Tag: game design

Five or So Questions on Iron Edda Accelerated

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Tracy Barnett on Iron Edda Accelerated, which is currently on Kickstarter! I hope you enjoy hearing what they have to say about the project and that you’ll give the Kickstarter a look.

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The Iron Edda Accelerated logo on black textured background. The words IRON EDDA are colored orange and red like lava and spitting off bits, and ACCELERATED is in hammered steel color.

Tell me a little about Iron Edda Accelerated. What excites you about it?

Ragnarok occurred in the form of 50 foot-tall, metal dwarven destroyers rising out of the ground. Humanity cried out to the gods for help, and Loki responded. “Here, take this thing (which I totally didn’t steal from the dwarves) and use it to bond the spirits of your bravest warriors to the bones of dead giants and y’all can make like Pacific Rim.” That’s the pitch I’ve used for Iron Edda since it first came out a few years ago. This new version uses the Fate framework found in Dresden Files Accelerated, meaning that every character is represented by a Destiny, a set of conditions and stunts which define what you can do in the world. It’s different than the previous version, and I’m thrilled with the design.

Iron Edda Accelerated represents a huge second chance for me. I Kickstarted the original Iron Edda game (War of Metal and Bone) about four years ago and I was never able to give it the time and attention it deserved. I mean that both as a game, and as a product. Last year around this time, I thought about what I could do to change the future of Iron Edda. I approached Encoded Designs, gave them the full rundown of the issues I’d had getting a marketing push for the original game, and pitched them the idea of a new version. They accepted and we started development. I got a chance to re-do things in a better way, with support from a publisher, rather than doing it all on my own.

Mechanically, this is the version of Iron Edda I’ve wanted to see all along. It’s funny, I was talking with a publishing friend at Origins last week and he was talking about how his games all have a five-year development cycle. I’ve unintentionally done that with Iron Edda Accelerated. The original draft which became this game was something I started five years ago for someone else’s Kickstarter. Now, five years on, I’ve learned enough about the world and I’ve improved as a designer to the point where I could make the game what I wanted it to be. That’s a lesson I’m going to keep with me.

What’s happening mechanically in Iron Edda Accelerated? What are the new fiddly bits?

The fiddly bits are legion with this design change. Fate Core is, in a lot of ways, an open template. You can make a lot of things happen by making new Extras and Stunts, which is what I did in the original Iron Edda. In the framework provided by Dresden Files Accelerated, everything is codified. Your core abilities are described by Conditions. Every condition has a finite number of uses before you have to undertake an action to recover them.

In mechanical terms, that means that you can’t, say, summon the bones of the dead giant who is bonded to your soul unless you mark a box of your Summon the Bones condition. In the original Iron Edda, there wasn’t anything like that. You called up the giant bones whenever you wanted. In Iron Edda Accelerated, you can do that five times (each time lasting a scene) before you have to indulge in your dead giant’s Worldly Desire to be able to recover boxes on your summoning condition track. If you want to push it, you can, but you then mark a condition called Abomination. You get the giant’s bones for a scene, then the giant takes over, using your body as it sees fit.

I guess the best way to say it is that everything has teeth now. There’s no use of power without a balancing influence or cost which you, as the player, have to be concerned with. Aside from making things mechanically more interesting, this also makes the fiction more interesting. Bonebonded have to content with their giants, Runescrbed with the power that will ultimately consume them, Seers with fate itself. There’s a push and pull for every destiny in Iron Edda Accelerated, and that’s so much more compelling to play.

That ties directly into your [next] question.

How has your path as a designer influenced the game in big ways – what are some places you can look at this new project and see the changes in you and the design?

When I wrote the first Iron Edda, there was a lot of stuff that I put in the game because it seemed to fit and because it seemed cool. Fate Core includes the idea of success at a cost, so I just left it in the hands of the players and GMs in the world to provide the negative sides of the fiction so playing a Bonebonded or a Seer would be interesting. As the years went by, I began trying to push for more of those complications in the games I ran because I thought it made for interesting fiction at the table.

When I read Dresden Files Accelerated it was around the same time I pitched a new version of Iron Edda to Encoded Designs. Something inside was telling me that the setup of conditions and linked stunts would be a great fit for Iron Edda and every time I’ve run or played it, that has borne out. I guess that speaks to the other side of experience as a game designer. There’s never a point where you need to stop learning. There is, however, a point at which I think it’s really valuable to begin to trust your design experience. I won’t ever claim I’m the best Fate designer or any BS like that. But I’ve got over fives years of experience working on Fate designs, and there are some designs that I know will work as I write them, playtest or no. That’s a huge thing to realize. So much of design work is fraught with insecurity. It feels really good to have moments where I see something work exactly as I intended it when I wrote it.

As a quick aside, one moment where I knew I’d gotten the flavor of the Seer right was during an online game a few months ago. The player who chose the Seer asked if they could summon a host of the dishonored dead to help them in a fight. There’s a stunt written for the Seer which does just that, but the player hadn’t seen it. Having someone new to the game and new to the rules ask to do a thing I’d already written was absolutely amazing. That’s what I call leveling up.

What was playtesting like with Iron Edda Accelerated? What were some of your better, and more challenging, experiences?

It’s funny; I think in a lot of ways I’ve been playtesting Iron Edda Accelerated ever since I made the first Iron Edda. By that I mean that I learned so much about how the game is supposed to run and how the world is supposed to be reflected from all of the sessions of War of Metal and Bone that I ran over the years. Iron Edda Accelerated is my best effort expression of that.

However, when I ran my first two sessions of the new system at Big Bad Con in 2017, they were near-disastrous. I was jet-lagged and sick, so when I got to the table, working with characters I’d written up on the flight out, everything just seemed off to me. It was like getting into a car you’re super familiar with and finding that someone has changed the location of all the controls. I tried to turn on the wipers and the headlights kicked on, y’know? But, those two sessions were necessary for me to learn the new layout and arrangement of things. A couple of months later at Acadecon I ran two of the best sessions of any Iron Edda game I’d ever run. I’d settled into the changes and everything worked the way I expected it to. Some of the mechanics needed tweaking, of course, but the game was what I wanted it to be. That felt good.

When you look at the work you’ve done, what are some of your favorite pieces of design, fiction, or even just experience had that you want to share with aspiring designers to show how good it can be?

Probably the best experience I’ve had in regards to gaming, especially running my own game, was at Origins in 2014. I was running the original Iron Edda at Games on Demand and I made the mistake I often made back then: I stayed up way too late, drank too much, and was hungover for my morning slot. I get there, and end up with a group of eight players. Six of them knew each other well and seemed to have good chemistry, so I just decided to roll with it. I explained to them how I was feeling and asked them to really bring it for that session. They did. It was a good, solid session with a lot of political intrigue and an honor duel to determine who the next Jarl would be. End of story, I thought at the time.

The next night, Saturday, I get to Games on Demand and the person organizing the tables asked me if I was okay with seven players. I looked at the table and the same group of six were sitting there, along with a friend of mine. I sat down with them and told them I was happy to see them. They asked me something I’ve not heard since at a convention: they wanted to keep playing the session from the previous day. They had their character sheets, I had all the notes I’d written, and my friend was happy to make a character to fit the continuing situation.

It was so gratifying to have an entire group of people want to come back and continue the story we’d begun the day before. I’ve had some amazing game sessions of Iron Edda since then, but nothing has topped that. Yet. I’m open to there being something even more gratifying in the future.

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Thanks so much to Tracy for the interview! I hope you’ll all check Iron Edda Accelerated out on Kickstarter today!

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Five or So Questions on Over the Edge

Hi all, today I have an interview with Jonathan Tweet on Over the Edge, an RPG currently on Kickstarter! I hope you learn something fun about Over the Edge from Jonathan’s responses below!

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Tell me a little about Over the Edge. What excites you about it?

Of all the RPGs I’ve designed, Over the Edge is the one that means the most to me personally. It started as a pet project of mine, not meant for publication, so it’s weirder than anything I would have conceived for a broad audience. The rules are also free-form and story-driven. That was a rarity in 1992 when the original released, but it’s more common these days. It’s exciting to be able to reboot this game and update it so that it’s ahead of the curve again like it was 25 years ago.

The team I’m working with is also really good. Atlas Games published the original, and they’re doing the new version, too. The producer, Cam Banks, is a big fan from way back, and so is Chris Lites, who contributed a lot of creative material.

What have you had to do to make Over the Edge modern, both in consideration of real life issues and what we conceive as paranormal or “weird” in the modern era?

In terms of real life, I had to ramp up the stakes. The setting is now set up with the expectation that a final reckoning is on the horizon. The world of 1992 was relatively peaceful, when the Soviet Union was defunct, Francis Fukuyama was touting the end of history, and Samuel Huntington’s so-called “Clash of Civilizations” was a new idea. These days, things are worse. Teenage girls who revere the Peacock Angel are burned to death in cages for refusing to be sex slaves in the army of the “Caliphate”. Carbon is heating the planet and killing the coral. Russia annexed territory by conquest, which no other country had done since 1975. Inequality has skyrocketed. Nationalism and racism are in fashion from one democracy to another. To compete with all this nightmarish stuff, the setting had to become more menacing.

The original game debuted just before the worldwide web, so the online aspect of modern life was missing. Interacting with the online world in Al Amarja usually means logging into the corrupt, State-run social network called Reba Online. Yes, the State is logging all your activity, but how else are you going to find a coffeeshop that has soy milk?

The paranormal elements of the game hardly needed updating. Paranormal beliefs reflect consistent human biases, such as magical thinking, so 25 years later you’ll still find ESP, interdimensional visitors, past lives, subliminal messaging, curses, etc. One new thing to add is epigenetics. Lay people tend not to understand what epigenetic changes really amount to, so you can sort of invent all sorts of weird abilities and say that they’re epigenetic. 

The Over the Edge cover with a woman in a head covering and face paint, a television showing an image of a man holding a knife behind his back, a morphed skull, a baboon, a person covering their face all but their eyes, and a plane flying off into the distance.
The Over the Edge cover is quite nice!
How does paranormality affect the average person in Over the Edge, from a narrative perspective and from a mechanical perspective?
The paranormal of Over the Edge is the sort of paranormal that fits right into everyday modern life. It’s like the paranormal that people actually believe in: prayer circles, horoscopes, alien contact, mind-control chemicals in the drinking supply, a parasitical skin disease from outer space, chakras, past lives, energy vampirism, subliminal mind control messages, chem trails, exorcism, reiki, rebirthing, or even child slavery on Mars. These sorts of paranormal elements are the sorts of things you find in Over the Edge, only in the game they’re weirder and more powerful.

The island of Al Amarja is a paranormal power center and a weak point in the reality manifestation matrix, so there’s more crazy paranormal events going on beneath the surface there than anywhere else. The people take it for granted that the government’s propaganda posters are some sort of mind control program, that messages are hidden in television broadcasts, and that the Internet is haunted. The most public face of the supernatural is Sister Cheryl, the leader of the Temple of the Divine Experience. Seekers who turn to Sister Cheryl can find all manner of shrines, disciplines, rituals, penances, psychoactives, prayers, book clubs, and animal sacrifices to help them progress along the spiritual path.

For players, the paranormal opens up a degree of freedom when they invent their characters’ traits. A player in my campaign, for example, invented a Christian Necromancer with a YouTube following. The game is set in the modern day, so players can bring in references to anything happening in the real world, and including references to the paranormal, such as necromancy. An important point is that the game doesn’t have mechanical subsystems. It doesn’t have a combat system or a magic system. It has a system for determining success and failure, along with possible good and bad surprises. That system works for psychic powers, street fighting, counterintelligence, and Christian necromancy.

What does the resolution mechanic feel like in play when supporting this rich fiction – is it punchy, does it leave a mark? What are any differences from previous versions?

From now on, that’s my new tagline for the dice mechanics in Over the Edge: a dice mechanic that leaves a mark! In the new system, players throw dice only when the results are consequential. With every throw, in addition to succeeding or failing, the player might get a “good twist” or a “bad twist”, which are surprising results that are outside the binary succeed/fail dichotomy.
Every throw of the dice matters. Fights, skullduggery, and paranormal efforts that would have taken several dice rolls in the original version are handled now with a single throw. A player’s dice throw determines how the conflict turns out, so a failure for the player is a success for the enemy. That’s a trick I learned from Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World. So every dice throw matters. For most throws, everyone at the table stops and watches. Each throw is that important.

Mechanically, a conflict is resolved by the player rolling two dice. If the player-character has a big advantage, the player can reroll a die once or twice. If the PC is at a serious disadvantage, the GM can force the player to reroll a die once or twice. After all the rerolls, the total on the dice indicates success (high roll) or failure (low roll). In addition, if a die shows a 3, that’s a bad twist, and if a die shows a 4, that’s a good twist. Good twists are more common with a higher roll, but you can fail the roll but still get a good twist, as when you throw a 4 and a 1 for a total of 5. Likewise, you often get a bad twist even with a success. The twists add a new dimension to the resolution system, a discontinuous result that can take the action in a new direction. The old system was serviceable, but it didn’t “leave a mark” like the new one does.

What are you doing in narrative and mechanical design to support a more inclusive, respectful play environment, considering the content you have in the game?

My roleplaying games have been marked for the way they have promoted women and people of color, especially Everway from 1995. It’s been gratifying to see the rest of the RPG industry follow the lead of those of us where on the front lines 20 or 30 years ago. In the original 1992 game, I made the leaders of the island women. That was back when D&D had officially removed the pronoun “she” from their rules, and it felt great to push back against “the man”. Putting women in charge was one small step toward counteracting the preponderance of powerful men in RPG settings. The great news is that today it’s no big shock for there to be powerful women, such as our own President Clinton. In order to continue to challenge stereotypes, I changed the ruling family, the D’Aubainnes, from French to black African.

More generally, the Atlantic island where the action all takes place is a mish-mash of germ lines and cultures. Seekers, fugitives, and spies from all over the world converge here, and the local population includes genetic contributions for all sorts of ancestries, including Neanderthals and probably Homo erectus. (It’s a long story.)

If you’re asking about respect, however, you might be asking the wrong person. Have you looked at the manuscript? The whole island is a mess of exploitation, lies, mind control, personal excess, social neglect, narcissistic self-aggrandizement, mental dysfunction, and conspiracies. Respect is hard to find. Instead, I’m an equal-opportunity disrespecter. The most powerful public figures on the Island are two black sisters, and if they’re powerful, that pretty much makes them villains. That said, if any GamerGater thinks that this is the game for him because the most prominent villains are black women, I hope he buys the game so he can be harshly disappointed. In Al Amarja, all sorts of people are terrible.

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Thanks so much to Jonathan for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Over the Edge on Kickstarter today! Remember to share the interview with your friends, too!

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Making the World Real (#RPGaDAY2018 Inspired)

The RPGaDAY 2018 chart

An August tradition, I suppose, is to respond to the prompts for RPGaDAY, and the 2018 prompts have a lot going on. I figured something I could do today is use one of them as a prompt for a blog post, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about, too.

Today’s prompt is How can players make a world seem real?

Two character sheets, one labeled The Lover, the other labeled a Snake.
Character sheets from a game of Turn I’m currently playing.

I think this can be a bit of a personal thing, but one way to do it for me is to give everything reasoning and give everything a story. NPCs, events in game, etc. all should have some flavor to their existence. It ties directly into collaborative worldbuildimg. This has been really growing for me while working on Turn, a game where everyone has loads of narrative control, and while playing D&D with my partner Dillon.

I’ll talk about Dillon first, because it’s super exciting to me. I’m not naturally a huge D&D fan – honestly, it’s a big game and a lot of the fiction bums me out. But, in the game I’m playing with Dillon, we’ve been rewriting a lot of it. The mechanics mostly remain the same, tho were using house rules and I’m playing cosmic horror investigation type fiction instead of the average adventure. But the fiction!

Two guards in front of a castle door. Overhead, a figure silhouetted by the moon creeps on a parapet.
Credit: John W. Sheldon CC-BY 4.0.

Dillon let me be a part of the world building for the main setting. This is something I once did in a game run by my husband John, where I got to make up dieties and religions and contribute to the fiction for the different species. Dillon is letting me do much the same thing! Collaborative worldbuilding means I get to see things I’m interested in integrated into the world I’m playing in, which inherently makes it more real to me.

For example, we were building up my character’s family and Kelt, my PC, is half tiefling, half half-orc, and I was talking about Kelt’s dad being a cleric. I said how it felt to me, due to some of the other background stuff we’ve done for the game, that tieflings aren’t demonic, they’re more druidic, nature based.

A black and white goat, photographed up close.
You know, more mountain goat than Black Phillip. Photo by Brie Sheldon.

Dillon and I discussed it, and he liked the idea, so we changed the way teiflings work in the game to have them even physically be more based in nature with antlers and ram horns rather than demonic horns, and it suited their culture that we’d developed, too. Now I have more knowledge about my PC’s dad’s history, the world around him, and I have a personal touchstone because I got to be a part of it!

And it reflects in that “everything has a reasoning, everything has a story” too – my character takes public transportation as we’re set in a near-industrial world, so Dillon had a newspaper I could read and gossip I could listen in on, but also he does something that’s important: when I suggest a frivolous detail for the scene, NPCs, etc., he considers it and often accepts it!

Like if I were to pass by someone and they rudely bump into me and I say,

“I bet they’re rushing off to a meeting with their mistress!”

Dillon runs with it, something like “actually, it’s his boyfriend and it’s their anniversary!”

I may never encounter that NPC again, but it feels real.

A green tinged campfire site where someone wearing an antlered mask calls out to a dog running towards the viewer, while another dog sits at their side.
Credit: John W. Sheldon CC-BY 4.0.

This is likewise with how Dillon’s treating Kelt’s dog, Orion, who is his familiar and tied to the Void (Kelt’s patron). It’s awesome when I play knowing that I’ll get to have my character deal with stuff like making sure Orion gets enough play time, or that his leash works in spite of his magical ability to phase through objects (lead lining helps!). Things like how Orion always wakes up to bark at the window-knocker and trolley actually make my in-game experience feel real!

So as a player, I engage back with these things, bring them up, ask questions, offer input. Making the world mine is part of the experience!

And this is all relevant to Turn. In Turn, I’ve tried to design some of this in. The worldbuilding you do with the town creation gives players deep engagement to the roots of the town and all its trappings, letting you understand the relationships and founding and themes before you start play, and you can add to it.

A town map from Turn, just circles and lines with text
A town map from Turn.

You also have vignettes each session with NPCs and the town dealing with real life needs that can be stressful and risk exposure of your shifter identity, even if it’s just going to pick up milk at the farmer’s market or trying to have coffee with your cousin. When players are engaging with Turn, I’m hoping they’ll ask questions of the town and NPCs too, and give reason to things that might seem otherwise random.

As a player in Turn, I’ve been lucky enough to have all of these experiences. John is often my GM in games and in Turn he does a spectacular job executing these ideals I have for a “real” world. He is the source for my researching the Storyteller section of Turn, and will be consulting heavily on it.

I’m so lucky to have two partners who are such amazing GMs and who let me make the world real from the role of a player!

Hope you enjoyed the post today and that you find it useful!

 

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Five or So Questions on Power Outage

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Bebarce El-Tayib on Power Outage, a superhero game for kids that’s currently on Kickstarter! Bebarce has given some excellent answers to my questions, so please check it out below!

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The words "Power Outage: Be a Hero" in yellow and purple. The O's in Power Outage are lightbulbs, one of which is broken. In the P, the hollow space is a lightning bolt.
This is a logo that was announced post-launch!

Tell me a little about Power Outage v 1.4. What excites you about it?

Power Outage 1.4 is a large leap in a series I’ve been developing for the past 4 years. It’s a Super Hero themed tabletop roleplaying game designed to be played by kids and GMed by adults. This would be the first attempt at making the book something I’m comfortable with being available in Print.

It’s exciting to me for a ton of reasons aside from the fact that it’s probably the largest and longest running creative endeavor that I’ve ever taken on. But I would have to say that the biggest excitement comes from the scope of change between 1.3 to 1.4. It’s a monumental shift. There is a completely revised mechanic system, much greater resources for crafting your own adventures, and the biggest thing of all is the expansion of guidance to not only include differentiation, but also a focus on creating more accessible gaming tables. Plus its just the inherent potential of creating something that introduces a new generation to a hobby that I and many others love.

Two character sheets, one more complicated design (labeled before) and one refined visually on the left (labeled after).
An example of the result of the Kickstarter funding on the character sheet.

When making games for kids, your point about a accessibility is super important. How do are you designing and developing Power Outage to be accessible, and why does it matter to you?

My work in Public Education as a technologist has me dealing with data often. Part of that involves creating considerations for Special Education, and managing Special Education Data. So when it comes to creating accomodations I realize the monumental task in front of me. As soon as I started I realized there was no end, so I’m tackling it from two fronts. In the book I have a section dedicated to Accessibility guidance. I broke the sections into 5 specific domains outside of general guidance. Physical, Communicative / Receptive, Behavioral, Cognitive, and Emotional. What I’m essentially doing is tackling the topic from a symptomatic approach, rather than a cause approach. Tthat limits me to an extent from the specificity inherent with conditions, but allows for the broadest spectrum of guidance. I have 2 directors of special education I’ve worked with helping to ensure that the information I’m providing is safe, sound, and that the terminology is effective.

Seperate from that I created a wiki called www.accessible-rpg.com It is currently under developed, and tailored primarily to children, but eventually I’d like it to become a free resource to people developing games or running tables, to create a more accessible gaming table. It’s a larger goal than Power Outage itself, and its only going to be successful with community involvement. That’s why it’s built in the wiki format. It has to be populated with information from the people who are directly effected. It has to be live, and continually changing. I plan on jumping right back into it once I’m done with the kickstarter, and pulling in as much guidance as I can get.

As to why it’s important to me, I could try to relate to work, or family members, or some forms of tangible relationships to be people I know that have disabilities, but in all honesty, it is something that we should ALL be working toward. Roleplaying games allow all of us to not only break free of the limitations we find in our every day lives, but express our real selves through our avatars. We bring our strengths and our perceived weaknesses and allow them to shape a world we actively create. The absolute NEED to make that process available to everyone is imperative. We need to be accessible. We need to be inclusive. We need to bring everyone to the table, and if we can’t, then we need to drag that table over to them.

A muscular character in a cropped jacket with a toaster for a head, a carafe as a gun, and a waffle press hammer labeled "BREAK FAST"

What are the mechanics like in Power Outage? How do you encounter and overcome challenges?

So we’re working with kids. That takes “expectations” and throws them into the waste bin. So the idea behind Power Outage’s mechanics is in compartmentalizing game play so that kids can be playing their own individualized game while still contributing to the greater narrative. It’s taking the concept of differentiation from the classroom and applying it the gaming sphere.

What it boils down to is the idea that the game is more a guide then a hard set dogmatic codex that must be followed. GMs provided guidance to players based off of their capabilities, and to do this effectively, the mechanics have been made so that it’s easily accessible to everyone involved.

Characters have 4 attributes. IMPACT – which effects basic human characteristics POWER – which effects their super heroic capabilities OHMER – which is the stat that IMPACT and POWER compare againsts and YP – Yield Points – which is the point pool that Heroes have before deciding them must Yield or regroup. There is no death in Power Outage.

The 4 attributes covers a lot of types of conditions, but is a reduced amount of record keeping so that not only are kids able to focus more on roleplay and story elements, but so that GMs can more easily manage groups of kids who for instance may not be able to read yet, or add large sums.

In order to allow creative freedom for kids to make the heroes they want, Power tables are provided with effects are provided and grouped to Combat, Support, and Utlity. Kids work with the GM to determine what their heroes can do, and the GM helps match the power to an effect on the table. So if you’re doing 1d4 damage from up to 20 spaces away, it doesn’t matter if that effect comes from a flame torch, or a snow ball, or lightning bolt or psychic shock. In short, Power Outage provides the effect, and the hero provides the flavor.

One last thing I’ll mention is the CAPE system (Combat, Alternative, Puzzle, and Exploration) It’s a way to compartmentalize adventures so that you can cherry pick what you want for your play sessions. In the prewritten adventures (to be released, although one is included with the core book) it becomes a choose your own adventure mechanic. Do you prefer to not have violence in your session, Alternative Components match up to every Combat Component. Are puzzles too difficult? Move around them directly to exploration. It allows GMs to build adventures that pertain to the needs of their group.

All of this comes from the game kids want to play, rather than the game kids are forced to play. And it happens at all levels. From something as simple as the character sheets “Character image” section being enlarged because kids want more room to drawing their characters, to color/symbol coding Attributes so that a GM can easily say “Tell me the red number” or “Tell me the number with the boot symbol”

letters and symbols in primary colors: C with a fist in red, A with a shield in green, P with a puzzle piece in yellow, and E with a magnifying glass in blue.

The five regions for playing in sound really fun! What are they like to play in? What exciting elements do they have in store?

So not only are the 5 regions different stylistic settings, the settings themselves allow for potentially uniquely suited playstyles as well.

The Atomnyy Zavod is a always night gothic soviet atomic punk city. It’s gritty, and confusing, and the some of the starker elements are only highlighted by the oddity of it’s semi-futuristic elements. You’ll see old-timey vehicles driving under nuclear battery powered street green glowing street lights. But this is the perfect setting for gritty noir mysteries. You’ll use Exploration and Puzzle solving components just as often if not more often then Combat/Alternative.

Shorai City is it’s opposite in many ways, with it’s soaring Neo-Japanese inspired towers, flying cars, and robotic servants. This city has become a gathering point for many big heroes and villains, and often becomes the setting for large confrontations. This setting is great for large Beat Em Up style baddies that hearken back to the Golden Era comic days. Villains include Mrs. Roboto and The Tempuritan.

The Overgrowth is by far the most expansive region of Outage. The product of Outages once barren but strange landscape, had tests done on it in the early stages of American involvement causing the worlds largest forrest to grow. That forrest however was both invasive, aggressive, and sentient. Still outpost seem to coexist within the Overgrowth. A musical troll city, a city of Outcast Powers (the name for people with Powers in Outage), and a School for Sandwich Magic are just a few examples of what is discovered, but certainly more mysteries lie within under the canopy. This setting is great for all sorts of Campy Adventures or Mythical Fantasy type games. One area might hold dragons, and the other might hold dinosaurs. Ancient civilizations come to light or scientific outposts. Villains include Treestache and Swagneto.

The sink is a geological anomoly. It is a peninsula on the south eastern coast of Outage. One end appears to be sinking steadily in the ocean while the other side of it emerges from the ground far inland, seemingly with intact ancient structures. At it’s tip, the sink features a floating shanty city of disreputable individuals known as The Scum. Under the ocean as the sink delves further into it’s depths lie ancient cities under the water, sealed off from the ocean that surrounds it (for now). This is a great city for acting a bit rebellious enjoying some not so squeaky mission, confronting morale dilemmas, or just outright exploration. Whether you’re in the muddy bayou, exploring submerged catacombs or getting into naval battles with or against pirates, it’s usually a nonstop adventure. Villains of note include The Boat Rocker and InstaGator.

Finally, Seward’s Refuge is central to the island continent. It is an American run scientific and military facility, that serves often as a waystation between regions, a central government, a barrier to the Overgrowth, and it’s Space Elevator even provides access to the stars. This region is great for multi-region adventures, political intrigue, science gone wrong, or incursion/spy missions. Villains of note include Agent Orangutan and General Specific.

Each region has areas that aren’t directly drawn out leaving exploration up to the imagination and creation of the GM. There is also a section in the book detailing potential other locations including Dimensional and Temporal options. It’s a huge sandbox that kids and adults can play in. You can build just about any game you want to in the world.

A character with short hair, goggles, and augmented clothing - armor with radar antennae, a claw hand, and braces at the knees.

With all of the efforts that you have put in, do you have any hopes moving forward for Power Outage and even other games to become more accessible for kids?

Yes, I think you’ll see a lot more of this cropping up. There is a positive shift in the culture of gaming that not only lends to more voices being heard, but a general awareness of the roles we play in inclusiveness, accessibility, and security. A lot of people grew up with these games, and are looking to share it with their kids. In he end, getting families around the table and talking and gaming with each other was the seed that my game grew out of. And as we learn more and more how games effect the ability to understand and retain knowledge, to become flexible and willing to learn new things. It’s becoming an imperative.

The Power Outage cover including an imposing image of a toaster-headed being in the background next to turrets, with a knight-styled character with a cape in the front holding a horse staff, next to a person in crash-test dummy styled costume.
What a nifty cover!

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Thank you so much to Bebarce for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Power Outage on Kickstarter today!

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approachable theory: Destructive Design

The approachable theory logo, with the text "approachable theory" and an image of two six-sided dice with one pip showing, with a curved line below it to make a smile. The dice are black with cyan for the pip and yellow with black for the pip.

Hello all! Many of you have likely seen me mention the methodology behind my design, destructive design, and I thought it was due time I broke the idea down a little bit. I thought approachable theory might be the best place to do it, because simple is good. I’ll talk about the origin of the methodology, how it’s applied, and what’s the difference between destructive design and hacking. I hope you enjoy the article!

Origins

Destructive design has existed informally, for sure, for a long time. From the first time someone took the time to examine a game’s design and use it to construct something new, the roots have been there. For me, personally, they’re rooted in the approach my dad taught me for repairing engines and similar things – I talked about this a little on [insert quest here].

My dad can take anything apart, put it back together, and fix the problems it had – his repair skills are legendary. He taught himself a lot of the skills necessary for it using the root of the mentality for destructive design. He would take things apart entirely – whole engines, down to the nuts and bolts – and put them back together. In the process, he could find the root of what wasn’t working just right, learn how the machine worked, and find opportunities to improve things. He taught me this when I was a young kid, and it stuck with me.

When I started in games, I kept finding games that were almost there, nearly right, but not quite what I needed. I wanted to fix it, and the only way I knew how to do that was to take it apart and put it back together. A common misconception is that my games and things I create with this method could be that they’re the put back together part – but that’s not how it works. I build something new – maybe making molds of ideas or pieces, but never copying right over – and try to make what I want to see, whether it’s like that other thing at all or not.

After all, my dad – an engineer – did that, too. He could take what he learned from those engines and build new designs for machines and tools. And it was pretty cool.

a man in a ball cap, tee shirt, and jeans sitting on a large rock near the ocean, holding a fish
My dad also likes to fish. Photo by Bonnie Cousins.

 

Application

It maybe isn’t easy to do destructive design, depending on your approach, but the core ideas are simple:

  1. Have a concept or mechanic
  2. Break it down into its basest parts
  3. Examine it in detail
  4. Build it back up again and look for cracks and loose bolts in the process
  5. Build something new from what you’ve learned

For an example, we’ll look at Struggles in Turn. Turn is a game about shapeshifters in small towns who must find balance between their human and beast identities. Struggles are what might otherwise be moves in a Powered by the Apocalypse game. There are just some slight changes, but they matter. Moves in Monsterhearts are one of the first parts that I broke down.

a text box containing the turn someone on move from monsterhearts: When you turn someone on, roll with hot. On a 10 up, take a String against them. • On a 7-9, they choose one: give themselves to you, promise something they think you want, give you a String against them.
The “turn someone on” move from Monsterhearts.

Here are some of the base parts of moves*:

– Descriptive prompt (when you ____, roll with _____).
– Requires die roll
– Stats can be penalty or bonus
– Success ladder (10+ succeed, 7-9 succeed at cost, 6- fail)
– Narrative options
– Mechanical options
– Risk of failure

When I designed struggles, I started with a different set of assumptions based on what I learned here. First, I built the pieces back together and realized that one of the key elements of these moves was what I wanted to avoid: failure. In Turn, while it might take time and will have consequences, you always succeed at what you do. So I struck out “risk of failure.” Next, I wanted struggles to exclusively be something that happened when you were doing something that your opposed form didn’t want to do, or that it might resist, or in situations where you were trying to hold your opposed form back from doing something. When you look at Monsterhearts moves, they’re only when you’re actively doing something, and you’re assumed to want to do it. I decided to make you always rolling a penalty to these rolls, so I took out “stats can be penalty or bonus.”

The success ladder is just handy, and I did want to require a die roll. I also wanted to include mechanical and narrative options for any pick lists. But with the ladder now, the 6- wasn’t a failure – it was just a giant pile of consequences. You do want you want, but the ladder represented the severity of consequences for succeeding. The base parts of struggles are now like this*:

– Descriptive prompt (when you ____, roll with _____).
– Requires die roll
– Stats are penalty
– Success ladder (10+ no or few consequences, 7-9 more consequences, 6- all consequences)
– Narrative options
– Mechanical options
– Guaranteed success

A text box showing the mind your manners struggle in Turn: Mind your manners – when your Beast threatens to speak first, roll -Honest. On 10+, choose two. On 7-9, choose one. You don't betray your nature and don’t mark exposure. You don't cause offense with your directness. You don't give too much information or reveal an uncomfortable truth.
The “mind your manners” struggle in Turn.

If you swapped these two mechanics – put struggles in Monsterhearts and moves in Turn – the games would be radically different. Giving characters in Monsterhearts guaranteed success could end up with towns overrun with monstrous teens, meanwhile making it so the stats could be bonuses could make shifters in Turn even more dangerous. It would change tone, and alter how people play.

The process of breaking these things down is really exciting sometimes! It is good to see what’s lying beneath the surface, what’s grinding the gears – and when put into application, destructive design can be revealing and instructive.

*Not necessarily an exhaustive list.

Destructive Design versus Hacking

What’s the difference between destructive design and hacking? Well, they’re not mutually exclusive. In fact, plenty of people who hack games use destructive design. The real core differences are that with destructive design your goal is to create something notably different on a structural or conceptual level, while some hacks intend to be similar, matching structure and concepts but with different dressing – and destructive design is an active and purposeful process.

Destructive design can happen even on the smallest mechanical or narrative design level. Some people do it, but wouldn’t call it that, because we don’t always label how we do something. Meanwhile, I use the term because it helps me align my methods and do things with intent. A person could consider Turn to be a hack – and some people do – but I don’t, because I think that I used destructive design to change fundamental concepts and structure. Like all parts of game theory, though, people’s perspectives differ.

A praying mantis on a pink background with the text "don't be a dick."
I love these animals from ravensribbon.tumblr.com.

Examples

One of the most significant examples of destructive design is Turn, which is currently in production. Turn was born of playing Monsterhearts and finding it wasn’t quite hitting the nerve I wanted, and then sitting there with my ideas piled up for like four years before I finally wrote anything down. There’s definitely evidence of Monsterhearts in Turn, but it is a completely different beast.

Another example of destructive design by me is Script Change. It doesn’t seem like it would be one! It’s just a content and safety toolbox, right? Well, some could say Script Change was inspired by the X-card… except the inspiration was to break it down into concepts and try to make it what I wanted. After using the X-card for a while and talking to John Stavropolous and so on, I realized it was a great tool, but not the right one for me. I examined it, watched it in play, and then figured out what worked best for me.

Many of my works are destructive design – including Let Me Take a Selfie! All of the games inside come from the root of seeing other selfie games and wanting to see how I could use a mechanic I cared about to tell the stories I wanted to, but not by using the same methods as the other games. None of them are directly inspired, none of them are intended to be similar at all to other games – they just come from the root of “break down this idea and build it back up so I can build something new.”

Conclusion

Destructive design is a methodology – a concept, and a potential way to do game design. It is based on the idea of taking something apart to understand it better, and using that knowledge to make something different and more suited to your needs. I hope this article gives good explanation to it and helps others explore design from a perspective that might not always be tidy, but certainly gives opportunity to learn something new!
 
Thanks for reading! Check out other approachable theory articles here!
P.S. If you’d like to write an article for approachable theory, email Brie at contactbriecs@gmail.com with a one paragraph pitch, your name, and your pronouns. 

 

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Five or So Questions on Tiny Supers

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Alan Bahr on Tiny Supers: Minimalist Superhero Roleplaying, a game currently on Kickstarter! Tiny Supers sounds like big fun in a small design space, so I asked Alan some questions. Check out Alan’s responses below!

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A masked black woman superhero in a leather jacket and gloves over plain clothes, deflecting bullets while protecting a frightened white man with glasses.
Bastion, one of the GallantVerse Iconics! Art by Nicolás Giacondino

Tell me a little about Tiny Supers! What excites you about it?

Oh, that’s hard to answer. I grew up loving Superheroes. I’ve struggled with mental illness for a very large part of my life, and comics were a big part of that recovery and healing process for me. I’m a person who needs a goal and aspiration, and superheroes provide that to me. Tiny Supers and the GallantVerse are my love letter to one of the most formative parts of my life.

How do the narrative bangs and pows of Supers integrate with the mechanics of TinyD6? What have you done to create the heroic “feel”?

Well, Narratively, the powers in Tiny Supers aren’t focused on “ranks” or who is stronger. It’s focused on the needs of the narrative. Much like comic powers vary based on the writer, Tiny Supers has some “flex” inside it’s system, due to it’s nature of a minimalist game line. We’ve worked extensively to make sure powers are flexible, interesting, and dynamic. 
A superhero in a blue metallic armor suit, racing fast and leaving clouds of dust.
Ryker Swift, aka Velocity! One of the Iconic GallantVerse Heroes. Art by Nicolás Giacondino
What is the GallantVerse like? Who are some of the major players and what’s at stake?
Well, the GallantVerse is a fledging supers universe. Most of the supers are under 5 years of tenure. A majority of the lead-in stakes revolve around heroes learning the limits of what being a hero means in the eyes of the public and their own conscience. It focuses on hope, optimisim, and being a beacon. There’s a lot that can feel oppressive, cynical and bitter, and while we shouldn’t avoid confronting the harsh and hard things in life, having a place to escape where it’s a little easier to be a hero can be fantastic. That’s the Goal of the GallantVerse. We have a slew of Iconic Heroes like Gallant (our Paragon), Velocity (a Speedster), Bastion (the leader of our teen hero team The Bulwarks), and so much more. 
What does a typical Super look like in Tiny Supers, mechanically?
TinyD6 functions on a simple system of 1, 2, or 3 six-sided dice. Heroes will roll a number indicated by their abilities/powers and if any dice results in a 5 or 6, they’re successful. Power Traits often will increase chances of success, either by granting the third d6, giving a better range of success, or allowing a unique set of actions. Heroes will have an Archetype that gives them a special Trait, and then they’ll select 3-6 Traits/Power Traits. That’s it! It’s very easy to make a character. 
What makes a Tiny Super look the most different from a character in another Tiny d6 game?
The Power Traits, and Nicolas Giacondino’s fantastic art! Our book is so beautifully illustrated because Nic does such great work.

A woman superhero with a G on her chest, styled in purple and grey with shoulder-length light brown hair.
The Iconic Hero and paragon of the GallantVerse, Gallant! Art by Nicolas Giacondino

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Thanks so much to Alan for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Tiny Supers on Kickstarter today!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

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Five or So Questions on Nunami

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Thomassie Mangiok on Nunami, which Thomassie describes as “the first Inuit designed board game where a player can win by leading a balanced cohabitation with another player.” Nunami is currently on Kickstarter and I’d love you all to check it out, so here’s what Thomassie had to say!

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Plastic hexagons with insets where paper triangles with designs on them are placed.
Here is an example of board layout.

Tell me a little about Nunami. What excites you about it?

Nunami is a game of probabilities where each player will set the layout at each start in order to change how they explore the land; the game will play out very differently each playthrough. The game is meant to encourage through fun people to live with others, in respect and understanding.

What excites me about the game is introduction of its concept and gameplay, it is most likely unique and new within a huge library of existing games.

Plastic hexagons with insets where paper triangles with designs on them are placed.
What inspired Nunami as a game? How did you come up with the concept?

Life in the north, our culture and Star Trek inspired me in general. When I tell people that I am going hunting, the trust is that I am actually exploring the nature, it changes each time I travel, and I love every bit of it. It has been difficult for me knowing what colonization of Inuit has caused, exchanges of cultures would eventually happen but both Inuit and Europeans weren’t ready or well equipped for the damages that would happen. So the game for me is way to encourage people to accept differences, it also intends to encourage players to work with probabilities.

I grew up having a difficult relationship with probabilities because as much as I loved it, it isn’t possible to master it since there are always factors while trying to set a path.

Our culture evolved with small groups of people, so we grew up with open and supportive practices. These are slowly being replaced with what consumerism and capitalism demand, but they are important and should continue to be practiced so we can at least moderate our capitalistic characteristics.

Star Trek series set goals and dreams for me, I just imagine how we can be in the future. So I mean to do my small part towards the future in which I’d like to live in.

Plastic hexagons with insets where paper triangles with designs on them are placed.
The designs on the game pieces are so cute!
What are your favorite mechanics in the game and why?
My favorite mechanics are the dependence of each player to be present – we absolutely need the resources provided by the other player in order to win. If my cards over populate a base, they will automatically be removed. Giving the other player more chance to control the base. The other thing I love is how we can set the start of the game; the layout of bases and the cards change our game experiences and strategies.

Has the inspiration from Star Trek influenced what players do in Nunami, and if so, how?

Star Trek has inspired me and influences me in my actions, the goals of the federation always have resonated with my values. Exploration, understanding, living with beings of different cultures, advancement guided by passion, and so on. My game isn’t directly inspired by anything else except by my person beliefs and love.
Plastic hexagons with insets where paper triangles with designs on them are placed.
Moving away from colonizing narratives is awesome! What do you hope players take away from the game about a co-existence narrative instead?
My hope is that we stop fearing, we often oppose others in fear of being less than others or of being harmed. The easiest way to stop fearing becomes to completely remove those that represent it, not the source. Racism, jealousy and anger are examples of what comes from fear and we as humans have to live beyond them. Why not through a game? I’d be happy if people are enriched by sharing the positive sides of different people, share and adopt what makes us healthier. If someone or something will make us healthier at an expense of our familiarity and comfort, make it a part of us. It is great to be able to share this view.
Plastic hexagons with insets where paper triangles with designs on them are placed.
I like the simplicity of the design and how it isn’t quite like anything I’ve personally interacted with.
—

Awesome! Thanks so much to Thomassie for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Nunami on Kickstarter today!
 

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Quick Shot on Ancient World: Atisi

Hello all! Today I have a Quick Shot with Marcelo Paschoalin about Ancient Worlds: Atisi, a Dungeon World campaign setting, which is currently on Indiegogo. I hope you enjoy hearing about the setting that Marcelo has developed!

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What is Atisi, both as a product and as your vision?

Atisi is a work of love and research — I’ve put a good effort in mixing the various cultures depicted in the book with something a game designer should never forget: playability. The best reference book would be meaningless in a gaming table if the material there is not able to make the players excited about it and eager to play. In other words, I’ve hit the books about sub-Saharan people, sought real life for inspiration, but I’ve also considered what fiction tells about all those, directly and indirectly. So, if one wants a simple answer, Atisi could be compared to Conan in Stygia, but it’s (a lot) more than that.

Consider this point: people in Atisi are not the Caucasian Eurocentric types. This, for once, is a change of paradigm when compared to standard sword & sorcery. The original book (Atisi was published in Portuguese powered by Barbarians of Lemuria system) was even used as a tool for teaching children about ethnics/racial diversity, so I believe I transcended the original goal — I wanted a fun campaign setting to play, but I’ve also got a kind of bridge able to bring people together.
So, as a campaign setting for Dungeon World, Atisi is a book that goals beyond describing the world: it gives the Game Master tools to create her own setting, as the multitude of questions (each point of interest on the map — big enough to include lots of blanks to be filled later — has its own set of questions, for example) will help the gaming table make it unique. This means the playbooks, the moves, the magic items, the monsters, the people, and the landscape add together to make this an exquisite sword & sorcery campaign setting. And as Atisi (one of the insular realms of the setting, and focus to this book) is inspired by a fantastic Egypt, you’ll surely find a lot of adventure inside the mysterious pyramids that dot the place.
It’s 280-pages full of wonders for the Game Master and the players, and we have 70% of the basic goal funded already (at the time of writing this). I’m pretty sure we’ll fund this crowdfunding project soon and aim toward the first stretch goal.


I’d love to hear about your research. What are some of the things you’ve researched that you’re really enjoying putting forward in the text? Did anything surprise you? 

At first it’s difficult to leave the castles and crusades behind, the knights in shining armor, the dragons… As we are all the fruit of our past experiences — and we are usually surrounded by Medievalish and Eurocentric settings — I had to approach everything with a clean mind. A blank canvas, to be honest. I was already familiar with the writings of Robert Ervin Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Poul Anderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jessica Amanda Salmonson (to name a few), so my sword & sorcery background was sound. What I needed was to focus on the people and their mythology.
What we call mythology, however, is another people’s religion — and I’ve learned a lot about Kemetism (a revival of Ancient Egyptian religion) and African religion (there’s a shamanic vibe in those, but it’s a lot more than that) — and I needed to respect that. This led me to many monsters of legend particular to Sub-Saharan Africa and I’ve tried the best to convey their spirit (even if I used different names).
Learning about the people, the culture, was also delightful. There’s such a vast amount of details that, together, creates a wonderful tapestry. There’s honor. There’s mutual respect. There’s a constant fight for survival. And those reflect today, as those values were never lost.
Yet I’m no Historian. So I grabbed some of my research and talked to some scholars (I dare to call them such, as this makes my writing journey a little more epic, don’t you agree?) to give me a better perspective of everything I was learning at the time: History and Sociology professionals were my best friends during those research phases of my work.
And I’m glad I’ve learned so much. It gave me a better notion of who I am, as I believe we only know about us when we learn about others.
Multiple figures of people from the text - dark skinned, wearing patterned clothing and jewelry.
Sample image by Brazilian artist Paloma Diniz.
How do you envision the material you’ve researched and developed will integrate with Dungeon World? How will it work together mechanically?
Not everything was “translated” into rules. After all, Ancient Worlds: Atisi is a game, not a treaty on those cultures. And another important thing: this is a fantasy world, not an exact replica of the reality (albeit real world sometimes is more fantastic than we can conceive at first, there are limits on what is “gameable”). So the heroes, the Player Characters, are larger than life, with abilities that mimic the legends, not the ordinary people (and, as a side note, I need to thank David Guyll and Melissa Fisher for the help in designing the playbooks — they were fantastic people to work with). Monsters of ancient tales are part of the landscape, old stories are forged once again and are transformed in tidbits of the lore of the places of the kingdoms of the land…
This means magical items and monsters, while inspired by Egyptian mythology, have their own tags and moves, becoming familiar to those used to Dungeon World. Even each point of interest becomes an adventure in itself (like a proto-dungeon starter), but none are set on stone as the related questions the GM may ask are able to turn Atisi into a unique setting for each gaming table.
Of course, everything is already written and playtested: I’ve started this crowdfunding campaign with a set goal in mind and the backers are already receiving an “alpha” version of the book, so they can start playing right now, even before the campaign ends. This way, all mechanics are already interwoven with the setting, as one reinforces the other.

—

Thanks so much to Marcelo for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Ancient World: Atisi on Indiegogo!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

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Five or So Questions on Flotsam

Hi y’all, I have an interview today with Joshua Fox, who you might recognize from Lovecraftesque, about Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars, which is currently on Kickstarter! It seems like an interesting new game and Joshua’s track record with Lovecraftesque makes me excited to see what’s there! Let’s see what Joshua’s excited about:

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Three people standing around a small table, in front of a large porthole window looking out to space and a spaceship. The people are a of diverse backgrounds and potentially species, two looking mostly human - one lighter skinned, one dark skinned - and the third blue-grey skinned and humanoid.
The art for Flotsam is so gorgeous!

Tell me a little about Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars. What excites you about it?

Flotsam is a GMless game about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in the belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society. It’s all about their everyday lives, interpersonal relationships and small scale drama, against a backdrop of poverty, social strife, gang conflict and supernatural weirdness. That’s the basics of the game. System-wise it’s kind of like a cross between Dream Askew and Hillfolk.
There’s two things about the game that excite me. First, I love stories about space and space stations, and I’m excited to offer a different take on the genre. Shows like Deep Space Nine and The Expanse give me all the genre trappings that push my buttons, but the bits I’m most curious about are the ordinary people lurking in the shadows, away from the epic political drama and space battles. What’s life like for a Belter union worker while grandiose plotting goes on? What does that Cardassian spy get up to when he’s not worrying about being assassinated? How do all those people relate to each other, and what little dramas take place in their lives? Flotsam answers those questions. It gives you an awesome science fiction setting, but zoomed in on the part of the story that usually gets skipped over.

The second thing – and if I was honest I’d have put this first, because it’s my personal quest – is that Flotsam is my take on how to do GMless gaming. It give you the best of both worlds. It lets you play one Primary character and explore their personal issues and relationships, really inhabit that character. It also lets you take the fullest possible part in building the setting and driving external threats forward, stuff I really enjoy as a GM. And of course I get the same back from my fellow players. That combination has given me some of my best gaming experiences. I’m particularly proud of how the system streamlines both sides of the game down to a level that makes it easy to juggle those two jobs.

Tell me a little about the core mechanics and how they relate to the setting. How does what players do mechanically translate to what happens in game?

Each player controls one Primary character and one Situation. A Situation is a constellation of threats and problems united by a theme, such as “the gangs” or “the spirits”. The setting is mostly encoded into the character Playbooks and Situation sheets, which are stacked with thematic details and setup questions to prime the game.

In any given moment of play, you’ll probably have two or more people playing their Primary character, and you’ll have at least one person playing their Situation. The interaction between those is pretty free-form most of the time, very much the “roleplaying is a conversation” approach. The game rules tell you when to step outside that freeform conversation, and that’s mostly mediated by decisions taken by people playing their Primary character.

If you want to inject some energy and threat into a scene that you’re in, you activate one of your character’s Weaknesses. Weaknesses can be external issues, like an enemy or rival, or they can be personal flaws, like the fact your character is arrogant and overconfident. When you activate a Weakness, you’re inviting the other players to make trouble for your character. In exchange, you get a Token which you can spend to power your Strengths. When you want to solve problems and put your character in the driving seat, you activate one of your character’s Strengths and spend a Token. Doing that gives you permission to narrate how your character competently does their thing, and blocks other characters from complicating what you do with new problems. And finally, if you keep your hands off those two mechanics, the Principles of the game encourage the other players to step back and let you have whatever interesting interaction is at the centre of the scene.

In other words, when you play your Primary character, you’re in control of pacing for the scene. Do you want to be put under pressure? Do you want to kick ass and take names? Do you want an intense, undisturbed conversation? You get to decide. With that said, you can’t just say and do whatever you like – if you ignore a problem in the fiction, or do something risky or challenging, that gives the other players permission to make trouble for you even though you didn’t activate a Weakness. But most of the time, the pacing of the scene is in your hands, with the default being the interpersonal interactions that the game is focused on.

The final piece of the puzzle is the XP system. This rewards you for having social and emotional interactions with another character, where you show them something of who you really are, and take the relationship out of its equilibrium. Every time you do that you earn Marks against your Relationship with that character, and when you accumulate enough Marks you rewrite the Relationship and improve your character. Together with those charged setup questions I mentioned before, this mechanic drives the game towards an overall focus on developing, evolving relationships.

a horizontal banner styled like riveted metal, with a desk in the center (top down) that has a book, star charts, and a watch on it.
This is such a pretty banner 🙂

How are you balancing these difficult concepts like poverty and gang conflict with the supernatural and sci fi elements? How do mechanics influence this?

Oh, wow. What a question! That’s a great question.

The game has a number of key themes, of which poverty is one, which are woven through the game. Each theme is threaded through the playbooks and the situations, in lots of small ways. So it’s difficult to disentangle how they’re handled, because it’s not like there’s a mechanic for poverty or something like that. But the game also brings each theme into sharper focus in individual playbooks and situations. For instance, for poverty, there’s a specific situation devoted to it, which means there will be one player whose job it is to think about how deprivation and want (and conversely wealth and privilege) impact on the community, ask questions about that and push that theme into the game. And there’s a particular playbook – the cast-off – that is all about what it’s like to live with economic precariousness, working different jobs to pay the bills.

The science fiction and supernatural elements are essentially handled in the same way. As to how they’re balanced with the more real-life serious elements – they’re not exactly distinct elements, if you see what I mean? The cast-off might be an ordinary human with mundane skills, or they could be an alien who has crash-landed on the station and is trying to parlay their unique skills to make a living down here. In one playtest game, my character was a trader up to his neck in debt, trying to stay afloat, but also happened to be a member of the race who built the station – and who had been driven off by humans. So his circumstances and the science fiction bits of the game intersected fairly heavily.

Now having said all that, it’s down to the players how they handle these themes. It’s totally possible for one group to de-emphasise a given theme, by choosing to pick up particular characters and situations. You drive the game in the direction you want to go. You could let the weirder elements come to the fore, or you could focus on the social problems of a place that lacks basic necessities, that happens to be on a space station. Either way the game’s principles push you to treat the characters like real people, to focus on their lives and relationships, and make them the centre of the story, not cool tech or weird phenomena.

Tell me about some of the Strengths and how they tie to the narrative and character development. What kind of Strengths can you have? What do they mean to the characters narratively?

Each Playbook has its own unique set of Strengths to choose from, which tie into the nature of the Playbook, and could be a skill, a resource, or a special ability. So if we take the Spider, who is a trader, criminal or spymaster, they can have straightforward abilities like “deception” which enables them to lie their way out of trouble; they can have resources like “connections (underworld)” which enable them to invent items or contacts that they need; and they can have interesting options that sort of sit between the two like “contingency plans” which allow them to invent a way out of a situation on the fly and say they planned it all along.

An example of weirder abilities are those of the Sybyl, who is a prophet with strange gifts; most of their Strengths have slightly cryptic names like “Dreamwalk” and “Thread of Fate”. The game doesn’t define what that means – we find out what your character can do in play, and in the process we might also find out what drawbacks or side effects those abilities come with.

Some of these Strengths link to the Playbook’s Weaknesses, like the Thunder, who may have a gang at their beck and call (which is a Strength) but that gang might also be liars and schemers (a Weakness). And one fun mechanic I haven’t yet mentioned is the way that Weaknesses can turn into Strengths; so perhaps your character is paranoid and vengeful, which starts out as a Weakness that can get them into trouble, but later on you might spend a character upgrade to switch that to a Strength. Maybe you rename it to “it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you”, or something like that, and now you can spend it to be ready when things go south – rather like the Spider’s contingency plans. So we see how a character can come to understand and master their own flaws.

I think the key thing about Strengths is that, as long as you have a Token, they’re pretty much a guaranteed get-out-of-jail-free card. So that encourages and enables players to dig themselves into deep trouble, knowing that ultimately their character can get out of it. So we can tell stories about characters whose backs are against the wall, without the fear of a couple of botched dice rolls ending the story there. Similarly, your fellow players are free to push as hard as they like because they know you’ve got that option. It really puts the direction of the story in your hands.

What are the most important stories you’ve told with Flotsam so far, and what more are you hoping to see from players? How has seeing the game played influenced the design?

I’ll tell you about a couple of my favourite stories so far.

In one of them, Oscar (a gang leader) and Deacon (a political activist) forged a tense and interesting relationship. Deacon was a demagogue, telling anyone who would listen that they needed to overthrow the oppressive government of the Above. Meanwhile, Oscar was worried that Deacon could light a powder keg under their community and bring the wrath of the Above down on their heads. This was complicated by a romantic relationship between Oscar’s daughter and one of Deacon’s followers. The story saw Oscar choosing between all these competing concerns to decide whether to throw his weight behind the resistance movement, even though it meant putting his people and his family in danger.

Another story included Barter, a trader struggling to avoid the attention of some very scary creditors, and Scarlet, a runaway who worked any job from appliance repair to stealing artifacts. Life kind of had both of them on the ropes, but they – and the other characters in that game – had each others’ backs, coming through for each other when their lives seemed right on the verge of falling apart. When Scarlet’s makeshift home got burned down by a gang, Barter gave her food and shelter. When Barter was running out of excuses not to pay his debts, Scarlet helped him make the trade that kept him afloat. So that was a great heartwarming story about people pulling together in the face of adversity.

I’ll come to what more I’d like to see from players in a moment, but in terms of how playtesting has influenced design, it’s kind of a truism but it’s really reinforced the need to simplify. The original draft game had a lot more moving parts and custom moves. But when people are juggling a main character and a situation, flipping between a GM-style role and playing their character, and keeping track of all these relationships, simplicity is absolutely key, to ensure nobody is overwhelmed. So I’ve stripped it back to the simplest set of rules I can without losing the things that make the game tick. At the same time, I’ve put a lot of work into refining how the system is taught, which again comes down to the fact that everyone has to know the rules. With Lovecraftesque we created a printable teaching guide to help people grok the system without everyone needing to read the rules, and that’s the same approach I’ve taken here.

Finally, what has amazed and delighted me about playing this game is how it seems to unlock people’s creativity. It gives you just enough structure and starting prompts to make it really easy to create intriguing, flawed relationships and beautiful, evocative settings, each reflecting the whole group’s ideas and input. So I guess I’m looking forward to seeing even more of that, seeing what different groups come up with. One thing I’m excited for is the stretch goals I’ve got lined up – these will provide some pre-written setting material and charged relationships, and each puts a very different spin on the game, so I’m eager to see how people use that at the table.

Two femme-appearing individuals at a bar, one tending bar and the other on a stool, wearing a military-style uniform and drinking.
I love the styling of the uniforms!

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Awesome! Thank you so much to Joshua for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars on Kickstarter! Make sure to share the post so your friends can learn about it too!

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Five or So Questions on UVG

Today I have an interview with Luka Rejec on the Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG)! Luka designs and illustrates UVG both in a free, introductory RPG and in expanded content on the WizardThiefFighter Patreon! The responses from Luka were really lovely – check them out! 

(All art in this post is by Luka Rejec.)
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A ziggurat style building on a green hill covered with bushes, under a purple sky. The ziggurat has neon signage in the shape of cacti, pineapples, and the word "love" with hearts on its walls.
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/

A black, purple, and fuschia background for the cover of UVG, with the text UVG, Update 13, Ultraviolet Grasslands & The Black City, Psychedelic RPG Crawl, Luka Rejec. There appear to be two figures in bright pink and darker blue on the horizon.
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.

A black and white cross-section image of a "Vome Hive" depicting characters, creatures, and environment with small text annotating details.
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.

A moon obscured partially with clouds over a pale blue sky, over the horizon of bright yellow grasslands. A group of people emerge from the right, crossing in a caravan.
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.

A blue sky and yellow landscape with two angled, vertical sets of rocks in dark brown jutting from the ground. They are mirrored, but angled away from each other. A small blue and orange caravan travels down a straight road headed away from the viewer.
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.

A grey and brown landscape with two rocky mountains and a dark blue-grey sky. Between the mountains, a small circular building erupts with a full color rainbow shooting into the sky.
This is my second favorite of the images Luka shared – the calm, muted landscape with the bright, vivid rainbow is a great juxtaposition.

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Thank you so much to Luka for the great interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview! Make sure to check out Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG) and consider supporting Luka on Patreon!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

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