Tag: geekery

Women with Initiative: Kathryn Hymes

Hello all! Today we’re featuring Kathryn Hymes, our Woman with Initiative for April!

Kathryn is one half of the indie design studio, Thorny Games. In the past year, the studio’s silent live action game Sign received an Honorable Mention from the Golden Cobra Challenge. Sign is a game following the journey of deaf children in 1970s Nicaragua. It’s received great reception at multiple events, including Metatopia and Dreamation, and will be featured at the upcoming Living Games conference. It’s always exciting to see designers approaching difficult topics and examining agency and experiences through the lens of gaming.

Kathryn’s current project is Dialect, which in her own words is

“…a game about language and how it dies. It’s a world-building game that follows the story of a community in isolation as seen through their language. We’ve run very successful playtests at Metatopia and Dreamation as well as with many local groups throughout the SF area.  My design partner and I have put a lot of time and heart into this game. Looking forward to Kickstarting in the late summer!”

She is also working on Xenolanguage, which is an introspective game based on one of her favorite sci-fi stories by Ted Chiang. In Xenolanguage, Kathryn explains

“…it’s five minutes in the future and we’ve just made first contact. You are a linguist tasked with deciphering an alien language. As you gain fluency, you begin to see the world differently.”

This in particular made me think of Magicians, a language learning RPG that teaches Korean. Using RPGs to help people learn and understand unfamiliar languages and cultural language coding is fascinating!

I had the opportunity to ask Kathryn some questions about her work and process. Check them out!

Why did you choose language as a focus for your current games?

Oh, man — language is so my jam. I read grammar books for fun as a kid (I was a fun kid). I studied math and language in school. It was a natural muse for game design. Language is a powerful and relatively-uncharted topic in gaming that is fundamental to so much — identity, culture and just being human.

Given it’s a passion, the ideas around it come very naturally. Dialect, a project I’m co-designing with Hakan Seyalioglu, started off as an idea about telling a story through building a language. In the past I’ve struggled with finishing projects just for the sake of it. Feeling compelled to make something because I really care about it gets me through the design slumps.

Language won’t be the focus forever, but for now I’m happy dancing in the space between a game-designer- linguist.

Could you talk a little about Sign and the research you did for the game?


Yes! Sign is a game about being understood. It’s a silent larp for 4-6 players in under 2 hours. It centers on deafness, play, and an emergent language that came from the hands of children. In Sign, players follow a small piece of the true story behind Nicaraguan Sign Language, which started life as an emergent language of deaf school children, and later became the official sign language of an entire country. In the game, players share the frustration and loneliness of not having a language and develop the tools to overcome it. Over the course of the game, they build their own form of communication through structure and freeform play. As a linguist, I’ve been moved by this story for a long time. I hope this game will help it spread!

My design partner and I have taken great care to make the game accessible, respectful, and fun to play. We’ve solicited and incorporated feedback from both the Deaf community and linguists specializing in sign language. This has meaningfully shaped the game. We believe Sign is an experience in empathy: It gives players a brief glimpse at how life changes when barriers to communication are raised, and what that means for people emotionally. The hope is that in addition to being a game, it can see a second life as an educational tool, spreading the word of what is one of the most remarkable linguistic phenomena of modern times.

How do you make games about language more engaging when they include elements like being unable to speak or having different languages without the game seeming forced?

Our brains are hard-wired for language – it’s something that makes us fundamentally human. This help it be naturally engaging. For example, what’s most unique about playing Sign is the arc of understanding. Players’ interactions during the first stages of the game are stilted and full of compromise. They don’t have language: they can’t be understood and it stings. Throughout the game, players define the words they need to communicate during recess and class time, and by the end, it’s incredible how much they can get across. We’ve also seen players hold onto their in-game language long after the game ends and use it with others to recall play. Words are just so sticky.

Thank you so much to Kathryn for answering questions and giving her time for this feature! You can reach Kathryn via the links and social media below if you’re interested in talking more about Sign, Dialect, or Xenolanguage, or whatever else caught your eye during the interview. Thanks for reading, and please remember to check out my Patreon if you’re interested in helping support more blog posts, interviews, and features on Thoughty blog!
—
Kathryn Hymes Contact
Thorny Games Website
 

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Kira Magrann on RESISTOR

I interviewed Kira Magrann about her upcoming zine, RESISTOR, which is being co-created with Elissa Leach. It sounds like a fantastic project, and you can check it out on Kickstarter now!

Tell me a little about RESISTOR. What excites you about it?
Elissa and I have been wanting to collaborate on a project for awhile, and we just weren’t sure what themes we wanted it to have. The second she said “let’s do something cyberwitchy” I jumped out of the chair I was sitting in and nearly spilled the bourbon I was drinking. YES. CYBERWITCHES.

The cool thing about this project is that it’s remixing a bunch of ideas, communities, and people in one place. That’s a very cyberpunk thing in and of itself. It’s featuring games, art, and fiction, in a zine format, which is very popular in current queer and social justice circles. We wanted a diverse set of creators so we’ve got trans, non-binary, women, and POC working on it. And we wanted it to have that gritty feel, like something you could find next to some fliers at a punk bar. I’m excited about the aesthetic, and the stories we’re telling!

Zines have a long history with social justice, queer culture, and a lot of divergent subcultures. What are you bringing that’s new to the format, and what inspirations did you have for the types of materials you brought together?
Elissa and I kinda wanted to remix a bunch of ideas, communities, and people in one place. It’s a super cyberpunk idea, taking the old “zine tech” of rough edges, collaboration, personal politics, and making it new. It’s featuring games, art, and fiction, in a zine format. We wanted a diverse set of creators so we’ve got trans, non-binary, women, and POC working on it. And we wanted it to have that gritty feel, like something you could find next to some fliers at a punk bar. So like, easy to pick up, engage with, and get sucked into our world with no prior knowledge of the themes or how to play these games.

What are a few of the challenges you’ve encountered creating a niche project like RESISTOR, and what good things surprised you?
I think the biggest challenges so far have just been logistics, really! This is my first Kickstarter, and Elissa’s second, so figuring out how all that works and how to coordinate with a partner on a project like this has just been a little trial and error. Mostly we just hung around with Elissa’s cats, listened to some records, and like, made headers and bios for the kickstarter page.

We’re both visual artists, so creating images and finding collaborators on that end wasn’t too hard. I’ve been really inspired while this kickstarter is running, it’s hitting the reward centers of my brain and motivating me to create new stuff! I think that sometimes its easy to see creating things and making Kickstarters as difficult, stressful obstacles, but I’ve really enjoyed organizing everything, and coming up with ideas that are cyber-witchy to write about. Working with these amazing people has been really maybe the best part. Banana Chan’s game is gorgeous, Elissa’s art is phenomenal, my game ritual has been super inspiring, it’s really easy to get into the setting and thinking of this zine and create a whole lot of things for it, because its basically everything that I love. Funny how that works out, making things I love is easy!

Cyberpunk and social justice are two things I absolutely love. Coming in from that angle, what are the two things that you would say to someone with my interests to get me to invest in the project?
I like to think of RESISTOR as a kind of tool to inspire people to think more about these ideas. Not really a manifesto, but something that someone can pick up and read and say, yea, I wanna go talk about this class issue, or this neat ritual way of thinking, or apply this to my every day life. We want it to be accessible to a bunch of different communities, so not just the queer, punk, music, comic communities where zines are popular now, but also gaming communities and fiction communities. My black heart would grow three sizes if women and trans and non-binary and POC people in comics started playing roleplaying games by picking up this zine. It’s also hella styish and woke af. Cyberpunk often is about awesome chrome cyborgs and fighting the corporations in this real rebellious uplifting way, and we kinda want it to be like that but, less guns and simple binaries, more witchy rituals and complex cultural nuances.


Finally, if I were a cyberpunk dystopia, and you were a witch, if you took out our hearts, what would they be in RESISTOR?

I mean, we’re already living in that dystopia. So basically, they’d be right where they are, but like, connected by deep black ghost tunes of all the other hearts around us trying to make this world a little better with our glitched-rituals, metallic hymnals resonating in tiny screens that sit next to us every day. Our hearts are all connected even outside of our bodies in machines where we make them vulnerable.

I don’t know about you, but those black ghost tunes are throbbing in my heart right now. RESISTOR sounds like an awesome product and I’d love to see it out and available. Check it out on Kickstarter and consider becoming a backer!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Elizabeth Chaipraditkul on WITCH

Today I am super lucky because I got to interview Elizabeth Chaipraditkul about WITCH! You’re super lucky, too, because I have some pictures and her awesome answers here for you to enjoy! AND, guess what? WITCH is on preorder for release in February in the Angry Hamster Publishing shop. Let’s get to it!

Tell me a little bit about WITCH. What excites you about it?

So, WITCH: Fated Souls is a modern dark fantasy role play game where you play a member of the Fated, someone who has sold their soul to a demon for power. When I started to write WITCH it was something I just had to do, when I started writing I figured even if no one else read the game at least it would be out of my head. I always loved dark games – gothic horror, haunted exploration, anything occult. Games that allowed me to make a character I could fall in love with, that haunted me, even when I was awake. I wanted to make a game based on the heroine in every one of my dreams. A setting where she could live, flourish, and fight her demons (internally and externally). I wanted to make a game that everyone could play who felt the same way, who had formed similar people in their minds – stretching them, shaping them over the years. When I see my game it’s not as horror-filled as I thought it would be, but there is still something about it that’s mysterious, dark, and filled with adventure. I feel I accomplished my goal, that is exciting.

The crunchy mechanics side of me is excited about the magic system for WITCH. I am always frustrated with games that limit my magical power in odd numeric ways. Like only having five spell slots or only having enough mana for three spells. Realistically, in these games the idea is that there is a point where your character is tried and can’t cast any more. But I never found that much fun and the idea that my power was capped (even if that meant I was just tired) bothered me. In WITCH you can cast your magic as much as you’d like. However, each time you do your chance to critically fail/botch increases. So, out of character, you get to live that exhaustion with your character. Are you going to gamble casting another spell, you can do it, but what if you botch? Worse yet, what if you have cast your magic so many times that you cause an Eternity Chasm (extra horrible botch), a catastrophic event that rips through all space & time.

What sort of inspiration did you use for the horror and occult imagery and feel of the game?
When I was thinking of how I wanted my game to look and feel I wanted it to be like Charmed, if it had met Hellraiser early on and was corrupted by it. American Horror Story: Coven, while it came out after I was almost done development for the game, definitely captures the look and feel I was going for.

I am a very visual person. So, from the moment I started writing I was pinning images that fueled my writing. Art gives me energy. Images can tell such an amazing story and were endless inspiration for me.

I am also a huge fan of buying crappy old books from the thrift store. There are a lot of random occult tidbits I was able to pull out of the books to weave into my game. It was important that WITCH, was far enough removed from reality as to be its own thing, but still have recognizable elements. For example, we have rituals in the game, rituals are an important part of any type of occult game. Saying that, they are totally made up and I’ve tried to stay away from anything that is practiced. I did make sure though that there was enough symbol for them to feel real and give a good play experience.



I want to know, what happens when you create an Eternity Chasm – what can be the impact of this rip?


Pretty much anything that is end-game horrible. For example, you could open a hole into an alternate dimension filled with evil replicas of yourself who invade the world looking to kill you. It could also do something like write every trace of you out of existence. So you have to play through the moments of your life as they are erased one by one. When an Eternity Chasm happens, it normally means your character is going to die or become unplayable (it is almost impossible for one to happen unless you are insanely reckless). However, like with all things in WITCH, it should be an excuse to further the story. I feel huge events like this should never be an excuse to just kill a character. It needs to add drama and play to the game. Having a strong, player driven story is so important, especially in WITCH.

What kind of encounters could players find in WITCH?

Exploration and adventure are huge themes in our game. Sure, you sold your soul and it sucks, but your life isn’t over. One huge trade-off is that you get to explore a magical world, which is pretty damn amazing. In our world there are different forces at work that Fated will meet. There is the Quiet, an all encompassing nothingness that is eating away parts of reality. As you get close to the Quiet you’ll hear voices, voices asking you to follow them. There are also hunters to contend with. People who hate you for the simple fact that you have sold your soul. And much more! 

We also have a lot of adventures that players can stumble upon by mistake, opening the wrong door, or messing up with their magic. For example, in our Planar Guide you’ll find a plane totally inhabited by puppets whose strings stretch high into the sky. Or you can visit a plane with no land and an ever expanding ocean. Dark finned figures lurk just below the surface of the water waiting for you to succumb to exhaustion.

How do you approach more sensitive topics in WITCH – do you have realistic, or possibly intimate, horrors?

There is a lot of different ways to represent horror in our game. In WITCH a lot of horror comes from the character realizing what they are capable of and willing to do for power. How they cope with the deals they make with their demon and how they (hopefully) triumph. Demons play a huge role in our game, because each Fated has so much interaction with theirs. While every demon is different there are some that take sincere delight in emotionally torturing their Fated, that is not for everyone.

What affects people is very personal to each person and group you are playing with. In WITCH we advise GMs, in the GM chapter, to speak to their players about what they are comfortable with before the game begins. I personally feel this makes playing fun and safe for all players.

In the text itself, while we do have a few grisly scenes, I have stayed away from sexual violence. I preferred to have intimacy and sex shown in a positive light. Likewise, we have some nudity in the book and our Devil’s Deck. I feel being naked is pretty natural and normal, it doesn’t have to mean sex (or violence).

Awesome! Thanks to Elizabeth for the excellent interview and for the gorgeous art to share! You can find find more about WITCH on Angry Hamster Publishing’s WITCH page and preorder options in their shop.


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Supernatural Evil vs. Real Evil: When Reality Bites

As a fan of many varieties of fiction and genre books, films, television shows, and games, I have seen a fair share of villains. Bad guys are, actually, one of my favorite things. Without villains, where would be heroes? Without evil, is there actual “good”? It’s a big question. The one thing that keeps coming back to me, however, time and again is the question of what is more frightening, more evil: supernatural villainy, or villains who could step out of the next corner shop?

Starting with my earliest exposures to the good vs. evil storylines, I watched a lot of cartoons. Cartoons are, for the most part, about unreality. The characters are not supposed to be super realistic or like anything you might encounter. In Disney alone, there are Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty), Ursula (The Little Mermaid), and the Evil Stepmother (Snow White) – they are all frightening to children and adult understanding of their motives definitely show that they are fucked up and evil, but for me, they are not nearly so frightening as Frollo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). There is a supernatural element to the Hunchback cartoon film, but Frollo is all too real. He is a man very dedicated to his religion, who sees beautiful women as vain and condemns their sexuality, and he considers himself better and more pure than those around him (which, imo, is terrifyingly real).

I was around 4 or 5 when I saw my first Stephen King films. Thank you television for doing re-runs, and thank you parents for leaving me alone with the television. I saw, in a sweet double-feature, IT and Carrie. They are both pretty well-done films, and completely compelling for a kid who loved ghost stories. I still have nightmares about those movies, but they are two very different types of nightmares. With IT, it is the standard “holy crap evil clown”, teleporting, monster-morphing scary that is easily expected. With Carrie, it is so much different. For me, the villain of the movie is not Carrie, or even the cruel teenagers. It’s Carrie’s abusive mother. See, in IT, the clown is a scary villain, yeah, but even at that age I knew that those things weren’t real. Abusive parents, though, were something I could definitely imagine (and had been witness to).

Further on we go – scary movies with werewolves and vampires and ghosts, right up next to Law & Order, CSI, and the serial killer shows and documentaries I latched on to. No matter how many nightmares I had about monsters, it never compared to the constant anxiety I felt day after day knowing that there were real people out there who were, from my perspective, far more evil than their paranormal peers.

One of my favorite book stories is, no surprise, Harry Potter. In the books, the biggest villain, the embodiment of evil, is Voldemort (Or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named for those of you who like to use extra words). He’s a torturer, murderer, son of a rapist (love potions are not consent, FYI), and straight up asshole who is willing to murder everyone who doesn’t fit his ideal concept of humanity. There are multiple descriptions of the shitty stuff he does, and the shitty stuff his followers do. And yet, they do not scare me anywhere near as much as Dolores Umbridge. Anyone who has read the books knows how awful Umbridge is. She constantly, as a human who is not supernaturally altered in any way, chooses to do harm and induce suffering on anyone she doesn’t deem worth or doesn’t like. She’s racist (and advocates for awful things against half-human or non-human species), and revels in the pain of others. Torturing children is shown to bring her actual pleasure and satisfaction. She is, in many ways, the perfect example of someone who would claim to have “just been doing their job” when all shit hits the fan, but who secretly really got off on doing awful things in the name of her cause – and the cause, in this case, seems to just be a convenient excuse.

I think that it is easy to see why realistic villains are more terrifying than supernatural villains (in most cases! There are always exceptions!). Bellatrix Lestrange is pretty fucked up and terrifying, but there is no way she compares to the Bitch of Buchenwald (Ilse Koch, from the Buchenwald concentration camp during WWII, Google with great care). Knowing that there are real killers, torturers, and rapists out in the world is way worse to me than the fantastical idea that vampires might suck my blood.

In games, we can always use fantastical monsters. That’s something that is super common in RPGs – hell, in a lot of games we play the monsters! But when running a horror game, the choice between real horror and fantastical horror is a very careful decision. Some GMs might know their groups well and be able to run it without a question. Others might need to really talk to their players and make sure it’s okay.

If you want to run a horror game with a realistic villain, but you don’t want to spoil the whole plot for your players, there are a lot of ways to get the information you need. The first is to have a boundaries discussion. Ask your players, “If you were playing a realistic game, what kind of bad guys, type of violence, and other content are you comfortable with and not comfortable with?” Give them the floor, and then feel free to bring up specific items, including ones you specifically don’t plan to use in the game. Examples of stuff that might come up: rape, harm to children, domestic abuse, torture, sexualized violence, stalking, harm to animals. None of these are things people should feel bad about vetoing, and it’s important not to shame players or try to bargain or bribe them. It’s more fun when people want to play the game without caveats.

Other options that are great are, like I mentioned in my previous post, using consent and content tools like the X-Card and Script Change. The biggest thing to do, though, is to talk with your players and ensure that they’re cool with moving forward.

It isn’t a bad idea to talk about this with your players when you are using supernatural villains as well. While we have seen that in the Netflix TV show, Daredevil, Wilson Fisk is an amazing villain without any supernatural ability, the new show on Netflix, Jessica Jones, the character Killgrave (known as the Purple Man in comics) has supernatural abilities and he’s simply chilling to see on screen, and his abilities are truly some of the worst.

There is a lot to gain by finding what really makes your heart pound, and your hair stand up on end, and it’s often fun to pursue it. Still, there is no reason that a person should be put in a place in a game where they can’t escape or stop the source of their distress. Players deserve to have a good time, even if that means they’re quaking in their boots!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Meguey Baker on Playing Nature’s Year

I was lucky to get a chance to interview Meguey Baker about her new project, Playing Nature’s Year, which is currently on Kickstarter. 

Tell me a little bit about your project, Playing Nature’s Year. What excites you about it?

A couple things really stand out for me. I love the old songs and fairy rhymes and little pieces of folk tales that I grew up with, and felt there were games there that could be as sweet and simple and strange. The first game, The Holly & the Ivy, came into my head so complete I nearly shouted at Vincent and Eppy to stop talking because I had to write it all down quick right there in the coffee shop. It felt a little like the magic I hoped to capture in the rest of them!

I loved the constraints I used in this cycle: each player always has ten d6 to start but each game has different mechanics; I had six weeks in which to design and write and find art and a song or poem for each game; each game had to do one thing well and be playable in under an hour.

Beyond that, the biggest thing is the idea of playing games with people you don’t really usually play games with. I’ve played some of these games with my little nephews, with folks brand new to gaming, with the parents of kids in my youngest son’s class, and I look forward to playing them with my mother-in-law over Thanksgiving.

Where did you feel you pulled your most valuable inspiration for these games?

Short answer: the earth and its cycles. Longer answer: I grew up in a household with a deep appreciation for the ways nature connects and contributes to our spiritual, philosophical, emotional and creative well-being. Some of my earliest friends were apple trees I named when I was 3, and played in daily. They were real beings to me, and my mother never made me feel silly or dishonest when I told her what they said and the adventures we had. Instead, she handed me books of mythology – Norse, Greek, Egyptian, Native American, and Japanese – and read me fairy tales from the Arabian Nights, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Anderson, as well as the Rainbow Fairy Books. This laid the groundwork for a lifetime of fascination with all things deemed “fairy” or “pagan” or “earth-based” in contrast to my grandparent’s fundamentalist Baptist faith. As a young adult, I spent a decade or more being fairly active in local pagan circles, and have pretty much incorporated elements of that sense of awareness of the world around me into my life going forward, even though it’s not the dominant part of my path at the moment.

What inspired you to use the constraints you did, and how do you think they influenced your design choices?

After the initial game came through so clearly, I was very conscious that the rest needed to be in keeping with the first. I had been laying rather a LOT of Tenzie, which is a wonderful and super-fast dice game, and it was the starting point for all the mechanics in the games – how can I use these ten d6 to do something different? I have this roleplaying story-telling wishing game for midsummer, how do ten d6 resolve in this game?
Also, the songs and poems are important to me. All of them except the Chickadee are ones I knew and loved from childhood, and I think there is an important place in game design to connect back to poems and songs and the ways creative ideas and stores were passed down for thousands of years before the magic of written word. They frame the games, and I hope they give the reader a greater sense of the feeling in the game. The influence of the songs to the games is pretty interwoven. With a few, it was crystal clear what piece I wanted, to the point of licensing “The Garden Song” because the game demanded it. And by the way, licensing music is a nightmare. On one or two of the games, I went looking for a song or poem to match, which is how I came across the Chickadee, which is a perfect fit.

Could you share a story of when you playtested these games that you feel exemplified their concepts?

The first time I played The Holly & The Ivy, I was surprised by the intensity of my own wish. That was quite a rush, because it told me the design was solid and that everything worked precisely as I intended it to, even for me.

I playtested the third game, Bless the Seeds, with my 9 year old son. It’s a game about perseverance and gardening, in which you talk about work you are doing in your garden. Tovey described the most wonderful seaside garden, with tidal pools and sea glass and sand dunes and a hammock. It was utterly delightful to watch his imagination unfold and to see him respond so enthusiastically to the structure of the game. The very best part though was after the game ended and he ran to tell his older brother all about the game and his garden in great detail. It had clearly captivated him, and that was exactly the outcome I was hoping for.

I did a final playtest of At the Stroke of Midnight at Metatopia, and two of my players were moved nearly to the point of tears at the end, where there is a conversation with the Beloved Dead. That was really rewarding, to have the ritual of the game support such willingness of emotion in people I had never played with before.


Do you find any special challenges when designing games that appeal to people of all ages and experience?

There are a couple things I keep in mind. I tend to avoid terms like “GM”, “PC’, and “NPC” that might look like alphabet soup to non-gamers. I aim to keep the mechanics smooth and interesting but not too fiddly, and I use plain six-sided dice which folks might have already even if they are not gamers. I aim for a game session that runs under an hour if I have kids under 10 in my target audience, and under four hours if I have adults who might play board games or computer games or play or watch physical games (aka sports). I avoid swearing in my game text, because I want folks to feel comfortable handing the book to their kids or their parents. If I don’t know what my reader’s comfort level is with that, I don’t need to mess with it. If you pick up Apocalypse World, I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to be put off by more vigorous words, and if you read all the way through 1001 Nights and have some familiarity with the source material, the art shouldn’t surprise you.


Finally, what do you hope people get out of playing the games in Playing Nature’s Year?

First and foremost, I hope they have fun. After that, I hope they are a bit more aware of the season around them after they play. Finally, I hope they are surprised sometimes by the places the games take them, by their own wishes and fortunes and the stories they create. 

Make sure to check out Playing Nature’s Year on Kickstarter, and thanks to Meguey for sharing her thoughts and process!


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Women with Initiative – Wendy Gorman




Hi all!

Welcome to my new feature, Women with Initiative! I am hoping to make this a monthly feature, but we’ll see as time passes whether the interest is there. Today I’ve interviewed Wendy Gorman, creator of Still Life, which won in last year’s Golden Cobra design contest. 

Wendy shares a little about her here:

My games are mostly WIP right now, but I co-wrote one of last year’s Golden Cobra winners, Still Life, and I’m currently working on two games, one called The Things She Carried, which I wrote for the Warbirds anthology contest, which won, and is a game about Japanese American women in the US during WWII, and Shemesh, which is a solarpunk utopia game that I’m working on with Different Play, and that is probably my game that I’m most excited about. I’ve also written a DramaSystem setting called “Game On” about the women’s baseball league in the US during WWII, and I have a million tiny baby game ideas that I’m working on with my favorite codesigner, Heather Silsbee.


Here are some questions I asked Wendy!

You have written some really amazing things. One of the previous cons I attended, many people played Still Life and said it was amazing. How did you find inspiration for such a unique game, and what kind of experiences do you think uninitiated players would have?

It’s funny you should ask about Still Life, because it has really been a huge surprise to me. Still Life is a mystery! My friends and I were play testing Jon Cole’s larp design work shop, Larp Jam, and our prompt was “pebblestone lifestyle.” I desperately did not want to write a Flintstones larp, and we were on the shore of a lake, with rocks surrounding us, so I guess it was easy to run with the rocks/nature theme. As for the uninitiated playing it, I’m sure experiences will differ! It’s a very low-key larp, with lots of sitting and quiet time, so if someone went in expecting to run around hitting people with foam swords, it would probably be a disappointment. That said, I’m told it’s a great game to play when you’re tired, because you really don’t have to move around very much at all!

In your work for The Things She Carried, how have you been gathering information and historical reference for it? What made you choose that particular subject?

For The Things She Carried, I was inspired by an amazing memoir, Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, about Jeanne’s experience with being relocated to internment camps in her youth. In particular, there’s a scene in the book where her grandmother is trying to sell some family heirloom plates that the family has had for years, and the buyer is refusing to give her what she considers a fair price, because the market is flooded with similar items from other Japanese American families who are also leaving. The grandmother gets so mad that she smashes the plates, one by one, rather than sell them. It’s a powerful book, and a powerful scene that stuck with me, especially since so many of these families lived in Washington, which is where I grew up. It’s a side of World War II that doesn’t get talked about enough, but it’s all I could think about when I saw there was a contest for WWII games about women. I’ve been reading articles, I reread the first inspirational memoir, and have been looking at photos on historical archives to try and get a better feel for Japanese women in the 40s.

I am so excited about your solarpunk game! I have been delving into it – tell me more about solarpunk, and about Shemesh!

Shemesh is probably the game I’m most excited about! Solarpunk is an emerging genre that focuses on ecofriendly, sustainable living with an art noveau flair. I love the aesthetic, I love the message, and I love the chance to explore positivity and hope. My game focuses on a city, Shemesh, that envisions a new way of living. I was interested in games about utopia, and couldn’t find any that I felt really fit, so I decided to design my own! The game is about exploring a solarpunk utopia in a diverse city, with a focus on aesthetics, which I love, and working through differences without resorting to conflict and anger. The question I’m inviting players to answer with this game is “What does it look like to approach misunderstandings in a utopia?” To top it all off, I have a backdrop of a bunch of funky fantasy peoples, including giant rats with a hive mind, human-sized sentient butterflies, fae, humans, and sentient robots, who all live alongside each other. I’m really, really in love with the setting and the game, and I can’t wait to release it. It’s sort of an amalgamation of a bunch of my favorite things, such as Microscope, the works of China Mieville, and beautiful, brightly colored stained glass. I’ve had a ton of fun writing it, play testing it, and I sincerely hope that others will enjoy it as much as I have!

What do you do outside of gaming, hobbies &etc.?

Outside of gaming, I’m a cat enthusiast, aspiring writer, and earring fanatic. I’m currently living in Spain for a year, teaching English, which I love. I am a big fan of feminist discussion, and trying to figure out how to make myself a more socially conscious human being. I also love to cook, and to bake, although I lack an oven here in Spain, so it’s put a huge damper on my culinary escapades.


Thank you so much to Wendy for sharing with us! You can find Wendy online on Google+!


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Interview with Whitney Beltrán – Tinker Kickstarter

I interviewed Whitney Beltrán about her upcoming work on Tinker, a steampunk web series production currently Kickstarting with a few days left. 

Tell me a little about Tinker – what’s it about? 

Tinker is a steampunk adventure themed web series show. It is about a father-daughter duo, Sho and Kimi Tinker, who are savvy inventors in Victorian era alternate history San Fransico. Sho has built a reputation for himself as an incredibly clever engineer, and Kimi is a sort of genius tomboy. Together, they are swept up into a world of intrigue and turn of the century Machiavellian power struggles as old empire and emergent capitalistic entities fight over resources and technology.   
Their adventures range all over, from their native San Fransico to Hong Kong to the British mainland. There are air ships and giant robot fights and organized brothel gangs, spies, assassination attempts (and successes!), romance, action, and needless to say, a lot of danger. There is never a dull moment in Tinker.

What do you think is the most interesting part of Tinker?
I’m biased. I will always go gaga over the costuming on a project like this. Our costume designer is extremely talented and is currently putting the finishing touches on a hand tooled leather corset that is to die for. I basically want to run away with it. However, in reality, probably one of most interesting things about Tinker is its exploration of morality in the face of Western expansion and globalization. Tinker does not take itself too seriously. It’s more of a romp than a thinker, but the undertones are there. 

How did you get involved in Tinker?

Well, I tend to have my fingers in a lot of cookie jars. I was NPCing for a LARP that was going on as part of a fundraiser benefit that an education non-profit, Seekers Unlimited, was putting on in L.A. I made friends with one of the other NPCs, who happened to have a role onTinker. At the time they were looking to fill a number of roles, so she arranged for me to visit the studio. I read some sides for the producer, and I landed the role of Elmira Perkins, who happens to be one of the nefarious spies!  

Do you enjoy working on indie productions? If so, why?
Absolutely. I do a lot of script work and setting development as well as acting, and big Hollywood is awful about crushing creative sovereignty. At the major production houses pretty much everything is decided by a committee of business school graduates. It’s very frustrating. Working with smaller studios is more like working with a family, and negotiating with creative ideas becomes a lot more enriching.    

Do you think the diversity of Tinker is important? Do you think it was a conscious choice?
The racial diversity of the cast of Tinker is off the charts. It’s one of the things that makes me most proud of being a part of this production. I am of biracial Mexican-American heritage. I often struggle to find roles. It is common that the roles I am suited for call for white women. I constantly have to think to myself, “Am I white enough to get away with this?” Sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not. Being on the set ofTinker is a breath of fresh air. I don’t have to worry about the color of my skin and whether or not I stand out.
It’s also really significant to me that the main characters are Asian and not white. It is the norm in Hollywood that racial minorities are relegated to supporting roles. This is especially significant because this is a steampunk production, which necessarily carries strong elements of imperialism and colonialism. It would have been really easy to stick with a homogenous cast. Instead, our executive producer, Micheal Taglianetti, insisted on a racially diverse cast. So yes, it was a conscious choice. 

What are you looking forward to most in the project?


I don’t know if I should tell you this! There is going to be an episode that involves live zebras. I am really looking forward to hanging out with zebras. I’ve never gotten closer than being at the zoo before. I just hope they don’t bite. 


Thanks, Whitney, for your interview and time! Go check out Tinker’s Kickstarter if you want to learn more!




THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2010-2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

Interview with David Pulver – Laboratory of the Forsaken!


Today I have a brief interview with David Pulver, a freelance writer in Canada, just for you! David is working on an adventure game for Crafty Games‘ FANTASY CRAFT Roleplaying system called “Laboratory of the Forsaken“.

B: David, do you want to tell me a little about Laboratory of the Forsaken?

D: The soon to be released “Laboratory of the Forsaken” is my first adventure for Crafty Game’s FANTASY CRAFT roleplaying system.

It takes place in the Realm, the same setting used in their earlier TIME OF HIGH ADVENTURE book, which features a conflict between the Circle (free-thinking but occasionally out of control scientist-arcanists) and the Church (nice folks unless you get on the bad side of their inquisitors).

The adventurers get to investigate the manor house of Doctor Magnus Croatalorn, a Circle member who has been performing experiments to investigate the origins of life. The Church has decided to shut him down (since he wants to prove life was magically rather than divinely created) but the inquisitors they sent after him haven’t reported back. Magnus has also dropped out of touch with the Circle, however, so they suspect something has gone wrong. 

The adventurers can either be servants of the Church sent on a follow-up mission, or agents of the Circle attempting to protect Magnus and his research before the Church can get their hands on it, or mercenaries who blunder into the situation. As they explore the manor they’ll piece together its secrets from the doctor’s lab notes and experiments. It’s a cross between a haunted house and a dungeon adventure, with elements of dark fantasy or horror thrown into it.

B: How long did it take you to create the adventure?


D: It took about two days to come up with the basic concept of a dark fantasy horror adventure set in the laboratory of a vivisectionist-alchemist who was obsessed with finding the secret origin of life. Crafty Games and I batted the concepts back and forth for a couple more weeks to set the specific details and parameters of the adventure. Then it took about a month to write it.

B: What suggestions would you have for others looking to write adventures – best practices for level design, flavor text, etc.?
D: For me, the key thing is to have a solid, interesting theme and concept and a careful outline. In this case the theme was mad fantasy science, so the adventure contained a lot of research notes, crazed experiments, and so on. Usually I work out a background first, but then get down to the nuts and bolts (e.g., what’s where, paths through the adventure, mapping, and so on).

It’s probably best to leave flavor text for last after you have the skeleton of the adventure. I’ve found that if you start with the flavor text it’s very easy to overwrite and end up with something that is too long.

That said, doing a bit of flavor text first is useful to give yourself a feel for what you’re doing. In my case I wrote a short biographical letter written by the mad scientist (Dr. Croatalorn) to a friend of his, laying out his philosophy, a key event in his childhood that led him away from the teachings of the Church and toward exploration of darker truths. I didn’t actually use this in the game – it was a bit too long – but it gave me a sense of his character and motivations, which helped me.

I did something similar for his wife Lunalia, who is another key character and possible ally of the adventurers in the plot.

Ideally you should playtest an adventure, but often players will not have time to explore all the paths. A trick you can use is to “talk through” an adventure with someone else – essentially skipping all the game mechanics (assume they win all the fights, make all the skill checks, or whatever) but just narrate what they see, who they meet, and have them tell you what they do.

This is a good way to get a sense of whether any mysteries, level design concepts and so on are too complex or too simple, and also it can sometimes reveal options and strategies you didn’t think of when you wrote the adventure.

The most difficult part of the adventure was striking a balance between a coherent, dramatic narrative (e.g., building up action and an exciting conclusion) and giving the players different routes and options. This had to be considered from the very start of the adventure, as Crafty Games Fantasy Craft setting tends to forgo a traditional good vs. evil structure in favor of different factions, any of which the adventurers could be aligned with. The adventure is set in the “Realm” background that Crafty Games introduced in their prior adventure collection Time of High Adventure. This introduced a conflict between religion and magic (The Church vs. The Circle, a group of arcane-scientists).

This became a central conflict in Laboratory of the Forsaken, but I set up the adventure so that the players could choose which side to support, or remain neutral, and also ended up writing three different variations of the adventure’s opening to accommodate different player character motivations or alignments.

Thanks to David for taking the time to share with us about his writing and design process! Check out the adventure, Laboratory of the Forsaken, at DriveThruRPG!


THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

The Song of My People


The leather wraps scraped across the callouses on Lilylen’s palms as she twisted the wraps around her hands. She tied them tightly. The wraps served as good protection from the wooden sticks she picked up and spun through her fingers. It was time to go, and she was nearly ready.


Lilylen stared out from the window of the holding, counting the rows of soldiers. There were near a hundred, armored and standing at the ready. Those were her chosen enemies. Chosen, yes, because there were so many different men to fight, so many threats to her home and in this case, her soul. The lord in command of these soldiers was a dark mage who had stolen the souls of his soldiers to bring himself more power. Lord Niccen, ruler of the city of Donwyn, what he called himself.


Untrue, though. She stood in the halls of Donwyn now, ready to protect it from his army of soulless men. If her side lost, then he would take over and hold the small city under thrall. This was not what she wanted. Donwyn was not her home now, but it had been for many years. She had no home, and her family had all aged away and left for the northern lights. Still, she wished to protect Donwyn, and her magic was strong.


She adorned herself with her armor now. Silver tips on her pointed ears, twisted and pierced through the skin, were enchanted to protect her from the raucous sounds of battle and hone her hearing. She pulled on a chain shirt and belted it with a leather strap that shone bright when she cinched it – her protection spell activating and spreading over her body in a shield. Finally, she raised her only weapon: her drum.


The drum was a gift from her mother on the day of her turning. Her mother had promised her the moon, and true to her promise, the large drum was made with the whitest of leathers stretched tight and it played the deepest rumbling. Her turning was a celebration of her sixteenth anniversary of birth, and marked the day her magic came true.


Now was no time for reminiscing, though.


Lilylen joined the warriors below in the great hall who all were armored and ready after enjoying midnight feast. There was a small party of adventurers standing in the center of the hall. Her companions were the fighters Dor and Leaf, the magician Wend, and trickster Fig. They had come with her to Donwyn, excited for the prospect of battle and as true friends. She would owe them everything if they won this battle. She raised her voice loud.


“Friends!” She clapped Dor on the shoulder. “It is time for the cries of battle and the victory! Let us feast our eyes now that we have feasted our bellies, and take down Lord Niccen and his thralls!”


Her words were met with a roar of approval from the crowd. Some warriors banged swords against shields in echoing clangs while they shouted and she cheered back at them.


“That’s the spirit, my good men and women! Join me now on the field!”


The warriors began to pour out of the hall, taking their places on walls and near gates. The battle was not long off, and Lilylen’s blood began to rush in her ears.


“Dor, Leaf, Wend, Fig – you are all my companions through battle again.”


“Lilylen, we fight for you as much for glory.” Dor’s eyes were bright behind her raggedy bangs. “Once we finish this, we will go back to the road and beyond.”


Fig slipped something sneakily into Lilylen’s hand. She looked down to see a small jeweled dagger, sheathed in shadow. She looked at Fig, raising one eyebrow in question. Fig just smiled and crossed his fingers.


“To war, to win!”


—


The adventurers made their way to the head of the warrior’s ranks, and Lilylen called for the gates to be opened. There was a loud creaking and clamoring as the large double gates opened, revealing the battlefield ahead. The warriors and Lilylen’s companions poured out onto the field, readying for the first light of dawn.


The sun rose slow and lazily, peeking through behind the holding and shining light on the thralls. Lilylen spun her drumsticks and rolled them on the drum, creating a deep, low rumble. A light mist fell down from the sky and settled over her fellows, providing cover from the soldiers and putting a protective shield around her fellows. The thrum thrum thrum echoed across the grass, and with that, the soldiers lurched forward, the warriors began to run, and they reached each other in a glorious crash.


The warriors had the strength of their heart and home pulsing through them, and all who heard the sound of Lilylen’s drum were given more power to resist their enemies. She strode forward, slowly, between the fighting, ducking and dodging while Dor and Leaf cleared her path. She had one responsibility only: to get to Niccen.


Dor and Leaf before her ran into the broken ranks of soldiers. The soldiers were technically powerful – precise in movement – but they lacked the intuitive skills of the warriors and adventurers, which failed them. In essence, they were strong only in numbers, just landscape to trample.


Wend walked behind her, casting bolts of mana into the surrounding crowds of soldiers and calling down fire from the sky. Fig was nowhere to be seen, but that was best. His tricks were not to be noticed until they had already been done.


They were nearly through the soldiers, pushing through while the warriors battled against the twice-strong army. At the back of the ranks was Niccen, not even fearful enough to be on a horse, standing proudly as though he were untouchable. He caught Lilylen’s gaze and there was no emotion in his eyes but sneering cruelty. She quickened her pace, leaving Wend behind unknowingly.


She was pressing forward and focused on Niccen, continuing to drum the slow rumble, when she felt a sudden sharp pain in her back. Her breath caught, she felt something within her go empty, and she struggled to breathe. She looked around behind her only to see Fig jump out from behind a soldier and land on another man – a man holding the jeweled dagger she had been carrying. Fig slashed the man’s throat with one sharp swipe, then he collected the dagger and returned it to Lilylen’s pocket.


“Be more careful!” He shouted, and the noise rang in her ears as she gasped for air. She began to lose her footing. Fig’s eyes widened and he placed his hands on her back, whispering an incantation. She felt her heartbeat pumping throughout her body, and slowly felt the pain ease and the air fill her lungs again. The battle pressed in close to them, and there were soldiers moving to attack. Lilylen braced herself.


Suddenly, a clap of thunder sounded and lightning struck, spreading through the bodies of the soldiers, turning them into crisp wastes. Lilylen sighed in relief and doubled her speed, trying to make up for lost time. She reached Niccen quickly.


He didn’t even move. She stood ten feet away from him and all he did was stand there, unafraid, undaunted. She gritted her teeth, and began to pound her drum faster, harder. She opened her mouth, and the sound from inside her was a deep bellow.


“Long we fight and long we live,
we do not fear the dark.
Strong we are and never gone,
we do not fear the burning light.
Hold back the night,
the night so cold.


We fight so long,
long will we live.”


She sang it again and again, her voice becoming louder and louder. Niccen stood there, quietly at first, then laughing. He did not notice the red light growing behind him, growing larger with each drumbeat.


“This is your plan?” He yelled above the drumming. “Sing me to death?”


Niccen moved his hands, muttering an incantation she couldn’t quite catch, even with her unique hearing. There were corpses around her from the battle, and they slowly raised themselves to their feet. Her breath caught in her throat, straining her voice. She found her voice again as she spun around with her drum, changing the beat and singing faster as she slammed bodily into the undead monsters surrounding her. They pressed in on her, grabbing at her clothes and scratching her face. Her heart was pounding in her head. She knew she didn’t have much longer until she would lose control, so she stopped moving and planted her feet. The song was sung.


Lilylen’s voice stopped mid-verse, and she banged on the drum three times in succession, and from behind Niccen appeared a giant, red, translucent dragon. The dragon was massive, a full-sized red dragon with a long crest on it’s head. Its flesh was nothing more than red light, the body of a spirit of vengeance. Niccen turned in response to its roar, and Lilylen imagined that his eyes grew wide. The dragon devoured him in one bite, and inside the dragon Niccen tumbled into its stomach. Lilylen felt elation welling up inside her, until there was a loud pop and Niccen disappeared. She spun around in panic, running into the corpses crowding around her who toppled over, the incantation controlling them no longer held.


“Fig! Dor! Leaf! Wend!” She called for her companions, who were fending off the soldiers. “He’s gone!”


None could hear her. In that moment, she felt a gust of wind burst against her side and tear through the leather of her drum. She gasped and turned to face Niccen, who was spinning a whirlwind. The wind blew so hard that it wrested the drum from her hands and took the air from her lungs. She felt as though her very soul was being pulled from her, but she staggered towards him, her face contorted with rage.


Blood boiling and rage overtaking her, her muscles grew and flexed, and her eyes tightened as the irises turned to bright red. She felt the dagger in her pocket and pulled it out, pressing her body against the whirlwind, her rage strength allowing her to resist it’s power. She screamed and bellowed at Niccen, at the wind, at everything that was in her way of tearing the mage apart.


“I will eat your soul!” Niccen cried out, and now she could hear the fear. She would always hear the fear when her rage rose within her. She breached the wall of wind and watched him tumble backwards. The look of terror on his face was all she needed to see. She tackled him and stabbed the dagger into his heart, twisting and wrenching it. The shadow of the blade spread out through his skin in a spiderweb, blackness filling his veins. She watched until the light left his eyes, hearing the crunch of cartilage and bone beneath her weight.


Soon, she felt the blood draining from her face. Her muscles weakened, and she staggered, falling to the ground beside Niccen’s blood-covered corpse. Around her, the thralls fell down, slowly but surely being overtaken by death.


She felt weightless as Dor and Leaf picked her up and carried her off the field. The warriors crowded around as she was taken to the hall. As she drifted off into weary rest, she heard the song of her people. The depth of their voices. The love in their hearts.


“For life! For victory! For Donwyn!”





THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

Systir Productions and 616


Today I have an interview with Systir Productions, a production team based in London. Amy and Victoria Howell are sisters and multi-award winning creators of ‘The Syndicate’ and ‘616’, the latter of which is currently crowdfunding.


What led you to the film industry?

Vicky has worked in film and theatre for the past 15 years. In fact she trained originally as an actor, then got sidetracked into writing and later to directing, but we’ve both grown up on films of all types – watching horror from probably a much too early age(!) and had often gone over various ideas for stories, but there was a eureka moment whilst back at our mum’s house for xmas 2008 when we just said ‘we should do this!’ Vicky had the industry knowledge and writing experience, Amy had the business experience and the ideas so it was an obvious next step.


What made you choose to work on a webseries?

We started with the intention of making films, to be honest, and the first project we wrote together was actually a feature version of the ‘616’ concept. However, during the course of that script’s development we became sidetracked into the story behind what became our first webseries, ‘The Syndicate’, which again we initially developed as a feature idea. When we wrote ‘The Syndicate’ back in 2009, there were very few webseries about, especially in the UK, but we did stumble across one which was made by the production team behind ‘Torchwood’ called ‘Girl Number Nine’ and this is what introduced us to the concept of webseries. The aspect that appealed to us initially was the ease of distribution and this is what gave us the idea of turning ‘The Syndicate’ into a webseries. Rather than being at the mercy of a distribution company to get your work seen, you just post it online and control the distribution yourself. And we’re really glad we did that, as, if we had tried to release ‘The Syndicate’ as a traditional feature film we could still be sitting around now waiting for a distributor, while, by releasing as a webseries, it has now been seen by almost a million people, travelled to festivals around the world, won awards and put us in touch with Frostbite Pictures who we are now working with on producing ‘616’. So webseries have definitely been lucky for us!


What would you say is your favorite project you worked on, and why?

Your first baby is always special, so ‘The Syndicate’ does hold a unique place in our hearts. It has also brought us a lot of opportunities so we’re also really grateful to it and to everyone who worked on it. We learnt a lot through making ‘The Syndicate’ as well – a baptism of fire in a lot of ways! – and ‘616’ is definitely benefitting from that.


What is ‘616’ about? What makes it worth backing?

‘616’ is a character driven, fantasy/horror webseries in the tradition of Buffy/Angel/Supernatural etc, albeit less glossy as we’re British…! Although it follows in some very established traditions, with ancient evils, magic and end of the world stakes, the concept behind the story, the way this evil manifests, is, so far as we can tell, entirely unique. We’ve watched many a horror film in our time and we’ve certainly never come across it before, so that alone makes it worth backing! Like all the best ideas it’s incredibly simple and you’ll kick yourself when you find out what it is…!


How has your experience been as women in the industry? Do you find any impact on your success?

So far, we’ve been very lucky and haven’t really experienced any overt prejudice or discrimination as a result of being female filmmakers beyond the odd “boys’ club” mentality of the occasional crew member. For the most part our gender has been completely irrelevant and that’s as it should be! We have been known to surprise festival programmers though as, with the nature of our writing, they assume we’re male…

What do you think is the biggest contributor to your success?

We don’t give in. Making low and no budget projects can be like fighting bears uphill through treacle – it’s hard work, it can be slow and frustrating and there is always something trying to stop you, from the weather to needing to pay the rent, but the trick is to just put your head down and keep going.

Thank you so much to Amy and Victoria! Good luck to them on the crowdfunding for ‘616’!

About Systir Productions

Systir Productions is an award winning production team, based in London, and consisting of sisters Amy and Victoria Howell. Amy is a writer/producer with a ten year background in project management and Victoria is a writer/director of over fifteen years experience. They began Systir in 2008 and their first project was a multi-award winning webseries, ‘The Syndicate’, which, due to interest from producers they have now developed into a feature script. The script placed in the finals of the Cascade Pictures Writers’ Couch Initiative in December 2012; semi-finals of the Bluecat Screenplay Competition 2013 and was a finalist for the Bluecat Cordelia Prize for best British script. Systir have also produced three short films, two of which, ‘616’ and ‘Drawn Together’ are live action/animation mix and still in post production – these are due to be finished by early 2014 to be submitted to festivals. The third, ‘6 Shooter’, was made as a competition entry for the Frightfest/Shortcuts to Hell competition 2013.

As a result of taking ‘The Syndicate’ to webseries festivals in 2012, Amy and Vicky met up with Canadian webseries creator Ivan Hayden, who, with co-creators Jason Fischer and Kirk Jacques, was aiming to establish a webseries studio, Frostbite Pictures, to produce high end webseries content. Systir agreed to become the UK arm of Frostbite and are now working on their second webseries, ‘616’, developed from their feature concept/short film of the same name. However, where the original concept was a B movie, effects laden gorefest, the webseries has been developed as a more mainstream, character driven fantasy/horror series in the tradition of Buffy/Supernatural/Grimm etc. ‘616’ is a completely original horror concept, which has never been done – so far as we can tell! – and Systir are very excited to bring the concept to the webseries world. They are shooting just the first three episodes at present as pilot episodes with which they hope to generate production funding for a full series.

As well as writing, directing and producing their own original content, Systir also collaborate with other webseries creators and filmmakers. Most recently, they directed and helped production manage short film ‘Leads and Follows’, a love story set in the world of swing dancing, and award winning comedy horror webseries ‘The Bloody Mary Show’, as well as assistant producing short horror film ‘Anna’.

Systir are currently crowdfunding for ‘616’ and would love it if you could help them out! There are some great perks to be had, so please do follow the link and check it out.

For more information on Systir and their past projects please see their website where you can also watch their first webseries, ‘The Syndicate’. You can also check out the trailers for their short films on the website or on their YouTube channel. If you’re into social media – and who isn’t these days! – follow them on Twitter –systiria and 616series – or Facebook – SystirProductions, TheSyndicateWebseries and 616series, or link up with them on LinkedIn.


THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.

ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.