create products that can pay me back for the work I do.

Does the design concept work?
I’ve written down some really silly design ideas. Some I saved, some I deleted. The thing is, if your design concept is flawed – like bad math or too much complexity or too much simplicity – there’s no point in pursuing the design as is. You either need to redesign or dump it. And there’s nothing wrong with dumping a design! Generally when I dump a design I put it in a Google Drive folder just in case I want to pull it out and pull ideas from it at a later date – I’ve saved every revision of Clash, every draft of Tabletop Blockbuster rules, and a bunch of other stuff.
Do I have time for it? OR Will I make time for it?
I’m super busy. I work and go to school and have this blog, plus I do freelance writing and design. So, stuff I’m working on personally has to have a lot of value for me. I have to either have free time, or make time. And whether I make time really depends on whether I like the product.
Do I like what I’m working on?

Some stuff this is a quick and easy “Yup!” like Girls’ Slumber Party WOO! Some of it is harder, like certain aspects of Tabletop Blockbuster (like GM rules, which were quickly handed over to John, my partner-in-crime). While designing is something I have found passion for, I still need to like the stuff I’m doing. This is different than having ideas; this is more an emotional investment. I need to want to pour my soul into what I’m doing.
In the end, it’s about whether I like the project and whether I feel like it’s worth investing in.
What helps you decide what projects to focus on?

Five or So Questions with John Sheldon on (un)Common Adventure Gallery

Tell me about the (un)Common Adventures Gallery. What has you excited about it?

The (un)Common Adventure Gallery is a collection of free-to-publish* genre illustrations I’ve started with funding through Patreon. Right now I’m doing all the illustrations, but I hope to reach a level where I’m making enough on each of my pieces that I can afford to hire other illustrators to add more variety and subject matter to the gallery. I’m really excited to have an ongoing project that helps me focus on my illustration efforts, that allows me to get direct input from my supporters on what they want to see from me, and that will eventually let me hire some of my favorite illustrators from the indie RPG scene.

*Using the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

What do you think makes you uniquely suited to this project, especially hiring other artists as well as doing illustration?

I love a broad variety of genres in illustration, and I love experimenting with different media and different styles of illustration (though I have certain sensibilities that always manage to bleed through). My time as the senior editor and producer of a daily TV newscast gave me a lot of experience working with other creative people and helping to integrate their work into a cohesive final product. Basically, I want this project to be a place where I can exercise many aspects of my own creativity, a place where I can help showcase the great work other people are doing, and a place where both happen in a coordinated way.

What motivated you to go Creative Commons?

I felt that releasing the art with a Creative Commons license would be a better deal for me and for the people in the communities I engage. Tons of people from game designers to authors and publishers find that they need art for their projects, and lots of the people I interact with don’t have much of a budget for their total project (let alone to pay an illustrator to make custom pieces for everything they want). So, using the most permissive Creative Commons license lets them grab something to use as a placeholder, and if they can’t find something better or can’t afford something custom, they can still go to press or do a commercial release with the work they’ve designed around.

The Creative Commons Attribution license works for me on two levels. First, I happen to have a job that pays my bills. I’m not relying on the illustration work to keep the lights on or to put food in my belly, so I don’t currently have to worry about what I could charge in the future for licensing these works. I’d be drawing anyway, and since what I’m drawing comes strictly from my own imagination I have little expectation of a financial return on it. The CC-A license lets a lot more people use it and feel comfortable sharing it, and means that I can show off the full size, high resolution versions of my art without distracting watermarks and without worrying that someone will steal it.

The second way the CC-A license works for me is related to that last point and feeds back into the reason I chose Patreon for this project. The more people that can see my work (in they way I intend it to be seen), the greater the size of my potential audience. As the audience grows, the number of people who might pitch in to fund my work grows. So, the CC-A license also works as a marketing tool for me by letting the full illustrations be my ads (which, of course, only works because I don’t need the money to feed myself).

How do you think the Patreon model will help you meet your goals?

Patreon helps keep me motivated to do some good, fun art in the absence of other specific motivations. I find that without a school project or a paying contract, I end up with a whole lot of half-finished illustrations and semi-complete drawings. With just a little bit of money on the line, like enough to go see a movie or get a nice meal, I suddenly have a lot more motivation to work on those personal projects. Patreon also lets me interact with the people who back me so I can be sure to work on stuff that interests them, too. The payment model is also great because it is results-oriented. If I don’t put out an illustration, nobody gets charged. If I put something out and nobody likes it, they can withdraw their pledges before getting charged.

Beyond that, the ‘stretch goal’ features of Patreon let people know what they’ll get when each of the works I produce nets more money. For this project, a lot of those goals involve hiring other illustrators to create CC-A licensed art for the gallery.

What are you looking for when it comes to hiring future artists?

I’ll be looking for three things when it comes time to commission work from other artists. First, I have to like their work. Luckily, this isn’t too much of a limiting factor as I have broad taste in illustration. Second, their art style should be different from mine. One of the primary goals of commissioning other illustrators is to get a larger variety of work in the gallery, and the creative briefs I develop for the commissions (with help from my Patrons) will help me aim for different content and styles than I have been able to produce. Finally, I will be looking for people from different backgrounds than mine.

The reason that last part is important to me is in part because I am so tremendously privileged that I don’t have to rely on this work to put food on my table. If I can put money in the hands of an artist who really needs it (and pay them a full, professional rate rather than the bargain rates they might otherwise bid just to get any work at all), it will be making a bigger difference than it would if it went to another illustrator in shoes like mine (comfortable ones that I could replace if I needed to).

What’s the next project for your Patreon, as of this interview (early May)?

I showed some concepts to my backers on Patreon, and the community-level Patrons have selected an illustration tentatively titled Cherry Blossom Knight. I’ve already shot the photo reference for it (which some of the Patrons can see), and I’m headed to media testing now (picking what media to work in, e.g., colored pencil or watercolor). From there I’ll proceed to different drawing and rendering steps, all of which I’ll be documenting for my supporters with photos, time-lapse videos, and scans. I hope to have the final illustration done in early June.

Five or So Questions with Benjamin Woerner on A World of Dew

Check out the Kickstarter for A World of Dew!

Tell me a little about A World of Dew. What excites you about it?

Ever since I was a kid and saw my first samurai film I’ve LOVED Japanese history and cinema. I played Legend of the Five Rings when it first came out and am literally still playing it now. I’ve read and watched a ton of Japanese history and media and played hundreds of hours of games like Shogun 2: Total War.

But there was something missing. In a lot of Japanese Chambara films the heroes are not the Samurai, they’re all the other people: the geisha, the ronin, the sumo, the peasant, etc. There wasn’t a game where you play those characters. At least, there was a modern story driven game that does that. I wanted to play Sanjuro, Zatoichi, Sayuri from Memoirs of a Geisha, and Bob from The Last Samurai. I wanted to play the snow fight in Sword of Doom, and solve the murders like Sano Ichiro in did in the Laura Joh Rowland novels. My friend John Wick had written Blood & Honor in 2010. It’s a brilliant game, but you play Clan Samurai in a Clan. I wanted everyone else. So I wrote it.

Instead of Clan Samurai you play all the other characters: Doctors, Gaijin, Yakuza, and all the other characters I mentioned before. And instead of building a Clan and playing in the Clan you build a City. John’s game is set during the Sengoku Jidai (The 15th to 17th centuries) when Japan was fighting constant wars internally to unify itself as one true nation. My game is set after that during the Tokugawa Era (1600-1850s). Japan was united politically, but it was being torn apart by the rise of modernism and the merchant class culminating in the Boshin War and the restoration of the Meiji Emperor as ruler of Japan. Cities, not Clans became important. Important trade hubs like Nagasaki, Yokohama, and Hiroshima begin to grow like crazy with the influx of gaijin (foreign) merchants from all over the world. It’s also when most of the great Chambara films take place.

And because John’s game was so well designed for a Japanese setting I was able to port over the core mechanics, create all the new character rolls, new advantages, aspects, and create the City Creation System. The players and Narrators build a City by spending Build Points to create important Locations, Faces, and Threats in their City. The Locations all have built in mechanics to drive the campaign’s story forward and help the Narrator decide where to go. It makes the work of Narrating Samurai Noir stories easy and exciting. 🙂

What influences did you use in your art direction?

I had a kind of atypical childhood growing up. Not to get into it too much but I knew more about Tchaikovsky at 14 than I did about Nirvana (yeah I’m old). My mom was a High School teacher of French, English, and Humanities. Every year she’d take her students on a bunch of cultural field trips, and I went on all of them along with my dad and sister usually. 🙂 Some people think that’s weird, but I learned a lot about art, music, and theatre fairly young. And don’t worry, when I got to high school and college I had friends who taught me about Nirvana, Queen, and most importantly Daft Punk.

The point being was that when I was a young teenager I already knew about Hiroshige and Hokusai and all the other great Japanese woodblock painters. One I spent a year of college in the UK I was very lucky to see a temporary exhibit at the British Museum that had hundreds of original Japanese woodblock prints, plus a bunch of other cool Japanese stuff like swords, armor, and a full sized Teahouse. I split my entire Fall break between that and a Battletech video arcade in Piccadilly Circus.

I knew going into this project that I wanted to share all these beautiful prints with everyone who read my game. When John was developing Blood & Honor I was helping him and Jessica Kauspedas, my Art Director for this project as well, with art selection. I found a print on the Library of Congress, and then Jessica found this huge archive of scanned original copies of all these Masters. The Great Wave of Kanagawa is there, as is Kanbara Village in Winter, which was chosen by Weezer as cover art for one of their albums.

One of the major ideas in my game is the conflict between old and new, and I wanted to show that. Traditional prints of modern subjects: trains, people in modern dress, cars, steam ships, etc. So you’ll see that in there. Finally, I wanted art that showed some of the Giri (Duty/job) players can choose in the book.

So three things really, different professions in Japan, my favorite art from the Masters, and old versus new. 🙂

The Sound of Water is your stretch goal collection. How did you choose authors and artists, and how did you pair them together?

It was a bit of a scramble to be honest. Months ago I’d asked six artists and six authors to consider doing a Stretch Goal that would a chapter and chapter header art for The Sound of Water. Most of my artists agreed, several were busy, but were tentatively yes, and three of my authors agreed, two said maybe. As you know, the Kickstarter was delayed from February to May because I was incredibly sick for nearly two months (all better now). This caused some confusion with both groups. A few thought things had happened, others were available now, and some were not. So right before the Kickstarter launched I confirmed who was in, all six artists and three of the authors, and then put out a call for more authors. I got almost enough responses as I was launching the Kickstarter and then the Kickstarter exploded.

Not only did the Kickstarter Kick, but we broke the first and second Stretch Goals, and I got a ton of offers for writing and art. I picked authors and artists I knew and who’s work I both trusted and enjoyed.

When it came to pairing them together I made a couple of choices. I wanted first, people who were familiar with each other. You, Brie Sheldon, and Marissa Kelly ended up being the only two of the final twelve that knew each other, and I was certain you’d make a great team. You two were the easiest to pair. You are also my only all female team with Jolene Houser being my only other woman working on The Sound of Water. Two of my original authors who couldn’t write for the project because of conflicts were also female, and no other female authors stepped forward when I put out the call besides you, for which I am eternally grateful. I’m a bit bummed that we don’t have more women providing their talent to the book, but I am incredibly pleased with all the other authors and artists.

The next consideration was experience and exposure in the Industry. Don’t get me wrong. I think all of the authors and artists are amazing, but some of them have been around the Industry longer than others, and some of them have more name recognition and a bigger draw. John Wick and my massively awesome still secret Eisner nominated artist. They are both big names and I wanted to pair them together as a big draw to hopefully boost pledges.

Finally, I wanted to pair styles of artist with the subject matter that the authors were working on. Fabien produces some truly haunting art and Tobie’s A World of Shadows will be brought to life by Fabien’s art. Josh and Jolene both produce great content and Josh wanted Jolene to take the lead and decide, so that was a cool way to create a chapter and it worked great! Steve is working on Ninja and Caleb has a long history in the gaming industry creating some excellent character art (see his work in Realms of Sorcery the Black Industries sourcebook for the Green Ronin edition of Warhammer Fantasy). I knew that would be a success. Finally, Stan and John Kennedy are working on a chapter together, the subject hasn’t been revealed on the Kickstarter at the time of this writing. Rest assured that Stan’s style will pair beautifully with John’s subject matter. I can’t wait!

Is combat common in A World of Dew? If so, how does it work?

I was working on final edits tonight for the Violence Chapter – Between Two Breaths for A World of Dew. Violence happens, but it’s not like your typical hack n’ slash. This isn’t a game about minutiae, counting Hit Points, and proper Feats. Violence is quick and deadly like in Chambara films. The most basic violence in the game is called the Strike! One player calls Strike! and points at another player or the Narrator. They gather their dice, make their wagers and roll. The winner then spend their wagers to describe what happened even the death of the other character immediately. Like I said, quick and deadly.

Healing is just the opposite, and the Doctor Giri is an important part of keeping characters alive.

While it isn’t always Violent the Sumo wrestlers, Sumo Tournaments, and Sumo Schools are all in the Violence chapter. Sumo characters have detailed rules about taking part in a tournament and bringing great Glory to themselves and their School!

What kind of play experience do you want people to get from A World of Dew?

A fun one! Hopefully, a samurai noir type experience. Being able to tell dark, gritty stories about ronin, geisha, gaijin, and more around their table is what I hope they’re going to get out of it. The ability to bring that experience of watching Yojimbo, Zatoichi, or Princess Mononoke from their TV onto their table.

The City Locations are designed to help drive the plot forward via the expenditure of Honor and Ninjo points. Ninjo points are also something that didn’t exist in John’s Blood & Honor. Ninjo is Japanese for Desire, and it serves a similar but more selfish role as Honor points. It helps turn the stories you tell into the noir tales we’re trying to experience. The quick and deadly violence, the Giri, and the Virtue Flaws are all designed to build on that dark noir story. The deep dive into Japanese culture that the rest of the game represents helps make it samurai. 🙂

What’s up next for you after this?

Oh boy, a lot. Getting the books printed before GenCon and out to the backers. Then getting The Sound of Water finished and out to backers before Christmas. Going to GenCon, Phoenix ComicCon, RinCon, and all the other cons.

Then writing another game. This time a hack of a popular new system setting it in a place it’s never been before. The most I’ll say right now is it’ll not be fantasy. There’s another BIG game design project I’m slowly chipping away at. Or more correctly, I’m slowly working towards getting the rights to design the game. It’s a massive IP that has no RPG developed for it, and a huge fan following that crosses over into the Gaming Industry. If I can get it I’ll be over the moon. I tinkered with the idea awhile back with a partner, but that didn’t lead anywhere. I’ve now got the bare bones for a new system and moving forward with that.

During all that I’ll continue to go to my daughter’s soccer games, play Lego: Marvel Superheroes with my three year old, and snuggle with my lovely wife while our corgi tries to snuggle under our feet. 🙂

Five or So Questions with Marissa Kelly on Epyllion

Marissa told me about her upcoming project, Epyllion, soon to be seen at Gen Con!

Tell me about Epyllion. What’s got you excited about it?

Sure! First, the word Epyllion means mini epic. It is a “comparatively short narrative poem that shows formal affinities with epics,” like the Iliad. I felt like the word literally captured the epic nature that a game about baby dragons should have… And yes! Epyllion is a Powered by the Apocalypse game in which you play baby dragons who must help each-other change, grow, and save Dragonia from the Darkness that has crept back into the land and threatens to corrupt all it touches.

I am excited to combine some awesome genres that I love, like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Lord of the Rings, under my all-time favorite system to play out an adventure of epic proportions.


What are you pulling from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Lord of the Rings to make Epyllion… well,epic?

When you first create your characters in Epyllion the game can seem very cutesy, but the threat of an ancient Darkness creeping back into the world tips the scales [pun intended] back to epic storytelling. Like in MLP or LotR the players are tested by this impending threat and are motivated to save the world they love.

I am a huge fan of both MLP and LotR so, as a designer, combining them and adding dragons into the mix has been nothing but fun. I wanted to make starting out as baby dragons feel like a hobbit being swept off on an adventure. I also wanted to make the friendships you develop with other PCs mean something, so like MLP’s friendship = magic, PCs can spend Friendship Gems to call upon the moons and perform magical feats.


What does using the Apocalypse system bring to the table for Epyllion?

The AW engine has helped me design a game in which every mechanic supports the fiction that the table can create, from the playbooks to the Dragon Master moves. All of the AW-hacks have been built on such a sturdy framework of easy, no-prep, “play to find out what happens” gameplay that Epyllion fit in flawlessly.


Is this a kids game, a grown ups game, or both? What do you want players to get out of it?

Both! The great part about “play to find out what happens” is that it is shaped by the DM (Dragon Master) and their players. The game has mechanics that enforce a “feel good game,” but the tone can be dark or light depending on who is running/playing it.


When can we expect to see Epyllion out in the wild, and what is up next for you?

I am planning to release the Epyllion: Drake Edition as an ashcan for GenCon this year. It will have all the rules you need to play the game and 6 playbook archetypes. Magpie will then run a kickstarter after that has some time to circulate.

As for what is next, I have a lot of fun ideas burning in my brain that I would love to get rolling on, but I am trying not to get ahead of myself.

Design Brunches and Collaborative Creation

Some of you may be aware that my local gaming community hosts semi-regular game design brunches. We basically get together on a Sunday and chat about game design, and everyone brings a problem with them if they have it, and we’ll discuss things, do rapid playtesting, try out designs, bring prototypes, and all of that. I’ve discussed them before, but I want to delve a little more into some of the stuff I find valuable.

The first thing is that we have a wide variety of experience levels, backgrounds, and types of expertise in the group. I, for example, am mostly a writer and player (aside from now designing), with experience playing more traditional games as well as story games. Stras is an ace playtester, a designer, and has tons of experience with trad and story games alike. He also has a lot of technical knowledge and baseline design knowledge that I don’t have. John, on the other hand, is our graphics genius, and is a really good designer, with traditional experience and the same level of story games experience as me – however, both he and Stras have GM’d WAY more than me. Paul is a designer (the only one paid-published of us, I think) and writer, with a ton of trad experience and story game experience, and one of his biggest points of value (imo) is that he plays with games that most of us have not or don’t anymore (like GURPs and Gumshoe). Marc is almost exclusively traditional/OSR, and has a great mind for math, and is a designer who does most of his own writing. Rachel is mostly a player, but offers a unique perspective, is a great storyteller, and provides us with a good sounding board. Jeff and Heather both have traditional and story game experience, and both offer a good player perspective. Nick, who just started coming, is a really fantastic designer and writer with a lot of experience developing his own games.

I don’t think I’m forgetting anyone! I hope not.  

Reading that, I think most people can see how we’d have a huge variety of input and different perspectives at every brunch, even if some people can’t make it. We also have a good group that gets along pretty well.

It’s awesome. It allows us a lot of opportunities to find flaws in design, or just redirect design that seems to be going away from its purpose. We also can focus on a variety of things: writing, graphics, technique, development, and prototyping.

This week, we playtested Nick’s Medical Bay 3 creation, evaluated Tabletop Blockbuster playsheets, discussed Stras’s Calamity Engine (super excited about that) and looked at his art inspiration for another project he’s working on, and had a long discussion about scenarios for Clash. All in a few hours! (We also talked about Patreons, Creative Commons, power dynamics in the indie RPG industry, and gatekeeping.)

The conversation about Clash was really interesting for me. One of my first scenarios is based on Romeo and Juliet and written by Stras, and I am planning on doing a couple more in the main book with some as stretch goals if/when we crowdfund. I have some great creators in mind and a few already signed up. I am hoping to make this a successful product, and I think scenarios are essential to doing that.

Anyway, one of the coolest things about this is that with all of this variety in input, we have managed to create things by collaborating. Clash would not be where it is without the input of the group, nor would Tabletop Blockbuster. I know that we have put a lot of input into Stras’s Hexes and Eights (which you should check out, btw). We also often run into solving problems for each other – I’ve written monsters for Marc’s Paramount, while John has created character sheets, free-to-use dice icons, and other such things for the group. The others have contributed so many things, it’s impossible to list them all.

We’ve had some shakeups in people’s availability so we might have to start working around an occasional design dinner but I am hoping we can keep this up. I think it’s really valuable.

Do you discuss design with your group? Do you have any regular get-togethers?

Do you find you design better alone, or with outside input?

My Design Process, part 1 of ?

A lot of creators talk about their design processes, and since it’s kind of a new thing to me, I wanted to write about this a little. I’m guessing I’ll have more to say about it the farther along I get, so that’s why this is a “part 1.”

Most of the time when I do creative work, I do it on a whim. I’m still learning to create on a schedule and design in windows of time granted by my already busy schedule. I’ll sit down and write a whole bunch and then leave it go or forget about it for a while.

There are two different methods by which I design: solo and collaboratively. We’ll focus on solo for this post.

When I first started working on Clash, I wrote the whole thing in one big swoop and then came back to it and fiddled with it for a while later. This is how it tends to go when I work on my own. I will come up with an idea, basically blow my load, and then take forever to get back to it and really work on it and make it right. It’s even harder when I add in an editorial process, which I think is the biggest challenge for me as a creator. It’s not that I don’t think my work needs to be edited – it does – it’s that the editorial process exhausts me. I feel like I can’t satisfy my editor or anyone giving me feedback. Every comment is like a cut. I’m getting better, but it’s still a huge challenge.

I am also still learning how to effectively research. My current research process for projects involves about 10 open Chrome tabs, open books scattered across my desk, and using my phone to e-mail people for questions while I read. I never read other game books deeply while researching because I don’t want to be too strongly influenced, but I skim and filter through for techniques and tools. I also read other people’s analysis of game rules.

For me, designing is learning. I know I’m still a n00b and that it’s going to continue to be challenging, but I think that I am making good progress. I’m hoping to have Clash as an ashcan at Origins and Gen Con, and soon thereafter take it to crowdfunding. While I’m doing that, we have continued work on Tabletop Blockbuster, and my larp, Girls’ Slumber Party WOO!

Next time I’ll write a little about the differences between designing a froofy story game like Clash, a more traditional style game like Tabletop Blockbuster, and a larp like Girls’ Slumber Party WOO!

Please comment with questions! I like to discuss this kind of thing with my readers. Tell me about your game design process – link me to any blog posts you have done about this subject!

Woo! First goal reached! Hangout Interviews!

I am super excited! We reached our first Patreon goal, Hangout Interviews! This means that in the next few months I’ll be working on finding interviewees and scheduling hangout interviews, which will be released on YouTube and Patreon.

HOORAY! Thank you all so much!