Thoughty remains! So does Script Change. I still hope to do some interviews, as mentioned, very periodically. I want to talk more about design, and about leadership in games. I want to talk about the things I personally enjoy in games, break them down, see if I can make them make sense. I hope when the worldsuck eases I’ll release more games, though I doubt anything I do solo will be as big and fancy as Turn. I’ll be separately supporting my partners with their projects. Oh yeah, and I’ll still be accepting guest blogs here when I can build up a larger fund for paying creators!
Times do change.
My first interviews were before Thoughty – on my previous and now defunct site that I ported here with Systir Productions & 616, and on Gaming as Women with attendees of a Gamerati game day and then Judy Bauerof all people. I kicked off Thoughty and Five or So Questions in 2014 as a continuation of the original blog, but only the interviews really stuck around.
Me in 2013 at Gen Con with F. Wes Schneider, Paizo’s then Editor-in-Chief, who I had interviewed for GAW.
I have done over three hundred interviews on Thoughty, about 250 of those being Five or So Question interviews. I have only had a few interviews fully fail to be completed due to scheduling, and one pulled by the creator. I’ve interviewed people about not just tabletop but also card, board, and video games, plus lonely solo games, huge collections of tabletop and live action games, their artwork, their design process, their Kickstarters, and more. I have had an exceptional opportunity to pick the brains of the most brilliant designers in tabletop games, from legacy designers like Ron Edwards to genius women designers like Dr. Jessica Hammer and Meguey Baker to groundbreaking modern designers like Jay Dragon and Rae Nedjadi. Many of these people I have grown to consider friends and colleagues, and I’m so grateful for the amazing things I’ve learned from them and shared with you.
I have been supported by my Patreon supporters primarily for these interviews, enough funds to pay for my website and a bill every so often, some busy months enough to help me pay medical expenses. I am incredibly grateful for my supporters, for everyone who has shared an interview, recommended a creator to reach out to, or praised my interviews, regardless of whether they supported me financially!
You may ask, if this is so great, why does the title say you’re ending interviews? What does this mean for Thoughty? Why has the site been so slow recently, anyway? Well, that’s what I’m gonna try to answer here. This is… a bit long. I’m still me, you know.
Hi all! I have a Patreon spotlight today and it’s on the designer and creator Kira Magrann, who makes some queer, experimental games that explore intimacy and cyberpunk themes, among other things.
Kira Magrann
Bio via Kira:
Kira is a tabletop roleplaying game designer, queer NB cyborg, and snake mom living in Columbus, Ohio. She currently has a Patreon where she designs experimental games, a YouTube channel where she talks about game design, and she blogs a few times a month at Gnome Stew. With the support of her patrons she recently released a game about Lesbisnakes in wintertime titled A Cozy Den.
Tell me about yourself and your work. Who are you, and what does your work do?
I’m a queer cyborg game designer living in Columbus, Ohio. I’m a horror movie lover, snake mom, and I’m working on making my hair look like Major Kusanagi’s. My work, my game design work anyway, aims to educate, titillate, and inspire. When people play my games I want them to feel things and have learned something they didn’t know before. Hopefully the designs and concepts are also accessible enough to reach a diverse audience which is something I work hard at doing.
The identification stats for lesbisnakes in A Cozy Den, featuring a range from High Femme to Stone Butch.
Descriptions of the various stats in A Cozy Den, including presentation.
You’re a known activist and queer designer. How does your perspective regarding these things affect your design work and the work you do for your Patreon?
Gosh, well, being an activist and a queer designer means that basically all my work will have some aspects of those two parts of me in them. Everything I make is queer, or cyberpunk (emphasis on the punk), or related to queer or feminine monster metaphors. It’s a huge pool of inspiration to pull from, which means I can make games that are kind of like, combinations of these things, and maybe not like, 100% just one of them. So A Cozy Den, my game about lesbisnakes, is about half snake half lesbian mythical monster creatures who are trying to live together during the winter. It’s also a non-violent game and focuses on cozy stories and mechanics. It also uses lesbian terminology, your stats being derived from a scale of High Femme to Stone Butch. So that’s easily like, all three of my main interests in one game. This is how all my games go! I basically draw from what’s important to me in my personal life, and also the genres I’m inspired by and care a lot about.
Three lesbisnakes from A Cozy Den.
Tell me a little about A Cozy Den. What inspired you to write the game? What about it speaks to your design and you as a person?
A Cozy Den came about because I’ve been obsessed with snakes since I adopted my 8 year old corn snake Sol about a year and a half ago now. I basically read about them daily and am in all these FB groups in the snake community and just love them so much. I’ve actually loved snakes since I was a child but never really owned any until now (I’m 37!). I had recently learned that snakes den together, and it really humanized them, painted them in a more communal and cozy way.
I like finding ways that make snakes less scary for people, because I think that removing fear even in a small way toward an animal can make huge changes in a person’s life and in removing fear in the world in all kinds of ways. I’d also been really into lesbian lifestyle history at the time and watched this short documentary on lesbian communes, and suddenly it clicked… snake dens and lesbian communes are so similar in all these ways like, culturally. They’re outsiders, American culture is kind of afraid of them, and the communes in the 70s and 80s in particular were very purposeful outsider ways for lesbians to live outside of the norm in America.
“What’s a Den?” section of the A Cozy Den text.
So I basically just combined the two and was like, I can make a game that can teach simultaneously about two things I love: snakes and queer history. That is so typical of my design style. I’ll basically find all these connecting points with the many genres and things in the world I love, combine them into an interesting genre game setting, and somehow teach about them in the game. I’m queer and a snake lover too, so this game is very personal, very much about me and the things I love. I also wanted to experiment with mechanics, to see if I could make a pbta game without physical conflict as the main driver. I’m more and more interested in games that don’t have violence, and instead create different types of feelings or situations. So in A Cozy Den all the conflict is inter personal… can the characters get along with each other during the winter in a closed space? What does cozy look like in a tabletop game vs a video game? There’s a lot going on in this tiny weird game, and its very much how my design brain and personal brain work. I could talk about it for awhile lol.
The “Healing” section of A Cozy Den.
Your new videos have been well-received! How do you decide what to do videos about? What is your process for creating the videos?
So, my videos, basically I recently got obsessed with YouTube (you’re probably seeing a pattern here with my creative obsessions) and I was like, shit, I could do this. I’ve always wanted to learn more about video making and a lot of my personal media on my insta has been drifting toward video too. Whenever I want to get better at something, I get obsessed with it and do it until I get better. It’s worked ok so far although I wish I could stick with one thing it’d be easier lol.
My videos are about my design process and thoughts, so while I’m working on things throughout the week I try to note particular issues I’m having while writing or designing, or thoughts another youtube video or article made me have, and then I write those down. Then I pick one, and make a word document with a bunch of bullet points stream of conciousness style what I might like to talk about in that video topic. Then I’ll step away for a few hours or a day, come back to it and clean it up.
I’ve cleaned up my extra bedroom office so that the space behind me looks decent and I have windows in front of me for natural light, and I just use a very cheap tripod from amazon and my iphone for recording. Then I’ll record in about 50 second pieces (I’ve found smaller ones are easier to upload to dropbox for whatever reason), upload them to dropbox, download them to my computer (this usually takes hours) then edit them in a free editing program I have on my ubuntu computer called kdenlive. I don’t do anything fancy with the editing, just add music and text. Once that’s done I’ll upload to youtube!
A video from Kira’s YouTube on Playtest Process and Design Iteration.
There’s lots of tricks on youtube to get more traffic and stuff in like, the way you tag things and name stuff and put ending credits in… all those I learned from watching videos on youtube about how to do it. I want to get a little more vloggy with my videos in the future, play with cinematography more, but for right now I’m trying to get a rhythm and skill set to just make them regularly. I think of my youtube channel like a blog basically, like, what would I write about to the community on g+ or gnome stew, then instead of writing I just film it. I’m getting better! It’s still mostly an experiment.
What are some goals you have for your Patreon and your design practice in general?
My Patreon is helping me become a better designer while simultaneously putting out content that I can’t make anywhere else. It’s a really unique opportunity to be able to explore whatever kinds of games my heart desires and not worry to terribly about the “sellability” of it, y’know? I think a lot of creators know what types of content really sells, something with fantasy fighters, something grimdark, something with skullduggery… basically new takes on the typical rpg stuff.
In order to create something truly new and different, it means that you’re taking a huge chance as a creator that no one in the rpg community will be interested in playing your weird stuff. So having this patreon to support me even a little monetarily helps me make those unique and innovative games. Also it is paying my bills! I’d love to get it up to 1500 a month, cause then it’d legit be like a part time job! But until then I’m scrambling to fill the extra money in with freelance work which to be honest is kind of overwhelming. It’s a dream to be able to live off my patreon. I think it’ll get there.
The Actions from A Cozy Den with some handwritten markup.
When do you experience the most joy, and the most satisfaction, while creating?
Wow this is a spectacular question and I’m not sure 100% how to answer it lol! The whole process for me is very joy inducing. I’m a hyper creative person and my imagination is always on overdrive, so coming up with the ideas is really fun. I also love to be critical, and I think editing is a critical skill, so basically the part where you’re taking the ideas and narrowing them and sculpting them into something more specific is also really satisfying. The act of writing is sometimes a little tedious, but when I get a flow going I disappear into the document for hours at a time and that flow feels really good, creatively.
I do really love collaborating, especially when I’m in charge of a project and can choose who else is on my team. I’m very proud to work with other marginalized creators and hire them to create art or other work like in A Cozy Den or RESISTOR. Sharing creative work is definitely scary, but I love creating artwork that people use or wear, so when people are getting the game and playing it I feel very accomplished and get this feeling of sympathetic joy. So I guess those are my favorite parts of creating, and the things that give me the most satisfaction in the process.
A character sheet from A Cozy Den.
Patterns and colors for the various lesbisnakes in A Cozy Den based on their stats.
—
Thank you so much to Kira for stopping in to talk about her Patreon,A Cozy Den, and her design! Please check out Kira’s work and share around this spotlight to show off the cool work she is doing.
You can find Kira on Twitter as @kiranansiand on YouTube, as well as through Patreon where she designs experimental games, and sometimes at Gnome Stew. Make sure to check out A Cozy Den, too!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
So, would you mind giving me a brief pitch for your Patreon? Tell me about some of your creations. My Patreon is what I use to fund my endeavors and gather attention for the games I make: a lot of great people there give me incredible feedback and promote my games, and the financial support I get helps take some of the stress off my living requirements, so all in all Patreon is what’s keeping my work going right now! I create small, short-ish games about sex, kink, communication, and connecting to others.
My game “A Real Game” won an award at GenCon! That and Our Radios are Dying are probably what people know of me best. It’s a game about taking an actual printed copy of the game and interacting with the pages, sometimes transforming or modifying them, as the game itself becomes sentient and speaks to you, unsure of its right to exist. It’s certainly gained the most attention, with a lot of different interpretations, which is always interesting to see!
Our Radios are Dying is a game about two space lesbians who got separated from their spaceship and are now drifting through space with only an hour left before they die. They have nothing else to do but talk about their relationship and their problems and who they are. You play it by sitting on rolling office chairs and actually spinning and floating around on them, as if moving through space, and I quite like it.
Kirigami Dominatrix Display Simulator is a game about domme-ing a sheet of paper. You take on the role of an alien dominatrix and do kinky things to the paper using common stationary tools, using this to immerse yourself in and symbolize BDSM play. I think it’s my most clever game, and it’s informed a lot of the rest of what I do.
Screenshot from inside Kirigami Dominatrix Display Simulator.
I’ve read Kirigami Dominatrix Display Simulator, and it’s a freaking fantastic game. I loved the design, and the use of paper and scissors and other modification of the paper is a gorgeous idea. It also includes some extra rules on how to simulate BDSM and orgasms in other games, which I loved, and it’s one of the most innovative and respectful games I’ve seen involving sex.
Tell me a little about your process for creating games. Do you brainstorm? Do you use any specific techniques? Is it pure Caitie goodness? How do you do it? Typically I think of something I wish I saw in games or a particularly trope or idea I want to fiddle with, and I’ll just keep that idea floating around in the back of my head. At the same time, I’ll think of characters or situations or plots that I like and keep those floating around in the back of my head as well. At some point, there’s a marriage, and then I make a game!
Sometimes two ideas click instantly, sometimes it takes forever. There’s stuff on my computer that’s been waiting years to get used, and maybe it never well. Eventually they work though, and I write out what I think is the best part of that system, slowly building up ideas while daydreaming at work. Then once I have it written out, I mercilessly edit and cut everything I can until it’s distilled down into what I think is the simplest and most fun version of that idea possible.
One of her better known games, bugfuck, is about bugs fucking. Like, for real. It’s amazing.
What is your background in games? How did you become a designer?
I grew up around people that were roleplaying and I never understood it, but I always wanted to figure it out and play. I did a little bit in middle school, but then sort of got into it proper in high school. I kept trying different games and different ways to play because I got bored after a while of just playing only one game, and so I got experienced with different mechanics and different playstyles. As I played with more people and as I started to dig into the indie publishing scene, I tried to make houserules that I wished were in the games I played – and then eventually after years of that, I had a more defined sense of how I liked to roleplay, but didn’t find very many games that experimented with it, so I made my own!
What helps you decide the medium to use for your games, the mechanics, and so on?
Basically editing. I slap together a game that I think will accomplish what I want, and after exploring it some, I realize it doesn’t do what I want at all, and then I search for what will. The first drafts of most of my games are very traditionally game-y: dice, character sheets, processes. It’s by seeing how those ideas don’t allow me to achieve the story I want that I open myself up to what does. It’s just ruthlessly cutting everything away until I only have the barest idea left.
What do you do to draw in more players and customers?
Oh, I wish I knew. advertise monthly or bi-monthly on social media, I enter a lot of contests, I get hired to do Kickstarter stuff and so on, eventually hoping that people will recognize my name and like what I do and seek me out. I just design a lot and spread out a lot and try to be as visible as I can.
How would you define your “brand” as a designer?
I angle for weird, sad, beautiful, and sexy, pick maybe 2 or 3. It’s just stuff I like to see in stories. Strange things and strange stories are fascinating to me and I love seeing games with quirky mechanics and ideas. I like and aim for stories that feature hot sex or heartbreak or life-affirming beauty or just invasive weirdness, so that’s what I try to make!
—
Thanks so much to Caitlynn for the interview and the opportunity to check out her process and work! Up next Caitlynn will be releasing a game in #Feminism 2nd Edition, and has been doing work on a fair number of Kickstarters, so keep an eye out for her name when a new product comes out! Remember to check out her Patreon to support her work and her website for more games!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Today I’m trying something new, and not sure if it’ll recur, so let me know your thoughts.
James Shields has a cool Patreon through which he creates custom RPG Stock Illustrations. It’s been around for a couple of years, and involves his patrons giving feedback and input into what art is created. I interviewed James as well as asking him to provide information on his process. Check it out!
When I asked about James’ process, he responded:
So here is my ideal process.
Somewhere there is an incredible independent creator with awesome RPG ideas but without the budget to commission some of the illustrations they want.
Somehow they learn about one of my Stock Art Patreon projects and jumps on board. Every month I post and ask for ideas.
Patrons are encouraged to comment on each others ideas to make the artwork more versatile. (Example: If the idea is for a Wild Elf with antlers, another patron may ask for moose antlers. If that’s good with the original patron, I roll with the adjusted idea.) They then vote on each other’s submissions by liking them on the post.
At the end of the month, I tally up all the submissions and votes. I then release a list of the upcoming art and the process starts all over again. On the 1st of month, patrons are charged their pledge level for each pack I released. After pledges clear, I send them links to the files for them to download at their convenience.
James also provided a FAQ:
What can I do if I can’t afford X amount 3 or 4 times a month? Patreon allows you to set a cap, or maximum number of creations you want to support each month. You will receive the packs that your pledge covered.
What if my submitted idea was in a pack that my pledge cap kept me from supporting? I give my patrons the illustration from their idea anyways.
How many ideas may I submit? As many as you want. In the future I may set a limit, but only if submissions get unruly.
Can’t I just get your art when you release it via Drivethru, RPGNow, TabletopLibrary, etc? Yes. Yes, you can. The dilemma is -when-. Uploading stock art is time consuming, so I don’t release very often. As of this writing, I am somewhere over a year and a half behind.My patrons get the artwork first. Long before anybody else.
What are the license restrictions? Ohhh… these are fun. Actually, I’m pretty liberal as far as this is concerned. You can use the artwork forever. You just can’t sell it as stock, posters, printable miniatures, or anything else where the artwork is the main product. You also can’t use it in offensive projects. Other than that, just create something awesome.
You should also let me have a copy. Well, that part’s not required, but I’m a gamer and love to see where my art is used.
Are there any restrictions to what ideas I may submit?
Yes, but they aren’t a lot. I don’t illustrate nudity nor will I create provocative poses/images. I won’t draw images of intellectual property, though I will do images inspired by them.
Also, a question that hasn’t been asked that is totally viable- I’m not an independent game developer. Can I still support the project?
Totally. There is nothing to stop people from submitting their RPG character for me to draw and them to see in printed RPG products. Totally cool.
As of this writing I do have only one remaining Top Tier slot where I guarantee to draw one of their submissions every month. At $25, you can’t get my art at a better deal.
Last thing I can think of. You are completely welcome to pledge to support my project just to see it from a patron’s point of view and cancel your pledge as soon as you’ve seen as much as you’d like. Feel free to take and post any screenshots as a patron if you choose this route. I won’t be posting any artwork for another two weeks so there won’t be any charges during that time.
Finally I asked James a few questions! What is your background in creating art both for and not for RPGs?
My first intro to drawing RPG art was in my first roleplaying group as a teen. My parents convinced me to go to school beyond high school instead of trying to dive into drawing comics. After I graduated from the Art Institute of Dallas, I worked for a game company for a year and a half before they went bankrupt. Except for a few drawings here and there, that was the last I would create artwork for about 10 years. After my second deployment with the Marine Corps, my wife convinced me to use my artistic abilities for something, so I dove into freelancing. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I did know that I loved to create artwork like the ones I had been introduced to in my teens, and as I developed as a freelancer I began focusing more and more on roleplaying because they were the projects I loved. I know it’s not the smartest financial decision but these are the things I get excited about. Another artist pointed me towards Patreon and that’s where I got the idea to provide something for independent game developers that would be in between pure stock and fully commissioned. I’ve been freelancing for over 3 years now and I love it.
What mediums do you use for your art?
Hard lead pencil on cardstock for sketching, followed by Faber-Castell inks. I then scan and color in Photoshop. Occasionally, I’ll paint digitally in Photoshop.
How do you respond when there isn’t a lot of patron engagement?
I’ll have to let you know when I get to that. The Patreon has always had patrons submitting ideas, but I recently moved the discussion away from a Google doc submission form to discussions and votes via posts on the Patreon website and interaction has exploded. Patreon sent me a message at the end of the year to let me know that my Patreon was more engaged than 95% of any other Patreon project. To answer your question more directly, all it takes is one patron to submit an idea for each category and I have content for the next pack. Occasionally I draw my own ideas, but that is rare and now if I have an idea I’d like to illustrate myself, I include it in the votes. I think it was in December, my youngest child (age 6) was talking about alligators, except it kept coming out as ‘owl-igators’ and I knew I just HAD to draw it, so I posted it as a submission for patrons to vote on. If it wasn’t popular I wouldn’t draw it, but they loved the idea enough that I got to include it.
Cool! Thanks James! You can find James’ Patreon at Patreon.com/Jeshields. If his work sounds interesting to you, go ahead and give it a look!
James also has genre specific Patreon projects:
Purely black and white fantasy art – Patreon.com/JeFantasy Purely black and white sci-fi art – Patreon.com/JeSciFi
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
To be added to next month’s list please respond to this survey by March 5, 2017, midnight, EST.
I recently posted on Google+ asking that game-related creators in hardship respond to my post with their various product sales pages or portfolios. I got quite a few responses, which is both great (lots of people to share about!) and bad (lots of hardship!).
I didn’t ask people why they needed help, but did say if they wanted to include information they could provide it. Please don’t judge people for not providing reasoning, or assume there is none. Some of us keep our hurts private. There is no particular order except those who responded first.
If you like the work of any of the people who I’ve shared information about below, and you have some money to spare, please take some time to support them!
I will note: this is extremely guy heavy. If you are frustrated I did not include enough women and NB people in hardship, please keep in mind that I am not scouring the internet for these things. I need people to self identify their work and their needs for everything I do on this blog. I try to keep an eye out, but there is only so much I can do. I may be doing this on a more regular basis, so please look out for the next post. Also feel free to reshare this with your own links!
—
Josh T. Jordan – Ginger Goat Games, Freelance Josh is trying to pay off medical bills for family (wife and kids). DriveThru RPG LinkedIn
Tod Foley – Project Ubi Tod Foley wants to hire artists for UbiquiCity. Patreon
Craig Judd – Editor, Layout Artist, Graphic Designer, Manga Artist Craig is working to meet needs and pay bills. Portfolio Site
Brandon Williams – Arcanum Syndicate (Creator of Demon Gate) Brandon is looking for collaboration as well as to bring in more talent for projects. Arcanum Syndicate site Michael McKensie – Graphic Artist Michael is looking to move to games and graphic arts full time. Portfolio Site
Lissi Leuterio – Animator, Storyboard Artist, and Illustrator (primarily 2D FX + boards) Lissi is currently job hunting, and doing sporadic commissions work. Tumblr Patreon Vimeo
Tom McGrenery – Writer and Editor Tom notes “bills to pay and mouths to feed.” Portfolio Site
Max “Drunken Dwarf” Havic – Writer, Designer (Galaxy Incorporated) Max has an upcoming Kickstarter. DriveThru RPG
Chris Kentlea – RPG-Related Designer Chris notes “always in need of a little help.” Facebook
David Schirduan – Game Designer David is looking to catch up on medical bills. Schirduans Site If you enjoy David’s free work, please send a thank you or PayPal what you’d like to davidschirduan@gmail.com.
Mad Martian One – Game Design (Ice Kingdoms) Mad Martian are releasing content for Ice Kingdoms and looking to raise awareness. LuLu CreateSpace DriveThru RPG Facebook
Ashton McAllan – Game Designer (The Republic) Ashton’s using games as supplemental income and to support an out of work partner. The Republic Site DMs Guild
Moses Wildermuth – Editor, Creator (Gold & Glory, Ice Kingdoms, Mutazoids) Moses has experienced a reduction in the income that allowed design work on the side. Patreon David Berg – Game Designer (Within My Clutches) David is looking for financial support during some life stresses. Shrike Design
Gennifer Bone – Artist Gennifer is moving and aiming to reduce debts. Patreon Blog
—
Thank you to everyone who has read, and to those who shared their needs! Speaking up is a hard thing to do, but a good one. I hope you all have the opportunity to check out the sites and projects above, and enjoy what you find – and support the creators while you do! Please share this widely!
This post is unpaid but Thoughty supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
This month’s Woman with Initiative is Emily Griggs, an artist, writer, and geek creator! Emily was kind enough to let me look over her work and ask her a few questions. One of the things that intrigued me most about Emily’s projects is her geeky cards – She has wall art and cards with geekyand often gaming-related designs and I love that kind of thing. Her various shopshave plenty of cool products to check out!
Emily has a cute and fun style that really strikes me. There is a prevalence of artists in gaming and geek circles, and I love many of them! Emily’s art stands out to me because of the color palettes that appeal to me and the stylized looks that I think capture her characters really well.
Her webcomic, Heartless, is a Victorian action/adventure comic, featuring an LGBTQIA+ cast, which is really exciting! Even moreso, her main character, Clara, is asexual. The comic is currently funded through Patreon, and had a successful Kickstarter last year to produce print editions. Also, I love that on her website, there’s a button to take you straight to the beginning of the comic – it’s weirdly rare. I asked her a few questions about her work and current projects, and I’m happy to share her answers below!
What importance do you place on having your main character in Heartless an asexual character?
Clara being ace kinda plays double duty, in that it’s important both for the story and for me as an author. The idea for the Heartless setting predates Clara, but while I had lots of cool ideas for the world and the supporting cast and how my vampires’ “Allure” power would work, I needed a protagonist. She needed to be a young vampire, so the audience could learn about the world through her eyes, but she also needed to be special in some way so I could justify the plot revolving around her actions. I remember vividly walking home one autumn afternoon, thinking about the story, when the solution hit me: she’s immune to the Allure, because she’s asexual! The rest of the story fell into place around that one twist, including the name.
Besides all that, when I started writing Heartless I had several ace friends, but I was resisting the idea that the label might apply to me. I had all sorts of exciting internalized fear and anxiety about it, and came up with every excuse in the book to try and ignore all the obvious signs. Developing Heartless and Clara as its protagonist helped me get over that, and by the time the comic launched I was quite happily identifying as a part of the ace community.
That whole experience was part of why I decided to turn Heartless into a webcomic, rather than seeking traditional publication: I wanted to make the story available to as wide an audience as possible. It makes my day every time a younger reader finds me at a convention and tells me how happy they are to see someone like them as a main character, and I hope I’m helping some of them feel as positive about being asexual as I feel now.
While looking for inspiration – for your cards and comic – where do you go, and how do you decide what “fits” for you?
Strangely enough, my approaches to cards and comics are almost the exact opposite. For Heartless I do piles of research: history books and articles, historical fashion resources, landscape and architecture studies, etc. I’m not married to historical accuracy, but I try and stay relatively true to the setting of the comic, and the Victorian era has plenty of wonderful, awful stuff to draw inspiration from. Figuring out dialogue, background, and costumes usually involves a lot of bouncing back and forth between references, taking what I can from them before filling in the rest with my own style.
For new card designs, I just sit down with a pencil and paper and doodle until something makes me laugh. I’m kind of my own target audience, in that a lot of the designs are things that I’d either love to receive, or to give to specific friends. I try to listen to customer requests and design things that other people will love too, but in the end the Sweet Ingenuity card line is always going to be pretty heavily influenced by my own nerdy obsessions: creepy-cute girly things and a whole lot of tabletop RPG references.
What are you looking forward to in your work and in Heartless over the next few months? Heartless chapter 4 is almost complete (it should be 29 pages once it’s all done) so I’m starting to gear up to crowdfund the next printed volume. I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to the Kickstarter campaign (so much paperwork D: ) but I am really excited to see how everyone reacts to the completed volume, and to get to hold it in my hands. There’s also a bit of a twist at the end of the chapter, so I’m holding my breath waiting to see how people will take it.
For myEtsy store, I’m taking the next few months to focus on creating more big illustrations. I’ll keep adding cards as new ideas spring to mind, but expect to see some new posters over the next few months. Most of my large illustrations lately have been commissions, so taking the time to get back to big fully-rendered original pieces has been a lot of fun, and I’m excited to show off the results!
Thanks to Emily for the interview and for sharing her creations with me! I’m excited to share this with everyone, and look forward to next month’s Women with Initiative post as well!
(Note: While I am mostly focusing on women working in game design, I also want to promote other women doing design work and who are creators in geek arenas, so having Emily as one of the interviewees was just sensible!)
Tell me about the (un)Common Adventures Gallery. What has you excited about it?
The (un)Common Adventure Gallery is a collection of free-to-publish* genre illustrations I’ve started with funding through Patreon. Right now I’m doing all the illustrations, but I hope to reach a level where I’m making enough on each of my pieces that I can afford to hire other illustrators to add more variety and subject matter to the gallery. I’m really excited to have an ongoing project that helps me focus on my illustration efforts, that allows me to get direct input from my supporters on what they want to see from me, and that will eventually let me hire some of my favorite illustrators from the indie RPG scene.
*Using the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
What do you think makes you uniquely suited to this project, especially hiring other artists as well as doing illustration? I love a broad variety of genres in illustration, and I love experimenting with different media and different styles of illustration (though I have certain sensibilities that always manage to bleed through). My time as the senior editor and producer of a daily TV newscast gave me a lot of experience working with other creative people and helping to integrate their work into a cohesive final product. Basically, I want this project to be a place where I can exercise many aspects of my own creativity, a place where I can help showcase the great work other people are doing, and a place where both happen in a coordinated way.
What motivated you to go Creative Commons?
I felt that releasing the art with a Creative Commons license would be a better deal for me and for the people in the communities I engage. Tons of people from game designers to authors and publishers find that they need art for their projects, and lots of the people I interact with don’t have much of a budget for their total project (let alone to pay an illustrator to make custom pieces for everything they want). So, using the most permissive Creative Commons license lets them grab something to use as a placeholder, and if they can’t find something better or can’t afford something custom, they can still go to press or do a commercial release with the work they’ve designed around.
The Creative Commons Attribution license works for me on two levels. First, I happen to have a job that pays my bills. I’m not relying on the illustration work to keep the lights on or to put food in my belly, so I don’t currently have to worry about what I could charge in the future for licensing these works. I’d be drawing anyway, and since what I’m drawing comes strictly from my own imagination I have little expectation of a financial return on it. The CC-A license lets a lot more people use it and feel comfortable sharing it, and means that I can show off the full size, high resolution versions of my art without distracting watermarks and without worrying that someone will steal it.
The second way the CC-A license works for me is related to that last point and feeds back into the reason I chose Patreon for this project. The more people that can see my work (in they way I intend it to be seen), the greater the size of my potential audience. As the audience grows, the number of people who might pitch in to fund my work grows. So, the CC-A license also works as a marketing tool for me by letting the full illustrations be my ads (which, of course, only works because I don’t need the money to feed myself).
How do you think the Patreon model will help you meet your goals?
Patreon helps keep me motivated to do some good, fun art in the absence of other specific motivations. I find that without a school project or a paying contract, I end up with a whole lot of half-finished illustrations and semi-complete drawings. With just a little bit of money on the line, like enough to go see a movie or get a nice meal, I suddenly have a lot more motivation to work on those personal projects. Patreon also lets me interact with the people who back me so I can be sure to work on stuff that interests them, too. The payment model is also great because it is results-oriented. If I don’t put out an illustration, nobody gets charged. If I put something out and nobody likes it, they can withdraw their pledges before getting charged.
Beyond that, the ‘stretch goal’ features of Patreon let people know what they’ll get when each of the works I produce nets more money. For this project, a lot of those goals involve hiring other illustrators to create CC-A licensed art for the gallery.
What are you looking for when it comes to hiring future artists?
I’ll be looking for three things when it comes time to commission work from other artists. First, I have to like their work. Luckily, this isn’t too much of a limiting factor as I have broad taste in illustration. Second, their art style should be different from mine. One of the primary goals of commissioning other illustrators is to get a larger variety of work in the gallery, and the creative briefs I develop for the commissions (with help from my Patrons) will help me aim for different content and styles than I have been able to produce. Finally, I will be looking for people from different backgrounds than mine.
The reason that last part is important to me is in part because I am so tremendously privileged that I don’t have to rely on this work to put food on my table. If I can put money in the hands of an artist who really needs it (and pay them a full, professional rate rather than the bargain rates they might otherwise bid just to get any work at all), it will be making a bigger difference than it would if it went to another illustrator in shoes like mine (comfortable ones that I could replace if I needed to).
What’s the next project for your Patreon, as of this interview (early May)?
I showed some concepts to my backers on Patreon, and the community-level Patrons have selected an illustration tentatively titled Cherry Blossom Knight. I’ve already shot the photo reference for it (which some of the Patrons can see), and I’m headed to media testing now (picking what media to work in, e.g., colored pencil or watercolor). From there I’ll proceed to different drawing and rendering steps, all of which I’ll be documenting for my supporters with photos, time-lapse videos, and scans. I hope to have the final illustration done in early June.
I am super excited! We reached our first Patreon goal, Hangout Interviews! This means that in the next few months I’ll be working on finding interviewees and scheduling hangout interviews, which will be released on YouTube and Patreon.
I’ve started a Patreon campaign to support the blog.
There are a lot of reasons for it. The primary reason? I want to keep supporting indie creators by putting their names and info on my blog and promoting their work.
It’s also because I really hope to do more with the blog. Thoughty has been around for a while now in different incarnations, and it would mean a lot to me for it to keep going and growing. I think the big thing is that I want to be able to produce varied content – vlogs, audio, Five or So, design posts, and fiction posts. The Patreon will make that a little bit easier on me.
As a writer, I’m trying to teach myself to put real value in my own words, and I think that this is an essential part of it. I won’t be counting every blog post for the Patreon, and no blog posts will be locked behind a paywall. I’m hoping that I can just produce more content with more variety, better research, and a wider audience.
I got to talk with Nathan Paoletta about his new project, World Wide Wrestling!
Tell me a little bit about your project. What is exciting about it?
The project is a professional wrestling RPG built on the Apocalypse World engine, called World Wide Wrestling. I’m a big wrestling fan, and started the game just as an exercise in modeling the kind of wrestling I really enjoy watching the most – character-driven, consequential, with the in-ring action feeding into the development of the characters over time and vice versa. As it turns out, the game really delivers on that experience, and playing it is super fun! The AW engine is a really good chassis for representing the world of wrestling with it’s iconic archetypes, ever-evolving storylines and abrupt changes of fortune. I’m running a long-term playtest game right now, and I haven’t looked forward to each weeks session so much in a long time. And, best of all, it’s making some of my RPG friends more interested in wrestling, and bringing some of my wrestling friends more into the world of RPGs, which is super-great!
What kind of players, aside from wrestling fans, do you think would dig World Wide Wrestling?
I think anyone who’s interested in over-the-top action and melodrama can find something to dig. Wrestling is basically the combination of universal storytelling tropes with superhero personae, so there’s a lot of potential avenues to get into the right mindset for it. If you have vague memories of being a kid and watching Hulk Hogan and Macho Man bodyslam each other and how awesome that seemed at the time, you have enough context to play the game, I think. I’ve had a lot of playtesters tell me “I’m not a wrestling fan, but I want to check it out now since I played this game,” which is great and tells me that it’s “working” on some level. I don’t really want to convert anyone or anything silly like that, but there’s a lot to love in wrestling and if the game can open up someone’s horizons to the good parts, that’s a win for me. And it’s definitely a low-investment, pick-up and one-shot friendly beer-and-pretzels style game, so it’s easy to check out and see if it’s really your thing or not.
Did you alter the *World mechanics much for the game? If so, how?
They’re pretty significantly altered! It’ll be familiar to people who have played other *World games, but I ended up spindling and mutilating a lot of the basics. Some stuff that’s the same is the core rolling +Stat and picking results from a list mechanic, having playbooks (“Gimmicks”), and gaining Advances to improve your character. On the player side, the mechanics and Moves are all about gaining Heat (roughly analogous to Hx) with the other wrestlers in order to gain Audience (kind of an inverted Harm track, actually). You’re not in physical danger (though you can get injured relatively easily if you have bad rolls), but your popularity is always at risk! On the MC side, a lot has changed. Creative (the GM role) literally books play like a wrestling booker, deciding ahead of time who’s going to win what match in order to advance the storylines. Players have the agency you’d expect in any other RPG, though, so they’ll throw wrenches into the plans all the time, and there’s a structure in place to help Creative make it look like they had it planned that way all along. I’d say that there’s actually more similarity on the surface than there is under the hood, so to speak. It’s been a really fun process to work through!
Who is your favorite wrestler? You can pick more than one!
Oh man, the hardest question! Well, not really, it’s more like the answer is always changing. But my favorite pre-modern era wrestler is definitely Macho Man Randy Savage, may he rest in peace. I will also always love The Undertaker, who is technically still wrestling (once a year at Wrestlemania!). There’s an amazing tier of young talent in the WWE right now that I am really, really enjoying watching. Roman Reigns is a warrior prince who deserves all of your tribute, Antonio Cesaro is probably the guy I most love to purely watch wrestle, and Bray Wyatt is the greatest, creepiest character the WWE has had since I’ve been watching wrestling. On the indy circuit, there’s a pretty well known dude named Jimmy Jacobs who I think is great. El Generico was my favorite indy wrestler until he retired to go work with orphans in Mexico, but there’s a guy on WWE’s developmental show NXT named Sami Zayn who has a lot of the same moves, and I think has a bright future in wrestling.
What else are you working on? What’s next for you?
Once WWW is out in the wild, I’m going to be bouncing back to my other game-I’ve-been-working-on-forever, which is a monster hunting game set in the gothic world of Edgar Allen Poe called The Imp of the Perverse. The mechanics are pretty solid, but I have some period research to finish and a bunch of writing to do for it. That will be in playtest for awhile yet, and it’s probably going to be my next big thing after WWW. I’m also working on a second edition of my Vietnam war drama game carry, mostly to update the physical book but also doing a full edit and revision of the text. I have a 2-player fantasy struggle-between-good-and-evil-for-the-fate-of-the-world game that I’d like to get back to soon. There’s a couple concepts I have for microgames, and who knows when one of those gels and demands to be finished. And I want to maintain releasing cool stuff supported by my Patreon backers, so I’ll have little things coming out every couple months through that venue, hopefully. Lots of stuff, I guess!
Thanks to Nathan for the great interview! You can check out Nathan’s Patreon and his website to keep up on his current work!
