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!
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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.
Today I have an interview with Glenn Given from Games By Playdate about the new game, Slash 2: Thirst Blood. Slash 2 is the sequel to Slash: Romance Without Boundaries, a card game about shipping – the fandom kind – and is a really fun and exciting game! Check out Glenn’s responses below.
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Tell me a little about Slash 2: Thirst Blood. What excites you about it?
Slash 2 is a standalone sequel to Slash: Romance Without Boundaries. It is a fan fiction shipping party game where players compete to create their favorite One True Pairing while swapping stories and micro-fictions. The thing that excites me the me the most about Slash 2 is the opportunity to incorporate everything we have learned since we began making games (the Original Slash was our very first project). We have researched hundreds of new fandoms and used player feedback and fan communities to better balance our characters while maintaining diversity and accessibility. I am also terribly excited to introduce remix game modes to Slash. We have had loads of fans telling us how they play and they have been some of the most creative and rewarding contributions so we are sharing those with the players as best we can.
Tell me about the different modes of Slash 2: Thirst Blood. What did you do to develop them? Which were the most challenging to codify?
We looked at what other games were popular and said “you know what, I bet you can use Slash for that” and it turns out that works pretty well. Seriously though we took a look at the Board Game Remix Kit, at the litany of party games these days and at fan suggestions about new modes and ran with that. There are simple adaptations that don’t require any further materials like using Slash for your game of Fishbowl. We’ve added a light RPG/larp that riffs off of Ghost Court to try and get more players into the storytelling side of the game and so forth. The most challenging thing was taking these game modes and really distilling them down to a few paragraphs or less of clear and inspirational rules.
Glenn Given, potentially lurking.
What were some of your favorite new cards to add to the game?
Hands down my favorite new character is “Every Punch Thrown in the film The Raid.”
What was different between this game development experience and the original game’s development?
We were consciously developing this product. With the original it came out after a 3 day bender at PAX East from a rented house full of geeks. We drove from Boston back to my job at the time in NH and printed copies that evening to play at the con the next day. With Thirst Blood we took a look at what worked and at how the landscape of fandoms have grown, how fanfiction in general has evolved in just 3 and a half years, and built something directly for those people. The characters are a better reflection of the audiences rather than me just stuffing every Disney Afternoon character into the set.
What are you most looking forward to seeing when the game is out in the wild?
I am really excited to see people look at the new characters and to look at the new rules and have the realization that what they have enjoyed can be played in a completely different way. I hope that they will see that games like this aren’t just rules ad cards but that they are toolkits for having a good time.
I attended Big Bad Con 2017 in Walnut Creek, CA on a scholarship from the con. This is post two! Find post one here. —
I got room service to make sure I finished my homework. >.<
I woke up after like, real sleep for the first time in a while, and wrote a paper for school before messing about hanging around with people until my next panel. I was brought a handy towel by Dante so I didn’t ruin the hotel towels and, tbh, I couldn’t find the towel before I left Monday morning, so no idea what happened there.
The next panel I was on was Gaming and Emotional Safety, with Mickey and Misha. Everyone knows I’m a pretty woobie heart person so I get emotional a lot, and I also have had some trauma in my life that I struggle with and that can (sometimes nonsensically) come up in game. We reviewed many of the various safety tools (though not all), noting that they’re not one size fits all and that people should use what works for them.
We discussed the importance of pregame discussion of content and tone, debriefs, and emotional safety as a whole. Games might not be everyone’s standard definition of “fun” but we aren’t there for abuse. It’s important to be on the same page, respect each other, and check in. I reminded people that even if they’ve had the same group for decades, they may make their games more fun for everyone by talking to their friends about their preferences. This included discussing racism, sexism, homophobia, mental illness, and so on.
more here>>>>
Games here that have risks in them: Misspent Youth, Lovecraftesque, Night Witches, Dread… that’s just a few. They are awesome games, but we gotta be safe. This is taken when I realized that games I worked on were for sale (Lovecraftesque), but handy for demonstrating games with inherent issues – like the racism and mental illness stigma in Lovecraft.
I also noted the difference between a squick and a trigger. Squicks are things that gross you out, make you a little uncomfortable, etc. They can stick with you, but are unlikely to have long term mental health impact. Treat these with respect – make sure people are okay with them, ensure they’re tonally appropriate, and be willing to alter content if it needs to be done. Triggers are typically tied directly to trauma and can result in panic attacks, nightmares, and activation of things like paranoia and mania (in my case). Don’t approach people’s triggers without checking in and getting their permission! And if you know about common triggers, ask your group before including them, but don’t require details. There’s also phobias, which I suggest treating much like triggers. Always check in.
There are some people comfortable with approaching their triggers and phobias on purpose, which Mickey and Misha discussed a bit. It’s not something I normally venture into, but they talked about how it can be helpful to work in that abstracted environment. Really loved that part of the panel!
Finally, we talked about inclusion, exclusion, and bad actors. The key points were 1) it is always okay to leave a game for any reason and especially if you don’t feel safe; 2) if you include people who hurt others with the content included in their play, you are excluding those who will be hurt, including excluding people of color in favor of racists, excluding women in favor of rapey men, etc.; and 3) you can always eject someone from the group. Always. If someone is hurtful, if they’re unsafe, don’t give them a space to be that way.
I was reminded later in the weekend how vile in-game violation of consent is. If you force a player or a character to do ANYTHING they don’t consent to, including ignoring at-the-moment objections, you are behaving inappropriately and you’re hurting people. Reconsider your role until you learn how to play games without hurting people.
I was lucky enough after the panel to meet up with Brian Vo, who made me a cocktail! It was nice to meet him and the drink was great. 😀
My nerding out in clothes for fandoms I’m not in.
The final panel I participated in was Adult Themes in Gaming: Adult versus “Adult” with Mickey Schulz, Clint “Ogre” Whiteside, and Jason Morningstar. It was a really great panel and I was excited for it because this is a topic that’s meaningful to me, specifically: what content is really mature content, how to present it, the tools we have to manage it, and adult content that isn’t just sex.
(It’s always funny when I run into Jason because we’re both typically busy, and we have these mini conferences like “what are you doing?” “what are YOU doing?” “I’m doing THIS!” “OMG tell me more about this!” and it sounds silly maybe but running into him like that is always awesome.)
We talked about the content we include in games – Mickey and Ogre include pretty much everything that their table is safe with, which is a lot (sex, romance, violence, and other stuff that needs to be approached with caution); I tend towards having lighter content, emotional interaction, some tougher topics, and I don’t approach sex very much; and while Jason covers a lot of more complicated stuff like grief and war, he doesn’t really touch the subject of sex at all in his games, though he discussed a recent experience playing a happy, healthy married couple and how transgressive it felt. It was so cool to see a variety of experiences at the table.
One note: Mickey commented on this and is making changes for future panels, but everyone at the table was white. This is something that is actually common to happen, but it wasn’t intended and it’s not a good trend, so more effort going forward will happen.
We talked about the difference between having content exist and be played out (which some people might consider more pornographic in regards to sex), and having content that fades to black or is glossed over. This is something I think really needs to be discussed in detail with players and GMs at the table, making sure everyone is comfortable.
Some people might want to push their own boundaries, too, which is dependent on a lot of factors. Specifically, I might be willing to address sexual content at a table full of close friends, but at a table with strangers it might not be okay. Likewise, there are non-sex topics that are challenging and mature. Violence is one of them! We use violence freely, but that’s not necessarily because it’s appropriate. We should be more considerate of this – Jason even said he’d like to explore more ways to resolve conflict without violence (my mini pacifist high fives this idea). Grief is another subject.
Before this con, and before last year’s Metatopia, I had a grandparent pass away (my grandmother first, then grandfather). I still went to the cons, and played in games where grief was relevant. At a lot of tables I might have stepped away or asked not to cover it, but both of these times I had people I trusted (last year was Jason, Amanda Valentine, and Roe Nix playing Storybox and this year was Hakan Seyalioglu, Kristine Hassell, Vera Vartanian, and Vivian Paul playing Dialect), and who I knew wouldn’t treat me badly if I cried a little or if I needed a break.
Honestly, the newest addition to Script Change, frame-by-frame, is here so that when people want to explore topics that are challenging, they can do so. It’s not always easy, but making a safe environment matters. Safety tools, discussion among players, developing a social contract – these things matter.
Useful tool (yes I’m reusing this picture) even at its base mechanics – using more of them can make games better.
One of the things we discussed was about deciding not to play or leaving groups. Just like in previous panels, we talked about ejecting harmful people and bad actors, but we also talked about self-selecting your group. Stepping away if the space isn’t safe, tapping out, or leaving groups: these are all okay. It’s okay to say no.We need to make it normal to leave games, to step away, and to take care of ourselves. That’s part of handling adult content.
After the panel, I had a bit of a breakdown. I was still processing grief (I still am!), I had done three panels without a panic attack which is amazing, and I’d been traveling and surrounded with people and writing a paper… I was exhausted. I burst into tears when I was alone by the elevator, fell to the floor, and just sobbed until Stephanie Bryant found me. Angel that she is, she made sure I was okay, took me up to my room, and reassured me it was okay to be upset. I’m so grateful for that!
I spent some time talking with Tanya and some Twitch and gaming friends of hers, & one of them who had attended the panel said the work I was doing was “so important, so valuable” and it really felt amazing to hear. I don’t often think of anything I do making a difference, but hearing other people say it is super awesome. It matters a lot to me. Thank you to anyone who thinks well of my work – I appreciate it so much.
I’ll have one more post covering Sunday with my games of Who Made Me Smile? and Dialect. Thanks for reading!
SNEAK PREVIEW! Dialect table!
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This will be probably a three-post report because I’m trying to break down my panels and games pretty detailed, so I wanted to warn you ahead of time. These will be paid posts! Thank you for your support. 🙂
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Me on my flight in, very tired.
Overall Con Thoughts
Big Bad Con is the best con I have ever attended. I don’t say this to like, make other cons look bad, that’s not the point. I came out of Big Bad Con feeling much more positive about the experience than any of my previous con experiences, I didn’t get hurt while I was there, I felt safe and comfortable throughout the con, and I was able to play the games I wanted, see people I wanted, navigate registration super smoothly, make it through my panels with a lot of encouragement from the audience and fellow panelists, and I felt supported coming to the con after a death in the family.
The con also seemed very diverse, compared to what I expected or maybe what I’m used to, I don’t know – I saw a ton of androgynous-styled people, I know of many trans people who attended, there were more people of color that I interacted with than is my norm, and so on. It was awesome.
The rooms were great, local food options were tasty and at least accessible to me (I went out to dinner 3 times and had no real issues getting to the restaurants), and the food at the hotel was good so I didn’t get stuck if I was too sore to walk. I will note that the panel room was super chilly and that could be worked on.
I played two games that I really enjoyed, met so many new people in an environment where I wasn’t feeling pressured to rush, and it was just really great. Sean Nittner and the entire incredible staff (who talk about Big Bad Con here) made it a great experience for me. I honestly really want to go back and I don’t know how I’ll make it happen, but it would be worth it.
Note: My experience is only my experience, and others may feel differently. For example, Stephanie Bryant expressed that being the only woman in a large crowd of people outside Games on Demand was awkward and uncomfortable. This is something that could use review – for me this is a consistent Games on Demand issue but my experience isn’t universal.
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Hazy!
Friday
I arrived at OAK airport around noonish on Friday, and Jeremy Tidwell was kind enough to pick me up and transport me to the hotel. The hotel is pretty nice! I had some minor room issues, but they were quickly resolved, and I got to meet Jeremy Kostiew FINALLY (his beard is gorgeous, fyi) and forgot how hugs work, as well as getting say hi to James Mendez Hodez, who I’m interviewing right now also.
I got to hang out with Mickey Schulz, Lex Larson, Misha Bushyager, and Rachel Beck. I loved talking with them and having a space where I could get settled into the con after the long flights. Also got to meet Tanya DePass, my roomie, who is awesome. Later I got to meet Sandy Jacobs-Tolle, who is really nice! I screwed around a lot but also spent a significant amount of time talking games culture, current work, and so on.
I noticed that there is a huge trend of people just really feeling like there’s no safe space for them. We talk about this online a lot, but in person, we were just really venting it out. We have to fight our way through just to be able to play. The number of people who said “I don’t play at tables with people I don’t know so I don’t game at cons” was significant, and heartbreaking. I know this feeling, and it’s just not fucking fair.
Later I went out to dinner with Tracy Barnett and some of the others. We discussed games a lot, but also some really challenging personal experiences from growing up, our own baggage, and how it influences our play styles, our gaming, and our lives. I had a few conversations like this over the weekend and was reminded that gaming is an incredibly human hobby.
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I was on the You Don’t Look Like a Geek panel with Kristine Hassell, Tanya, and Jahmal Brown. I admit it was weird (but good) to be the only white person on a panel. The experiences that the others shared we’re very far from my own, but I felt really lucky to be there as a part of it.
I was, to my knowledge, the only non-cis person on the panel, which is part of why I was there, plus my orientation queerness and disability. Those don’t all seem super visible, and in narrower communities like indie games they don’t seem remarkable, but those things still can fall into the category of weirdo for a lot of geeks.
Thankfully Big Bad Con had made steps to welcome people like me. Like Metatopia, all-gender bathrooms made a difference for me, so much.
We talked a lot about things that made us feel unwelcome or out of place. I am the only one who actually uses “geek” as a label for myself much, and it’s not a constant for me. We discussed ways to make geek environments more welcoming for people like us, how to handle exclusionary behavior, and also (my favorite) what benefits we had from being nonstandard geeks, much of which centered on finding others like us.
I liked when Jay talked about being a veteran and how when he had gone to basic training everyone had to be in it together, and how that’s how he participates in games: everyone is in it together, and they should try to find common ground. I will note this can be challenging (sometimes more for some than others), it’s a good intent. It’s relevant to the discussions that happened here and elsewhere about those behavior you will allow at a table, and why you would let people like racists stick around.
On the subject of being white, I was reminded how much white people contribute to ostracizing and distancing people of color from the community. That’s bad, and something I hope to continue working on.
I personally spoke a little about forgiveness and moving forward in geekdom. We have a hard tendency to hold tight to people’s mistakes, which is understandable. But when someone has apologized, even if they’ve demonstrated change and tried to make up for it, we so rarely give them forgiveness or allow things to move forward. They can continue to be pariahs, treated with disrespect, and so on. It hurts me to see that, and my heart ached when someone from the audience came to thank me for talking about it because they had messed up in the past and they feel like they can’t do enough to make up for it. That sucks! If you continue to be treated like a bad person even after you’ve apologized and made changes, the motivations to keep trying get fewer every day. This sticks with me.
That being said, we discussed the nature of exclusion and inclusion where keeping racist, sexist, homophobic, and other bigots in your space excludes people of color, women and trans and nonbinary people, queer people, and other marginalized people from your space. Even if they’re still at the table, they are likely uncomfortable and may have already checked out. This subject came up A LOT at my panels.
John Brieger caught up to me after the panel to talk about his current project and ask for my thoughts on his safety mechanics. It was fun to meet him and the others I caught up with, but my exhaustion and medication caught up with me and I hit the sheets early.
Before I crashed out, I was gifted a pocket size Script Change card by Tomer Gurantz! I received a lot of good comments about Script Change this weekend, and on Sunday spoke with Dante (Bryant Stone) about adding a new mechanic to it. It’ll be coming soon as one of the optional mechanics. 😀
Front of the fancy pocket card. 😀
And backsies! 😀
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That was Friday! It was REALLY packed somehow, even though I wasn’t actually that really busy. I am still processing a lot of what happened before I left for the con (work crises, loss of a family member, etc.), but I honestly have a lot of love for Big Bad Con. I had heard so much good stuff about it, I thought it would disappoint, but nope. 😀
Saturday (with two panels) and Sunday (with two games and talk on Script Change) coming soon! Thank you for reading!
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Today I have an interview with Eloy Lasanta on his continued project, AMP: Year Four. It’s currently on Kickstarter and has a legacy over the past years of AMP: Years One, Two, and Three. Check out what Eloy has to say below!
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Tell me a little about AMP: Year Four. What excites you about it?
What excites me about it? First off, it’s the continuation of an ongoing story within the game line, and it’s the penultimate book (since I began with a five year plan). With every book, I’ve been adding more player options and really upping the ante story wise.
This time, we are adding magic to the setting, something we’ve been hinting at for a while and the fans have really wanted. I love that we’re able to deliver to them in an epic way that will change the setting forever.
Tell me about the origin of AMP. What sits in the soul of the game? Where did it come from?
The origins of AMP are pretty humble. I always wanted to do a superhero RPG and I started getting ideas. It was important to me to check out as many other superhero RPGs around to make sure my ideas weren’t just parallel development. So I spent about a good year playing as many as I could, and discovered that my idea has a niche to fill!
In comes AMP: Year One, where I decided to detail what happens when superpowers hit our society. A few other games did broad strokes, but I wanted the development of the setting to be intimate, so we lay out each month, giving dates and important events, that players can jump off of to start their own stories. I also took that opportunity to tell my own stories as well. There are character running around in the AMP setting that are doing some amazing things, changing the world for better or worse, and it’s been an honor to see so many people engaged with the story we are telling as well.
The soul of the game is that it is not really a superhero game. It’s a game about people with superpowers. Everyone is a person, not some caricature, not some cape-wearing vigilante. They are faced with real threats and problems from society, the government, other AMPs, the dead! So many things to contend with, and yet they need to make sure they keep their heads on straight.
In AMP: Year Four, it’s the Year of Invasion. What does this mean at the table?
Throughout the storyline, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs in terms of tone and subject matter. During Year 2, it got kind of bleak, leading to a group of AMPs literally leaving Earth. They blinked and were just gone, but no one knew where they went. This group, the Orphans, have returned in Year 4, however, and are waging all-out war on Earth.
At the table, this means a few things. The Orphans have returned with the ultimate power in their hands… magic! This is new to the AMP gameline, as we’ve been centered on scientific and Earthly abilities up to this point. That also means that there is a new player option called the Rebel Orphan, making them playable if a player so chooses. The timeline for Year 4 deals with the invasion, the climactic battles that take place, and what happens when old enemies and new friends must all come together to fight a threat capable of destroying everyone.
What are some of the challenges of doing a series of games that span years? Is consistency an issue, or maybe variety?
Consistency is definitely an issue. We don’t want power creep in the books, but we also want to give something new every time. Any new game material we come up with follows its own ruleset, but also fits nicely within what is established already. Energy beams from your eyes, martial arts, power suits, and now magic all have their own inner workings, but are purchased the same and work within the same rules. It’s a tough way to do it, but it’s important. I’ve seen some games treat every power like it’s own subsystem, and that can be very annoying and often broken really fast.
Variety is a thing too. I, and the AMP writing team, have worked hard to have a consistent story to tell, but gamers aren’t the patient type. They want that new rule NOW, even if it doesn’t make sense in context. That’s the best part about being deep into the setting now, we’ve introduced things that just weren’t there in Year One.
Year One was just AMPs, because no one knew about them quite yet. Year Two added rules for playing normal people, and a new power, Gadgeteering. This let you play a Batman-esque characters and made sense for the setting, because this was humanity’s first response to knowledge of AMPs. Year Three bumped up the dial to 11, when both sides became more powerful. AMPs began developing mutations, and normals developed power suits. On their heels, we also introduced a new player option called the Twice Born, people returned from the dead, and really heralds of the magic that was to come.
What are your favorite new mechanical and flavorful things coming from AMP: Year Four? Tell me what you’re looking forward to sharing!
As mentioned, the inclusion of Rebel Orphans as a player option is going to be fun! As is now having magic, which is something the fans have wanted for a bit. We’re working with a couple version of it, but it’s looking awesome so far. Also, the new core powers for AMPs are getting a magical touch. Even if you don’t want magic per se, you can now pick magic-inspired powers like Mother Nature or War. I’m very excited for those.
Hi all! I’m running on short notice with this post, but wanted to still get the word out there. Dave Silva contacted me about his Kickstarter, Metahumans Rising, and I asked him a few quick questions. Check them out!
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What is Metahumans Rising, both as a product and as your vision?
Metahumans Rising is a tabletop role-playing game inspired by iconic superhero stories. It is a self-contained core book with everything you need to get started including character creation, how to generate your powers, build threats, and a GM’s chapter including 8 Simple Heroes, a host of villains ranging from streetgangs all the way up to a cybernetically enhanced genetically engineered dragon, and an introductory adventure that pits your characters against a new gang along with a full super villain team.
As for Metahumans Rising’ s vision, we wanted to recreate the feel of comic books. Because the medium is so diverse, we approached character creation differently. Before even making characters everyone begins by establishing the Campaign Scope. Here everyone contributes in designing the overall tone and feel of the world the characters will inhabit. Because why a hero was doing something was just as important as being able to lob bolts of energy or fly, the next part of character creation involves establishing motivations, why are you a hero, what pushes you. The last part of of character creation is actually a team origin where the players work together to explain how they joined forces.
This last step acts as a kind of love letter to the GM regarding the types of stories the players want to see. The character creation process is designed to be inclusive and cooperative. In game play character motivations serve as a vehicle for player agency, allowing them to add elements to the story on the fly. Doing this, also increases the hero’s ability to go beyond their limits and because of how motivations alter the story it’s easy to share the spotlight.
How do the mechanics work for threats in the game, considering the scale goes all the way up to asteroids?
In virtually every medium superheroes face any number of threats from other powerful beings to storms and earthquakes to the aforementioned planet killing meteors. The Open Action System, the engine that Metahumans Rising is based on, uses a basic philosophy of you roll when it’s appropriate and roll what’s appropriate.
In a disaster, the players describe how their Heroes would mitigate the threat, whatever it might be, raw power or a talent, whatever makes sense in the narrative. They roll based on the actions they’ve described. Disasters have a Basic Value and dice based on their scale. The GM makes an opposed roll for the disaster and then we figure out how things shake out. It will take multiple actions to overcome most disasters. So the heroes are not doomed for one bad roll and if things do go poorly it means the GM can up the stakes. Disasters can also serve as complications while other things are happening, such as trying to fight a giant sea monster in the middle of a hurricane.
Tell me about some of your favorite powers in the game, and how they work in play. Why are they your favorite? What is the most fun about them?
Metahumans Rising allows players to create their own powers, and there have been some interesting ones. Out of the signature characters, my favorite hero’s power is probably Nox’s Shadow Control. She is able to generate fields of darkness, and blades of shadows. This also allows her to fly on waves of darkness and fade into shadows making her extremely hard to see. When you add in Willpower, it leaves her with a ton of possibilities. In convention games players have created everything from shadow cages to her own dark mecha to fight along her side.
Of the powers other people have made, one of the coolest was Copycat, when the character touched someone they mimicked their appearance and powers. This let them stand toe to toe with some tough customers. Unfortunately, it happened automatically, this lead to being turned into a giant slug at one point, not to mention a number of identity issues.
On the other end of the spectrum, one of the funniest has to be the “Spank ray” used by a Nannybot from the future. It was a tractor beam that could emit painful levels of force when administering discipline. The Nannybot’s inhibitor chip had been removed alloeing it could fight crime between babysitting for other team members.
Of course, those powers just scratch the surface of what is possible.
Tell me a little about New World Magischola House Rivalry. What excites you about it?
New World Magischola House Rivalry is our first foray into board/card games design and publishing. That’s both awesome and scary! When we decided two years ago to open a wizard school live roleplay experience in the United States, we realized that to do it the way we wanted to required us to write a whole new magical world that was specific to North America and its history. We wanted to be both respectful and inclusive of the many peoples and cultures — and magical traditions — of North America, and to also honor and engage thoughtfully with our fraught history of Colonialism. While we originally set out to design a larp, we ended up writing a world, and now we have an intellectual property that exists beyond the larp, with stories that can be told in many media, including board/card games, RPGs, books, and more.
So for me, I’m excited because we are opening up the world of the Magimundi and the experience of going to wizard school in it to a lot more people than those who are able to attend our 4-day signature wizard school events. They get to experience at the table some of the fun, whimsy, and magical mayhem of Magischola by taking courses, joining clubs, and using conjures to improve their progress or hinder a rival’s. They get a feel of navigating school because you have to pass your courses with a B or better to get credit, and you earn more points for completion the higher your grade is. It’s definitely a competitive game, since only one House can take the Trophy, but there are lots of opportunities for roleplay and fun engagement with your friends around the table.
There are two other things I’m pretty excited about regarding House Rivalry:
1. The deliberate design choices to be inclusive in the playable characters. Of the original 6 PCs, 2 are people of color and also have Hispanic names: Martín Spinoza and Soledad Reyes. We also designed Jax Slager to be deliberately agender or nonbinary, and we ensured our art showed different ages and body types or sizes. It is very important to us to not fall into the same sorts of fantasy art that we often see in posters, games, and comics. This is a diverse and inclusive world, and we want everyone to imagine themselves as being part of it. We have to do that through the fiction and the artwork. Of the five House founders of New World Magischola, there are two women of color (Tituba and Marie Laveau), one white male (Étienne Brûle), one white female (Virginia Dare) and one indigenous nonbinary (Calisaylá). We paid homage to the diverse peoples who form the history of North America: indigenous peoples, people from Africa & West Indies, British, French, and Spanish. All too often people have a tendency to over-simplify our history and our fictions, rather than showing the tensions and the multiplicities within it, and we wanted to embrace that instead. The Magimundi is for everyone, even though it’s not a utopia.
2. I’m excited because this game is designed for mixed groups of gamers. All-too-often we can get into conflicts by identifying as *either* a “gamer” or a “hard-core gamer” or a “casual gamer” or a “non-gamer.” We, as a gaming community, can gatekeep in these ways, subtly asking “are you one of us?” One of the ways we do this is by designing games that are more complex and have a lot of rules to master, or that take a long time to learn. Some gamers look down on casual games as not being challenging enough, and even make fun of these games and the people who play them. It can be difficult to prove your credibility as a gamer, and some gamers don’t want to take the time to include newer gamers to their gaming groups. House Rivalry is designed as a bridge game. It’s complex enough that the more hard-core gamers have something they can do and enjoy. There are multiple strategies and different tactics to manage your resources, choose your actions, and use the variable player powers of your character and House. However, the game is easy-to-learn, and there are lots of party game elements, especially in the Clubs. What this makes House Rivalry really good for are mixed groups of gamers: the hard core and the casual and the in-between. It’s a great game to get people together and to play when you don’t have the time to teach a complicated new system, but you want some strategy. It blends luck and strategy in a way that feels satisfying to all levels of gamers. For me, getting different groups of gamers of varying abilities and credibilities around the table is a great aspect of the game, and one I’m most proud of and excited about.
MORE MAGICAL GOODNESS AFTER THE CUT:
Tasty tasty board game bits.
What were the greatest challenges mechanically for making a themed game that is appealing for mixed groups?
The greatest challenge was finding the balance between being easy-to-learn, but also having depth and strategies that are not necessarily apparent to the casual gamer. We know that frequent gamers prefer strategy and meaningful choices, which should mean that if you play well, you will win. Casual gamers are more tolerant of luck and randomness in a game; too much “swing” and a hardcore gamer will not want to play. One of the things that our developer, Mike Young, did so well was apply math to the game, figuring out the “worth” of each action, and balancing the effects of cards so that when you took a calculated risk, you got a calculated reward. Another thing is the balance of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Everyone has been to school in their lives, so they have some idea of how it works. You take classes (only so many at a time) and you study to improve your grade, or do extra work to finish the course faster. So the actions of Enroll and Study are pretty intuitive, and easy to pick up even for young players. The third action, Conjure, is when you use some resources in your hand to your advantage. This is where the hardcore gamers love to evaluate the different resources they have, and calculate the effects of them based on their turns and time. More casual gamers might choose a Conjure just because they like the art, or because they want to say “take that” to a rival. Either way, because the game is carefully balanced, the effects are going to be similar. A good player will be able to prioritize and stack these resources to greater effect, but a new player can just throw some spells and make things happen.
We also designed the game with some party mechanics that each player has choice over playing. This is done with our Clubs, which were a new addition to Dylan’s game idea. About one-third of the Clubs include roleplaying party mechanics to earn (or lose!) House Points for the RP. These include singing while in Kokopelli’s Choir, whispering while in the secret society Obsidian Circle, and starting every utterance with “Wrong!” while you’re in Debate Club. Those who love this sort of thing enroll in those clubs and have a great time with it! Others have to catch them messing up, which is fun. If these active, party mechanics are not your jam, you’re not required to enroll in those clubs, and can instead get your club requirement through another club, such as Crossed Wands Club, where you manage your time and resources in a more traditional manner.
What we wanted was to hit the “sweet spot” where the casual gamers could learn to play quickly and have fun, and the hardcore gamers could see the layers and strategize toward victory at the same time. That means the game has to be seemingly simple and surprisingly complex, accessible as you learn, and then a later epiphany of “oh! I see how this works!” after playing a few times. The game introduces casual gamers to the concept of resource management and variable player powers, but moves along quickly with a series of rounds that include chance-based mechanics such as the Magischola deck, which keeps the hardcore strategists from necessarily running away with it in a mixed group. Definitely a tough balance, but our playtesting shows that we’ve done a pretty good job! (there’s a quote on our Father Geek review that sums this up rather nicely).
The school crest. They’ve got turtles, y’all.
How did you integrate the fiction and themes into the mechanics? Did you leave anything specific out that might feature in other formats?
Ha! Yes, the Magimundi is really deep, and there was no way to include all the elements into this game. One thing we had to leave out that I wish could have had more play is the presence of the House Founders of New World Magischola. It’s one of my favorite parts of the lore, and where the inclusive nature of the world and its engagement with North America’s Colonial past comes through. Otherwise, the game is 2-5 players because there are 5 houses of New World Magischola, and you play by House. We had to name the actions taken by the players to feel like something they would do in magic school. Enroll and Study are definitely school actions, but they’re also rather mundane. The third action was originally called “Dominate” but that didn’t feel very magical, and it also felt too punitive or hyper-competitive for the feel of the game. It took us a while to come up with Conjure, but that has the magical feel of casting spells or using the magical artifacts at your disposal, which either help you along magically, or hex your rivals. There are definitely some easter eggs on the cards for those who are more familiar with the world or the larp. Things like the Wendignado card, which is a reference to the tornado that hit our location during the inaugural larp — while students were in the woods casting elemental wind spells against a wendigo. Rather than call one of the cards “Sugar Rush,” it’s called “Hot Fudge in the Dining Hall,” which was a refrain in our third run as participants discovered the chocolatey goodness was available at every meal, and began to top everything with it. We had created a lot of creatures and lore, so the wizard courses are the actual NWM curriculum, as well as the clubs. The creatures expansion are all from our book, the Compendium of North American Cryptids & Magical Creatures.
A photo from the New World Magischola larp, the inspiration behind the board game.
What motivated designing a board/card game for Magischola – why move away from roleplaying?
We realized that a lot of people loved the world we created, the lore we had built, and the creatures we’d imagined. We own this work as an intellectual property, so leveraging it into multiple media makes sense. We’re already at work on a collaborative storytelling board game, also set in the Magimundi, but with completely different play. We definitely aren’t moving away from roleplaying as a company! This game has a roleplaying element, the next one does to an even greater extent, and we have two (maybe three!) RPG scenarios coming out in 2018! The world is rich with opportunity so we wanted to have the chance to tell stories within it in a variety of ways. We also realized that we have a lot of fans who can’t attend the premium larp experiences, but want to interact with the world. It’s definitely been a challenge! We’re newcomers to the board game industry and trying to gain a foothold. But it’s a huge market, if we can successfully break in! We want others to know about the Magimundi!
Larpers at a Magischola event repping their house. 🙂
Tell me about the role of competitiveness in New World Magischola: House Rivalry. What made you choose to make a competitive game? How does it further the goals that you have for the game, and the stories you want to tell?
This is a tough one! I consulted with Ben to answer this one, to talk through my feelings about it, because it’s complicated. One of the things people wanted from their magic school experience at New World Magischola larps, was the kind of fierce competition for House Points that they had seen in the Harry Potter books and films. While neither I nor my partner Ben Morrow are very competitive people (and our larp design is based around consent, cooperation, and relationships), our players were motivated by the competitive aspect of the First House Trophy. It drove a great deal of enthusiasm, creating an external motivation for taking an interest in their magic school classes and engaging in plot that could lead to a points reward. Also, getting recognition feels good, and the adrenaline rush that can come from healthy competition also feels good.
Dylan’s initial idea for the game, long before he met Ben and me, was to capture the feel of being at magic school, and helping your House win the day. When he made his pitch to us, we knew that the competitive play for points was a motivating force for many of our players, and we thought that offering that kind of feeling through a board game would make the game feel like the magic school experience that they had read about, and had been waiting to experience for quite some time. Since the object of the game is to win the First House Trophy, this game is not the most ideal generator of stories, but it does share our world. Players can look at Jax Slager’s card and wonder about their story, and Jax does have a fairly big story waiting to be discovered in some of the other media that’s forecoming. Similarly, our magical creatures book can give players more info about the Ghost Helicoprion when they see its tooth whorl on a Conjure card. Ultimately, we wanted to entertain, and we’re hoping that our game’s content and artwork invites the curious to find out more about our magical world, and the stories within it. The *next* game, already in development, is very collaborative and storytelling-based, akin to Mice & Mystics.
What is your house, what’s your favorite spell, and why? 🙂
Now, I’m the organizer and designer! I can’t have a favorite House! But I will say that I test into Calisaylá, with Laveau close behind. Favorite spell? Hmmm. A young person at Gen Con created and cast a “Fair Wages” spell. I think that one is pretty awesome. If I could cast “Fair Wages” and “Universal Health Care” on everyone, I would. Otherwise, I really like Pàgakwàn (PAH-guh-kwahn), which is from the Algonquin, and creates a protective shield against physical attacks.
Thank you SO much to Maury for this fantastic(al) interview! I’m excited to see more from Magischola, and hope you’ll all check out the Kickstarter today! Share this interview with your friends, too, so more people can read and enjoy. <3
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Hey all, I know it’s been a while, sorry. Grad school. But hey, NEW INTERVIEW! Today I have an interview with Quintin Smith from Shut Up & Sit Down about the current Kickstarter for The Metagame: The Games Deck! I had never heard of The Metagame until this Kickstarter came out, but immediately bought it after seeing the Shut Up & Sit Down intro because I am a sucker for this kind of game. I asked for an interview, and Quintin obliged – see the responses below!
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This pic is used for the “What the What” game on the game website. 🙂
Tell me a little about The Metagame. What excites you about it?
What excites me about The Metagame is something that a lot of games that Shut Up & Sit Down recommends have in common. It feels high-quality, and it feels different. Either in your hands or in play, it’s like nothing else out there. For people like me who have dozens of board games in their collection, that’s the first thing I’m looking for.
But it’s also exciting because you just never know what’s going to happen next. There are games out there where you never know how this particular match of it will play out. With The Metagame, even once you’ve decided which game to play, you have no idea how a given turn will play out. You might find yourself weighing up whether you’d rather have Saved By the Bell or Legwarmers while you’re stuck on a desert island. You might have to argue why Email Spam is macho. The only consistent thing is that it’s going to be entertaining, and you’re going to learn a little something about your friends or family.
Check out this play video of The Metagame with SU&SD.
What have you experienced while watching & participating in the development of The Metagame & the Games expansion that you felt differentiated it mechanically?
Well, it’s a spin on something that I really enjoy when I’m playing games, which is realising that I’ve miscalculated and suddenly I’m in hot water, and it’s nobody’s fault but my own. It’s a bittersweet problem to be wrestling with, and for whatever reason I just love that.
The thing that differentiates a lot of games packed into The Metagame is that you can create an argument in your head for why a particular Culture card would make a good fit, but what you don’t know is how other people around the table feel about it. So before you make fun of Moustaches, you have to weigh up whether your friends might like moustaches. If someone were to use “D&D” to try and win me over, they might be surprised that while I love games, I have some pretty complicated feelings about D&D. In this way the cards you’re playing with aren’t static, they’re fluid, and playing involves considering your friends and being surprised by your friends. It makes it a very tricky game to play well, but one that it’s fun to fail at.
I have so many ideas about how to have fun with these cards, no lie.
Who have you played The Metagame with, why, and what do you think made the game worth playing with them? (I swear, I’m getting at something with that! 😉 )**
Hmm. You know, I don’t wanna overcomplicate things, so I should just say “I played it with my friends, and what made it worthwhile was that we were laughing and talking excitedly for the entire time.”
But it wouldn’t be the whole story to describe The Metagame as just an engine for hilarious debates and conversations. It’s also a real joy to draw cards from the top of the deck, since they’re so varied and they’re all so beautifully illustrated that you have no idea what you’re going to get.
Games with a lot of spontaneity can put a little bit of cognitive load on shyer people or low-energy groups. Can The Metagame still be approachable for them? How?
That’s actually one of the reasons that we recommend this box so wholeheartedly. Spontaneous or high-energy games are just some of the games in the box! There’s also perfectly placid games in there like Matchmakers, History 101, Think Alike and Special Occasion. Seriously, there are just so many games in this box. It’s been pretty tricky getting people to understand that! I think some people see “10 games in 1 box” and assume that there’s no one good one, but honestly- they’re all lots of fun.
I love the card layouts, too.
You mentioned how fun it is not knowing what you’re going to get – how did that aspect influence development The Games expansion? How did you come up with enough interesting content that you felt the surprise would still be there?
Oho, great question! Well, anyone who’s seen my (now slightly old and embarrassing) Golden Age of Games talk will know that I think “gamers” have a slightly myopic view of this hobby. As well as Pandemic and Metal Gear Solid, we should be celebrating the 52 card deck, Twister and tennis. It’s all play! It’s all game design. And there are lessons to be learned everywhere.
Both the team at SU&SD and the designers of The Metagame agreed that the games expansion would benefit from this broad view of the hobby. So when you draw cards from it, you might get Dark Souls or you might get a tug of war. You might get Vampire: The Masquerade or you might get hot dog eating contests. Trust me, the surprise and playfulness of the base game is alive and well.
Finally, which games-within-the-game of The Metagame do you think you’re looking forward to playing most in the future, and why?
I mean, The Metaquilt is the centrepiece of The Metagame, and I can’t see myself stopping playing it ever. Have you played it? A lot of board games know the joy of a tapestry of cards or tiles slowly being stitched together on your table. The combination of building something, while laughing, while being interested in what your friends have to say? That’s just great.
Nice.
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Thank you so much to Quintin for this interview! I could hear his head in my voice the entire time, very impressive. Make sure to check out The Metagame on Kickstarter and share with your friends – I have a feeling that many of you would love this game, and I’m looking forward to playing the copy I just bought!
I couldn’t wait for the Kickstarter!
**I admittedly DID hope Quintin would overcomplicate but that’s because I’m a massive dork. However, fyi, this set me up for asking the second to last question. I promise, I have a plan when I do these things. 🙂
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