Category: Interview

Interview on Crow Island Funeral // PROCESSION with Jan Martin

Hello all! Today I have an interview with Jan Martin, creator of Crow Island Funeral // PROCESSION! I’m so excited to share this interview, Jan is an amazing creator and Crow Island is SO cool!

Jan: ” I wanted to have this section of the overall story play out as a game because it underlines the importance of surviving the trip in a way that a short story couldn’t do on its own. Being able to fail, actually fail and lose and not make it at all, would have huge implications in the universe. There’s no telling how the future would have unfolded if that group didn’t survive the trek to the City of Seven Nations. “

Hello all! Today I have an interview with Jan Martin, creator of Crow Island Funeral // PROCESSION! I’m so excited to share this interview, Jan is an amazing creator and Crow Island is SO cool!

Thank you for the interview, Jan! You have been designing games for a while now, but for people who are new, could you tell me a little about yourself and what gives you passion for games?

Jan: I think the biggest thing for me with games is I love how they can help putting together a good story. Every great TTRPG session would make a great TV show, film, book, comic, whatever medium. That’s a magical thing to me, a book with some rules and ideas, in the hands of a group of humans, leads to great stories. Stories that come together organically, with lively characters and compelling scenes. I’ve spent my life writing fiction and I’ve never been able to come close to the kind of story you can make with friends around a table.

It’s that idea that I might be able to craft a game that can help people create compelling stories of their own that really excites me. Game designers have an incredible power in this way, and I guess I’m always trying to chase that same power. To facilitate stories full of laughter, drama, and intrigue between friends with a book of ideas is amazing. That’s what gives me passion, is the pursuit of the dream that I too can someday make a game that can do that.

Beau: Today we’re talking about your solo game, Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION. It is a really well put together game with a lot of content, & I am excited to know more! What excites you about Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION?

Jan: This is the first introduction to a much larger world and Universe that all my games and fiction are set. This game takes place in the same location as seen earlier this year in a short-story I wrote for Wizardpunk by Sandy Pug Games. That story was set in the modern day. In Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION players explore that area in the early years of civilization on the planet. It’s the year 349, exactly 10 years before the discovery of Spirit Trees and Spirit Magic. It introduces some names that will show up again and again, Asogomas and Naad, as well gives a peek into early culture.

Anyone who picks up my games now and follows from here on will keep seeing familiar details and learn more and more about them. I’m really excited to be able to share these bits of the world, and even more excited to see peoples reactions as they learn how things end up. I’m also a little worried, because the deeper it goes, the wilder it gets and I run the risk of alienating some people along the way. The expectations of what this world is and its place in the Universe it lives aren’t obvious at this point. I’ve got some plans to try and keep people onboard and interested so hopefully those work out.

Beau: Creating a world in which your games are set sounds really awesome!
Having read through your game, I feel like there’s a lot of richness
there. What is guiding your planning for this world and what are some
ways you can see it in Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION?

Jan: It’s a combination of things, a large part of it is making sure everything fits within the larger Universe. There are a lot of different planets and even Universes involved so it’s a challenge to keep everything organized. For Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION in particular a key part of keeping organized is a timeline of the planet that starts when Crow Island itself is in year 1, when it created by Kiskik the Creator.

The timeline goes all the way up until current day, the year 13,425, which happens to be the year the larger game in the series is set. You can see this in the game itself through some of the lore, for example the two paths you can take. There’s the Path of Asogomas and the Path of Naad I mentioned before, but another example is the location Mudgash River. This is the location where the story in Wizardpunk is set, and will be an important spot in other games and stories. Some of the areas on the map will come up again more than others, but pretty much everything you see in this game will be present or referenced in future ones.

A graphic of a more zoomed in map matching up to the areas on the main map of Crow Island, labeled East Central Crow Island, with a detailed list of landmarks and settlements. We see the same longhouse on a lake labeled City of Seven Nations, and the paths leading down to the Village Where the Land Ends. On this map we also see more details of the landscape, a dog, ruffed grouse, blueberries, salmon, herbs, and a moose peppered around the landscape which is full of lakes, rivers, and trees.
The map from Crow Island’s text with a zoomed in focus on East Central Crow Island, featuring a legend of the landmarks and settlements, by Jan Martin.

Beau: Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION has a really cool card mechanic and I
love the structure of it. How does the design of the mechanics
interrelate with the world building and the fiction of the stories you
tell in the game?

Jan: The mechanics are meant to reflect the uncertainty of life while still being predictable. This ties directly into the world which is very similar to how my people lived pre-Colonialism. We had great understanding of the land and how to move through it and survive, but there is always that element of unpredictability, random chance, chaos, whatever you want to call it. It makes it so even the most skilled individuals must take care and have constant respect for the dangers of nature. Having the cards always have the same set of resources available, just presented in different order thereby taking something predictable and adding tension.

At the time of me typing this the game is too easy, and I’ll have to tweak things a little bit to better reflect the dangers of travel through the wilderness. The dice mechanic is similar when fording rivers, technically it’s possible to get through river obstacles without issue, but it’s highly unlikely. Basically I wanted to have the mechanics reflect two things, that you are experts of travelling through this wilderness, but despite that, it can still kill you. This is important to get right because future games will be difficult but for different reasons. I want there to be a strong contrast between how things were tough “back in the day” versus modern day, but keeping it clear that both times were rough.

Beau: The timeline of Crow Island seems very significant! Designing your own
universe sounds like a big task, but what are the best parts of making
something so big but accessed in individual play experiences?

Jan: It’s really nice to be able to zoom in on something in your Universe and have people pay attention to it on a deeper level. Originally this was all going to be a sprawling science fantasy novel series, with endless lore and backstory. That felt too tedious to subject readers to, even if I enjoy that sort of thing myself I don’t have the writing chops to deliver that kind of content in an enjoyable way. Anything I wrote sounded like a history text book and I wanted something immersive. Breaking the Universe up into separate experiences allows me to share a lot more about a particular part of it without worrying about people getting bored. It’s also really enjoyable to have a Universe just sitting there to think of like a sandbox. Anytime I’m feeling blocked on progress in a game, I can just hop into the Crow Island Universe timeline or map and find a new thread to pull.

Graphic comparing two maps, on the left is a full map of one large continent roughly in the shape of a crow mid-flight with five smaller landmasses just above it, all five of which are also roughly shaped like birds in flight. These are labeled as Crow Island World Map. The topmost landmass is completely covered in ice and snow. Nestled into a bay on its eastern shore is a smaller landmass of mostly tundra and bogland. To the east of that is the smallest of the landmasses, mostly mud and sand. To the east of that is a long landmass which has a good spread of biomes, with ice covering its most northern tip. To the southeast of that is another landmass, this one all green with a large lake splitting it into a western and southern side. Below all that is the main continent, with a dry western edge, the southern most tip which is rough badlands full of canyons. The middle of the continent is a mixture of grasslands, rolling hills and thick forests. The entirety of the mainland is riddled with rivers, leading from the most central portions of the continent where the mountains lie. In the north central portion of the main continent is a longhouse on stilts over a lake labeled City of Seven Nations. Far to the south east from there is a peninsula with a spot labeled Village Where the Land Ends. To the right of this map is a more zoomed in map matching up to the areas on the main map. We see the same longhouse on a lake labeled City of Seven Nations, and the paths leading down to the Village Where the Land Ends. On this map we also see more details of the landscape, a dog, ruffed grouse, blueberries, salmon, herbs, and a moose peppered around the landscape which is full of lakes, rivers, and trees. above this map is the label Map from funeral PROCESSION. Both maps sit on a dark blue background simulating the ocean.
The World Map for Crow Island by Jan Martin.

Beau: The experiences of your people are valuable, & it’s really awesome how
you’ve reflected them in this game. Are there any unique challenges to
designing a pre-Colonialism game?

Jan: Absolutely, there’s all kinds of worries about depicting things accurately and not viewing the past through a modern lens. Originally this game was about North America and an alternate-history where Indigenous Nations drove off Colonial forces. The more I worked on it through that lens, the more I started to feel guilty. Sometimes I will talk out loud to my ancestors and ask them about what I’m doing, they never answer me, but, just the act of asking about it gets me to think of it through their mindset. The more I thought about that the more I realized I wasn’t being fair to my ancestors, assuming I or anyone could have done anything differently to predict or avoid what happened.

As a result I ended up re-writing about 40k words or so of my “Universe Bible”, and changed it from an alternate history project, to an entirely unique Universe of its own without any of the trappings of our current history.  I don’t think anyone would have taken issue with my game the way it was, but for me personally it just didn’t feel right anymore and I had to change gears. That same thing happens continually throughout this process. I’ll have some idea for the world, game, or story in this Universe and the more I talk it over with my ancestors, the more I come to realize things have to change. It’s an extra layer in the process that has no clear answers.

Unlike many problems we face in the game design process, some of the questions I arrive at I can’t look up online or even find the answers from my Elders, because we don’t know anymore. The Mi’kmaq were some of the first Indigenous peoples to meet Colonial forces and as such we’ve been subjected to the ongoing effects of their occupation since the start. So many of our practices, so much of our language, is just gone. Often the best we can do is speculate. That complicates things even further, I obviously don’t want to offend anyone living or misrepresent our culture. But more than that, I don’t want to offend my ancestors, the people who actually lived in the time periods I’m romanticizing in my games.

Beau: In playing Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION, players encounter a lot of dangers. How did you design the game to balance those dangers while
still keeping players hopeful of reaching the end of their journey?

Jan: Working out mechanics is a slow process for me, especially the math side of things. Any semblance of balance the game has right now I owe to keeping the math simple. Well to be honest it’s not super balanced right now, I thought it was, but I didn’t account for my own terrible luck. I balanced everything by playtesting it myself, and historically I’m an abysmal dice roller. In games where rolling a 1 is a failure, I roll lots of 1’s.

In games where rolling a 1 is a failure *and* you get XP for it, I never roll 1’s. So in my personal playtests, the balance felt right. I lost a couple times, and most other playthroughs I barely scraped by or had some a series of close calls. But then, all the feedback I’ve received so far from playtesters has been the opposite, that outside of a few terrible run-ins with a river, for the most part they managed to cruise through the game without any problems. Balance will be an ongoing thing.

In the next update I’ll have tweaked the math a little bit to try and increase the difficulty to be more in line with my original vision. I don’t know what will happen after that, if people playtesting say it’s much harder but they’re not having fun anymore, I’ll tweak again. I want to make sure I don’t let my vision get in the way of an enjoyable experience and I’m lucky to have some people sending me this valuable feedback so I’m taking it to heart.

The Choose a Role card from Crow Island featuring the different roles which you can play in the game with simple graphics & statistics for the Hunter, Healer, and Elder. The paragraph detailing instructions states "The Role you choose determines your starting Resources. Or make your own. Spend 160 Points, Dogs cost 20, everything else costs 1." The graphics include two arrows crossed in an X for the Hunter, a wing for the Healer, and a necklace with a symbol on it for the Elder.
The Choose a Role card for Crow Island by Jan Martin.

Beau: I find the visual design of Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION
approachable & really gorgeous! What was your perspective on how to
present the game to your audience, & how did you work to implement it?

Jan: I wanted to capture the same sort of feeling and vibe I got from the original Oregon Trail games I played as a kid on school computers. Everything was pretty stripped down in the version I played, but it really captured the vibe of going on a road trip. To pull that off I wanted to go for really simple graphics, something like you might see on a sign at a National Park. It felt right to go a little more cartoony than that, but that was my launching point.

Beau: It’s remarkable how complex of an approach to your design choices you
have, including in how you involve & respect the experiences of your
ancestors. What about this medium, games, makes it well suited to
telling stories that reflect those experiences?

Jan: Games are one of the best mediums to tell stories that have experiences you want to communicate in a more interactive way. It can help make the gravity of a situation meaningful in a fun way. In Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION I could have written the game as a story, but in the story they succeed in making it to the City of Seven Nations and that’s that. I wanted to have this section of the overall story play out as a game because it underlines the importance of surviving the trip in a way that a short story couldn’t do on its own. Being able to fail, actually fail and lose and not make it at all, would have huge implications in the universe. There’s no telling how the future would have unfolded if that group didn’t survive the trek to the City of Seven Nations.

In later installations of this game world, people will see that importance in a new light. It’s a small thing, but having “lived” in the footsteps of people in this world I think will lend that gravity I mentioned to how things went. I don’t mind spoiling it, but essentially the discovery of Spirit Magic hinged on the body of the Chief being examined at the City of Seven Nations. It’s a hugely important detail, and players being able to fail at carrying out that detail gives more life to the words than I think I could pull off with a story alone.

Thank you so much Jan for this amazing interview! This has been truly a joy to interview Jan and I hope that all of my readers enjoyed learning about Crow Island Funeral // PROCESSION. Check it out today!

Interview on Coyote & Crow

Today I have an interview with Connor Alexander about Coyote & Crow, which is currently on Kickstarter! This game sounds so incredible and is something I have hoped to see in games – a sci-fi fantasy game that’s about an America that was never colonized by white settlers. I feel like this is a really major project and I hope you enjoy learning about it, like I did!

Today I have an interview with Connor Alexander about Coyote & Crow, which is currently on Kickstarter! This game sounds so incredible and is something I have hoped to see in games – a sci-fi fantasy game that’s about an America that was never colonized by white settlers. I feel like this is a really major project and I hope you enjoy learning about it, like I did!

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I’m excited for the opportunity to interview you about Coyote & Crow! It has been very successful on Kickstarter thus far, but I’d love to know more about you and the project. Can you tell me a little about yourself and how you came to work on the game?

Hi Beau! Really excited to chat with you. Thanks for taking the time. I’ve been a gamer my whole life, but I only started working in the hobby game industry in 2014. Pretty quickly I began to notice the representation gap in both presentation and in creative teams. The gap in the game industry seemed to mirror most of the rest of media and pop culture, which surprised me a little at first. Doing something about it didn’t occur to me until I was chatting with a Native representation consultant and they said something to the effect of, ‘even when they do representation accurately, it’s almost always through a colonial lens’. That really stuck with me. Then I saw the trailer for the video game Greedfall and I knew I had to take some kind of action.

I feel so very privileged that I have a steady job in the game industry and had access to many experienced voices who were willing to give me advice. I’m just a working stiff so it was really tempting to create a proposal and try to just sell the idea off to another publisher and let them run with it. In the end though, I felt that there were too many ways that the project could lose integrity along the way. Once I decided to tackle it myself, it became about team building. And that’s where the game began to become something much bigger and more important.

A promotional image for Coyote & Crow featuring sci-fi styled structures embedded in hilly landscape.

It’s pretty clear there’s a lot that makes this game unique and intriguing. How would you approach a new player to pitch the idea of the game to them, and are there any things players should know starting out?

That’s actually been one of our biggest hurdles. There’s almost no comparative media out there. When you talk about classic fantasy, even non-gamer audiences know Game of Thrones and Lord of the RIngs. Traditional sci-fi and cyberpunk also calls up a dozen properties and tropes. That cultural shorthand is embedded deeply in our collective conscience. On the one hand, you have to battle all of the negative stereotypes and assumptions non-Natives have. On the other, you have to create a world that’s both exciting and challenging to Natives, but also speaks to an incredibly broad array of Native cultures and traditions in a way that’s inclusive while not appropriative. It’s an extremely narrow ledge.

So to answer your question, when speaking to someone about it for the first time, I try to put them in the mindset of when they first read about Wakanda in the Marvel Universe or when they first played Horizon Zero Dawn. Not the cultural specifics of those worlds, but the idea of shifting your perspective of what could be. Once they’re in that headspace, I usually ask folks to picture what our continent would look like if Europeans or any other colonial forces had ever set foot here. And not at the point of contact 500 years ago, but in the future. From there, I usually can start filling their heads with all of the little details that make this world feel lived in. And while our game has a speculative future with fantasy elements to it, we made it a point to build a world that has a lot of potential grounded in reality.

As for things players should know starting out, there’s a big one that many folks have mentioned. I’ve heard so many variations on ‘I want to play but I’m worried I’ll do or say something insensitive’. I love that so many have asked that. It means there’s progress being made. But we are designing the game so that non-Natives can jump into this and play without worry. There’s a section at the beginning on how to approach the book and what to avoid. And throughout the book we give explanations for words and phrases and additional context for certain concepts or rules. On the flip side, we have specific things we call out where we indicate that Natives can add on or tweak a rule to help it fit their tribal specific customs or context.

A promotional image for Coyote & Crow featuring a figure in purple and black with face paint, a staff, and a hood in a beautiful landscape.

That’s all really useful to know! You have a great team with a lot of varied experiences. What is the process like for deciding which ideas for mechanics or content goes into the final product? How do you ensure the most voices are heard?

That’s actually one of the most rewarding portions of development for me. I created the broad parameters of the game and set the stage. Once we had an initial draft, I invited everyone on the team to comment on it and if they felt strongly about a section or a concept, invited them to have a chat with me about either doing edits or re-writes. Nothing in the book is so sacred it can’t be changed. If someone on the team has a brilliant idea, I want it in. As long as the idea doesn’t derail the core concepts or conceits of the game or cause internal inconsistencies, I’m on board. It’s led to some really vibrant discussions and concepts I never would have thought of on my own.

We’re certainly in the ‘kill your darlings’ stage of development and with that comes the pain of seeing some of your initial ideas break in play testing. From a personal standpoint that stings, of course. As the game development progresses, it’s like I built the framework of a house and I’m seeing people add walls and paint and windows. The more work they do, the more mine becomes invisible. But that’s fine. I never wanted this game to be some sort of statement about me personally. From the start I knew this project would be better thematically and mechanically if we had a chorus of voices.

You’ve shared a lot of cool stuff on the Kickstarter page, but I would love to know more! What are some of the exciting things we can expect from the game, the kind of things that really make you want to share with others? 

For me, it’s the little details that make a world feel lived in. A perfect example is the underground transit system of Cahokia. It was built originally as a system of tunnels to keep people warm and safe during the brutal winters. As we thought about it practically, we saw flaws. How would this be lit? Keeping fires going in enclosed tunnels would be difficult for so many reasons. Our answer was one that I think is equal parts inspired and reasonable. The people of this world eventually grew their light sources through cultivation of bioluminescent fungi along the walls and ceiling of the tunnels. The effect is that in this future the interior ceilings and walls of these tunnels and the magnetic levitation rail transit system all glow green and blue and purple. While having a living ceiling as a light source is a cool image, I like to also think that it represents a different way of problem solving. We’re working hard to fit as many of those kinds of thoughtful ideas as we can into the book.

We’ve also got bigger ideas that we at least want to set up. I’ve always been a fan of storylines in games that involve shadowy organizations or grand conspiracies. Mystery in TTRPGs is one of my favorite hooks. So we have lots of story prompts and adversaries that are based around those kinds of adventures. It also leaves lots of room for Story Guides to build out around their own concepts.

A promotional image for Coyote & Crow featuring a stylized illustration of a person with a bow and arrow fighting against a large purple and black creature.

What led to the decision to make this a game that focused on sci-fi fantasy vibes and encourage the specific style of play (which seems unique) that you did?

That’s a great question. I don’t think there’s a way to answer that without addressing my own personal tastes, so I hope I don’t come off as self-absorbed. I grew up on original Star Trek, Star Wars and authors like Ray Bradbury. Stories that were full of forward thinking and hope. In contrast, my Native heritage always felt grounded in now, in today. It was a very personal and not always a happy part of my relationship with my father and our family.

But in the last decade, we’ve seen some media that has started to meet somewhere in the middle of those two points. It’s not all utopia and hope or escapist fantasy, but it’s also not grim and dirty reality. Shows like the Expanse, newer Star Trek, video games like Horizon Zero Dawn and tabletop games like Android Netrunner were all able to put fresh spins and new perspectives on some of those old concepts, while also highlighting diversity and representation in a way that didn’t feel obligatory.

When I knew I wanted that kind of feeling for Coyote and Crow, it just became a process of elimination. I didn’t want just fantasy because too often non-Natives exoticize Native Americans and that setting is just too ripe for them to abuse, even if it was told well. And pure science fiction doesn’t leave as much room for the subjective and the immaterial that I wanted to make sure spoke to so many Native beliefs across tribes.

I wanted it set in the future because I wanted Natives to see this as a hopeful view of what could have been and maybe some things that might still be, but it had to be built on  a different past because I wanted it very clear to everyone that this was a world that colonists and specifically Europeans, had no part in building.

It was also important that the core mechanics offer combat as an option and not the default. Most fantasy games are geared toward going somewhere unfamiliar, killing everything there and then measuring your success based on how much you looted. That sort of storytelling is really limited. For me, the best stories are about building bridges, righting wrongs, finding equilibrium in the middle of chaos and optimizing your gifts in ways that benefit as many as possible, not just yourself. I’m really hoping that Coyote and Crow becomes the launching pad for those kinds of stories.

A promotional image for Coyote & Crow featuring an older Indigenous person in a high collar with split tones over their face of red and blue, lighting their eyes with those colors.

Amazing! So much good stuff here. I just have one last question to finish this off. As you’ve worked on the design and playtesting for Coyote & Crow, what are some experiences that stand out and excite you for the game and for players to enjoy? What lasting impact do you hope for?

That’s actually a long list. The first time we did a playtest and one of the players got to experience the exploding dice mechanic and they were so thrilled. I knew I was on to something when I saw that look of joy and excitement. Another great moment was when my Native group of playtesters got to meet the supernatural entity that we were using in our adventure (and appears in the one shot that’s in the book). That feeling like we were all playing something that was “ours” was palpable and deeply gratifying.

Since I’ve passed along some of the play testing to our team, I’ve heard some incredible stories from our Story Guide. They said one group just decided to completely cozy up and become friends with a group we’d originally written as sort of adversarial. That was great! As much as I love writing stories and being a Story Guide, having players take it down their own path is always such a treat. Most of my own personal favorite RPG stories over the years usually involve some amount of deviating from the gamemasters plans.

Which leads me to the second part of your question. The lasting impact that I’m hoping for is that people, Native and otherwise, find themselves exploring the world we’ve built and feel inspired to tell new stories and new kinds of stories. I’m a firm believer in storytelling and the power of it. It has the power to unify, to heal, to inspire. My greatest wish is that Coyote & Crow does what all of the best science fiction does, which is to bring some hope to our real lives by giving us a thought provoking world to temporarily escape to. If I can do that for some folks, especially my Native cousins out there, then I’ve succeeded.

A promotional image for Coyote & Crow featuring two characters in gorgeous Indigenous outfits surrounded by colorful patterns, with what appears to be a flying robot overhead.

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Thank you so much for the interview, Connor! Coyote & Crow sounds like a really amazing game and I’m excited to see all that comes from it. Check it out on Kickstarter today!

Interview on Tomorrow on Revelation III

Today I have an interview with Dominique Dickey about their project, Tomorrow on Revelation III, which is currently on Kickstarter! This project seems really amazing and explores a lot of complex themes, so I hope you enjoy hearing about it! Check it out!

Today I have an interview with Dominique Dickey about their project, Tomorrow on Revelation III, which is currently on Kickstarter! This project seems really amazing and explores a lot of complex themes, so I hope you enjoy hearing about it! Check it out!

I’m excited for the opportunity to interview you about Tomorrow on Revelation III, which you’re launching on Kickstarter. It sounds fascinating! Before we talk in detail about the game, can you tell me a little about yourself and how you came to be designing this project? 

DD: I’m Dominique Dickey! I’m a writer, editor, and consultant. I’ve previously worked as a freelancer on projects such as Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Sea of Legends, Lost Roads, and Pathfinder Lost Omens. You can also find my rpg TRIAL on itch.io: it’s a narrative game that explores race and the criminal justice system via the story of a murder trial, and was my first foray into games as a mechanism of social change.

Last summer, I had the idea for a game about farmers avoiding becoming obsolete on a space station. I was interested in themes of capitalism and finding meaning outside of labor. I also wanted to design a game about community-driven social change, and find a way to represent that change through game mechanics.

I spoke to my dear friend Charles Linton and realized that my initial premise was more suited for a one-shot than a campaign, as resolving the problem (making sure the space farmers had rights and protections) would break the game (by obliterating a core aspect of the setting). I also didn’t want it to become a game about making oneself necessary to the capitalist machine: what if the farmers’ profession actually does become obsolete, but they find value outside of their labor? The way I initially envisioned the game would not allow players to answer that question, or others like it.

From those discussions with Charlie, the game shifted to be about a group of people on a heavily stratified space station, all with different backgrounds and levels of privilege, working together to improve their collective circumstances. I was really excited by the idea of developing the eponymous station and its stratifications—this was my first time writing a game with a super concrete setting, and I wanted to create a rich and generative sandbox for players and GMs to enjoy.

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Thoughty Ending Regular Interviews

Thoughty remains! So does Script Change. I still hope to do some interviews, as mentioned, very periodically. I want to talk more about design, and about leadership in games. I want to talk about the things I personally enjoy in games, break them down, see if I can make them make sense. I hope when the worldsuck eases I’ll release more games, though I doubt anything I do solo will be as big and fancy as Turn. I’ll be separately supporting my partners with their projects. Oh yeah, and I’ll still be accepting guest blogs here when I can build up a larger fund for paying creators!

Times do change.

My first interviews were before Thoughty – on my previous and now defunct site that I ported here with Systir Productions & 616, and on Gaming as Women with attendees of a Gamerati game day and then Judy Bauer of all people. I kicked off Thoughty and Five or So Questions in 2014 as a continuation of the original blog, but only the interviews really stuck around.

Younger Beau with long brown hair, glasses, and a nerdy tee shirt standing next to a man with short dark hair and a blue Paizo polo. Behind them is a busy convention crowd.
Me in 2013 at Gen Con with F. Wes Schneider, Paizo’s then Editor-in-Chief, who I had interviewed for GAW.

I have done over three hundred interviews on Thoughty, about 250 of those being Five or So Question interviews. I have only had a few interviews fully fail to be completed due to scheduling, and one pulled by the creator. I’ve interviewed people about not just tabletop but also card, board, and video games, plus lonely solo games, huge collections of tabletop and live action games, their artwork, their design process, their Kickstarters, and more. I have had an exceptional opportunity to pick the brains of the most brilliant designers in tabletop games, from legacy designers like Ron Edwards to genius women designers like Dr. Jessica Hammer and Meguey Baker to groundbreaking modern designers like Jay Dragon and Rae Nedjadi. Many of these people I have grown to consider friends and colleagues, and I’m so grateful for the amazing things I’ve learned from them and shared with you.

I have been supported by my Patreon supporters primarily for these interviews, enough funds to pay for my website and a bill every so often, some busy months enough to help me pay medical expenses. I am incredibly grateful for my supporters, for everyone who has shared an interview, recommended a creator to reach out to, or praised my interviews, regardless of whether they supported me financially!

You may ask, if this is so great, why does the title say you’re ending interviews? What does this mean for Thoughty? Why has the site been so slow recently, anyway? Well, that’s what I’m gonna try to answer here. This is… a bit long. I’m still me, you know.

Continue reading “Thoughty Ending Regular Interviews”

Into the Mother Lands with Tanya DePass and more!

Hi all! Today I have an interview with the creators of Into the Mother Lands, a new project being performed on and sponsored by Twitch and released on YouTube, developed using the Cortex Prime RPG system. You can keep up to date on the project through their Twitter or Discord, and until then, check out the responses from Tanya DePass (T.D.), B. Dave Walters (B.D.W.), and Gabe Hicks (G.H.) below!

Catch Into the Mother Lands, a Cortex Prime RPG actual play using a new sci-fi IP created by Tanya DePass, leading a team of veteran Black & POC creatives as they build the world and its stories together at twitch.tv/cypheroftyr, Sundays at 4pm Pacific/6pm Central/7pm Eastern/5pm Mountain time.

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A photo portrait black woman with dreadlocks wearing a dark colored shirt and a necklace.
Tanya DePass, Creative Director for
Into the Mother Lands.

What an amazing team, and with Tanya at the lead! For our readers who may be new to your work, could each of you introduce yourselves and talk about your experience and specialties that you’re bringing to the Into the Motherlands RPG?

B.D.W.: I say words about things! I have been playing games for about 30 years now. I’m the writer and co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons: A Darkened Wish and DM for the streaming series of the same name. I also have written for Werewolf the Apocalypse 5th Edition and some other unannounced World of Darkness projects.

I have also consulted on increasing diversity and inclusion in a number of well-known gaming properties. 

T.D.: I’ve been a diversity & inclusion consultant in RPG’s for the last few years, have writing credits with Green Ronin, Paizo, Monte Cook Games, WotC and have been playing RPG’s since I could hold a D6. 

G.H.: Hi, my name is Gabe Hicks! I’m a voice actor, streamer, and designer who works in digital and tabletop. I have written for MOBAs, worked with Paizo, Zweihander, a plethora of other companies and systems and narrative work and taking those experiences and working with different worlds is part of how my design and narrative process have helped me in building this world for Into the Motherlands RPG. It’s learning a little bit from each piece that I’ve done and considering how it all blends in the world together.

A black man with a beard and mustache wearing a black striped and patterned shirt smiling a the camera.
B. Dave Walters, Lead Developer for
Into the Mother Lands.

There is hype for Into the Motherlands already, but what are you most excited to explore? How does your use of streaming and your varied backgrounds impact your presentation of these exciting elements?

B.D.W.: I am most interested in being able to explore a sci-fi setting that’s not ultimately a bland retelling of the Westward Expansion!  We have the privilege of painting an entirely new portrait of a civilization completely free from colonialism, and that has been an incredibly satisfying mental exercise. I can’t wait for you to see it! 

TD: I’m excited to tell a story without colonization and slavery as part and parcel of the world’s lore and history. To see where our folks wind up and how their choices become a canon part of our world. 

G.H.: I’m really excited to give a core premise for worlds and then see how people build onto them or build their own. There’s a lot here that we have to build up and create more and more, and it’s an opportunity not often given to really have a whole fresh start especially when it comes to world’s imagined specifically by people of color. With the different skill set and experiences of the team as a whole when it comes together it’s beautiful. We’re able to figure out and design a game that plays well in a show format but doesn’t have to be a show to be fun. 

That sounds great! So tell me about Into the Motherlands. What is different about it from other sci-fi settings? How are you demonstrating the unique elements?

TD: It’s different in that we’re not going for super grim dark, it’s populated by a variety of cultures and does its best to invert a lot of tropes. 

G.H.: We built this system with such a heavy emphasis on storytelling in a sci-fi setting. So many people try to make games that are combat in space without as much emphasis I’d like in story, world building, and creating entirely just new ideas rather than playing off tropes. Not to mention, when we do see these things there is almost never African inspiration tied into them.

A black man with dreadlocks and glasses perched on his head wearing a white tee.
Gabe Hicks, Development on Into the
Motherlands.

What is it like debuting a game on Twitch? Are there unique challenges or benefits that come from this platform as your showcase?

TD: It’s hard because we discovered people will backseat literally anything, including a brand new system and even the production of the show. Benefits are that people can see it done real-time, but also you get to see the weird commentary and other things people are throwing around. For me, it’s hard because all these theories are so incredibly wrong, but you can’t stop playing to address it in chat. 

G.H.: I honestly think I’m spoiled now with development. We get a chance to see LIVE what people are interested in, what people want to see more of, what people want to know more about and it honestly makes my job so much more interesting. It’s an opportunity to literally focus on the things people want and then create extra on top. This isn’t a circumstance where we have to wait and see what gets people interested during development. It’s such a fortunate thing. 

Where did the inspiration for Into the Motherlands or your work on it come from? How have you workshopped ideas when you’re working to avoid colonialism? Does that come naturally to your team?

TD: We just talked, and decided there would be no colonialism, slavery etc. It’s not that hard and we didn’t need to workshop it. With an all Black & POC writing team, we just opted out off that, simply because Sci fi and fantasy don’t need those to tell a compelling story. 

G.H.: It does come pretty naturally. It’s a team effort and that’s so clear when we sit down and work. Like Tanya said it was just a straight up choice, none of it. I’ve literally been reading into the different biomes and environments in Africa, the way flora and fauna interact, and how much variety there is in life. It’s been a never ending supply of inspiration and stuff to share.

The Into the Mother Lands logo with a black and white starfield background and the text Into the Mother Lands in a stylistic font with two yellow lines swooping through like rolling hills.

What’s it like working on an inclusive and diverse team that’s got such varied perspectives? Does it feel more freeing to work in this way, and does it help on this specific project to be such a diverse team?

TD: Absolutely it’s more freeing. However, we assembled this talented team of Black & POC creatives not just to be ‘diverse’ but because everyone is super talented and capable. While it’s being pointed out that we’re an all Black & POC team, by us because for me (and maybe others) it’s the first time we’ve had that option. But it’s not the only thing about our group, game and show. 

G.H.: It’s freeing. Someone always has a new perspective or an insight. IT’s not just one point of view but it’s like knowing we all have some different experiences in some of our similar views. I feel a bit like I have less to prove of myself, a bit like I can already say “These people get it.”. On this project especially, having a diverse team is huge part of why this game works as well as it does. It’s a testament to diversity being such a boon in creation.

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Thank you so much to all three of those able to respond for this interview! I hope you all enjoyed this interview, and that you’ll check out Into the Mother Lands on Twitch each Sunday!

Catch Into the Mother Lands, a Cortex Prime RPG actual play using a new sci-fi IP created by Tanya DePass, leading a team of veteran Black & POC creatives as they build the world and its stories together at twitch.tv/cypheroftyr, Sundays at 4pm Pacific/6pm Central/7pm Eastern/5pm Mountain time.

The Map is not The Territory with Chris Longhurst

Today I have an interview with Chris Longhurst on The Map is not The Territory, a project debuting today on Kickstarter! This project uses one map and many perspectives to give a variety of experiences of play – a really cool idea! Check out Chris’s replies below.

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The cover of The Map is not The Territory with two characters with pointy ears wearing adventuring gear are moving through portals to other places while one has a map and a bright blue bird rides on their back.
The cover for The Map is not The Territory. Love it!

Thanks for joining me for an interview, Chris! I’m excited to hear about your project, The Map is not The Territory. What is your experience like in games that it led you to this project?

I’ve been noodling around the RPG industry in a variety of capacities since the mid-2000s, but I didn’t get serious about freelancing and publishing my own stuff until the tail end of 2014. Since then I’ve published a few things ‘the old-fashioned way’, and run four Kickstarters — three successful, one un. I think what specifically led me to this project though is less of my industry experience and more that running my RPG business as a side gig means I tend to make whatever I feel like making and hope it speaks to people. TMINT itself springs from my love of remixes, remakes and covers — I love the way different people can arrive at such wildly different creations even if you give them the same origin point. 

In essence it’s a project motivated by my personal foibles when it comes to running a business and my personal tastes in creative media, to which I am personally contributing very little. The irony feels good.

Coordinating a big team of creators and being part of such a team can create a lot of challenges. What made you uniquely suited for this project and this team?

Like… as I mentioned above, this is a very personal project. It’s a thing I wanted to exist, so I decided to take the steps to make that happen. And in that sense I am the only person who could have originated this project, because it has its roots in things I enjoy and things I appreciate. I’m the only person with this particular combination of perspective, tastes, skills, and reach — therefore, I am uniquely suited to this project and this team because anyone else who did something similar would produce a different project with a different team.

But.

Everybody has a network and a perspective and some tastes. Skills can be learned, or skilled people can be hired. I like to remind people that if I ever do something that looks complex, it’s really just several simple things layered together. If I do something that looks difficult, at base it’s just several smaller, easier things combined into a greater whole. Anything I can do, can be done by someone else. Anybody could create this kind of project, and in that sense there is literally nothing that positions me as uniquely qualified to do so.

Which, I’d like to emphasize, is a good thing. Every human being is unique, and brings a unique perspective to their creations — which, full circle, is the whole point of TMINT. To highlight those unique perspectives by giving them a common origin and seeing how they grow outwards from there.

…of course, if you’re asking ‘do you have any excellent team management skills?’ the answer is ‘lol no I’m making this up as I go along’ — but I like to get the old philosophy degree out for an airing now and then.

A map designed by Dyson Logos.
The map by Dyson Logos that is at the center of the project.

What is The Map is not The Territory as a project, and what is the vision for the project? What from your prior experience helped you create it?

The Map is not The Territory is a project to show what a single origin point can look like when viewed through as many different lenses as possible. The vision is to bring together authors, game designers, scientists, and poets, and showcase the creativity which each individual brings to the basic concept. I want anyone into RPGs to find something they can use in there, whether it’s a dungeon quest, a whole other game, a world of adventure… something. I want people to flip through it and go ‘ooooh’.

Because I’ve been noodling around the RPG industry for years and running my own publisher for slightly fewer years, I’ve got experience with the practicalities of turning manuscripts into finished pdfs and printed books. I know how to budget and run a Kickstarter because I’ve run three successful ones (and if people want to know more about that, I do a public postmortem after every one). I’ve got all the skills needed to turn a concept into a reality. I, uh… just need the money.

For each of the 24 contributors, what is included in their contribution to the project? How did you determine the scope of the project – how long it should be, what it should cover, etc.?

Each contributor is going to write me 500-1000 words on a subject of their choice, inspired by the map, which will go alongside a customised version of the map. Some versions of the map are going to be almost the same as the original. Some are going to be wild.

I always wanted it to cover as many different interpretations of the map as possible — and to have those interpretations be as far from each other as possible — and I think we’ve hit a really good range. The sheer variety of responses when I asked for pitches was stunning, and I deliberately grabbed a selection each from ‘normal with a twist’, ‘kinda weird’, and ‘left field’ to make sure there was something for everyone.  

The scope of the project was defined largely by the tension between two opposing forces: wanting to pay everyone a decent sum for their work on one hand, and what I could expect to sell it for on the other. (Down with capitalism.) I wanted to include as many authors as possible, so I just kept incrementing that number on my budget spreadsheet until I hit the balancing point between ‘will sell for about $15’ and ‘paying all the contributors okay money’.  

My basic idea was that every interpretation of the map, plus the custom map, plus some art and/or layout flourishes, would sit on a double-page spread, making for a slim softcover. Once again, I was thinking about how much I could afford to pay each contributor without exploding my budget — you get 300-ish words per page, so 500 words plus a map can fit on one spread. My original idea was for a minimum of 32 pages, but with 24 contributors we’re looking at minimum 48 pages plus a few frontmatter odds and ends. I think some of the pitches I’ve received are going to run somewhat longer than that though, so the page count might go up.

Kickstarter takes a decent amount of risk out of the equation, but at the same time I didn’t put it on Kickstarter to see if it was workable — I put it on there because I already think it’s workable and I want it to succeed.    

The map by Dyson Logos colored in blues to indicate a water level style of adventure.
The map for Samantha Hancox-Li’s “The Luminous Depths.”

This seems like such a cool idea! So how did you find your amazing contributors? What did you look for in their ideas?

I put an open call for pitches out on Twitter and left it open for… two weeks? A month? I forget exactly. Some time. Anyway, I also specifically reached out to some marginalised creators and asked them for pitches directly because I’d heard that marginalised folk tend to self-select out of stuff like this. Once I had a nice Google sheet full of pitches, I extracted all the pitch details without looking at the names so I could do a proper blind pick.

Once I had all the pitches, I divided them into three broad categories: ‘dungeon crawl with a twist’, ‘something unusual’, and ‘highly weird’. Then I grabbed my (more or less) eight favourites in each category and that was the final 24.

I looked for slightly different things in each category. For the weird section I wanted properly out-there stuff — things which used the map in such a way that it was barely recognisable as a dungeon any more. The unusual section consists of things which are recognisable as roleplaying adventures but use the map in an interesting way or have a unique twist. And for the dungeon crawl section I wanted to see fresh elements which you don’t often see in other dungeons. And I got all of those things in spades! The scale of creativity in the pitches was amazing, and if I could make 

What made you decide on the particular map that you’re using? What is unique about it?

I originally went to Dyson Logos’ page because I knew he was a very good dungeon cartographer. I was sort of half thinking to hire him, half thinking to consult his designs for inspiration. When I saw he was allowing people to use some of his maps for free, I immediately jumped on that. Quality stuff! For zero dollars! Then it was just a matter of sifting through his extensive back catalogue for just the right map. I eventually settled on the The Lost Temple of Aphosh the Haunted because it’s big enough to have a lot of encounters without being sprawling, and offers a mixture of natural and artificial terrain. I wanted something that people could project their own ideas onto and that had enough conceptual ‘hooks’ to work with without being prescriptive. 

Map chosen, I emailed Dyson juuuust to make sure the plan was ok, he said yes, and here we are.

A book mockup opened to The Luminous Depths with a map and text displayed and blue tones coloring the page.
The mockup for the physical form of The Map is not The Territory.

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Thanks so much to Chris for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out The Map is not The Territory on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on Brinkwood

Today I have an interview with Erik Bernhardt about the game Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants, on Kickstarter perfectly in time for the spooky season. It’s also the first example of castylpunk on Thoughty – if you’re curious what that means, read on!

Content warnings for images: blood, gory imagery

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The Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants logo of white textured text on a black background with a smear of red blood.

Tell me a little about Brinkwood: Blood of Tyrants. What excites you about it?

Brinkwood is a Forged in the Dark game, a system I love working in. This is my second attempt at putting a hack of Blades together, and I’m excited to be working as part of a team now, as so many good ideas flow into the project from our consultants, playtesters, and others involved in the project.

The four-word pitch is “Robin Hood versus Vampires”, which I think, if that grabs your attention, this is a game you’ll be interested in. What excites me about it is the chance to build a game that has a lot of depth and longevity to it’s campaign level, without a lot of the baggage and book-keeping that typically goes into this sort of game. We’re putting a lot of work in to make it so that you have an evolving experience, starting from just a few bandits out in the woods, slowly building allies and relationships with other factions, many of whom who have been working at this a lot longer than you have, and slowly turning from a band, to a coalition, to a movement, to finally a true revolutionary force.

I’m probably most excited to bring in some of the real-world experience I’ve had in leftist organizing. In a lot of games or media about rebellion and revolution, the focus is on heroic individuals, rather than groups and movements. I think both narratives are valuable, and I wanted to include both in this game. In many ways, this game is about taking different groups who all share the same ideological goals, but differ in the details of how to accomplish said goals, which mirrors my experiences from 2016 onward. This isn’t a game where you try to get deeply opposed groups to work together, it’s about the smaller frictions of approach between groups that are incredibly committed to the same goals, and negotiating those competing approaches to try and build a successful rebellion.

An illustration of a regal white-haired woman in a white fancy dress with a golden crown. She is crying tears of blood and her lips, cheeks, chin, neck, and dress are stained with blood.
Art by Mohammed Saad.

Tell me more about integrating your organizing experience into the game. How does this come forth in play?

For my organizing experience, I think it comes out in play in two main ways, one subtle, and one not-so-subtle. On the subtle side, I think the interplay of the various campaign-level systems, be it your allied factions, their strength feeding into your strength, the sedition mechanics, and even the actions the GM takes as the “Vampire Lord” create a sort of test-kitchen effect, where players are put into the mind-space of organizers and revolutionaries. One of my favorite examples came in a recent game, where my players asked themselves first, not what they thought a community needed, but what they could do to find out what a community actually needed. I saw this problem crop up a lot in my organizing experience, with groups coming in with their own agenda, imposing solutions to what they thought were a community’s problems, without actually consulting said community. It was thrilling to see this very issue emerge organically, and for the pressures of the game system to guide my players to (what I believe to be) the correct choice for any organization: Ask people what they need first, don’t assume you know better, and then work with the community itself to provide mutual aid.

On the not-so-subtle side, we have the Conclave, a system whereby every few sessions, depending on the player’s actions, they will meet with the stakeholders in their rebellion. I was inspired in my own experience of meetings between different faction representatives (called “spokes”, both in anarchist organizing and in Brinkwood) to determine what goals to prioritize, what resources to allocate, etc. It’s a messy process in real life, and so far, when played out, it’s messy and dramatic in-game. To me, the most interesting conflicts are between people who both have the same goals and ideas, but differ only in their approach. It’s interesting for players to be in a space where they have to stake an opinion on the world, and actively make decisions about who-gets-what that actually impact the game’s world and their own relationships with one another and their NPC allies.

An illustration of a masked figure in a long sweeping cloak and practical clothing, carrying a bow and arrows. The mask has dramatic antlers, and the figure is traversing a tangled wood.
Art by Olivia Rea.

How are you building hope and the possibility of success into the game when mechanically Forged in the Dark mechanically can trend a little bleak?

We’ve done a lot of under-the-hood work on the Blades system to try and make things more hopeful and less bleak. The slow grind of vice, stress, and trauma tends to “wear down” PCs in Blades, and I’ve read a lot of reviews and analyses (some critical, some positive) of both Blades and, in some ways, Brinkwood‘s closer antecedent, Band of Blades. On the first level, I’ve changed how the stress grind works. For every resistance roll (Blades’s main mechanic for players to resist, or “cancel out” negative consequences), I’ve changed the math so that the range of stress goes from one to three, rather than from zero to six on a single roll. This means that most every action now carries a price, albeit a smaller, slower burn-down that, in my opinion, allows the players better control of how quickly their characters get into trouble.

Similarly, I’ve “split” the typical Blades sheet into two pieces, with the player character on one sheet, and the special abilities / archetype information on a separate “Mask” sheet. Players are free to choose between these masks on each Foray, and this allow players to be more flexible than they would in other systems (ie, play the mask of Violence if their character needs to be able to defend themselves, or play the mask of Lies if they need to deceive or socially manipulate their enemies). I’ve also “split” the stress track between Stress and Essence, so that players have access to more resources overall, but still have the tension of two slowly burning resources.

Lastly, in the reference documents we’ve prepared for players, we’ve put a lot of emphasis on giving the players all the tools they need to succeed, with advice on how to boost their rolls, their effectiveness, or what to spend and what to do. I think Blades can be an intimidating game to learn in some ways, and if you don’t have access to all the knowledge the game demands, it can become a lot more deadly or stressful than intended. We also state explicitly in our GM advice is that the GM is a co-conspirator and a player, and should remain on the PC’s side, giving advice on how to use the rules, how to spend resources, or how to navigate other more complicated aspects of the game to ensure the PCs know all of their options in a given situation. It amazes me how much less “aggressive” and more fun Blades becomes when you remember to do simple things like offer Devil’s Bargains, or remind players that they can resist any consequence you throw at them.

An illustrated bust of a long haired vampire with a goatee and red eyes wearing a very high-collared red cloak over a smaller high-collared top.
Art by Mohammed Saad.

What is the world like that the characters exist in and that they’re encountering challenges in?

Brinkwood takes place in a castylpunk world, meaning it’s aesthetic is very much in line with stuff like Castlevania or similar properties, but with a punk intention brought to bear on it. So it’s medieval / gothic-esque, with lots of castles, gothic architecture, gloomy cities, sprawling manors, small villages, etc, but also alongside things like primitive firearms, smoke-belching factories, flesh-steamwork amalgamations, and other more anachronistic monstrosities and details. By saying this is a “punk” game, we mean that you aren’t here to admire the scenery or sympathize with oppressors, you are here to tear down systems of control and oppression, not to replicate or replace them.

An illustration of an arrow-ridden corpse laid over a stone block with "The Blood of Tyrants" written in blood on the wall behind it.
Art by Olivia Rea.

What inspired the choice to split the character sheet into two parts, and what are some of the benefits that come with that design choice?

The inspiration came from a common problem I saw in some campaigns of Blades, as well as other games I ran. I found that often times, people would lose interest in the mechanical side of a character long before the character’s “story” had completed. By separating most of the mechanics out to a separate sheet, it allows people the freedom to “try out” different mechanical archetypes, and not shackle their character’s story development as closely to their mechanical development. Likewise, it allows interesting groups of characters to play together, without necessarily worrying that they’re “missing” a key archetype or ability.

Playgroups are free to experiment, try different types of Forays, and not feel pigeonholed into doing the same sort of thing over and over again. In a narrative sense, it helps contribute to the theme of “commonplace heroism,” your character isn’t exceptional by virtue of some in-born talent or ability, but by their willingness to take up the mantle of responsibility and take action.

A Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants promotion with preview of the book, a link to www.brinkwood.net, and a brief description before a call to action to "Join the Rebellion!"

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Thanks so much Erik for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants on Kickstarter today!

Quick Shot on Hearts of Magic

Content Warning: There are allegations against Erika Shepherd for abusive behavior. I don’t have any links, but have been notified in private and respect the privacy of those raising the concerns, and I’m making this note as part of my policy against perpetrators of harm.

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Hi all, I have a few quick questions with answers from Erika Shepherd on Hearts of Magic: Threads Entangled! It looks like a really interesting game, I hope you like what Erika has to say!

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What is Hearts of Magic, both as a product and as your vision?

Hearts of Magic is a Firebrands Framework game about fey nobles, arcanist-bureaucrats, and anarchist witches vying for control of a magepunk fantasy city, getting in messy entanglements with eachother amid an undeclared magical war. It’s a story told against a backdrop of imperialism and class struggle, but it’s also a story about individuals finding ways to resist that system, and just maybe finding eachother instead.

It’s intended for one-shot play, with zero prep and an easy-to-learn ruleset you can pick up and play; while it has a set of factions and setting elements built in, it’s easy to adapt to other settings/factions, and flexible about how you portray your faction, without defining a lot of the worldbuilding.

It’s also, not to put too fine a point on it, *gay as hell*. An Oblique Discussion is explicitly and intentionally a game about, not being able to say out loud the thing you want to tell somebody, and As A Lesbian, it was important to me to put down in a game that feeling of, talking around something and hoping your were understood. It’s a game about fighting with your friends and allying with your rivals, but most of all, about falling in love with your enemies, and about how love (or something like it) can overcome the things that keep us apart and the systems that tear up our world.

The Hearts of Magic cover with three people in fancy historical dress are standing around a table reading a spellbook. One person is in a purple and pink dress and looks like an elf with pointy ears. The other two are human-looking, and one is stabbing a knife into the table near melting candles. The text reads "Hearts of Magic: Threads Entangled" by Erika Shepherd.
The cover of Hearts of Magic, illustrated by Finn Carey.

What is the design process for a project like this with the ten games in one design, especially when trying to create these messy entanglements?

I have to give almost all the credit to Vincent and Meg Baker, for the overall design – Hearts of Magic started as a 1:1 reskin of Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands, and much of that design is still part of Hearts of Magic. I did, however, remove a couple of the Firebrands games, and added two of my own – Weaving a Spell and A Wizard’s Battle. With that said, I did have to think about the kinds of entanglements I was looking to create. This game is as much the story of The City as it is a story of the characters themselves, and I wanted to make sure to focus as much on the ways characters interact with The City as the ways characters interact with eachother.

In “A Chase”, for instance, I wanted to make sure to fill out the landscape of the city and the range of setting options, for the players, being sure to include a range of physical locations in the City to expand the range of whats possible, there (Like trains! Can’t have magepunk weird-fantasy without trains!). Another example is how A Wizard’s Battle makes sure to include as much about how a violent confrontation affects the City, potentially devastating the surrounding neighborhood.

With that said, the real core of the game is about the interactions between the player characters; by making Weaving A Spell focus closely on the intimacy of doing magic with another person for instance, by keeping the focus of the games on the relationships between the players and not just their factions, I wanted to make sure that there was more binding the players together than keeping them apart.

A fancily dressed horned person with branch-like legs wearing an outfit with a long train that is being carried by a small bug.
Sketch by Sasha Reneau.

What kinds of characters do we see in Hearts of Magic, and what are they likely to encounter mechanically in the various games?

The three factions of Hearts of Magic are the Lords and Ladies, the fey nobles whose families have controlled The City for generations and who hold their power with the magic of nature, promises, and prophecy; the Order, a bureaucratic empire of scholar-mages who use the might of empire to, supposedly, try and protect the world from the dangers of magic; and the Witches, anarchists trying to free the city from nobility and empire alike and teach Magic to the masses. Each faction has their own set of adjectives to describe the characters with, but aside from the faction description and the adjectives, very little about character creation is dictated by the book – you can explicitly be any kind of person you can imagine, certainly not limited to traditional fantasy archetypes. My favorite character I’ve played as is a noble Lady whose body is a musical instrument of glass, wood, and clockwork, and that’s pretty tame on the scale of what the game allows.

The ten games that make up Hearts of Magic are:

  • Solitaire (what were you doing? what have we heard about you?),
  • A Chase (do you have the nerve to pursue?),
  • A Conversation Over Food (at ease together, or a tense meal?),
  • A Dance (when the music ends, will I see you again?),
  • A Free-for-all (why do we fight, and what are the stakes?),
  • Meeting Sword to Sword (steel meets steel, gaze meets gaze – who will blink?),
  • An Oblique Discussion (how can I tell you the things I can not say?)
  • Stealing Time Together (alone, together, with a gentle “may I?”)
  • Weaving a Spell (how do the two of us make magic greater than either alone?)
  • A Wizard’s Battle (can you resist the full strength of my powers?)

The games are all played by taking turns choosing prompts, except for Solitaire, which you play by yourself quietly to establish some context for yourself, and A Conversation Over Food and An Oblique Discussion, which give you the choice between choosing a prompt or engaging in actual improvised conversation. A Chase and Meeting Sword To Sword involve coin-flips to determine the outcome, but all the other games let the players decide the outcomes, and even in the fights, your character’s fate is always in your own hands – only you can decide if your character’s life is on the line, or how badly they are hurt by their opponent’s blows.

A witch with a witch's hat and sparkling coming from their eyes. Their one hand unwraps the other, revealing a bird-like claw.
Sketch by Sasha Reneau.

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Thank you Erika for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Hearts of Magic: Threads Entangled on Kickstarter today – hurry, only a few days left!

Five or So Questions on Sleepaway

Hi y’all, I have an interview with Jay Dragon about Sleepaway, which is currently up on Kickstarter! Jay had some really interesting things to say about Sleepaway. I hope you enjoy the responses below!

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The Sleepaway book cover with a person in a yellow raincoat who has a red tree growing out of their chest and wolves running towards the red blooe on their white tee shirt. One of their eyes is wide open and they have thumbpins in a circle around them, while a forest is in the background. The text "Sleepaway" is in white outlined text.

Tell me about Sleepaway. What excites you about it?

Sleepaway is a Belonging Outside Belonging game about a group of summer camp counselors protecting their children from a nightmarish monster. It is born from both my complex and intense relationship with the summer camp I work at, and my own thoughts and reflections on my childhood. It’s secretly a very autobiographical work, with themes ranging from my own friendships to important places from my teenage years to certain experiences I’ve had with my mental illnesses. I’m also really excited about the design space – it manages to merge the collaborative GM role of Belonging Outside Belonging games with a bizarre structure that resembles a “ghost GM” (as I’ve facetiously referred to it to friends). Horror is a genre with a narrative arc, and building an arc and a “Legacy Games” -esque framework into Belonging Outside Belonging becomes a really fascinating intersection of design space.

A person in a lace and floral top in a car, wearing a floral crown.
Jay Dragon.

That sounds really cool! I remember summer camps being the height of complex emotions as a kid. How do you approach the emotions and excitement of those environments with care?

I think that care and compassion are the most important part of Sleepaway to me. An early and immediate concern is making sure that the campers have narrative weight and independence, that they’re not just extensions of the staff’s emotional journeys. I think it’s really important that the campers get to have their own life paths, and that as a counselor in the game you can support their endeavors but you’re not in a position to fix them and you can’t protect them from everything.

Being a queer summer camp counselor is so complicated because you see kids going through things you’ve been through yourself, and no matter how much you want to help them, you know they’re on a journey of self-discovery that they need to engage in on their own. The game has ways for the kids to go off and engage with each other without the players interacting, and ways to put down the counselor characters and play out the campers interacting in an abstracted, ritualized way.

A campfire scene in sepia and black with kids all around a campfire deep in the woods.

What are the mechanics like in Sleepaway? How do players engage with the fiction?

The beating heart of Sleepaway is the Belonging Outside Belonging system by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum. Players pick up and pass around setting elements that represent locations and forces within the setting, while building a web of interpersonal relationships. Periodically, players end up invoking the Lindworm, which results in a moment of tension as everyone closes their eyes and a card is picked from a deck, causing horrific events to happen. My favorite mechanical moment in Sleepaway is the Lindworm – there’s a purposeful decision that players never have the chance to roleplay as the Lindworm, and the Lindworm is treated as an outside entity outside the game itself.

As you play the game, you can also end up developing a corkboard of motifs, characters, items, and locations that are tethered together, which at the end of a campaign you unravel in order to defeat the Lindworm. It, along with Rituals (moments when you put the traditional structure of the rules aside to enter into a new fictive space that abstracts a moment of play that wouldn’t normally get space to show up) really show my camp LARP origins! I think bodies are always implicated in all games, and I really love the way a tabletop game can challenge and shift the way that engagement can occur.

A rocky cliffside with trees on the top by a body of water.

The Belonging Outside Belonging system is really intriguing. How does it suit Sleepaway in regards to player interaction? What types of design choices did you have to make with the system to make it suit your vision?

I’ve rapidly fallen in love with Belonging Outside Belonging since I started working within it. It’s one of those systems that can transform game design into poetry, just through it’s invitation to play. The move “Ask: Why won’t your character just fuck off?” is both one of my favorite ones to use in play and also one of my favorites to be asked! Belonging Outside Belonging allows for a game that integrates less on the characters and more on their relationships with one another and the land.

I wanted the game to reflect my own experiences roleplaying at The Wayfinder Experience (my LARP Summer Camp) while growing up. This meant the game is really rooted in developing a complex relationship to the land. At The Wayfinder Experience, we always thank the land before engaging in play, and I’ve always missed that sensibility in regards to tabletop. Belonging Outside Belonging games allows me to build a game where the players are all collaboratively representing a world that is just as much a living breathing identity as any individual player, and can in some ways exist outside the players as a sense beyond us.

A mockup of the Sleepaway text with a campfire scene in sepia and black with kids all around a campfire deep in the woods. The text Sleepaway is in white.

What is the Lindworm, and how does it work? How does it interact with the fiction?

The Lindworm is the monster of the summer camp, the thing that hangs in the background of everything. It represents cycles of trauma, abusive people, and the ways in which the outside world can hurt us beyond our control. The Lindworm isn’t a character in the game, nor is it a setting element or anything else that any one player is responsible. The closest you get is that one player secretly channels the Lindworm during the session, but they are never referred to as actually roleplaying as the monster. There’s some things that shouldn’t be roleplayed as or sympathized with.

At the start of each session, both to set the tone and protect the space, you invite the Lindworm to play. I wanted the sense that the Lindworm was an actual creature that hovers over the game itself, but also by inviting it you’re able to ensure the safety of the space, because it’s not actually there. Over the course of the game, the Lindworm’s channeler makes secret decisions for it, playing cards from a deck to determine how everyone (themself included) are in danger.

The Lindworm acts callously, infallibly, and unrelatably – it will casually murder important characters and destroy everything the players have built. The horror of the Lindworm comes from knowing that its actions can happen to anyone, but due to the way Belonging Outside Belonging works as a system, the Lindworm is always invited to act upon the group, and the group as a whole interprets the Lindworm. As a collaborative horror game, the fear comes from a collective desire to be afraid and to build horror together, inviting the Lindworm like a tabletop version of Bloody Mary to play with before putting it back where it began.

A corkboard with tons of playing cards, index cards, and notes on it with string tying the thumbtacks together.

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Awesome! Thank you so much Jay for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Sleepaway on Kickstarter today!

Quick Shot on Tikor & Swordsfall

Content Warning: Since this article was posted, multiple individuals have come forward with statements credibly addressing Swordsfall a.k.a. Brandon Dixon’s abuse of power and violation of consent. With respect to their shared experiences, I am putting a note on this article to ensure that their voices are heard and future readers are aware. Many statements are not public so I’ve only linked to the public statement. Please do not direct any harassment to the survivors who have raised these concerns.

I have a few questions today with Brandon Dixon about Tikor, the Swordsfall RPG Setting book, which has a couple days remaining on Kickstarter! Check out the Kickstarter and the responses below!

The Tikor Kickstarter image with a black warrior person in patterned armor with a large metal weapon on their back. There are two books displayed with world maps on them.

What is Swordsfall’s Tikor, both as a product and as your vision?

Swordsfall is almost like a platform. It encompasses the setting book, “Welcome to Tikor”, a RPG, a comic book and even novels. So it’s truly a world that I can use to do all sorts of creative projects with. As fans start to find favorite characters and place, I want to be able to go to those things and do EVEN more. The setting book is my way of opening the door to that world.

A black warrior person in patterned armor with a large metal weapon on their back. With them is a cheetah with glowing green eyes. At the bottom of the illustration, the Swordsfall logo is in dark purple.

How do you consider Swordsfall and Tikor to be special in their content and design?

Well, no one else is really doing Afrofuturism like I am. It’s why I’m saying its part of the Afropunk sub-genre. It has it’s own style. That punk style. But instead of being anti-capitalism, it’s anti-colonialism. Or really, a world re-imagined where that was never a factor. Then you have the art. T’umo Mere has a style of his own. His art is bold, striking and dripping in real African lore. He’s from Botswana so he’s been happy to dig into his own culture and the ones around him for source material.

A black woman with short hair, makeup, cyberware on her jaw and ear, and antennae is framed like a bust in rich colors.

What were some choices you made in the art and presentation of Swordsfall and Tikor to show the values and style of the setting?

A couple of big things we’re focusing on are color and patterns. African cultures have almost used color to tell a story. You’re never going to a picture where everyone is draped in black. Those colors and what they mean are important, and we’re making sure they’re in Swordsfall. The other big thing in African cultures are patterns. Different cultures had their own symbols and patterns, but almost all had them. And they meant something. It could be mundane, it could be a call to a spirit. But the combination of colors and patterns often told a story. And Tikor will have that as well.

The Tikor Kickstarter image with a black warrior person in patterned armor with a large metal weapon on their back. The Swordsfall logo is prominently displayed.

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Thanks so much to Brandon for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll head over to Tikor’s Kickstarter to check it out today!