Tag: books

Dissident Whispers with Jeremy Childrey

I’m lucky enough to have today’s interview with Jeremy Childrey about Dissident Whispers, an anthology collection of 58 two-page adventures by diverse, international creators supporting the National Bail Fund Network.

Note: Today seems pretty packed with pics because this particular style of design and art appeals to me a lot, so please excuse this indulgence.

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Tell me a little about yourself and your work. What’s your background like and how has it led you to Dissident Whispers?

My name is Jeremy and I did the layout for ‘Hopebringer’ and ‘Rhemati’s Spring’ for DW.  I’ve been tabletop gaming for around 6-7 years and creating stuff for around 3 years. I am a Warden (moderator) on the Mothership discord and active in a few others. One day “Silver Goat” posted up a request seeking volunteers for a BLM project, as a mixed race man (black and white if it matters) who lives in a rural area I had been struggling to find my place in the protests, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get involved.

The interior of Dissident Whispers, on the pages for Hopebringer, showing a diagram of an arena.
The interior of Dissident Whispers, on the pages for Hopebringer, showing a diagram of an arena.

What other projects have you worked on that you’ve brought forward knowledge to working on Dissident Whispers?

I have been working on writing and laying out a Mothership Hack called Gordinaak for way to long, and recently released a very dumb nega tower called ‘Why is there a Wizards Tower in this Dump?’ on Itch with my writing partner. 

Tell me about Dissident Whispers. What kicked off such a project concept and how did it come together? What’s the pitch?

Dissident Whispers is a collaborative compilation of adventures for various systems. For me, it all started when I saw a message on Exalted Funeral’s Discord looking for volunteers to do various pieces for a project. As we were talking about logistics the projects founder, Silver Goat, mentioned posting on the Mothership Discord. It just so happened that I warden there (moderate) so I reached out to Sean Mccoy about it and then it just kinda took off. As far as a pitch goes I’m pretty terrible at that so I guess it’s a book with a bunch of dungeons and adventures so anyone who plays games needs it.

The interior of Dissident Whispers showing the Mirstone Manor adventure - on one page, a detailed map, and on the other, an unusual pink creature.
The interior of Dissident Whispers showing the Mirstone Manor adventure – on one page, a detailed map, and on the other, an unusual pink creature.

How is planning the content of such a project impacted by the increased focus on inclusivity and a specific message?

I think for everyone involved it was different, some people made things that were topical while others did stuff that was standard adventure fare. For instance one of the adventure’s I did layout for, Hopebringer, was very stick it to the man and defeat the oppressors. 

What are some examples of the adventures in Dissident Whispers that players will have to dig into?

There are soooooo many, I did the layout for Hopebringer, and Rhemati’s Spring, both very different, both system agnostic. There are some really interesting ones for Mork Borg, and I actually played one for Mothership called Ghost Ship, on the night we finished everything, which was amazing.

The interior of Dissident Whispers, focusing on the College of Acoustic Ministration, showing alien creatures and men with lobster hands.
The interior of Dissident Whispers, focusing on the College of Acoustic Ministration, showing alien creatures and men with lobster hands.

What were some of the best parts of working on this project and putting together the collection for players to experience?

My favorite part was probably watching a flood of talented people get involved, one day it was a few people then the next the discord exploded. It was just amazing watching everything develop and how cohesive everyone was moving as a unit. I’m still in awe of what was accomplished.

The interior of Dissident Whispers showing the Snake Temple Abduction adventure, with a beautiful illustration on the right page in blue and white and a simple but useful map in blue and white on the left, along with the guiding text.
The interior of Dissident Whispers showing the Snake Temple Abduction adventure, with a beautiful illustration on the right page in blue and white and a simple but useful map in blue and white on the left, along with the guiding text.

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Thank you so much to Jeremy for the interview (and the amazing layout!)! Check out Dissident Whispers and help support justice for those in need!

Behold, Products! The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide

P.S. Sorry for the borked links earlier, I still haven’t mastered WordPress.

I recently had the pleasure to read and review James D’Amato’s Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide, which is currently available online for purchase! James contacted me for the interview, but in true Beau fashion I took forever to review it (sorry!).

Full disclosure: I was given a free review copy and I think James is pretty rad.

Photos in this review are by Brie Beau Sheldon.

A book with a black cover and orange and pale green text that says The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide.
The book itself, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide, by James D’Amato.

I approached the review in a weird fashion, to try to get a full perspective. The book itself is basically a tool to help you build the background of your character for RPG play. Some elements of it seem to trend towards games with levels, but I think this could be used for most roleplaying. It uses die rolls for randomizers at times, but also a lot of it is pick lists and freewriting to flesh out the character.

The way I approached this was to have three separate sessions of exercises (there are so many included in the book)! with three different people, and each of them had their own individual characters, while I kept the same character through the whole test. Each of the character had varying levels of previous information – mine, for example, was made up on the spot! I also spent a fair amount of time looking at the book

The interior of a book, on a section titled Old Haunts.

The book itself has a fun orange, black, and greenish color scheme and is relatively well organized. I will note there are a few spaces where the text contrast is not as comfortable for me to read, but aside from that, the book is pretty clear to follow and read.

The biggest comment I’d have about this book? The questions were often wonderfully open. I am not good with constraints on my creativity – I like a lot of free space to wonder along. There is guidance for a lot of the questions, plus the random rolls, but enough of the questions allowed me to explore where I wanted to go.

The inside of a book with the section title Pocket Dimension.

I really appreciate James’s thoughtfulness in providing subjects that range from death to relationships to magical objects and places – it feels like there’d be something here for basically everybody! Special love for the “Damn Merlinials” exercise, too. The exercises vary in complexity, with some including random rolls resulting in skipping forward sections, and others just simple fill-in-the-blanks, and some even have a combination of methods to answer all of the questions.

Overall, I think that it’s really useful tool for someone who wants to create deep, complex characters with a lot of history, flavor, and support for their perspectives and beliefs.

The inside of a book with the section title Magic Mirrors.

A note on pronouns: One thing that I didn’t like in the book is that all of it uses he or she pronouns, even when it’s quite clunky. This was also noted by all three of the other players I tested with. I do know, however, that James didn’t want this in the book and he even consulted with me on how to address it, and I wrote a statement to his publisher. I appreciate James’s intent a lot and wish his publisher had followed it. I bring this up because I know I have many nonbinary readers and the use of binary pronouns from one of our own can feel a little jarring, and I want you to know that James had the best intentions, but couldn’t push it through. That’s basically the only major issue I ran into with this book though!

I’m including the full text of the responses to the prompts I played through, but they only include the answers to the questions – for those you’ll need to get your own copy of the Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide by James D’Amato on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble!

Continue reading “Behold, Products! The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide”

Five or So Questions on Improv for Gamers

Hey all, I have an interview today with Karen Twelves about Improv for Gamers, a new book being released through Evil Hat that includes workshops and exercises to help any roleplayer or GM become better at improv! These workshops, like the one offered at Big Bad Con this October, promote fun, low-pressure environments to try out new skills for GMs, larpers, roleplayers, and more! Check out Karen’s answers to my questions below!

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Tell me a little about Improv for Gamers. What excites you about it?

I’ve always been excited about giving people a practice space to try out this improv stuff they’ve been hearing so much about. I’ve been playing tabletop rpgs since high school, and when I took my first improv class back in 2008, I was stunned by the obvious skill overlap. And also surprised that there weren’t more improv classes for roleplayers, especially being taught outside of conventions. It’s been super fun and rewarding to teach the Improv for Gamers workshops and give people some ideas and tools they can take back to their games. But what I’m most excited about right now is coming out with this book, because it gives people a bunch of exercises they can just pick up and play with friends in their living room.

What are a few of the skills you’ve picked up in improv and cover in the book that serve you the most often in gaming?

In both improv and gaming, you need to pay attention to what your fellow players are contributing to the story. If you’re not listening to how the story is shaping around you, you’re going to have a hard time navigating through it–to mix metaphors, all your subsequent ideas will be off-key. Active listening is required in order to say “Yes, and” to your partner, which is the act of honoring someone’s ideas and building on them. (There’s more to unpack with “Yes, and” about it not being a blank check, and nobody is actually beholden to accept every offer, so I prefer phrasing it as “Consider yes, and.”) But to build off an idea, you need to have actually heard it first. This is just as important in a game that weaves a narrative between characters as it is in a fight sequence where you’d want to keep tabs on what everyone is doing on their turn. So the book has a lot of great exercises that specifically practice paying attention to and acknowledging your partner. You might copy someone’s movements, repeat what they said, add a line to a shared story, create a cast of characters, or communicate through eye contact. But at the heart of all collaborative storytelling, you need to be listening.

A skill that I really love is handling invisible objects. You may have imaginary items in a larp, and you can also embody your character a bit at the table. Maybe you just mime your character polishing their glasses, or drinking a coffee. It’s a lot of fun. The book contains exercises that practice holding and using invisible objects, and it’s something that I still practice a lot in my improv troupes. It definitely came in handy during a larp where my healer character was asked to remove an invisible spear from someone’s leg and patch up the wound, and we had zero props.

How do you make this content approachable for new people and people not into the gaming scenes that favor improv?

When I teach the workshops I always stress that I’m not expecting anybody to be actors. It’s a practice space, so things might feel weird or be a little rough and that’s okay. Nobody’s going to walk out thinking “Cool, I’m perfect at this now!” And I repeat that a lot in the book–that the focus isn’t to be perfect, or funny, or entertaining, but to just try stretching this one specific muscle that the exercise is highlighting. There’s only a few exercises that are actually “scenes,” the majority are group games, so there’s less pressure to perform. There’s also some things that speak to GMs, like identifying when to switch from one scene to another, or how to quickly come up with some specific voices so your NPCs sound different. And that thread of “listen to each other and make people feel included” runs throughout all of it, which is a life skill, not an improv skill. But you can practice it through some fun improv exercises!

The improv for gamers cover with a traditional actor's mask and dice on the cover.
What are some practices and behaviors in games that you think could be improved using improv, and how do you address them in your workshops and book?

There are games where it makes sense to be protective of your character, and there are games when you could be more reckless with them. I definitely wanted my Pathfinder fighter to make it into double-digit levels! But my Blades in the Dark whisper? That game grinds characters down by design. They’re supposed to get hurt, physically and emotionally. Character death is definitely on the table. And if I’m in a one-shot game, I’ve only got this one story with this character, so I’m definitely going to take more narrative risks because I’ve got nothing to lose. There are so many improv exercises where you’re encouraged to get your character into trouble, or play someone without a lot of power or status. I’m not saying that the best way to play is to play to lose, but it’s a style that works well with a lot of games. And if it’s a style that’s kind of new to someone, I want to give them the opportunity to get into that mindset, take some risks, and have a lot of fun doing it.



What are some ways improv skills help with different roles in game, like GMs and players, and different types of play, like larping and tabletop?

Like I mentioned earlier, GMs have the daunting task of making sure everyone has an equitable amount of time in the spotlight, so you want to have a good sense of when you can put a pin in one scene and switch over to another. Improvisors develop a similar sense of knowing when to cut a scene so it ends on the right note. And during a show, that’s a shared responsibility–much like in a GM-less game, everyone should be conscious of when it’s time to see what a different character is up to.

I would say that any skills regarding character development are useful both at the table and in larping. There are so many tabletop games that have a line right on the character sheet for a defining belief or worldview, and you may even get a mechanical reward for expressing that belief in play. Similarly, regardless of what style of improv you’re doing (fast-paced comedy, thoughtful drama, or something in-between), it’s important to identify what matters to your character. That’s going to color their decisions in a scene. It doesn’t have to be something grand like “Blame the carpenter, not the tools,” your defining value could be “I love trains!” and that’s still going to lead to some really cool interactions. And whenever you’re feeling lost and not sure what your character would do, be it improv or gaming, you can fall back on that touchstone for guidance.

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Awesome, thanks so much, Karen, for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Improv for Gamers today!

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Quick Shot on The Forest Hymn & Picnic

Hey all, got a little piece with Cecil Howe on The Forest Hymn & Picnic, which is currently on Kickstarter! Check out Cecil’s responses to my questions below.

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A tree with a pumpkin-headed friend floating nearby, plus the text The Forest Hymn & Picnic

What is The Forest Hymn & Picnic, both as a product and as your vision?

As a product it’s a tabletop adventure game where players take on the roles of oddballs that live an absurd, unending and often haunted forest. It’s a mix of exploration and slice of life gameplay much closer to D&D in play than something like Apocalypse World. The game takes cues from some of my favorite things from when I was a little dude—I didn’t grow up in love with The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, I didn’t grow up with D&D; I even missed out on Harry Potter ’til I was 23 despite my generation growing up with those books and movies. 
I did, however, love books like The Wind in the Willows, and the Frog & Toad stories when I was a kid. Fairy tales and fables and cartoons, too, all left their mark on me in ways traditional fantasy fiction never did. So the game digs into those influences more than anything, and I guess my vision is that adventuring in The Forest Hymn invokes those memories we have of what fantasy was to us as kids, before we read The Hobbit, but in a way seen more so through the lens of being an adult. Like what if Little Bear was all grown up and needed to sell off some heirlooms to hire someone to help him get a ghost out of his closet, or what if Frog got lost in the woods and Toad got a musket-toting posse together to go find him? I am not trying to hit a nostalgia button with this game, instead I am re-imagining all those things in my own voice and outside influences like Americana folklore, old tall tales, living in the southern US, and ghost stories.

A bear in a blue plaid shirt and green cap going fishing, smoking a pipe
How have you designed the game to address tone, pacing, and mood, considering how particular the various referenced media are in that regard? 
The three biggest influences on The Forest Hymn & Picnic are The Wind in the Willows and various children’s books about animals being idiots, the music of The Decemberists, and the cartoon Over the Garden Wall. They all poke their head in on things one way or another, but like I mentioned it’s through my own grown-up eyes and I take license here and there to reflect my own personality and get a bit weird with it. Tonally, you’ll find the game to be more adult than those children’s books; the player characters have more grown-up flaws and superstitions and especially the Ghost characters tend to er on the sad side of things—when you decide to play a ghost you pick a costume that reflects however you might have died in your former life. 
The ghosts made their way into the game after I watched OtGW. I was telling a friend about this game I was making that was about animals in a haunted forest, and they recommended it to me. I instantly watched it a thousand times, and how that cartoon handled things like death and family and basic human behavior really showed me you could do more with children’s stories.

You can play as Animal Folks who are animals that walk and talk and are pretending to be what they think people are like, which is kind of the entirety of Mr. Toad from Willows expressed as an entire set of player options. Animal Folk are busy bodies and gossipers, concerned with social standing and prone to commerce. You can also play as people, who like Christopher Robin are a little more grounded in reality, but they’re naturally lost in the woods. So the mood and tone very much my own projections of looking back at those influences as an older person. It’s real silly, but a little bit serious. 

The book and the art, too, reflects a lot of these influences. I’ve been painting backgrounds and backdrops in traditional, mixed mediums like watercolor and colored pencils while the other artists, Casey and Sam, will be doing the action and foreground art in their own digital styles to give it that sort of old cartoon feel. They layout is closer to a children’s book than a traditional RPG textbook, and graphic novelist Gabe Soria has contributed the lyrics to songs the forest dwellers sing to open each chapter.

I’m gunna answer the part about pacing in the next question, but my good pal Dustin told me that the way The Forest Hymn & Picnic is presented is like inviting kids to eat at the adult table and I think that’s a good way to sum up the tone and mood of this game.

a floating pumpkin headed friend holding a bouquet of flowers and a book labeled "Die-ary"
Tell me a little about the progression of the game in play, from inception of characters to milestones and on. What was challenging to create here, and how does it feel in play? 
The pacing of the gameplay is made to intentionally mimic the way those kid’s books are read. A lot of those books are collections, two or three-page accounts of whatever mischief the characters get into; each chapter is a contained story all bound into a single book but the characters very much feel like they’re up to the good times in between the pages. The Forest Hymn & Picnic does this too. Each adventure is meant to be a contained experience the players have. A single adventure, a quest, a day at the county fair, 48 hours on the road between towns, etc. The narrator can choose to craft those episodes in a way that links them all together with an overarching plot, or choose to just explore the woods and the world across several sessions.

Players start with character generation; they’re given the numbery, mathy stuff like characteristic scores and whatnot up front to get it out of the way. Then you’re given a set of personality generating tables to sort of build the background of their character; they can make random rolls or pick and choose from the tables to learn things about themselves. People learn how they ended up in the woods and how they were raised, Animal Folk learn what kind of animal they are and what silly quirks they have, and Ghosts put their costumes together. 

You take all of that and put it together to form a description for your adventurer. What you’re left with at the end of character generation is an extremely unique adventurer who has their own fears and goals and personalities, built-in adventuring hooks like finding your long lost father or working to become mayor of some town, and a relationship with the woods itself.

After each episodic adventure players will go up in a level, and the options they take and decisions they make represent what those characters are up to between adventures. So like, a player might decide that in between level 0 and level 1 they want to get involved with the supernatural and learn some magic tricks so they become a Fortune Teller. Or maybe the player can’t decide just yet what they want to do, so they take on the role of a rakehell and bum around town with not much to do. Each of those choices then give the players new options, skills, magic tricks, and cool moves, and even adventure hooks to use on their next adventure and advance their unique personal stories and lives in The Forest Hymn. Not including the different types of Animal Folk, and not including the different micro decisions players make at each level-up and their own contributions, there is over 500 different combinations of unique dweller to choose from. 

That’s where the influence of The Decemberists comes in; their songs tend to be storied, melodic looks at seemingly ordinary people and the different player options work they same way: you don’t choose to be Mega Sword Hero™, but you do decide to take up the quiet life of a knife sharpener or burglar, bakers, librarians and all that good stuff. In play it feels very much feel like players are a part of the world rather than heroic outsiders, which is delightful and intentional. It gives the actual adventuring narrative weight; it’s odd to go adventuring in the woods, it’s not normal to go traipsing around The Spookwood, making it all more interesting when you do these things as a someone who’s really good at churning butter and keeping books instead of swinging a sword.

The most challenging thing about creating anything with this game is staying true to the setting and making sure it’s cool. The Forest Hymn & Picnic is running on a very very simplified version of the same engine that powers a game that couldn’t be further from different than it: Shadow of the Demon Lord by Robert J. Schwalb. SotDL is a—fantastic!—super gritty, grim dark hack & slash RPG and what I’ve made from it is different by leagues of night and day. 

I’ve quieted the importance of fighting and weapons and replaced it with a more granular task resolution system using the same math. So the easy part, the math, was done already. But making sure the setting comes through in player options and the magic tricks, in the character generation and the songs, the art, and the brief introduction to the world has been the toughest part. It’s not a genre covered heavily in RPGs or really in mainstream media very often at all; fewer of us have the concepts and tropes that define it burned into our brainholes like we do typical fantasy or sci fi ones.

Thanks for reading! Love,
Cecil

The text The Forest Hymn & Picnic and an image of the book with black cover, then a stork carrying a bundle and some trees.
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I don’t normally include signoffs, but Cecil’s was part of the answers given, and I liked it. 🙂 Thanks to Cecil for a great interview! I hope you’ll all check out The Forest Hymn and Picnic on Kickstarter today!

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Quick Shot on Vintage RPG

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.”]

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. ¶ #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #ADnD #DandD #AdvancedDungeonsAndDragons #TSR #RPG #TabletopRPG #roleplayinggame #dragonsanddaggers #ImperialToys #ClashoftheTitans #HeMan #fiveanddime #BenFranklin #MonsterManual #DavidCSutherlandIII
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Thanks so much to Stu for the interview! I hope you’ll all check out @vintagerpg on Instagram. 

Do you have a favorite pre-2000s game cover or piece of game art? Share it on Instagram, G+, or Twitter and tag it #myvintagerpg. 
Feel free to tag me in, too – I’d love to see what you love!

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If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings: They Are Not What You Think

Content Warning: I’m going to talk about trigger warnings here, so if you don’t like hearing about that, click away now.

Hey humans! 

I want to talk about what content and trigger warnings are, and why they are important. Let’s first establish what these things are:

Trigger Warnings:

Trigger warnings are related to psychological triggers, like those from abuse and trauma. Triggers are things like sights, scents, sounds, and sensations that can produce flashbacks, painful memories, or anxiety/panic reactions in people who have experienced abuse and/or trauma.

For example: I have been sexually assaulted. When I watch movies, play games, or read books that have sexual assault in them, I can become panicked, stressed, and uncomfortable. This feeling can last anywhere from a minute or so to days or weeks. Some people I know are triggered by scents like smoke, sounds like yelling, or sights like specific violence in media or even something like being on snowy roads in winter.

Triggers are not something of cowardice. They are a psychological reaction to traumatic experiences of someone’s past. No one can define the severity of someone else’s trauma. Even when it comes to professionals, they can’t read someone’s mind. When someone is triggered, they can have complex and extreme reactions, or just some stress and a desire to remove themselves from the situation.

Content Warnings:

Content warnings have some things in common with trigger warnings, but they are not the same. We see content warnings all the time – at the movies (Rated R for language, violence, and sex!), on TV (This presentation may contain material that could upset viewers – just like Law and Order), and on video games (Rated M for content). They are not new, and anyone who is surprised by them may have been living under a rock.

Content warnings are not in regards to people’s mental health or put together to avoid panic attacks or flashbacks. Content warnings are there so people can prepare, or decide what they should let their kids see. They are not censorship, and they are not any restriction on media. They are there to guide consumers to media they want, or away from media they don’t want.

Common Objections:

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are for cowards/babies/wusses/immature people!”
Nope! Trigger warnings are there to prevent people with past trauma from experiencing further trauma. Believe it or not, a lot of people suffer from trauma, and it is not something that you can just “tough it out” most of the time. Soldiers who return from war with PTSD (diagnosed or not) can have trouble because of triggers. People who were abused as children can have triggers. Not just soldiers have PTSD, and people of all ages have experienced trauma in their life. This is why trigger warnings are valuable. When you expose someone to a trigger, it has a psychological impact. In some ways, it is like an allergy. If someone were allergic to peanuts, would you tell them to eat peanuts anyway, because their allergy is just “all in their head”?

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are censorship!”
Nope! Slapping a rating or a simplified list of the content of media on the package doesn’t censor anything. The media is still produced, and available for consumption. It might be limited by age, but parents can buy for their kids, so that isn’t a significant issue. People who are triggered by the content might be upset that the product exists – and that’s okay! They can talk to other people about it and say, “hey, if you don’t like this stuff, don’t buy this thing!” and maybe other people won’t buy it. Maybe they still will. People can make choices!

“If people see trigger or content warnings that have stuff they don’t like in them, they won’t buy it or consume it!”
Not necessarily true! While everyone, regardless of their issues with triggers, might decide not to consume a product, there are plenty of people who still will. People can, and often will, still consume media that has objectionable material in it, and that has triggers for them. Seeing a trigger warning isn’t always “That’s not for me!” It might be “I can watch this when I am having a good day” or “Maybe I will save this until when I am not in a depression” or “If I get a friend to watch this with me, I’ll be great” or even “Maybe if someone tells me what part to skip, I can enjoy the rest of the thing!” Also, we are not in the business of forcing people to buy things. No one has to buy what you are selling. It’s not like creators walk beside people in the store just putting things in their cart and telling them that it’s something they should watch, even if they don’t like it. That’s like forcing people who like action movies to watch Oscar bait.

“People will abuse them to get out of work/school/responsibilities!”
Totally! And you know what? That’s okay. It’s okay because those people will be few. It’s okay because people use excuses to get out of work/school/responsibilities already. It’s okay because the people who use trigger warnings and content warnings for their own wellbeing and awareness will, a lot of the time, still take the classes or go to work or fulfill their responsibilities. People abusing systems is nothing new, and we shouldn’t put other people through difficult and often dangerous situations just because some people are jerks.

ETA: “You can’t possibly list all of the triggers, how am I supposed to know what they are?”
Well, for one, you can’t list all of them. That’s okay. You don’t have to list them all, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t list any. Part of the point of trigger warnings is demonstrating that you are aware of your audience and willing to listen to them. You can try to focus on the common ones: graphic violence, sexual assault and abuse, domestic/child abuse, and rape. From that, most people can get an idea of whether it’s their kind of media. Trigger and content warnings are not an all or nothing tool. You can talk to your audiences or potential audiences, you can check around in forums and on social media to see what your potential audiences might have issues with. Even if you don’t do that, you can still be considerate even with limited information.


Why are these things important?

A lot of reasons, actually! I have covered a lot of them already, but I’ll summarize.

  • Many people have been affected by trauma in their lives, and it is important to provide support for them to feel safe and still able to enjoy their lives in any way we can.
  • A lot of people prefer to consume different types of media for many different reasons. Some have kids, some like to compartmentalize their media, and some people just don’t enjoy all types of content.
  • We should respect psychological issues just like we do physical issues. They are valid, and denying people the ability to avoid things that hurt them is, honestly, just rude.
  • Everyone should have choices in their media! Everyone is different, and we shouldn’t force everyone to enjoy one thing just because the majority enjoys it, or because not liking it makes them seem judgmental. 

How can this be applied?

In school, it’s simple. Put a note on your syllabus about what kind of content will be discussed in class, what materials you’ll be using, and how to contact instructors to either change classes, consider alternate materials or assignments, or help to figure out a good way to go through the classes without putting students in a position where they don’t feel safe in class.

In media, it’s pretty easy. Create what you want, but put a note on it. It can be simple: “This film includes rape, sexual assault, and sexualized violence.” It can also be more complex: “This game has mechanics that allow for PC mind control, which are not optional and central to the game’s premise.” Either of these options are great, and importantly, they are way better than nothing. If you are planning a convention game, you can put notes in your description, or let the players know when they arrive at the table, and offer them the opportunity to step out.
What about in games where we aren’t using a script? What if something happens in game that wasn’t planned?
This is more difficult! The cool thing is that it’s not impossible! One of the first things you can do is establish boundaries with your players so that if there is something completely off the table, you know in advance and can avoid that material. Another thing is that you can provide tools like Script Change and the X Card. These tools give you either the option to skip content altogether, or to back up and go through a scene again with new content, fade to black, or pause for a moment to evaluate players’ comfort with moving forward. It gives players more control of the content, as well as helping them to feel comfortable. It is awesome because sometimes it makes players even more likely to try adventurous content they may not have otherwise tried.
I want to emphasize: You can still create whatever you want to create. The key is to allow those who aren’t interested in your content to safely avoid it, and give those who want to enjoy your content an easy way to navigate. People have more fun doing the things that they enjoy, and when they are stuck doing things they don’t want to, it drags everyone down. Trigger warnings and content warnings help people find content that they can enjoy, and can encourage them to try new things.
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In the end, trigger warnings and content warnings are a great way to support other people in trying new things, expanding their boundaries, and exploring, without leaving them with no safety net, and without ignoring the importance of their mental and emotional health. Some people might not care about this at all, and that’s okay. However, I think that kind of attitude definitely shines a light on who is likely to consume their media, and whether they are the kind of person those who have experienced trauma are willing to trust. For me, there’s no question: I want everyone to have fun – not just the people who don’t care.


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Rafael Chandler on The Astounding Antagonists

What was your inspiration for The Astounding Antagonists?

In comic books and films, people with superpowers commit violent acts in the name of justice. A while back, I started thinking about heroes, and how they might be designated as criminals or villains if their idea of ‘justice’ differed from the status quo. And the novel emerged from that idea.

Are these characters antiheroes, true heroes, or just freakin’ awesome superheroes, and why?

In the novel, they’re referred to as villains, and they embrace the term, because they steal, destroy, and kill. However, they believe that their actions are justified, so they do see themselves as heroic.

Tell me a little bit about Helen Damnation!

She’s an blue-skinned extraterrestrial who wears a suit of high-tech armor developed by Dr. Agon. It turns out that the armor doesn’t do what everybody thinks it does. Helen is somewhat contemptuous of any society that values material wealth. She likes dogs. She enjoys sweets. She’s fiercely loyal to the people that she loves. Though she will not kill, she enjoys combat, and is quite proud of the scars that she has earned.

Your RPG work is known for being a little gore heavy. Is it the same with this work?

It’s not particularly gory. Like my previous novel (Hexcommunicated), this is a fast-paced adventure. There’s some violence, and if it were a movie, it’d be rated R — but it’s nothing like the splatterpunk work I do in RPGs.

What’s up next for you, post-Astounding Antagonists?

I’m working on the second book in the Agent Tepes series; it’s called Hextermination, and it features shoggoths, ghouls, and witches. Should be fun! Also, I’m nearly finished with my kickstarted monster manual, Lusus Naturae. Very excited about that.

Thanks so much for the interview, Brianna! The Astounding Antagonists is available here:

Amazon (Kindle):
http://www.amazon.com/Astounding-Antagonists-Rafael-Chandler-ebook/dp/B00OOXZGRQ

Amazon (print):
http://www.amazon.com/Astounding-Antagonists-Rafael-Chandler/dp/1502894548

Lulu (print):
http://www.lulu.com/shop/rafael-chandler/the-astounding-antagonists/paperback/product-21858531.html

Five or So Questions with Shannon Appelcline on Designers & Dragons

Tell me a little bit about Designers & Dragons. What excites you about it?

Designers & Dragons is a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. It starts with TSR and runs through Posthuman Studios and along the way it provides complete histories for over 80 other roleplaying publishers. Each history focuses on the roleplaying production of one company, but also charts out all of its highs and lows, so you can learn about TSR’s lawsuits, Palladium’s Crisis of Treachery, the few times that Chaosium teetered on the edge, and much more.

This all excites me because it’s the backstory of the industry. It’s the tales of people who are remembered, the ones who were forgotten, and the great games they created — most of which are no longer on the shelves. It’s about the companies that prospered (often in unexpected ways) and the companies that failed (usually in equally unexpected ways).

I started writing Designers & Dragons because I wanted to know what had happened to these companies of the past — where they’d disappeared to and what their stories were. I found that uncovering this knowledge was fascinating, and it appears that readers do as well!

What do you think are highlights of the 00s that new designers should really be aware of?
First, designers should look at the indie movement. Some of the early indie ideas like resource management and freeform attributes have already hit the bigger time in releases from larger publishers. However, indie games also contain lots of other interesting design like unconventional narratives, distributed authority, scene framing, and stake setting. Not all of it’s appropriate for every game, but a designer should be aware of the entered toolbox, and that toolbox has been expanded a lot since the mid ’90s.

Second, designers should look at the OSR movement. I’m not necessarily talking about the retroclones, but the newer games that have melded together modern design aesthetics with old-school design tropes. I think that Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (2012) is the game that’s probably done the best job of managing this merged landscape.

If you know what made the industry appealing in its early days and if you know the newest ideas about how to develop roleplaying games, then you’ve probably got a pretty good handle on interesting design.

What is your favorite thing to talk about in RPG history?
I love the scope of history: the fact that the RPG industry has been around for forty years and that it traces its origins back even further; the fact that its created parallel industries like modern miniatures games, CCGs, and computer RPGs. I love how you can often trace a designer’s production through multiple companies, to see where they started and where they went. I love the scope within an individual company, as you see how it rises (and sometimes falls).

However, I find it just as intriguing to talk about the reasons behind all this history: why a person started a company and why they decided to create an RPG on a specific topic. I love discussing why an abrupt change occurred at a company: why an old RPG line went away or why a certain type of product was discontinued,

So I’d say those two things: the big picture and the little reasons that underlie it.

Who do you think will benefit the most from the books, and why?
My first reaction is to say that old-time gamers will benefit from Designers & Dragons the most, because the books talk about all the old companies that they remember and the old game systems they still play. Equally, the books reveal the secrets of the smaller presses that old-time gamers might have heard of, but never investigated. However, I think that newer gamers will benefit from the books too, because they’re full of everything that’s gone before — the companies and games that are the foundation that modern gaming is built upon.

So I’d have to say anyone who wants to learn more about the gaming industry, the companies that made it up, and the games they’ve produced over the last four decades.

What do you suggest people do, aside from reading Designers & Dragons, to learn more about RPGs and the industry?
I love the old gaming magazines for what they reveal about the industry. Wizards of the Coast’s Dragon Magazine Archive is awesome for the fact that it lays out 25 years of industry growth, and you can get it on eBay for about $100. The generalist magazines were also good because they tended to be full of news, interviews, and game design notes from a wide variety of companies. I’d particularly recommend The Space Gamer, Different Worlds, White Wolf, and Shadis — which together form a nice chronology from the late ’70s through the ’90s.

There have also been a couple of great books. Heroic Worlds, a catalog of the games of the ’70s and ’80s, and Playing at the World, a dense investigation of the origins of roleplaying, are particularly interesting.

Finally, there are a number of OSR blogs which do a good job of looking at the history of the industry. Grognardia was my favorite until it fizzled out, but it’s still got interesting things in its archives.

Five or So Questions with Rafael Chandler on Lusus Naturae

I interviewed Rafael Chandler about Lusus Naturae! (warning: image heavy post)

Tell me a little about Lusus Naturae. What’s there to make people’s skin crawl?

Lusus Naturae is a collection of monsters for old-school tabletop RPGs. It uses the Lamentations of the Flame Princess system, so people who enjoy other retroclones (or older versions of D&D) will be able to use these monsters right out of the book.

Lusus Naturae (Latin for “freaks of nature”) is currently crowdfunding here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rafaelchandler/lusus-naturae-a-gruesome-old-school-bestiary We’ve hit our initial goal, so the project is funded. Over the next 23 days, we’re hoping to reach our stretch goal so that we can go full-color.

As for what makes people’s skin crawl… I’m hoping that gamers will enjoy the monsters the way I do! I adore horror of all kinds: cosmic horror, splatterpunk, body horror, and so on. This bestiary will feature all of the above.

Without divulging any spoilers (I don’t like it when people ruin surprises), I will say that many of these entities are driven by peculiar compulsions, or attracted to human vice. They feed on hatred, fear, wickedness, and innocence. They commit — or coerce others into committing — ritual murders and other horrid crimes. They establish violent religions, lurk in lightless depths, and build citadels from the corpses of children.

Where do you get your inspiration for monsters?

Typically, I try to get into the right mindset by listening to metal — Ulcerate, Enslaved, Altar of Plagues, Goatwhore, that sort of thing — and thinking about cruelty. I always ask myself, “What’s the worst thing one could do in this situation?”

I watch a lot of horror, though I’m not sure if it inspires me, per se. Perhaps? It’s hard to know if it’s merely a comfortable experience that satisfies, or if it’s somehow gotten some fluids percolating in the back of my mind. Anyhow, I’m quite fond of the New French Extremity, especially Inside, Martyrs, and Frontier(s). I’m also a fan of torture porn, including the Saw and Hostel series.

What makes Lusus Naturae different from your other projects?

Last year, I released a bestiary called Teratic Tome; it featured new versions of classic monsters, such as orcs, dragons, and demons. By contrast, Lusus Naturae will primarily consist of all-new entities. In addition, some of the monsters in this book will be drawn from the myths of my Peruvian ancestors; I’ve never really delved into that subject matter before, and it’s quite enjoyable.

For example, Ai Apaec is the chief god in the Mochica culture; he’s typically depicted as a spider-human hybrid with a knife and/or severed head in his hand. He’s known as the Decapitator, and his worshipers believed that he would reward violent and painful human sacrifice with abundant crops. As a rule, I’m not interested in history or authenticity, but this is the sort of thing that I love.

There’s one other thing that makes Lusus Naturae different: instead of selling it through print-on-demand via Lulu, I’m working with a printer. This book will feature glossy paper and a sewn binding, and perhaps even full-color interior artwork. I want to create a quality book, and crowdfunding makes it possible to produce something beautiful and durable.

How do you decide what artists to hire for your projects, especially ones with so much variety like this?

I like my artists the way I like players at my table: ready to bring the gore and brutality. I’ve been lucky to work with a number of very talented people!

Gennifer Bone and I have worked together many times; she illustrated all of ViewScream, and contributed artwork to Pandemonio, Teratic Tome, and Bad Myrmidon.

Last year, she suggested that we work on a major project, something significant. I had been mulling over the idea of a new bestiary, but had planned to work with several artists. But I wondered if it might not be better to have a single person tackle all of the artwork for the book. Genn hits her deadlines, and she’s fun to work with. So I said yeah, let’s do this.

What’s up next? Can we expect more gore from you sometime soon?

I’m working on Obscene Serpent Religion, a sourcebook for LotFP which features face-melting artwork by Sandy Jacobs-Tolle, Sarah Richardson, and Wayne Snyder. This book’s look and feel (square, dark, and vile) are meant to evoke the vinyl album produced by a black metal band. We’ll see if that works.

Beyond that, I’m working on a sourcebook called Exhumed Errata, which is my take on epic fantasy. No gore, just strange magic, wondrous weapons, and a new character class. Natalie Bennett and Quinn Murphy are my co-writers on this one.

My second novel is nearly finished; it’s called The Astounding Antagonists, and it’s about a group of supervillains gearing up for one last heist. It’s fun, frantic, and action-packed! Features a wraparound cover by the incredibly talented Claudia Cangini.

And, of course, there’s my day job (story designer and scriptwriter in the video game industry). I’ve got a new game coming out soon, but I’m not allowed to talk about it until later in the year!

Thanks, Brianna!

And thank you, Rafael! Looking forward to all of your projects!


Five or So Questions with Matthijs Holter on The Devil’s Cub

Today I have an interview with Matthijs Holter, creator of Archipelago, about his book “The Devil’s Cub” and it’s upcoming sequel.

Tell me a little bit about “The Devil’s Cub.” What’s the story?

The main character is a 150-year-old noaide – a Sami shaman. When she encounters the devil on a lonely forest road, she decides to seduce him – and becomes pregnant with his child. So the question is, what will she do with it? Her plan is to use it to gain more power, but will she manage to do that, and how? How will it change her?

What made you choose this time period and these folklore elements?

It’s set in the 1800s in Norway, which, at that time, was a place of contrasts and changes. A few families became extremely wealthy selling timber to warring countries, while most people were poor, often starving. The church tried to educate and civilize the population, but the population often didn’t give a shit – or, rather, they stuck with their traditions and beliefs. In the book, of course, most of those beliefs are true, and I get to play with a lot of half-forgotten elements from our history and folklore. Some are pretty horrible! There was something called the utbord, for instance, which is the spirit of an unchristened child; the image of an undead baby, buried somewhere in the forest, screaming… It’s pretty bad. And it says a lot of things about the culture at that time; about religion, about the expectations towards women, about how children were treated…

I wrote a game in this setting in 2004, “Draug”, and did a lot of research. Back then, I tried to be very historically correct; now I’m having fun with it, using history and superstition to make a great story.

You used some methods from gaming to help write the book. What were they and how did they help with the process?

The most important one was what Ron Edwards calls “Driving with bangs”. A bang is something that happens to a character that they have to do something about. Often you, as a player (or writer), don’t know what they will do until it happens. The situation that starts this whole book is a bang: “You’re pregnant with the devil. Now what?”

Another one was to use phrases from my own game, Archipelago. (It’s available for free on the internet). I didn’t do this very consciously, but at points I definitely thought to myself “More details!” or “That won’t be so easy!”

And then there’s what Vincent Baker calls “Play to find out what happens” – in this case, write to find out what happens. I didn’t plan ahead a lot; I was just curious to see where the story would go, and was often surprised at what the characters chose to do. There was a lot of laughing, shaking my head, and cursing in frustration as I saw their stories unfold.

Tell me about the sequel. What can I look forward to? When is it coming out?

I can’t tell you too much, of course, because that would spoil it! But we do see some major changes in the protagonist. She meets new dangers that are, in their way, much worse than the devil (“Better the devil you know” is an apt expression here). She also gets a new circle of friends – or, should I say, her first ever circle of friends, as she tends to be a loner. There are ghosts, unexpected sexual attractions, a huge fire and some pretty good parties. It’s a little like “Pride and Prejudice” with lesbian witches.

It’s coming out this spring – we’re editing it now!

What was the biggest challenge writing “The Devil’s Cub” and its sequel? Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with it for new writers?

The biggest challenge… Actually telling myself and the world that this was what I wanted to do, and then doing something about it. I took time off from work, dropped off the internet, didn’t see a lot of people for a while, and just wrote, wrote, wrote. And once I got that momentum going, getting up every day and knowing “Today I’m writing”, the book took on a life of its own.

My suggestions for new writers:

– Decide whether you want to make money or have fun. You’ll probably never make money from this, so have fun instead.

– If you want to write, you have to write. Read some, too. But mostly just write, write, write. Open your document and start typing words. If it’s crap, you can throw it away later, but while you’re writing, you can’t actually know if what you’ve written is great or terrible!

– Use a treadmill. Write while walking. It’s great! You get flow, your brain gets oxygen and comes up with lots of ideas, you get a little exercise along the way. Amazing.

– Last, but not least: Get a good editor. I’m working with Lizzie Stark right now, and really enjoying that. Talk in person (or via Skype).

Thanks to Matthijs for a great interview!

Author’s web page: http://matthijsholter.wordpress.com/