Hi all! Today I have an interview with Shannon Campbell from Astrolago Press about the new bestiary currently on Kickstarter, Faerie Fire, which is compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Shannon is the creator alongside Dillon MacPherson and Malcolm Wilson. The Kickstarter runs until the morning of February 7, 2018. Check out Shannon’s answers below!
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The Conglomadog by Kory Bing
Tell me a little about Faerie Fire. What excites you about it?
Faerie Fire is a collaboration between myself and two of my gamemasters: Dillon MacPherson and Malcolm Wilson. The three of us are friends and colleagues and we’re all very passionate about tabletop gaming–we’re active homebrewers, Dillon and Malcolm especially.
There’s loads of things that excite me tremendously about Faerie Fire: the fact that it’s full of items and creatures that the three of us have enjoyed so much in our own campaigns, and now we get to share them with everyone; the list of incredible illustrators that I’m so grateful to have had the chance to work with; and the fact that it’s entirely up to our own creative vision what goes in the book. AND THE AESTHETIC IS KEY. I’m super stoked to get to work on such a vibrant, colourful project. We wanted to make a really wild book that felt a little bit sexy, a little bit dangerous–but at the same time super inclusive.
What was the inspiration for Faerie Fire, and how did you start compiling and creating all of this content together?
To start, a lot of it was homebrew we had developed for our own campaig ns. Dillon and Malcolm have known each other for a decade and as they were both game designers and avid game masters, they were constantly developing and exchanging new content. They’d always wanted to make a tabletop compendium of their own, and the success in recent years of similar projects spurred them on. I’m a writer and narrative designer in video games but I’ve also had experience as an editor on various print publications–including Bones of the Coast, a Kickstarter-funded comics anthology I helmed in 2016, and The Underground: A Sam & Fuzzy RPG, a tabletop system & setting I edited a couple of years ago.
Right away it seemed clear to me that we should do something aggressive and bold–that it wasn’t enough to just produce content that was the same flavour as the vanilla stuff already widely available. We were spending a lot of time in the fairy realm in a campaign that Malcolm was GMing and it seemed like there was a lot of content there to explore and develop–and it quickly became clear that anything we made for the Wilds would be anything but vanilla.
Pox and Pilfer by Amy T. Falcone
Why did you choose to use 5e as your base? Is any of the material flexible to use in other systems, even just the flavor?
Dillon and Malcolm have been playing for 10 years but I only came onto tabletop games with D&D 4th edition, which I played for about a year before 5e came out. After that I went through a handful of systems–but I kept coming back to 5e. I like long-form storytelling and character-driven stories, and 5e is just the right combination of intuitive and versatile–and it’s so, so homebrew friendly. Pretty much every 5e campaign I played ended up having homebrew added before too long: custom player races and classes, new magic items, weird hybrid monsters–and everyone I played with was always happy to go off book. 5e feels like a robust and elegant toolset.
One of the things we’d really like to do with Faerie Fire is make it Fate-compliant as well (I’m a huge fan of Fate Accelerated)–whether this is done as a stretch goal, or as a side hobby over the next year, is hard to say. We think that the style and aesthetic of Faerie Fire would readily fit into a lot of systems and worlds–though the mechanics would obviously need to be adapted a little. And, of course, the fast-paced, glamorous, brilliant setting of Faerie Fire would make it a perfect fit for one of my favourite impromptu systems: All Outta Bubblegum.
How did you choose artists for the project to capture the aesthetic you were looking for? What was your search like?
I come from a comics background, and for five years I ran a curated comics festival called VanCAF that put me in touch with a large network of artists, so I quickly compiled a shortlist of talent that I thought would be a great fit for the project. We had an open submissions process, as well, where artists could pitch monster ideas for us to collaborate on–but in the end we only selected a handful of artists that way.
The vision was for Faerie Fire to be vivid and stylish and bold and glamourous, but I also wanted it to be non-binary and queer. It seemed to me that if we approached it as an art book as well as a supplemental, then it might provide an opportunity for people who have otherwise felt excluded from gaming to discover how incredible these worlds could be. To that end, we wanted to collaborate with diverse creators. My own connections were very LGTBQ+ representative, and feeds like @sffpocartists on Twitter and the #drawingwhileblack and #latinxartists hashtags provided a bounty of skill & talent that made it incredibly easy to discover new names I might not have been introduced to otherwise.
Tell me a little about the design process. How did you flesh out the creatures? What did you do to make sure everything was consistent thematically and mechanically?
The design process was a little bit different from artist to artist–some artists preferred to be assigned a creature, in which case they’d give us some requests (flowers! or feathers!) and tell us what they hated to draw, and we’d build them a custom creature that played to their strengths. Other artists had their own idea for a creature, so we’d get them to run it by us and then cross-reference it to all the other monsters going into the book to make sure that it was unique. We’d send back design notes, if necessary, but otherwise we wanted to give the artists as much autonomy as possible.
Making sure that each monster is unique involves, basically, a lot of spreadsheets. We have cross-references for creature type, whether they’re humanoid or not, sentient or not–whether they have damage resistances or vulnerabilities, whether they can be used as a familiar or a mount. The book runs the whole gamut. Dillon and Malcolm design the stat blocks between the two of them and each of them reviews the other’s work–I come in at the last to give the final review, whip up the lore, and make sure everything looks hunky dory from there. As the art comes in we review it and, if there’s anything that doesn’t quite sync up with the lore & stats we’ve developed, or if the artist has surprised us with something we weren’t quite expecting, we’ll tweak the written content one last time to make sure it gets the most out of the art and doesn’t introduce any confusing inconsistencies.
The book is designed around the a chaotic Fairy plane, home of the fey. While not all the creatures originated there, they’ve all been affected by it, and that shapes their powers and design. We’ve also introduced the Plane of the Living Light, a neon-inspired plane that kind of bumps up against the Wilds–those with special sensitivities can see into it, and certain creatures can channel its living energy through them. Everything in the book, therefore, has been touched by one of these two things: either chaotic fey magics, or the pulsing, energizing Living Light.
Because the aesthetic ranges from the cyberpunky Neon Noir to the fun colours and friendly animals of certain beloved 90s stationery, there’s a wide range of creatures: some are monstrous, some are sexy, some are friendly–some are just plain weird. Each and every one of them is an original creation.
To finish off, what are a few of your favorite items and creatures in the text, and why?
My favourite probably comes down to two or three different creatures: there’s the Kapny (which is going to be drawn by Jemma Salume), dryad-like creatures that live in the husks of trees burned by wildfire; I’m also a huge fan of the Cawillopard (drawn by Desirae Salmark), a tall, giraffe-like creature whose head can’t be seen for the weeping willow branches that trail down its neck; it has a symbiotic relationship with glittering spiders that live in its branches. When you’re under its expansive canopy, the spiders make it look like the night sky shining above you. Pretty! But also creepy, depending on your particular phobia. And, lastly, I’m a big fan of our “cover girl”, Sepal: she’s the warden of the fey prison, where all the prisoners are transformed into flowers and shrubs for the duration of their imprisonment. She keeps a disciplined, well-manicured garden, and she’s a fierce and cunning member of the fairy nobility; though she mostly prefers to stay out of the various squabbles and underhanded politics of the court, it’d be pretty stupid to underestimate her–she literally grows her own army. Yuko Ota drew Sepal for the cover of the book and the interior illustration of her, as well.
Jesse Turner is drawing all our items as we speak and each time he turns in a new one, it’s even more fantastic than the last. I’m most looking forward to seeing the finished art for the Comet’s Tail: a magical flail that looks something like a glowing comet, and allows the wielder to cast Minute Meteor.
Can you tell me about the genesis of this collection? What prompted you to make a series of games focused around this particular tool, and what was your process for discovery and creation?
I take a lot of selfies, like a really lot. They mean a lot to me! Cell cameras are a vital advance in modern communication and our ability to share our identities and emotions with people around the world, even if we don’t speak the same language. Part of it is also just that I like trying new ways of telling stories and exploring game experiences.
I love dice but it’s fun to take different mechanics from weird things we do. In Literally, I Can’t, one of the games in the collection, you use the MASH (mansion, apartment, shack, house) game that I played as a kid to build characters. That is the kind of thing I want to explore in games!
I also design in response to things. I saw a few games using phone cameras that I felt didn’t do what I wanted. I have had to learn a lot about selfies and myself to use this technology, and needed to apply it to games to get the experiences I wanted.
To make games, I honestly just took selfies. A lot. And I remembered how selfies have been relevant to my life. They are instrumental in my long distance relationships, and a part of how I feel connected to others, but also are ways that I know I can appear to not measure up to expectations or fade into the background if I’m not interesting enough. All of that came through in the collection! Every game has my heart in it, somehow, just with some “how to break it” instructions included!
Using mobile technology as a play aid and intermediary is such an interesting area to explore. Obviously this offered enormous design inspiration, but I’m wondering what challenges it also presented. Does it complicate aspects of design or play?
It certainly does! There are a lot of elements that are challenging. The first, one I’m very aware of, is that not everyone can afford a cell phone with a camera. I hated this, because it’s a reality I wish I could fight, but to make games with this element I had to accept that loss. I am trying to figure out a way to make up for it, but my own financial status isn’t awesome either.
Second, not everyone likes to take selfies, and not everyone even really knows how to take them (there’s not really a wrong way, though, honestly). When I playtested Who Made Me Smile? at Big Bad Con this year, most of my table was people who either didn’t take selfies, or didn’t take them often, and most people approached it with some anxiety. Thankfully, we talked about it and I encouraged them and it went great! I don’t know how it’ll go with others, though.
Third and final so I don’t write ten paragraphs, privacy and safety are huge concerns. For some of the games you’ll pass your phone to other players or share your phone number, for others you’re alone outside, and for some games you’re dealing with emotionally trying things. All of these have their own measures. For sharing contact information and phones I tried to give strong reminders about respecting safety and deleting the other players’ numbers unless they permit otherwise, and I also require that people hide NSFW pictures and content to avoid any consent violation. Being alone during game is risky, so I ask that people have an emergency check-in contact – and I also ask that for the emotionally intense games to help people get support. I also recommend Script Change for all of the games.
It’s all complicated, I think, but it is worth it, I think.
I love the way this collection blends analog and digital and subverts expectations. The four group games imply that the participants will be together physically rather than distributed, and I wonder if you could talk about this choice.
One of the most troubling things I’ve seen with selfies, and one of my secret goals to target with the games, is the negative perception of taking selfies in front of other people. People regularly shame young people for taking selfies in public, and mock tourists who get selfie sticks to take pictures in front of huge landmarks. We don’t mock people who have strangers take their pictures, or people who take pictures of other things or other people. Only people who dare recognize their own existence in public. I struggle, personally, with embarrassment over this – and I wanted to poke at it and prod it to see if I could fix that a little. In the games, you have to take selfies in front of people – sometimes making weird expressions or while feeling complicated feelings. I want to normalize that.
I want to normalize being in an airport crying before you head home after leaving a loved one and taking a selfie to say goodbye to them, or to let the person you’re coming home to see that you’re struggling, but okay. I want to normalize sharing your joy publicly by taking a picture of your smiling face to send to faraway friends. And I want to let that start with an environment that pretends you’re far away from each other, which is where the games make it possible. In Literally, I Can’t you have to take “competent”-looking selfies while all together for play – it’s a challenge against the anxiety and stigma.
It’s also important with Don’t Look at Me, a two-player selfie game in the collection about my personal experiences in a long-term relationship with my husband while he was deployed in Iraq. The purpose of being together, but not facing each other and only able to see each other through selfies, is to create the emotional tension of knowing the person is there, feeling them just out of touch, and not being able to see them except through these constrained circumstances. John and I were, and are, very close, and I always felt like he was with me, but I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t look at him face to face – everything was through lenses and bytes. I cry every time I think about the game because I know that tension, and it was important to me to make sure that the people playing it could experience it too. In Now You Don’t, it’s important to be around other people to create that experience of physical closeness and emotional ignorance. Surrounded by a crowd, but invisible – almost palpable.
Your games push back against a popular narrative that selfies are trivial narcissism. I feel like these games make selfies tools of meaningful expression, communication, and inquiry. What would you say to someone hostile to, or uncomfortable with, selfies?
Well, honestly, first I’d ask them how they feel about Van Gogh’s self portraits. Maybe those are narcissistic, too, I guess, but I don’t think that would be the majority opinion. I could direct them to the interview I did alongside a professional fine artist where I talk about the use of selfies as a grounding element in life, and where the artist (Robert Daley) says that selfies are simply modern portraiture.
Video by John W. Sheldon
For me, there’s the first aspect of selfies as being about identity and recognizing your own existence, validating who you are, making you feel whole. Then, there’s the second part: it’s just art. Photography is art, most people agree, and so are the oil painting portraits of people throughout history, including those like Van Gogh’s that are self-portraits.
I don’t see what is different about using a modern camera to take a self portrait, aside from it being more accessible to people of all backgrounds (excepting those of very low income who have trouble accessing this tech). It removes the boundary of needing an extensive education in technique to paint yourself! Instead you take pictures in a moment, and learn with every photo how to change the angle, how to adjust lighting, how to open your eyes wider or raise your eyebrow to convey emotion, and how to show you, who you are or even who you want to be. It’s magical, to me. I would just have to tell them that much: selfies are about showing who you are to whoever you want, and they are an artistic expression that’s more easily accessible than many of those before.
You write in your introduction how important selfies are to you as a way to present yourself to the world in images you control. Do you see ways to incorporate either selfies as artifacts or mobile phones and their liberating ability to document a person’s personal vision more generally in other games, old or new?
I would love to see some larger scale larps use selfies for storytelling – specifically, in larps where there are mystery elements or similar things that they could use a selfie to identify a character not in a scene, and distribute it to players. This would be excellent for games where there’s reason to be suspicious of specific individuals. Using selfies that you either take in costume or alter to represent your character in game would, I think, bring a level of personal identification with the character that isn’t often had. It also lets you record the experience of a game from the viewpoint you choose – you frame the moment, not anyone else.
Doing selfie diaries for very emotional or intense games could be exciting – much like The Story of My Face in the collection, combining your words with a visual representation can make experiences feel more vivid. When I did test plays of The Story of My Face for the photos in the book, I really had fun in part because when I looked back at the pictures, I could remember the spooky story I was telling myself. Mid-game selfie logging, much like taking pictures of character sheets or game materials, can help keep memories rich and more easily recoverable. And that latter part, with taking pictures of game material – using phones to document game materials is really awesome because you can refer back to it easily. I also like using texting for “secret” communication in game or for sharing codes – the day someone makes an Unknown Armies-style horror game that uses text messages, selfies, and cell pictures to tell the story and guide players is the day I am pretty sure we win at games.
(by Brie)
— Thanks for your time, Brie!
I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll share this interview and the DriveThruRPG link with all your friends! [From Brie: Thank you to Jason so much for this, it was a really fun experience and I’m so glad to talk more about LMTAS!]
Note: All images except the cover are by Brie Sheldon and excerpted from the collection used to write and layout LMTAS, and the cover is a compilation of Brie’s photos with a super nice layout by John W. Sheldon.
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
In case you’re interested in what I’m working on or looking for something to playtest!
Turn is a slice-of-life supernatural roleplaying game set in the modern era.
Players in Turn are shapeshifters in small, rural towns who must balance their human lives and habits with their beast needs and instincts. Their baser natures will challenge them as they strive towards goals from everyday tasks to life-changing experiences, and they will need to find comfort in one another to make it through without becoming stressed out. The system uses player discussion and a set of d6 rolls for resolution.
Turn is slated to be a complete draft by the end of 2018, potentially pursuing crowdfunding.
EDIT: The Turn Beta is no longer available but you can find the game at any of these links:
Today I have a great interview with Jason Morningstar about his fascinating new project, WINTERHORN, which has information on the Bully Pulpit site and is also on DriveThruRPG. This game sounds really cool and also really important. I hope you enjoy what Jason says below!
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Really nice layout and design for the materials!
Tell me a little about WINTERHORN. What excites you about it?
WINTERHORN is a live action game for 5-8 players about how governments degrade and destroy activist groups. The thing that excites me most about WINTERHORN is that it might actually be useful. I’m an American and I feel like my country is in genuine danger right now. WINTERHORN arose from a pretty intense internal conversation about what I could do about it. What skills could I bring to bear? How could I amplify my voice and offer tools to resist a worst case that is pretty fucking bad? I looked to history as a guide – what happens when authoritarians come to power?
The playbook is well worn and it is being methodically repeated. I thought about how important resistance and dissent are, and the many tools governments have to suppress them. I read further on the Stasi, on COINTELPRO, on the Soviet Union and its successor states, and from that came the germ of the game – play the “bad guys” to learn how to be a better “good guy” in real life. Of course it isn’t that simple, but through the game you’ll absorb a dozen different ways activists get interfered with, and maybe that will spur some conversations about encryption, operational security, or hardening groups you care about against disinformation or worse. The game itself is fun and interesting, and it isn’t at all didactic, but I feel like you really have a chance to embody these government operatives, which gives you both perspective and maybe even empathy. And you come away with these awful techniques on your mind. Every time I see the game hit the radar of some little Reddit anarchist cell or humanities academic I get excited.
What were elements of your research that stood out most regarding the emotional factors of power, control, and resistance that had the most influence on WINTERHORN?
I’ve read pretty deeply on the Stasi (Staatssicherheitsdienst, the security apparatus of the former East Germany) in the last few years, which was influential (The agencies you work for in WINTERHORN are mirrors of the organizational hierarchy of the Stasi). But I’d say the most influential elements were pulled from American history. FBI and Chicago police collusion leading to the death of Fred Hampton made a powerful impression, for example. If you are familiar with his killing and pursue a violent path in WINTERHORN you will see its unsubtle echoes.
How do you, in this game specifically, represent the “bad guys” in the game without making them into soulless monsters?
In the full-on larp version of WINTERHORN the characters are tangled in bureaucracy and divided into two factions that roundly dislike each other (The Ministry of State Security and the People’s Police). Each character has a professional and emotional attachment to a partner, and each has some affinity or soft spot that might color their choices. One likes the deeply stupid but brave, for example, and another likes the elderly. So there’s enough meat on those bones to slightly humanize them, even if they are doing fundamentally inhuman things. In the more edu-game version of WINTERHORN, you are making the same decisions ina much more abstracted way, and there’s none of this nuance but many more inputs from participants.
Why did you choose to present WINTERHORN in the format you have, a live action game with a card deck, as opposed to any other, and what value do you think it brings to the experience?
I wanted the game to be flexible and accessible, because I wanted it to be used outside of “normal” roleplaying contexts – in other words, outside of the living rooms and convention hideaways of super intense gamers. I also wanted the game’s information to be smoothly and organically transmitted in play rather than through a didactic lesson. In my experience live action play is great for this – you embody a character, and that’s a dial I, as the designer, can set low or high – and being physically engaged really aids in retention. WINTERHORN is dead simple and that was also a design goal. From the beginning I wanted to make sure that you could sit down and play it, even if you weren’t a huge nerd who knew what a larp was. Cards are a great way to share and transmit information. To be honest the game grew a little bit and now requires printed material as well, but I’m totally OK with that. I’m really proud of the handouts and what they communicate.
WINTERHORN sounds like the kind of game that could use workshopping, debriefing, support mechanics, or other methods to help players engage with the material safely and deal with the harsh realities that they may uncover. Which of these do you use? If none, why?
You begin with some light workshopping, and the game guides you through it. There are six player-level roles in the game – Orientation, Time, Case Board, Dynamics, Paperwork and Debrief. Orientation presents the game world and your goals, as well as introducing you to the game’s safety tools and touch boundaries. Dynamics’ sole responsibility is to make sure all the players are engaged and having a good, productive time. Debrief leads a directed post-game discussion where you check in as players and segue into talking about how the game’s content reflects real life, if you want. Time, Case Board and Paperwork all have in-game responsibilities. For larp nerds, the safety tools are Cut, Largo/Brake, and The Door Is Always Open. In play it is surprisingly chill – essentially WINTERHORN is a committee larp played around a table staring at a case board covered in photos, which makes it pretty accessible if you’ve ever seen a detective show.
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Thanks so much to Jason for this great interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll share this interview, the WINTERHORN link, and the DriveThruRPG link with all your friends!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
I had a great interview with the creators of Potlach: A Game about East Coast Salish Economics! The researchers and creators of Potlach, The N.D.N. Players, are Jeanette Bushnell, PhD; Jonathan S. Tomhave, PhD; and Tylor Prather. We talked about the origins of the game and the meanings that are held in the cards and language of the game. Check out the interview below!
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Picture of the Potlach cards on a table – lovely artwork!
Tell me a little about Potlach: A Card Game About Coast Salish Economics. What excites you about it?
Potlach: A Card Game About Coast Salish Economics is a strategic, educational card game based on indigenous philosophies. It is designed to meet K-12 educational standards for teaching about native history, economics, culture, and government. Potlatch was developed as a community effort with local elders and language experts. The game is written in both English and Lushootseed, an indigenous language of the Salish Sea region. Game mechanics are based on sharing resources to meet other players’ needs for food, materials, technology, and knowledge.
What excites me about our game is that as you play it, you get a shift in your thinking towards valuing sharing within a community rather than accumulating as an individual. Or, as one of our early game testers wrote, “A big change in thinking from other games. I started out thinking about what I was getting and by the end it was more important the way I was sharing.”
Players at a table playing Potlach with great enthusiasm!
What was the impetus for making Potlach into a game?
The impetus to make a game based on indigenous philosophy came after a couple years of analyzing games for our podcasts. For indigenous scholars like ourselves who study systemic oppressions (and live them), analyzing and playing game after game that reproduced these oppression got tedious. One aspect in particular was individual accumulation – a concept often associated with capitalism. So, one night, Tylor said he’d always wanted to develop a board game and we started working on one that used concepts and values from indigenous economic systems rather than those from capitalism. Eventually we decided on looking at the very specific system local to us (Salish Sea region) that redistributed wealth.
The word potlatch comes from Nuu-chah-nulth who live in what is now British Columbia, Canada. The word was altered via the commerce language knows as Chinook Jargon that was used throughout Washington and British Columbia after Europeans settled in the area. Potlach is not a Lushootseed word but has become commonly used to describe events associated with wealth distribution actions.
The “above waterfall” card with the number 3 in a primary color at each corner, and the card name in English and Lushootseed. The style is really easily understood, which I love.
How do the basic mechanics work?
The deck has two types of cards – Resource Cards and House Cards.
Each player has one House Card that indicates the size of their extended family dwelling. Historically, the largest known house was Old Man House at Suquamish, WA. (Link to press release from 2014 about this dwelling.) Our House Cards are sized as having 3, 4, 5, or 6 fires that indicate the amount of resource needs for the people in the house.
Every player is dealt six resource cards of various types and sizes. Players take turns Gifting their Resources to meet the house needs of other players.
With the cards representing resources that are being given gifts, how do players understand the meaning and importance of those concepts – is it through language, symbols, or how the cards can be used, or something else?
Primarily our game is about a sharing-based economic system so what players tend to notice the most is that the play moves them to strategizing ways to insure that every players has all their needs met rather than one player accumulating more of anything.
The game can actually be played without understanding the meaning and concepts of the various cards. The cards are all color-coded and numbered to facilitate play. That said, each card has a picture and the name of the item in both English and Lushootseed (the local indigenous language).
Based on our own experiences of attending potlatches (or giveaways) in Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia we developed four types of giftable resources. Then we talked to some local elders and language experts and finalized the types of resources as: food, gathered materials, crafted technologies, and teachings.
Ideally, players will look at and read the cards while playing. We are working on a Teacher’s Guide to facilitate more teaching about local resources. With the success of the Kickstarter Campaign, we will have some funds to make a podcast with a native Lushootseed speaker so players can hear what the Lushootseed words sound like.
The “clam” card with the number 4 in red at the corner, and the card name in English and Lushootseed.
What are the important parts of the gifting and, to me, ethical caring that are demonstrated in Potlach – to you and from your world perspective?
Our game is about an economic system that very pragmatically assures that all members of society respectfully have their needs met so that they can continue being active and valued participants. From our world perspective, in which all things are interconnected and impact each other in highly complex and nuanced ways, it would be illogical to do anything else. Keeping the system in balance is the ultimate goal.
Gifting is the word we use to represent the reciprocal distribution and redistribution of available resources. The societies that have used this system are highly complex and have many ancillary systems in place.
Stars by Ethan R (https://www.flickr.com/photos/etharooni/3884801617/) CC-BY-ND-2.0
Tell me a little about Poor Amongst the Stars. What excites you about it?
The possibilities. There are twentyish questions asked during creation of the generational ship and at least three suggested answers for each question. Not taking into account player creativity, that’s 3486784401 possible ships, each subtly but importantly different.
So while the book does encourage you to select from a limited list of answers the players are not actually that restricted in the scenario creation. I’m pleased that I was able to find so many options for ways to describe how the characters are trapped aboard ship and what that cage feels like.
How did you figure out the questions?
I originally started with a more technical approach, describing the ship in mechanical/physical way; how long is it in meters, how big are the cabins, what scientific instruments does it carry. I quickly realised that this approach was not compatible with Malandros. What matters more is how the ship feels and how it influences play. So I started from the point of view of an unimportant person on this ship and built the questions to give context to their life rather than just measurements. For example, I don’t ask you how big the ship is, I ask you how does its size feel to the characters; is it cramped, cozy, spacious or nearly empty?
ISS by Daniel Lombraña González (https://www.flickr.com/photos/teleyinex/6977215423/) CC-BY-SA-2.0
What about the questions makes the creations interesting? How do they spur creativity?
The questions and prompted answers themselves don’t make the creations interesting. That comes from players and their creativity is spurred from a lack explanation. The prompted answers never tell you why the ship is as chosen. In selecting an option, the players are partially forced to consider why they are picking that option and to consider what history the ship has that resulted in this current condition. For example, if the players decide that the ship’s crew are segregated from the passengers a lot of the story detail will come from expanding the reasons why. In my test game, the players decided that the crew slept in a virtual reality to keep them in a pseudo-stasis to preserve their precious skills and knowledge.
Where did you get your inspirations for the Poor Amongst the Stars?
I was thinking about writing a setting for Malandros and had the thought that a science fiction would be an interesting diversion from the original Imperial Brazil setting. Another author had already tackled a colony style setting so when the idea of a generational ship fell out of my brain it interested me. Fiction that influenced me during writing included: Macross Frontier, Cities in Flight, WALL-E, Dark Star and Red Dwarf.
What are a few examples of scenarios for the setting?
I wouldn’t say the book has any pre-generated scenarios. With Malandros, the scenarios are created by the characters relationships with themselves and the constraints the ship puts on a person’s ability to improve their standard of living. The book does have a short section on episode themes for the game master to apply if they feel the need to inject an external stimulus.
Crab Nebula by NASA GSFC (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/33735105264) CC-BY-2.0
Tell me a little about Kids on Bikes. What excites you about it? Doug:Kids on Bikes is a narrative-driven story telling game set in your favorite 80’s movie or TV show. We like to say that it takes place in a town small enough that everyone knows each other (for better and for worse) and in a time before cell phones could take videos of monster. The GM acts more like a facilitator, and the players are really the ones telling the story.
One of the things that excites me about Kids on Bikes is the way that the game starts! The town and character creation, especially the rumors and the questions about the relationships between the characters, helps to start the game even as you’re creating the world you’ll be playing in. Stories often start to emerge and tensions start to become clear there in pretty cool, open-ended ways!
What was the motivation for putting together Kids on Bikes? What about the concept put your hearts into it?
D:Stranger Things! Two summers ago, like most of America, I’d just binge-watched the first season, and I posted on Facebook, “Okay – who wants to make this a game?” Jon responded, and we got rolling on it. But even more than that, I grew up as an AD&D player. I had a paladin, a wild mage, and a few classes I created myself, and seeing D&D played on the show really made me want to replicate that in some streamlined way – but also to pay homage to the wonderful 80s tropes that I grew up on.
How do you approach violence and violent content in Kids on Bikes?
D: Personally, I play games for escapism, so violence for me in games has to be one of two things: either absurd, cartoonish, and completely divorced from reality like it is in D&D – or nonexistent. Kids on Bikes is super close to reality, which is something that I love about it, but that also means that the violence in it is supposed to be terrifying. In the rulebook, when we talk about combat, one of our statements is that there’s no such thing as “safe” violence in Kids on Bikes. And our first step in creating the world of the game is having all of the players establish what they want to see and what they don’t want to see. Ultimately, Kids on Bikes is a framework for players to create what they want within it, but it’s definitely a framework that discourages casual violence.
Tell me about the design process. How did you start mechanically? What has changed since the game’s inception?
D: We started with thinking about making a game that felt like AD&D but streamlined. I had a bunch of ideas that complicated things, and Jon was really great at saying things like, “Yeah, THAC0 was a thing…but maybe that’s not in anything anymore for a good reason.” As we went, we kept streamlining and streamlining to keep the focus on the story. That’s something that Jon is really, really good at…and that I’m learning from him!
Another thing that was probably the main aspect of the design at the start was the notion of duality. We love the idea of inversions and balancing acts that happens in so many of these things from the 80s, the way that the villain is some corrupted version of the good guy or the way that every negative is a positive and, usually, vice versa. In our initial creation, we kept asking ourselves, “Great… What balances that? What’s its counterpoint?”
What is your focus audience for Kids on Bikes, and why? Is it a nostalgia product, considering the timeline restriction, or something different?
D: Our audience is new and experienced RPG players. It’s an easy enough to pick up game that even folks who’ve never rolled a d12 before can jump in and get rolling, but we think the opportunity for narrative is rich enough that it can appeal to people who love narrative games and have played a bunch of them. I don’t think of it as, first and foremost, a nostalgia product; I think of the time restriction as a way to complicate what, in the modern day, would be easy solutions and drive the narrative. Like, if a current high school stumbles upon a cult, they shoot some quick cell phone video, they post it to Snapchat, and it’s a scandal. 30 years ago, though, they have to convince people that it’s really a thing. That’s the kind of space I’d want to tell stories in right now, so that’s the kind of engine we made. That said, there’s for sure a nostalgia element to pretty much everything I design, so I think that influences the kinds of stories I want to tell.
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Thanks so much to Doug for the interview. I hope you all enjoyed reading it and that you’ll pedal your way over to Kickstarter with a few friends to catch the last few days ofKids on Bikes!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hi all! I spoke to Steve Radabaugh about his latest mobile game, Cast Off, a movie trivia game! It sounds like a fun time so I’m sharing what he has to say about Cast Off with you!
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Tell me a little about Cast Off. What excites you about it?
So Cast Off was originally designed by Jonathan Lavallee as a card game. I’ve turned it into an app. It’s a game where one team will select a famous voice and a role from a selection of 3 each. Someone on the other team will audition for the role by reading a line while impersonating the given voice. The rest of the team has to try to guess the voice and various facts about the movie the line came from.
I’m excited because I think the game really works better as an app than it did as a card game. It’s more convenient to pass around a phone than a deck of cards, and you always have it with you. I really think this will open it up to a new audience.
How did you go about getting authorization to make an app based on someone else’s game? What kind of process is that?
In this case, it’s probably a bit different than normal. I put a message out to IGDN members noting that I was looking for things to collaborate on, or just straight contract work. Jonathan approached me about this project last spring. He’s been great to work with, I’ve given him test builds along the way, and he gives me feedback. He also helps me make sure that the audio and visual elements that weren’t in the original game are on brand.
Images from the Radical Bomb website.
What is the interface of Cast Off like, from the player perspective?
I really tried to stick to the idea that it’s a card game. The players will see the 6 initial cards, and they choose two. It then displays just those two cards much larger for the person who is doing the audition to read. I added tutorial elements that can be turned on or off into the game to really guide the players. After doing testing, I found that most people tried just playing without looking at the tutorial.
What are the major mechanical functions of Cast Off, and how did you make them work?
The biggest part is just drawing and displaying cards. When you start playing it builds an array of the cards that you have access to. (There are 5 sets total to choose from, and you can choose as many as you like. One comes with the game, the other four are in app purchases.) It pulls three random cards out of the array displays them, and them puts them into a second discard array. What’s interesting to me as a programmer is that I don’t actually every “shuffle” the deck of cards. Its more like grabbing a random card out of the middle instead of just grabbing the top card.
How can people access Cast Off and how do they play once they have?
Cast Offwill be available as of October 26th, 2017 on both iOS and Android. The best way to play is with a group of at least four people, it can easily play a group of twenty or more. Everyone shares one device, so there’s not a huge requirement of everyone having the device. The players divide into two to four teams, there does need to be at least 2 people on a team. Team one will start with selecting the cards for the role and the voice, then pass the device to one person on team two. That person will attempt to impersonate the voice while reading the line. The rest of their team will have 30 seconds to try and guess the voice and facts about the movie the role came from. The person who did the audition marks which things were correct. Then it’ll be team two’s turn to draw cards.
This is so damn pretty regardless of anything else. Dang. By Shen Fei.
Tell me a little about 7th Sea: Khitai. What excites you about it?
The Khitai setting expands 7th Sea’s 17th-century swashbuckling fantasy to Asian, Oceanian, and Pacific settings. I’m excited to represent times, places, and legends close to my heart and my real-life ancestry, many of which have never appeared before in tabletop role-play. Khitai also ups the scale of the game’s heroism: one Hero can lead an outlaw gang in the marshes of Shenzhou, a slave revolt on the peninsula of Han, a pirate fleet in the islands of Tawalisi, or a samurai clan governing a warring state in Fuso. We get to stretch the boundaries of what a Hero looks like and how they can change the world.
I know in previousinterviews we’ve spoken about your academic and personal expertise, but I’m curious what new you may have studied, played, or what kind of media you looked at to work on Khitai. What were some specific things you enjoyed reviewing as you’ve worked on the project? Tell me how they’re reflected, at least a little, in the game.
Khitai has brought a great deal of new media into my life. Here are a few inspirations that really stand out.
The Water Margin Classic, also known as Outlaws of the Marsh, is probably the single most significant influence on Asian swashbuckling adventure in general, and my vision of Khitai in particular. It’s one of Chinese literature’s Four Great Classical Novels alongside the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber. It’s about 108 martial heroes whose … eventful … lives drive them to join a bandit gang in the Chinese swamps, where they make trouble, rebel against the unjust government, and then ascend to positions of responsibility and authority in a new government.
I based indigenous Fusoese religion on The Song the Owl God Sang, a book of folk songs and stories compiled by a young woman of indigenous Japanese ancestry who mysteriously and tragically died hours after she completed it. Fusoese Kamuyru will reflect the sometimes-playful, sometimes-deadly kamuy who rule the land, animals, and humans’ relationships with the foregoing in Ainu thought.
To research Han, I started watching a K-drama called Slave Hunter because it’s set in seventeenth-century Joseon Korea, where somewhere from 10% to 33% of the population were slaves or serfs of some kind. I think I might have gotten more than I bargained for, because it’s sexy swashbuckling pseudo-historical nonsense in exactly the same genre as 7th Sea. I highly recommend it. Things I have learned so far about historical Korea:
only NPCs wear shirts
disguising yourself as a member of a completely different social class is trivially easy
all combat involves super jumps and/or backflips
hip hop is the most traditional Korean musical genre
the more complicated someone’s hat, the more likely they are to be evil.
Han sourcebook cover!By Shen Fei.
[Brie’s Note: As someone who is a big fan of some major K-pop/Korean hip-hop style bands, this amused me a lot actually.]
What are some challenging aspects of creating adventuring type games that travel over sea and in non-Western/Western-assumed settings, in regards to fictionally aiming it towards players and gathering interest?
Tropes define a great deal of Western popular media’s relationship with Asian material. Navigating and integrating those tropes into new stuff is tough because so many people have such different assumptions and feelings attached to those tropes. Let’s look at martial arts as an example. If we’re telling a swashbuckling story about Asia, we should of course include martial arts action. But gamers have different priorities about these topics: some players get really excited about fidelity to their understanding of realistic combat, others want to do unrealistic things on purpose, and many gamers are just tired of martial arts storylines because all too often, that’s all there is when it comes to Asian content.
Still, Asians developing and excelling at martial arts has a strong basis in both military history and fiction, with characters like Preceptor Droṇa from the Indian epic Mahābhārata or places like the Shàolín Monastery. So we’re going to feature both realistic and unrealistic (but still well-sourced) martial arts action in Khitai; but what we can’t do is perpetuate the stereotype that martial arts are either a) peculiar to Asia and Khitai and not other continents, or b) assumed to be known by every individual Asian or Khitan you meet. Nearly every culture in history (and every culture in 7th Sea without exception) has practiced martial arts; fewer, but still many, have traditions of martial fiction as robust as China’s. Martial arts figure prominently in The Three Musketeers, Things Fall Apart, and The Summer Prince. America’s 52 hand blocks and Nigeria’s dambe are no less effective boxing systems than wing chun or karate. It’s okay for tropes (though not stereotypes) to inform and expand our storytelling. It’s not okay for them to limit us.
Naoko, a young Hero whose home was destroyed by bandits. By Charlie Creber.
What are heroes like in Khitai?
They’re complicated! To answer that question I want to revisit the Water Margin Classic’s 108 Stars of Destiny, the rebellious outlaws of Liángshān Marsh, because they represent a lot of the internal contradictions I hope to see in Khitan storytelling. They prize honor and loyalty, but they spend most of the story getting drunk and committing crimes for reasons ranging from revenge to boredom. They rebel against the corrupt government, but wind up in positions of authority in that government. This theme comes back again and again in Asian heroic literature: very often the individual who winds up with the job of “hero” isn’t very good at their job, and the one who winds up with the job of “villain” seems way better in comparison.
Similarly, the arch-villain of the Mahābhārata, Prince Duryodhana, is a pretty bad guy; but his best friend, King Karṇa of Anga, is the most badass, loyal, and honorable warrior in the entire epic—he just winds up on the wrong side because he’s of mixed-caste parentage, and only Duryodhana is willing to look past it. In the final Battle of Kurukshetra, Karṇa’s chariot wheel gets stuck in a rut and he gets out to fix it, reminding the hero Prince Arjuna that attacking him while he’s coping with technical difficulties would violate the laws of honorable warfare. But Arjuna’s charioteer, Lord Kṛṣṇa—who is an avatar of Viṣṇu!—tells Arjuna to shoot Karṇa now because Karṇa’s harder than Arjuna and it’s the only way they’ll ever beat him. So the shining hero shoots the villain in the back, his head goes flying, and that’s how you win a land war in Asia. These are the kinds of problems the players will have to sort out. Or cause.
Agnivarsa sourcebook cover. Such drama! By Cassandre Bolan.
What has been your favorite part of working on Khitai, in any aspect of the project?
The most exciting part of this project has been watching the creative team and the players—myself included—go from knowing nothing whatsoever about certain places and times in history to champing at the bit to play characters from there. John Wick has gone from doubting we could do Korea justice to posting excited links about Admiral I Sunsin on Facebook. I never knew about the Sultanate of Sulu and the Moro pirates until I started reading about them for background on the Kiwa Islands, and now I’m plotting what might be my first ever Renaissance faire costume. A little while ago, a fan posted a sea shanty she’d composed herself with reference to Théans sailing to Nagaja and seeing the elephants there. I get to watch 7th Sea‘s world grow larger and more colorful one player at a time.
FYI, Some of my photos are a little shaky. I was in the middle of an allergic reaction for half of it, and honestly, no tripod when I’m not feeling well makes it lousy. I tried though!
This is, I think, the last installment about my experience at Big Bad Con 2017! —
Gif of selfies and friends <3 (featuring Tanya DePass, Misha Bushyager, and Nathan Black
My experience on Sunday at Big Bad Con was really great. I had a lot of positive experiences, and some really good emotional ones. The morning was mostly socializing – Tanya picked up some Jack in the Box for me, I visited people and talked about all sorts of stuff, and in the afternoon, I got to play games! (I know, gaming at a gaming con, who would have thought?
The first game I played was from my upcoming collection, Let Me Take a Selfie. The game is called Who Made Me Smile? and I played with Tanya DePass, Nathan Black, and Misha Bushyager. It was so fun! The general play is that we each write some three-sentence stories with different mood themes, and then take selfies after we read a selection of them.
Our stories and some selfies. 😀
After that, we talk about it, and take a “neutral” selfie. The most fun part for me is after that, when we look at other players’ selfies and the stories they read to guess which story was associated with which selfie. It’s fun to see how my friends express their emotions!
Google made this.
After that, you match up who guessed which selfie right, and everyone gets the chance to take selfies or write more stories. We didn’t have any need to write more stories, which you do if anyone doesn’t match anything right with another player, so instead we just took selfies together! I loved it so much.
It’s important to note that none of us see each other outside of the internet very much, so being able to share these stories and see the emotions people expressed in their selfies – including people who don’t normally take selfies – was such a great experience! I think everyone else had fun, and it’s something I really enjoyed. Also, it was so cool seeing people play my game!
LOTS more here, including Dialect!>>>
I got to play Dialect in the afternoon with Hakan Seyalioglu running, alongside Vivian Paul, Vera Vartanian, and Kristine Hassell. I honestly can’t get over how amazing this game was. Vera cried a hecka lot, in a positive feelsy way, so we must have been doing okay. 🙂 Dialect is a game about language, specifically the death of it, and to make that happen, you need to build it. It is fascinating to me how integrated the language is with the cultural and emotional development of the characters, honestly.
Dialect table setup.
We played a group of artificially intelligent robots left behind after humans departed from earth known as EIPS (Earth Inter-Planetary Surveillance, “eeps”). The general vibe ended up being that the planet was One Hot Mess and environmentally trash. So our job, we decided, was to do surveillance on the planet so that the humans could someday return. We were there a while, and as time passed, we got better at our jobs, so we ended up with idle time to do less rote things. One of the first words we made was a filler word – ona – that we often said while thinking, interrupting our own speech, and so on. We also developed friendship. These three things are the aspects in the game that we would go on to tie words and explanations to, as well as ourselves.
To me, Friendship was the most important aspect of the story. It came up constantly because our relationships were really deep. EIPS took friendship seriously, and were grateful for those they connected with. Initially, the connections were for maintenance – the EIPS bots would repair each other by linking to each other and doing updates and repairs. During that, they learned about each other, about compassion, and about caring. This is where they made friends – synckeeps. Their synckeeps were bots they really cared for – and our bots were all synckeeps.
I mean, seriously, just thinking about the game has me tearing up, jeez.
In Dialect, you have a character of your own which a card that guides the character’s identity. I was the Explorer, and I associated myself with Friendship – in the game, I tried to explore the breadth of human emotion with my limited artificial intelligence, and got quite far, I think. I played 244-L, known as Leon. Leon was a “life emulator” designed to replicate human existence with the safety of robotic structure. He looked …approximately human, and had human-like skin that could regenerate from pretty much any chemical or environmental exposure. He was the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Leon’s creator had loved the idea of Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth, and Leon was the realization of that – his body would keep regenerating, regardless of what happened. That was the plan, anyway.
Kristine played Jesse, the Jester, who was initially a data entry module. I think Jesse was associated with the surveillance of earth aspect. She was connected to data points all over the place until, as time passed, each one shut down and she was left alone with just us other models. While the settlement of bots was in the thousands, she was just herself. Because of this, she had learned sarcasm, which was her way of dealing with stress and isolation. She reviewed our daily reports for errors, and for so many years they had been static – eventually she started to copy and paste.
Next, there was the heart of our group – Spinner. AMZ013 was played by Vivian, who did a spectacular job making a lot of us feel really squishy. Spinner was a utility bot who had a broken wheel and so, obviously, Spinner spun and wobbled instead of going straight. Spinner was an incredibly interesting character who kept us on track, oddly enough, when the story got more challenging. Spinner was one of us who had a lot to do with how we spent our idle time (see later, “Uplink.”
Finally, Vera played IONI, ECR1147-C, a satellite who was never actually launched. IONI was our technical hub, kind of “in charge” of the situation – her archetype was the Ruler. She monitored all of the goings on, and made a lot of the big decisions. IONI, like Jesse, was pretty much the only one. We found out that IONI had been saying she received contact from the humans, but it turned out that for far too long she had been getting radio silence – what we knew as commfail, the word that described our sadness.
The first big event we had was that Jesse uncovered a discrepancy – a variance – in her reports. She couldn’t just copy and paste. She reported it to IONI, and IONI decided to investigate it with an expedition. As Leon was an explorer both emotionally and on the ground, he would go out on the expeditions with other EIPS units to test the environment. It beat him up pretty bad, and there was always a worry he wouldn’t come back. Because of this, we developed a way to say “good luck.”
When an EIPS unit says goodbye to someone, they send a datapacket to them with silly pictures and cute animals (cute cats, otters, etc.). While EIPS don’t entirely understand the point of all of it, the humans who made them were cheered by them, and they learned to enjoy them over time. Along with this, however, we needed an indication of them doing it, so we came through with . The bots with LED screens could simply flash the hearts, while those who were more anatomically human used their hands to make the heart (see picture).
This pic is super old but it demonstrates the point, yo.
(This was actually inspired by RPG_Dante (Bryant Stone) who I met at CONlorado. He signals to me when we part ways. I may have made everyone tear up with this because of how cute and sweet it is, which is a rare thing for a Brie.)
After Leon came back, it was determined that there was nothing evident in the outside that would explain the variance. We moved forward an age. Each age, you take one aspect and move it into the next circle set up on the table that represents the ages in the game. We chose Idle Time, which was changed into Overtime – we were working past our limits, longer than we had planned with no response from the humans, and running out of glint (our fuel). We were working overtime.
Kristine broke my heart with her character’s story and how she dealt with the loneliness and commfail that the characters experienced, as well as how she brought levity to the table. She was the first of us to express worry – known to us as 404. Her 404 was often founded, as Leon and Spinner got into a mess. There was a holiday known as “Uplink” where we would all power down and just socialize and be calm during a big storm that passed over our compound, and it took a lot of time and energy to give this space to us.
After the Uplink, Leon found Spinner. They hid in a closet and – in one of the most dick moves I’ve ever done in a game – Leon suggested that they might save glint if they put some of the others… out of commission. “Not everyone is necessary all of the time” is I think what was said, and the interaction was so painful, but Spinner agreed that it wasn’t an unreasonable plan. They planned to keep it secret, and had hid out of the range of IONIs base sensors, but they couldn’t get away from Jesse.
Jesse showed up and asked what was up, and in the process of trying to hide their discussion, Leon offered Jesse a can of “Pork nnnn beeens?” (Spinner noted it’s only $2.49) while trying to demonstrate that they were just getting rid of old cans. It didn’t work, and they spilled the (not pork and) beans. Jesse demanded answers in her 404, and Leon and Spinner responded. One of the biggest issues was that they suggested powering IONI down, even though she was their synckeep, and things got very complicated. After getting support from other EIPS, they gathered their courage and reported their thoughts to IONI, presenting themselves as in favor of Eco-Mode (which was a label for their faction, including those who agreed with them). IONI wasn’t happy, but was eventually convinced.
The age turned, and they began putting people into Eco-Mode. The first versions – periods of time where they disabled groups and later reenabled them – went okay, but over a lot of time, they ran into an event that made it harder to move forward: The Wipe. A huge sector of EIPS units were powered down, but when they were meant to go back online, there was nothing there. Their AI had been fully wiped. Unrecoverable. The commfail was immense. Going forward, the synckeeps struggled to stay together and powered on, but as those who had pursued Eco-Mode, some of them felt obligated to version.
Spinner was the first to get boxed up – literally – but was so well loved that the entire community came to wish him as he went into Eco-Mode, heavy with 404 that he might not return, and experiencing commfail at not having him near. This hit Jesse especially hard. Still, as Spinner left, he repeated our unity saying, “We are still here.”
Our aspect for Surveillance of Earth, in the last age, was changed to Survival.
Leon continued to do expeditions, and Jesse found another variance, so he pushed out one day to find out what was there. He was walking along with guidance and wishes of from Jesse and IONI because there were no other life emulators with him, just bots without AI doing utility tasks. There was a lot of interference, and he struggled to hear them while his vision was overwhelmed with environmental waste. His last messages repeated until it cut off – “404. 404. IONI? Jesse? 404. 404–“
IONI and Jesse struggled with the loss of their synckeeps, upset they couldn’t recover Leon because of the environment and their limited abilities. Eventually, they were the only ones powered on. In an act filled with commfail, IONI had Jesse power her down and send her last message out to the humans with the full archive. It was truly heartbeaking, honestly, I swear we were all near tears. Jesse, hugging her pork nnnn beeens, was alone.
After time, utility bots who had been surveying the landscape came across the body of Leon, who – after his skin had been burned away by sulfur waves – was now healed, but still deactivated. Jesse had him brought into IONI’s hangar, and then she brought in Spinner and set him up. She arranged little monitors for IONI, Leon, and Spinner, and played messages and videos. We faded to black.
In the dark, a message blinked on IONI’s status monitor.
“Archive received.”
Final table.
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HOLY CENA MY FEELS, Y’ALL.
This is one of the best game sessions, and games, I have ever played in my entire life. I’m still crying just thinking about it. It was an amazing experience. Great players, great facilitator, great game. I would love to play Dialect like 8 billion more times. SO good. *dies*
Afterwards, I hung out with the aforementioned Dante and had dinner. I told him about being the messenger of in our game, which I think he liked. We also discussed my new mechanic for Script Change, frame-by-frame, and his own project that sounds like a lot of fun. After Dante left, I talked with Kristine, Tomer Gurantz, and a few other people about Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place and it was a great way to finish out. My flight was early and I stayed up late but it was well worth it.
I can’t wait to go back to Big Bad Con! I had such a good time and it was really amazing.
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