Hi all! Today I have an interview with Sarah Rowan about The Watching Book, a project on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2 right now! It seems really interesting and has a really romantic element behind its creation. Check out the interview below!
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What is The Watching Book, both as a product and as your vision?
The Watching Book is a diegetic setting zine told as the journal of oracles. It presents the religion, culture, and rituals of a fictional people through the eyes of the women who guide them. Accompanying the zine is a short paperless, gm-less rpg. In this, players take on the roll of children to enjoy a game of mystery-solving and oral storytelling. Both the game and the zine are in-world artifacts that can be used to enhance a campaign setting or be given directly to players as found items during a game.
This zine is the second foray into the world of Soothsayer, my boardgame from 2019. The project started as a gift for my wife, and consequently the world is built around centering the lives and accomplishments of lgbt characters. By using different viewpoint characters throughout, I also get the chance to examine the ways in which the same ritual can take on different meaning to different people, even within the same group. I really wanted the world built by these games to explore real faith in fantasy by leaving some questions unanswered.
This sounds very cool! What are some of the ways you set boundaries and encourage creativity, either mechanically or otherwise, for players in The Watching Book?
The Watching Book is more of a setting than a game in and of itself. But carrying through from Soothsayer one of my design goals was to make sure to avoid encouraging a “dark” look at the world. The problems faced within the text are natural disasters, disagreements, or mysteries rather than acts of intentional violence or hate. I primed the world to be not a utopia, but a relatively peaceable sort of place where brutal content is very clearly out of place and inappropriate. There are a lot of games and settings where those topics can be explored, but this is not one of them.
As for creativity, I stay away from explicitly answering any of the religious and spiritual questions that exist about the world. Are the spirits actually real? Are they real, but different than how most people interpret them? Readers and players in the setting have room to develop their own opinions and explore beliefs without being handed a yes or no answer within the text.
It’s lovely that this was inspired by your wife. In what other ways than the people is The Watching Book a queer game and product?
I made sure that at every step of the way I tried to include people of different outlooks and communities. Ezra, the artist, describes themself as a Queer Jewitch Farmer. That’s a material way I’m using my work to give back; hiring other LGBT people to work with me.
Additionally I am happy to adopt a policy that’s gaining traction in the ttrpg community; as part of the campaign I have included Community Copies of the zine. These are donated copies from generous people that are available to anyone, no questions asked. In this way I can make my zine a little more accessible to those having a hard time.
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Thanks so much for the interview Sarah! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out The Watching Book on Kickstarter today!