Tag: interviews

Five or So Questions with Jason Morningstar

I interviewed Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games! Thanks to Jason for his time. 

You’ve been way successful with Fiasco. What’s been the best part of that success?

I’m really proud of the game and love to hear people’s dumb Fiasco stories, particularly when it serves as a gateway drug for people new to roleplaying. I love to see the places people take it, and how they make it their own. That’s very satisfying.

Tell me about Night Witches. Who would enjoy it? What do you want people to get out of the game?
Night Witches is a game about Soviet women who served as bomber pilots during the Great Patriotic War. It’s a crazy focused setting and provides a really interesting feminist window. While as players you experience the terror of conducting actual combat missions in shitty, 20-year-old biplanes, the real heart of the game happens between missions. The Red Army is massively sexist and wants these women to fail, and in many ways that is the greater enemy. There’s a constant tension between retaining your female identity and functioning within this massive masculine war machine. Since it’s an Apocalypse World engine game, that tension plays out directly and mechanically as the fiction unfolds for your group. I have no idea who will enjoy it. I’m always surprised. I take great, great care to make sure you don’t need to be a history nerd to get into it, though. I’ve been working on Night Witches on and off since 2007!

What other projects do you have in progress?
I always have a few things cooking. Beyond Night Witches I am poring over my back catalog of projects that really needed economical short run card production to be viable. Expect to see some of that come out. Medical Hospital, the medical game of medical melodrama, is back on track and in semi-active development. We’ve commissioned a guy you might know, Mr. John Sheldon, to do some art for us. More Fiasco material is coming out in 2014 for sure. I’m also helping with a few Kickstarters and supporting my friends.

The Climb has gotten a lot of great feedback. Do you have plans for more LARPs?
I’m really gratified that people are playing and enjoying The Climb. I remain super excited about the potential of live action play and continue to push at the form, using what I know about tabletop generally and GMless play specifically to inform it. I’m working on three different live action games right now. One, Villa Air-Bel, will get its first playtest at Dreamation. It’s about a bunch of weird American expats who smuggled Jewish intellectuals out of Vichy France in 1940, a true story. Another is a sort of thematic companion piece to The Climb that takes place on a commercial fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska. A third (man, I need to focus!) is about Mexican villagers coming to grips with the looting of their ancestral tomb.

What is your biggest goal as a game designer right now?
My #1 goal right now is to really understand what live action roleplaying has to offer and cross-pollinate lessons learned between larp and tabletop. This is a tremendously exciting area with many, many opportunities for cool new stuff. Thanks for your questions!

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What a great interview! I’m looking forward to seeing what Jason brings out with Night Witches, Medical Hospital, and more LARPs!

Five or So Questions with Will Hindmarch on Project: Dark

I got the chance to interview Will Hindmarch on his current Kickstarter project, Project: Dark. It just debuted yesterday and it looks fantastic!

Tell me a little about Project: Dark. What’s the general idea?
The project is a single banner for a single game—Dark—that can be played in several different game worlds with just minor tweaks and expansions. The game takes stealth-adventure play into the tabletop RPG space by casting all players as stealthy sorts of characters operating in perilous and mysterious worlds. It’s a game of sneak-thieves, spies, trespassers, and other such nefarious sorts, without assuming that such characters are heroic or antiheroic necessarily.

The first setting for the game is the titular Dark (though this world has gone through a lot of names during development!), set in a fantastical city of staggering riches and squalid slums, with a style that’s sort of a blend of Elizabethan London and medieval Constantinople.

What led you to create the project?

For years, I wanted to facilitate this kind of campaign with a system that was designed explicitly for this kind of play, so I designed one that did what I wanted.

I’m the kind of GM who loves to make maps and imagine what goes on in the game world before (and after) the players’ characters come through. I like the glimpses into occulted corners of the world or the little conversations and monologues we sometimes hear in great stealth video games. As a player of stealth video games, I love the moments when the setting comes alive around you through little performances or moments of humanity. Eavesdropping on a world that doesn’t know the players’ characters are there creates this great multifaceted feeling. It’s not like the guards who patrol that rich castle every night think some trespasser is the star of the story, right? It naturally creates great conflicts and worlds with multiple viewpoints.

So I didn’t just want to design a game that brought stealth play to the table as a puzzle or tactical simulation; I wanted players to be able to imagine the spaces around them and have those details come into play in a variety of ways. To get the most mileage out of the game and the world, I wanted to create as many environments as I could—I wanted to design little sandbox levels, really—that were both compelling fictional spaces and narrative structures. I didn’t just want to make the game, I wanted to support it with a bunch of adventures to make it easier for other GMs to play.

I’ve heard it’s great at emulating a very cool stealth-action feel. What kind of mechanics did you use to create that feel?
While most everything in Dark points at a few core kinds of gameplay choices, I think the card-based play is the best example. To help reduce the impact of randomness a bit, and to emphasize the role of caution and precision, the game system relies primarily on regular playing cards rather than dice. (The GM uses a combination of dice and NPC traits to express the environment, though.)

The cards sort of straddle the gap between character-level and player-level mechanisms in this case. Inputs from the game world determine how many cards a player holds—so the better hidden your character, the more options you have available to you and the more you can plan your next move. But that ability to see what sort of options you have available isn’t nailed down too tightly. The abstraction there gives the player some freedom of expression. Does a hand full of cards suggesting physicality mean your character’s itching for a fight? Does it make her confident or reckless?

Part of the way cards work also emphasizes that stealth is sometimes about ponderously deliberate action rather than dashing antics. Making slow, measured moves in Dark seldom comes down to a single volatile die roll, but neither is it tedious. Everything happens in dramatic, informative increments.

Individual adventures then emphasize or focus on unique circumstances and situations, so one scenario might be about sprinting for a treasure before rival thieves get it while the next is about shadowing a mark without being detected. The game offers a lot of diversity in play, even with its honed focus.

What did you use as inspiration for this project?
Lots of stealth video games inspired this one, for sure. I love having the time during a level to explore and experience the worlds of games like Thief and Splinter Cell and Dishonored. My favorite Halo game is ODST because of the meditative style of those city levels and the way players get to slow down a bit and get glimpses of life in the future through audio diaries and the like.

Look at the variety of play styles within the various Splinter Cell games, for example. That’s inspiring to me. Each new game isn’t just new gadgets and levels but new ways of framing the themes, characters, and environments of the game world. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Blacklist especially contextualize player actions in fascinating ways, turning some tactical decisions into rich ethical and dramatic choices.

At the same time, I’m into architecture and history, futurism and espionage dramas, so I’m rolling elements of those into the game worlds, too. It’s been great fun to study up on the physical places and the cultures that have inspired the worlds for Dark. Part of the joy of creating fictional worlds, for me, is that I can draw on lots of interests and hobbies to make the worlds feel more real. All kinds of research ends up going into the final product.

What can we expect to experience when we play Project Dark?
Like a lot of RPGs, some of it will depend on the scenario or campaign you play. The game shines, though, when it’s about suspense and suspicion, about camaraderie between thieves and skulduggery against rivals. A Dark campaign can be about righteous trespassing in corrupt halls, about desperate revolutionaries toppling rotten powers, or about a variety of other takes on the core activity of play. Every setting for the game is meant to put the act of intruding, of trespassing, of stealing into a dramatic context that provokes more questions than it answers. Robin Hood was a hero, but not all Dark tales are about Robin Hoods.

The game breaks out into a few key phases of play—casing the target, the job itself, and the investigation by an inspector—each of which can be spun or altered to create a different rhythm for the campaign over time. So while your campaign might become about vendettas and revenge, dodging a zealous inspector, or bringing down a sordid duke, the game expresses helps you channel that story into those key phases.

It’s a bit like the way that a classic fantasy dungeon-crawl can be about things bigger and more epic than the dungeon … even as the game often expresses itself through linked and thrilling maps to explore. Over time, I expect the adventures to show more and more ways to remix these components.

What’s next for you, after the Kickstarter?
Depending on how far the funding goes, I’ll be presenting additional content for the game for a little while yet. I’m planning on presenting adventures for Dark, as well as a few other games, via my Patreon page over the next few months, if interest is there.

Of course, I’m also writing and designing for Storium at storium.com and I have at least one other game in the works for 2014. These are exciting times!

Make sure to check out Will’s Kickstarter and his Patreon for more Dark goodness!

Five or So Questions with Mark Diaz Truman and Epidiah Ravachol

I interviewed Mark Diaz Truman about The Fate Codex, and Epidiah Ravachol about Worlds Without Master, both Patreon projects. 
First, Mark!

Tell us a little about The Fate Codex. What goals do you have for the project?

The Fate Codex is a mostly-monthly e-zine showcasing the Fate roleplaying system. Each month(ish), we’ll publish an e-zine that features new Fate Systems, Essays from Fate experts, Quick Start Adventures, and Short Fiction in the Fate style–all featuring new and experienced voices in the Fate Community.

My goals are diverse. I hope to bring in new folks to the system with a set of e-zines that are easy to pick up and play and to entertain experienced Fate players with Systems and Essays that expand what the system can do. I’m also hoping to feature new perspectives on Fate from a diverse set of creators!

Finally, I want to see people get paid for the great work they’re doing. Folks like Ryan Macklin, for example, are constantly pushing out new ideas to the Fate Community, but often as unpaid blog posts and community discussions. I don’t want to replace that work–these discussions are so valuable–but I think there’s clearly a hunger for polished pieces that present finished ideas.

What motivated you to create The Fate Codex?

Since the Fate Core Kickstarter blew up the interwebs in 2012/2013, Fate has been a big part of my gaming experience. I was lucky enough to write Timeworks for Fate Worlds, followed by work developing Wicked Fate and Do: Fate of the Flying Temple, and now Fate is a regular feature at my table. I love developing these bigger projects, but there’s also a lot of little stuff that I’m working

At the same time, I’m also an active member of the Fate Core Google+ Community, and I see so much interesting and different thinking coming through that group. Unfortunately, much of it is lost, pushed down the Community page and inaccessible to new folks. It’s like trying to drink from a firehouse of awesome sometimes!

It occurred to me that I could kill two birds with one stone by creating a venue for this kind of work (both my own and the work of others) that would be curated and polished. And when I saw Eppy’s Worlds Without Master Patreon campaign do so well the last few months, my brain slowly slowly slowly kicked over to thinking about some the work I do in Fate being a good fit for that system as well.

What benefit does the Patreon model provide for you, as a creator?

More than anything else, it gives me a budget to bring in great people. Magpie Games is lucky enough to have some cash on hand from our work on our previous Kickstarters, but it’s tough to estimate demand for something like a mostly-monthly e-zine. Knowing that I’ve got over 250 subscribers who are excited to get their copy of The Fate Codex through Patreon means that I can hire great people to produce great pieces for future issues. We’re already talking about Issues 3 and 4, and I’m excited to be able to pay people for that work right now instead of waiting for several months’ worth of revenue to come in before we can start planning Issue 2.

What is the biggest challenge to creating and distributing an e-zine like The Fate Codex through Patreon?

One of the biggest challenges is getting a regular flow of content. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, but gathering up great pieces, editing them, and laying them out on a regular basis is tough. I’m thankful that Patreon structures the payment system so that I don’t have to think much about how much content to produce, but staying on top of it all is a big job. Luckily, I’ve been doing these kinds of projects for the last few years, so I’ve got some experience herding game designers.

What are you looking forward to the most with the project?

Right now? Our first issue! We’re deep into writing, editing, and laying out our first issue, and I can’t wait to show the Fate community what we’ve put together. It’s exciting stuff.

I know that down the road I’m also really excited about the potential to bring new voices to the table–especially folks that haven’t had a chance to show off what they can do in Fate. It’s a wonderful system, and I want to bring in new voices that will take the system to interesting places. In many ways, I think The Fate Codex could be a wonderful place for new designers to get started with Fate–it’s small enough to give folks a chance to try new things and big enough to have a real audience for good work.

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Thanks to Mark for the interview! Make sure to check out The Fate Codex, which will soon feature a short story by yours truly!

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Next, Epidiah!

Tell us a little about Worlds Without Master. What’s it all about?

Worlds Without Master is an ezine of sword & sorcery fiction and games. It’s as much about sword & sorcery as it is about that intersection between fiction and gaming. I want the reader to feel as if they’ve been shown the paths to a myriad of worlds for them to explore in whatever way they wish.

What motivated you to create Worlds Without Master?

It’s been in my head for a while now, and perhaps even longer. Sword and sorcery was the genre of my youth that I abandoned for several decades for many reasons, some very much misguided. About four or five years ago, I began the used-book store hunt for Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stuff. I remembered really enjoying his books when I read them as a teen and wondered if they held up. They did. And what’s more, the parts of them that struck a chord with teenage Eppy read as delicious satire to adult Eppy. I began to find new things about the genre that I missed back then, but now captivated me.

This set me on the path towards making the Swords Without Master game. While struggling through the forging of this game, all these proto-stories kept welling up from within, always to be cast into the future. Once this game was published, I promised myself that I would set pen to paper and finally write these things out. I just needed to get this game published first. But I wanted the physical object of the game to be something I did not have the power to create just yet. So everything kept being pushed into tomorrow.

In the summer of 2013 I started to look for places to submit my stories and a surprising number of ezines were only offering free copies as compensation for my work. As my frustration with this was on the rise, I became aware of Patreon and it all sort of tumbled out from there.

What benefit does the Patreon model provide for you, as a creator?

So many benefits! It allows me to write the stories I want to write, hire folks to edit and proofread those stories, dream of artists I want to see illustrate those stories, pay those artist to do just that and then distribute those stories to an audience who is not only eager to receive them, but will pay me for them!

By only charging the patrons when an issue is released, Patreon has relieved me of a lot of the pressure to release on unrealistic schedule.

By letting me know roughly how much money will come in after an issue is released, Patreon eviscerated 90% of the risk involved in publishing.

The traditional publishing model has evolved a number of vestigial organs that now exist only to second-guess what the audience wants. Patreon surgically removes these obstructive organs and puts me in direct communication with my audience. This closer relationship with the audience is a powerful motivator. You can look at your Patreon page, see how many people are eager for you to create, and more importantly, know their names. This is a different relationship than before, and it’s one I intend to explore further.

What is the biggest challenge to creating and distributing an e-zine like Worlds Without Master through Patreon?

There is a deluge coming. At the moment, I’m holding back a liquid wall of fiction, games and art. A flood of sword & sorcery that wants to sweep across the land and alter the landscape forever. I’ve got amazing works from talent writers, artists and designers pushing and shoving at me. And I want to set them loose. But I have until the Patron Horde is huge enough to take them head-on. So at the moment, each issue is the merest trickle of what this ezine can be. The biggest challenge is waiting that out.

What would you say is your biggest achievement with Worlds Without Master?

“One Winter’s Due,” my story in the second issue. Before that, it was “Strange Bireme.” With a little luck, each story will be a slightly bigger achievement than the last.

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Thanks, Epidiah, for the interview! Keep an eye out for Worlds Without Master on Patreon!

Five or So Questions with Martin Ralya on New Game Day

I interviewed Martin Ralya from Gnome Stew about New Game Day, upcoming on February 2, 2014, as well as Gnome Stew and Engine Publishing. Today’s Five or So is a special edition to give people time to plan for the holiday!

Tell me a little bit about Gnome Stew, and about this new holiday you’re starting, New Game Day. Why should I be excited?

Gnome Stew is a system-neutral, multi-author GMing blog that’s been running since 2008, with over 2,400 articles (all free). We’ve had almost 2,000,000 visitors to date.

New Game Day is my attempt to jump-start a gaming holiday in the vein of GM’s Day (March 4): a free annual event for tabletop gamers worldwide, dedicated to playing new RPGs and board games.

You should be excited about it for lots of reasons: it’s fun to play new games, and even more fun to share them with friends; it’s fun to celebrate our hobby with shared events like this one; and because playing new games expands your horizons in good ways.

It was one of those ideas that hit me and wouldn’t let go until I’d done something about it. It seemed so simple that I was surprised not to find it out there already. So I put together a website, hired my friend Darren Hardy to create a logo for it, and now I’m trying to get the word out.

What goals do you have with this New Game Day?

New Game Day happens on 2/2 (yes, it’s also Groundhog Day — and, this year, Super Bowl Sunday), and the idea is that folks will get together to play new RPGs and board games, or just one or the other, and share their love of games.

Who should be interested in the New Game Day?

Anyone who plays tabletop RPGs and board games (including wargames, card games, etc.). There’s a lot of overlap between those two hobbies, but if you don’t already do both New Game Day is a great excuse to try the other one. And if you do already play both kinds of game regularly, take it as a challenge instead: Play something outside your comfort zone, or see how many games you can play in one day.

Gnome Stew is also sponsoring a giveaway to celebrate New Game Day, with over $300 in prizes just for dropping by to tell us what you play on 2/2 (Click here for the giveaway!).

Tell me a little about your work with Engine Publishing. What’s new and upcoming?

I started Engine Publishing in 2009, and I’ve worked with the authors of Gnome Stew, as well as other talented folks, to produce a book a year since 2010: Eureka, Masks, Never Unprepared, and Odyssey.

Our fifth book, also a system-neutral resource for GMs, is currently in editing. I’m not ready to talk about it yet, save to say that it’s different than the first four but should appeal to the same audience.

What big plans does Gnome Stew have for 2014?

We’re going to be hiring a couple of new gnomes (authors) to replace Patrick Benson and Kurt Schneider, who left the site in 2013. We have a conference call and a bit of discussion between us and posting that announcement, but it should happen sometime next month.

Apart from that, we’re going to keep doing what we’ve enjoyed doing so much for the past six years: writing about GMing, talking about GMing with our readers, collaborating on Engine Publishing books and other projects, and featuring articles by our readers.

Five or So Questions with Tracy Barnett on Iron Edda

Today I have an interview with Tracy Barnett, who is currently Kickstarting Iron Edda: War of Metal and Bone. I’m so excited to have him on the blog! Check out the five or so questions below. 

Tell me a little bit about Iron Edda. What is it? Why should people be interested?

Iron Edda is a Norse fantasy setting where the dwarves rose up against humanity in large, metal destroyers. To fight back, warriors bonded their spirits to the bones of dead giants. It’s epic in scope, and personal in nature. It’s a great setting because there’s room for grand action, personal stories, and everyone who comes to the game table should find a place for themselves in the setting. I’ve worked very hard to make the setting as diverse as possible.


What sparked the idea of Iron Edda?
I pitched the initial idea to Machine Age Productions for their Apotheosis Drive X Kickstarter. I wanted to write for that game, but mecha is not my strong suit. Fantasy, however, is. So when I thought about how to do mecha in a fantasy setting (with some inspiration from Skyrim), the dwarves in destroyers and human as bonebonded came to mind. Turns out that it’s a really sweet idea.

Inclusiveness is important for you. Why? What made it a priority?

I’ve lived a pretty privileged life. And as I’ve come to realize that privilege, I’ve also realized that I can turn it to good ends. There are so many amazing voices in the sci-fi/fantasy, and RPG communities that don’t get heard. I want to do the best I can to provide exposure through paid work, and diversity in the projects that I create. It’s just the right thing to do. As well, I’ve come to realize that I’m transgender. Specifically, I”m genderqueer. I don’t always identify as male, or as female. I want a space for myself in games, also. And if I’m going to advocate, I’m going to advocate intersectionally, meaning that I’m going to advocate for space for everyone.


What does Iron Edda mean to you, as a project?

That’s a difficult question to answer. One one hand, it’s just my next project and gets all the care and attention that any of my previous projects got. On the other hand, this is the biggest, most in-depth project that I’ve ever done. If it succeeds in the ways I think it could, it would go a long way toward making my dream of writing and designing full-time a reality. That means a lot to me.

What has been the greatest part of the Iron Edda project so far?

Absolutely it has been the response I’ve gotten to it. People seem to really dig the concept, and those that have played it have had a good time. I love seeing a thing that I’ve made prompt a positive response. That means a lot to me. And if I can throw a second thing in there, working with the team I’ve assembled for this project has been amazing. So many talented people working towards a unified goal is a wonder to behold.

Don’t forget to check out Tracy’s Kickstarter for Iron Edda! 

Five or So Questions Series

Very soon I’ll be starting up the Five or So Questions Series, where I’ll interview members of the gaming community with about five or so questions.

Hope you enjoy!

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!




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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.


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