Tag: RPGs

Five or So Questions with Kira Magrann on RESISTOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Five or So Questions with Nathan Paoletta on World Wide Wrestling: International Incident

Today I have an interview with Nathan Paoletta! He is releasing his supplement to the fantastic World Wide Wrestling RPG. World Wide Wrestling: International Incident sounds like a great follow-up to WWWRPG, which brought in over double its Kickstarter goal in September 2014. I interviewed Nathan about WWWRPG, and now I’m excited to see all of the info on the new supplement!

Tell me about your upcoming project. What excites you about it?

This project (World Wide Wrestling: International Incident) is the first full-bore supplement to a game I’ve written. I’ve done micro-supplements and little settings and stuff like that, but this is going to be a whole complementary volume of background info and new rules that extend what the World Wide Wrestling RPG already offers to cover international iconic wrestling styles, as well as structural rules for some things I decided to leave out of WWWRPG originally. I guess I’m pumped about it because it’s a new thing for me to attempt, and also because it means I’ve been diving deeply into wrestling (particularly Japanese wrestling) to research it and just discovering all kinds of amazing stuff that excites me as a wrestling fan. Since I have the supplement in mind I pay attention to what I watch in a little different way, and I feel like I’m learning a lot more about these traditions than I would if I was “just” watching them, which is very cool. Learning is fun!

What are the biggest challenges you encountered in making a full size supplement for World Wide Wrestling?
Existential ones, for the most part. What “deserves” to be in a supplement, which is to say, what kind of new content is of enough value for players that its worth printing, binding, etc to make a thing? I’m balancing how to add new mechanical material such that it doesn’t invalidate extant content, as well as distill the insights of the WWWRPG community over the last year in order to fill some holes that keep on tripping people up. Because the mechanical framework already exists, it’s a lot of thinking about how to frame the new content, and a lot less writing of rules that I’m used to. Also, there’s 15 official Gimmicks already out for the game, and “balancing” the 6 new ones that are coming such that they don’t overlap with the older ones, and can still be played alongside them is a lot of work that I didn’t expect. I recently made a big spreadsheet of every Gimmick to compare the hard rules across all of them, because I realized that I was designing power creep into the new ones by accident! I had to zoom out and formally reframe them in context with what’s already out there.

What were some of the coolest tidbits of trivia you encountered while doing your research?

Getting introduced to the British wrestling that was broadcast on a show called World of Sport may be the biggest highlight – trivia-wise, the rules for those matches were esoteric by todays standards (much more like boxing), but it means the psychology in the ring could be very, very nuanced. There’s a ton of stuff on YouTube but yeah, watching old Marty Jones and Rollerball Rocco matches from the late 70s is just a joy and so different from todays style.

As a single trivia bit, I had no idea that this happened: Ric Flair (widely regarded as the greatest pro wrestler of all time) and Antonio Inoki (legendary founder of New Japan Pro Wrestling and, arguably, the Japanese “Strong Style”) wrestled in North Korea in 1995 in front of the largest crowd for a wrestling match EVER, 190,000 people. Muhammad Ali was there too. Here’s a great Sports Illustrated story about it.

What are some of the concepts you’re exploring mechanics-wise with the supplement?

The wrestling company itself, the promotion, as a character. This is present but pretty abstract in the core game, and in the supplement I’m adding a more structured way to measure the progress and growth of the company that the wrestlers all work for. It really highlights the tension between the performances and the effect that those performances have on everyone’s welfare, and I really like how that’s coming together. Part of this is a new system for what I’m calling “Mythic Moments,” which trigger on certain really good die rolls, and create these rare but memorable moments that can end up defining a character’s career. Those two things together give a sense of really building something together, I think.

The other big one is providing some more fine-grained structure for wrestling matches. The basic method of handing them works fine, but I think players who are educated in how pro wrestling works appreciate having some more nuanced mechanical ability to represent that knowledge in the game. I’m working on providing a couple of different methods to “zoom in” on a certain match and play it out by leveraging different aspects of your character to maximum advantage, for players who have mastered the core mechanical cycles of the game.

Finally, one of the surprising (to me) pieces of feedback I’ve received from the community is that wrestlers advance mechanically more quickly than some groups expect – I think there’s a community of players who come from experiences with year-long-campaign style games, and seeing their characters grow session to session feels rushed to them! So I’m adding some optional rules that actually slow advancement and provide more space for playing out extended stories and feuds, to accommodate that playstyle in a way that’s not just me saying “uh, play slower?” 🙂

Do you think this supplement will change gameplay in any significant way, and if so, how?

The goal isn’t to change gameplay fundamentally, but extend it to address more and varied aspects of wrestling! I hope that it encourages people to set their games in more diverse promotions and with more varied rosters, for sure. I think the new rules about the promotion growth as well as the Mythic Moments rules have enough obvious play value that people will start using them for long-term games (I hope!). The rest is generally “optional” in the sense of, if it’s providing an experience you want, you should use it, but adding it for the sake of adding it isn’t going to change much.

That said, my biggest prediction: I expect to see a lot more Luchadores in games at conventions!

With World Wide Wrestling, you have managed to catch a pretty big audience with a lot of passion. As an experienced designer and entrepreneur specifically in the game design industry, what are the things you look for when working on a project to help find your audience and are there ways you tailor the experience to their interests, and did you do that at all with WWW?

I’m a big believer that projects have different “fits” with the overall audience and culture. One of the benefits of experience is being able to discern that fit earlier in the design process, I think. Some work is clearly never going to have a wide appeal, other projects needs a certain pitch or skin or other orientation to make them more accessible that they otherwise would be. Most rarely (again, in my experience), a project just has a spark to it that all you need to do is cultivate. With World Wide Wrestling, I often feel like I’m just stoking the fire on it so that it stays hot, to mix some metaphors. The RPG+pro wrestling overlap audience is out there, and a lot of my job is maintaining awareness and trying to make sure the game remains in the conversation over time! For this supplement in particular, it’s a nice alignment of interests. I’m capitalizing on something I’m already interested in (non-US wrestling), reaching out to folks who are especially interested in those styles to maybe look at the game for the first time, and rewarding folks who are already fans with new content that, I think, will be a net positive to their game experiences.

Thanks to Nathan for the great interview! I can’t wait to see the final product, and I think World Wide Wrestling: International Incident is going to be a killer product.

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

Five or So Questions with Alessandro Piroddi on The Name of God

I had the pleasure to interview Alessandro Piroddi about his upcoming game, The Name of God. The Name of God is coming soon on Kickstarter, and Alessandro has been kind enough to share his Kickstarter preview link with all of us so you can check it out ahead of time!

Tell me about The Name of God. What excites you about it?

The first thing that excites me about tNoG is the same thing that blew my mind the first time I saw Vast & Starlit: a whole gmLess game with fully fleshed and coherent procedures all bundled in a handful of cards. It’s not unheard of today, but at the time it felt like doing the impossible. No GM, no books to study, no prep time, no sheets and dice and pencils; you sit down and play the game and it just all works. Kabum!

The second thing that I love about tNoG is the setting… I am a huge fan of a certain kind of dark-ish urban fantasy. When I think about books like Neil Gaiman‘s Neverwhere, Anansi Boys and American Gods, or any book from Jim Butcher‘s Dresden Files, the thing that intrigues me the most is the idea that everyday mundane people and actions might actually hide a hidden meaning, a secret knowledge.


What has been different for you in designing The Name of God than other games, considering it’s very different format?

Space constraints.

I wanted it to fit, in its original form, to slim format business cards. This meant a draconian control on word count. Every sentence had to deliver the intended meaning, setting flavour, procedural instructions, everything that was needed in very few words. And even the specific words used will often need to be scrutinised to find suitable synonyms, as using one expression instead of another would brake the line in the wrong place, occupying extra space. From there, going to poker-card format was actually a comfortable transition >_<

You said that dark, urban fantasy that has the idea of mundanes have a secret knowledge. How do you think that comes through in The Name of God?

In the game your character is an homeless person with no powers or any weird ability, and the rules simply end up framing this person in normal and ordinary scenes.
But then your personal Fetish (a sort of character template) asks you a couple of weird questions, very thematic and philosophical; stuff like “Why nobody is innocent?” or “What hunger keeps you awake?” This charges your perception of the character in a uniquely individual and personal way, making it feel more than just some random guy on the street.
And then the rules add to each scene you play a slightly bizarre detail; nothing mindblowing, and exactly because of this it tilts the picture and makes everything feel kind of off.
Finally, any of your actions might have a ritual meaning, simply because you feel like it… thus triggering the game mechanics.
It also helps that the Ritual Action rules effectively allow to cheat the game… where normally you would surely fail and cause damage, you can instead draw power and make one more step towards your final goal… at a price.
But truly, the game itself is a ritual: people looking at your table will see 3 to 4 friends chatting, then all of a sudden one says something weird like “I am the Winter! I do this and that, I am the Winter” and out of the blue the whole group starts chanting a mantra. Players look positively crazy when they play!

Structuring a Kickstarter for such a unique style of game may have presented some challenges. How did you make choices to structure the Kickstarter to ensure you could meet your goals and make backers happy?

Unfortunately in my “real life” I have no time, skills or extra help to manage logistics: printing, delivering, stocking. The choice of a PDF + Print on Demand solution seemed not only ideal, but practically the only viable one. Also, this is a nanogame, so I planned the whole project to be as small and sustainable as possible.
The game is already there, the artist graciously performed a good share of the graphical work upfront, I only need the money to pay off the rest of its work and send the final version of the files to the PoD service, then Bob’s your uncle. In that regard the existence of a website such as DriveThroughCards made everything very simple for me, and convenient for my backers: it’s a big online shop of renown fame, with solid production standards and a killer customer service that ships worldwide. Others might have slightly cheaper fees, or marginally better paper quality, but considering the whole package I believe this to be the best solution for both me and anyone interested in the game.

Also, the stretch goals are built in such a way that each one will add value to the whole project, but ultimately are not needed… if not even one is funded, the game will not suffer from it, while the more are funded the better the game becomes for everyone. Logistically speaking the workload for each guest designer is incredibly small. The main bottleneck will be the illustrations, but this only means that if worst comes to worst there will be a slight delay in the fulfillment of the project, nothing else.

What kind of stories do you think players will find when they play The Name of God? What do you think might surprise them?

So far I’ve seen all kinds of stories.
Some are quirky and over the top, surrealistic.
Others are humane and touching, others are dark and hurtful, others yet are light hearted and almost comical (in a weird kind of way). A few kind of remind of Todd McFarlane‘s Spawn stories, the first ones that were more down to earth.

For example I remember one game, one of the very first playtests, where the Winter produced a chilling (no pun intended) story of revenge, the Shadow went down as a deranged and very dark vigilante tale, and the Stars surprised everyone by pulling off a story of personal struggle and redemption with an unbelievably sweet and positive ending (as far as suicide goes).

The Winter was a middle aged woman. Cheated and abandoned by her husband, she methodically went on stalking him and his new happy family, stealing trinkets and mementoes, and finally getting into their happy house and killing their newborn infant child. The player (Pablo) commented that most of the horrible things he made his Fetish do where not planned, they just kind of happened because they felt right in the circumstance, and he was the first to be shocked by them.

The Shadows was an angry old man. He behaved like a vigilante, fighting the inner demons that plagued the periphery of his perception by beating drug dealers and pimps with a baseball bat. The player (Claudia) was consistently creeped out both by how her character’s actions failed to ensue a positive effect no matter how hard she tried (very powerful a scene with a prostitute she helped, as the girl freaked out because her pimp got smashed to a pulp before her eyes). And her ascension scene was epic, facing a small army of demon-children in a construction yard near a railway, finally throwing the character against an incoming train as a last enraged attack against his not-so-inner demons.

The Stars was a young guy with a drug problem. He faced prejudice and violence and temptation in order to win over the girl of his dreams, eventually risking his life to save her father, a man that until the very end had shown him only hatred and contempt. A touching moment happened when he put a gun to his own head, inviting the girl’s father to pull the trigger if that would solve his family problems and ensure the girl’s well being … and by turning this into a Ritual Action that, literally, sparked a light in the man’s heart, the scene ended up in tears and reconciliation. But the best part was the final ascension. The player (Alejandro) saw that there were no rules dictating when the ascension scene needed to take place, so he framed his character as old, in his house bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror and remembering a happy and fulfilling life with his beloved; she was now dead since a few months and he felt it was time to leave the mortal world behind and ascend, serenely, in his own bed, with the help of some pills and a good drink. It felt like real closure even to the other players. Beautiful.

Awesome! Please make sure to keep an eye out for the upcoming Kickstarter and check out the KS preview page. Thank you to Alessandro for the interview, and I am looking forward to seeing the final product!

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

Five or So Questions with Elizabeth Chaipraditkul on WITCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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


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

What kind of encounters could players find in WITCH?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Playtesting Bluebeard’s Bride with Sarah Richardson!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of playing a session of Bluebeard’s Bride with Emily Care Boss, Hannah Shaffer, and J Li, with the fantastic Sarah Richardson as our GM. (Note: this was an amazing group to play with. WOW.) Sarah Richardson, Marissa Kelly, and Whitney Beltrán are the creators of  Bluebeard’s Bride and I was very excited to get into my second playtest of this gorgeous game.

Up front for people interested in this game: First off, this game is still in development and has not been released. Everything in this has the possibility of changing. It is not a game for kids. It often contains very twisted material, including seriously NSFW and graphic descriptions. This review will cover some sexual content (I’ll try to keep it relatively vague), generally creepy stuff, and violence against women.

Bluebeard’s Bride has a really awesome initial setup. It’s currently based on Apocalypse Word mechanics, but it’s quite far removed from that material. The game is about the story of Bluebeard, a fairy tale that has seen many different interpretations. The core of the story is that a woman marries a man with a blue beard, and instructs her that she can explore his whole castle except one room, then leaves for business. Eventually she opens that room, and finds that it is full of the corpses of Bluebeard’s previous wives. Bluebeard finds out that she’s opened the door, and kills her (in some versions she is rescued, but the regular story results in her death). How this plays out in the game and how it ends is something you’ll just have to find out through play! My two experiences with this game have been quite different, so it is one of the few games that is kind of encapsulated in one specific story that has a ridiculous amount of replayability.

The general idea in this game is that there is one bride, and the players play different parts of her psyche. The playbooks we used were the Animus (physicality, masculine bravado, and independence), the Fatale (sex, sensuality, and intrigue), the Virgin (innocence, exploration, and critique), and the Witch (transgression, magic, and power). There is also a playbook called the Mother, but we didn’t try that out.

The playbooks are one of my favorite things. They include six sections: Wedding Preparations, Sisterly Bonds, Token Tracks, Stats, Burdens, and the Trauma Track. I don’t want to overcomplicate this review so I’ll just talk about my favorite things: the Wedding Preparations and the Burdens. Wedding preparations are basically character generation. There are questions about whether you trust your husband or not (I didn’t), what gift did you give him (a stag’s head and the knife I used to cut it off with, to demonstrate my power), and then a question about the physical appearance of the bride, with a second question about the way other people influence her appearance. This was a fascinating exercise.

The Burdens are basically playbook specific moves. I am a huge fan of these. The Animus has one presently (though this could change) that involves investigating objects by breaking them. This was so my thing. I was super excited to play it.

Okay, I do have to mention the other playbook sections: Sisterly Bonds are relationships between you and the other Sisters (pieces of the bride’s psyche). To my knowledge there is not a specific mechanic. The Token Tracks are Faithfulness and Disloyalty tracks that are marked when you exit rooms to help determine some of the details of the end game mechanics. Stats are self-explanatory. The Trauma Track is effectively harm. I can’t remember exactly what happens when your Trauma Track reaches max, but it’s called “shattering” so that’s pretty cool. 🙂

The play involves passing around a ring from player to player in no specific order (the player with the ring chooses who it passes to for the most part). There are moves for investigation, supporting or interfering with other Sisters, and some other really good ones – my favorites are shivering from fear, which is typically called on when the GM sees you get really creeped out (this is an awesome body language thing to me), and dirty yourself with violence, because yesssss.

There is a cool thing where you leave a room and you have choose a token kind of representing what you discovered, which I think is cool because it makes you reevaluate everything having to do with that room. There are also a few instances where the game asks you what the scariest thing or most horrible thing that could happen is. I love how it gives players the agency to terrify themselves.

Agency is actually something really important to me in games. Bluebeard’s Bride actually, imo, does a pretty good job with it. First of all, I don’t know if the other creators do this, but Sarah did get in touch with players in advance and allow us to flag any major triggers. This is hugely appreciated for me, because the game is filled with a lot of really upsetting things. She also allowed use of an X-card in game. On top of that, Sarah is an incredibly perceptive GM, which I think helps a lot. If you plan to run horror games, I think that it is way valuable to have a good read on body language.

Another part of the agency is that how the players approach the materials – like in other AW games – tends to influence the type of horror and danger, as well as the severity. This allowed us to take things in worse directions for some subjects, and better directions for others. When the game asks “what is the worst thing that could happen here?” the GM can see by our responses what is really working, and where buttons could further be pushed.

Also! I liked that this game has a very elegant way of violating perception. Like, when we play games, they are fiction, and we can have our characters experience stuff like hallucinations – particularly popular in horror. This, however, is a story where we are expecting bad stuff to happen and when the horrific stuff happens it’s very easy to assume that it’s actually happening! Because the game is contextually horrific, seeing horrific things is very easy to accept as reality. This is able to be turned over its head by the GM revealing the mundanity. It’s very cool because it has this element of “this could be real, but it could also not be real, but what is real?!” while still keeping a great flow to the story.

Beyond the mechanics!

The session was SO fun. I am just going to cherry pick some stuff, because while the story changes with every session in a lot of ways, I want to leave a lot more mystery regarding the structure.

In one scene, while the bride was investigating the bathroom, a mosaic on the ceiling depicting a standing man and woman changed by looking into the water in the bath below into the man strangling the woman. While the bride was examining this, a shade of some sort came from behind her, and began to strangle her and shoved her into the water. Upon waking, the bride discovered no markings or other indications that it had happened, except that she was now lying in the bathtub. While examining herself in the mirror, the shade came behind her, and when she tried to attack it, it grabbed her shoulder, and seemed to physically break something. The pain continued throughout the session.

In another scene, the bride was examining some locks of hair and the Witch tried to divine whether they were from violence. The response was for the walls and ceiling to start bleeding, and blood to pour over the bride. When she tried to wipe it off, her skin peeled off as she touched it, coming off in ribbons. When she screamed for help, the maid arrived, and there was nothing happening at all. Instead of the locks of hair on the dresser in front of her, there was a large, wooden dildo. The scene that followed with the generally creepy maid involved a disturbing kinda BDSM scene where the bride was somewhat involved, as well as a second maid.

Later, the bride went into the dining room to discover a huge banquet of food, all of which smelled just like what her mother cooked at home. A third maid offered her a small pie, all the while talking about how the bride shouldn’t each very much. The bride eventually dug in and ate a little bit of everything, and by then the other two maids had arrived and they started shaming her, talking about how Bluebeard didn’t like chubby girls. Since the Animus (me) was in charge of the character at that point, that resulted in a little violence – the bride hauled off and punched one of the maids, and then two of them held her while that maid punched her in the stomach. When they left, the bride was so full of rage at everything – the maids, Bluebeard, and especially her mother for forcing her to do this – that she shattered a ton of the now-bare plates. That led to another discovery…

The ending scene was incredibly dramatic, and super fucked up, but it was great! The whole exploration of both the house, Bluebeard’s character, and the bride herself was fascinating. I fully recommend checking Bluebeard’s Bride out soon – playtests are currently rare, but I think it will soon be coming to us all on Kickstarter. I, for one, am hella excited!

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

Supernatural Evil vs. Real Evil: When Reality Bites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings: They Are Not What You Think

Content Warning: I’m going to talk about trigger warnings here, so if you don’t like hearing about that, click away now.

Hey humans! 

I want to talk about what content and trigger warnings are, and why they are important. Let’s first establish what these things are:

Trigger Warnings:

Trigger warnings are related to psychological triggers, like those from abuse and trauma. Triggers are things like sights, scents, sounds, and sensations that can produce flashbacks, painful memories, or anxiety/panic reactions in people who have experienced abuse and/or trauma.

For example: I have been sexually assaulted. When I watch movies, play games, or read books that have sexual assault in them, I can become panicked, stressed, and uncomfortable. This feeling can last anywhere from a minute or so to days or weeks. Some people I know are triggered by scents like smoke, sounds like yelling, or sights like specific violence in media or even something like being on snowy roads in winter.

Triggers are not something of cowardice. They are a psychological reaction to traumatic experiences of someone’s past. No one can define the severity of someone else’s trauma. Even when it comes to professionals, they can’t read someone’s mind. When someone is triggered, they can have complex and extreme reactions, or just some stress and a desire to remove themselves from the situation.

Content Warnings:

Content warnings have some things in common with trigger warnings, but they are not the same. We see content warnings all the time – at the movies (Rated R for language, violence, and sex!), on TV (This presentation may contain material that could upset viewers – just like Law and Order), and on video games (Rated M for content). They are not new, and anyone who is surprised by them may have been living under a rock.

Content warnings are not in regards to people’s mental health or put together to avoid panic attacks or flashbacks. Content warnings are there so people can prepare, or decide what they should let their kids see. They are not censorship, and they are not any restriction on media. They are there to guide consumers to media they want, or away from media they don’t want.

Common Objections:

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are for cowards/babies/wusses/immature people!”
Nope! Trigger warnings are there to prevent people with past trauma from experiencing further trauma. Believe it or not, a lot of people suffer from trauma, and it is not something that you can just “tough it out” most of the time. Soldiers who return from war with PTSD (diagnosed or not) can have trouble because of triggers. People who were abused as children can have triggers. Not just soldiers have PTSD, and people of all ages have experienced trauma in their life. This is why trigger warnings are valuable. When you expose someone to a trigger, it has a psychological impact. In some ways, it is like an allergy. If someone were allergic to peanuts, would you tell them to eat peanuts anyway, because their allergy is just “all in their head”?

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are censorship!”
Nope! Slapping a rating or a simplified list of the content of media on the package doesn’t censor anything. The media is still produced, and available for consumption. It might be limited by age, but parents can buy for their kids, so that isn’t a significant issue. People who are triggered by the content might be upset that the product exists – and that’s okay! They can talk to other people about it and say, “hey, if you don’t like this stuff, don’t buy this thing!” and maybe other people won’t buy it. Maybe they still will. People can make choices!

“If people see trigger or content warnings that have stuff they don’t like in them, they won’t buy it or consume it!”
Not necessarily true! While everyone, regardless of their issues with triggers, might decide not to consume a product, there are plenty of people who still will. People can, and often will, still consume media that has objectionable material in it, and that has triggers for them. Seeing a trigger warning isn’t always “That’s not for me!” It might be “I can watch this when I am having a good day” or “Maybe I will save this until when I am not in a depression” or “If I get a friend to watch this with me, I’ll be great” or even “Maybe if someone tells me what part to skip, I can enjoy the rest of the thing!” Also, we are not in the business of forcing people to buy things. No one has to buy what you are selling. It’s not like creators walk beside people in the store just putting things in their cart and telling them that it’s something they should watch, even if they don’t like it. That’s like forcing people who like action movies to watch Oscar bait.

“People will abuse them to get out of work/school/responsibilities!”
Totally! And you know what? That’s okay. It’s okay because those people will be few. It’s okay because people use excuses to get out of work/school/responsibilities already. It’s okay because the people who use trigger warnings and content warnings for their own wellbeing and awareness will, a lot of the time, still take the classes or go to work or fulfill their responsibilities. People abusing systems is nothing new, and we shouldn’t put other people through difficult and often dangerous situations just because some people are jerks.

ETA: “You can’t possibly list all of the triggers, how am I supposed to know what they are?”
Well, for one, you can’t list all of them. That’s okay. You don’t have to list them all, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t list any. Part of the point of trigger warnings is demonstrating that you are aware of your audience and willing to listen to them. You can try to focus on the common ones: graphic violence, sexual assault and abuse, domestic/child abuse, and rape. From that, most people can get an idea of whether it’s their kind of media. Trigger and content warnings are not an all or nothing tool. You can talk to your audiences or potential audiences, you can check around in forums and on social media to see what your potential audiences might have issues with. Even if you don’t do that, you can still be considerate even with limited information.


Why are these things important?

A lot of reasons, actually! I have covered a lot of them already, but I’ll summarize.

  • Many people have been affected by trauma in their lives, and it is important to provide support for them to feel safe and still able to enjoy their lives in any way we can.
  • A lot of people prefer to consume different types of media for many different reasons. Some have kids, some like to compartmentalize their media, and some people just don’t enjoy all types of content.
  • We should respect psychological issues just like we do physical issues. They are valid, and denying people the ability to avoid things that hurt them is, honestly, just rude.
  • Everyone should have choices in their media! Everyone is different, and we shouldn’t force everyone to enjoy one thing just because the majority enjoys it, or because not liking it makes them seem judgmental. 

How can this be applied?

In school, it’s simple. Put a note on your syllabus about what kind of content will be discussed in class, what materials you’ll be using, and how to contact instructors to either change classes, consider alternate materials or assignments, or help to figure out a good way to go through the classes without putting students in a position where they don’t feel safe in class.

In media, it’s pretty easy. Create what you want, but put a note on it. It can be simple: “This film includes rape, sexual assault, and sexualized violence.” It can also be more complex: “This game has mechanics that allow for PC mind control, which are not optional and central to the game’s premise.” Either of these options are great, and importantly, they are way better than nothing. If you are planning a convention game, you can put notes in your description, or let the players know when they arrive at the table, and offer them the opportunity to step out.
What about in games where we aren’t using a script? What if something happens in game that wasn’t planned?
This is more difficult! The cool thing is that it’s not impossible! One of the first things you can do is establish boundaries with your players so that if there is something completely off the table, you know in advance and can avoid that material. Another thing is that you can provide tools like Script Change and the X Card. These tools give you either the option to skip content altogether, or to back up and go through a scene again with new content, fade to black, or pause for a moment to evaluate players’ comfort with moving forward. It gives players more control of the content, as well as helping them to feel comfortable. It is awesome because sometimes it makes players even more likely to try adventurous content they may not have otherwise tried.
I want to emphasize: You can still create whatever you want to create. The key is to allow those who aren’t interested in your content to safely avoid it, and give those who want to enjoy your content an easy way to navigate. People have more fun doing the things that they enjoy, and when they are stuck doing things they don’t want to, it drags everyone down. Trigger warnings and content warnings help people find content that they can enjoy, and can encourage them to try new things.
—-
In the end, trigger warnings and content warnings are a great way to support other people in trying new things, expanding their boundaries, and exploring, without leaving them with no safety net, and without ignoring the importance of their mental and emotional health. Some people might not care about this at all, and that’s okay. However, I think that kind of attitude definitely shines a light on who is likely to consume their media, and whether they are the kind of person those who have experienced trauma are willing to trust. For me, there’s no question: I want everyone to have fun – not just the people who don’t care.


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

Women with Initiative – Wendy Gorman




Hi all!

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

Wendy shares a little about her here:

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


Here are some questions I asked Wendy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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.