gaming – Page 7

Thoughty Bundle-Up for Whitney #BundleUp4Whitney

The Prism art featuring characters embracing in the center surrounded by the symbols of the Prism cultures. — Whitney is the creator of Prism, currently available on DriveThruRPG.

I started this bundle in support of Whitney Delaglio, to provide financial relief after a back surgery. The funds will be processed by Beau Sheldon (me) through Thoughty and be rewarded to Whitney after the end of the bundle. Whitney has been a supportive and amazing part of the gaming community for years and we want to support her through this difficult time! Please buy a bundle if you can. Thank you!

This bundle ends on 12/7/2019! Thank you to Misha and Meguey for their support of it. Thoughty supports our community – let’s do this!

https://itch.io/b/396/thoughty-bundle-up-for-whitney-delaglio

Five or So Questions on MoonPunk

Hey all, today I have an interview with Alex Sprague on MoonPunk, which is currently on Kickstarter! It’s got a lot of awesome stretch goals to hit, so check out what Alex had to say below!

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

MoonPunk is a Powered by the Apocalypse game that is about punks on The Moon. It has a punk zine aesthetic and has praxis and direct action as a focal point for the gameplay. There are 12 Punk playbooks with several mechanics that are fairly new yet simple. We have made a game where when the players see an issue they have total freedom to try to fix it. We give them a few guidelines about how to do so, but I expect to hear about similar problems being dealt with through serious trade negotiations or beating up The Authority.

So MoonPunk is, in essence, a game Jessica Geyer and I made in response to the idea that games shouldn’t be political. Almost everything is political and for many just trying to live has become a political issue. In much the same way I can’t actually slay a dragon, I probably can’t steal a corrupt politicians tea supply and jettison it into space. These stories of political unrest and oppression are stories that people want to talk about. Every fantasy story of a dragon hoarding wealth and eating peasants could be a metaphor for how billionaires act in our current world. So everything excites me about this game, it really feels like a large part of me laid out in game form.

Powered by the Apocalypse games can vary quite widely. How is MoonPunk unique in its design, specifically exploring some of these new mechanics?

Part of the process when making a game for us is trying to find the one element we are hoping it embodies. For our micro-RPGs we were able to really hammer this home. 10 Paces was Western movies, My Mecha has Shark Arms was every Voltron-esk anime, we then did Superheros, Afterschool specials, slang words, road trips, an entire game written as a script for an Action Movie game. For MoonPunk it was taking that core concept, Direct Action, and making it more than a 1-dimensional game. We had the what, then the Where became The Moon and the Who became punks. Each of those came from our own perspective. Our mechanics directly came from that.

Combat is different than other games because even a big guy like me only weighs about 35lbs on The Moon. Low gravity means a punch is going to send both parties just kinda floating backward. So our combat is called Throw Down, and unless you get some leverage, or literally slam someone into something, you aren’t going to do much damage. Our favorite mechanic though is TANSTAAFL (there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch), a term popularized in the book The Moon is a harsh Mistress. This mechanizes the idea of asking favors of others, allowing quest hooks to have a place in the cultural norm of the setting.

Twelve playbooks seems like a lot of variety! How did you find so many opportunities for differences and variety in the playbooks, and what kind of playbooks are there?

The playbooks came along when we were looking for what roles were needed in a revolution. I think the only trope we vetoed was The Spy because it didn’t feel very punk. So our game only has 4 stats, and 3 playbooks embody each stat in a different way. For example, we have the stat Presence: we have Guildy, Politician, and Rocker. Guildy is your hard-working well-liked person around town that just seems to know everyone, you’d have a beer with them. The Politician is your silver-tongued type, they tend to be likable when you are talking to them, but leave a bad taste in your mouth later. The Rocker is a catch-all artist, they might play music and get you riled up, or draw a political cartoon people can rally behind. These different facets of stats and the role they could play in a revolution is how we built most of these playbooks.

When you talk about the punk aesthetic, and about being punks, what does that mean to you and to MoonPunk, in comparison to other potential understandings of the term? How does it affect the experience of play?

The most important part of the punk aesthetic to us is the DIY culture. This is seen a lot within the game but it is also a point we make a lot in our game design. We made a ton of small games live on Twitch to show our process and attempt to show others the act of creation is mostly just starting. Anyone who wants to see a game come to life completely has the ability to get it made. I can basically guarantee even the most diehard D&D fans are homebrewing a little bit, and that little start of tinkering should be embraced; not rules lawyered out of existence.

As far as the idea of being a punk, that is something I have seen plenty of people gatekeep in the past. That is about the only thing I don’t abide, I mean sure people saying “conservatism is the new punk rock” are fucking idiots and wrong, but saying a kid is not punk because they don’t know anything about Milo or why he is going to college is silly. Punk is about individual freedom to me, and I think that comes across in the game.

Tell me a little about the plan of your Kickstarter, including your choice to include an Economic Hardship and a Hardship Supporter level. How has the activist ideal of the game MoonPunk been reflected in your ethical choices with the actual crowdfunding?

The choice to include the economic hardship and hardship supporter tiers came from a few peers in the TTRPG space who had already done it. It’s something we will be doing for all our games if we can, it reflects our attitudes toward gaming more so than our attitude towards activism. We want people to play our games, we want people to take away lessons and truths from these games. The Kickstarter was just about the only way for people without funds to get a game up, and a more diverse group of voices writing and doing art for the game without us having to ask people to work for free. We can work for months on a passion project, and we have, but to ask anyone else to do something for us for free really bothers us.

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Thanks so much Alex for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out MoonPunk on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on the Curse of the House of Rookwood

Hi all, today I have an interview with Mike Addison about The Curse of the House of Rookwood, which is currently on Kickstarter and looking to hit some stretch goals! It sounds really interesting and explores family dynamics – check out Mike’s responses below!

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A black & white illustration that looks like a woodcutting featuring a tall white-haired man, a shorter dark haired man, a long-haired woman in a white dress, a very elderly man in front sitting, and a man in the back holding a stick of some kind adjusting something.

Tell me a little about The Curse of the House of Rookwood. What excites you about it?

Rookwood is a story game where you play a family with an ancient curse that grants them supernatural powers, but slowly transforms them into inhuman monsters. Since you play as members of a family — parents, children, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins — the game is packed with relationships that your characters value, but did not choose for themselves. The rules support this part of play by giving you tools to create interesting problems that complicate these relationships, and reward you for exploring them during play. I spent the last year running the game for different groups at conventions, and it is exciting to see the different ways that players interpret “family” as a game/story concept. It can be funny, poignant, and sometimes a little bit intense, but it always seems to ring true because family is a common denominator for pretty much everyone.

A broken-down cemetery depicted in black and white linework.

How do the rules work to connect and structure the family, and complicate those relationships?

Family is defined in the rules on several levels. First, during character creation, players collaborate to answer questions about their progenitor, their ancestor who brought the curse upon the family. Their answers shape the current standing of the family, as well as what resources the family shares. Second, players define for themselves what family roles they want their characters to fulfill — parent, child, aunt, grandparent, etc. It’s up to the players how their family is structured in terms of age, gender, and identity.

Lastly, each player will choose a Skeleton for their character. Skeletons are complications that strain a character’s relationship with another character. This could be a dark secret that will harm the other character, a past mistake they want to reconcile, or an unequal relationship such as a need for approval or being overprotective. Each Skeleton has “bones” — scenes or events that might happen during play that players are rewarded for pursuing. As a story arc comes to an end, players decide if their Skeletons have been resolved positively, which improves the family’s standing, or negatively, which hurts the family.

Family drama can be difficult for some players! How do you provide support for play to help ensure everyone has a safe experience?

Safety tools are really important, especially with an emotionally charged subject like family relationships. The rules include a section on safety tools, which we introduce upfront. We recommend that players make use of Lines and Veils, as defined by Ron Edwards of Sex and Sorcery fame, as well as an X-card/O-card at the table. References to learn more about these tools are included.

A black and white illustration showing woman in a long dress shining a light toward the mantle of a very fancy fireplace in a ornate household.

What are the general activities of The Curse of the House of Rookwood – what do player characters encounter in play (such as monsters or situations), and how do they interact with it mechanically?

It depends on the Campaign Concept your group selects. You could be secret agents for the British Crown, employed to contain or eliminate supernatural threats. You might play as high society dilettantes, plying your talents as supernatural communicators and hunters. Or you might even play a traveling troupe of entertainers, looking for your next gig. Regardless what situation you place your family in, the core loop of play is trouble presented by the chronicler — a mystery, an adversary, and outright monstrous threat — and the family’s response to that threat.

Each family member has a finite amount of resources available to them to move the story in the direction they want. They have Traits, which are a pool of six-sided dice, and Assets, which can be spent to gain some immediate guaranteed success, or to gain extra dice when a Trait roll goes wrong. Like many rpgs, the game proceeds as a conversation.

When the outcome of what a player wants to accomplish seems uncertain, the GM and the player work out a list of Risks, things that could go wrong, and Rewards, things that could go right. The player chooses how many dice to roll from their pool — 1, 2, or 3 — and Assets to spend. Any dice that roll 4 or higher count as a success, which are used one-for-one to cancel Risks or buy Rewards.

Where it gets interesting is that the number of dice you roll reflects the amount of effort your character is putting forth in the fiction of the game. One die is normal effort. Two dice is extraordinary effort — if you roll any doubles, the effort is stressful and you lose a die from your pool. Three dice is supernatural effort — you must call forth the gift of your curse. If you roll doubles, not only do you lose a die, you also gain a new Mark of your curse.

A black and white illustration of a skeleton in a cloak covering their body with their back reflected behind them.

The descent into monstrosity could reflect any number of fears in metaphor. How is it represented in the game mechanically and narratively, and what does it mean to the characters?

As alluded to above, every time you use the power granted to you by your curse — calling forth crows to act as spies, wrapping shadows about you to conceal your movement, suffocating a foe with a billowing mist — you risk gaining a Mark of your curse. Marks are outward, physical signs of your curse, but could also have an emotional or psychological element. For instance, if you have the Curse of the Rookery, your Marks could be amber eyes of a crow, black feathers instead of hair, literal crow’s feet, or an uncontrollable urge to steal shiny things. Each character can gain a limited number of Marks.

Mechanically, Marks function as a story timer. The last Mark on your character sheet is always “Lost to the Curse”. Using your power can give you a lot of narrative control over the story, but the more you use it, the closer you come to being completely lost. At that point, the character is gone from the story — transformed into a statue, a hideous bird monster hidden by the family in the attic, or lost in an endless void of shadows.

Characters might struggle with identity as their bodies transform against their will, feel dread about suffering the same fate as a lost ancestor with a similar curse, or leave troubled relationships unresolved when they are lost. It’s tragic stuff. And though a character’s fate might be out of their control, it’s important to note that the player does have control over their story. They choose their Skeleton and their Curse upfront, and they choose how the Marks of their curse manifest.

An image of the book for The Curse of the House of Rookwood in black and grey with very stylized block serif text and a cameo with a skeleton in clothes and with hair on the cover.

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Thanks so much to Mike for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out The Curse of the House of Rookwood on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on BALIKBAYAN

I have an interview today with Rae Nedjadi on BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home, which is currently available on itch.io! This game sounds so fascinating, and Rae talked about some really deep thoughts with me. Check them out below!

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Tell me a little about BALIKBAYAN! What excites you about it?

BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home is a narrative tabletop role-playing game that gives everyone at the table equal creative opportunities!

Specifically it’s a story about Elementals, beings of Supernatural Filipino Folklore come to life. BALIKBAYAN takes place in the far future, in a Cyberpunk setting at the mercy of The Corp, that has enslaved the elementals through machinery.

Over the generations these machines have infused with the magic, so BALIKBAYAN is also about wielding machine-magic and using it to stay on the run, destroy the Corp, and rebirth Magic.

I’m excited about so many things about BALIKBAYAN, but I’m most excited about offering a creative playground for everyone to enjoy. I’ve never understood this boundary between science fiction and fantasy, technology and ritual, machine and magic. I wanted to offer people to play with these ideas, while also offering my own modern reimagining of Filipino folklore.

I’m really happy with the response, and how excited everyone is to enjoy Filipino games made by Filipino designers! I’m honestly hoping this will encourage more people to create their own games so we can have more creative voices in the community.

Another thing that excites me is the game system. BALIKBAYAN is a Belonging Outside Belonging game, which gives everyone more creative control. It’s different from your typical TTRPG experience, where only the Game Master controls most of the narrative.

A sheet with the title BALIKBAYAN and the book of BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home.

Many of my readers will be excited to hear about the Filipino roots of the game! What are some of the elements (themes, history, magic) of BALIKBAYAN that players will see that are very much Filipino?

The strongest and most apparent Filipino themes are present in the Playbooks themselves. Currently BALIKBAYAN has six playbooks: Tikbalang, Diwata, Saint, Aswang Santelmo, and the Duwende. I wanted to unapologetically use the original names for these beings of myth and legend.

I did this mainly because I come across a lot of Filipinos who are familiar with the folklore of other countries (most people who play D&D here know about elves, gnomes, and all that). But when I run a Filipino inspired game and lean into our roots, most of the people I know, living here in this country, don’t know much about our own myths. And often they use a western perspective when approaching these myths, which breaks my heart.

I will say though that I decided to personally interpretat the essence of these myths and legends. There are some problematic aspects of our folklore that reflects the centuries of colonization that still influences the Philippines to this day.

For example I wanted to take the Tikbalang and break it away from just being an anthropomorphic horse. Horses aren’t even a natural local animal here, and to this day they’re associated with the elite and privileged. Instead I wanted to lean into our shamanic and animism roots. The Tikbalang in BALIKBAYAN can change into any anthropomorphic animal form, and I wanted that fluidity to be an important aspect of the playbook. I also wanted to reflect how we often look to spiritual leaders in our community, and the Tikbalang is true to that.

I think the SAINT is another important one. Religion is a big thing here in the Philippines, for better and for worse. We have so many beautiful stories about Saints and the mystical miracles they embodied to protect communities. I wanted to acknowledge that, but once again honor our pre-colonial roots and have the SAINT be a playbook that interacts with Small Gods, in a Cyberpunk setting.

I could just go on and on about each playbook!

Sheets titled The Enslaved and The Corp, But That Was a Long Time Ago, and We Were Magic. The last sheet, We Were Magic, is in neon colors with black background.

In general I wanted to honor our folklore, but I wanted to respectfully bring it into the present and reflect our modern values, nuances, and struggles. Because I’m bi-racial, queer, and non-binary, I think that shows in the design. I put so much of myself, and my complex love for my country, into this game.

BALIKBAYAN also speaks to leaving behind our masters and becoming our own masters. I wanted this to reflect in the premise and creative setting, but also in the mechanics and narrative prompts.

Becoming our own masters is something I want to happen for Filipinos in general. We were colonized for centuries, and the scars still show. As a society, we haven’t done the collective and deeply emotional work to decolonize our perspectives, approaches, and values. In a way we are still bowing down to Masters that have long left us to rot, and it shows in our governance and social value systems.

I have faith that we can do the work. Many artists, teachers, and leaders are already helping their communities to do so. BALIKBAYAN is my own personal attempt to help along and honor that decolonization process.

BALIKBAYAN seems like a big step away from what we’ve seen from cyberpunk. How have you altered the standard cyberpunk setting to really make it yours and to do something different?

It’s funny, I really get this a lot! But to be perfectly honest, BALIKBAYAN simply embodies how I’ve always seen and engaged with Cyberpunk. For one thing, I’ve always gravitated more to portrayal of Cyberpunk themes in anime, especially from the 80s and 90s. I’ve always appreciated that lens more, and it really speaks to me.

I did want to make magic a big part of the game. This is again deeply personal. I believe magic and technology aren’t at odds with each other, and magic shouldn’t be regulated to fantasies chained to the past either. I was initially inspired by games like Shadowrun, but I didn’t like how the lore and system created this great divide between magic and technology. So in BALIKBAYAN I wanted to make that barrier non-existent.

I think the main issue with Cyberpunk as a genre is that we often see the aesthetic markers and surface indicators of the genre, but we ignore the important work that POC and queer creators have done in the space. They’ve given me the permission to define Cyberpunk on my own terms.

And in turn, I want to do the same for the people who will play BALIKBAYAN. The game asks you to bring about the rebirth of magic and to create a Revolution, but what that will actually entail is up to the players and is out of my hands. I believe Cyberpunk, and the Revolution it inspires, is a deeply personal experience.

Because I don’t think the world will change from one Revolution. I believe it will change, and has changed, from the series of ongoing neverending Revolutions that we bring to life.

A sheet titled DIWATA and details about playing different types of characters.

There is a lot of discussion about decolonizing games and how many major games are from a colonized perspective, so I really appreciate you talking about that! Does any of this translate to the actual mechanics you use in the game? What are the mechanics like?

I definitely feel that the decolonization process can be incredibly personal. For me it was in realizing that the games I used to love to run and play, namely Dungeons & Dragons and games like it, focused on violence, possession, taking things through strength, with a focus on exploring the “alien” and “exotic” and marveling at how “weird” it all was. This was reflected in the mechanics of the game too, I feel. As a Filipino, knowing that my own country was treated this way by its colonizers, it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

In BALIKBAYAN, the Belonging Outside of Belonging system favors narrative play that is entirely in the hands of the players. I also added a few mechanics that center on the decolonization process. First, each playbook asks the players to choose and build on a “human form” and a “true form”. Because the Elementals are on the run, this is basically what forms are “acceptable” versus what they truly look like. I wanted to leave it up to the players and each story what this means, how do they navigate this? Next the playbooks ask you to choose “What you hope for”. While the players are tasked to bring about the Rebirth of Magic (more on that in a bit), I also wanted to give the players a personal goal to help drive the story. In a way this reflects how I feel about the decolonization process: each path is unique, deeply personal. People can talk about what their decolonization process is like, but they cannot dictate to others what it SHOULD be like. Each of us interacts with different intersections of class, race, background, and so on. What the decolonization process is like in America is VERY different from what it is like in the Philippines, and so on. The individual hope reflects that, but it also asks each player to balance or find common ground with that hope and the rebirth of magic.

Which brings us to another mechanic I added. Originally I just liked the idea of having a sort of countdown mechanic, to give the players some structure or urgency to the story being told. There are two clocks running. The first clock is you start ON THE RUN, but can eventually end up CAPTURED by the Corp again. The second clock has you start at FADING, your magic is weak and dwindling compared to your ancestors, but you want to reach REBORN, with the magic being your own.

In my mind, decolonization is not about returning to what was before our colonizers came. That is in the past, and much of our history has been rewritten by those more powerful than us. When I think about what we’ve lost, what we could have been, it frustrates me. When I think of the privilege I enjoy because of my circumstances that are favored by a colonial mentality, I feel guilty and ill at ease. For example, I speak English well and that opened a lot of doors for me, when it shouldn’t have. I strongly feel that the way forward is in acknowledging the past, while building our own sense of worth and grace outside of our colonial mentality. In the Philippines we need to acknowledge that much of our systems and infrastructure are badly compromised by these centuries of colonization. We need to rebuild, to be reborn, to reclaim our own magic.

Sheets of paper titled Homecoming and Death or Rebirth, and We Create Our Fate in neon colors on a black and white image.

I’m nonbinary too, so I’m always fascinated to see how other nonbinary designers make games. How do you feel that your queerness, your nonbinary identity, being bi-racial, and these other personal aspects of yourself have impacted the design and presentation of BALIKBAYAN and the cyberpunk world within it?

To be honest, I used to really struggle with the idea of queer design, and what that looks like. I have to truly give credit to the community of indie designers who looked at my work and reflected on it, helping me see the queerness and nonbinary nature of my design. In BALIKBAYAN my nonbinary asserts itself by allowing the players to choose how active or passive they wish the story to flow. There are tools available, but I provide many examples that show how each game can be unique and flow completely differently. As a nonbinary, I believe in nuance and push away from the black and white. There are some cool mechanics tied to that (for example, even if you bring about the Rebirth of Magic, you have to answer the question “Which one of us runs away, and helps rebuild the Corp?”). Though I also have to say that also reflects my colonial pain, many of us resort to acting like our colonial masters in the way of rebirth and revolution (those dang intersections, right?).

But yes as a nonbinary designer, I come from a place of nuance and push that towards the forefront. I think that also gave me the sheer confidence to tackle the Cyberpunk genre. I grew up loving it, and like so many people like me (queer, POC, etc) I also felt disappointed by how so much of its core themes of revolution and self-acceptance were rewritten and downplayed. But I refuse to back down, and I’ll continue designing in these spaces and do my work to reclaim it along with other diverse artists.

The brightly colored BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home cover with a long haired person in pleather-looking clothes wearing a gas mask and the text of the title on the cover.

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Thank you so much to Rae for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home on itch.io today!

Five or So Questions on Doikayt

Hi all, today I have an interview with JR Goldberg about Doikayt: A Jewish TTRPG Anthology, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds really awesome and I’m always excited for more Jewish projects. Check out what JR had to say below!

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

Doikayt is a Jewish Tabletop Role Playing Game anthology. The word Doikayt itself is Yiddish, and roughly translates to “hereness”. It is this idea that I am most intrigued and excited by, truthfully. Judaism is a religion and a tradition that isn’t monolithic. It’s founded on the principles of conversation and argument, conflict and interpretation. Riley and I were lucky enough to get pitches and submissions from people that claim vastly different backgrounds and experiences, and subsequently have different ideas of what constitutes Judaism.

I can’t wait to see how everyone’s work comes together, how their worlds influence their ideas and words. For me, the moment I’m most looking forward to is seeing the games complete and spending the time thinking about how my Judaism is a product of my upbringing, and how the themes explored by each designer help to paint a picture of them and their Jewishness.

JR Goldberg and Riley Rethal, the project leads.

Awesome! What about tabletop RPGs do you think makes them a good medium for expressing the different experiences and perspectives of Judaism?

There are a few reasons. First and foremost, the Jewish tradition is steeped in things that could be generally classified as a LARP or a TTRPG. A lot of Jewish traditions, especially ones surrounding the holidays, have been gamified in some way. So I think for many Jews, expressing something that speaks to them about Judaism through a game is something that is perhaps not innate, but at the very least is experiential.

Additionally, Judaism is a tradition and religion that isn’t based on dogmatism. Discussion of everything is encouraged, and learning and discussion of the tenets of faith is encouraged with a partner or in a group. Other perspectives are necessary. I think this is helpful and true for design and for play, as well. My best game experiences and memories have been times when the group coalesced and built something together that would have been impossible to do by myself. While I don’t necessarily think that Jews have a monopoly on that sort of thing, I do think that having it be such a part of the culture will make for some interesting angles with regards to play and design.

What are some of the challenges and benefits of running a project like this for a group of people with such different, but still related, stories they want to tell?

Riley and I were lucky in that none of the pitches we gravitated toward felt too similar. I can only think of maybe one instance where we felt as though we had to choose between two games that were too thematically close to both be included. I think that speaks to the amount of stuff that can be covered, and the amount of stuff that people think of when prompted to make a “Jewish Game”. That being said, we did have to be conscious not to just represent one Jewish tradition.

When we realized that the majority of the perspectives that we got through the submissions were Ashkenazi, one of the first things we decided to do as a stretch goal was to add essays that would be representative of the rich histories that Sephardic, Ethiopian and Mizrahi Jewry have completely separate from Ashkenazi Judaism. We felt like getting context from community members themselves would be the best option, as we certainly did not want to be appropriative in any way.

What are some examples of the kind of games, concepts, and artistic presentations we’ll be seeing from Doikayt and its designers?

Gosh, I think we have some really varied and interesting stuff in the anthology. One thing that we did semi-consciously is try and make games that have original systems in some way. Because we anticipated have a readership that may not know exactly what PbtA or BoB is, having a book full of hacks of existing games might’ve been alienating for some, in that there is an inevitable shorthand used that less experienced players would’ve had a hard time with. But beyond that, we have games that run the gamut.

While we have many designers working on the book, we do have one unifying force: all interior art is being done by Never Angeline North. You can see Never’s first piece for Doikayt on the kickstarter page. She is a recent convert to Judaism, and I think that is a super interesting perspective that will be present throughout.

How does a Jewish approach to games and game design differ from the more mainstream work we’re used to seeing, and what do you most want people to take away from this project?

I’m honestly not sure if I can that question at this point in the process! I know, speaking for myself, I don’t think I can help but have my Judaism permeate all my design work, even the stuff that isn’t expressly Jewish. How that manifests exactly is something that I’m not sure I’m introspective enough to really answer. That being said, I think once we have the book in our hands, we will be able to see the start of something.

My hope is that it is something that defies simple classification, but I can already tell from what we have looked at thus far, it will contain the humor, vulnerability and contemplation that is present throughout most Jewish texts. I suppose that is also what I to leave people with: my Jewish experience was probably different from yours because my life was different than yours. You may not even be Jewish, just a fan of TTRPG and a curious soul. But rather than focusing on the differences or setting up hurdles, through these games, we will be able to find human similarities.

Project image for Doikayt: A Jewish TTRPG Anthology featuring two hands covered in Hebrew letters and various symbols. — Project art by Never Angeline North.

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Thank you so much to JR for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Doikayt: A Jewish TTRPG Anthology on Kickstarter today!

Quick Shot on Big Book of Amazing Tales

I’ve got another great quick interview with Martin Lloyd, this time about the Big Book of Amazing Tales, currently on Kickstarter! It sounds like a great game resource for kids to add to your Amazing Tales collection. Check out Martin’s responses below!

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Two kids sitting at a table with an adult with character sheets and dice in front of them. The one kid has their hand raised triumphantly.

What is the Big Book of Amazing Tales, both as a product and as your vision?

Some of the most fun I’ve had with Amazing Tales has been playing games with the kids while on holiday, that’s when we’ve played out campaigns, and the idea of the Big Book is to make it easy for other families to do the same. So in the book I’m including four campaigns, one for each of the settings in the book. So you’ll get…

A Dream of Trees – for the Deep Dark Wood setting
The Quest for the Dragon Crown – for the Magical Kingdoms setting
Captain Cadava’s Treasure – for the Pirate Seas setting
The Cryptid Conundrum – for the Adventure among the Stars setting

The Big Book of Amazing Tales should be seen as a companion volume to Amazing Tales. Amazing Tales gives you all the tools you need to make up amazing adventures with your kid and get them started on role-playing. The Big Book of Amazing Tales is about providing you with some really great campaigns that can take things to the next level.

Before I started writing I set myself some goals. One of them was to include elements in the games that would bring the games alive in the real world as well as the player’s imagination. So in the Quest for the Dragon Crown there is a crown for the players to cut out, colour in and put together when they find it. It doesn’t look like a conventional crown, but its form is a clue to what it really does so having it right there in the players’ hands is important. One of the other goals is to include ‘moments of awesome’ for the players, to make sure they have those moments where their characters get to do something amazing. You really will save the kingdom, slay the dragon, stop the alien invasion and so on.

It’s also a chance for me to answer two of the questions I’ve been asked most frequently since launching Amazing Tales. Namely – ‘How do you use this game in a classroom?’, and ‘Can I use this game to help my kid with some kind of problem?’. Although to be honest I won’t be the one doing the answering. Baz Stevens, who is both a teacher and a game designer will be answering the first question, and Lilly Smith who is a child therapist will be answering the second.

Dice lying on a character sheet with a character illustration.

As an ongoing product, how do you keep coming up for ideas for Amazing Tales, and keep them fresh?

It really helps that Amazing Tales doesn’t have a fixed setting. So I’m not stuck trying to come up with five different fantasy adventures, or a new twist on space pirates or whatever. If I’m writing a pirate adventure I can make it the most piratey pirate adventure imaginable, a kind of Pirates of the Carribean in RPG form, and try and cram it full of as many pirate ideas as I can. I don’t need to worry about having used all the good stuff and then having to write another pirate campaign next week. * Once a month I publish a set of story seeds in the Amazing Tales newsletter, and those are always a good chance to really interrogate an idea. I pick a simple concept like ‘Temples’ and then try and come up with a set of ideas that do something interesting with that idea – stretching it in different directions. It’s a good practice.

And then there are the games I hear about people playing with their kids. Often there will be a couple of sentences on Facebook that sound brilliant, but that’s all there is. So it becomes a jumping off point for new ideas. Someone posted the other day about an adventure involving a lost circus in a forest. That’s about all I know, but it’s a great starting point. An adventure about a lost circus in a forest, it almost doesn’t matter what genre or system you’re playing – that’s a great place to start.

What are some of your favorite things in the Big Book and what are they like for players?

I’m really looking forward to some of the special extras. So in the Cryptid Conundrum, where the heroes need to crack the alien codes, there’ll be a decoder ring for the players to cut out and make. Now a lot of kids will probably make something like that at some point while growing up, but how many of them will get to use it to rescue the victims of an alien kidnapping? In a similar way that bit of research about kids being better at identifying logos than trees really bothers me. So A Dream of Trees will definitely include puzzles that require learning about trees, leaves, nuts and the like. Hopefully that will be enough to make kids a bit more excited by being outdoors, because playing outside is almost as important as role-playing 🙂

* Thinking about it, this is probably one of the reasons the Pirates of the Carribean sequels ended up the way they did…

Two pirates dressed in fancy pirate regalia discovering treasure inside a seaside cave.

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Thank you so much Martin for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out the Big Book of Amazing Tales on Kickstarter today!

Big Bad Con 2019

I recently attended Big Bad Con 2019 at the grace of many generous purchasers of a bundle that funded my attendance. Big Bad Con is my favorite con, and I’ve talked about it in the past on Thoughty with a lot of passion and enthusiasm, as well as interviewed the staff. It is a con that I truly feel has a caring ethic to their design, and I love being there a lot.

The Big Bad Con community standards page of their welcome handbook. — The Big Bad Con welcome pamplet’s Community Standards.

A brief personal note

This year I was traveling in the midst of some personal crises – at home, I found out mid-con my kitchen was mildly flooding, and the following week, I had a mild-but-anxiety-inducing medical procedure that had basically blocked my mind from functioning. On my flight in, I sustained a mild back injury that made my participation in the con limited. It was really frustrating, stressful, and I feel like I let a lot of people down by letting stress get to me and by not being able to keep my body going.

I am super grateful to everyone who supported me by helping me get medication and supplies to get through the pain I was in (shout out especially to Jeremy Tidwell, Lucian Kahn, and Vivian Paul!). I apologize that this con report isn’t Super Exciting and Full of Games! I was simply limited by my own realities, and it is a dreadful thing, to be sure.

A bag of toffees and a rainbow card. — Also big thanks to Anders Smith who managed to get me a gift when he wasn’t even here.

What I did

I arrived a day early on Wednesday and spent most of that day meeting new people and getting into my accommodations. We initially feared a power outage, which sent me into a tizzy, but it never happened. I still tried to be prepared, and in doing so, I spent a lot of time around the lobby keeping an ear out and seeing who arrived.

Some of the amazing people I had the chance to meet were Sangjun Park, creator of moonflower; Luke Wildwood; Sidney Icarus (who I hope to someday have guest write on Thoughty for approachable theory!); and after that it starts to get real busy. See, Big Bad Con this year did some amazing things – one of the biggest things is that, combining scholarships and the very vital Babble On Equity Project, they had guests from all around the world, including Australia, Korea, and Malaysia, and even had a guest from Trinidad, Brandon O’Brien, who I got to meet later that day. Brandon said some very kind things about Turn, especially about A.J.’s poetry. It made me so glad!

A book titled Not in Need of Rescue: A Coloring Book of Women in Fantasy Settings, Art by M.C.A. Hogarth with a woman who appears Native with white hair using fans on the cover.

Later in the week, Big Bad Con also hosted the PoC (People of Color) dinner and meet & greet, focusing on supporting and connecting people of color in the gaming community. It was really awesome to see! I was lucky enough to meet a lot of amazing designers of color from outside of the U.S. and from inside the U.S. too. It was incredible to see such a presence at the con, to see so many people there who deserve to be heard and given opportunities, as well as allowed space to show the amazing work they do!

EVERYONE who got a scholarship, attended the PoC events as a person of color, or was supported by the Babble On Equity Project at Big Bad Con is rad as hell and their work is worth investing in.

HELP THEM THRIVE. Do not fail this whole class of designers and creators by dismissing them or ignoring them. Look them up, research them, hire them, pay them, buy their games and art, interview them, promote them, and when you do those things? Respect their identity and their backgrounds with care and generosity and do NOT let them down.

On Thursday, I co-hosted the Soda Pop Social with Meguey Baker and it was a great success! We had a really good turnout and lots of people were super enthusiastic for the sodas we’d selected. I again had a lot of comments from people grateful for a welcoming space for non-alcoholic networking that was still fun and had recognizable people to meet and get to know, so that was great! I love the social, even though it keeps me moving for a couple hours without significant breaks, because I get to kind of be one of the first faces to welcome people and to share something fun and lighthearted with them!

Three tables with sodas and small cups on them. — So many sodas! This wasn’t even the ones in the fridge!

I also did my first Ranger shift! I volunteered at the con this year to cover my badge and my shifts were both at the Tell Me About Your Character Booth, which is really cool! I got to listen to people talk about their cool characters they’ve played and see the resident artist at the booth draw a portrait for the guest, and donations for the booth went to Doctors without Borders! It was really great. I did provide feedback to the con about improving the accessibility for those of us who have to be seated for our shifts, and for guests who need to sit. We worked out some more comfortable arrangements on my shift the next day, too, so it was good overall! I’m hoping if I volunteer again I get to do the booth and, if I’m lucky, do the booth with one of my artist partners so I can listen and they can draw!

Friday, I did the Terror in Design panel with Meguey Baker, Whitney “Strix” Beltrán, Misha Bushyager, and James Mendez Hodes, moderated by Rachel Bell. It was a fantastic panel, and some notes were taken by a guest and can be found here. We discussed a lot of things, especially consent, boundaries, how consent and boundaries can make horror more interesting, creating ambiance through design, where we find horror, and so so much more. It was a really interesting panel!

I actually really dig horror and I don’t talk about it as much as I’d like to because I’m also incredibly picky about horror, and have a lot of triggers, squicks, and general issues to watch out for. For example, on the flight home I watched the Hulu In The Dark film New Year, New You and got through the film with few issues because it’s altogether not too trauma-heavy for me, except for the references to suicide. But I watched In The Tall Grass on Netflix tonight and had to look away or distract myself multiple times because there was a pregnancy as a major focus of the fiction and horror. As I have tokophobia, that’s a no-no. It’s tricky, that lizard brain.

A picture of a pamphlet explaining how the Script Change rewind, fast forward, and pause tools work. — Big Bad Con actually has Script Change as one of their recommended safety tools!

I also did a second shift at the Tell Me About Your Character Booth on Friday, a little more successful this time around. 🙂

By the time Saturday ran around, I was 100% burnt out. I’d been dealing with a lot of emotional stress, so after a lot of weaseling around I elected to drop out of two games I’d been dying to play – Lucian Kahn’s Visigoths vs Mall Goths and Kieron Gillan’s DIE. But, I was in no state to play. So I just visited people most of the day, getting to hang out with a ton of people and talk about games and the industry!

The only actual game I played over the course of the weekend was a portion of a game in progress by LiteralSoup, who is great. It’s a mech game, and gave me the mech name of Challenging Hope, which sounds about right! I thought it was super cool, and I really enjoyed hearing of other people’s mech names – if you played Soup’s game, please tell me your mech name! I want to know! We need to cancel the apocalypse together! <3

All throughout the weekend people were stopping to have me sign Turn or Script Change for them, which was amazing! I loved that so much – I loved being able to sign books for the first time really and it meant so so much to me. I really appreciated everyone’s enthusiasm for the book and for Script Change! I’ve worked hard on my projects and it means a lot to see people show love for them. <3

A black book with silver embossed lettering that says "Undying" in all capitals. — Did I mention I got a copy of Undying from Paul Riddle and DIDN’T have him sign it? *headdesk*

Late in the night I went to the Big Queer Dance Party hosted by Jackson Tegu, which was super fantastic! While I don’t dance much anymore, I really enjoy attending the dance party and listening to music. I was hugely impressed by the workshopping on consent, communication, and care that Jackson (assisted by Anne Ratchat) provided to help people ask each other to dance, accept rejection, provide rejection, and be comfortable in the space. It was so amazing, and I love that Big Bad Con allows space for events like these!

Many people who attend USian gaming conventions might not have had the kind of access to places to dance and be comfortable in their body that people from other subcultures or even just cultures in general might have had, and there’s also a huge number of queer people at the con who are given a space to express themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of games or mechanics were thought up just in those flashing lights on the dance floor as we all listened to music. Goodness knows I thought of some!

I stayed up ungodly late talking to a fantastic person (Soup) then got up earlier than I wanted and flew home on Sunday.

A copy of a book titled Elder Song, or, an investigation of Dino-Utopian Optimism, Hadean Edition by Vivian Paul. — Not before I grabbed a copy of Vivian Paul’s *Elder Song*…and also forgot to have her sign it.

Some thoughts

I’ve been reflecting on Twitter about a lot of things since then, including a thread about how I learned to “hold court” at cons and how it keeps me from spending the whole con sitting by myself. I really enjoyed the con, but as I told many people there, I have a lot of challenges with conventions. They’re quite expensive, it’s hard for me to travel alone, if I get injured or ill it’s a whole mess, and I struggle to keep up with everything – plus I often feel out of place or alone.

I’m putting these facts out to the world because I want to be honest, and also so others don’t feel alone if they feel the same way. These things we do as professionals or as hobbyists to be connected with our community and our industry can be very challenging for us in a lot of ways, and flying thousands of miles to feel left out and discouraged and not good enough is hard. It’s scary and makes you feel like the world is ending. And like, there’s no real good fix for it!

A sheet of paper with text on it naming a mech Challenging Hope and labeling a finishing move "Generously Contrasting Timing Reoccuring Lie." — I keep trying to remember the good moments of the con, like this, even though my finishing move makes no sense because I don’t know grammar terms apparently.

I want to say something that fixes it. I want to say that I will wake up in a few hours (as it’s already 4am) and feel refreshed, and like going to Big Bad Con was a wonderful, flawless experience. But it wasn’t. There’s weird industry baggage – I’ve been working long enough to have that. There’s annoying health stuff – I’m old enough and disabled enough to have that. There’s stressful home stuff – I’m old enough and low class enough to have that. There were challenges at the con with accessibility (some solved, some not), and challenges with travel with accessibility.

There were so many things I loved about the con! But I do wish I had gotten to play more games so I had more to report to you, my readers, and I wish I had more to say to you than this: there are so many amazing games on the horizon and already HERE that I can’t even handle it, and I also do not know what my capacity truly is for the situation I am in. I want to be bring you the interviews and theory you want, I want to design you games you enjoy. But I may not always be as speedy as I once was, and Big Bad Con this year showed me that.

You could say, really, that… this con hit me a little differently.

I leave you with something much better worded with a lovelier message, some courage and joy from Jeeyon Shim at the Keynote for Big Bad Con 2019.

Beau at the Tell Me About Your Character Booth. — I did my best, y’all. <3

Five or So Questions on Under Hollow Hills

I generally try not to be so under the wire, but life has been hectic lately! Here’s an interview.

Today I have an interview with Meguey and Vincent Baker about Under Hollow Hills, which is currently on Kickstarter! It’s a game about traveling performers and explores a new realm of Powered by the Apocalypse design. Check out what Vincent and Meguey had to say!

All art by Vincent, after Rackham.

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Tell me a little about Under Hollow Hills. What excites you about it?

Meg: Traveling together as a group, seeking audiences, dealing with a stuck wagon or a friend in trouble, showing up at birthday parties to just utterly dazzle a human child and leave them with a touch more wonder than before – that’s all real neat to me. What excites me most though, perhaps, is the core ethic of this game, of paying attention to how we are together when times are good and when times are bad. Fairies often get portrayed as either all sweetness and light or all threat and magical terror, and I’m excited to see MORE than that. We’re drawing on a lot of different fairy stories, and I look forward to the new stories that come from this.

VB: In Under Hollow Hills you play the performers and crew of a circus that travels through Fairyland and through the human world, through good times, bad times, and dangerous times. I’m excited about the tour of Fairyland that the game offers – but it’s like a working tour, not a tourist tour. You’re behind the scenes, you see what goes on in the Wolf King’s Court, you perform for audiences who think they’ve commanded you, but really you’re playing them. You see through the glamor to the mystery, if that makes sense!

I’m also excited by how much the game loves words. Metaphor, poetry, wordplay, puns, it’s a game that loves and plays with language.

The silhouettes of two smaller people carrying paper lanterns and packs.

There are a lot of fairy tales that people might be familiar with. Where are you pulling influence from, and what are some examples of the things you’re spinning of your own?

VB: Yeah! Meg’s history with fairies is older than mine. I think I started, these decades ago, with Alan Lee and Brian Froud’s book Faeries. For me my main sources have been Yeats’ Fairy Tales of Ireland, Sikes’ British Goblins, and Kirk & Lang’s The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. These all mix collected stories and folklore with the speculations of their authors / editors, much in the mode of a bestiary or field guide. This is where the idea of fairy kinds comes from, I think, these marvelous old collections.

I’m also influenced by Shakespeare, by Norse myths, and by more contemporary fairy tales and fairy tellers like Francesca Lia Block, Tanith Lee, John Crowley, Jane Yolen, and even Jack Vance per Lyonesse.

That said, we’ve tried to keep our interpretations fresh and playful. In the playbooks, for instance, we always try to mix and cross influences, not narrow down. The Chieftain Mouse has elements of Reepicheep and Despereaux, and also of Rob Roy. The Crooked Wand harks back to the three old women who share an eye, and to Odin, and then to Yubaba from Spirited Away and Nora Cloud from Little, Big.

Meg: I had a beloved storytelling teacher in 4th grade, Janet Glantz, who gave me Nancy Arrowsmith’s 1977 Field Guide to the Little People, which leads off with “In high summer meadows, nestled in the moors, near old castles, or behind the kitchen stove—these are the places where the Little People may be found.”. If I had to point to one clear influence alone, it would be this book and this line. The earliest fairy-tales I remember are the ones in Olive Beaupre Miller’s 1928 edition of My Bookhouse books, particularly volume two, which has fairy tales from around the world, and the first book I remember reading for myself is Midsummer Night’s Dream, when I was about 6.

The Muppet Show, of course, and Labyrinth. I saw the 1962 movie Gypsy a surprising number of times as a kid, so the backstage parts of a traveling show were there, and when I was learning to walk and talk, my parents were crew in a Shakespearean diner theater company, which was of course FULL of fairies and actors and stage effects. I spent 8 years in the 1990s doing hair design and costuming for our local Hampshire County Shakespeare Company, too. Apples and trees, you know. Decades of thinking about the natural world in a way that invites the possibility of fairies also fit into the game design, and noticing the playfulness of bees, the enthusiasm of the berry bramble, or the determination of a stream. Then blending all of that so that there are layers on layers of influence, so players can bring their own influences to their unique portrayal of fairyland.

What is Under Hollow Hills like mechanically? It seems like it might function a little differently because of the types of stories you’re telling!

VB: It does!

The structure of the game is, you travel through fairyland and the human world, and everywhere you go, you put on a show. On the GM’s side, this means that between sessions, you prep up where the circus is going next. You don’t prep what’ll happen – there’s no way you could guess! – but just what the place is like, and who’s there. There’s a quick system for this, rules you follow in prep that help you decide who the audience is, what they want from the circus, and what they have to give the circus in return.

In play, then, you arrive at this new place, and you know that you’ll be performing here, but before you do, you want to get the lay of the land. As much as your audience here wants something from you, you want something from them too. So you introduce yourselves, enjoy your hosts’ hospitality, get people’s stories out of them, and meddle as you see fit. When you’re satisfied, then you plan your show and perform.

Planning and performing your show are distinct phases in the game, and they give you a lot of power. In your performance you can change the season of the place – “season” here includes mood, fortunes, history, even who rules and who’s ruled over. You can win from the audience what they have in plenty, or win from them what they hold most dear. You can also change the circus, switching up the performers’ jobs, welcoming new performers or bidding old ones goodbye, and opening the way forward from one world to the other.

Now this is the large view, the overall structure. Your character has cycles and structures of their own. Your capabilities include, yes, ways to get the lay of the land, and ways to plan a show and perform in it, but they also include your own angle on things. Ways to get what YOU want, whether you line up with the circus or not.

Meg: A lot of game mechanics are designed in terms of a linear progression, from point to point to future point. Under Hollow Hills mechanics cycle and spin, as we spiral through the seasons and through our own emotions and the characters’ emotional relationships with each other. Players may come back to things that feel familiar several times in the course of play, but from a different angle each time.

I’m intrigued by the implicit theme of transience in these stories because of the traveling nature of the troupe and the temporary nature of performance. How does Under Hollow Hills address the concept and experience of transience by the characters, and naturally, players?

Meg: Playing with time and space is part of fairyland, as well as of stagecraft and performance. The magical thinking of childhood when summer never ends, and how it takes forever for a special event to arrive, and the way time moves oddly when you are fully engrossed in the current moment even as an adult, are all part of the game. All those can be tiny windows into fairyland, that may open only for a fleeting moment. We all change over time, in myriad ways. Major ways that come to mind are gender fluidity and variance and how that permeates Under Hollow Hills in reflection of the actual world we live in, and seasonal cycles as they affect all life on the planet. There’s a third, of course, which is mortality, and the questions around death that come up from the fay viewing it as a game and the mortals knowing that for them it is the biggest and most permanent change. Shifting through these moments smoothly takes practice.

As characters pass from moment to moment, in terms of Under Hollow Hills game design specifically, we built in ways to shift your character’s expression fluidly across their summer aspect and their winter aspect, and we recognize the impact people have on places (and vice versa) in the way that the Circus can move the place they perform towards different seasons. Illustrating the pinwheel of the seasons, choosing as a group how you move the circus and spaces through the pinwheel, helps convey the transient but also the cyclical nature of the game, and therefore of life. Movement is a basic part of the game.

Building a game where travel is intrinsically part of the story helps address some fictional issues in storytelling as well. Have you ever encountered a detective series you like, set in “a small country town” where there’s multiple mysteries and murders in each book? For heaven’s sake, get out of that town! It’s a hell-mouth! Making the circus mobile, building an interconnected group that is traveling together, with the inherent community needs and relationship complications that arise when people come to rely on each other, and when they are constantly encountering new groups of people wherever they go, allows for very different stories than having the characters in a fixed location.

Another topic that interests me is the diversity found in traveling troupes in history, and the prejudice with which they’ve been treated. A hard topic, I know, but have you addressed it at all in Under Hollow Hills, and why or why not?

VB: Not so hard a topic! Historically, traveling people, especially traveling performers, have been treated all different ways – with horrifying violence and racism, with glory and celebrity, with suspicion, with reverence – all different ways. Right now in the US, for instance, a lot of carnival workers are seasonal migrant workers, vulnerable to the US’ racist anti-immigrant policies and sentiments.

In Under Hollow Hills, we’re definitely presenting a romantic version of the traveling circus. When the circus travels, it’s usually easy. Where it arrives, it’s usually welcome. When you come into conflict with your audience, usually it’s a personal matter, a disagreement or personal animosity. It’s possible in the game for you to come into town to find a racist hate mob waiting for you with knives and clubs, but the way violence works in the game, it disarms even this kind of situation.

Our goal isn’t to examine real-world racism and violence, or even just the real-world difficulties of taking a show on the road. Those are different games, and ones we’d love to play!

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Thank you to Meg and Vincent both for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Under Hollow Hills on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on Visigoths vs. Mall Goths

Hi all! I’ve got an awesome interview with Lucian Kahn today about Visigoths vs. Mall Goths, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds super cool and I’m personally looking forward to playing it at Big Bad Con. Check out Lucian’s responses below!

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Tell me a little about Visigoths vs. Mall Goths. What excites you about it?

Visigoths vs. Mall Goths is a tabletop roleplaying game and dating sim about the conflicts and romances among the warriors who sacked ancient Rome and 20^th century spooky teens, set in a shopping mall in a Los Angeles suburb in 1996. There are a lot of bisexuals.

The plot structure of Visigoths vs. Mall Goths resembles an open-world videogame RPG. Designed for either one-shot or campaign play, each adventure episode offers several quests that you may choose to pursue (or ignore), and the mall setting is packed with many strange retro marvels to discover. Or you can just replay the game over and over to kiss all the kissable clerks.

Imagine a surreal combo of The Craft, Empire Records, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Clueless. In addition to all that, I’m thrilled to be working with an incredible array of artists and writers on this project. The famous, talented, and extremely nice Robin Eisenberg has done an incredible job on the cover. We’ve got illustrations by Lluis Abadias Garcia, who did all the art for the Retroverse D&D 5e expansion. Vee Hendro, the graphic designer for Good Society, is doing the graphic design. We’ve got guest adventure modules by a very cool bunch of game designers, including Liz Gorinsky from Goth Court, and Maja Bäckvall who was the runes expert on Civilization VI and God of War. I could go on. The artists on this project rule.

A Latex-wearing goth with red and black hair, eyeliner, shoulder length gloves, big boots, a sleeveless shirt, and pants with cutouts that show off pentagrams stands over a Visigoth in red, golden, and steel armor with long golden hair with their foot on the Visigoth's chest.

What are some of the challenges and more exciting aspects of combining ancient Visigoths and 90s mall goths?

The only real design challenge I faced in the goth-on-goth arena was figuring out exactly how disoriented I wanted to make these time-traveling Visigoths. This could have gone very Encino Man, but I didn’t really want the game to be about ancient warriors staring in awe at escalators, so it took some work to get the narrative framing right, where the Visigoths are historically displaced but we’re assuming they’ve somehow learned English and know what a computer is. Fortunately, this game is completely surreal and absurd anyway, so this extremely fast learning process doesn’t have to be plausible to buy into the premise and have fun.

Part of what’s exciting for me about throwing together these 2 types of goths is that they’re both outsiders. The Visigoths are outsiders for 2 reasons: first and most obviously because they’ve been displaced from their original historical context and dumped into a ‘90s mall, but they were also oppressed outsiders in Roman culture before the time travel. The Mall Goths are also outsiders in 2 directions: they’re too weird to fit into mainstream teen culture, but they’re also both too young to get into goth clubs and too commercial to be accepted by the avant garde. So the scenario I’ve set up pits these 2 groups against each other, but both groups are outsiders within the context of the mall and the suburbs. This makes for a weird and fascinating array of potential social dynamics that the players can mess around with.

It’s weird to think of it, but a 90s game is now a period piece! What’s it like writing a near-history piece and how did you make the game feel totally 90s?

I was a bisexual grunge-rock teen in Los Angeles in the 90s and started goth clubbing as soon as I turned 18, so the aesthetics of this game are very close to my heart and my personal experience. Honestly, this entire design process has been extremely heartwarming, partially because I’ve gotten to indulge my nostalgia, but also because the past year of playtesting at cons and stuff has brought me into so many cute conversations with other people who still carry a torch for 90s counterculture. People who were there at the time will find a lot of Easter Eggs that refer to real stuff that was going on back then, and at the same time, I’ve made the world vivid enough that it’s still fun for younger players or people who weren’t in the USA at the time, etc. I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but the mall has a salon for humans and pets called Gerbil Essences.

Gerbil Essences is amazing! It sounds like you had a lot of fun with the project. What was it like in playtesting – how did the design choices you made come to fruition with different diverse groups?

I playtested this game for over a year, which is a long time for me, and it definitely evolved a lot over that time. One constantly recurring theme was the balance between structure and freedom in the game rules. I wanted this game to accommodate the needs of some very different types of players, from Dungeons & Dragons fans, to indie storygamers, to LARPers, to total newcomers. Based on player feedback in the past few months, I think I’ve struck a fun balance that lets a lot of different people enjoy the game.

How are the Visigoths and Mall Goths represented mechanically in the game, and how do their mechanics interact with each other?

There are 3 types of Visigoths (Conqueror, Charlatan, and Runecaster) and 3 types of Mall Goths (Theatre Tech, Witch, and Cyber Pet). Each character type comes with 3 skills that get bonuses on dice rolls. For example, the Theatre Tech has bonuses to costumes, pyrotechnics, and rappelling. They also each have a special skill they can use once per day without rolling dice. For example, the Cyber Pet can put on cute animal ears for a half-price discount at any store.

But the most important mechanic is probably Embarrassing Traits. Each character has 1 or 2 of these, and the options are different for Visigoths and Mall Goths. For example, one Visigoth embarrassing trait option is “Fear of Animals,” which gets especially dicey if you’re a Conqueror with the “control animals” skill, and another is “Allergic to Metal,” which sucks if you’re wearing chainmail. The way these work is that you can embarrass yourself to make your friend look cool in comparison or draw attention away from them, giving one of your fellow Visigoths or Mall Goths a bonus to their roll.

Finally, while most games only track physical damage, Visigoths vs Mall Goths only tracks emotional damage. That’s right, physical combat only has emo outcomes — and if you get too emotionally overwhelmed, you can’t fight anymore until you talk about your feelings with a friend!

The cover of Lucian Kahn's Visigoths vs. Mall Goths, subtitled " a tabletop roleplaying game and dating sim." On the cover the background is a deep purple in varying tones showing mall store fronts. In the foreground, a Visigoth with light blue skin and pink hair in an ornamented helmet and scaled armor in blue and gold wears a fuschia cape and holds a sword while staring down a goth with short curly blue hair and light purple hair and a spiked choker, who is wearing a fishnet shirt under a vampire smiley face crop top and a belted skirt.

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Thanks so much to Lucian for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Visigoths vs. Mall Goths on Kickstarter today!

What’s in a Ring?

I have a big life thing coming up soon – specifically, my partner Thomas and I will be exchanging rings near Halloween to make our relationship “official.” While looking at rings and thinking a lot about love and relationships, I realized there’s just not a lot of support for polyamorous people who want to have a formal aspect to their relationship, and especially when you’re not religious in any way, it can be difficult to have a way to mark your relationship.

Someday Thomas and I want to have a more formal commitment ceremony, when things are more secure, but for now, we’re just gonna have a quiet exchange of rings. I decided to write a little game about love, polyamory, self love, consent, and commitment – and give people like us a ritual to mark their love, too. I tried to be inclusive – I hope it is inclusive to you! If you like it, consider picking it up at https://briebeau.itch.io/whats-in-a-ring and leaving a donation to help us pay for a celebratory dinner. 🙂

Love to all <3

Tag: gaming

Thoughty Bundle-Up for Whitney #BundleUp4Whitney

https://itch.io/b/396/thoughty-bundle-up-for-whitney-delaglio

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