Tag: game design

Five or So Questions on Grimmerspace

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Rone Barton on Grimmerspace, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds pretty cool so I hope you enjoy Rone’s responses below!

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

Grimmerspace is a Starfinder compatible sci-fi horror setting. It allows you to game through a gritty brand of sci-fi wherein the concepts are mind-bending and terror is outright palpable. I’m darkly zealous for the chance to raise the bar on these two genres that Brundlefly together so harmoniously.

While success in all genres hinges on achieving certain desired instant reactions from an audience, such as romcoms that always end with one lover leaving the other for good but it all gets turned around because of an impassioned and revealing speech that leaves us misty and full of hope for a more positive tomorrow, or a tearjerker that absolutely requires our investment in the story’s characters enough that we genuinely find it sad when the crops die and the family bloodhound contracts dropsy, the horror genre is actually more like the humor genre in that there is a binary pass-fail with no shades of gray between. You somehow conjure a primal fright or a laugh or you do not. And there is the expectation to create that effect many times in a row, which is demanding. But if you fail to deliver memorable terror or a symphony of giggles, it just wasn’t that good, was it?

Grimmerspace is a chance to pull upon ten thousand threads of speculative wonderment and dread from films, books, TV shows, graphic novels, daydreams, and true life experiences from my past leading all the way back to childhood and then tangle them together to form a web that traps your imagination. It’s an artistic holy mission to create something next level for gamers. That’s ambitious sounding, but that’s who I’ve always been. If brass rings were five feet off the ground we wouldn’t ever mention them.

In a dark office, a creature with a rounded head, large eyes and nose, and sharp small teeth in a large mouth sits with blood dripping down its chest.
The MinoThunk from the Abattoir 8 adventure, available from DriveThruRPG for free.

What does horror mean in Grimmerspace? What do players encounter that can shake them to the core, giving them memories turned to nightmares?

Horror is as widely sourced in our science fiction setting as it is in any Earth-based fiction. While you could play a game that’s entirely along tonal lines of say, Alien or Event Horizon, those films merely scratch the surface of the dread storytelling possibilities we left in the GM’s toolbox.

Grimmerspace horror is like any horror fiction that ever shook you, regardless of where it was originally set. We’ve excised the quivering heart of such tales and placed them on distant worlds and in the cold and deadly space between them, and woven science fiction inextricably throughout them.

Lou Agresta and I identified fifteen subgenres of horror we’re working with in Grimmerspace, and when Iron GM Games designs an adventure we look at which subgenres were present and then label them according right up front so GMs will know what they’re in for, be it any particular combination of the following horror subgenres: Apocalyptic, Body, Comedy, Cosmic, Crime, Dark Fantasy, Erotic, Gothic, Occult/Religious, Psychological, Rural, Splatter, Surreal, Survival, and War.

You don’t find horror merely in having beasts and monsters, and the darkest natures of people on display. It’s in how you frame a scene. That’s where the terror comes from. An excerpt from my essay About Horror in Grimmerspace (which is what I hand out to our writers to orient themselves in my idea of storytelling) goes like this:

A vampire skulking around a gloomy castle in D&D can provide fun at the gaming table, sure. But do you find that vampire inherently scary? In D&D, a vampire is usually just viewed as a potential level drainer and you already have a pretty good idea of how to kill the thing (if not, you’ve really got to step out of the sensory deprivation tank). However, if a GM had a flair for inspiring dread or put in a solid amount of work, they could make that vampire the most chilling encounter the players ever experienced. That same GM could also spend that very same effort to make Keep on the Borderlands scary, right? But that’s a lot to ask from a GM. Grimmerspace is there to make it easy by offering the recipe for effective horror right there on the page, so just follow our suggested directions.

Let’s get back to that vampire (not that there are traditional vampires in Grimmerspace). What if we wanted to make a vampire that was actually scary? How about one that, once surrounded by a party, spins growling to face each of the PCs one by one in preternaturally quick jerks that cause one NPC ally’s dead lover – dangling by his/her neck in the vampire’s maw – to sway like a broken mouse? The vampire isn’t all that scary on its own. But the dominance of its prowess certainly is. The loss of a loved one is. The NPC couldn’t save the lover… the person who just before had so much light in their eyes is now but a sad, limp prop who only moves when their devourer makes them move, and in a horrid way you’ve never before imagined. Humans are supposed to be exalted beings but clearly, we are animal prey just like any other beast of the field. Ta-da. Genuine discomfort!

Our adventures can’t be horror just because maybe you saw a corpse or spines removed from bodies. Not that these gruesome sights don’t help establish horror. They most certainly do. But horror also has to be baked into the plot itself, not superimposed ala “Well… maybe this could be scary if we made the monsters gooier.”  

About Horror in Grimmerspace by Rone Barton
A humanoid large creature stands on a metal structure in an industrial environment. They have a metal-looking vest with wiring and red light and for arms, the lower halves are each a pair of circular saws.
The Butcher from the Abbatoir 8 adventure, available on DriveThruRPG for free.

Very cool! When you talk about a horror sandbox, just how big is that box? If someone’s hanging by the tether of their spacesuit, what are some examples of horrors they might witness before they feel the sudden jerk of the limit?

That sandbox is as wide as a galaxy and then some, and rife with locales that each engender particular blends of horror subgenre. This particular question offers a serious challenge to my desire to be pithy because you have me wanting to essay here. Worry not, I’ve been court ordered not to.

There are remote planets all around the less explored edge of the G-Rim, and each of them has individual characteristics that make it unforgettable and unique. The ineffable locha trees of Paravesh that exude chaos itself. That which lies dormant under the sands of Tarmire but will come alive with your sweat. That which beckons to and changes you on the ocean world of Sensica V. The City of Morn promises the chance to speak to the dead, but Grimmerspace is a ravenous place that often takes more in return than is deserved.

And while unthinkable threats in remote zones are solid choices, we’re not limited to them. For instance, the planet of Attien Prime is studded in eight mega-arcologies, each reaching from the ground to well past the clouds and each huge enough to house a billion person nation. That set-up precludes certain types of horror tales because a blade-wielding maniac with the Friday the 13th ch-ch-ch-ah-ah-ah soundtrack playing behind him would be taken down in a heartbeat by a law enforcement drone. But there are horror stories that ideally pop off in overcrowded places. In a tightly contained realm full of rich and poor, segregated into separate cities and work areas, you can imagine how any outbreak or revolt could turn into something quite ugly. All those people packed in with no way out. All of that bubbling resentment or screaming panic. So while you won’t see the lone and wordless slaughter lovin’ maniac in the woods who proves so effective in rural horror, you might witness a swarm of mayhem gush across a city like a tsunami wave of blood ala World War Z. One minute of that might have you wishing you were taking your chances back at Camp Hockey Mask.

Now, what horrors might you find in the killing space between the stars of the G-Rim? Well, we’ve made space less empty than most would like. There are things that can get you out there. Things outside your ship. Things within it. Thing is, Grimmerspace offers heroism in the face of all of that horror. Our heroes have been through too much to let the monsters win, and they battle on even if it costs them their sanity or their life. Same goes for the villains. One example, there’s a predator that floats through interstellar space on cosmic wind, waiting to feed upon the energy of the passing ships it ensnares. However, the Shung Corsairium, a deeply evil and dangerous pirate organization, capture and weaponize these creatures, using them to immobilize other ships in electro-absorptive netting.

All of this to say that when you first experience things that go bump in the night or that scratch at the ship’s hull, it ought to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. But like Ash and the Evil Dead, eventually, you’ll been pushed past the edge and you resign yourself to fight back until you’re strong enough to overpower your monsters. Our setting is grim, to be sure. And horror can certainly be disempowering. But in Grimmerspace you can and likely will become the very thing that makes the boogeyman lose sleep at night. Fear is something to be confronted. It asks you questions that you can answer if you try hard enough. Fear can be beaten.

Finally, how does Grimmerspace work within, or defy, the confines of the Starfinder mechanical structure? How might players who like Starfinder be drawn in, and how might they be pleasantly surprised by new elements?

Horror gaming is often best served with a narrative touch, and so our challenge at Iron GM Games is to gently add that touch to Starfinder which is an inherently crunchy system.

We offer tips throughout our adventures for how to convey and maximize the effect of horror. How NPCs are developed and used is a major part of this. Foreshadowing. Explaining the nature of why things frighten us and why we want them to. An optional sanity system that is ideal for the cosmic horror subgenre (or any other subgenre in my opinion). There are so many more tricks up our sleeves than what I’m alluding to, but when the book release, you will see what we’ve done. You will see and despair. The darkness will come for you and you will become the darkness. But hey, in a FUN way!

A cast of characters with various degrees of alien or technological advancements on their bodies with purple lightning in the background and the text "Grimmerspace" and "Funded" emblazoned on the piece.

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Thank you to Rone for the great interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Grimmerspace on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions with San Jenaro Co-Op

I’m very excited to share this big interview with you today! It’s an interview with the San Jenaro Co-Op about their Short Games Digest, Volume 1, which sold over 100 copies on its first day released! They also have a Kickstarter coming out on June 15, 2019 for the Roleplayer’s Guide to Heists! Today you’ll get to hear from Liam Ginty (L.G.), Ken Rountree (KR), Chris Falco (CF), Olivia Hill (OH), Galen Evans (GE), Magnus Hansen (MH), and Dyer Rose (DR)! Hope you like what they have to say!

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The cover of Quarterly San Jenaro Game Digest Volume 1 Summer 2019 with three characters of a variety of genders, one with a second set of eyes and a smart suit, the other two with armor and fancy tech.

Q: Tell me about Short Games Digest and your role on the project! What excites you about it?

L.G.: I’m a writer and one of the mentors heading up the Short Games Digest. SGD is a collection of shortish TTRPGs made by a variety of designers both new and old that serves as our flagship project for getting new writers published in the industry. I really love the collaborative process of the project – everyone chipping in to create something better than any one of us could, I also really enjoy reading everyone’s games – some first time designers have made some really excellent work and it’s been a joy watching some folx grow so fast and so much over the course of the volume.
KR: I’m a writer for the first two Short Games Digests. Specifically, I wrote “The Gods Play Dice” for the first volume, and am working on something heavily cat related for the second volume. The SGD is my first time writing for roleplaying at all. I’m excited because I feel we are a group of friends with a common goal rather than a traditional roleplaying company. We don’t just care about the games we make individually, we support each other in making each other’s games. The awesome mentoring and editing teams made the impossible into the achievable.

CF: I’m also a writer for it, and personally, I find the lower barrier of entry combined with the community surrounding it to be the best part. Games can be anywhere from short to long, freeform to mechanics-heavy, and it allows for a diverse number of writing styles and experience levels to go into it.

OH: I write and do some layout work for the Short Games Digest. I’m excited to see so many new names moving from repeatedly saying they want to make a game to being able to say, “I’ve made a game.” It’s really great seeing the diverse approaches the various creators have taken to this project, and all the different ways they’ve creatively answered the completely strange questions posed as part of the design process. It’s also amazing seeing creators excited to build something for the collective benefit, and not just a crapshoot of “will my game be the next D&D?” I like the idea of using the act of building games as a method of building community.

GE: I wrote my first game, “Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today” for Short Games Digest Vol.1 and served as one of the community editors. The idea of a project of so many cool games and settings and mechanics is very exciting and I am proud I am a part of it, but the most exciting bit is being a part of a co-op with such a diverse and talented membership. Getting to collaborate with this group and work to produce really amazing and ethical work in this space is a joy.

Spaceships and asteroids pass overhead while a person with rad hair in a spacesuit shoots at a Martian.
Art from Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today.

Rad! So what kind of content do we see in Short Games Digest, and how did you work together to make this content happen?

GE: You can expect to find over 10 RPGs, all less than 30 pages, with their own unique systems and settings. Do you want a OSR rogue-like game of brutality? Check out “Clerics”. Do you want a expressive dungeon diving game? “The Great Instrument” should be right up your alley, do you want a action packed fast moving space opera? “Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today!” is a action packed fast moving space opera. Do you just want a expressive game of courtly romantic queer love? Try out Filamina Young’s “Lonely Knights” and have a blast.

As to how we made it come together, Liam Ginty did a lot of the organizing work, and handed out to everyone a prompt to start writing, we all chatted about concepts together, but started work writing a game, Olivia handed out a design doc to help us prepare our work for layout, and we requested Dyer to make art for our games, During the process, myself, and the rest of the editing team would receive works in progress, add comments and offer tweaks and suggestions. It was a very natural process. In many ways, the game was the baby of whomever was authoring it, with the rest of the co-op acting as support and sounding boards.

MH: One of the wonderful things is the vast array of different content you get in the SGD. I made a weird fantasy dungeon crawler unlike anything i’d made before, and when i needed to fill up another page of space for layout reasons, I got to make a short, 1-page larp for two, as well, a game about lying to your friend – two incredibly different games. And there are so many others, like the game about lonely and very queer knights, or a game about competing for a good position in a new dimension you’ve found yourself in. That said, even though we have a wide variety of games, the strangeness of some themes, and the page constraints do mean the games have a tendency towards the experimental, the new, the interesting. And our community is very inclusive, so there’s quite a bit of Queer content in there as well.

Once I finished a script, people commented on it, and helped me turn my ideas into a cohesive whole, and Galen edited it into readability. Not to mention that Dyer Rose provided the (very pretty!) pictures. It means that even though The Great Instrument is my game, it’s not just the wholly-formed child of my mind. There’s a bit of Galen’s editing style there, there’s Dyer’s visual style, and of course, the creativity of whoever gave me the theme “War In Heaven (Celestial Mecha)”

A person has their hands posed in front of them and is communing with gods while a bearded person writes in a large book.

What’s it like being part of a co-op, and how do you do things like dividing responsibilities and sharing creative loads?

GE: It’s a blast! It is like having a group of friends who are all driving towards the same overall goal. We are still figuring out a lot of things as we go, but as one of the “new blood” in the TTRPG publishing scene, it has been great to have mentors like Olivia, Filamina, Magnus, and Liam. as they offer overall strategies, they give us a free hand to execute what needs to be done. Everyone is very respectful and honest about their capabilities, capacity and needs and it makes for a wonderful collaboration environment.

CF: It’s pretty cool, and gives you a lot of opportunity and ability to get yourself some experience that you might not have managed otherwise. The “prompt” system of the SGD itself means you always have a direction to aim for so you’re not just wondering what your next little game should be. Responsibilities are mostly divided into the organizers and then everyone else; the organizers say what needs to be done, and then everyone else claims what duties they want. It might sound a little unorganized, put that way, but it works out pretty well (and in a given project it might be a little more specific than that).

DR: It’s been a real blessing to get involved with these folx and form this co-op, everyone is supportive, kind and understanding (people first!) and everyone has something to offer. We complement one another’s skills well while helping to improve or teach completely new skills to others with interest.

Responsibilities are all completely voluntary, from beginning to end. Even the process of choosing to take the lead and pitch a project. For instance, let’s say someone comes in and is like “Hey! I got this idea I think is really cool! *explains project* Is anyone interested in getting in on that?” and if there is interest at that point you put a call out for people to sign up, you put together a contract that delineates things like share splitting/remuneration and any other important bits. And the people who want to work on the project sign up as a writer, artist, editor, layout, and whatever else the project might need.

At the moment, creative loads have all seemed to be managed by the people on their end, and how much they volunteer to take on. As an artist, I get a few prompts and when I’m getting my way through those, if there is still time, I’ll reach out for anyone else that needs art. Everyone knows I am but one man and can’t necessarily do art for everyone and that’s okay (again: people first.).

KR: Everyone is supportive and filled with awesome beans! We signed up for specific roles in the beginning and generally stick to them, but people step up when something outside of their expertise pops up all the time. There’s a lot of anxiety involved with a lot of newer people creating games when they maybe hadn’t published anything AT ALL before. I think we all have a good instinct on when to give constructive criticism and when somebody is just looking for some validation. As silly as it might sound to a certain type of human, someone saying, “Hey, you’re doing great. You’re going to create a game and it’s going to be cool af,” is valuable.

OH: It’s really nice because this isn’t a primary gig for any of us, so it’s something easy to step into and step out of as the time and energy arise or fall. If you need to step away for a couple of weeks, you can do that. If you’ve got time on your hands and want to pick up some slack, you can do that. It’s like Marx said, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. We’re all individuals with different situations. I’ve been in gaming development projects before where one person’s situation got in the way of the whole project moving forward. With this model, those same hurdles happen, but we’re more open to step in and say, “Hey, can I get that for you?” In the end, it makes for a much, much smoother development.

A blue and white blueprint diagram with yellow notes about where to drill and whether to use dynamite and the heading The Roleplayer's Guide to Heists, a collection of 25 capers for any tabletop RPG from the San Jenaro Co-Op.

How does being a part of the co-op positively influence projects like the Digest, and how does it complicate it?

GE: It democratizes the work and makes it far easier to create the hype train. Also it works as an incentive to do work, As a new TTRPG designer, I’m not sure when i would have gotten off of my butt to make my game if it was not for the Digest and the timeline, and even if I had gotten off of my butt and made my game, I still don’t know layout, or how to best market an indie RPG, I would just be yet another person out there with their own system, instead thanks to the help of the co-op I can say that I am a published game designer 🙂 because of the hard work of everyone else, I am able to live my dream, and all it costs me is helping others live theirs. Where it does become complicated is in project management, we have a huge and diverse group of collaborators and there is a bit of a wrangling cats issue, however, because we have so many people it is often easy to distribute needed work to someone else if things fall through.

DR: Positively influencing projects? Man, honestly I have to say how does it not? Okay that’s your second question, and I have one of those, but seriously… It’s just absolutely amazing. You have so many kind and creative people that are all trying to not only succeed, but help you succeed, they are always there if you need a second, third, fourth set of eyes on a project, they are there to fill in gaps and knowledge, and teach you those skills if you want. And they are there to encourage you, having a constant hype train around your lil project, your lil 4 page game or your illustration is such an awesome driving force to keep going. It’s infectious, everyone is so excited, not just for themselves, but everyone else. As for the issues, Galen kinda touched on that above me here, but the main issue I notice is something we are looking into at the moment, where currently are tasks are all kind of spread across some discord rooms and Google Sheets, and it can be a bit chaotic at time. But we haven’t run into any real complications with that, currently have someone designing some work flow stuff on trello, so i expect that chaos to be toned down a lot before we get to a point where its a problem.

KR: When I first started in the Co-Op, I missed the deadline for my game due to life circumstances. I was so used to the normal boss based business model that knots formed in my stomach. I apologized seventy three point five times, and said some very self-deprecating things. But everyone was supportive and understanding. I was so used to people screaming at me over minor things from places I had worked, and here everyone was being super cool and supportive. I worked harder and came out with what I consider a high quality game. If I was working in a traditional model, I may have been fired or worse. But not only did I finish the first game, I’m completing a second as well as a microgame for volume 2.

CF: The Co-op model is honestly perfect for something like the games digest, since it allows so many different people to all just write in their own style without trying to blend everything together. If someone has a problem, it’s easy to say “No big deal, put it in the next volume” and still have plenty of games in it so we don’t need to worry about it. As others already mentioned, everyone’s really friendly and supportive, which helps people get comfortable in writing their games in the first place, too.

What is something in the Digest that you just cannot wait for people to see, whether it’s because of the work you or someone else did or just because it’s cool?

GE: Aside from all of Dyer’s amazing art you mean? It’s really hard to pick just one thing, there are so many cool things packed into this digest and I know there is something in it for everyone, so I guess I will talk about my own game, “Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today” the thing i am really excited for people to see and try out is the game plotting mechanic I call “That Cosmic Swing” which endeavors to keep action going and keep the pace of game frenetic and fun by removing any delineation between narrative and structured time that many games have. When I run games I often have an issue of getting things moving while wrangling players, and I have come up with hacks and ideas to keep things moving and get the story going and I took those ideas and formalized them as one of the key components of the game, and to be honest, I think its super slick…  

DR: Oh man. I honestly have to say, just like every last game in that book. It’s bringing in so many unique voices and design philosophies, so many unique systems that each one is its own unique treasure in its own way. Just seeing the WIPs and Write Ups in discord has left me hungering to get a copy of this into my hands, and I’ve already seen most everything in it!! I will say I think the thing I’m most excited about, to narrow that down abit more, is the number of people in this book that will be able to say for the first time “I have a published game” that’s SO COOL, especially for someone that had NO IDEA they’d be able to have that happen 3 months ago.

KR: Doogans and Dogans. That’s all I’ll say for myself. The Tony Hawk inspired RPG by CF fills me with joy just by it existing.

A red border of raccoon heads around a raccoon head with the words San Jenaro Co-Op making the eyes of the racoon with the O's in Co-Op.
I love this logo!

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Thank you so much to the San Jenaro Co-Op for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Short Games Digest Volume 1 today! Watch out for the Roleplayer’s Guide to Heists Kickstarter mid-June!

Five or So Questions on Facing the Titan

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Nicolas Ronvel, a.k.a. Gulix, creator of Facing the Titan, a game that just successfully funded on Kickstarter! The crowdfund may be passed, but you can still follow the Kickstarter and pick up the game upon release! It has amazing titans and I’m excited to feature some work from the French gaming community! Check out Nicolas’s responses below!

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The cover of Face the Titan with an ice-covered mountainous titan.

Tell me a little about Facing the Titan. What excites you about it?

Facing the Titan is a GM-less RPG. It features a group of heroes, the Company, against a gigantic being: the Titan. The Company’s fate is to defeat the Titan, and the goal of the game is to tell that story. But it’s not a tactical game. In Facing the Titan, the Companions will remember the past, share their memories, tell each other their journeys and what they prepare for the grand finale. Then, and only then, they will face the Titan. It’s a lively discussion game.

Facing the Titan is my first “big” game. I wrote several micro-RPG over the past few years. But this one is the first I push to get a full RPG that will get a physical life through a book. It’s a big achievement for me. That’s what excites me.

And I want to see Facing the Titan get its own life. I playtested it while always participating in the game. I want to see actual plays, to read stories from the game. I want to see how people use the game and maybe change it.

A black and white humanoid titan towering above buildings and holding a large weapon.

Since Facing the Titan isn’t a tactical game, what are the mechanics and gameplay like?

The mechanics of Facing the Titan are based on those from Swords Without Master.

First, there are the Tones. When, during the discussion, you want to be at the center of the attention, you grab the dice (or someone give them to you), and you roll them. During each Phase, one specific Tone is associated with each Dice. For example, in the World Phase, you play with the Tones Ruins (Black Die) and Wonders (White Die). The higher die tells you which Tone to use. And you frame what you say around the Tone. You can use it for the subject you talk about, for the mood of your story, the way you tell. It’s open to interpretation.

If you roll a Double, well, the Titan steps in and you use one of its Tones. And special rules apply.

Then, there are the Motifs. During play, you will record words, expressions, feelings, images other players are saying. And when you got enough Motifs, the current Phase ends and you can get to the next one (there are 5 Phases). The further you get in the game, the more Echoes you will have to write as Motifs. Echoes are Motifs that recall a previous Motifs, while being different. That will bring a common thread in the game, with the end game reflecting ideas and themes seen all through the game.

Those are the Mechanics : Tones and Motifs.

A knight-like titan in black and white, towering over people.

What kind of threats do the Titans pose – what are they like, and how do people feel about them in the fiction?

It depends on the Titan. Each one of them has a different story, a different stature in its Setting. And each one comes with a different Setting.

Generally, they pose a threat by their size. They crush villages, destroy buildings and wanders without even noticing it. But some are evil or malevolent. Some are causing damages knowingly.

The Titans are described briefly, because I wanted to give prompts, ideas. Not fully fledged creatures. So each group, each game will set what is the level of threats the Titan pose. The illustrator was chosen because of this. I didn’t want photorealistic pictures of the Titan. I wanted pictures describing them broadly but leaving a great place for the players imagination. Roger Heal managed to do that with great talent.

A titan that is a swirling mass of shapes in black and white, standing over a group of humans.

What is an average session like, in the rise and fall of play?

First of all, a game of Facing the Titan is not prepared. Of course, you will need at least one person who knows the rules, but that’s all. As with Fiasco, we choose a Playset and go for it. Here, we choose a Titan, the associated Setting, and we go for it.

The first part of the game involves choosing the elements of the setting that you want to use. Then we really start the game.

The first Phase, the Companions Phase, allows us to create the characters, to start discovering them. This Phase is in two parts. We start in a disembodied way, and we tell the story of the successive entrances of our characters into a place that we have just defined. Then we play our characters. They haven’t been together for a long time, and they’re going to discuss the past.

The second Phase moves away from the characters to focus on the Titan. Who is it? What is it? What is it capable of? Through vignettes told like scenes from a movie, we will show it.

The third Phase goes back to the characters and their discussion. Through them, we will share about their travels and talk about the world.

The fourth Phase continues the discussion but changes the subject: what have we prepared to face the Titan?

Finally comes the last Phase of the game, the Clash Phase. In this one, a player will lose his character to play the Titan. Then, like a choreographed duel, the Titan then the Companions then the Titan again then… will take control of the story and narrate the duel. With the objective of making it epic, memorable and giving a beautiful exposure to all the characters.

Finally, the game ends with an Epilogue, where each player can tell what happens to his/her character.

This division into five Phases forces the story told and the scenario that will be created around the table, even if each game will turn out to be different by the choice of the Titan, the Setting and the ideas that the players will bring with them. Each Phase also offers different Tones. The dice roll will determine the tone to be used when speaking, and each Phase will have a very different theme.

A titan with bright eyes and swirling tentacles going up against a small ship.

What sort of media do you use as reference to help inspire you while designing a game about something fantastical like the Titans?

When I started working on the game, I didn’t have any graphic resources. Just ideas, images. Then as I went along, I accumulated images of gigantic creatures in various monster manuals, on the subreddit /r/ImaginaryBehemoths, in galleries on DeviantArt and ArtStation. I also used landscape images a lot. Nature and its power have inspired me for some of the most raw Titans.

Contrary to what some might think, I didn’t really take inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus. It hangs around in my subconscious, of course, but I had to use at most one fan art of the game in the process of creating of the game. The game was called Facing the Colossus at first. But I didn’t want to mention Shadow of the Colossus too much for the difference in the way the game was played (a group game against a solitaire game, a narrative game against a riddle game).

When I found Roger Heal and started receiving the first drafts of Titans, the game’s different worlds began to take shape. Some Settings have been extensively modified following details of his illustrations. Illustrations that were based on my concepts of Titans. There was a very interesting ping pong on that side.

A picture of the creator holding open a proof of the book.
A proof of the book.

—

Thank you so much to Nicolas for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Facing the Titan on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on A Cool and Lonely Courage

Today I have an interview with Alex White about A Cool and Lonely Courage, which is currently on Kickstarter! This game is about women in occupied France in World War II and I asked Alex about the research involved. Read on to see more!

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Tell me a little about A Cool and Lonely Courage. What excites you about it?

Last summer I was discussing the role of women in World War II with a friend, thinking about the courage which they had displayed and the encouragement that can give to us today. The next evening on the flight home I remembered a museum exhibit I had come across once about the women who worked as spies in occupied France, and the germ of an idea for the game formed – I’ve still got the half page of scribbled notes which are the underpinnings of the game even now! I wanted to design a game with simple rules that would allow us to tell emotionally complex stories. 

I followed this up by several weeks research into the women who served as part of the Special Operations Executive and I was rocked back on my heels by their history. They came from all kinds of backgrounds and faced incredible peril. A third of them were captured, tortured and executed, but they performed a vital role in the liberation of France.  The photo below shows Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Khan, Nancy Wake and Odette Sansom. 

Four historical black & white photos of women, two of which are in uniform.
The four women the game is based on, Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Khan, Nancy Wake, Odette Sansom.

I decided that I wanted the game to remember and honour the women who had faced such dangers. I’ve put as much history as I can as examples into the rules and made every effort to help the players understand the kind of circumstances these real women found themselves in. I’ve been delighted that many people have said afterwards that they want to find out more about these spies, and I’ve included a book and film bibliography in the rules to help people find our more. 

The central mechanism of the game reflects the fates of war, and gives a tremendous replay value to it. Every time that someone plays, very different stories will result. Because the game is interested primarily in the relationships these women had with the people around them, and tracks the changing relationships during their time, it has the capability to be very emotionally engaging – even shocking. As one player, new to story games, said during a recent session “I can’t believe that I’m crying over someone that we just made up in the last hour”.

That’s a long response to a short question! But in a nutshell I’m excited about the capacity of this game to give the players genuine emotional experiences and a new respect for the women who did this for real. 

You mentioned your research. What kind of research did you do? How did you find the right sources?

When it comes to research, happily there are many books available! Historians have done all the hard work in research or working as biographers. I started by looking at some authors who have covered a number of the women who worked with the SOE such as Rick Stroud who wrote ‘Lonely Courage’ or Beryl E. Escort who wrote ‘The heroines of SOE: F Section: Britains secret women in France’. I followed this up with more in depth biographies of women such as Pearl Witherington and Nancy Wake. 

I supplemented this real life history by looking into some of the fiction based on these activities. I really enjoyed the young adult novel ‘Codename Verity’ by Elizabeth Wein, and I was able to obtain a 1988 TV series called ‘Wish me luck’ by Lavinia Warner and Jill Hyem. 

A friend of mine is an amateur historian of World War II and he was able to give me a lot of additional context about the situation in occupied France too. 

Did you reach out to the families of the women who you based the game on, whose likenesses you’re using, to gain their perspective or permission?

No, I didn’t attempt to reach out to any of the families – None of the public resources I had available referred to any family members much, and trying to track them down would have felt too stalker-y.

A spread of two pages in A Cool and Lonely Courage with playing cards and detailed descriptions of the instructions for play.
The pages within A Cool and Lonely Courage.

What happens in play of A Cool and Lonely Courage? What do players do, and what are their hard questions?

When it comes to playing A Cool and Lonely Courage, it goes like this:

There are a series of questions which each player answers to develop an initial view of their character – their background, how they speak french, the reason they joined up, a strength discovered during training and a weakness revealed by training. Whether they were going to be primarily a courier or a radio operator. Their code name, and the name of the circuit leader they would be working with in France (who is their first supporting character). 

As the play starts, the players have to picture themselves in neighbouring cells, captured by the Nazis. They briefly introduce themselves, and they start telling each other their stories…

Each player is dealt a hand of 6 cards, held face down. 

There are going to be five chapters, and in each chapter every player will have a scene. The chapters are arrival (meeting the resistance), a mission with the resistance, an interlude which is a period of quiet and getting to know people, the chapter where you are captured, and a final chapter in prison. 

As each player is going to have a scene they draw one of their cards, and the suit determines whether the focus of the scene is one of love, success, misfortune or death. The scenes will involve one or more supporting characters, adding to a selection in front of each player or reusing existing ones in later scenes. Other players take the role of the supporting characters in the scene. 

As the chapters progress it will be natural to revisit some of the supporting characters and depending upon the fall of the cards you will see relationships grow, deepen, fracture or sometimes be tragically ended by death. Through playing out the scenes there is a real sense of personality in the supporting characters… and when a spade is drawn and the players set a scene where a lovely person has to die… that can feel really tough – but true to the sense of the wartime story that is being told. 

The conclusion is a real point of decision. Everyone has one card left. They then secretly decide whether to keep that card for themselves or donate it to another player. When these decisions are revealed, anyone with two cards is rescued! Anyone with no cards is killed out of hand. Anyone with one card is sent to the concentration camps and if your card is black you die there, if it is red you survive. 

Finally, in the epilogue, the players think about what happened next to the survivors after the war. And who remembers those who died. 

It is sometimes a little quiet at the conclusion of the game, as we think about the stories that have been told, and perhaps reflect upon the real women who the game is based upon. 

Images showing resistance fighters in France in World War II holding rifles, including the women.
Women working alongside Resistance fighters.

How do you support players who might find this kind of play overwhelming or upsetting once they’ve jumped into it?

One of the things that has always been important when running the game is that everyone knows that there is an open door policy – anyone can excuse themselves for the game for any reason. They might want a break, or they might feel that they have to exit the game entirely. It is important that people know that this is an option at the start of the game, and that if during the game someone feels they have to step out it is important for the rest of the table to reassure them that is perfectly fine, and it won’t ‘spoil the game’ for anyone else. 

I’ve seen this used twice, once in a game that I was facilitating and once in a game a different person was facilitating. In each case it was easy to reassure the person that was fine, and they left with no worries that it would impair anyone else’s fun.

Occasionally someone finds one particular thing that is brought up somewhat upsetting, and the game rules discuss right up front using Ron Edwards “lines and veils” or John Stavropoulos “X-card” mechanics to help avoid troublesome areas up front or during play. 

How do you feel sometimes knowing the end of the story can affect play and the experience of the game?

I think that knowing the end of the story actually plays really well. Although it may not be fashionable, I really loved the movie Titanic. We all know the ship sank, but it was interesting to see the stories leading up to that point. Indeed, it lent a bitter-sweet aspect to some of the stories. The same holds true in A Cool and Lonely Courage. 

Knowing that these stories end in capture can make the sense of small moments of joy or victory shine like candles in the darkness. And of course, the very end of the story isn’t known. You know that you are all in prison, but there is the question about what you do with your final card… to keep it or to give it away, once you know everyone else’s stories. The final end of each character isn’t known until the epilogue!

Images from occupied France including the Eiffel Tower and the arches.
Occupied France.

—

Thanks so much to Alex for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out A Cool and Lonely Courage on Kickstarter today!

Note: As required by my standards, you’ll note that I asked Alex about whether he reached out to the families of any of those he’s writing this game based on. I understand Alex’s perspective, but as I have spoken of before, I care about whose stories we tell, so I wanted to ask to get that perspective.

New Game: In Other Lives!

I released a new game! In Other Lives is a game you can play by yourself, or with friends, as you tell stories about the tourists that pass you by in public!

https://briebeau.itch.io/in-other-lives

In Other Lives is a collaborative storytelling game that you play in public, using optional randomizers and creative ideas to make the tourists and other people around you into the stuff of nightmares – or daydreams, if you’re like, into that. You can play this solo, or play with a group of friends.

REQUIRED

1-2 hours

1-6 players

A public space with some repeating visitors (the “Scene”)

Randomizer (six-sided die or flip a coin) (optional)

Notepad (digital fine)

Script Change

The cover of In Other Lives showing a carriage driver in black & white with the text In Other Lives by Brie Beau Sheldon, created for We Can Make This Work Jam - Very Hungry Tourists.

Five or So Questions on Afterlife

Hi all! Today I’ve got an interview with Elizabeth Chaipraditkul about Afterlife, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds really fascinating, so check out what Liz has to say below!

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

So, here’s the elevator pitch taken right from our Kickstarter page: 

Afterlife: Wandering Souls is a macabre fantasy game set in surreal plane known as the Tenebris. You take on the role of a Wanderer—someone who died, but didn’t end up in Heaven, Hell, or any other traditional afterlife.  Devoid of any memories of your life on earth, you find yourself in an endless desert filled with gateways. Search different planes of existence for clues of your former life – or a semblance of one. Along the way you’ll encounter strange inhabitants, alien cultures, and other humans who’ve lost all hope and are bent on destroying you. 

Afterlife is Alice in Wonderland meets What Dreams May Come set in a world inspired by the works of Guillermo del Torro, Hayao Miyazaki, and surrealist artists. *A few things really excite me about Afterlife: Wandering Souls (AWS) first, the concept of exploring forgotten memories has always called to me in rpgs. My favourite part of running games for people is having those poignant moments with players delving into their personal stories.Whatever type of game your playing – a sprawling adventure, a strange mystery, or a political nightmare – play is always heightened for me when characters have their own personal stories going on. In AWS you travel through strange worlds and get to experience a look into your character’s past. I love that!

On a more personal note I’m excited about this project, because it’s the work (for my company) that I am most proud of to date. I’ve learned a lot through my years of freelancing and I feel it’s culminated to this. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that you need a great team around you – and this project has the biggest team to date! When you have so many talented people working towards one goal – that excites me! 

A person with dreadlocks, a beard, and tattooed skin and halo of crystals and light holds a shattered gem in their hands while reality seems to swirl and bubble around them. The text "Afterlife: Wandering Souls" is at the bottom of the image.

How does Afterlife work mechanically, just the basics, to demonstrate this surreal plane and the way you interact with it?

The basics of Afterlife’s mechanics are rolling a pool of d6’s and getting the number of successes required by the Challenge set by your GM. Around those base mechanics we’ve built in a lot of cool systems that help reflect the setting you’re playing in. For example, each Wanderer has an Approach which is a martial item that can warp and shape based on their personality. The more players define what their Approach does the more unique it becomes – but also mechanically it gives them a bonus to their checks. We also have something called Death Marks – which are tattoo-like markings on a Wanderer’s skin. Each Death Mark is linked to a memory the player helped develop during character creation and each gives a special mechanical benefit. Throughout the game people unlock their Death Marks by interacting with their memories.

What do you do to support players with the potentially difficult subjects that come up in game, considering the references like What Dreams May Come?

We encourage GMs to have an open and honest conversation about what player’s expectations are of the game before they start, along with going over themes that the players aren’t comfortable with. For public games where you might not know each other well or convention spaces we suggest GMs use safety tools like the X-card which can be easier for players to interact with when they don’t know everyone well. Afterlife is all about strange exploration and (OC) enjoying all the drama that comes with experiencing past memories and bringing them into play. To paraphrase what we’ve written in the corebook – Afterlife is a game where you play a dead planar traveler with magical powers searching through alien worlds for memories – arguing someone should re-live traumatic memories they’re not comfortable with because it is realistic is just obtuse. 

A person with tattooed skin and a gem on their forehead holds a crow-like bird with one yellow eye and one red eye in their hands while reality seems to swirl and bubble around them. The text "Afterlife: Wandering Souls" is in the center of the image.

Memories seem really important in Afterlife! How do players interact with their memories mechanically and in the story itself?

Within the game we have a mechanics called ‘naming a fragment’ whereby you as a player see something that you’d like to have relate back to your past life and denote its importance to your GM. When this happens you GM uses that person, place, or thing you named to create a small side scene for you known as a Break. During a Break your character goes into a catatonic-like state and they re-live a memory of their past life. When your Wanderer comes to, they have a better idea of who they once were and what their memories mean to them. Aside from getting some awesome play out of naming a fragment, it also has mechanical benefits. One of the best ones is unlocking a Death Mark, which gives you a cool power and also means you’re one step closer to the end of your Wanderer’s journey.

What are the alien worlds like and what influence do characters have on the world around them?

In Afterlife: Wandering Souls the alien worlds are known as Limbos. Each is strange and often macabre. For example, we have a Limbo in the book known as the Drowned Lands filled with shipwrecks, ghosts of the dead, and strange sea creatures. In another Limbo we have is a giant wall of roses under a rolling grey sky – daring to look into one of the roses could spell doom for your Wanderer as they contain memories of the living world. 

Characters are encouraged to be active participants in the Limbos they visit. Without interacting with the world around them, they are unable to find memories of their past lives and therefore risk falling into Stagnation (a loss of hope). To put it in the simplest terms – Wanderers are encouraged to be the stereotypical adventurers getting embroiled in plots, going on adventures, and interacting with NPCs. The amount of influence a Wanderer wields is based on how they interact with the Limbo itself – if people like them, if they are helpful, if they can do something of us.

—

Awesome! Thanks so much Liz for the interview! I hope you all liked it and that you’ll check out Afterlife on Kickstarter today!

Bestiary: Hillside Phimf

The people living in those flatlands, they don’t know true horror. They’ve never heard its sound. They’ve never had to run, run downhill to the flats and hope there ain’t just another hill to come, hearing the growls, hearing the scream, the baaaaaaah it roars, the sound of its four feet pounding unevenly behind you. In the hills, we know. The hills don’t have eyes. They have the phimf.

Tarnin Covalesky, woodsman
The Phimf is a large - some would say gargantuan - beast that has four cloven hooves like a goat, two short on the right and two long on the left, that make it easy for them to travel over hillsides, with a stout torso that’s heavily muscled and four gorilla arms and hands, as well as a ape-like face that’s long in the snout like a goat, and four pointed horns - perhaps the creature’s only point of pride.
This blessed image is of the Hillside Phimf by Thomas Novosel.

Background

The Hillside Phimf is a cryptid. The most elusive kind, that is, until you’re on a hillside at night. Then it’s just nearer than near, its hot breath just bristling your hair and its rage tenable, just behind you. It’s a perilous beast, and like none you’ve ever heard of. There are some who try to compare it to a sidehill gouger, but those beasts are sweet creatures in comparison to the giant Phimf.

It might sound the opposite of terrifying when it’s stuck to hillsides, but you’ll only think that until you spend some days in a region where there’s more sideways than straight. The creature walks on two short legs and two long ones, gripping the hillside, and reaching out with four arms to capture anyone caught unawares on the slope. It rarely goes hungry, and only ranges where dips and valleys make their home.

The screaming roar it makes seems to echo through the hillsides, but is never heard inside the thick-walled homes. The trees buffer its baahhhhing, its cry to the wind. The Phimf is said to be half gorilla, some sort of ape, with large grasping hands and fearful teeth, and half goat, with clopping hooves that find even steep cliffs no trouble at all. Where it comes from, no one knows, but we do know where it goes – ’round the hills, soon as dusk falls, and not stopping until its growls turn into satisfied grumbles from a good meal. If there’s no folk around to have a bite, it’s not afraid of partial cannibalism, eating everything from other goats to spare possums trying to find their way home in the night. All along it stalks the hills.

The Phimf has their weird goat eyes, rectangular pupils and wide, with a legendary ability to see in the dark. Bright lights shy them away, but if they’re hungry they’ll just eat the light. Goat gut’ll digest anything, so they say. They might yell while they do it, truth be told. Their bleating yells reveal squat, square teeth that crush more than shear. They batter on their chest with apelike hands that have long reach and strong grip.

The way to get at them, supposedly, is a crew with strong stomachs who can round it up onto the flat. Its strengths become weaknesses then as it’ll topple to the side, struggling between its short and long legs. It’s still grabby as all get out, but it’ll eat anything you put in front of it – even if that snack happens to be sleep-inducing or worse. No one knows for sure whether it’ll work, but someone had better do something to protect these hills.

Hillside Phimf for D&D 5e

Large cryptid, chaotic neutral

Armor Class
16

Hit Points
84(8d10+ 40)

Speed
40 ft.

All Posts

STR 14|+2DEX 16|+3CON 20|+5INT 8|-1WIS 10|0CHA 7|-2

Proficiency Bonus
+4

Skills
Intimidation +8, Perception +2

Senses

Darkvision 120 ft., Passive Perception 10

Languages
None

Challenge
8 (3900 XP)

All Arms. The Phimf has four arms and is always counted as having reach in all directions, and cannot be flanked.

Actions

Multiattack.The Phimf makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its hands. It can make both attacks against the same target.

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 33 (4d12 + 7) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 17). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the Phimf can’t bite another target.

Grasping Hands. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 17). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the Phimf can’t grab another target.

Disgusting Roar. The Hillside Phimf has eaten ungodly things and its stomach works hard to digest it. When the Phimf roars to frighten its prey, anyone caught in the 20ft. cone must make a DC 10 Constitution save or suffer nausea and dizziness for 1d4 rounds (Temporary Constitution & Dexterity Penalty of -2).

Facilitator Notes

Drives

  • Driven by unending hunger.
  • Driven to find the tastiest food the most easily.
  • Doggedly pursues anything that smells like food regardless of when it last ate.

Interactions & Reactions

  • The Phimf is almost never seen during the day, seeking caves, shadowed cliffsides, and abandoned houses or barns to hide in when the sun is out.
  • If attacked, the Phimf will only try to fight back or resist. It will never try to run away. At most, it will seek cover when the sun is rising.
  • The Phimf is always hungry, and has no restrictions on its diet.
  • The Phimf is a large – some would say gargantuan – beast that has four cloven hooves like a goat, two short on the right and two long on the left, that make it easy for them to travel over hillsides, with a stout torso that’s heavily muscled and four gorilla arms and hands, as well as a ape-like face that’s long in the snout like a goat, and four pointed horns – perhaps the creature’s only point of pride.

Other System Notes

  • The Hillside Phimf has 8 hit dice.
  • Grasping Hands equivalent damage: Maul or Heavy Two-Handed Weapon.
  • Bite equivalent damage: Greataxe – three attacks for each bite.

Hillside Phimf for Monster of the Week

Monster: Devourer (motivation: to eat everything tasty)

Powers

All Arms: The Phimf has four arms and is always counted as having reach in all directions, and cannot be flanked.

Disgusting Roar: The Hillside Phimf has eaten ungodly things and its stomach works hard to digest it. When the Phimf roars to frighten its prey, anyone caught in the blast takes 1-harm close messy.

Teeth and Hands Attacks: Bite: 3-harm hand; Grasping Hands: 4-harm hand close.

Armor

Tough Skin: 1-armor.

Harm Capacity

12.

Weakness

Hunger & daylight: If the Phimf is tricked into eating something that could harm it, it takes harm more easily (no armor against ingestion). It also is weakened in daylight, but mostly in that it will cower and try to hide.

Assembludo: What I’m Working On

I’ve had some recent changes in my personal life, and they’ve reflected some changes in my professional life, too! As some people know, I have multiple romantic partners (I’m polyamorous), and that I work on game stuff and play games with my partners a lot. One of my partners is Thomas Novosel, who is a brilliant artist and game designer I met through Google+ a few years back. We’re dating, and we’re also working on some super rad game stuff.

A dark haired, bearded man in glasses and an orange and blue flannel button down looks off to the distance inside an industrial styled restaurant.
Thomas Novosel, photo by Brie Beau Sheldon (c) 2019.

Thomas is in upstate New York, and he’s consulting with me on Turn’s border towns stretch goal that replaced the Mormon towns goal. This stretch goal is going to take a little longer to complete, but Thomas was part of the inspiration – I visited him in his town, on the northern US border, and realized there are a lot of stories to tell. He’s helping me get in touch with the local indigenous center (Akwesasne natives). This is hugely useful.

(P.S.: I’m still looking for a southern border consultant, preferably a person of color, from either side of the US southern border! Please use the contact page if you’re interested.)

Thomas and I have also made our own little game collective, called Assembludo (a mashup of assemblage+ludo for artistic mashup of game stuff, basically). It’s been really fun to work on so far, and we’re nearing having some projects ready to release! It’s hard figuring out how to fund projects, but in the meantime I’ve been helping Thomas get some game jam products out like The Heaven’s Prophet’s Tomb for the Pamphlet Dungeon, and he’s run his game Runaway Hirelings for me so I can get a better feel for his design sense. (Unsurprisingly, Runaway Hirelings was SUPER fun, very creative and adventurous, and plays in like 2 hours! It’s worth way more like $10!)

The Runaway Hirelings cover with a person carrying a large sack illustrated as walking along with determination.

The other new projects we’re working on are even more exciting!

The first project we’re hoping to release as a joint effort as designers is called The Magic Hour, and it’s a short adventure for general fantasy campaigns with some custom creatures. It’s set in a small town in a rural fantasy land with a variety of characters in the town, where a mystery is occurring! People in the town have been disappearing, and no one can seem to figure out what’s happening!

The description I gave to John one of the creatures is “okapi with condor wings” and I’m excited to see them realized in the game. We’re both obviously working on this while juggling our regular jobs, freelance work, and individual projects, so it’s taking a little bit of time. But, we’re making good progress, and I think it’s a cute game adventure that encourages nonviolence, explores a small town, and has a little bit of silliness baked in. We’re both capable of seriousness and spookiness, but I think that’s something really wonderful about what Thomas and I have been working on – there’s just a little lightheartedness in every bit!

Two okapi, a mother and baby, walking around in the zoo. They are horse-like creatures with shorter faces and big ears, dark brown fur all over their torsos and then zebra-like striped fur on their legs.
Two Okapi, so cute, so weird (from Wikimedia Commons).

We have a few other ideas bouncing around. Like, Thomas is working on a King Arthur and the Round Table inspired knight game, A Knight Rode at Dawn, which looks absolutely fantastic and has been fun to follow and contribute to as he needs. I’m working on Flicker, something I started writing inspired by Thomas’s art before we started dating, which is a game about hope where you burn down tiny paper houses as you, a living flame, travel the darkening world to relight the sun. I love the game a lot, and it’s reignited by Thomas’s gentle encouragement.

Our big project, which could take a long while, is Little Green Dot, which is a game about a world populated by animals that live on little islands. It’s a world touched by folk legend and there’s a lot of thinking about our actions, what they mean now, and what they’ll mean years from now to our community, our family, our party, and ourselves. Animals are sometimes bigger or smaller than they’d be in our world, but they’re also able to use leaf-swords and acorn-caps and travel to become legends in their own right.

One of my favorite things that Thomas has written in our draft notes is this, about one of the character types that I wanted to have.

The squids and the turtles children would grow together but would always be upset and miss each other and grow apart as one went towards land. The Whale saw this and kissed the squids mantles, giving them a soft membrane of water from home to follow them onto land. Allowing them to go as far as they want, with their friends, while also taking their home with them.

Thomas Novosel, draft notes for Little Green Dot, 2019

There is a section below it where he elaborated that I read as he typed, and it made me cry!

Specific Feeling: Taking a stone from the farm with you into the city. A stone that you looked at and liked. But someone put it in your hand so that you didn’t have to pick it up.

Thomas Novosel, draft notes for Little Green Dot, 2019

This is the weirdest thing about designing with Thomas. He still is quite technical and focused on mechanics, like John is. And he’s highly artistic, like John is. But Thomas is much more of a feelsy person like me! So when he wrote this, especially as a farm kid who moved to the city and no one gave me something to carry with me, just punched me in the heart forever. It was one of our first design sessions and it remains one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen a person write about something they were designing.

Low mountains on the other side of a large field with a dynamic skyscape above, lens flares scattering across the center of the frame.
We recently went to Lake Placid and had a picnic looking at nearby mountains. Few things make me miss living in rural areas more than spending time in the wilderness!

I think my work with Thomas has made me reflect on how I design a lot! Like, maybe I need to start putting myself first, and the game after. And maybe, I should not tell myself it’s stupid to think about how mechanics feel. We ignore it so often, how games feel, what they do to us emotionally when we take action or don’t, and how we feel when we roll a die or flip a card or enforce a mechanical rule. Feelings aren’t stupid. And just because we have to work at understanding them sometimes does not mean that we should dismiss them in design. Needless to say, I can’t wait to show you more from Assembludo in the future!

One last thing I wanted to mention about my work with Thomas is something he put in the Little Green Dot document. It sounds simple, but it’s really important:

The Love Contract
If this game affects our relationship negatively, or starts hurting us. We will stop working on it, because we love each other very very much. And being in love is more important than fighting over work.

Thomas Novosel, signed by Beau and Thomas both in the Little Green Dot documents.

I look at it and I think, my gosh. How many of my relationships would be less rocky around our design experiences if I’d put this in there? What if I had put in a Friendship Contract or a Respect Contract in my projects I’ve worked on? How simple of an idea is it to just stop doing something that’s hurting you, or hurting the relationships that build up the game in the first place? It smacked me right in the forehead with its sense. So I signed it!

I love all of my partners very much. And I work with them all, to varying degrees! I think what I was missing this whole time wasn’t the right person to work with, it was the right attitude to go about working with. Considering that Thomas and I, and John and I, are very aware of how fickle the game market is and how we can’t ever expect success. I think we also know how precarious relationships can be when you’re working together. Like, yikes. With that in mind, I think prioritizing love is worth it.

Beau and Thomas in front of a picturesque mountain and lake scene with branching trees behind them. Thomas is a bearded, brown haired man in a green and red flannel shirt and aviator sunglasses. Beau is a nonbinary person with blue and white short hair, wearing a blue and black shirt and aviator sunglasses. They're both smiling brightly.
Beau & Thomas at Lake Placid, by Brie Beau Sheldon (c) 2019.

Find out more about Thomas at thomas-novosel.com and find him on Twitter at @thomasanovosel. His itch.io hosts a number of his games & game materials as well (including fonts!), and is a good place to follow!

Beau’s website is currently under construction, but you can find them through briebeau.com and as @ThoughtyGames on Twitter, on Pluspora as briebeau, Pillowfort as Brie-Beau, and at briebeau.itch.io.

P.S. I go by Beau now, tho the full name is Brie Beau Sheldon. 🙂

P.P.S. – My work with John continues on Roar of Alliance – check him out on Twitter as @johnwsheldon and on Pluspora to follow his progress. He is also still my husband, thankfully. 🙂

P.P.S. I’m still with Dillon long-distance, too, and he is running some really cool games as an awesome DM, and makes some awesome creatures for his games! Keep up with him on Twitter as @Damn_It_Dillon!

Five or So Questions on A Town Called Malice

Today I’ve got an interview with David Kizzia from Monkeyfun Studios about A Town Called Malice, which is currently on Kickstarter. I love the idea of Nordic Noir and wanted to hear more about it, so check it out!

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three copies of A Town Called Malice against a brick wall, the cover depicting a person walking away from bloodstained snow in a red winter coat and black pants, towards pine trees.

Tell me a little about A Town Called Malice. What excites you about it?

Nordic Noir is a great genre. It refers to more than just an international import, it’s an approach to ensemble-style drama where characters of different backgrounds all deal with the same dramatic tension equally. The BBS series “Broadchurch” is a great example where everyone in the same small town comes to terms with a murder over multiple episodes, and the first run of “Twin Peaks” is the same way. From a game mechanics perspective, it’s something I hadn’t done before – my previously credits used the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. It’s excite to explore a new style of gameplay.

What are the characteristics of Nordic Noir and how do they show up in A Town Called Malice?

Nordic Noir is more character-driven, I find the tragedy or crime to be solved becomes a prism to show the internal conflicts the characters are experiencing. Both the original and US version of “The Killing” show how multiple backgrounds are affected by a terrible death and as the series progresses, we as an audience see the story go deeper beyond just the basic “Whodunnit” type of mystery. By going with a story game format, (as opposed to something more stat driven), it emphasized the relationships the player were building within the narrative. That seemed more of the portrayal of the genre.

How do you ensure the players are comfortable, while still unsettling them as appropriate, in a Nordic Noir game?

We of course make sure to highlight appropriate safety measures and basic responsibility when dealing with both the horror and relationship elements. Because the players cooperate in building the narrative, they also lead the drama to the levels that best suit their gameplay tastes.

A black and white drawing of a body in a trench coat, pants, and boots collapsed in a puddle. The text beside it reads "No one's coming. It's up to us."

What are the characters like and how are characters built for the game?

Characters are guided by several things – Each role has a Personal Goal which should influence the player’s actions. These guidelines are intended to be neutral to how the player feels they’re best served. The Personal Goal of the “Criminal” role for example, is to “Gain the Advantage”. This can be interpreted by the player, and can be either a good or a bad trait depending on the situation. Gaining the advantage can be interpreted into helping the Law in solving the bigger problems of the Town for example.

Characters are also developed by the relationships they have with the other players at the table, through the use of Heit and Kult dice. These dice are placed in between the players at the table, representing the immediate relationship around them. Both players have input into that relationship, so a relationship can be a mixture of both good and bad feelings. This allows the players to expand on the overall narrative and determine what they need to personally overcome in order to succeed.

If players wanted to play the game and get the most out of it, how would you suggest they prepare for it?

I have really enjoyed watching players going deeper than they normally would’ve in say, a straightforward dungeon crawl. I think people will enjoy it most when they focus on the relationship aspects as much as trying to overcome the supernatural threats to the Town – what does your character feel? What do they need? How can they overcome these things together? It’s a really different focus for me as a creator, and I’m glad to see people get excited about the prospects of what Malice can be.

And for fun, what would you suggest as the ideal murder?

Wait. Who talked to you? I wasn’t there, no matter what you’ve heard! (laughs)

The header image for "a town called MALICE" with a person in dark clothes walking alongside an empty road in a snowy region, towards dark trees in the background.

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Thanks so much to David for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out A Town Called Malice on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on Fate of Cthulhu

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Sophie Lagace, PK Sullivan, and Ed Turner about Fate of Cthulhu, which is currently on Kickstarter. I am impressed with some of the changes they’ve made to the Mythos and to Fate for the project, and I hope you do too! Check it out!

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Purple and blue monstrous entities writhing in the background behind the FATE OF CTHULHU title card.

Tell me a little about Fate of Cthulhu. What excites you about it?

Sophie Lagace:  It’s a take on Cthulhu I have not really seen before, where the heroes are seriously out-gunned and out-tentacled, but not hopeless. Maybe you can’t save humanity from an apocalypse, but you can save it from complete extinction, for example. It’s a game about fighting back even when you’re a tiny person against a monstrous evil, giving it all you got and having a chance to make a difference. I can seriously relate, these days.

Also, we acknowledge the glaring flaws in the source material and in H.P. Lovecraft himself, take the good, and reject the bad. I love critical examination of our faves rather than pretending everything is fine

PK Sullivan:  This is the first genuinely hopeful take on the Cthulhu mythos that I’ve seen. That’s something really important to me. Sean Nittner reached out to me in July 2015 asking if I would be the lead designer for this Fate Cthulhu game that Evil Hat wanted to make. My first response was, “Me? Are you sure? I’m not a Cthulhu fan.” Ultimately I think that worked in my favor. Stephen took point on the mythos story while my job was to design a system that reinforced the themes of the mythos. But I need hope in my stories — I made that very clear early on — so Fate of Cthulhu started to lean more toward the good you can do in the timeline

It can still be a pyrrhic victory, or you can still completely screw things up and make the future worse but there’s always the chance, the possibility, the hope that things can be better. And ultimately that’s what you’re trying to achieve as a character: a better future.

Which is surprisingly easy to achieve when the timeline starts as dark as possible.

Ed Turner: Sophie and PK already adequately covered the joys of cosmic horror with a side of hope, so I’m going to be a bit more mechanics-focused: it’s corruption that excites me. As characters deal with phenomena related to the Great Old One, they’ll slowly be corrupted by the sheer wrongness of eldritch forces. Left unchecked, corruption takes the form of horrible mutations. You want claws and tentacles and dripping ichor and other body horror shenanigans? Eat your heart out. Maybe literally… corruption can do weird things.

I love corruption for so many reasons. It’s a way to convey the danger of these alien entities without falling back on tired and problematic notions of “madness.” It’s a way to give players actual hard consequences when things go awry—having a character die is almost never as interesting as having a character’s very humanity get twisted. But more than anything else, it’s a way to empower characters… as bad as corruption is, your new tentacles are also tools in your arsenal, a way you can use the Great Old One’s own malevolence against itself. It ties back to that all-important sense of hope: the worse things get for a character, the better they are able to fight back. As bad as the threat you’re facing is, it contains the seeds of its own destruction.

And of course it means your character can have tentacles. Nothing wrong with more tentacles. The heroes need to even out the tentacle playing-field.

A woman in a wide brimmed hat with long, dark hair in a black and white image.
Sophie Lagace

What is your role in the project, and what did you especially enjoy working on over the course of the project?

SL: I have had three roles. The project stretched on for nearly four years (with almost a year out of that devoted to the playtest rounds), so many things changed along the way. I started on quality control, a sort of sounding board for “Does this thing fit as a Fate game?” Eventually the project management work was rearranged across all Evil Hat products and Sean Nittner asked me to take over project management for this one. And as of almost a year ago, when Lenny Balsera didn’t have time to be Fate Line Developer, I have taken that on as well.

I tremendously enjoyed working (once again!) with top talent, and this will continue with our stretch goal collaborators. On a personal level, I had a flash of elation when, after compiling the mass of data from our beta playtest round, I suddenly realized that we had objective confirmation that we had addressed the problems revealed by the alpha round. We all had a vague, hopeful sense from the comments received that maybe we were on the right track, but it was great to get hard data

PK: I’m the lead designer and I love weird challenges in game design. The first four or five months of design was very collaborative. Sean, Sophie, Stephen, and I (wow, am I the only not-S on the original team?) had a bunch of Skype calls where we hashed out the parameters of the game, both fiction and mechanics. The thing we hit on was that the meat of this game would be in an ever-changing, non-deterministic timeline. Which is hella tricky because we have characters coming from the literal future who know the timeline as a matter of fact.

The first iteration of our timeline mechanisms pretty detached from any role play the characters made. At the conclusion of an event (more or less what we call an adventure) one of the players would get slapped with paradox and suffer terrible visions of the new future they’ve created. This involved a skill check against an epic difficulty that was almost sure to cost resources (Fate points, etc.), followed by rolling four Fate dice with modifiers based on how well that skill check went. If the player had been able to shake off time’s assault just fine, then they got to improve dice. If they blew that defense roll, then one of the dice was guaranteed to be a negative. The dice result became the new rating of the event the players had just completed (more or less how badly it screws humanity) and those dice rippled out to the other events in the timeline. This did two things: it gave the characters valuable information about the new state of the timeline and made sure no one could game the system for the best result.

Playtesters hated it

So I had to go back to the drawing board. I redesigned the timeline mechanisms so that the heroes and the squamous horrors of the void are competing on a track for changes to the timeline. As those rack up, ripples get made across the other events. But! Now it’s up to the GM to interpret what those ripples mean. This was a really clever solution to a problem I didn’t know we had. I was leaning too hard into the action element of the action-horror stories we set out to tell. By making the timeline changes a GM element, while giving them tools and guidance to convey those changes to the players in thematically appropriate ways, the uncertainty that players faced dramatically increased. Uncertainty is key to horror stories. We need to keep the players in a state of imperfect information, even if other Fate games rely on perfect information.

That was the biggest challenge in the game and one I hope goes over well. Fred and some of the early readers have really responded to the condensed, concise Fate Core rules set I’ve put together for the game. The first stretch goal was to put that into the Fate Core SRD so people can build their own Fate games using those 50 pages of rules. That’s very flattering. I really hope people build tons of great games off this chassis I put together. It would be the greatest reward so far in my game design career.

ET: I got pulled into the project relatively late, to help get it ready for the second round of playtests, and after that I was part of the writing team. In practice, most of my energy went into the detail work: example text, spells and rituals, corruption stunts, things of that nature. Whenever you see a list of things, I probably had a hand in it. It’s not easy to pick a favorite part—by the time I started working on the project, the core of it had already come more-or-less together. It meant that I was given a wonderfully ghastly playground to explore.

Perhaps my favorite part was helping to finalize the timelines themselves. Stephen wrote some wonderful apocalypses, which are just an absolute delight to read; my job involved statting up the NPCs and horrible monsters that populate his world. In short, getting them ready for a GM to pick up and throw at their players, while still being as weird and scary as Stephen envisions. It’s a fun challenge.

A dark haired man in a collared shirt on a brown background.
Ed Turner

What are the unique challenges of a timey wimey affected game? You’ve talked about the timelines – what do those mean to the players?

SL: For one thing, it means being able to play some pretty unusual characters, whether by having corruption aspects and stunts, or by confronting temporal paradox. We had playtester groups who reported that some of their members played different versions of the same character, and that seemed to generate a lot of fun moments for them.

For another, it means that the heroes will be dealing with high stakes; for example, if you can’t change the timeline, you have not the possibility but the certitude that everyone you ever cared about will suffer a horrible, ah, fate.

Finally, the fact that a group can tackle any of the four key events in a timeline in any order in turn makes each story truly unique to that group. It’s likely that two gaming group taking on the same timeline and Great Old One will have a very different narrative, so replay value should be good.

ET: It means that players and GMs alike will be contending with an interesting juxtaposition of knowledge and uncertainty. The timeline gives players many, though not all, of the essential details about what they’ll encounter during an event, but their actions ripple forward, changing subsequent events. The knowledge they were so sure of at the outset grows less and less helpful as time goes on. And it gives the GM room to really mess with players’ expectations.
Of course, that does also suggest part of the challenge: rationing out that change. PK pointed out earlier that uncertainty is key to horror stories, but uncertainty requires a solid baseline, otherwise things change so rapidly that they stop being unsettlingly wrong and start being pure static. In other words, the GM can’t mess with players’ expectations if things get so chaotic that the players don’t have any expectations anymore. Timelines, and the timeline track, help contain that chaos, so players will always know more-or-less what’s going to happen, but can be shocked by the details.

PK: The biggest challenge was finding a way to have timeline actually matter. We decided early on that a timeline would play a significant role in the game. That’s why the whole structure of Fate of Cthulhu is built around the timeline. When I started mucking about with possible timeline systems, I realized that for it to work it needed to do two contradictory things: the players have to know the timeline and the timeline has to change and shift. From there it was a tightrope to walk of having the changes be unpredictable and Lovecrafting while letting the players feel like they earned the changes to it.

How did you approach making an inclusive game in something that most marginalized consider volatile, the Lovecraftian mythos, both mechanically and in the fiction and in presentation of the game rules?

SL: It was clear from the first moment that to make this a game which Evil Hat could publish, we would have to face the true monsters in the Lovecraft story. It just would not have been compatible with our mission to gloss over racism, ableism, and other -isms.

It may be tacky but I’m going to toot my own horn here regarding the concept of sanity: I was the first to suggest a corruption mechanic and the high cost of facing the horrors being the slow transformation into a monster yourself. I’m very fond of RPGs that ask the question “What are you willing to sacrifice in order to succeed?” instead of just “Will you succeed?” I think it’s central to Fate, a game where PCs have lots of resources to draw on in order to achieve goals.

That said, I’m certain someone else would rapidly have come up with the corruption idea, but I felt good about being the one to pull it out of an evil hat.

ET: I think Sophie really hits the nail on the head: getting rid of the tired and thoughtless treatment of “sanity” pulls a lot of weight. I think it also helps to be absolutely explicit when we call out Lovecraft’s bigotry. It’s so commonly elided over, or dismissed as being a product of its time. And that’s no good… his writings often, and with varying levels of subtlety, other real-world groups, and that’s something we don’t want to lazily perpetuate.

And of course, we can’t forget the contributions of our sensitivity reader, Misha Bushyager. Sensitivity consultation is great idea in general, but on something like this, it’s invaluable.

A bearded man in a cap and black jacket, looking to the side and smiling.
PK Sullivan

How is Fate of Cthulhu different from other experiences in Fate, from your perspective? What do you hope people enjoy in the variation?

SL: I think it puts in doubt whether you will achieve success like no other Fate game we’ve released before. Also, there are not that many role-playing games that provide mechanical support to allow time travel and changing the future, and I don’t know of any other based on the Fate engine. In fact, most time-travel RPGs I know of have a lighter tone: TimeWatch (Pelgrane Press), Doctor Who (FASA, Cubicle 7), Time & Temp (Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing), etc.. On the other hand, Fate of Cthulhu can have funny moments, but it’s not meant to be played for laughs

ET: The timelines give the game a very strong narrative superstructure; there is a very clearly defined end point that you are building to: eventually the moment of the Great Old One’s rise will arrive, and it’s on you to be ready for it. It means there’s a grand finale always on the horizon, which gives the campaign an ongoing sense of pace… the characters might not know what the best next step is, but it’s impossible for them to lose sight of their greater goal. It’s not the very first Fate game to do something like this; Uprising has a built-in narrative arc leading to an end point. But Fate of Cthulhu pushes the concept even further, diving really deep into the short, focused campaign concept. I also hope that people take advantage of the focused, relatively brief campaign by going through multiple apocalypses. Not only by re-trying a timeline, hoping to get a better result with the next iteration, but by trying out the variety of timelines in the book and coming out as stretch goals from the Kickstarter.

PK: Most Fate games have characters change laterally, sometimes gaining in power but only in small doses. Because a given campaign is really just four adventures — four events on the timeline — and a denouement in the form of the final event Rise of the Great Old One, we actually put advancement on the fast track. PCs get a new skill every milestone. But… that’s tempered by the corruption mechanisms. This is the only Fate game I know of where you can end up in a mechanically reinforced spiral of self-destruction. Corruption stunts offer you great power but at the cost of further corruption. Not to mention many of the horrors you’ll face can push you down that path, as well. It’s another interesting dichotomy where characters can get very powerful very fast but also just wind up taking themselves right out of play by getting too dark.

One last question! If you could be in the Fate of Cthulhu world, what would you most want to do and see? What would be the wildest adventure you could want?

PK: Is it a cop out to say I don’t want to go there? We made the worst future! Futures! There are five of them! They’re all completely terrible. War, plague, famine, pestilence, and unending subjugation await anyone who lives long enough to see the future. If I had to be someone in Fate of Cthulhu, I think I’d want to be a modern day mystic. Maybe someone who has visions of the future. Being haunted by nightmarish visions of things yet to be is about the most chill thing you can be in this world.

SL: I’m with PK! But I would want to see success in avoiding a cataclysm, righting things to the point where humanity can build a better future. So, ++++ on the timeline!

ET: Yeah, there’s definitely no great place in the Fate of Cthulhu world. But I dunno, I think the Dagon timeline might be pretty okay? I mean, assuming you survive the horrible transformation into a Deep One. Sure, you’d suffer eternal subservience to a giant paranoid fish-monster at the bottom of the ocean, but you’d get to breathe underwater, and that’s pretty cool. That’s about as good a trade-off as a Great Old One is going to offer.

Old ones encroaching on a city, all tinged in green, passing a billboard that's been vandalized with anarchy symbols, and someone riding past on a motorcycle with a helmet and rifle. The title FATE OF CTHULHU is on the image with the subtitle "The stars are right for Great Cthulhu's Return. It's up to you to make them wrong again."

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Awesome! Thank you so much to Sophie, PK, and Ed for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Fate of Cthulhu on Kickstarter today!