Tag: roleplaying games

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

Five or So Questions with Dustin DePenning on Synthicide


I interviewed Dustin DePenning on Synthicide, his sci-fi RPG planned for Kickstarter next year. He is currently looking for playtesters to help refine the game, so if you’re interested, e-mail him at synthiciderpg@gmail.com.

Tell me about Synthicide. What excites you about it?

Synthicide is a custom tabletop rpg system set in a violent galaxy where humans are second-class to robots.

You and your fellow players take the role of Sharpers: free agent criminals exploring and looting society’s corpse. By working jobs, you will make friends and enemies amongst gangs, corporations, and pirates. And the Tharnaxist Church, the only thing resembling law, will stay well out of your way. But that’s only if the Church doesn’t catch you killing their pride and joy: a synthetic.

Now that’s out of the way, what excites me about Synthicide are two things: it’s gritty setting and its player tools. The game world is a combination of all my favorite sci fi themes: cyberpunk missions, societal decay, corruption, and space exploration. Each of these themes can become dominant from session to session. As players interact with these elements, their decisions snowball into crazy situations over the course of a campaign.

The player aids make me proud, because Synthicide’s rules are meant to be played, not read. Character battle rules fit on a single page for easy reference, and high speed vehicle chase rules are on a second page if needed. And to help with improvisation, the GM has automated tools to generate NPCs, mission outlines, and even vehicle stats on the fly.

All this makes me really excited to finish development in the coming year.

What would a standard session be like for players as Sharpers?

Sharpers, are constantly losing money to needs like food, fuel, and better equipment. So most sessions start with players looking for a job – anything from assisting a street gang break into a vault, to helping a corporation track down and punish its debtors. The GM is encouraged to provide the players with two or three mission outlines so they can choose what kind of job to run, but most involve shady and violent activity. The real choice is who the players like working with and who they oppose.

As sessions add up, the consequences of player choices make the game world more intricate. Opponents from previous jobs might come back for revenge, complicating the players’ efforts to stay on someone’s payroll. If the players mess up enough, they lose their friends yet are left with dangerous enemies. They might have to turn tail and start fresh somewhere else in the Galaxy, continuing the cycle.

Tell me something interesting about the Tharnaxist Church. What is scary about it?
The Tharnaxist Church has the most resources and power out of everyone in the galaxy. Their history and influence stretches back to when the galaxy fell a millennia ago, so they alone have knowledge of advanced technology and mastery of robots. None of this power is put to good use, as Tharnaxist Priests aren’t concerned with human affairs. You steal from someone? They don’t care. You murder someone? They don’t care. But as soon as you lay a hand on a robot or priest, they will destroy you.

The problem is that the best jobs a Sharper can get involve attacking priests and synthetics.

How do you make the gritty setting reflect in the rules?
Combat can be brutal. Synthicide uses a traditional HP and damage system, but it only takes a few hits to bring down a warrior. Also, HP levels up slowly, while attack and damage can increase quickly. To crank it up even more, there are optional rules for circulatory shock or suffering mental trauma. There’s also an optional system where powerful attacks instantly kill poorly-armored foes.

The game’s economy is also gritty. Players are frequently in danger of starving to death, but food is expensive. However, the rules don’t track ammunition costs, making violent jobs an easy way to fill a hungry belly.

How does NPC generation work?

NPC generation is the simplest part of the game. The GM uses the automated tool to makes a few selections fitting the concept of the NPC. First choose a type, which is anything from rich man to animal. Next choose a mechanical role, such as a killer or sneak. Finally, choose one unique power, such as extra defenses or an explosive attack. The generator then fills in all the relevant stats and even rolls for loot. You can try the generator out yourself here: http://www.synthiciderpg.com/generator/npcGenerator.html

What do you want players to take away from Synthicide?

I want the players to feel invested in overcoming the economic and social challenges they face in the game. They aren’t adventuring as a choice, or because they are chosen heroes. They are fighting tooth and nail to justify their existence in the Galaxy. And as they grow in power and experience, I want them to notice what kind of person their character has become. Are they proud of what they have done to get this far? What are they willing to do to go even farther?

Thanks to Dustin for the great interview. Keep an eye out next year for the Synthicide Kickstarter, and don’t forget to e-mail Dustin if you’re interested in playtesting at synthiciderpg@gmail.com.


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

Five or So Questions with Ian Williams on ACTION MOVIE WORLD!

SUNDAY EDITION! 

I had an interview with Ian Williams on his game, ACTION MOVIE WORLD, which is currently on DriveThruRPG for purchase! It sounds like a really fun time!

Tell me a little about ACTION MOVIE WORLD. What excites you about it?

I got the bright idea to make an Apocalypse World engine game about a world where everything from action movies was real. I was working through the skeleton of this idea and my friend, Bret, says that I should make it a game where you’re playing the action movie actors, who are then playing the action movie heroes. That was all brilliant, so that’s the genesis of the game. I set it up so it was aggressively multi-genre; as an actor, you don’t just play one role in your career. You play in lots of movies, lots of characters. So I decided that you would have a character playbook based on what “type” of movie actor you are, a la any other *World game, but you’d combine it with a playbook for your current movie. That would give you moves which lasted only for the duration of a specific movie, 1-3 sessions.

So you end up with what I think it a pretty cool and flexible thing where you can just go nuts with as many genres as you can squeeze into your game. Do ninjas one night, cops the next, etc. So that’s exciting, but I also just genuinely love action movies, particularly the bad VHS fodder of the 80s and 90s. AMW is my way of deconstructing what makes them work as a medium before reconstructing it. It’s a love letter with a stamp on it labelled “Thinking of You”.

How does it work to combine the type and playbook – do you get separate moves or bonuses to stats? 
Your actor playbook is basically like a character from any other Apocalypse engine game. Or, if someone doesn’t have that frame of reference, just a character in a RPG. So any moves or bonuses you get there are permanent. They’re essential to you, the actor, who translates those moves into a character for a movie.

Scripts (the name for the movie playbook) give you a move. You pick one from a list which is super genre specific. But those moves last for the duration of that one movie, only. Say you’re doing a ninja movie. You pick a move which lets you drop a smoke bomb and disappear. That’s yours until the movie ends–usually 1-3 sessions. So the combo of these two approaches lets you play both with and against type.

I’m a big fan of team mechanics. Can you talk a little about Camaraderie? 

At the core of action movies, there’s this physical expression of emotions. Anger, love, fear, whatever. It’s always physical. That’s a main theme, that action heroes display their emotions in this physical, primal manner. And another main theme is that these movies are basically about friendships, even if it’s a friendship in the past, like with a lone POW escaping from Vietnam or something like that, where the soldier’s friends are left behind but are still the motivation.
Camaraderie measures the friendship between the characters. It goes up and down, as you either contribute to or betray this communal bond between pals. And you can use it to make a Camaraderie move, which is basically that moment in a movie where the friends get together and kick some ass while a guitar wails in the background. That move is super powerful and it’s not quite as distinctly “this is that and nothing more” as most of the other moves. It’s meant to be rolled when you do a cool thing with your buddies, even if it’s just a hi-five before fighting the bad guy. If you succeed on it, you get some cool doodads like doing mega damage to the movie’s villain or similar.

I love that you have a statement about inclusivity. Who are your favorite lady action heroes, and what do you think they’d play in AMW? 

I love Michelle Yeoh on “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” alone, much less all of the other stuff she’s done. I think she’d be a Thespian or Gunfighter, in terms of playbooks. Lucy Lawless. I loved Xena. Definitely a Smartass, with a high +Muscles rating. And Cynthia Rothrock, who should be way more famous than she is and probably would be if she’d come on the scene today. Pugilist for her.

The game has leads and supporting characters. Can you give an example of a team with leads and supporting characters from a film, and how they’d play out in game? 

It’s really any action movie you care to look at! That system with an invulnerable lead and supporting characters who die in droves is really about the idea that action movies are about the journey, not the ending. The ending is never in doubt: the hero’s going to win, most of his or her friends are going to be dead or maimed, serving to make the hero even more badass.

A really good example is “Alien” You’ve got Ripley and this cast of compelling, strong characters. And, one by one, the supporting cast are killed off. Ripley wins and she looks even cooler by virtue of the fact that her supporting cast was so strong. Textbook stuff, even though it’s also a horror movie (horror and action are two flavors which go well together).

In game, that would be Sigourney Weaver as the Lead in the movie “Alien”. Everyone else is supporting cast; they get experience when they die. The next movie the group plays is a Tom Skerritt movie. Skerrit’s the Lead, Weaver is supporting cast in that one. Eventually, Weaver gets to be Lead in another movie after everyone else has had a turn. The whole table is happy and buys three more copies of ACTION MOVIE WORLD to show their enthusiasm!


Make sure to check out ACTION MOVIE WORLD on DriveThruRPG now!


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

Five or So Questions with Jason Pitre on Sig!

Today I have an interview with Jason Pitre about Sig, his new expansion for his previously released game, Spark. It’s currently on Kickstarter!

Tell me about Sig. What excites you about it?

What is Sig? That questions has a lot more to it than you might think.

On the surface, Sig is an expansion for my previous game, the Spark RPG. It presents a vast new multiplanar fantasy setting to explore. It offers with mechanical refinements and new tools for storytelling. It’s even designed to encourage collaborative world building during play, as characters explore the infinite multiverse.

That’s not what the setting is really about though.

Sig is the platonic ideal of a city. Cities are actually rather strange places, when you think about them. Thousands of living, breathing souls crammed together in a small patch of land. Every city has some residents whose roots run deep, with generations upon generations residing in the same neighbourhoods. Other residents are newcomers, from near or from distant lands. Cities thrive based on the industriousness of their inhabitants, creating wonders of art, craft and ideas that spread on an international scale. Cities are hungry places, devouring obscene amounts of resources from the surrounding countryside. They are places where religions clash, where ethnic groups mix, and where languages change.

Sig is a lens through which I was able to delve deeply into what a city really means. It gave me a chance to explore how a cosmopolitan city functions and how the vast diversity of the world interacts. It’s a place to focus on those cast out by society, and those laden with privilege. It speaks of how immigration, community-building and gentrification will change the nature of neighbourhoods. Issues of class, of race, of sexuality and of gender identify are all part of the constant dialogue of the City Between.

This sounds fascinating! Can you tell me a little about the mechanical side of Sig? How does Sig tie into Spark, functionally?

So, in order to talk about the mechanics of Sig, I need to give a bit of a primer for the original core system of Spark. Spark was first, big project that I kickstarted back in 2013. It was a game about building worlds and challenging your beliefs within them. The two pillars of the game are those two key activities.

In Spark, you build worlds together. Each person names one of their favourite pieces of media; a book, game, comic, song or the like. Each person then identifies one thing about that media that really inspires them; perhaps the cosmopolitan markets of Babylon 5 or the sass of Rat Queens. As a group, you mix some of those inspirations to create facts about the world you are creating, until you have a solid framework. Those then get fleshed out by discussing the fundamental Beliefs of the setting; things like “Might makes right”, “The Emissaries are traitors” or “Love is stronger than anger”. These Beliefs inspire the various organizations that make up the world, and drive play. It’s a fun mini-game to build exciting settings that contain a little bit of everyone’s personal contributions. I even expanded that into a free product titled “A Spark in Fate Core”, which adapted that to Fate.

The rest of the game is about challenging, or confronting, your Beliefs. Like the setting itself, each character has three Beliefs. Over the course of a number of scenes, the player collaboratively establish scenes, collaborate to roleplay freely, and enter conflicts when people disagree on what should happen next. Each of these situations gives the characters the opportunities to discover evidence that refutes or supports their Beliefs, which provides a currency known as Influence. Players spend Influence to win conflicts they would otherwise lose, to avoid paying the price of victory for conflicts that they do indeed win, and to change the Beliefs of other characters.

Sig runs off the same basic foundation, but adapts it somewhat. While the Spark RPG presents four character attributes (Body, Heart, Mind & Spark), Sig reduces them to two (Spark & Smoke). Sig cares less about how conflicts are won, and more about why they are engaged in. That’s why in Sig, there is explicit discussion of Heritage (ethnicity/species), of urban Factions (guilds) and of the Powers (gods) they serve. These social ties also give the characters more ability to call upon external support through political leverage and divine rituals. The most important NPCs are also expressions of those social ties, sharing heritage, factional loyalty and religious convictions with the PCs.

Can you give examples of stories we could tell with Sig?

The stories of Sig tend to be strangely personal and emotionally gripping dramas with a vast, bizarre multiverse in a backdrop.

One of my friends played a gender-fluid ghost sex-worker who appears to people as lost loved ones and was paid in memories. They aspired to become the god of Lost Children.
Another player was a half-giantess whose conflicted relationship with her massive mother and her frail father drove her.
A third was a bestial, massive man who taught the orphans of Sig, telling himself in the dark of night that his mother hadn’t abandoned him.

Now, there may have been homocidal godlings, raging kaiju, or dragon armies involved in some of those games, but the personal stories are what stay with me.


As someone creating an expansion for an original game, what suggestions do you have for other creators, based on your experience?

Expanding on existing games is tough, both for creative and logistical reasons.

First thing to keep track of is the fact that supplements only sell a fraction of what corebooks do. Even in the good old days of the TSR boxed sets, those expansions and settings barely paid for themselves. If you want to build an expansion, you have to be absolutely sure that the product is compelling.

You need to make sure that your expansion aligns with and supports your core game, keeping the content close enough to be familiar. Paradoxically, the expansion also needs to push boundaries, offering new mechanical systems and fictional ideals to work with. It needs to broaden the scope of play, or examine one specific facet of the core book in detail.

Expansions are difficult things to create, but a successful one can breathe new life into a game.

Thanks to Jason for the interview! Make sure to check out Sig on Kickstarter!


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

Five or So Questions with Mike Evans on Hubris

Today I have an interview with Mike Evans on his setting Hubris: A World of Visceral Adventure, currently on Kickstarter!


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

Hubris is a weird, horror fantasy setting that utilizes the Dungeon Crawl Classic rules.  It’s a setting of horrific monsters, strange abandoned ruins, and terrifying gods that care little about the world.  Players can be any of the classes from DCC, or they can dive into new races and classes in Hubris such as the mutant, murder machine, shadow dancer, alchemist, or blood witch (to name a few).  I was inspired by horror movies such as The Thing, Tetzo Iron Man, Evil Dead, Pumpkinhead.  RPGs that inspired me are Vornheim, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Cthulhu, Iron Kingdoms, and more.  While writing the setting I had a constant flow of TOOL, A Perfect Circle, Slayer, Type o’ Negative, Cannibal Corpse, Anthrax, and White Zombie blasting on my stereo. 
Hubris excites me because I wrote the setting how I would like a setting book to be: usable at the game table.  It’s got horror, weirdness, and fantasy.  The territories I’ve created have just enough fluff to give good flavor, but by and large they are a d100 random encounter chart and a d100 interesting locations chart.  Each territory then has 5 or so locations I’ve created (with a paragraph of description) and 3-5 plot hooks/rumors.  If you don’t like DCC or don’t want to use that ruleset, you don’t have to.  The territories are largely system neutral and can be used with any mechanics.  I’m also excited because the people who are helping bring Hubris to print.  Alex Mayo is doing the layout, while David Lewis Johnson, Jez Gordon, Jason Sholtis, Jeremy Duncan, Doug Kovacs and Angie Groves (my wife) are doing art.  It’s been great to connect and work with them. 
What did you do to help guide your design process – structured templates, blog posting, etc.? 
The biggest hurdle I had to overcome was HOW I wanted to do the territories as far as formatting goes.  I played with several permutations, but I wasn’t happy with nothing.  I ended up getting frustrated and put down the territories for about 2 months and went to work on the gods, patrons, spells, etc.  Finally one day I was on a OSR blog and they were doing a list of random encounters that had location and encounters in one table… and it just felt right to separate them and create a d100 of each.  Once that was done, boom- I was off writing again. 
As far as other things- I kept an open mind to constructive criticism and valued the opinion of my peers, friends, and especially my wife.  She was a good grounding… and she’s not a role-player so she offered a great perspective on things. 
I put quite a bit of stuff up on my blog (https://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/the-hubris-campaign-setting-links-page/) for others to use and offer feedback and thoughts, and the more I did the larger the Hubris following became.  The interesting thing is I originally didn’t intend to publish Hubris, but peeps seemed to dig it and I said fuck it. 
As far as structured templates I used those quite a bit (and tried to emulate the formatting of DCC) for the patrons, spells, etc.
What would you say is one of the most unsettling thing you worked on in the book?

Easily the most unsettling thing I worked on was the Charred Maiden (https://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/hubris-the-charred-maiden-a-dcc-patron/).  The patron was inspired by the burnt lady in American Horror Story the first season, Countess Barthory, nightmares, etc.  I wanted the character description to be “real” so I researched what burn victims look like and read reports on how the body reacts to high temperatures, etc… Tried to capture that a bit in her writing, but I didn’t want to go too far.
Can you tell me a little about The Black Queen? She sounds awesome.
I love pictures.  When I started developing ideas for Hubris I was just typing up random crazy words in Google that I had in my head and looking for art to inspire me.  One piece I found was of the evil queen from Snow White (https://wrathofzombie.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-black-queen.jpg) and it just HIT me that I wanted something like her in my game.  I wanted a strong character that could be a horrific ally or a formidable foe.  I also thought it would be cool to link her to a game mechanic (patron bond to the Floating Island of Terror- https://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/hubris-the-floating-island-of-terror-a-dcc-patron/).  Players can share that bond and that could create interesting situations. 
The queen consumes nightmares, rules through fear, and is responsible for flintlock weaponry being distributed through Hubris. 
Here’s a small piece about her” The Black Queen, a powerful sorcereress, sits high on her throne of bones and steam in her floating metal city, satiating her hunger on the nightmares of her subjects.  The Black Queen governs and commands all who enter here; with the help of The Black Guard of Abhorrent Action, a group of devote followers of the Black Queen, it isn’t difficult.
As a designer, you get a different perspective on how games function (from my experience) – what is the best takeaway from a design perspective that you would like to see in a player’s toolkit?

I’d have to say that this is a two-fold desire.  One- I hope people use the book at the table.  It’s packed full of charts and tables to be used on the fly, and each territory (there are 10 of them) have two d100 tables.  I want the players to say, “fuck it!  We want to go into the Land of Perpetual Stone and Mire and explore!” and the GM can do a few simple die rolls and have a couple locations and encounters ready to spring.  If they want to go deeper they can flip to the charts and use the die drop table to create a horrible ruin or the table to create the alter of an ancient and forgotten demigod… 
The second is that it has been my experience that many authors fall in love with their own campaign settings, as they should as it’s their work… however it shouldn’t be treated as gospel.  When I read some (not all) settings I get this sense of THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE PLAYED!  DO NOT DEVIATE!  And I say fuck it!  DIY!  Hubris is a toolkit; hack it, chop it, mutilate it and use what the hell you want.  The map does not have a scale…  I want the GM to decide the size of Hubris.  Is it a REALLY dense island?  Is it the size of Texas?  Africa?  Larger?  Whatever- I don’t need to put something in there to sway your mind.  I’m putting three versions of the map in the book.  A map with no labels, one with labels, and one with a hexgrid overlay.  Some GMs like hexcrawls and others don’t.  I want people to play Hubris (or mine from it) what they want. 
If someone uses just ONE idea from Hubris, then I’m happy. 
Thanks Mike for the great interview! Make sure to check out Hubris: A World of Visceral Adventure on Kickstarter!

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

Insanity in Horror and Lovecraftian RPGs

A friend who I don’t know if they want to be tagged was discussing mental illness and insanity mechanics in RPGs with Lovecraftian themes on G+, and I wanted to share my original response, and kind of give some more thoughts.

I honestly think that part of the experience of trauma and disconnection with reality that is represented by insanity mechanics in games is a combination of personal suffering brought on by the exposure to a greater existence and comprehension skewed by denial.

I don’t know if any of you have experienced real life paranoia or psychotic experiences. It is, from personal experience, completely terrifying. When it happened to me, I had to cope with the things that I knew for sure were not real only because of how unreal they were, and then the things that I could not tell if they were real because how very real they could be. I imagine that the true horror of Lovecraftian exposure would be that the things that definitely could not be real are actually definitely real, and knowing that, and feeling as though you cannot trust your own mind to tell the difference between what you see as “normal” or even “unusual” is now corrupted by the extreme and phantasmagoric. When the unreality is the new reality, what then is truly real?

For me, the experience of paranoia and psychosis may definitely have been unique to me, so I don’t mean to speak for everyone.

It was the oddest thing. I have some idea of what triggered the paranoia to seep in, but it’s not entirely clear. What I do know is that I woke up after a series of nightmares and found that the mere idea of walking outside the house was nearly impossible to grasp. I knew, I just knew that if I walked outside and, I knew would happen, someone would see me, and they would burst into flames. It’s completely irrational. It defies all logic and is impossible. But I knew it. It was true, and I was so frightened. It was even deeper than that, in that I knew people could hear what I was thinking. I could see in their minds what they thought of me, and how vile a creature I was. When I looked in the mirror I did not look like what I previously had thought I looked like, and until the episode ended, I couldn’t tell what was real and what I just knew.

The hallucinations I experienced were sometimes silly and simple. My cats talked to me and told me about games they wanted to design and screenplays they wanted to write. Others were not as good, like the movement out of the corner of my eye that became a car crashing into the side of my vehicle while I was driving. Others, they were unbelievable and I denied them, because they were things I knew couldn’t be real, but god, they felt real.

When I played Black Stars Rise, one of the breaks that was given to me was a card with a man of shadows who followed me. I laughed when I got it, because I knew that man. For literally my entire life, I have had experiences that lasted long periods of time when the shadow man followed me. He never hurt me, he never did anything to me, but he was there. Watching. It was something that was so startlingly real that I could perfectly imagine it in-game, and it made me think a lot about how we translate real-life phenomena into games.

It can or may be very easy for someone with good mental health or less extreme mental health issues to portray mental illness in a character and portray something like mental illness in a character. For me, when I am having a bad time of it, even something like receiving the paranoia or hallucinations cards in Eldrich Horror makes me anxious, and watching other players portray characters who are “insane” or “mad” can be very difficult.

Working to comprehend the differences between natural chemical imbalances, trauma-induced chemical imbalances, and otherworldly trauma mental impacts is something that I think needs to be worked on. Some games have approached it (one in particular, Lovecraftesque, I consulted on), and others have chosen to avoid it altogether, and I’m not condemning any specific game or way of handling it.

However, we really do need to understand that part of what is experienced in Lovecraftian RPGs is trauma. It is not simply the otherworldly experience, or the defiance of reality. While I agree with myself in my original statement up near the top, I honestly don’t think that encompasses the entire experience. Traumatic events in RPGs are often either dismissed or responded to with extremes, like flashbacks or violent outbursts. While those things can be response to trauma, they are not the only response to trauma. Sometimes it results in having triggers, where certain things cause an emotional response – anything from anxiety, to a panic attack, to a physiological response, to rage, to violence. I personally discourage people from playing characters who respond to trauma with extreme responses unless they are willing to play it respectfully. I don’t like to see players doing the comedy crazy. If you play a mentally ill character, it should not be for laughs, because those are _real people_ you are mocking. And that is my only real problem with insanity mechanics: they separate us from understanding the differences between the impacts of otherworldly exposure.

Here are the three ways of portraying characters in horror or Lovecraftian RPGs with complicated mental and/or emotional states that I think make sense:
Characters who start out as having a mental illness or mental difference: these are characters who have depression or bipolar disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder or even autism. Their behavior may seem abnormal to other characters and that’s okay, if you’re playing it with respect it can add a lot to the story, because, like in my case, how would I know whether what I was seeing is a hallucination or a delusion or if it was actually real? Is the obsession with researching and cataloging unnatural events really influence by an unnatural power, or is it a natural compulsion? These are things you can explore, but I definitely advise doing at least a little bit of research before you do it, or taking the time to think about how you would feel if someone had these issues was there.
Characters who have experienced trauma and as a result have mental or emotional response: these are characters who, whether in the course of game or as part of their background have had a traumatic experience either directly related or indirectly related to the horrific subjects at hand. This is a point that is extremely delicate. Post-traumatic stress can be represented in so many different ways, and there are a few important things to think about. One, you need to make sure that it ties together. The behavior is not necessarily logical, but you don’t want someone who was kidnapped by a cult to have panic attacks because they are in open spaces, unless you have more detailed justification. There are certain words or experiences that might trigger someone’s issues with PTSD or trauma, like with victims of sexual assault, but that trauma can present in multiple ways: shutting down and not responding, panicking, emotional response (crying or distress), or in some cases, yes, violence. The final response is not nearly as common as we see represented. Trauma responses are something that definitely have their place in horror and Lovecraftian games, but they should be handled with care. You never know who shares the table, and who you might hurt. 
Finally, characters who experience otherworldly trauma: these characters, in my opinion, are somewhat different than the previous category because they have a different type of experience that actually may be stacked on top of typical trauma. The otherworldly trauma is kind of like a combination of the previous two, where you experience something so unreal, so disconnected from your reality, that you now question your very existence, and it consumes you. This is the kind of thing where a character might see into the void, and when they return, they are no longer the same. Maybe their behavior will be unusual, or they respond irrationally to normal stimuli, but they are not “crazy” nor have they experienced what we normally would explain as “trauma”, because it’s not a natural trauma. It is something that they may not be able to explain or even understand themselves. This also needs to be treated carefully because it can infringe upon both of the other types of character behavior and representation. Be mindful of what natural responses to trauma and mental illness people have, and try to show yours as different. Perhaps they do have hallucinations, but because they have seen the reality of the void, they don’t react as though they are troubled by them because they are confused and it is unnatural, but instead they have a reaction of discontent and frustration – less “Is this real? What do I do?” and more “Why do you plague me? I wish you weren’t real.”
This is not a perfect way to do it, I know. I think it’s just one of the ways to look at the situation and a way that people can think in more detail about the themes we work with in horror and especially things like Lovecraftian fiction in games. If you choose to play a character who has been scarred by their experiences, think very carefully about how you’re doing it, why you’re doing it, and how best you can represent it without making other people feel like you’re treating them like a joke or like something to be feared. Even the mad have feelings, and darkness only gets darker when you lose trust in those around you.
 

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

Five or So Questions with Phil Lewis on Wrath of the Autarch!

Today I’m interviewing Phil Lewis about Wrath of the Autarch, now on Kickstarter! This boardgame-inspired RPG sounds super fun, so check out the interview below!

Tell me about Wrath of the Autarch. What excites you about it?
Kingdom building games have always been in my blood. The idea of collaboratively telling the story of a society through the lens of the important leaders is really exciting! I also like exploring this space between boardgames and role-playing games. Wrath of the Autarch takes elements of boardgame design and uses them to create challenge in a more traditional role-playing game space. I really like that!

What are the key elements of boardgaming you wanted to highlight, and how did you bring them in?
The primary one is an action economy. There is only so much time to do what you need to do! I wanted the players to feel a time pressure that builds over the course of the campaign. The Empire is growing in strength and the Autarch is coming!

That action economy works at many time scales. The Stronghold players must finish a certain number of challenge scenes each season of time, or the Autarch player gains more benefits. Each season of time, the Stronghold players only accomplish one large goal, so they have to choose what they think is the most important.

I also used an abstract dice mechanic to handle resources. It was inspired by boardgames such as Kingsburg. The Stronghold players use six sided dice at the beginning of each season to build developments for their society. Multiple colors of dice are used, each mapping to a type of resource (like food or ore). Based on results of rolls, there are tough choices – do you build the development you really want, even if it might not be the best use of your resources that season? Or do you get as much as you possibly can, optimizing all of your rolls and trades, even if those developments may not have an immediate benefit.

What was the hardest part of integrating the two modes – boardgame and TTRPG?
Tabletop role-playing games have many unspoken procedures. There’s this shared history that is frequently leveraged to make tabletop role-playing games work. Boardgames don’t really have that. So there’s some extra work in trying to make some of those procedures explicit.

There’s also a challenge in harnessing the creativity that comes out of role-playing games and placing it into an action economy like Wrath of the Autarch has.

Threats sound interesting! Tell me a little about them.
Threats are the way that drama emerges in the game! At the end of each session, there’s a chance for badness. Regions that your society controls might have threats. Factions that you’re friends with could have threats as well.

Threats generally have a type (like diplomacy, infiltration, skirmish, warfare) as well as a difficulty. They’re a great chance for the Autarch player to reincorporate all of the drama from the Stronghold’s past into the storyline! Did something happen between an emissary from the Stronghold and the leader of a faction a few seasons ago? Maybe that has snowballed into a bigger issue! Maybe they demand aid, or perhaps there are disagreements over customs or religions.

The Stronghold players can choose to ignore threats, but that usually has other consequences for the Stronghold. Regions might not be able to produce resources. Factions may start to dislike the Stronghold.

Finally, the Autarch player has schemes at their disposal. Schemes are like super threats! Each year, the Autarch player may choose a number of schemes to unleash. They grow in intensity over the campaign, finally culminating in all out attacks by the Autarch!

I’m going to give you a tough one: what is the ideal player for Wrath of the Autarch?

That’s a really good question! I’ll answer it this way: I designed this as a game I could play with my friends. Our usual game group is made up of older people with jobs and children. Almost invariably, a few people can’t make it each week. Wrath of the Autarch is troupe based and episodic so that if a few people can’t make it, it’s not a problem. The story can continue!

More directly: The biggest fans are people who like kingdom building games, either video games (like Crusader Kings or even Civilization) or role-playing games (like Birthright or Ars Magica) or even boardgames. During playtests, players who aren’t as into those games still have fun setting up scenes, playing characters, exploring relationships. But it’s really going to hit all the right notes for someone who likes to think about the long term strategy of their kingdom.

Thanks, Phil, for the interview! You can find more about Wrath of the Autarch on Kickstarter!

Five or So Questions with Becky Annison and Josh Fox on Lovecraftesque

I interviewed Becky Annison and Josh Fox about their new game, Lovecraftesque! It’s currently on Kickstarter and looks awesome!

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

J: Lovecraftesque is a storygame of brooding, cosmic horror. It recreates the rhythm and style of Lovecraft’s stories, and gives you the tools to collaboratively create monsters and other horrors that feel like they could have come from Lovecraft’s notebook.

B: I really enjoy the typical model of a Lovecraft story – the single protagonist getting deeper and deeper into a terrible mystery only to find they are already doomed. But the majority of Lovecraft RPGs focus on a party of investigators instead of the lonely protagonist. What excites me is how Lovecraftesque takes the story back to that lone protagonist. I love the fact that the rotating roles in the game mean that everyone is trying to doom that character in their own way.

J: For me, this is the GMless mystery game I’ve always wanted to play in. I love the fact that I get to put my own stamp on the story, while getting the uncertainty and suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen. And the game’s rules mean you still get the coherence and direction you’d normally get from a GM, without the need to break the atmosphere to discuss what’s really going on.

Lovecraft and associated mythos are, historically, kind of problematic. What have you done as creators in regards to problems like sexism, racism, and ableism?
B: Lovecraft is very problematic and we are approaching that openly. We have done a number of things to try and de-toxify Lovecraft. I think there are 3 main areas we have worked on this.

Firstly we wanted out art to be as diverse as possible and part of the reason we chose Robin Scott was for the amazingly inclusive art in her Urban Tarot series.

Secondly we’ve put a lot of thought and guidance into how to create a good safety culture at the table. We encourage players to agree up front their approaches to sexism, racism and abelism and ensure everyone’s views are heard.

J: The setup phase of the game includes a step in which players can ban specific themes or elements, and we’ve included a prompt to consider banning in-character racism and racist themes.

B: Lastly we’ve written two guidance sections in the game text, one on mental health and one on racism. In those we explore the stereotypes in Lovecrafts’ work and give practical guidance to ensure people don’t unconsciously replicate them.

J: The mental health side is handled a bit differently. It’s fair to say we encourage people to omit racism entirely from the game, and we don’t think that will hurt the story in the slightest. By contrast the effect of the horror on the human mind is an important theme of Lovecraftian tales.

We’ve analysed the different ways that the horror can impact on someone’s mind or their behaviour, giving you a set of options for a respectful portrayal that steers well clear of the stereotype of the horror driving people “mad”. The key thing is to portray a character, not a collection of symptoms.

How do you envision a typical session of Lovecraftesque?

B: This is a story game in which the players rotate the role of a single protagonist and share out narration. Everyone creates clues and then secretly leaps to a conclusion about what those clues mean. A typical session should have people inventing clues, building on each other’s details layer by layer and dripping atmosphere and tension into every scene.

But my favourite bit is when the players leap to conclusions secretly. Because at the end you not only have a finale which feels like it was planned all along, but you have a the fun of comparing theories at the end of the game.

J: As you near the end of the game, the protagonist begins what we call the Journey into Darkness, where they travel to an old, dark or sinister location where they’ll confront the horror. It’s one of my favourite bits of the game – you ramp up the tension and shift the game’s gears from “I’m sure all this can be explained rationally” to a scene of stark, alien horror.

The Final Horror is the apex of that journey, where all those theories you’ve been building are finally resolved. And there’s always a bleak epilogue where you see what happens after the story ends.

Which Lovecraftian works did you pull from the most for the themes in Lovecraftesque?

B: Our biggest influence was Graham Walmsley’s Stealing Cthulhu which does an inspiring job of deconstructing Lovecraft’s stories, breaking down their rhythm and structure. His work focuses on a smaller number of key stories which we have expanded on. But we’ve also looked at the following in more detail: The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innmouth, The Whisperer in Darkness, the Haunter of the Dark, At the Mountains of Madness, Cool Air and Pickmans’ Model.

J: I’d add the Colour Out of Space and the Call of Cthulhu to that list.

B: I’d be hard pressed to pick a favourite but I do love The Whisperer in Darkness.

J: For me it’s the Colour Out of Space. It’s such a great example of Lovecraft’s weird blending of the themes of what we’d now call science fiction with a classic horror tale.

If you were to set up the ideal environment for a session of Lovecraftesque, what would you have there? (Props, music, location, etc.)
J: Atmosphere is key for Lovecraftesque, and a lot of the game’s mechanics are targeted on building tension. The gaming environment should support this. Low-key, instrumental music played at a low volume. Ideally play at night (we did one of our playtests on a dark and stormy evening and scared the bejeesus out of each other). You can even turn the lights down or use candles, since the game doesn’t require much in the way of rules look-up.

If I had absolute freedom to choose any venue, I’d choose an old house, old enough to creak and sigh a little. It would be in the countryside, far from any main road or settlement. It would have old paintings on the walls and a fire crackling in the corner.

B: My favourite place for playing Lovecraftesque is our own dining room. We are lucky enough to have a oak panelled dining room which is dark, intimate and atmospheric.

Five or So Questions with Jacob Wood on Psi-punk: Worlds Edge Arena!

Today I have an interview with Jacob Wood about his Kickstarter, Psi-punk: World’s Edge Arena!

Tell me about Psi-punk: Worlds Edge Arena. What excites you about it?

World’s Edge Arena is the second sourcebook for Psi-punk, a Fudge-compatible cyberpunk RPG. It introduces players to the city of punta Arenas, Chile, where characters compete in a televised bloodsport known as the World’s Edge Arena.

Players form teams and face two qualifying rounds against psychicly-controlled, cybernetically-enhanced predators such as wolves, eagles, bears, and komodo dragons. If they survive the qualifiers, they enter a single elimination tournament against seven other teams and battle for fame and fortune. Also, just to keep things interesting, the layout and terrain of the Arena shifts and changes between matches so every fight is new and exciting.

World’s Edge Arena is televised globally and has a huge fan base. Players can tap into their excitement and approval by means of a Fan favor mechanic which gives them an edge in combat.

The huge success of the Arena draws thousands of people to the formerly-small city. An influx of outside wealth and culture has created a rift between old traditions and new customs. The setting explores what it’s like for people who live in the town and the conflicts that arise because of its sudden population explosion.

To me, the most exciting thing about the book is that it gives both plaayers and GMs a lot of hooks to really get invested in the setting. It would be simple to play an entire campaign set in and around the area–there’s downtime between matches at the Arena, and there’s plenty to do around town. For groups who are fond of combat, the Arena itself offers a lot of diversity. For those who like to mix in intrigue and traditional cyberpunk-style street running, it offers a lot of that too.


How does the Fan Favor mechanic work, and what do you think it puts into the game?

Fan Favor is pretty simple: do something awesome and you gain Favor, do something shameful and you lose it. The book has a chart with a few examples of ways to gain and lose Favor. For example:

Incapacitate or kill a wounded opponent: +1 Favor
Incapacitate or kill an uninjured opponent: +2
Victory against overwhelming odds: +2
Heal a creature during combat: -1
Execute an incapacitated opponent: -2

Fan Favor is accumulated on a team level, so everyone contributes to the team’s pool. Anyone may spend some of their team’s favor to do something cool, such as:

Add +1 to a roll: -1 Favor
Re-roll and take the better result: -2 Favor
Force an opponent to re-roll and take the worse result: -3 Favor

Favor rolls over between matches, and GMs are welcome to start opposing teams with some Favor of their own. From my experience running Psi-punk, re-rolling dice in Fudge has the potential to alter the course of a conflict and makes for some pretty exciting gameplay. The mechanic also gives a trackable meta-game element which players can use to get an idea of just how great they’re doing–it’s like unlocking achievements or levelling up, but without any pre-set goals.

Tell me about the creatures in your bestiary – which ones are the scariest?
The Arena has a sizable bestiary filled with augmented predators. During matches, these animals are controlled by humans with the mind control power, so they think and reason like expert strategists but have all of the natural (and cybernetically-enhanced) abilities of a normal creature. The beasts are clone, so there’s a near-infinite supply of them, and they represent the largest and fiercest animals of their species.

A couple of my favorite examples are:

Coyotes augmented with sonarkinesis so they can unleash a howl that literally damages their opponents.
Black panthers with the ability to dim the lighting near them, which gives them an even greater stealth advantage.
Wolves with a frost breath attack capable of freezing multiple opponents.
Komodo dragons… because they’re komodo dragons.

How do you emulate the changing layout and terrain?

One of the key aspects of the Psi-punk setting is technology built on emulating psionic powers. This tech is known as magic, and magic devices can perform a huge variety of tricks based on what they’re programmed to do.

The World’s Edge Arena is built with a device capable of using a power known as control animate to terraform the arena’s terrain. As a televised broadcast, the Arena is set up like a season of a TV show. Each season has one terrain theme–jungle, desert, tundra, mountains, grasslands, etc.–and every episode (that is, every fight) takes place in that one terrain. It influences the types of beasts from the bestiary who will fight during that season and has a huge impact on how the human warriors interact with their environment.
To keep things from getting stale or from someone gaining the upper hand by studying the environment, the arena changes shape between episodes. During one match a player may have discovered a helpful cave to hide in or a particularly large tree to climb, but when they get to their next match they’ll need to explore all over again.

The specifics about how things change are intentionally left vague so the GM and players can decide on that themselves. I’m a really big fan of players being able to ask questions like “Is there a tree I can climb to get a height advantage?” and the GM can make that call. it creates an environment where the players get to have a say in what’s happening around them.

In creating the game and prepping it for backers, what is the coolest experience you’ve had?

While running the game at a local convention for a group of people new to Psi-punk, I got to see how different people and different personalities interact with the setting and the mechanics. In particular, there was one character who was a skilled hacker but was a total coward when it comes to physical combat. Instead of the player spending all of his time running and hiding and generally not feeling like he belonged in a combat arena, he tapped into his hacker skills to generate Fan Favor for his team.

Every Arena match is televised and even people in the live audience watch the matches on enormous view screens. This player hacked the camera feeds to close in on all of the cool things his teammates were doing to ensure the audience saw the best and most favorable footage. He also hacked the feeds to try to counteract the team’s blunders.

The approach struck me as a really creative way to get a non-combat character involved with the fight in a way that could help his team, and I incorporated that tactic in the rules to make sure I called it out as a viable option.

Thanks Jacob! Make sure to check out the Kickstarter, running now!

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

Five or So Questions with Oliver Shead on Infected!

I interviewed Oliver Shead about his new game, Infected!, currently on Kickstarter!

Tell me a little bit about Infected! What excites you about it? 

Infected! is a zombie setting placed after the outbreak. It’s around five years on, and the infected have been all-but wiped out after years of brutal quarantines, outright warfare and anarchy. There is now a chance for humanity to rebuild society – or to tear it down.
To be honest I’ve had a lot of people tell me that zombie settings have been done to (un)death, and when I first started this setting I would have agreed with them. 
However, after quite a long time playtesting it and re-working it, I found the setting had changed. It was no longer just a story of crazed survivors clinging together and killing zombies. Instead, it’s a living, breathing world that has evolved to still work in many ways. That’s the funny part – a lot of it is kind of normal, in a Dark-Ages style of normal.
I get excited when I think of the cultures that evolve in the wake of this sort of an event, as well as the political entities, and the countless ways they can interact. For instance, there are governments that still exist, holding a tenuous web of power over wide geographic zones. However, without much of a standing army, they are reduced to a sort of feudalistic-loyalty system, and some will resort to almost any measures to maintain that control – including having overseers who couple as standover men, commanding the loyalties of local factions – all the while with the risk of the infected looming in the background…like a particularly dangerous pest that refuses to go away.
Basically, it’s the richness of the setting that interests me. I think any setting should really inspire you to play it, and make you dream of some of the intense scenarios you can concoct as a Narrator or Player.

Infected! has a classless system. How do you handle experience and advancement?

It’s done with a point-buy system. Basically, when you get experience, you can save it up to improve higher stats, or spend it more quickly to improve lower stats. I feel it quite accurately represents how people actually learn – a little bit at a time, rather than by suddenly jumping up to a new range of abilities. We ultimately leave it up to the Narrator’s discretion as to what is permitted to be advanced, and by how much – with guidelines that stats should go up a bit at a time, not all in one go, and should represent what characters are learning and applying themselves to as they go. So if you never use Athletics, for example, it should not go up unless you start attempting to work the Skill.

Can you give me a brief description of the type of characters people would play in Infected!?

Ooh, this is a great question! 
Really, they can play anyone they want. I personally love to see real characters. Not muscle-bound, gun-toting Rambos, but rather deep, varied and interesting people. People who are ultimately flawed, and who all face their horrors in countless different ways. In a zombie setting, many people instantly assume that everything is about fighting and killing, but in fact the Immersion RPG system supports characters doing far more than that. We have had players in our games who almost never fired a shot. Their characters were all about discussion, statescraft, the controlling and manipulation of people, commanding groups, and so forth. Because of the lethality of the system, groups of relatively normal people are still a tremendous threat if they wish to be, so the use of your diplomatic skills is in many cases far more important than your fighting skills. Try fighting your way through ten armed men… talking, on the other hand? That’s a real possibility.
Also, with the setting being quite dynamic and “alive” with trade routes, even highways, and societies ebbing and flowing along these channels as they always have (ultimately, it would be quite difficult to survive in complete fortress mode), there is the real possibility of players running characters like dedicated traders, scrap merchants, snake-oil salesmen, travelling shows, gypsies, spies, informants, farmers, soldiers… really, the gamut of usual societal roles.
I personally love unusual characters with detailed histories. They are shaped by their pasts. They may be scarred by them. But they are surviving in their own ways.

Can you tell me about the infrastructure and logistics in the Infected! setting? (anything from politics to how they handle power and water!)

Great question! However, the answer to this really varies greatly from location to location. One of the great things about the real world, is that there are just so many exceptions to every rule! It’s almost impossible to generalise – when you do, you miss out on so much of the quirky, odd, different and outright bizarre things in the world. That being said, I’ll now generalise as best I can!

By and large, the logistics are reduced to a 3rd or 4th world level. Because a fairly substantial portion of society is still alive and functioning, the need for supplies, water, sanitation and equipment is paramount. No society can survive without a steady stream of resources coming in and going out – few could be completely self-sufficient.

There are communities left in the ruins that range from a few lonely hold-outs, to burgeoning cities of ten thousand people or more. But no matter their size, their positions, strategy and very lives depend on a few basics – fresh water being one of the most critical. The loss of a functioning water system in the cities means that people rapidly shift to those areas that water can be readily found. Some townships use pumps (usually man-powered, as diesel is in short supply for powerful generators). Others use the most age-old method there is: the bucket.

This also creates other issues. Sanitation of river water is dodgy at the best of times. Some years on, much of the pollution has eased off from the waterways, but even so, it is an easy way to gain a nasty disease (or even the nasty disease). As such, most people at least try to boil their water before drinking it, or use other methods of purifying it, like tying cotton over the water spout, or making rudimentary carbon filters.

Power is another interesting one. In some areas, there are still power plants functioning – though they are highly prized commodities. Hydro-electric dams tend to be the most valued of all – an infinite power source at your fingertips. Despite this, most communities are without anything but the most rudimentary power supply. Lamps and candles are far more numerous. Working electricity is also a status symbol – only the greatest, richest political entity has access to as much power as they need. Just as only such groups have manufacturing of complicated items – like guns and bullets, or the refining of petrol.

This brings in the political entities of the world. It’s a multi-layered situation. At the local level, many towns and communities band together out of mutual protection. Often they decide that having a government is a bad idea – they can handle things much better on their own! Most governments are fractured, splintered things, just vestiges of their former glories. However, they still have many resources garnered from those who remain under their sway. And many make use of “overseers” – those who watch, and observe…and sometimes take precipitate action to ensure loyalty is kept. Many are nothing more than glorified assassins, enforcing loyalty.

Really, the question of power comes down to knowing who will back you. It’s a game of chicken. If you revolt against a more powerful group, then do you have enough support from other communities to see the revolt through? Or will they leave you in the lurch, even team up against you when the government soldiers arrive, and then seek to split the spoils?
Besides, most communities are all-but on their own anyway. So how important is it if a government claims them?
Then again, rival governments can attack and destroy communities, simply because they’re part of the other side.

Ideally, what do you want players to experience when they play Infected!?

I would like them to experience a rich world, with the opportunity to really experience the adventures and the horrors of this new dark age. I would like them to make characters that live and breathe, and to have deep campaigns that are about so much more than zombie killing! I would very much love for the societies to shine through. The bizarre new cultures and trends.

And that being said… I would also love them to feel the gut-churning, cold-sweat fear of realising the Infected are hunting them – and then truly discovering what that terror would be like.
Thanks to Oliver for the interview! Make sure to check out Infected! on Kickstarter!


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