Tag: interviews

What Makes a Good Player? with Alys Humfleet

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Alys Humfleet! Alys provided a little additional background for the interview, as well. Check it and the interview out below.

—

From Alys:

The very first tabletop/RPG I ever played was a demo for a small independent game … at GenCon. (I got dragged there by a friend of mine because of a resource book release she thought we’d both enjoy. Which got delayed and wasn’t even published by the time we got there, but we had the tickets, so we went.)

I had never played any CRPGs either, (I tended more towards the adventure games), and I’d never even played any of the board games that have some story or plot; my favorite board game by a wide margin is Clue. I say all this just to illustrate how out of my depth I really was; the most clueless of newbies. (I need how many dice? Why are they all weird shapes? What are we doing again? Why? How?)

But I am a writer, have been since my third grade teacher made us do a daily journal and I realized it was fun, so I sat down at that demo, and listened to our GM talk about the game system, and made myself a character I would like to read or write about.

She fit our setting pretty well, and she managed a couple really great and interesting moves throughout the demo, and I had a really good time. (Even if I still had no idea what I was doing. Never let having no idea what youíre doing stop you.)

Now, this company was doing a series of demos with a serialized plot, and a couple people from each demo were picked to continue onto the next one, and then a few from that one would go on again, and then once more throughout the full four days of the Con. Unsurprisingly to me, I was not one of those picked to continue, but the GM took a moment at the end of the game to chat with me about my character, and he commented on how interesting she was, but how she wasn’t interactive enough. (He sounded actually apologetic about it, which was mind-boggling to me, because it hadn’t occurred to me that this thing my friend had made me do with her might be something I could be good at doing, or would ever attempt to do again.)

But I’d made a character with an interesting interior life and internal conflicts (thus good to read or write about), who made a good enough first impression the GM commented on it to me later, but not one whose motivations displayed well and gave the other players something to, well, play off of. And that is the one thing that has always stuck with me about game characters, tabletop or computer. They inhabit a world, they work with other characters, and it is only in those interactions that the gaming happens. Otherwise you’re just playing solitaire. (Which can be fun too, of course, but is not at all the same thing.)


(BrieCS): What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

(Alys) Learning from this, I realize that the very first thing I have to do when I am creating a character that will enhance both my experience and the rest of the players, is make sure that they are flexible enough to be active and reactive. A good game is never just about you. In character creation terms, this can be influenced by your systemís use of strengths and flaws, classes and skills, the spread of various stats. The mechanics change from game to game, but the point is that you both have something to offer, and some way to screw everything up. (Itís recovering from failure where things get interesting, after all.) You can play a quiet introverted character (though it is more difficult) but you still have to give them a stake in the proceedings, you have to give them a reason to act, and a reason to react to the other charactersí actions and behaviors.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

While I certainly seldom consciously break it down, I am sure the way I play is influenced by the way I write, (itís still about moving the character around, in either case), and the bits of drama class and improv class that I still remember from when I was in school.

The first thing they ask you when trying to write plot, is what is the worst thing you can do to your character. What is the one thing they absolutely do not know how to handle … because that is exactly what should happen to them. (Make your character uncomfortable! Thatís usually the fastest way to make them do something.)

The most important concept they teach you in any beginning improv class is that you can’t say no to whatever the last person did, you can’t ignore it and go on with whatever you were thinking about before, you have to say yes, AND. You have to take what the other players and GM give you and build off that, even if it wasn’t at all what you thought you were going to be doing when you started. That doesn’t mean you should forget your personal goals for your character or the plot, but you have to let everything else happen as well.

It’s also really helpful, especially when you’re first starting a campaign, to make sure you’re familiar with the other characters, so you can help create the situations that will make them uncomfortable, that force them into action. (Also so you have decent party balance in terms of solving problems. Clerics are awesome! Be the lone cleric and save everyone’s lives over and over again! Can we tell I have a type?)

It helps to develop all your characters as a group, if you can, maybe even take a look at the other players’ character sheets (or however much they’re willing to share; sometimes someone has secrets, after all, and finding them out in game is a large part of the fun). Remember that the team dynamic is more important to a successful and entertaining game than anything else. You’re choosing to hang out with these people for hours or days or even years at a time. Make sure your character has a reason to stay, and make sure you, the player, will enjoy it.

That doesn’t mean your team can’t have conflict, but they have to have a reason to keep working together anyways, or your group will splinter apart.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

Ideally, I find a weekly game helps keep momentum, and makes sure you all remember what you were doing and why. Realistically, very few people have consistent weekly schedules so every two weeks or even every month can also work, but I find trying to meet every week means that, even when something goes wrong so you miss a week or two here or there, it’s easier to get back into the game as soon as possible. If you only meet once a month, and one month one person can’t, and the next month someone else can’t, you lose group cohesion and motivation. It becomes a chore you have to try and get back to, rather than a hobby you’re enjoying.

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

I like all sorts of games. I find it easier to get into games that are more free-form (fewer stats, less well-defined locations, no miniatures/battle maps, etc) just because that’s what I started with, and I have always been the kind of person who writes by making up sh*% as I go along. (I am what, in writer circles, is referred to as a gardener or a pantser. As in I write by the seat of mine, and seldom have much of a plan. Outlines tend to slow me down.) It can be a lot of fun to just BS your way through a gaming session. (As long as the other players are helping out, of course.) Let the voices in your head go free and see what happens. (I am, at the moment, playing a Fate Accelerated game, which is pretty much the epitome of that philosophy. You have a few approaches, and a few aspects, and a couple stunts, and everything else you figure out as you go along.)

That said, a game with a really deep mechanics/lore system is also a lot of fun, because you have so much to work with, so many potential hooks into the world and the other characters to help you make your character deeper and more invested in the surroundings. It can also be helpful if you’re in a difficult situation in game, because you have a list of abilities/skills/tricks/etc. that you have chosen, that fit your character, that you can go through to help you decide what to do next, rather than having to think up something entirely new each time you have an encounter.

(Also, it’s only when you have a variety of skills/abilities to try and apply in unusual ways that you get most of the best stories that show up on something like an outofcontextDnD website. You can’t get that completely unexpected juxtaposition of skill/setting/player if you don’t have a skill-check that gave you an unusual result, or a well-defined trope or setting to subvert.)

So basically, I like them all, (I am no help, sorry!) but it’s important to use the mechanics/setting/style that your group is most interested in as a whole, because that’ll keep you all coming back.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

It’s hard to describe these in detail, because they’re usually so reliant on context. Any time you can defuse the most obvious plan and do something different to resolve it? That’s a win. Anytime you drive another character into doing something they didn’t think they could do? That’s a win. Did you try something new and it failed mightily? Even thay’s a win. Even if your party loses their battle and runs into the woods and has to regroup and everyone ís terrified and yelling at each other, and maybe even someone almost died or got kidnapped or really actually died and now you have to try and heal them or save them or mourn them and everything is TERRIBLE … you made the game change because of something you did. And now you have to fix it! More to do right now!

Specifically? In my very first game, when we’d almost entirely screwed up what was basically a boss-battle encounter, and I was in the worst possible position to attack the giant-evil-mech that had shown up, I tried anyways, and rolled a critical success.

The GM just paused for a moment, and tilted his head. “The gun explodes.” The mech was very annoyed and made terrible mechanical yelling sounds and tried to stomp on people, since it couldn’t shoot them anymore. It was delightful. Part of what makes games so interesting is the randomness introduced by the dice. Sometimes the best moment will be the one moment no one had any control over.

Sometimes, the best moments come from the roleplaying. Near the climax of a campaign, while we were fighting an agent of the final villain, my character got completely side-tracked from the actual quest, and instead commented on the agent herself, because my character was personally offended by her actions. (They were both from the same race of elves, and to have one of her own people screw up so badly was infuriating.) She ignored the fight that was building, the Evil they were hunting, and just basically yelled about what a terrible example of their Clans that the agent had become.
Probably not the smartest thing, especially since she wasn’t charismatic, or good with people, or really very sensible a lot of the time. But she was powerful, and she was mad.

And it worked. With the help of the agentís long-estranged daughter they broke through the Evil Influence, the agent gave them a ring that would help in the final stage of the quest, and then sacrificed herself so she couldnít be used again.

We bypassed an entire potential battle! For which the GM had done quite a bit of preparation, but he was delighted, because weíd done such a good job bringing it back to the characters and the setting. A good GM knows how to improvise when the players go off the rails. Sometimes thatís when the best stuff happens. Sometimes it just makes a big mess and you spend a couple sessions trying to get yourselves back in order again, but that’s fine too. You’re still doing things together as a group.
The basis of tabletop gaming, for me, is that it is collaborative entertainment. Whether it turns into a dense political story, or is a ridiculous dungeon crawl that always seems to end up with someone losing a boot and limping into the next room and you’re looting piles of gold and dripping jewels and blood by the end doesnít matter, as long as itís what your group is trying to make together. Yes, your character may do something that is detrimental to the other characters, your group may devolve into petty arguing and inter-party conflict (or they might be best friends and family, or an endless shifting combination of both) but anything is fine as long as the players are still working together and moving the game along.

—

Thank you so muc to Alys for the interview! Hope you all enjoyed reading this week’s What Makes a Good Player? feature!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Five or So Questions with Tod Foley on Other Borders

Today I chatted with Tod Foley on his new game Other Borders, which is currently available digitally on DriveThru RPG, RPGnow, and OpenGamingStore. It’s a DramaSystem based game and sounds pretty interesting! The print edition hits in December 2016. Check out the interview below!

—

Tell me a little about Other Borders. What excites you about it?

Other Borders is a DramaSystem game of drugs, money and magic in the modern American southwest, originally conceived as an expansion for Tom McGrenery’s “Malandros”. The first thing that excited me about working on this project was the Malandros system itself – you might call it “the Malandros branch of DramaSystem”. Mechanically, it’s a simplified version of DS; there are no cards and fewer tokens. But it also has Character Types and Moves inspired by Vincent Baker’s PbtA (“Powered by the Apocalypse”) system. I really wanted to work on a setting that would embrace the genre of “magical realism” in a dramatic and spontaneous way, and Tom’s rules gave me that opportunity: the town of Entrelugares is a place where drug cartels and law enforcement come face to face with the powers of traditional magic. In fact to the best of my knowledge, it’s the first DramaSystem game to include rules for magic. That’s very exciting to me, and I’m looking forward to hearing all the trippy things people do with it.

What have you done with the Drama System mechanics that players might find new and interesting?

The Malandros branch uses the same definitions of scenes, scene types, and drama tokens as any other DramaSystem game, but adds procedural moves. These moves are written in a way that will be familiar to PbtA players, although only 1d6 is used: a total of 2 or less represents failure and/or a problem arising, 3-5 represents a partial success (often with a cost), while a total of 6+ represents a full success. And like PbtA games, there’s a list of GM Moves that are taken in response to low rolls and “what now” moments.

Other Borders also adds a statistic called “Poder” which represents your character’s magical power. Poder may be used to add a die to your pool, or to enhance the efficacy of certain magical moves. But I think the most interesting thing is the way this magic plays out: it’s different every time. Magic is highly personalized and unpredictable, because its effects are made up and narrated by the players themselves. There are four types of magic in the game: A class of “general magic” which is common and ceremonial, plus Brujeria (Sorcery/Dark Witchcraft), Chamanismo (Shamanic/Mestizo Magic), and Curanderismo (Healing Magic).

La Santa Muerte
What kind of research did you do for the project, since it is related to some fraught topics?
Most of the “magical realism” stuff was simply drawn from years of reading. Today magical realism is a recognized genre practiced by authors around the world, but its roots are Latin American, and many works in the genre were first written in Spanish. A particularly seminal work was “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez. My academic sources included the works of writers and literary critics such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Jüri Talvet and Wendy Faris. The criminal elements (cartels and gangs) are drawn mostly from television and movies, from “Weeds” to “Colors” to “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”, and from my studies on Santa Muerte. As for the fictional city of Entrelugares itself, it’s an amalgam of research data on real US/Mexican border towns such as Naco, Arizona and Nogales, New Mexico. But I’ve made it very dense, small and isolated, for dramatic effect. Such a place probably couldn’t exist in the real world, but it’s perfectly suitable for a movie or a telenovela.
What audience are you aiming for with Other Borders, and why?
You know what? I really wrote it to please myself, because Tom gave me a chance to do whatever I wanted to do. I love the genre, I love the culture and the people (I’m from the southwest and I live in a part of Las Vegas which is mostly Latino: El Dia de Muerte is a bigger holiday than Halloween in my neighborhood). But really, I guess the first thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to write magic for DramaSystem. Everything else followed from that.

How do you approach character and player interaction – PvP, collaborative, etc. – and how is that reflected in the mechanics and fiction?
As in all DS games, players are able to insert details (or themselves) into scenes pretty freely. If a conflict arises on the meta level, players can enter into a back-and-forth with Drama Tokens until the scene is settled one way or the other, and the GM Moves are there to keep things jumping even if the players don’t have any immediate ideas.

On the character level, enmity is a totally acceptable form of relationship: this is a TV show and sometimes it’s fun to play the bad guys – but “bad guy” is a relative term. The town of Entrelugares has many factions and character types: in addition to townspeople and immigrants there are smugglers, gangs, cartel bosses, cops, academics, new age hippies, and a variety of magical practitioners both light and dark. It’s possible to play a cooperative scenario like “townspeople banding together to rid the city of drug smugglers”, or a competitive scenario like “cops versus the cartel”. It’s all up to the group, and what they want to play. Because the game includes both modern weapons and powerful magic, if you get into combat it’s fairly easy to get debilitated (at least for a while), but the stress and harm rules are forgiving enough so that not a lot of characters will end up dying.

As far as action resolution mechanics go, the modifications Tom made for Malandros created a set of rules that makes it easier for characters to accomplish things on their own, compared to a traditional DS game like Hillfolk. This makes for a faster-paced “episode” with “hard cuts” to different locations, so characters can get more done in less time and this moves the plot along quickly. But of course, they are all tied to each other by direct relationships established in CharGen, and this (in addition to the Drama Token rules) guarantees that their paths must keep crossing in dramatic ways. Its very telenovela-like.

Anything else you want to add?

Thank you for taking the time to interview me, Brie. It’s always a pleasure talking with you, and I hope you and your readers enjoy the game!

Encounter with the Magical Woman

—

Thanks to Tod for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview, and if you want, check out Other Borders on the various available sources!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Five or So Questions with Avery Alder on Monsterhearts 2

Hi All! I recently contacted Avery Alder about doing an interview for Monsterhearts 2, the second edition of Monsterhearts that is currently on Kickstarter, and she accepted! The original flavor of Monsterhearts is one of my favorite games and was one of my first steps into the story gaming culture and gaming style, and I’ve written about my experiences while playing it a little bit in the past. I hope you enjoy reading this interview with Avery!

—

Tell me a little about Monsterhearts 2. What excites you about it?

Monsterhearts 2 is a game about the messy lives of teenage monsters, exploring what it means to have a body and desires that are changing without your permission. It’s written with a queer lens for understanding desire, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that every character you play is going to be queer. I think the project is really exciting for me personally because it’s an opportunity to focus on refining something I was already proud of. I published the first edition of Monsterhearts in 2012, and since then people have often told me how lucid and inspiring the text and design are. And looking back at it, I agree that it’s solid. But I also see all these ways that it could be tighter, that I could better contextualize the mechanics, that rough edges could be smoothed down. And so it’s exciting to have a chance to do that work.

I’ve played Monsterhearts quite a few times and the issue of attraction and asexuality has come up a lot. I saw in your new sneak-peek of the game you address this. Could you talk a little more about how you’re addressing it and the motivations behind it, for the readers who haven’t delved into the material yet?
Definitely! Monsterhearts explores what it means to have shifting, confusing desires. There are rules about turning people on and gaining power over them. The way those rules are designed intentionally challenges some of the dominant narratives that our culture has about how sexuality works – that it is fixed, that it is predictable, and that it is binary. I think challenging those narratives works out really well in play, too. It means that every session is surprising and feral.

But there was this other dynamic that the first edition introduced, of unwittingly reinforcing another set of dominant narratives about sexuality – that everyone is sexual, and that everyone is equally available for sex. And I think that in designing the game the way that I did, I did a disservice to asexuals and to survivors of sexual trauma. I aligned myself with dominant narratives that erased and hurt them. Since 2012, I’ve had people bring that to my attention and I’ve sat with their criticism. I knew that the core of the game should stay the way it was, but that I needed to create space for these other stories as well. I’m still figuring out how to introduce these new mechanics into the game gracefully!


A subject near and dear to my heart is boundaries and safe experiences in games. You’ve written about it in Safe Hearts, and I’m interested to know more – what are your goals with your new chapter on the subject? How do you personally, as a creator, approach tough subjects while still allowing for the inherent mistakes in social interactions that are so common for teens?
Part of my approach in writing Safe Hearts (an essay from 2014 that’s being adapted into a chapter in the new book) was to establish priorities. It’s easy to over-simplify questions like “How do we take care of each other’s emotions while doing something emotionally vulnerable together?” It’s also easy to over-think them until you feel anxious and immobilized! And so my approach was to suggest a list of priorities: focus on this first, then focus on this if you have the capacity, and then finally this. The three concentric circles of priorities that the essay outlines are: first to ourselves, then to others at the table, then to the characters we’re portraying.
The text I wrote in that essay isn’t being revised very much as it makes its way into the new book. I feel like what I wrote on the subject in 2014 remains solid. Most of the revisions are just adjusting the way it flows to make it fit better as a chapter in a larger text.
Strings are a really interesting in-game currency. Can you tell me a little about what new you’re introducing for them and how you hope it will impact gameplay?
Strings are at the core of Monsterhearts. They tell a story about how power is unevenly and intimately distributed between characters. They represent the way that leverage is gained and used. The biggest change to Strings in the new edition is that they’ve been streamlined. This was really important, because in the first edition people would work to acquire Strings, but then they’d just sit there idle on the character sheet. The mechanics for actually spending Strings were a little too cumbersome for new players to grapple with, so they would get ignored. And other bits of the game (like the Manipulate an NPC move) directed players away from figuring out how to use the Strings economy. In the new version, the mechanics for spending Strings are more simple and more visible.
What do you hope to personally take away from your experience working on Monsterhearts 2, beyond satisfaction in a job well done?
I published the first edition of Monsterhearts while I was still figuring out where my place in queerness was. A year later I started coming to terms with being trans. And throughout that time, I started to gain recognition from wider audiences. Returning to write Monsterhearts 2 is exciting because I’m in a different place now personally. I’m a queer trans woman, I know my own politics better, and I’m excited to bring new voice and perspective to bear on this text.
Another thing I’m excited to take away from my experience working on Monsterhearts 2 is a better understanding of how to synthesize community feedback and incorporate it into a revision process. I’m holding four years of feedback in my brain. I put out a survey to learn more about people’s experiences and it garnered 766 responses. But at the same time, I’m the person most intimately acquainted with the game’s goals and pitfalls. How do you make sense of all that data, honour all that feedback, while still remaining confident in your own instincts and vision? I’m learning new skills.

For a game about queerness, Monsterhearts & Monsterhearts 2 could seem hard to approach for someone out of the queer community, and I’ve seen your work raise a lot of awareness for people like that. What do you think straight, cis people can gain by playing a game like Monsterhearts – or what would you hope they do? 
I think that everyone has confusing, complicated memories about what it was like to be a teenager. And a huge part of Monsterhearts 2 is telling those sorts of stories, exploring those sorts of feelings. While queerness adds an important dimension, I think that everyone is able to bring their own life experiences to the table. And I hope that straight, cis people feel invited to engage with these themes and be challenged by them.
or like, I hope everyone plays Monsterhearts 2 and I hope it makes them gay.

—

Thanks so much to Avery for the great interview! I really enjoyed talking with her and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. Check out Monsterhearts 2 on Kickstarter now, if it sounds like your kind of game!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Five or So Questions with Jim Tait on Four Corners: Thieves of Sovereignty

Today I have an interview with Jim Tait on Four Corners: Thieves of Sovereignty, which is currently on Kickstarter! Check out what he has to say about his new game below.

—

Tell me a little about your project. What excites you about it?

The world of Four Corners: Thieves of Sovereignty is one where what you believe about the world and your place in it gives you magical powers to control or embody at least one of eight elements: air, water, earth, fire, cloud, metal, glass, and lightning. You play a hypercompetent hero trying to make the world a better place, and standing a good chance at succeeding, eventually. The game uses FATE Core mechanics, with some adaptations, which allows for some fantastic storytelling. The book is intended to be welcoming of players of diverse genders, sexual orientations, and backgrounds, and I invite feedback from supporters of the kickstarter while the book undergoes graphic design and illustration.
What excites me about the kickstarter is sharing my world with a wider audience, hearing their feedback, and watching Tetra (the name of the setting) come alive through the skilled artistry of Elizabeth Porter.

Can you talk about the mechanical changes you made from the Fate Core mechanics, and why you made them?

Fate Core has mechanics for four different actions, including Attack and Create an Advantage, and a long list of nouns which are skills letting you do one to four of these types of actions. Fate Accelerated has a list of six adjectives from which you can choose how you approach any of the four actions. I wanted to find a middle ground between these two options, and wrote a list of twelve verbs, three for each type of action. One for taking the action in a physical context, one for a social context, and one for an intellectual context. For example, you can roll Fight to attack someone or something physically, Unnerve to attack someone’s reputation or social standing, or you can roll Confound to attack someone’s ideas or mental well-being. All twelve verbs are on the character sheet from the start, but not all at the same level of ability, to reflect that even the most competent of characters have some angles from which they are more comfortable coming at a situation than others.

Where did you get your inspiration for the setting and mechanics?


Like several other fantasy or speculative fiction worldbuilders have, I started with a “What if?” question. I feel strongly that the choices we make are influenced heavily by what we believe is possible and proper, but that many of us don’t consciously consider what beliefs we’re working under, and assume that other people’s beliefs are more similar to ours than they actually are. I started with the question of, “What if the things we considered possible and desirable came with some sort of obvious indicator?” I was studying the similarities and differences between Christian denominations when I started working on this setting, and there’s a Bible verse that says, “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” and wondered what the world would be like if this was a regular practice? What if all people who held to a particular faith, philosophy or worldview moved mountains around as part of their daily routine? Then I sketched out details of thirteen different worldviews, and created mechanics for different magical powers each worldview made accessible to those who held to it.

How did you work to make the game approachable for diverse audiences? 

I did a lot of reading and researching, over the past several years, on inclusive gaming, representation, cultural appropriation, and toxic tropes. I would love to guarantee that this meant none of my ignorances and biases made it into the text, but I know I can not. I welcome feedback.

I did strive to make sure that every culture I created was not just a thin stereotype of a culture in this world, but an outline including fashion, economy, government, values which are celebrated, birth and death rituals, and thoughts as to how both their magic and interactions with other cultures have influenced them over time.

While there are some cultures I wrote with assumptions about gender which cause the titles at the top of government structures to be gendered, every other military or government title (not coincidentally, the ones more likely to be held by player characters) is gender neutral. All of the sample names are presented as gender neutral. My example characters at the end of each nation write-up include one who has masculine pronouns, one who has feminine pronouns, and one who has the gender neutral singular they as a pronoun.

In two of the three empires, sexual orientation is not an in-world issue. The Ambrosian Empire is so regulated that all long-term relationships are formed by contract with clauses on intent, duration, and renegotiation. The Konung Empire is so filled with anarchy that alliances and betrayals don’t consider sexual orientation on more than the most personal level of mutual compatibility. The Utopian Empire has rules about who you can have children with, and I’m belatedly realizing I’m going to have to expand those rules to include adoption because sexual orientation is not properly a key factor for them, either.

Smaller societies include the Wayfarers who have arranged marriages to promote traits they want in future generation, the Ice Guardians who have arranged Handfastings which teams up skills and strengths to create pairs of hands that work for the Guardians, and may or may not include sex between the two partners, and the Chosen Tribes, who do not have a concept like marriage, but have a strong concept of consent.

I am hoping everyone who sits down to play this game is able to see people like them, and create people like they want to be.

Tell me a little about the world of Four Corners. What kind of characters and environments do you see during play, and what kind of stories can you tell?

The world, with a few magical exceptions, has a technology level equal to ours about 2000 years ago. There is one main continent, with four corners. Three empires have split most of the continent between them, and kraken- magically giant squid- destroy any ship that goes too far from land. Each of the three empires want to take over the entire continent, but they are fairly equally balanced in power, and they are not the only ones fighting to have their worldview be either dominant, or at least independent. 
You might choose to be a member of the unofficial shadow empire, gathering evidence for judges as to what really happened in the cases they preside over. You might choose to be a sorcerer of steam and clockwork obsessed with creating something no one ever has before, in a castle long ruined by warfare and anarchy. You might choose to be a weather mage, uninterested in fighting with your neighbours over when it should rain, instead living on shipboard with a captain choosing the day’s forecast. You might choose to be a functionally redundant bureaucrat in a city of over 500,000 residents, with certain wild animals given social precedence over yourself so that you have to give way to horses during court banquets, and you quietly pass messages on behalf of an estranged Empress who is said to value ability over bloodline. You might risk your life travelling across the country, arranging faked deaths and real marriages between clans who refuse to leave their conquered homelands. You might choose to join the Air Forces with a bunch of hedonistic dragonriders and fly against an enemy that has learned to craft arrowheads that can disenchant dragons, causing them to fall apart in mid-air. You might lead a rebellion against the conquering of your homeland, disavowed by your leaders and facing a hierarchy-worshipping army which has learned to work together to rain fire down from the skies. You might be a visionary, seeing a new way to relate to the elements, and upsetting every status quo by introducing a new religion, and a new sorcery.
I encourage stories where you think about what it means to make the world a better place, then step up and do something about it, whether through wit, diplomacy, battle, or magic. There are many places on Tetra where a hero is needed.

—

Thanks so much to Jim for the interview! Make sure to check out Four Corners: Thieves of Sovereignty on Kickstarter if you get the chance!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Danella Georgiev

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Danella Georgiev. Danella talks about genre preference and character relationships.

—

What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

As important as it is to try to progress the story, I’ve always found it’s more fun — for me as well as others — when we hang around between plot points and trade in-character banter. It doesn’t need to be long, but a few quips help pace the scene so it’s not just action-action-action go a long way. This also builds relationships between the characters… which is really what makes a game an RPG and not just a numeric dungeon crawl.

A lot of times it’ll draw out recurring themes and comments from individual characters and develop their personal subplots. It gives us all a sense of accomplishment to look back at the early “episodes” and see the changes.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

I haven’t formally studied creative writing or acting, so I’m not sure, but I do remember (and took to heart) something from my high school improv class: Always Say Yes.

That doesn’t mean your character has to agree with every single plan, but even their protests and complaints should try to highlight an alternative solution or motivation to complete a task. If you spend the whole session bickering about why you shouldn’t do task the NPC assigned, it’s a waste. It’s always more fun and more growth to see a reluctant undertaking. Part of this is on the GM, as well; the best quests are ones that are motivated by more than one reason.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

Most of my group is made of busy adults with a low energy level, so as fun as it is to be in a group of nerds, I find anything over three hours a session to be draining. We’re fairly distractable as it is, so if we go longer than that, we’ll get really wishy-washy. A few years ago, we had one that was 4-5 hours and it was fun but my butt started to hurt.

I’d love to play a second session a week but we’re all really busy. #goals, though.

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

Not sure whether this is a mechanics or genre question, but I like my fantasy and sci-fi very much. It’s where I live. It allows you to dress it up with humor, drama, romance, horror, everything. There’s a lot of settings to choose from or a lot of places to draw inspiration from if you’re going from scratch. Any opportunity to delve into the things original writers/showrunners never did is one I try to seize.

This makes FATE my favorite system to work with because it’s so flexible and adaptable.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game? 

I try to experiment with different roles (in combat and in social interactions), but my favorite was a pissed off elf I played in my very first tabletop. Despite being very contrary, combative, and oppositional, and despite me being new to the experience, I think I nailed the sweet spot between annoying, useful, and thought-provoking. Mechanically, she was great in a fight and did a lot of damage. But I think her presence changed the nature of the game from an adventure to a story about the dynamics of family and upbringing. 
—
Thanks to Danella for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Five or So Questions with Darren Watts on Golden Age Champions

Today’s interview is with Darren Watts for his project Golden Age Champions, a setting book for the Champions superheroic game using the generic Hero system. It’s currently on Kickstarter, waiting for you to check it out! Let’s see what Darren had to say about his project.

—

Tell me a little about Golden Age Champions. What excites you about it?

Golden Age Champions is a setting book for Champions, the superhero game using the generic Hero System that’s been around in various editions since 1981. Specifically, it describes the Champions Universe (the modern version of which I co-wrote with Steve Long back in 2002) of 1938 to 1950, but more importantly it teaches GMs and players about the genre of Golden Age superheroing. We go into extensive discussion of the tropes, the styles of play, and the kinds of stories you can use these building blocks to tell at your table.
The Golden Age is at the same time similar and alien to fans of modern superheroing. Many of your favorite characters were created then: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America. But the Golden versions of those characters aren’t exactly quite the same as the ones you know. Many of the assumptions we make about how superheroes “work” were set back then, but again there are plenty of concepts that will be brand new to today’s gamers and fans. There are hundreds of superheroes in the period you’ve never heard of, and some of them are downright boggling.
The book is also a lot about how to run historical long-term campaigns. I’ve run several for years at a time, starting well before the war and carrying all the way through and past it. How do superhumans go to war? How do simple characters grow and change over time? How do we play with these amazing, imagination-charged concepts that don’t quite fit modern sensibilities? Indeed, how do we address the differences between then and today; both the social ones (the unfortunately-all-too-common racism and sexism, the ever-present shadow of the war) and the more technical ones (why do these characters keep splitting up?) that make for rough gaming at today’s table?
For some background, can you tell me about the game system Golden Age Champions is a supplement for?
Champions runs on the Hero System, a generic point-buy system that first debuted in 1981 and originally created by Steve Peterson and George McDonald. It’s famously crunchy, but most of the crunch is in character creation. It’s designed with a great many “adjustable settings” so that it can simulate a wide range of genres and play styles. Most Hero books focus on a specific setting or genre, so it scores very high on the “simulationist” axis. There have been six editions over the years, and I was president of the company for the last two of them. 
The Champions Universe is the long-running fictional superhero setting for Champions. It’s also the basis for the MMO Champions Online, who are the actual IP holders and our business partners. I’ve kind of been the keeper of continuity since I wrote most the 5th Ed Champions Universe back in 2002.
Tell me some exciting things about running long-term campaigns! What kind of information do you have in the book for GMs to make them happen?
Well, the first thing you have to do is get great players! Or teach them to be great, I suppose, but I’ve been very lucky over the years. Then, you have to get them invested in the setting, which needs to be both deep enough to hold their interest and yet open enough that they have room to contribute and take some ownership. In this case I follow Ken Hite’s truism, “nothing is as interesting as the real world.” World War II is such a fascinating period, and I try very hard to bring it alive for the players. In my campaigns we have a very strong sense of time and place, moving month by month through the war and letting the great narrative of the actual history inform everything we do.
With superheroes in particular, you have to be careful. Players coming to a GA setting are presumably at least somewhat interested in the war itself from a historical basis, which means among other things they want the setting to remain based in the historical reality. They want to see Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Berlin, etc. and participate in it all on some level. But with characters who are too powerful, there’s also a strong pull to the question of “why didn’t Superman and Green Lantern and the Spectre, etc., all just fly to Tokyo on December 8th and stomp it flat, and while they’re at it take out Berlin on the 9th?” The tension created by those answers is interesting and fertile, I think.
How did you approach the sometimes-tough topics of racism and sexism in the era? Did you address any other issues like homophobia?
Well, I stay aware that I’m telling superhero stories, and so most of my characters are broad and the heroes in particular are idealized. But on the other hand I don’t want to ignore the range of people’s experiences or to whitewash history. My game includes female characters who show considerably more agency and breadth than most period comics (Wonder Woman as a notable exception!), and I have heroes who are POCs which were vanishingly rare in the period. As idealized heroes, we kind of default to an ahistorical sense of social justice because that’s just nicer to play. However, we do talk about the sexism and particularly the racism that motivated a lot of the horror on all sides of the war (and the US was a terrible offender itself- one of the sample heroes is a nisei from California who is fighting for a country who is currently imprisoning his family.) As superhero stories do, we can also talk in grand allegory- the Atlanteans are terribly prejudiced against airbreathers, and “lander” is one of the nastiest words in their vocabularies. I haven’t specifically talked much about homophobia in the book, but one character is clearly gay and again, in this idealized setting, his teammates know and help him keep it from becoming public.
[Blogger note: POC stands for people of color, just in case you didn’t know!]
Can you offer some of the concepts you think will be new to gamers and fans today, to help players and GMs understand what they might be getting into?
I’m not sure there’s anything “brand new” in either the rules or setting- I’m trying to reintroduce a quite old thing, actually, as far as the genre goes. If you’ve never been exposed to the sheer joy in goofy creativity of the period comics, then I hope to show you what’s lovable about it. Comics at the time were initially intended for small children, and it took publishers a few years to realize the size of their adult audience- Captain Marvel was the best selling periodical at military PX’s, beating out magazines like Time and Life! 
—

Golden Age Champions sounds pretty cool! There’s a lot to think about in the world of superheroes, and it looks like Darren has done a fair amount of that. Check out the game on Kickstarter, and share this interview to spread the word if you like it!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Kate Bullock

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Kate Bullock. Kate talks about gaming regularly and Powered by the Apocalypse games!

—

What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

I try really hard to find out what people are doing with their characters, what they want in terms of challenges or moments of shining, and I try to give it to them. I try to put my own character out there so that I can help invest in other people’s stories and help them shine. To enhance my own experience, I invest in other players’ characters and so my story is impacted by their story doing well or thriving. I also try to go for what’s good for their characters’ stories over mine, but I find that very satisfying. 

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

I ask very pointed questions, which is a big part of the PbtA systems. I’ll pause to even ask “What do you want out of this?” so I can help facilitate that into happening. I’ll also do some ground work ahead of time by finding points of story where I can push as my character and come to the table prepared to engage the other characters with new problems or ways to bring forward more story. I also use the X-Card at everything because I find it lets me dig deeper and play darker because there’s a safety hatch in play.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

I play campaign games anywhere from 2 – 6 times a week. I game regularly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and some Sundays. On Mondays I usually blog or podcast. I love gaming. It’s part of my life blood. The best way for me to maintain good energy is to stay engaged and listen and ask questions. I find emotionally investing myself helps a lot and eating good food and having good snacks and lots of water. I also spend a lot of time talking to people online about what they want to see so I have cool ideas before I get to the table, but I’m not beholden to them. I’m happy to let the fiction do its own thing and follow it where it may lead.


What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

I play for emotionally intense experiences, most often of the sad and dramatic kind. This has lead me down the PbtA road towards Urban Shadows and Monsterhearts a lot. I also really enjoy story games, like Before the Storm, Fall of Magic, Summerland, and a few others. Anything that addresses emotional feedback and payoff. I’m comfortable with almost any game, as I’ve played a lot, but the minute things get very detailed and simulationist, or have a huge expansive world that requires a certain degree of canon knowledge, I’m out. 

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

 Hm. Most of my special experiences are as a GM. But I was playing Monsterhearts a few years ago as the mortal. It was my “job” to make people feel like monsters, but also feel human at the same time and offer salvation and redemption with kindness and love. I had been terrified when all of my friends became their darkest selves, so I made a deal with a fae redcap to let him out of the fae realm if he gave me fairy dust that would remove the monster from my friends. And then I proceeded to find all my monster friends, whom were all guys who had some interest in my mortal character, and blow dust on them, at time when a murderous fae was on the loose (oops). My lover got out of his darkest self, found me, we had sex after saying I love you, and he became the demon darkest self once again. It caused a lot of drama, a lot of issues, and drove story in a great way that included everyone. I dug it.

—

Thanks so much to Kate for participating! I hope you all enjoyed reading.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Kirt Dankmyer


In today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature, we have an interview with Kirt Dankmyer! Check out his interview below.

Note: Content warning for discussion of negative player behavior including the topic of rape in game.

—

What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?
​So, like most avid players, I can be somewhat of an attention hog, so one thing I try do the most often is make a deliberate effort to share spotlight. This isn’t entirely unselfish, as watching other people go is great for sparking creativity, and even the most “conventional” fellow player has all sorts of surprising things in them.​

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

​Hmmm. I did improv in college, but I never cross-applied the techniques much, except maybe the principle of saying “yes” to suggestions about what’s going on (yes, we’re brothers… yes, I’m in love with you). That is, avoiding negation when possible, because that slows down the flow of play.​

Rather than having a particular grab-bag of techniques I always use, I try to make use of the narrative potential or opportunities created by a particular ruleset and/or setting to its fullest extent. For example, in 13th Age, you in essence make up your own skill list, which can be as flavorful as you like, while still being useful in a generic way. So, given that opportunity, I make sure to take the skill “Burglar Emeritus of the Drakkenhall Rogue’s Guild” rather than just “Thievery.” Even something like old-school AD&D has areas where you can do something like this, though obviously some games provide more opportunities than others.



How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
​I like to game once a week. I used to like to game more often, but I’m in my 40s now and I get exhausted more easily.

As long as I feel like I can actually affect the action in some way, I can usually maintain pretty decent energy. Obviously, a game that pushes my various genre loves (science fiction, post-apocalyptic, cross-genre, urban fantasy)​ ​or system preferences (highly focused, indie-style games) helps maintain energy. I’m an introvert, but gaming is one of those areas where I’m super comfortable, so using gaming as an opportunity to interact with people I like and even to meet new, interesting people also helps me maintain energy.

The flipside of the latter is I’m not afraid to drop a game if it’s not working for me, particularly if there’s a personality conflict or some other dysfunctionality. I don’t believe that any gaming is better than no gaming. I’m sad to say I’ve been in several games that were way, way worse than no gaming at all, especially in terms of the amount of negative emotional energy that they generated. ​

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

​So, I have a big soft spot for cross-genre stuff, but in terms of “pure” genres, as I mentioned before, I’m pretty big on urban fantasy and science fiction, particularly post-apocalyptic stuff and space opera. Being in a genre I’m a fan of and/or comfortable with is a good start.

Setting aside, as a Forge veteran, I know that system matters. I’m most comfortable with a game that has a very specific thing it is trying to do and does it well, ideally in as a tight manner as possible. Even a “generic” game can do this; Fate covers a lot of genres, but it’s very focused on a particular style of cinematic play and the rules encourage a particular sort of narrative arc. As another example, I’m a big fan of the Powered by the Apocalypse games, particularly the subtle way the chosen list of moves influences how the game runs. Even if I think a system is a little too complex for my tastes, like GUMSHOE, I can respect a decent implementation of a game’s focus, such as the way GUMSHOE handles investigative play and clue gathering. ​I’m also a huge fan of games that share more power with the players than the “traditional” D&D paradigm.

So, the sweet spot for me is a game that has a focused rules that allow me to exercise some interesting narrative control, and is in a genre that I like. I could spend an entire page giving examples, but in the urban fantasy genre, Monsterhearts comes to mind, especially as rather than eliminating the sex moves from Apocalypse World like most Powered by the Apocalypse games seem to do, Monsterhearts adapted the idea to add the proper tension to a (supernatural) teenage soap opera.

Talking about sex moves reminds me of another comfort issue. This is less about particular games, though some games have a relevant mechanism built in or discuss the sort of thing I’m talking about in the text, but I’m most comfortable where there’s up-front discussion at the start of a campaign as to what people are okay with, and possibly making use of the X Card or a similar mechanism. I’ve been in too many games where lack of such discussions or lack of a safety net like an X Card has lead to serious problems.

Trigger Warning: Rape. 

As an extreme example of games where lack of discussion or safety valves lead to an issue, and also apropos of games that are worse than no gaming at all, one should never come back to a game after missing a session to find that the other PCs have allied themselves with a gang of rapists. Yes, this actually happened. I don’t want to get too much into it as it could get into even more serious trigger territory, plus talking about that game, and that terrible, terrible gaming group, is probably a multi-page essay that’s best left unwritten.
So, yeah, returning to a more cheerful topic, a tight game with decent narrative control and in a genre I’m a fan of is likely to keep me extremely engaged. 
Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?
​Hmmm. This is a level of “toot my own horn” that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with, but I’ll give it a shot.​ I’m probably going to veer into “let me tell you about my character” territory here, but that seems pretty inevitable, given the question. 😉
​One example that comes to mind is a Castle Falkenstein game I was in back in the 1990s. The GM told us the game was going to focus on three daughters of a British military officer, a very tight focus that would lead to more extreme things in a standard Castle Falkenstein 19th century Steampunk/Pulp “Tales of Adventure” sort of way.

I jumped in with both feet, creating a character that was a faerie interested in romance, but had been disappointed over the centuries in that most of his partners seemed to be more interested in what he was rather than who he was. Therefore, as he became attached to one of the daughters, following a standard romantic trope, he disguised himself as an ordinary human, so that he could tell if she loved him for himself rather than his faerie nature. This actually gave the other player characters a lot of chances to shine, as I needed their help to maintain my secret, and several of them rose heroically to the occasion. I also made sure to repay the favor, by helping out the suitors of the other daughters and generally being willing to stick my neck out to help them with their plots, like a proper gentleman faerie.

Aside: While I went that way because it’s a fun trope in fiction, I want to be clear I think “testing someone’s love” in real life is pretty much a total dick move. Keep it in novels, soap operas, and RPGs.

In any case, as many campaigns often do, the game eventually collapsed, but not before I was able to complete my romantic arc and reveal my true nature to my beloved, confident that she loved me for who I was. It was pretty heart warming and it definitely made the GM happy, as it was exactly the sort of thing he was going for, and by that point all the other players were almost as invested in the plot as I was, so they were pretty happy as well. Sadly, apropos of spotlight sharing, I had been looking forward to fading a little more into the background and cede a bit more spotlight given my arc was largely done, becoming largely a support character, and like I said, the campaign collapsed soon afterward. I still feel a bit guilty about that.

In any case, however, I think it’s a good sign of the job I did is that people who were in that campaign, aside from me, still talk about the game, and that character. It came up as recently as a month or so ago, decades later. Ugh, now I feel old…

—

Thanks so much to Kirt for the interview! I hope you enjoyed reading these answers!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Five or So Questions with Alessandro Piroddi on Touched by Evil

Today I have an interview with Alessandro Piroddi on the new game Touched by Evil! It sounds really interesting and seems like just the right kind of game for Halloween weekend. Check it out on DriveThruRPG here and give the interview below a read!
—

Tell me a little about Touched by Evil. What excites you about it?

I love horror stories.
But the word “horror” can refer to wildly different things.
The specific brand of horror I love is the one that is all about a dreadful atmosphere, a creeping sense of unease, an indefinable sense of wrongness that has no obvious or rational source. One type of narrative that draws heavily on such elements is the Lovecraftian one, with its old fashioned rhythm where tension builds slowly but surely, inexorably crawling up to a final horror.
Traditionally this kind of game experience is considered to be very difficult to achieve even by veteran roleplayers.
What excites me about Touched by Evil is that it manages to deliver exactly this, and that it does so by virtue of system design rather than personal player ability or knowledge of the horror genre.

Can you tell me a little about the mechanics used in Touched by Evil? Are they strictly narrative, or are there tools you use? Why did you choose those mechanics?
First of all the rules outline a clear and specific structure in regards of “who can say what when and how”. It is not as articulated as some of my other games, like FateLess, but it’s definitely not a game where you just freeform-chat your way through the session. Everyone has clear tasks and procedures to perform such tasks.
That said, there is next to no crunch involved.
Most of the structure is focused on achieving the right kind of scene framing and story rhythm; here the main inspirations are Montsegur 1244 and Psi*Run.
Dice are rolled when the fiction demands it, with simple and minimalist mechanics inspired by Cthulhu Dark.
Overall things are set up just so that the Players can feel safe and in control, right up to the point when they are not anymore and realise how safety was always just an illusion. This feeling of being powerless before something you don’t fully understand while at the same time being an obvious protagonist and active agent that CAN get much accomplished, is a focal element in how the game drives home its emotional point.
Where did you pull inspiration for the horror concepts put forth in Touched by Evil?
The first and most important source is with no doubt Graham Walmsley’s essay Stealing Cthulhu. It sparked the idea of doing a horror rpg, to begin with. It revamped my old love for Lovecraftian literature. And gave me the basic tools to build something that FELT like Lovecraft … this is pretty obvious in the name and structure of the five Chapters that make up the story’s Path.
Another hugely important source of inspiration and technical help has been the YouTube series Extra Credits. I found out that most of the video game design concepts they present could be applied verbatim (or almost) to tabletop rpg design. Plus, in time they have built a pretty amazing selection of videos focused on horror games, unpacking and analyzing things like the structure an nature of protagonists, locations, monsters and narrative tropes in the horror genre … with a even a full episode specifically on Cthulhu!
Which, I would like to highlight, says lots of things that would go hand in hand with the concepts expressed by Graham in his own analysis of Lovecraftian literature.
Another important helpful hand came from the book by Kenneth Hite Nightmares of Mine as it put into focus the difference between different kinds of “horror”, helping me discern what was it that I wanted to aim for. I actually talk more about this in an article on my blog, here.
How does an instant setup for Touched by Evil work?

The game presents a default setup that is both the fastest and most effective in terms of emotional impact: you play in this city, in this day and age, a normal person. That’s it.
Then a single Touched Character needs to be generated. This is the one protagonist moved, in turn, but all the players. The procedure is also quick and easy: pick a name, a profession and three “loved ones”, three people that the TC cares about and that are part of their current life.
Finally, a “catalyst event” is generated. This is the event that “touches” the protagonist and kickstarts the whole story. A brief chat, moderated by the game procedures, is all that is needed here.
Done. After that the first Moment of the story is played.
What kind of experiences do you think players will get out of the game, and why should people play it?
The reason to play is the same one for watching a horror movie : you enjoy being frightened (in a friendly and controlled environment).
It is effective because, although by the end of the game you might have a taste of the kind of horror you dismiss easily as “obviously impossible” (monsters, gore, supernatural stuff), the main part of the experience is built on a creeping sense of unease we all can face in real life: something feels off but you don’t know what, something completely normal starts looking weird and menacing but you don’t understand why, everything is as usual but you feel unsafe or even threatened. And then you get isolated, nobody believes you. 
That stuff gets under your skin. 
—
Thanks so much to Alessandro for answering my questions about Touched by Evil! I hope you enjoyed the interview, and that it’s piqued your interest enough to check out the game on DriveThru! Have a good time creeping yourselves out. 🙂

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Mike Wood

Today’s What Makes a Good Player feature is with Mike Wood. Mike had some great responses to my questions! Check them out:

—

What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

For me, the best part of gaming is embracing the unexpected. I started playing tabletop RPGs pretty late, I guess – I was 25 or 26 when I had my first D&D session. My RPG experience before that was basically from video games, which I love, but they’re a more passive play experience, and that could be frustrating sometimes. When I’d play some game like that, I’d end up thinking “why didn’t they just do X?” a lot – like in a bad horror movie where you’re wondering why they don’t just call the cops. So when I’m playing D&D or similar, I like to push the boundaries a bit in terms of creative solutions, because I really enjoy the freedom of being able to shape the narrative in unexpected ways, or the incongruity of bringing 21st-century common sense into a fantasy world. When I DM I try to be really open to the unexpected, too, because to me that freedom is the best thing about tabletop games.
Of course, how far you can take that sort of thing really depends on the type of game you’re playing, and the type of group you’re playing with. Sometimes trying to come up with crazy solutions for things works great, if your character has a good dynamic with the rest of the party – in my longest running game, I played a sort of Pollyannaish dwarf whose ridiculous ideas played well against the cautious pessimism of one of the other characters, and there’d be some arguments and conflict that made for a good experience. But I try to keep a lid on it if it looks like it’s starting to dominate the conversation. I’m conscious of my showoff tendencies and try to play against them as much as I can.


Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?
Nothing formal, but there’s an improv rule that your response to any question has to be “yes, and…” – as in:
“Did your dog swallow the ambassador’s priceless diamond cufflinks?”

“Yes, and she’s been kidnapped by the mafia!”

I always try to keep that approach in mind while playing – always try to keep momentum moving forward, even if things go in an unexpected direction, or not quite how you want them to. That doesn’t mean don’t plan things out – sometimes discussing how to do something can be its own kind of narrative momentum, as well. If you’re DMing, “yes, and” becomes “yes, but” – “yes, you can try to do that, but X might go wrong.”

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
It used to be a weekly thing for me and that was great, then a bit less frequent and that was good too. I think 2-3 times a month is probably about right.
What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?
I don’t have a lot of experience with different systems, but I like games that can support a consistent and fair but rules-light approach that’s flexible enough to deal with lots of different things. I’m sure there are games where you can turn to page 27 of appendix R to find the table to roll on for swinging on a chandelier, but having a general “athletics” roll works better in my book. I think there’s such a thing as too flexible though, I didn’t like FATE for whatever reason. Maybe I just needed time to get used to it.

One game that I really enjoy is Unknown Armies. It runs on a percentile dice system, which is easy for everyone to understand, and it’s got a really nice sanity system, but the real star for me is the way magic works. Magic in UA is based on either obsession (with drugs, alcohol, TV, stamp collecting, whatever) or conforming to a primal archetype like the Mother or the Warrior or the Fool. The book lists a few examples of each but it’s clear that you can make new obsessions and new archetypes, and it’s all built on the premise of player engagement with building the system, and taking things in unexpected directions according to what the players want to do. For me that’s what gaming is all about.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

It’s tough to pick one. Once, during a long-running 52 Pages campaign, the party was on trial for something and we had the option of either doing trial by combat or arguing our case. We ended up deciding to argue, which I think was unexpected since it’s not the usual murderhobo way, and one of us had to be the defence attorney. So naturally I volunteered because I’m a huge showoff. And it was a lot of fun, a really nice change of pace. I ended up doing the sort of Matlock impression you’d do if you’ve never seen an episode of Matlock.

—

Thanks so much to Mike for being a part of the interview series! Hope you all enjoyed reading. 🙂

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