Hi all! Today I have an interview with Nicolas Ronvel, a.k.a. Gulix, creator of Facing the Titan, a game that just successfully funded on Kickstarter! The crowdfund may be passed, but you can still follow the Kickstarter and pick up the game upon release! It has amazing titans and I’m excited to feature some work from the French gaming community! Check out Nicolas’s responses below!
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Tell me a little about Facing the Titan. What excites you about it?
Facing the Titan is a GM-less RPG. It features a group of heroes, the Company, against a gigantic being: the Titan. The Company’s fate is to defeat the Titan, and the goal of the game is to tell that story. But it’s not a tactical game. In Facing the Titan, the Companions will remember the past, share their memories, tell each other their journeys and what they prepare for the grand finale. Then, and only then, they will face the Titan. It’s a lively discussion game.
Facing the Titan is my first “big” game. I wrote several micro-RPG over the past few years. But this one is the first I push to get a full RPG that will get a physical life through a book. It’s a big achievement for me. That’s what excites me.
And I want to see Facing the Titan get its own life. I playtested it while always participating in the game. I want to see actual plays, to read stories from the game. I want to see how people use the game and maybe change it.
Since Facing the Titan isn’t a tactical game, what are the mechanics and gameplay like?
The mechanics of Facing the Titan are based on those from Swords Without Master.
First, there are the Tones. When, during the discussion, you want to be at the center of the attention, you grab the dice (or someone give them to you), and you roll them. During each Phase, one specific Tone is associated with each Dice. For example, in the World Phase, you play with the Tones Ruins (Black Die) and Wonders (White Die). The higher die tells you which Tone to use. And you frame what you say around the Tone. You can use it for the subject you talk about, for the mood of your story, the way you tell. It’s open to interpretation.
If you roll a Double, well, the Titan steps in and you use one of its Tones. And special rules apply.
Then, there are the Motifs. During play, you will record words, expressions, feelings, images other players are saying. And when you got enough Motifs, the current Phase ends and you can get to the next one (there are 5 Phases). The further you get in the game, the more Echoes you will have to write as Motifs. Echoes are Motifs that recall a previous Motifs, while being different. That will bring a common thread in the game, with the end game reflecting ideas and themes seen all through the game.
Those are the Mechanics : Tones and Motifs.
What kind of threats do the Titans pose – what are they like, and how do people feel about them in the fiction?
It depends on the Titan. Each one of them has a different story, a different stature in its Setting. And each one comes with a different Setting.
Generally, they pose a threat by their size. They crush villages, destroy buildings and wanders without even noticing it. But some are evil or malevolent. Some are causing damages knowingly.
The Titans are described briefly, because I wanted to give prompts, ideas. Not fully fledged creatures. So each group, each game will set what is the level of threats the Titan pose. The illustrator was chosen because of this. I didn’t want photorealistic pictures of the Titan. I wanted pictures describing them broadly but leaving a great place for the players imagination. Roger Heal managed to do that with great talent.
What is an average session like, in the rise and fall of play?
First of all, a game of Facing the Titan is not prepared. Of course, you will need at least one person who knows the rules, but that’s all. As with Fiasco, we choose a Playset and go for it. Here, we choose a Titan, the associated Setting, and we go for it.
The first part of the game involves choosing the elements of the setting that you want to use. Then we really start the game.
The first Phase, the Companions Phase, allows us to create the characters, to start discovering them. This Phase is in two parts. We start in a disembodied way, and we tell the story of the successive entrances of our characters into a place that we have just defined. Then we play our characters. They haven’t been together for a long time, and they’re going to discuss the past.
The second Phase moves away from the characters to focus on the Titan. Who is it? What is it? What is it capable of? Through vignettes told like scenes from a movie, we will show it.
The third Phase goes back to the characters and their discussion. Through them, we will share about their travels and talk about the world.
The fourth Phase continues the discussion but changes the subject: what have we prepared to face the Titan?
Finally comes the last Phase of the game, the Clash Phase. In this one, a player will lose his character to play the Titan. Then, like a choreographed duel, the Titan then the Companions then the Titan again then… will take control of the story and narrate the duel. With the objective of making it epic, memorable and giving a beautiful exposure to all the characters.
Finally, the game ends with an Epilogue, where each player can tell what happens to his/her character.
This division into five Phases forces the story told and the scenario that will be created around the table, even if each game will turn out to be different by the choice of the Titan, the Setting and the ideas that the players will bring with them. Each Phase also offers different Tones. The dice roll will determine the tone to be used when speaking, and each Phase will have a very different theme.
What sort of media do you use as reference to help inspire you while designing a game about something fantastical like the Titans?
When I started working on the game, I didn’t have any graphic resources. Just ideas, images. Then as I went along, I accumulated images of gigantic creatures in various monster manuals, on the subreddit /r/ImaginaryBehemoths, in galleries on DeviantArt and ArtStation. I also used landscape images a lot. Nature and its power have inspired me for some of the most raw Titans.
Contrary to what some might think, I didn’t really take inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus. It hangs around in my subconscious, of course, but I had to use at most one fan art of the game in the process of creating of the game. The game was called Facing the Colossus at first. But I didn’t want to mention Shadow of the Colossus too much for the difference in the way the game was played (a group game against a solitaire game, a narrative game against a riddle game).
When I found Roger Heal and started receiving the first drafts of Titans, the game’s different worlds began to take shape. Some Settings have been extensively modified following details of his illustrations. Illustrations that were based on my concepts of Titans. There was a very interesting ping pong on that side.
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Thank you so much to Nicolas for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Facing the Titan on Kickstarter today!