It’s been a big week for me – yesterday, the Turn books arrived to ship out to backers after a bundle of effort, and today, I’ve launched Homunculus Assembly Line on Kickstarter, led by John W. Sheldon! John is my business partner at Daedalum AP and also did the art direction and some of the art on Turn, as well as the layout. We’re excited to get this project live and moving!
Homunculus Assembly Line is a really fun experimental zine project focused on RPG art that will include some RPG material written by yours truly and some written by John, and focus on several illustrations by skilled and fantastic artists in the RPG scene including Juan Ochoa, Evlyn Moreau, Sandy Jacobs-Tolle, Thomas Novosel, Alex Mayo, and John himself!
Hi all, today I have an interview with Nick Zachariasen on METAL WORLD! It’s currently on DriveThru! I normally don’t include game pitches here, but the METAL WORLD pitch is so rad, I had to!
METAL WORLD takes the breadth of the heavy metal genre and throws it all into one game world. It doesn’t care how much sense something makes as long as it’s awesome. It has a demon-possessed lawman who rides a rocket-powered robot horse and carries a pair of 666-shooters. It has an undead ship made of the bones, sinews, and skin of the sailors it kills. Hell is a continent you can get guided tours of from the MegaDevil himself. The cherry on top? It has a volcano made of dragons, which shoots lava and more dragons when it erupts. The game system— including character building— are as loose as possible to allow your group to play the way you want.
With that in mind, check out Nick’s responses below! —
Boris Vallejo’s Kalevanpojat.
Tell me a little about METAL WORLD. What excites you about it?
The germ for the idea that became METAL WORLD came about when I looked at the Boris Vallejo painting Kalevanpojat (above). There’s this giant half-man/half-dragon thing posing like he’s trying to impress this only nominally-dressed woman who could not possibly be interested any less. She has an expression as if to say “Yeah, buddy, just get down the mountain, already. Three of whatever you are have passed through in the last half hour. They’re probably at the tavern.” I imagined what kind of world that must be for such a fantastic sight to leave her completely unfazed. Fast forward to after the premiere of Metalocalypse and I finally come up with the vague idea of a world of heavy metal in all its breadth. Of course, a couple weeks later I learn about Brütal Legend, which was sort of what I’d conceived spiritually but for the most part not even close aesthetically, although I did draw some inspiration from it all the same.
METAL WORLD, then, takes every kind of metal— whether basic, “classic” metal like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest or just about any subgenre you can think of like doom, black, pirate, or whatever— and throws it all into a blender so that you can have situations like a barbarian riding a nightmare steed charge a tank crewed by cyborgs and actually have a chance at winning! It’s everything Ronnie James Dio ever sang about. It’s anything you might see in a Dethklok video. It’s everything power metal sings about, with valiant heroes, fire, dragons, The Gods™, and all that. In short, METAL WORLD tries to bring everything awesome into one place without regard to piddly details like “Wait a minute, how does a region with this ecology sustain a tribe of human-hunting giants? They’d strip the population bare in months and then have no food source!”
METAL WORLD ignores pesky things like so-called “continuity” or “travel time” unless it’s important for the overall story you’re telling with your group, and I think that’s what excites me most about METAL WORLD. I’m not aware of anything quite like it, where any play style your group could want is not just possible but encouraged so long as everyone’s on board, and the game actually mechanically encourages it with a rule set that’s just vague enough to be accommodating but specific enough to be playable while also having fun with its readers to keep from taking itself too seriously.
What are the mechanics of METAL WORLD like and how do they relate to the theme?
The mechanics try to be simple and stripped-down. You have five main stats, each named for a subgenre of heavy metal: Death (your health), Power (strength and “persuasion”), Prog (intelligence, perceptiveness, and actual persuasion), Speed (agility, reflexes, and overall coordination), and Thrash (combat ability). I kept it that simple because A) it keeps creation easy and B) on the eventual character sheet I can put each one at the point of a pentagram.
The design philosophy is that instead of worrying about how far you can move in a round, exactly how long a round is, and that sort of thing you see some other games get bogged down with, METAL WORLD tries to focus in the in-game exploits of the characters and what they bring about in the world around them. It didn’t grow out of a wargame and god-of-your-choice help me if it grows into one. METAL WORLD’s main concern is giving people a setting that facilitates telling an interactive story with evocative imagery. That’s one reason I don’t have classes; they pigeon-hole characters into a predefined type without allowing for a player’s creativity to show through.
You can have a band (METAL WORLD’s term for an adventuring party) containing traditional sword-and-sorcery fantasy characters like elves, humans, dwarves, and so forth alongside robots, cyborgs, Atlanteans, and METAL WORLD’s gnomes, which are a race of mad geneticists called ge-nomes— essentially, they’re a race of Bioshock-style Splicers. The environment contains everything from fantasy’s quasi-medieval environment to near-ish future tech and references galore to metal, its inspirations, and occasional random other things. You need complete freedom to be able to have that kind of spread in characters and environment, so METAL WORLD focuses a lot on group consensus as to the tone of the game, which means the Metal Lord (the GM) has very wide latitude of what to allow or to rein in if it proves unbalancing.
Another important thing I think bears mentioning about that latitude is that the guiding metric of METAL WORLD is “as ______ as it needs to be.” Because everything worries more about the story than thinking about ensuring you have enough provisions for the trip or how much you can carry, let’s say an invading army approaches. Your story is about the epic battle that ensues like the battle of Helm’s Deep, so the band and NPCs have plenty of time to prepare defenses and have a grand old siege ahead of them. Now say you have a story in mind where the focus is more on evacuating those who can’t fight and making a stand to buy time. That same army leaving from the same place will take less time to get to the same destination. In METAL WORLD, space actually dilates or contracts depending on the needs of the narrative, though no character is ever aware of this— it’s just a cognitive blind spot created by reality itself. Similarly, a character can carry as much as (s)he reasonably could.
Then you also have Metal points, which reflect the favor of The Gods™ like Fate Points in d6 Star Wars or bennies in Savage Worlds. They serve two purposes. First, they fuel magic use for those who know how to do that that as well as other effects, like maybe the powers of a magical item. More generally, though, they serve to allow characters to (usually) unconsciously generate special game effects depending on what they want to accomplish. You get them by doing particularly impressive things or just because the Metal Lord feels like it.
What kind of player characters exist in the game, and what are they like?
As I said before, you can make pretty much anything you can think of within reason and even perhaps a bit beyond. Your band can have an axe-wielding barbarian who rides a nightmare steed, a mad scientist who raises and otherwise experiments on the dead, a lizard man martial artist, a shroom-addled shaman who drives a wicked van with amazing scenery painted on its side, and a dwarf who’s replaced both of his hands with chainsaws. Mind you, all of these are among the sample characters I’ve created— the dwarf is named Angus Mac Chainsaw Hands. You truly are bounded only by your imagination and what the Metal Lord will allow. I haven’t statted minotaurs for use as PCs, for example, but if you want to play one, work with your group’s Metal Lord and figure out how to run one so it’s balanced with the rest of your group’s characters. Maybe you want to play something I haven’t even provided for yet at all. Make it up and work it out! Again, I want people to be able to create the most awesome things they can imagine so everyone can have fun with it.
How do you handle topics like violence, sexual content, and so on in a game themed so wildly and intensely?
bviously, violence is going to be present given that heavy metal isn’t exactly known for diplomacy over tea and crumpets. I mean, Hell is a continent you can physically go to and get a guided tour of, possibly by the MegaDevil himself. As far as sexual content, I do make a note about that in the introduction when I mention the traditional scantily-clad women you’d see in the artwork of Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell, and other fantasy staples who inspired much of METAL WORLD’s aesthetic. I tell people to play it up to their group’s taste. This game tries to encompass the breadth of metal in its entirety. Some of that will involve mature-audience content and if you end up playing those kind of things up to the point where they become ridiculous, that’s totally fine if you’re enjoying yourselves.
As you say, METAL WORLD is indeed wild and intense and I feel the form that takes should be subjective, determined by what you want out of it. It’s like how if you’re listening to metal and you want something dark and brooding you listen to doom metal while if you want something that fills you with a sort of positive energy, you’d listen to power metal. It’s clay in your hands. If you want to make that clay look like something you might not want your parents to see, what’s important is that it’s what you want, not what somebody else wants. When you get right down to it, that’s one of the classic themes of metal as a genre.
What is one of your favorite moments from playtesting or designing METAL WORLD so far, and why?
I honestly haven’t gotten to playtest METAL WORLD nearly as much as I’d like. I mean, having to work a full-time job will necessarily do that, especially when you have a family. That’s why I hope people run through some sessions on their own (via downloading METAL WORLD: The Rough Cut) and give me feedback so I know what makes sense to people who don’t already know what it’s supposed to mean.
That said, I guess I have a few— deviating from your question just a bit— favorite design moments. The first is when I was writing about skills. I mentioned meteorology and added a footnote (the work as a whole is peppered with them throughout as asides, whether for comedy or to clarify without disrupting flow) that the Meteorology skill also teaches you about space because that’s where meteors are. This game is at least 20% puns and that’s probably my worst/best. The one with the best result as far as the overall work is how I added a chapter between the world (the fourth) and the creatures (then the fifth) so that I could have Chapter 666: The Number of the Bestiary. That chapter lists some adventure hooks and an example of play, which I think it really needed. I think the ge-nomes are one of my most clever ideas, having come to me as one of those thoughts that pops into your head about 15 seconds or so after your head hits your pillow at night.
That said, though, I am aware of a moment from a friend of mine running a playtest session. Someone commented that METAL WORLD “reads like it was written by a madman with a law degree.” I don’t know what this person’s clue was, but apparently it caused “tear-inducing laughter” when my friend informed this person that it reads that way because it was written by a madman with a law degree!
Tell me a little about Dinosaur Princesses. What excites you about it? Dana: What is there not to be excited about? First, Dinosaur Princesses is also a colouring book—actually colouring and drawing is one of the most important parts of gameplay, in my opinion. One of the first things you do is draw and/or colour your dinosaur princess. As part of that, what I think is really great about the game is that it taps into the limitless and boundless imagination that we had a kids. The colouring and drawing parts are great at breaking down barriers that we often have as adults which tell us to reign in our creativity to make it fit within certain perimeters of consistency and probability; it gives permission to just have fun. It is meant to be able to be played by kids, but I think it really shines when adults play it.
Dinosaur Princesses is also very friendly to folx who are completely new to table-top RPGs. When I have run it, I have often had a high percentage of folx who have never played a ttrpg before. The system is very rules-lite, so players have very little stress worrying about system mastery. It’s also so fun and easy to run that it acted as a gateway to get me to finally get over my extreme social anxiety and be able to run the game myself!
Finally, I think of it as a queer game. Princesses are explicitly stated to be of any gender. “Dinosaur” is also a pretty open descriptor; you can be a t-rex or velociraptor, but your dinosaur can also be a cat or train. It’s subtly stating that what we see as rigid boxes, descriptors, or roles are actually malleable and able to be questioned. One can take those boxes and, if they want, subvert them to express other identities—and that is totally an acceptable and good thing to do. It’s a freeing experience.
What were the inspirations for Dinosaur Princesses, and how did you come to the point of making a game plus coloring book from those inspirations?
Hamish: The main inspiration for Dinosaur Princesses are the kids of a couple of my best friends in New Zealand. At the time, their favourite things were Dinosaurs and Princesses, and my friends were joking about finding a game they would both like. I said I’d write it and a few months later they playtested the first version! They were 4 & 6 at the time, so that’ll probably be my youngest playtesters for a long time! Beyond the origin story, I had a lot of discussions with those same friends about the kind of things that the game could do that other games don’t. The idea of the central mechanics being cooperation and problem solving came out of those discussions.
(Following on from Dana’s comment about it being a queer game) One of the fundamental design principles is that the rules should provide enough structure to help children tell stories that feel like an after school cartoon–with all weird and wonderful characters that involves!–and that, within the confines of a game about cooperative problem solving, the rules should never block them from imagining who they wanted to be while they play. I didn’t want an 8 year old telling their younger sibling that they couldn’t play a cat or a dragon or whatever because it’s “against the rules.”
Dana: I can tell the story about how it became a colouring book! Hamish was already working on it, but I didn’t know much about it at the time. We were in a small bar in Wellington, NZ a couple years back and he was telling a friend about the game. He said he wanted the rules book to look like a kids book and that he was also thinking of the character sheets as something for people to draw and colour on. I made the logical leap and (probably) shouted, “THE RULES BOOK SHOULD *BE* A COLOURING BOOK!!!!!!”. I guess that was my first touch on the game. I didn’t really start working on it actively until earlier this year.
What are the mechanics like in the game, and how do players interact with each other and the world?
Hamish: Dinosaur Princesses uses an opposed dice pool mechanic which is set up so that if a Dinosaur Princess tries to do something on their own, the odds are against them. After they assemble their dice pool, they ask their friends, the other Dinosaur Princesses, the most important question in the game, “Will you help me?” Then their friends build dice pools and hopefully overcome the problem together! Dinosaur Princesses has a GM who rolls the opposing dice pool, but it’s a very low-prep role that brings in a lot of the Powered by the Apocalypse ethos of encouraging player participation in worldbuilding and player-driven narratives. The players come up with the story together at the table.
[Brie Note: The collaboration encouragement here is SO GREAT.]
How do players choose their Dinosaur Princess, and what do they use to assemble their dice pool?
Dana: Players have a character sheet, some of which of have colouring-book style line art of typical dinos (t-rex, triceratops, etc) and some of which have the picture space blanks so folx can draw their own. Players decide on what type of dinosaur they will be—there is an example list in case someone has a hard time coming up with one. However, it’s important to note that we use “dinosaur” in a loose sort of way; I have played a cat and platypus “dinosaur”! Similarly, players then choose what type of princess they will be. This can be any sort of profession-like thing, such as doctor, aquanaut, news caster, and so forth.
They assemble their dice pool by describing how they use their strengths as a dinosaur and as a princess to help their friends. The mechanic is set up so that if a Dinosaur Princess tries to do something on their own, the odds are against them. It’s important that the player starting dice pool asks their friends, the other Dinosaur Princesses, the most important question in the game, “Will you help me?”
Hamish: There are sample lists of types of dinosaurs and princesses in the book and on the character sheets, but they’re supposed to be inspirational, not restrictive. Players are encouraged to be as inventive and imaginative as they like in choosing who they will play.
What kind of stories do you tell in Dinosaur Princesses? How do you keep it interesting?
Dana: The sorts of stories being told in the game are as unique as the Dinosaur Princesses that the players create at the table. The world-building and story plot directly grows from that foundation. I have had games where the plot revolved around the Dinosaur Princesses trying to find their Houses & Humans game miniatures, and I have had games where the Dinosaur Princesses rode around town on the monorailasaurus to try to uncover the mystery of the queen’s roving teapot. I have had games that took place in an abandoned mall and ones that took place in space. It really is a game where everyone’s boundless imagination shapes play! Hamish: Dinosaur Princesses is designed to be played as a one shot, it takes about 2 hours to play a game, and it draws on the creativity of everyone at the table; so it spreads the cognitive load of coming up with new stuff and people can usually keep the ideas coming over the short length of play.
Leading with Class, in case you don’t know (most people don’t!), is my YouTube show where I teach about leadership using roleplaying games. It’s the dream job I made real for myself through a lot of hard work and the support of my loving, and incredibly talented, partner John. It also still doesn’t feel much like a dream come true, because it comes with some overwhelming “but”‘s.
I get to teach leadership…but it’s not in a respected role. I get to teach using games…but it’s not seen as “fun.” I get to work from home…but I can’t pay my bills. I get to work with my partner…but he doesn’t get paid any better than I do. I get to share my vision with the world…but almost no one watches my channel.
In 2014, I made the decision to continue my pursuit of an education and get my degree in organizational leadership. From there, I continued on to graduate school and got a degree in leadership – and over that two year period, experienced continued health and career setbacks that left me unemployed at graduation. My job became Thoughty – and Thoughty is still my actual primary income. All $300-ish a month, maybe. I have ten years of career experience that the lessons learned can apply to my work in leadership, but no one wants someone who was mostly an admin in a position of leadership, and my health disallows a full time job.
So, whatever, fine, I said. I’ll make my job. With John’s encouragement (and from my other partner, Dillon), I started working on scripts for Leading with Class. Even now, it feels endlessly selfish, and working on Leading with Class instead of trying to dig through thousands of jobs to find at least one that pays $15/hr. and only requires 25 hours a week felt irresponsible. But I did it while still doing freelance work (as I am now) and Thoughty, and it was so wonderful to make something that meant so much to me!
What was less wonderful was the lack of feedback and viewership. I am incredibly grateful for the Leading with Class patrons on Patreon – honestly, it means the world to me that anyone would support this work. But it’s still extremely quiet. On all of our videos combined – all of them – we have fewer than 350 views. I’ve shared on LinkedIn, Facebook, G+, Twitter, Mastadon, and Instagram, and of course, they’re on YouTube. I’ve done streams on Twitch to garner interest, answering questions and writing the script live to engage viewers.
We have three comments on all of our YouTube videos combined.
Now, we’re lucky enough to have followers and subscribers on our variousmediaaccounts! There’s just really low engagement. I know we’re kind of a niche interest, but I’ve only ever seen (personally) fewer than 5 total shares of Leading with Class content outside of my own personal shares, John’s shares, and the dedicated shares of some of my close friends on G+. Most shares aren’t accompanied by any positive recommendation, either.
And you know, yes, this does sound like whining. But as a creator, as a person who struggles with impostor syndrome and serious anxiety and depression, and as a person, I think it’s essential that my viewers and readers know me as a real person, and that they know the truth. The truth is, creating the thing that means the world to me, living the “dream” like I am, is heavily dented by struggling to make it through financially every day and hearing basically silence when it comes to my work.
I am used to silence when it comes to my work. People don’t link and share my site(s) or my work very often, and this has been notoriously challenging for me. I struggle with professional envy, seeing others get praised while I can barely get a retweet at times. But I thought, with Leading with Class it will be different! Even if it makes no money, even if it gets no press, I’ll be making something meaningful. I’ll be using my degree to do what I wanted the most!
But if a YouTuber makes an amazing video and no one watches it, does it functionally exist at all?
When one of my key purposes with Leading with Class is to educate, and there are no new viewers, who is really learning? If one of the necessary aspects of so-called “edutainment” is that it is spread broadly and enjoyed by an audience, have I created anything really at all? Did I get hit on the head by a backdrop while recovering from a brain injury and struggle to put words together to make episodes and even my best friends, people I respect and admire, haven’t watched a single episode?
This is the episode where we stopped using the backdrop because it fell on my head. Such a headache!
And I suppose it does often just burn me that John puts in so much work to make these episodes look beautiful, to make me look and sound competent, even through brain injury problems, and yet as of this writing, only 22 people saw our latest video? The lovely work he did? That makes me so sad! I feel I’m wasting his time. This thing that is meaningful to both of us feels injured by the quiet, by the feeling that we are working so hard, this is so good, it means so much, it should go far and silence.
I do try to bolster with every like our videos and posts get, and absolutely I could be posting more often. But the hype machine only does so much when no one else turns the gears.
And I don’t want people to think I hate making the videos or I don’t think they matter. I do think they matter, and I love them, and love creating them! I had to take a hiatus in July because my recovery from my brain injury (sustained last November) was taking a long time and writing and filming while trying to also do freelance work and get through recovery was just not working. I struggled so much, and I cried so hard about taking a hiatus! It would doom the show, I knew it, and what if we could never start back to it?
But we did, even though I’m still in recovery. Even though the cats insist on interrupting our shoots.
And I’m spurred, truly, to keep working on the project. I want to take it further – I mapped out a second series, and a mini-episode series. I’m even getting the chance to do my first workshop at Big Bad Con – one huge part of Leading with Class that hasn’t progressed far yet, but would mean the world to me to make bigger and broader. This ismy dream.
I am a game designer, and love designing games – I want to keep doing that. And Thoughty is still important to me! But Leading with Class is a dream that I feel could make a difference! If it could just… grow. I know I need to work harder, I always do, but I have always worked best with the enthusiasm of others encouraging my progress, and John cannot carry all of that weight. He isn’t my audience.
I suppose, what I’m trying to say is, it is very hard to do the thing you love and feel unfulfilled by it. The perils of relying on others! But we are, as they say, a community, so I think a lot of people could understand what I’m feeling here, so I felt like I needed to finally speak these words clearly, so you don’t feel alone and so you don’t feel like your work is meaningless. Leading with Class isn’t meaningless, and your work that feels like it’s floundering has meaning, too.
So what the heck am I gonna do about this?
First, I’m going to keep writing scripts, filming, hopefully streaming, and doing workshops. I’m going to finish the first season of the show with the full twelve episodes, no matter what.
Second, I’m going to try to do better about promoting the show and increase my social media presence, as hard as that can be.
Third, I’m going to continue to be honest in how I approach this work and my purposes with Leading with Class. I’m never going to bullshit you about the work I’m doing, and I will continue to be transparent.
And fourth, finally, I’m going to be grateful for those of you who are here, who do support me and Leading with Class, and try to keep that in mind when the gremlins come to fight in my mind. I can’t let them win. I’m the winner here!
Thank you for reading, for watching, and for every moment of your being. The world is a better place because of you, even when you think it’s not. And hey. Come join me — in Leading with Class. <3
*For those curious about the time John and I spend on a given episode, here’s a breakdown.
Brie’s time investment per episode ~10 hours research ~5 hours script writing ~1 hours rehearsal ~3 hours filming = ~19 hours
John’s time investment per episode ~1 hour research support ~1 hour script review ~1 hour rehearsal ~3 hour filming ~5 hour editing ~3 hour graphics and animation = ~14
Total investment = ~33 hours per episode. The Patreon currently sits at $28/episode.
We aren’t stopping, though. 🙂
—
Check out Leading with Class on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. For questions about the show, email leadingwithclass@gmail.com.
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
This is my favorite of the images that Luka sent me for the post. It just punched into my heart somehow.
Tell me a little about the UVG. What excites you about it?
It says on the tin: an rpg sandbox inspired by psychedelic heavy metal, the Dying Earth genre, and Oregon Trail games.
But let’s break that down a bit.
You know Shelly’s Ozymandias, right? That sense of awe at a deep, vast time.
Then you’ve got the journeys of Odysseus or Xuanzang. That sense of wonder at an epic, vast space.
It’s all captured right there, in The Hobbit. The journey there and back again, through the bones of fallen civilizations. That stuff is exciting as all get out. Put on some slow, heavy music, crack open one of those stories, and you’re transported.
When I got into D&D – this fantasy that promises infinite worlds beyond time – I wanted that. I wanted wonder and awe. Instead, I got hexcrawls. Six mile hexes. Imagine running a hexcrawl of the Santiago de Compostella, say the Camino del Norte. That’s 800 km, or about 80 of those damned hexes. I tried to make something epic, but instead I got a slog.
So, I started tinkering with the format, with the goal of making these massive, awesome journeys feasible within my favorite role-playing game. At the completely mechanical level, I mixed a pointcrawl with the Oregon Trail to create tools a referee and players can use to experience of exploration and alien environments. So, you could say, it’s a caravan simulator.
Rules-wise it’s simple enough – I built on a stripped-down 5E D&D chassis, because that’s what I like, and it can slot into pretty much any D&D adjacent game with ease.
Content-wise, it’s now 80% done at a wee bit over 50k words and 25 major locations that take a caravan across six timezones on a three-month journey into a vast land of wizard cats, body-hopping spirits, multi-bodied abmortals, biomechanical monsters, mountains of bone, floating islands, crystal intelligences, and possibly the end of the world.
That was a little bit about the UVG, as for what excites me: I get to draw and paint and write and share this world of limitless possibility inspired by my favorite pastimes – and here’s the best part – over a hundred people care enough that they put down actual money where their likes are. This is intensely affirming for me as an artist.
I mean, come on – I write a world that is a literal rainbow of different colored lands, where shamans ride into the sky on chariots of fire from the tops of neon ziggurats and gunslingers possess their enemies with the bullets they shoot. It’s mad, and metal, and colorful. m/
The UVG cover update. I love the vivid brights against the darkness.
The setting looks truly psychedelic! When you’re putting the setting, art, and mechanics together, what about that colorful vibe is most important to the stories told in UVG?
I assume you’re asking, which is the most important to the stories that come out of the game – the setting, the art, or the mechanics?
First let’s clear up element zero: the players (and I always count the referee as a player unless otherwise specified) should not be assholes (is that getting beeped out?).
The referee, especially, shouldn’t be adversarial or invested in a given story or outcome. Their role isn’t to defeat the heroes, or tell the story of their own world, but to facilitate a weird and wonderful trip for the whole group (and yes, the acid pun is on purpose). Of course, dice and danger should slaughter individual characters mercilessly, but the referee should be impartial and all the random tables are there to also ensure the referee is unknowing – an unreliable guide, who simply doesn’t know in advance what is around the next hill.
Ok, but beyond that – it’s definitely art first, setting second, mechanics third. We’re human – visual monkeys – so a picture, whether painted in words or ink, is what grabs us.
Yes, you have giant walking beasts, yes, you have biomechanical horrors, yes, you have radiation ghosts. The art draws the players in and encourages them to imagine stuff that’s vivid and weird.
The setting itself is a layer cake of kitchen sinks, kitsch, cultural references, and random tables. That’s to drive home the high weirdness and possibilities — it’s not just about 14 types of polearm, but about roleplaying a wizard polymorphed into a lettuce being attacked by a dappled bunny rabbit (true rp story).
The last part are the mechanics. Frankly, the precise numbers are never all that important in a role-playing game — yes, a certain granularity and level of detail is fun. Having a +2 bonus or a +5 bonus feels different. But at the end of the day, dice, tables, and random effects are there to remove predictability (I’m repeating myself).
So, what do the mechanics do in the UVG? They make long overland voyages reasonably playable and work to remind the players that their little caravan is alone in a vast, mind-boggling, huge realm … and that when things go wrong, they will have to eat their pack animals and leave their loot behind.
This is fascinating!
How did you develop the setting? Did you use media references, have you cycled through ideas? I’m curious about your process!
For years now I’ve been moving away from the idea of the referee as some all-knowing ‘world master’ or ‘game master’ who controls the game world.
The UVG started life as a remote and inaccessible region in a campaign I ran and co-created with a group of players, the Golden Goats, over a couple of years. That game ran entirely in the Rainbowlands, which became the ‘civilized’ launching point for the journey into the UVG.
We built the Rainbowlands collaboratively, with me as referee challenging my players to build it fast and loose at our first session, and then we progressively fleshed it out as new elements became relevant.
Please, don’t imagine this involved the writing of any kind of game fiction or prep outside of the session. We got together, unfurled a sheet of paper, scrawled on it with pencils, dribbled cheese and grease on it as we ate, and stuck post-its on the edges once we ran out of space. This became a living, and loose, document of the world.
After I moved away that campaign ended and I started up my patreon page to encourage myself to draw and write (that motivation and people voting with their wallets thing again). I flailed around for several months, before I figured out how to mix writing and art in a single package, and then … I held a vote.
I presented three or four options — existing worlds or mini-settings I had ready to write. The patrons chose the UVG and so the UVG it was. Patron preference substituted for a die roll to determine which world I fleshed out.
It turned out to be the best possible choice. Obviously I enjoyed and knew the world and it reminded me of fun times, but it was an especially good challenge, because the seed of the world was not just my imagination, but the collective creativity of a group of people who became friends through role-play.
For example, the sandbox starts with the magical mind-controlling cats in the Violet City. Trust me, that was not something I would have used without improv world-building!
As to my day-to-day creative process; well, it’s pretty simple. I get up in the morning, open up a word processor and write.
Of course, I slide back and forth through the text, revise and edit, but it’s essentially just me and the keyboard. I don’t refer to specific media or prior art (aside from what marinates in my head), but I do often refer to references on geology, biology, and other sciences, to harvest real-world, tactile details. It sounds better to say a portal is made of flaking schist, and sometimes you’ll play with a geologist, and they’ll take advantage of the effect of schistosity on rock masses in support columns.
The other thing that has a pretty large influence is some of the music I listen to. Genres and subgenres like psychedelia, space rock, stoner rock, and doom metal. I wrap all this up and call it “psychedelic metal”, to the dismay of some heavy metal music conservatives. I rarely refer to songs or albums directly, but I try to evoke the mood and feel of these genres — summed up perfectly by that chorus line from Truckin’ by the Grateful Dead
“Lately it occurs to me What a long strange trip it’s been.”
As for the art, well, sometimes a scene comes before the text, sometimes after. Usually after. And yes, I’m inspired by my favorite artists: Moebius, Frazetta, Corbusier, Pratt … well, another long story. Let’s say I’ll make a post on artists and music I connect with the UVG at some point. After another strange journey.
The bright yellow here just really grabbed my eye. I love the details and the rough edges!
How did you make UVG look so intense? What techniques did you use?
You mean the art? I use a mix of digital and traditional media — no surprises there, since every piece has to pass through processing before going into layout.
Most of the pieces starts as a blue pencil or graphite sketch, followed by inking. For inking I use a whole series of tools, depending on my mood and the mood I’m going for with the piece. Pens, gel pens, felt nib pens, markers, brush pens, and various regular brushes.
The contrasts are key here, between white space and figure, between thin lines and thick lines, between detail and emptiness, between light and dark. That’s all intensity is, really – contrast dialed up.
After I have the piece inked I ‘digitize’ it — which is a fancy way of saying I take a photo or a scan, bring it into Affinity Photo or Photoshop and roughly clean it up – remove vignettes, even out the lighting, drop all the colors, and ramp up the contrast to get rid of the pencils (more or less).
For the digital colors, I try to stay with the hand-drawn mood of my lines – so rough brushes, fast strokes, limited palette, stark contrasts. It’s a bit different when I work with water colors, poster colors, or colored inks – since I do the coloring at the same time as the inking. But, that’s about all there is to it.
don’t go for polished linework and perfect lines — I’ve become bored with the hyper-polished art styles that are so prevalent in fantasy and comics these days (gradient fills are something I particularly detest). I want it to keep that hand-drawn feel.
As for … how to get the artwork looking intense? You think it’s intense? I keep thinking it’s not there yet – I want it starker and better, but I estimate I’ve another 3–4 years of practice ahead of me before I reach the precise mood and style I want these days.
I find this exceptionally pretty because it reminds me of the desert, one of my favorite places in the world. The colors and style are very evocative!
What would you like to try on your next project, keeping in mind your experiences on UVG? What have you learned from it?
The next project? Or projects?
Overall, I’ve learned I need to be more uncompromising. I need to be tighter with my writing, more minimalist with my rules, richer with my content, less restrained with my art.
I’m going to try harder to explode the idea of pre-built, whole, unbreakable, static units: the setting, the character. I see this dominant approach in rpgs of all colors that tries to overdetermine every single aspect of every character and setting.
Characters and settings are built up, layer by layer, into these lovingly crafted, optimized, perfect bundles projecting the hopes and dreams of their players. But when I look at the great stories, from the Mahabharata to the Forever War, success is followed by failure, loss is the seed of victory. The arcs are dialectical, and sustain a creative tension.
Many of the players I game with love to test both their worlds and their characters to the breaking point and beyond. That moment, when a hero dives into the gullet of a leviathan with nothing but a sword, ready to die – that is epic right there. The player should be rewarded! Instead, the whole table groans. If he dies, they’re going to have to wait thirty minutes (or more!) for the player to build a new character.
At my game table, there is no wait. The building of the new character is a game – often collective – with input from all the players, and a lot of random rolls, long odds and weird effects. I want to bring that to other tables, other referees, other players. The deaths and failures of characters, villages, kingdoms, worlds, should be opportunities for fun, weird games.
So … I guess that’s the thread running through the Necropolis (working project title), the Voyages of the Black Obelisk (working project title), and Sixty-Six Heroes (working project title): life out of death.
Huh. That’s a simpler theme than I expected when I started writing this answer.
This is my second favorite of the images Luka shared – the calm, muted landscape with the bright, vivid rainbow is a great juxtaposition.
Choose Your Own: Sci-Fi Stock Art is a project that lets creators mix and match sci-fi stock art to create instant masterpieces for their tabletop roleplaying game.
I love the “choose your own…” style of the art for the Kickstarter and all – I was a big fan of such books growing up.
What is Choose Your Own: Sci-Fi Stock Art, both as a product and as your vision?
As a product, it is hundreds of individual sci-fi art assets that can be mixed, flipped, rearranged and more to create custom images for roleplaying games.
As my vision, it is a continued effort to help independent RPG publishers bridge the gap between pure commissioned art and stock art. It’s my way of giving back to a community that has given so much to me.
How did you develop and decide on the various art assets that you’ve put together for the purposes of the Kickstarter?
I will be using a mix of existing assets as well as creating all new illustrations from ideas that backers submit. I’ll read through the pool of ideas and take those that inspire me. It’s going to be exciting because it will be the first time in a long time that I get to create a bunch of art based purely on inspiration instead of assigned ideas. It’s also really cool because I can have ideas that I think are good, but then I get submissions and it will blow my mind that I get paid to illustrate ideas like that.
A collection of covers.
What has been the best part of running the Kickstarter, and what have you learned for future projects? The best part? Without a doubt, hands down, absolutely, it has been the response from the independent publishing community. I couldn’t ask for better support from the RPG community. The gratitude they express for creating this project is unparalleled. Every day for probably the first week, I’d have another voluntary offer to include their product as a reward for backing my project.
The amount of complimentary awards is so high that it is actually MORE than the value of my Kickstarter pledge levels!
I have learned, by accident, the value of symbiotic relationship in the RPG community. I began creating custom stock art as a way to express my thanks for publishers who have given me the best hobby ever. That act began friendships. I don’t have to try to sell a product to any of them. I just create something that my friends benefit from. Connecting through the shared experience of roleplaying games is what we should all strive for.
Tell me a little about Yarnia. What excites you about it?
Yarnia is a quiet little land that has a habit of being invaded by monsters. Eons ago the rulers of Yarnia set up a summoning system to bring in heroes from different worlds to aid them in their constant quest to repel the wool-thieving monsters. Part of what makes this so fun is that it’s a system that allows players to bring their RPG characters into Yarnia or roll an entirely new character for the quest.
A lovely cowl & a creative designer!
How did you come up with the idea for Welcome to Yarnia and start integrating the knitting aspect into play?
Yarn Quest – Heroes to Yarnia is an RPG knitting pattern that I designed to make a randomly generated pattern. We’ve done quite a few Yarn Quests now, and I wanted a pattern that would allow me to teach people how to double knit, along with introduce new gamers to RPG-style gaming. Welcome to Yarnia is designed as a sort of Introduction to the world of Yarnia. It also offers a gateway between the knitting and gaming communities, allowing members to cross over and bring new ideas to both communities.
What are some of the types of patterns players will encounter during their Yarn Quest?
There is a combination of geometric patterns and pixel monsters. I try and model my art after a lot of the classic RPGs like Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior while putting my own spin on it.
Gorgeous wings pattern.
How do the roleplaying and storytelling mechanics function in the game?
The game is heavily based on storytelling as there’s no way to shift the full story on the fly like a traditional RPG. Your role as the player character is to make choices as you progress through the story, and the dice are the main tool you’ll use to determine what charts you’ll knit. As the quests are designed to be played solo or in a group they are often set up as almost a choose your own adventure. At the base of it I believe that RPG’s are a very extensive form of a choose your own adventure.
What makes knitting work with the roleplaying so well, and provide a rich framework for storytelling?
There is a large community of geeks who are also knitters, and knitterly folks love to try out new things. There are so many different stories to tell through the RPG format, and each person’s adventure is going to be different. Overall, it’s fun to experience new things, and Yarn Quest is different from any knitting pattern. The ability to record your character’s journey through a project that is almost a tapestry is a fun and unique method of knitting a pattern.
This black and white shawl with the bird pattern is so beautiful.
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Thank you so much Tania for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading and that you’ll check out the Yarnia Kickstarter today! Make sure to share the post with all of your friends, knitters and gamers alike!
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I recently found an Instagram account called @vintagerpg, thanks to being tagged in by John. I was immediately enthused by it, excited to see all of the different games showcased there. There’s not a lot of interestingly showcased and easily accessible game material history/curation, and the creator, Stu Horvath, shares a lot of great information about the games shown on Vintage RPG. Stu was willing to answer a few questions of mine – check them out!
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What inspired you to start your Instagram? What makes you excited to post?
My friend Ken (@zombiegentleman on Instagram) prodded me to start @VintageRPG. Over the last couple years, my collection went from respectable to Serious and, coupled with the fact that my brain somehow got packed with RPG history, it just seemed like a no-brainer to find a way to share it. Instagram seemed like the place to do that.
The excitement, that’s changed and evolved a bit over the course of the feed’s (shockingly short) existence. I’ve written about tabletop RPGs in the course of my career, so at the start it was mostly just an extension of that, maybe in the service of some nebulous larger project. A lot of the early entries seem like notes for a book, or something along those lines. Still do, I guess. As the feed drew more and more followers (it blows my mind that so many people are following me – I truly expected a couple hundred folks and for the whole thing to fizzle after a few months), I’d be lying if I said that watching the Likes accrue didn’t give my lizard brain some primitive satisfaction.
I spend a few happy minutes every day rooting for new posts to break my top ten most liked. Lately, though, I’ve been enjoying puzzling out what folks will respond to and it is always a surprise. I run a criticism site called Unwinnable and we long ago closed the comments sections because they were so toxic. The experience with @VintageRPG has been the complete opposite: almost entirely positive, an outpouring of enthusiasm and personal stories. When communication works on social media, its a hell of a drug.
How do you curate the games, and where do you find backup information for them?
Curation is improvisational. A lot of it comes down to my whims – what I feel like photographing and writing about on a given week. A lot of it is context. I try to not do too much of any one thing in consecutive weeks. If I’m bored, I’ll do something from totally left field, like covers of fiction books that inspired games. A lot of it is just plain editorial instinct, too. I try to work four to five weeks ahead to give myself some ability to address what I think my followers want to see. Big name games, like D&D (a mainstay) and some of the big licenses like Star Wars and Middle Earth Roleplaying get a lot of attention and demand a lot of interaction, so I try to cool things down after a big week with more obscure games I am passionately interested in but probably won’t generate a ton of comments, like the modern indie I covered last week.
I’ve been reading, reading about and playing RPGs practically my entire life, so a lot of what I’m writing is stuff I’ve internalized or my critical impressions of art or mechanics or theme or what have you. I have a near complete run of Dragon Magazine that has contributed greatly to my historical knowledge, as has Shannon Applecline’s four-volume history of the industry, Designers & Dungeons. If I’m in a bind, I hit up RPG.net or just reach out to the creator in question – a lot of RPG designers are pretty accessible online these days. If all else fails, I guess – and if I get it wrong, someone who knows better points it out in the comments, which is always pretty great.
What are a few of the coolest things you have discovered while running the account? What’s something that just really blew you away with how unusual or interesting it was?
I am going to answer this two different ways, if you don’t mind.
One of the most surprising things was actually discovered by my pal and DM, @JohnMiserable. We had played through a series of classic modules – Against the Slavers and Against the Giants – and, using Vintage RPG, I publicly guilted him into finishing up the drow modules after a long hiatus. In one session, he noticed something in Bill Willingham’s art for the D&D module D1-2: Descent into the Depths of the Earth and it just blew all our minds.
[The following Instagram embed includes art from the aforementioned module, captioned: OK, check this out – don’t flip to the second image yet. This is an illustration from D1-2 – Descent into the Depths of the Earth by Bill Willingham. I posted it a few weeks back. We’re playing it in a 5E conversion now and our DM, @JohnMiserable, spotted something super cool in there. Can you see it? OK, you can flip to the second image now. Captain America’s shield and Iron Man’s helmet, in a drow chest, decorated with what some might call Spider-Man eyes. What the hell did the drow do to the Avengers?!”]
Second, a few months ago, I scored a copy of something I have been searching for a long time: the 1983 Imperial Toys catalog. I love it because Imperial Toys sold knock-off D&D toys and just, you know, totally ripped off the art for the cover in a way only a Hong Kong toy manufacturer in the 80s could. It is delightful in every singe way. So I love it for that, but I also love it because no else does. Most people probably have no clue this exists or how weird it is. That I was able to find something so disposable as a dime store distribution catalog feels important to me in a way I suspect few people would understand. And that’s OK! That’s why I’m here, doing my thing.
[The following Instagram embed includes images from the 1983 Imperial Toys catalog, including a Pegasus and two-headed dragons, and the caption: “This week, I’m talking about knock-offs. First off: one of the crown jewels of my collection, the 1983 Imperial Toys catalog. I have been looking for this for a very long time and finally scored a near-perfect copy last month. The reason for my desire should be apparent from the cover art, which rips off two things I love in dizzying fashion. First off, don’t those dragons look familiar? That’s because they are crude, modified traces of David C Sutherland III’s art from the Monster Manual. Then there’s the Pegasus/Centurion that seems to want to capitalize on Clash of the Titans. The toy line was called Dragons & Daggers. It was a blatant attempt to capitalize on the popularity of LJN’s Dungeons & Dragons toys (right down to the sliding puzzles), aimed at the five & dime market. I got the two-headed dragon at my local Ben Franklin (which I just learned was a chain!). Later additions to the line were a variety of cool riding beasts made in for the scale of Battle Cat and Panthor from the He-Man line. Catalogs like this (and maybe catalogs in general) feel special to me. By their nature, they are disposable, so there can’t be that many of them still in circulation, especially in the case of distro catalogs like this that were aimed toward business owners. I suspect not a lot of collectors know about the odd little corner of D&D history this occupies, and likely even fewer care. It is special in another way. The other toys and junk in the catalog are an amazing trip down memory lane. I have zero nostalgia for this stuff and would never have remembered them if not for seeing them here, but I appreciate the chance the catalog affords me to catch a glimpse of those long gone five & dime shelves.”]
Can you tell me about the genesis of this collection? What prompted you to make a series of games focused around this particular tool, and what was your process for discovery and creation?
I take a lot of selfies, like a really lot. They mean a lot to me! Cell cameras are a vital advance in modern communication and our ability to share our identities and emotions with people around the world, even if we don’t speak the same language. Part of it is also just that I like trying new ways of telling stories and exploring game experiences.
I love dice but it’s fun to take different mechanics from weird things we do. In Literally, I Can’t, one of the games in the collection, you use the MASH (mansion, apartment, shack, house) game that I played as a kid to build characters. That is the kind of thing I want to explore in games!
I also design in response to things. I saw a few games using phone cameras that I felt didn’t do what I wanted. I have had to learn a lot about selfies and myself to use this technology, and needed to apply it to games to get the experiences I wanted.
To make games, I honestly just took selfies. A lot. And I remembered how selfies have been relevant to my life. They are instrumental in my long distance relationships, and a part of how I feel connected to others, but also are ways that I know I can appear to not measure up to expectations or fade into the background if I’m not interesting enough. All of that came through in the collection! Every game has my heart in it, somehow, just with some “how to break it” instructions included!
Using mobile technology as a play aid and intermediary is such an interesting area to explore. Obviously this offered enormous design inspiration, but I’m wondering what challenges it also presented. Does it complicate aspects of design or play?
It certainly does! There are a lot of elements that are challenging. The first, one I’m very aware of, is that not everyone can afford a cell phone with a camera. I hated this, because it’s a reality I wish I could fight, but to make games with this element I had to accept that loss. I am trying to figure out a way to make up for it, but my own financial status isn’t awesome either.
Second, not everyone likes to take selfies, and not everyone even really knows how to take them (there’s not really a wrong way, though, honestly). When I playtested Who Made Me Smile? at Big Bad Con this year, most of my table was people who either didn’t take selfies, or didn’t take them often, and most people approached it with some anxiety. Thankfully, we talked about it and I encouraged them and it went great! I don’t know how it’ll go with others, though.
Third and final so I don’t write ten paragraphs, privacy and safety are huge concerns. For some of the games you’ll pass your phone to other players or share your phone number, for others you’re alone outside, and for some games you’re dealing with emotionally trying things. All of these have their own measures. For sharing contact information and phones I tried to give strong reminders about respecting safety and deleting the other players’ numbers unless they permit otherwise, and I also require that people hide NSFW pictures and content to avoid any consent violation. Being alone during game is risky, so I ask that people have an emergency check-in contact – and I also ask that for the emotionally intense games to help people get support. I also recommend Script Change for all of the games.
It’s all complicated, I think, but it is worth it, I think.
I love the way this collection blends analog and digital and subverts expectations. The four group games imply that the participants will be together physically rather than distributed, and I wonder if you could talk about this choice.
One of the most troubling things I’ve seen with selfies, and one of my secret goals to target with the games, is the negative perception of taking selfies in front of other people. People regularly shame young people for taking selfies in public, and mock tourists who get selfie sticks to take pictures in front of huge landmarks. We don’t mock people who have strangers take their pictures, or people who take pictures of other things or other people. Only people who dare recognize their own existence in public. I struggle, personally, with embarrassment over this – and I wanted to poke at it and prod it to see if I could fix that a little. In the games, you have to take selfies in front of people – sometimes making weird expressions or while feeling complicated feelings. I want to normalize that.
I want to normalize being in an airport crying before you head home after leaving a loved one and taking a selfie to say goodbye to them, or to let the person you’re coming home to see that you’re struggling, but okay. I want to normalize sharing your joy publicly by taking a picture of your smiling face to send to faraway friends. And I want to let that start with an environment that pretends you’re far away from each other, which is where the games make it possible. In Literally, I Can’t you have to take “competent”-looking selfies while all together for play – it’s a challenge against the anxiety and stigma.
It’s also important with Don’t Look at Me, a two-player selfie game in the collection about my personal experiences in a long-term relationship with my husband while he was deployed in Iraq. The purpose of being together, but not facing each other and only able to see each other through selfies, is to create the emotional tension of knowing the person is there, feeling them just out of touch, and not being able to see them except through these constrained circumstances. John and I were, and are, very close, and I always felt like he was with me, but I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t look at him face to face – everything was through lenses and bytes. I cry every time I think about the game because I know that tension, and it was important to me to make sure that the people playing it could experience it too. In Now You Don’t, it’s important to be around other people to create that experience of physical closeness and emotional ignorance. Surrounded by a crowd, but invisible – almost palpable.
Your games push back against a popular narrative that selfies are trivial narcissism. I feel like these games make selfies tools of meaningful expression, communication, and inquiry. What would you say to someone hostile to, or uncomfortable with, selfies?
Well, honestly, first I’d ask them how they feel about Van Gogh’s self portraits. Maybe those are narcissistic, too, I guess, but I don’t think that would be the majority opinion. I could direct them to the interview I did alongside a professional fine artist where I talk about the use of selfies as a grounding element in life, and where the artist (Robert Daley) says that selfies are simply modern portraiture.
Video by John W. Sheldon
For me, there’s the first aspect of selfies as being about identity and recognizing your own existence, validating who you are, making you feel whole. Then, there’s the second part: it’s just art. Photography is art, most people agree, and so are the oil painting portraits of people throughout history, including those like Van Gogh’s that are self-portraits.
I don’t see what is different about using a modern camera to take a self portrait, aside from it being more accessible to people of all backgrounds (excepting those of very low income who have trouble accessing this tech). It removes the boundary of needing an extensive education in technique to paint yourself! Instead you take pictures in a moment, and learn with every photo how to change the angle, how to adjust lighting, how to open your eyes wider or raise your eyebrow to convey emotion, and how to show you, who you are or even who you want to be. It’s magical, to me. I would just have to tell them that much: selfies are about showing who you are to whoever you want, and they are an artistic expression that’s more easily accessible than many of those before.
You write in your introduction how important selfies are to you as a way to present yourself to the world in images you control. Do you see ways to incorporate either selfies as artifacts or mobile phones and their liberating ability to document a person’s personal vision more generally in other games, old or new?
I would love to see some larger scale larps use selfies for storytelling – specifically, in larps where there are mystery elements or similar things that they could use a selfie to identify a character not in a scene, and distribute it to players. This would be excellent for games where there’s reason to be suspicious of specific individuals. Using selfies that you either take in costume or alter to represent your character in game would, I think, bring a level of personal identification with the character that isn’t often had. It also lets you record the experience of a game from the viewpoint you choose – you frame the moment, not anyone else.
Doing selfie diaries for very emotional or intense games could be exciting – much like The Story of My Face in the collection, combining your words with a visual representation can make experiences feel more vivid. When I did test plays of The Story of My Face for the photos in the book, I really had fun in part because when I looked back at the pictures, I could remember the spooky story I was telling myself. Mid-game selfie logging, much like taking pictures of character sheets or game materials, can help keep memories rich and more easily recoverable. And that latter part, with taking pictures of game material – using phones to document game materials is really awesome because you can refer back to it easily. I also like using texting for “secret” communication in game or for sharing codes – the day someone makes an Unknown Armies-style horror game that uses text messages, selfies, and cell pictures to tell the story and guide players is the day I am pretty sure we win at games.
(by Brie)
— Thanks for your time, Brie!
I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll share this interview and the DriveThruRPG link with all your friends! [From Brie: Thank you to Jason so much for this, it was a really fun experience and I’m so glad to talk more about LMTAS!]
Note: All images except the cover are by Brie Sheldon and excerpted from the collection used to write and layout LMTAS, and the cover is a compilation of Brie’s photos with a super nice layout by John W. Sheldon.
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Today I have an interview with Hannah Shaffer on her game Damn the Man, Save the Music! which is currently on Kickstarter kicking ass. Damn the Man, Save the Music! is an exciting, thoughtful, 90s-music-filled game and I hope you all love hearing what Hannah has to say.
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Cover by Evan Rowland
Tell me a little about Damn the Man, Save the Music. What excites you about it?
Damn the Man, Save the Music! is a game about a bunch of weirdo outcasts trying to save their ’90s record store from collapse. It’s inspired by one of my favorite movies, Empire Records, which everyone should go watch right now. What excites me about Damn the Man is that it uses ’90s nostalgia as a way to explore the best parts of ’90s media while challenging the worst parts.
I watch a lot of ’90s movies, and while I love their structure (like where did action-romance movies go? Why aren’t those getting made anymore?), it was a weird time for minority representation. Queer characters started to appear in ’90s movies, but they were often there just to add a bit of edgy humor. And you’d find people of color in most ’90s comedies, but their roles were at best “token” and at worst, the same deal, there for stereotyped jokes. Empire Records is a movie that celebrates the music of its time, but the only reference it makes to hip hop is in a line that disses rap and makes a homophobic joke at the same time.
I love Damn the Man because it provides this opportunity to play out a ’90s movie but better. It asks people to think about what ’90s nostalgia is all about, and to explore that nostalgia with a critical eye—without even realizing that’s what you’re doing.
In-progress art by Evan Rowland
What is the gameplay like in Damn the Man, Save the Music!? What kind of action do we see?
Damn the Man is a single-session game and all of the game’s action takes place over the course of one day. The day is divided into a three act structure—the store opening, a big record signing event, and closing shop at the end of the day. During each act every character gets one Schedule Scene. That’s a scene where the spotlight is shining on your character, even if there are other people in the scene with you!
There are a few different things you can do during your schedule scene: you can try to heal a relationship with a friend (all relationships start off damaged in the game), you can try to double down and accomplish a task your boss assigns you, or you can shoot for your goal.
Choosing to heal a relationship might look like taking a smoke break with a friend you’ve been avoiding after learning you’re both secretly gay. Doubling down looks like diving right into a store task, like trying to catch a shoplifter before they make off with an entire rack of new CDs. And shooting for your goal looks like finding the time to confess your love, or pay back a debt, or find the lost cat… right in the middle of your schedule scene.
Every scene ends with rolling dice to see if you accomplished the task your boss assigned you. Winning lets you accomplish the task and functionally prevent a store trouble, losing means you failed to accomplish the task (like screwing up everyone’s coffee orders) and a store trouble escalates as a result.
The game’s action is centered around the scenes. Trying to juggle increasingly absurd retail tasks while also trying to accomplish your heart’s true goal and heal relationships with the people you love. There’s a real sense of not being able to do it all, and things getting wackier and spiraling out of control as the day goes on!
What sources did you pull inspiration from, aside from the ’90s as a whole?
The most obvious inspiration for Damn the Man is the movie Empire Records, a movie about a bunch of teenagers working at a ‘90s indie record store, who take a dramatic shot at saving their store when they learn it’s going to be bought out by a big corporate record chain. The game follows the structure of Empire Records pretty closely, but it also follows this ‘90s movie coming-of-age structure, where everyone totally freaks out and then undergoes a major personal transformation in the course of a day.
I really liked movies by Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater during my high school years, so you’ll see that inspiration in Damn the Man as well: Dazed and Confused is a surprisingly poignant movie, Slacker, Clerks, and Chasing Amy, a movie about how things break down when we try to force our own expectations and demands on someone else’s identity.
Finally, I think the game is inspired by my complicated relationship with nostalgia. We’re in a golden age of ‘90s nostalgia right now, but the ‘90s really sucked for a lot of people. Nostalgia can be this way of reframing history through a rose-colored lens that privileges certain types of experiences. I wanted to make a game that celebrated ‘90s music and counterculture that wasn’t just another Buzzfeed “remember when” listicle.
How did you move from “hey, this is a thing that matters” to “this is a game you can play” with the game – did you do a lot of playtesting, or spend a lot of time privately testing mechanics?
I did do a lot of playtesting! The game started as kind of a joke hack of Questlandia, when I was re-watching Empire Records and realized it shared the exact structure of a Questlandia game:
A big personal goal you have to accomplish today, only three scenes before you’ve got to accomplish it, characters who are just trying to do their best with what they’ve got, and then a big collapse—or not!—at the end.
Questlandia was the first game I made, and I think the mechanics need some work. I just kept bringing Damn the Man to conventions and playing it with friends, watching closely for the places where people got stuck. I took away mechanics and added them and took them away and added them until finally I was seeing games that regularly had a great flow, a good energy, and rules that supported exactly the types of stories the game is trying to tell.
Art by Sarah Robbins
Tell me about some of the important themes of the game. Weirdo outcasts, queer characters—what matters about them beyond representation? What strength lies in their stories for Damn the Man, Save the Music!?
I talked a little bit about nostalgia before, and how it paints over the past with these “everything was great” rosy-colored brush strokes.
I wanted to make sure Damn the Man told these stories that captured the feel of a ‘90s romance-comedy, without erasing the experiences of queer people and people of color. Beyond the importance of representation (which is really important), these are coming of age stories, whether or not the characters are teenagers.
Everyone in Damn the Man is searching for something. They’re trying to make things right with their friends, they’re trying to manage the demands of retail and the people who treat you crappy while also trying to find meaning in their lives. I really like telling those kinds of stories. I feel like there are a lot of big hero stories, but not a lot of “people just trying their best” stories. I wanted a story that shines a light on a single day, or a single moment in time, that maybe changes everything or maybe just gets lost to history.
Fictional Damnster Fire band poster by Sarah Robbins
