Five or So Questions on Dust Wardens

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Nora Blake on Dust Wardens, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds awesome and promotes a lot of values I appreciate, so I hope you like the responses below!

Tell me a little about Dust Wardens. What excites you about it?

This is a game I’ve been working on in one form or another for almost two years; it’s technically a hack of a game that doesn’t exist (anymore). I think the most pressing influence is Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and the way it talks about bonds between people and places and things (words like karass, wampeter, and granfalloon do not appear in this book, but honestly they might as well!). Those themes have stuck with me for a long time and are really important to me, especially as someone with almost no ties to, for example, blood family. It’s nice to think about my connections to the world and which connections are really mine.

The Dust Wardens Kickstarter image that has brown lettering overrun with various plants, skeletal remains, and bugs saying Dust Wardens.

The game focuses a lot on relationships, and this is mechanized in Vows. How do Vows work and what do they mean to the players?

Essentially, Vows are promises; specifically, they should be “I will” statements that drive you toward action. I’ve seen them end up as anything from things like “when the time comes I will give you my moonlight” to “I’ll always hold the pieces together when you feel broken”. They help to define your relationships through a lens of action and devotion, which are very important to me. I’m the type of girl to make big romantic promises with an inside context only the two of us know.

Polyamory and queerness feature heavily in Dust Wardens. I’d really love to hear more about this! How did you prioritize including it, and how do these elements affect the gameplay?

I talk at length about polyamory and queerness in the text itself, and how pivotal these things are to it. The world of dust wardens is a dangerous one, and humanity exists on the fringes of life on the planet. There is no bastion of “civilization” or state controlling their lives or coming to save them. On a more somber note this is how it can feel sometimes to be a queer trans person in the world doing my best to build my own pockets of community in a wider, more dangerous world. I won’t call it a metaphor, but it’s an applicable framework.

Why did you elect not to use playbooks, and how does this enrich the game for players of different backgrounds?

To be honest I thought about using playbooks a few times in the course of development but I never found any that really felt right. I have no idea how I would sort dust wardens into categories. It’s something I might revisit someday, but as it stands I like that things are more freeform. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be able to make yourself in this game and play the game with someone on a date.

The Dust Wardens cover art by Anna Landin that shows three people, two darker skinned with red and brown hair and one paler with blonde hair, dressed in mostly utilitarian clothing with tattoos and simple jewelry, standing beside a car that's well-worn and has plants growing on it. The ground and asphalt below them is broken and cracked.
Dust Wardens cover art by Anna Landin.

The choice of using cards as a mechanic is really cool! How do the card mechanics differ from traditional PbtA type mechanics, and how do they better support Dust Wardens as a game?

The tools we use in play have an immense impact on tone and impression. I think about the Quiet Year a lot and how the map is such an integral piece of its tone. Originally this game used playing cards, and had a much stronger Americana theming, but as time went on I began to want something better than America. I’m sure part of that is from thinking about hope a lot more these days. A better tomorrow is out there, even if it’s on the other side of an apocalypse. The world of dust wardens isn’t there yet, but it’s on its way.

Thank you so much Nora for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Dust Wardens on Kickstarter today!