Tag: RPGs

Five or So Questions with Avonelle Wing on Convention Organizing

Tell me a little about what you do as a convention coordinator. What’s exciting about it?

What do I do? that’s a very complicated question, because I wear many hats, and the list of things I do could read like a resume.
From the practical and very concrete perspective, my job is to make sure the resources are available for the convention staff to provide the most satisfying convention experience possible to the broadest segment of our population. Among the things I do are:
  • Remembering to buy the right envelopes (peel and stick, #10), card stock, poster board, tape, packing tape, duct tape, and knowing which brand and why.
  • Keeping track of ridiculous things, like remotes, wires, plugs, components – making sure everything gets packed to and from every con, and I know where each important piece is. all the time. 
  • Refreshing our extension cord supply. 
  • Counting bed spots accurately so senior staff and guests all have a place to sleep.
  • Soliciting and tracking prize support and library copies of games.
  • Keeping track of special guests and making sure they have satisfying experiences at the con. 
  • Maintaining a social media presence so the conventions are people, not faceless corporate entities to attendees. 
My brain holds a million vital little details that mean we don’t ahve to reinvent the wheel. and we never have to deal with the experience of buying the wrong duct tape again. (the whole Big Board system fell off the walls at DEXCON. Within hours of putting it up. It’s my job to remember that horror and to make sure we avoid it in the future. 1,000 events on the ballroom floor. oi.)

I talk to game masters. I help piece the schedule together (my husband does the lion’s share of the scheduling and I still get a little swoony when I look at the sheer magnitude of the task he takes on every convention.). I coordinate staff.

On a more ephemeral level, I get to be part of the magic of our community. I am the welcome wagon – I notice when somebody is looking a little lost and I loop them into something exciting. I forge connections, solve problems. When somebody is in the middle of a devastating breakup and needs to hide, they end up in my room, because that’s a safe place to hide and I always feed you after I scrape your sobbing self up off a hallway floor. Our conventions are described by lots of people in our community as “giant family reunions” and I get to make that magic happen. It’s akin to being the eccentric aunt who rents the pavilion, hires the magicians and buys 100lbs of charcoal. The difference is that our community has chosen to be here. and I love them for that.

I get to facilitate our evolution. When somebody comes to me and says “freeform. it’s a thing. we need more of it” I get to say “ok! fill out the form and let’s do it!”

When somebody says “gender. It matters in gaming and we need to talk about it.” I get to say “OK! space, exposure, attention. let’s go.”
18 months later, somebody said the same thing about race. “Great. Let’s talk. Let’s talk long and loud and let’s get angry and let’s do positive things to change our world. Let’s go!”
We hear “old school roleplayers feel lost. we want a home too!” and we launch a convention within a convention to serve them too.
Our job is to be responsive and supportive and encouraging. and I think we do a decent job of it. It’s exciting to me to hear somebody say “I want to…” and to be able to say “and I can help make that happen. I’m excited! let’s go!”

I am often humbled, watching our community support each other. and I get to know that they’ve come together because I’ve given them the venue and the opportunity and the reason to do so.

What is the biggest challenge to hosting a con?
The biggest challenges of any convention lie in the unknowns – will the air conditioning be able to keep up? how many bottles of soda will we blow through this year? The system and process stuff? We’ve got that down, and it’s entirely on us. Once you set the machine in motion, you become dependent on other people to see things through, and on the universe to cooperate.

I drove all the convention badges, the printer and all the other registration materials to a convention once through a storm system that spawned tornadoes. As I drove down the highway, I watched trees falling behind me – it felt cinematic and not as terrifying as it should have been. Those things, you can’t plan for. You just have to keep your head screwed on straight and keep moving.

What do you think is the most valuable advice you could give someone starting their own event?
Talk to other local events. Make sure you’re not crashing their party. Ask them about venues – sometimes there’s a reason an event moved suddenly. Schedule so you’re not stepping on anybody’s toes. Ask for help – Double Exposure is always happy to help a small even negotiate for space and sometimes we even help staff for your first couple of years.

Figure out a reasonable budget and double it.

Carry the best insurance you can possibly afford. Wait. what? insurance? Yes, insurance. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Don’t run by committee. Take personal responsibility for things that go wrong and be generous in sharing the credit for things that go right.

What are your goals with Maelstrom and DEXCON, which are two wildly different cons?

Maelstrom is an experiment, and I’m still sorting out my goals. I need to go back to my brain trust and discuss what worked and what didn’t, and to set community-guided goals.

DEXCON’s goal is, always, to provide the most action-packed, diverse, intense, intimate five days of gaming anywhere. We’ve got the excitement of one of the mega-cons with the comfort and friendliness of a local con.

What’s big for the next year for Double Exposure?
Big… I’m not sure we are ready for much bigger than 2014! We’re up to four conventions a year of our own, plus we’re doing the First Exposure Playtest Hall at Gen Con.

I’m just getting my feet under me when it comes to talking about the importance of social justice – of advocacy and representation. That has become a bigger part of Double Exposure’s program over the last several years, as I’ve realized that we were above the curve, but had more we could be doing. the rest of 2014 and likely most of 2015 is going to be continuing to present the best possible product to our community while refining and advancing our approach to outreach, education and representation. I have so much to learn, and so many brilliant people to learn it from.

I have a still-flickering hope that we will be able to do a larp-oriented project in 2015, but that won’t be decided until we’ve gotten home from Gen Con, at the soonest.

Why do you run these conventions?
Riding home from Gen Con last year, I found myself pondering the fact that these conventions – even with their stress, financial exposure, physical toll, worry and effort – are as close to worship as I come. We create a thing that is ephemeral. It’s temporary, like a play, and when we’re done, we strike the set and we go home. But while they exist, we create something that is as close to a Divine act as possible.

Conventions connect people in a very tangible way. We step outside of our daily lives and enter a space outside of time. We storytell – one of the most human and most sacred of acts. We trade pieces of ourselves. We laugh. we cry. We see friends we only see a couple of times a year, and we pick back up right where we left off. There’s an emotional resonance to conventions that is unlike anything else I’ve experienced.

Also, it’s safe place to be a nerd – to love My Little Ponies. to know the dialogue to every Star Trek movie. to remember every model number of every Terminator to show up on screen, ever. There’s very little fear of mockery or disdain. As somebody who was vexed for being a reader, for being a nerd, for having a grown-up vocabulary, sometimes it moves me to tears to watch folks (often younger folks) come in – a little awkward, a little wound up, a little too much – and to see them unwind, slow down, find their own unique pace. We create a space where we protect each others’ weirdnesses, and share them. It gives folks who find themselves on the fringe at school, at work, in their daily life, a chance to be in the middle of the puppy pile – to be respected, to acknowledged and seen and known.

It’s a calling, and I’ve known that since I first walked into a Double Exposure convention in 1997. I welcome each new face like a companion on this path to carve out a spot of acceptance, creation and joy every few months.

Five or So Questions About Snow White

I interviewed the creators of the module, Snow White, now on Kickstarter! Excuse the brevity, we’re running against time – this Kickstarter is almost over!

Tell me a little bit about Snow White. What has you excited about it?

The story of Snow White was originally old Hessian folklore from Deutschland (Germany) and was later adopted and altered by the Brothers Grimm. Finally this tale made it to the stage and big screen through Disney who continued to alter the original tale getting even further from the roots. We wanted to go back to the beginning of the tale and pay homage to the old folklore while at the same time providing a new and unexpected twist (or three).

Many of the Grimms’ tales feature “strong and active characters,” as opposed to “strong (usually males) and helpless (usually females)” participants. Who is good and who is bad also flows back and forth, with no one type of person depicted as good and another as bad. Snow White is especially good at this mixing and matching, and the various tales depict all kinds of people, of both sexes, in all their glory or infamy.

We looked at the original tales – Albanian, Armenian, Indian, and Russian for example – and could see some wonderful elements for an immersive rpg. We thought that our greatest asset would be that GMs know the story, will expect certain faerie and magical elements, and then look to see (and hopefully accept!) the additional thoughts and ideas. At the same time we thought that our greatest problem would be that players know the story, and if they get wind of what it is they are playing, expect a certain set of encounters and potentially grumble at anything that deviates from the story. So knowing that the various tales have many similar components, but a few different elements, we found that we could introduce some exciting variations and mysterious new events that would keep players on their toes. And so this prove to be, as our Snow White drew together some wonderful parts from assorted faerie tales and wove them into one grand adventure. -Jonathan & Stephen

What inspired the title of the adventure?

It was difficult to move away from the faerie tale title, although we wanted to disguise this from players. We also wanted to make it clear that this isn’t the Disneyfied version of events – no whistling while you work here, as the intelligent sinkhole will hear you – so the slightly blood-soaked version on the adventure cover came to life. Then we also wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t just an adventure-by-numbers, with the well known, “obvious” ending the only possibility. In fact, we included 8 possible endings, and acknowledge that there could be more! So the tagline, “Not all fairy tales have happy endings” became an important part of the title, as it makes it clear that this could all go horribly wrong if the players aren’t careful. Of course, no matter if they are successful or unsuccessful, at least one person will be very happy and another very angry. Who display which of these emotions all depends on what the players do, and when. So these ideas, based on the elements of the various tales mentioned i the previous answer, all contributed to the way the title turned out. -Stephen

What have you done to be more inclusive with your project?

None of the players are cast as “Snow White” or her “Prince Charming,” which I think opens up the door for inclusivity by not pigeonholing either male or female players and their characters into certain roles. As Jonathan said previously, we wrote eight possible endings to the story. This allows the players to make the decision as to how the tale will end, instead of the adventure itself. We hope that there is an ending for everyone, but if not, the players can make up their own. -Will

Five or So Questions with Josh Jordan on Mask & Crown

Tell me about your current project. What has you excited about it?

Now that Dangers Untold is in layout, I am starting to think more about my next game. It’s true that I’m still knocking out a few extras for the Kickstarter backers, but most of my work for that game is done.
The project I’m bouncing around in my head right now is a duet of games called Mask & Crown. A duet of games is two games that can be played separately, but that have been designed to work well together. In this case, I’m designing games to be played in alternate sessions. You don’t necessarily play the same characters in both games, but your actions in your previous session of Mask give benefits to your character in Crown, and vice versa.

Mask is a game about internal conflict. You play a seeker of enlightenment on the day of an important festival. You try to overcome selfishness, so that, by the end of the day, you become possessed by a divine spirit. The game uses tokens and a board to help you keep track of where your character is in his struggle, and what sorts of things he is struggling against. Each session covers one day of game time.
Crown is a game about family and noble house conflict. You play one of the noble houses, and can act as any member of that house. You want your house to rise to the imperial throne. You can pursue that through a number of skill trees. Once you advance a skill tree, you open up new kinds of conflicts for your house to face. Each session covers one year of game time.
I’m excited about these games for three reasons. The first and most boring reason is that I want to be able to play in a setting that explores these issues. I like the idea of telling a Game of Thrones-like story, where each player wants her house to seize the throne. And I also want the chance to focus in on a member of that household who just wants to become a better person and touch the face of his god.
Second, for a while now, I’ve wanted to explore the idea of interlocking games. Each needs to be complete on its own, but they should be even more fun together. I can think of card games that do this, but I don’t know of any story games designed to complement each other.
Third, there’s a physical element to these games that I want to explore. In Mask, there is a physical mask that starts the game covered, then becomes uncovered, and is eventually worn by the player whose character is possessed. This is a powerful theatrical element that can have a good emotional charge if done well. Likewise in Crown, there is a physical crown that players can seize and wear. Unlike the Mask, you can sometimes take the crown off the head of one of the other players and put it on yourself. Seize the crown!

What do you do mechanically to demonstrate the differences between playing on a personal level and playing on a House level?

The games are still in development, so some of the in-story elements of this need to be hammered out by playtesters. I can tell you that in Mask, you’ll have a little token that you move around on a board that represents how close you are to enlightenment. You have a small, fixed dice pool that you roll to overcome challenges. In Crown, you gain a larger and larger dice pool as you overcome challenges and advance your house. By the end of the game, you are rolling a significant pile of dice as you try to control the entire kingdom.

How do you mesh the two games together?

A session of Mask represents one day of in-game time, and it always takes place on a festival day in the story world. A session of Crown represents a whole year of in-game time. So if you alternate sessions, the timeline should work out smoothly.
At the end of the text for each game are a list of various bonuses based on how your last session went. For example, if you were wearing the mask at the end of your last session of Mask, you gain extra dice to pursue the magical hermit/wizard approach to seizing the throne in Crown.

What benefits do you think there are to physical props at the table?
I think physical props are one way for players to engage with the story emotionally. They make the game into a ritual, which is a powerful category of human activity. Part of my intent with these games is to explore how physical props affect players’ connection to the story. In other words, if we make a roleplaying game more like a ritual, how will players experience the game differently and how will they talk about their story after the fact? I know that, for me, it will make the game feel more important, but I want to see what happens for other people.


When can we expect to see Mask and Crown in the wild, and what’s coming up next?

I’m planning on releasing a playtest version of Mask and Crown shortly after I finish delivering all the rewards for the Dangers Untold Kickstarter. I hope that means by September. We’re trucking right along. Dangers Untold should go to print in June, and there are relatively few rewards left for me to create.

That means that Mask and Crown should be playable by October. I’d like to have the games in their final form some time next year.
Otherwise, keep an eye out for other Ginger Goat games in early 2015. I’ve started work on a trilogy of sci-fi games tentatively called The Soldier of Sympathy trilogy. And you can always check in with my podcast about storytelling, Tell Me Another, at tellmeanother.net.

Five or So Questions with Brendan Conway on Masks

Tell me a little about Masks. What has you excited about it?

Masks is my Powered by the Apocalypse game of young supers, figuring out who they are when the world keeps telling them different things. You’ll play a young superhero type person, someone who’s capable already, but not at the peak of their ability. Somebody who’s still learning about who they are, and the world they live in, and trying to figure out where they fit, even as adults and peers are shouting at them constantly, trying to tell them exactly where that is. You’ll be part of a team of others like yourself, who are of course also nothing like yourself, and who are all struggling to find their own places. And you’ll be telling them who they are even as they do the same to you. Oh, yeah, and of course amid all this drama, tons of super-heroic action. Cars flying through the air, ice beams, absurd acrobatics, that kind of thing.

The key mechanical innovation that I’m playing with to get this tone across (and the one that has me most excited) is Labels. Instead of Stats, which are used in most Powered by the Apocalypse games, you have Labels. Stats are sort of objective measures of who you are. If you have a +3 Hard, then you’re a hard guy. If you have -2 Volatile, then you wouldn’t hurt a puppy. Stats are objective measurements of subjective qualities. Labels, on the other hand, are explicitly about how you see yourself. So they fluctuate a lot. As people tell you who you are, their words have impact on your self-image, and your Labels will change. As you decide who you are, your Labels will change. As a result, the things that you’re good at and the things that you’re bad at are never quite set in stone. The consequence of being a young person who doesn’t quite know who they are yet.

Beyond the fact that I’m psyched to explore that game mechanic, and that I’ve had great fun testing it so far, and that I just get a thrill putting pen to paper and writing up more ideas for it…I’m super excited by the potential to create a system that consistently produces stories like ones I love. I am enamored of RPGs that set themselves up as story-engines, capable of consistently producing particular kinds of stories that you might find in movies, books, comics, whatever. For Masks, I wanted to create an engine that could produce stories like those in Young Avengers, Runaways, Avengers Academy, Teen Titans, and certain iterations of the X-Men. In particular, I’ve been watching Young Justice, and every time I think about how Masks could be the system that creates Young Justice style stories at your table, I get chills. That’s what I want — to be able to create my own Young Justice stories with friends. If Masks gets anywhere close to that goal, I’ll be pretty happy.

How do Labels work, mechanically?

The caveat is that they’re still in development, but here’s how the Label mechanics look right now. There are six different Labels: Hero, Danger, Freak, Star, Radical, and Mundane. Each one is ranked just like normal Powered by the Apocalypse stats, from -3 to +3. Each one has a single basic move attached to it, and when you make that move, you’ll roll 2d6 + the appropriate Label. All of this is par for the course in Powered by the Apocalypse games.

The difference comes with the seventh basic move, “Tell someone who they are.” This move has you rolling+Influence, which is the amount of sway your words have over someone, to adjust that person’s Labels. You’ll have a different amount of Influence over each other Mask (PC). So if I’m playing Robin, I might have 0 Influence over Superboy because he doesn’t really have anything staked on my opinions of him. I’ll be rolling+0, then, when I tell Superboy that if he keeps acting the way he has been, he’s going to get someone hurt! I’m telling Superboy that he’s a Danger. If I get a hit, then my words have sunk in, and Superboy’s Danger Label will go up by 1. As a consequence, though, another of Superboy’s Labels will go down by 1. That’ll be Superboy’s player’s choice. If, on the other hand, I tell Superboy that he’s endangering people and heroes don’t do that, then I might actually be telling Superboy that he is not a Hero. In that case, on a hit I can decrease Superboy’s Hero Label by 1, and then Superboy’s player can increase another Label by 1.

That’s the basic idea, but then I’ve got a lot of other accouterments I’m hanging on it. For example, every playbook has six unique moves, one for each Label. When you are at +1 in a particular Label, you’ll get access to that move automatically, but you’ll lose access if you drop below +1 in that Label. As you advance, you’ll gain the opportunity to permanently unlock those moves. Other advancement opportunities include the ability to add +1 to a Label — no, you can’t be guaranteed that it will stay higher, but it means that on the whole, your Labels ecosystem will add up to one point higher than before. I think of that as having developed a stronger sense of self on the whole — you’re still figuring out who you are, but you’re growing in the sense that you are somebody. Another advancement opportunity is the ability to lock your Labels in place at the time you take the advance, to solidify your self-image. You can lock your Hero in at a +3, for instance, ensuring that no one can tell you that you aren’t a Hero anymore — you know that you are. Or, you could lock your Hero in when it’s a -3 — you’re not a Hero, and you never will be, no matter what they tell you.

Tell me a little about the Paragons. How do they work and how do they help shape the game?

Paragons in Masks are folks like Magneto and Xavier. They are NPCs, the big, most important highlighted people in the world of these young Masks. They might be anything from teachers to idols to feared criminals to hated enemies, but one way or another they are critically important to shaping the world that the Masks live in.

At the start of play, you’ll create three Paragons as a group. Each Paragon embodies one Label, denies another Label, and has a particular type. For example, you might wind up with a Paragon who embodies Radical (he thinks he knows how to change the world, himself), denies Danger (he would never harm anyone if he can possibly avoid it), and be of the Teacher type (with the move: Highlight inexperience). The exact details would be up to your group to fill in, with the GM asking questions about the Paragon until you all have a clear idea of that character. In this case, that Paragon might be Professor Charles Xavier.

After making the three Paragons, each Mask picks one to label as the most important to them. The idea here is to have the Masks with strong feelings already toward the iconic characters in their setting, the way that Young Justice characters like Robin, Artemis, and Superboy have strong feelings about Batman, Sportsmaster, and Superman. Or the way that the young X-Men have strong feelings about either Xavier or Magneto. The Paragons would then give the GM the equivalent of Fronts for Masks, as well as giving the GM a means by which to actually affect the Masks’ Labels — if you deeply care what Xavier thinks and then Xavier tells you you aren’t ready to go out there and fight to save lives, you can rest assured it’s going to affect your Labels.

The Paragons are there to be pillars, to be the major forces that you can deny, or accept, or join with, or run from. If young people define themselves in contrast to or similarity with the important people in their lives, then Paragons are those important people.

What is the biggest change, tonally, from other Powered by the Apocalypse games and Masks?

Tough question! I don’t think that, tonally speaking, the Powered by the Apocalypse games can be easily lumped together. If I had to answer on the whole, the biggest thing I’d call out is the difference in one of the fundamental principles for Masks. While I still see Masks as a “Play to find out” kind of game, I also keep rephrasing it in my head as “Play to find out who the Masks are”. Less of a focus on events and actions, per se — more of a focus on identity and personality. To answer a bit better though, I need to call out some of those games individually.

Monsterhearts is a wonderful game about being a teenager where adolescence is depicted through the lens of being a monster, and it pretty much says whatever I could think to say about adolescence from that perspective. Masks is about being a teenager or a young adult, but with much more focus on figuring out who the heck you are and how the voices of everybody around you can affect you. So beyond just the obvious horror versus superhero fiction difference, I see the difference being between your internal struggle with yourself and with control and understanding and growing up, and your external struggle to hear what other people are telling you about yourself and internalize that helpfully and healthily, without losing yourself to other people’s opinions. Or something.

Dungeon World is a wonderful game about fantasy fiction, particularly of the D&D vein. It pretty much does what Masks tries to do in functioning as an engine that will consistently produce stories of a particular variety. A key difference, though, is that I’m working to make sure that Masks has a heavily emotional component, something that produces what I have heard experts describe as “the feels”. I don’t think that DW is really all that worried about producing said “feels” in the same way, but that’s appropriate to the type of fiction that DW is designed to emulate. DW is very heavily focused on action and awesome and cinematic coolness, while Masks is trying to have some of that action, along with its scenes of people yelling at each other while tears slide down their faces.

Apocalypse World is a wonderful game about scarcity and violence and human struggle and right and wrong. Perhaps the most important tonal difference here is about the badassitude of characters. In AW, you’re the baddest asses around. You’re really, really great at what you do, and NPCs are chumps. Chumps with guns, sure, but in general no NPC is ever really your equal. In Masks, though, you’re young supers. You have enormous amounts of potential, and you can still do some pretty awesome things, but it’s an explicit element of the game that you’re not there yet. You’re Robin, not Batman. Someday, you’ll be in the big leagues if that’s what you want (though who knows what side you’ll be on), but right now? You’re still learning.

There are a couple of supers Powered by the Apocalypse games that I can think of — Worlds in Peril is one of the most prominent examples, having just finished a successful Kickstarter. I haven’t really delved deeply into Worlds in Peril‘s rules, so I don’t know for sure how exactly it works, but my impression of it is that it’s focusing on superheroes generally, with a tone that reminds me more of the Avengers movie, or superhero comics in general. Masks is designed to delve deeply into a particular style of superhero story, not into superhero stories in general, so that alone is a substantial divide. I’m also noticing that Worlds in Peril has mechanics that are meant to reflect the physics of superhero stories, while Masks has mechanics that all feed into the fundamental idea of Labels and figuring out who you actually are. Of course, all that’s a very superficial analysis.

Another superhuman Powered by the Apocalypse game is Mutanthearts, which last I’d heard was being worked on by some great people, and which I had the pleasure of playtesting. It deals with similar setting ideas to Masks, focusing on young mutants, and the issues facing them. It was great! I think that this is one of those interesting cases where Masks and Mutanthearts may be playing in very similar sandboxes, but they’re not doing the exact same thing, and that means that they’re elucidating different ideas about the genre. Mutanthearts, from my perspective at least, is way more about being a mutant and telling X-Men stories in all their glory, and it’s GREAT at that. Masks is much more about just plain being a young super person, dealing with growing up and becoming a full adult super person. That has some X-Men elements in it, but not every X-Men story would fit Masks. Mutanthearts‘ focus on the drama of being a mutant teenager aims it at a different tonal target than Masks, so really what I’m saying is that if both games ever fully exist you should buy both.

Do you have a timeline for Masks, and if so, when can we expect to see it out in the wild?

Right now, I think I have a very strong core for Masks, a set of ideas and baseline rules that are solid. But I think I have a lot of additional work to do, along with a lot of playtesting, before I feel comfortable bringing it to a finished form. My goal, my hope of all hopes, would be that a year from now, I can put together a Kickstarter to make it a real thing. But in the mean time, I’ll be playtesting it and working on it and talking about it.

But, y’know, it helps to have people asking me about when it will exist. Because then I feel more obligated to make that actually happen, and think about things like timelines.

Hangout with Brie and PULSE Creators

Five or So Questions with Aaron Pirnack on Renaissance Adventures

Check out Renaissance Adventures at www.renaissanceadventures.com!

Tell me a little about Renaissance Adventures. What excites you about it?

We incorporate experiential education into a live-action roleplaying game in a way that kids can have a fantastic time outdoors while developing 21st century skills (such as critical thinking, teamwork, self-esteem, leadership, and so on). We’ve been doing this since 1995 and are excited that others are wanting to join in on our business and educational model.

What type of live-action games do you typically play?

​Our programs are usually fantasy themed with challenges that emphasize a myriad of skills sets. Yes, we do plenty of boffer combat, but each quest has a number of other physical, mental, social, emotional, and ethical challenges packed in. Furthermore, because this is a children’s program, the game also develops 21st century skills of critical thinking, teamwork, ethical reasoning, self-esteem, fitness, and social awareness. I’ve actually found that our live-action games are unique. There is a single storyteller (“Quest Leader”) that leads a small group of six or so “Questers.” As a group, they adventure over the course of an entire week’s day programming (30-40 hours of questing). Then, next time they play, the Questers are in a new group with a new Quest Leader to take them on a new adventure.

What do you think the positive side effects are of your teaching model?

​The children and teens are engaged and motivated to succeed in a dynamic story, and thereby have a passion overcoming its challenges. By couching real-world issues and skills development into the ​framework of a quest challenge, the participants easily intuit the lessons’ importance, context, and self-initiation that is otherwise very difficult to teach in the classroom. Our emphasis is also in experiential education, so the participants reflect upon and redo many of the more difficult challenges. Finally, I believe that setting any lesson into a story means that it is more memorable. That includes historical events (imagine being at the Battle of Waterloo rather than being lectured about it), language arts (imagine writing a story about what your character did), and even mathematics (imagine solving a hexadecimal based puzzle-door that must be opened before the vampire lord’s minions discover the heroes).

What work did you have to do to set up the organization and spread the word?

​I personally have been working for Renaissance Adventures since 2000. By then the company was five years old, but it was still fairly small – just a dozen of us “Quest Leaders” leading groups in Boulder. As word of our glorious adventures spread to more families, I transitioned to become the primary quest and resource writer. Then, in 2009, I become co-director and business manager to help maintain the momentum, help craft a business and marketing plan, and explore options of branching out to other locations.​ Now we have four major locations in Colorado and one in Washington. We have sold a license to utilize our business methods and program resources to a company called Lore Adventures in Michigan; they have been so successful that they are ready to expand into Texas. We are about ready to open the license to a larger pool of “beta licensees” that have a passion for education, youth development, and of course live-action roleplaying games.

How can people support Renaissance Adventures, and who benefits?

​Spread the word of what we do, and should someone want to open up their own Adventure Quest license in their area, we would love to start a conversation about what that looks like. We have spent nearly 20 years perfecting this program and creating resources so that those who want to do what we do can support themselves as a successful business owner without reinventing the wheel. In fact, our business model requires very little overhead cost from both our own pricing as well as equipment and administration costs that a business would have to incur. We truly believe that this could be a great renaissance in experiential education, summer programming, and live-action roleplaying.

Five or So Questions with Ryan Schoon on Edara: A Steampunk Renaissance

I interviewed Ryan Schoon about Edara: A Steampunk Renaissance. It launched end of May!

Tell me a little about Edara: A Steampunk Renaissance. What has you excited about it?

The world that we have built! What we have done is taken a Tolkienesque world and fast forwarded the timeline and set it during the invention of steampunk. It’s a chance to see the effects of a growing new technology on a fantasy world and it’s an amazing place to explore.

What sort of influences did you have for the steampunk aesthetic? 

I have been a fan of steampunk since I first watched Metropolis. Steamboy, Full Metal Alchemist, and more recently The Legend of Korra have all provided inspiration for the aesthetic of the game. We have put a twist on all of it but setting it during the Renaissance, (normally steampunk is a pre-WII Germany, Victorian England, or the Wild West) so while we were able to inform our aesthetic from our favorite shows and movies, we were allowed to organically originate our own ideas as well.

What do you think the benefits are of having a threshold system instead of target numbers?

It’s more easily explained by comparing it to a system that does not use a threshold. Pathfinder for example. If two characters in Pathfinder are making a skill check and one is naturally better than the other. The better character may utterly destroy the target number while the other may barely scrape by. Yet the outcome for both characters is the same.

We wanted to do something different. Two characters may both be able to perform a skill, like running from rooftop to rooftop using Parkour, successfully. But the better character, the one who utterly surpassed the target number, flows from rooftop to rooftop like he was born there. He moves faster, jumps farther, and surpasses all obstacles. This better reflects our goals of better representing reality.

Tell me a little bit about the different bands. What makes each one unique?

Each Band reflects a different attribute and element of the world. This isn’t just a surface reflection. The element to which they are tied is obvious in every ability they have. So the Red Band, linked to Fire, has this aggressive, fiery undercurrent to all of their abilities while the Green Band, linked to Nature, has abilities based around a deep connection to nature. So even when two Bands share certain abilities they are more deeply linked to their element.

What’s up next for you? Expansions on Edara, or something new?

We definitely have expansions in the works. Deeper campaign settings and more information on the world. We do have one or two secret products in the works that we aren’t quite ready to talk about yet, but there are exciting things happening for us!

Okult by Wilhelm Person and Asking Good Questions

Recently on G+ I put out a post saying how I wish I could just get copies of the games I interview people about. A few people sent me stuff, which was super cool! One of the things that got into my grabby hands was Wilhelm Person’s Okult.

I’ve been watching Okult from afar for a while. I saw when it came out and was vaguely interested, and got a little more interested when I read a little about it. However, I’m both cheap and busy, so I hadn’t put it on my urgent list yet. Getting it and reading it was a genuine pleasure. I loved the photography in the book and was excited to take a look at the game itself.

Okult is a horror game and photo book. First off, the game is mega simple. It is a storytelling game of a sort, and has a scale of the intensity of the horror in the game. There are no complicated mechanics. It’s also GMless, which I dig.

What I like about it is that one, when you get to a point in a scene where you ask a question, someone else gets to answer it, and two, it’s all about asking good questions. Questions about your Hometown, questions about your past, questions about what you can do in the game, questions about the secret of the town. So many questions!

Epidiah Ravachol said (In a post supporting me, no less!):

As a whole, game designers are only just starting to wake up to the fact that the single most effective mechanic is a question. That’s going to change soon and over the next few years you’re going to see a lot of hot new games built entirely around the questions players can ask and how they can be answered. When this happens, we’re all going to appreciate just what it takes to craft a well-asked question.

I think that Okult has a decent handle on this.

When I think of asking questions, which I do, quite a lot of the time (in case you hadn’t noticed), I think of how I want the responder to feel, how I want them to think, where I want their train of thought to go. I never like closed questions, so I always look for a why, or a what, and press for it.

I want to write a game about asking questions, but I think I’m just so wrapped up in the questions that I can’t find my way to answers. I like that Okult doesn’t give you the answers – it lets you explore them on your own. And it does so visually! It uses a map, a big map, and you also record facts on the map, answering the questions.

What’s so great about questions? To me, I love questions. Questions often demand answers, and even when they don’t, they invite thought. They lead to exploration. They guide us through the unknown by giving us a point to start and a reason to answer – the good ones, anyway. Plus, questions lead to interaction. Yes, you can ask yourself questions and answer them alone, but the most enjoyable way to explore questions is to share it with other people. To ask, and receive responses, and then ask more, continuing the discourse.

Vincent Baker says that games are a conversation.

What’s a conversation without questions?

New Games for New Hacks

Recently I had a discussion with +Stras Acimovic and +John Sheldon during our camping/gaming weekend about the prevalence of Powered by the Apocalypse games and similar hacks.

First thing: I don’t think hacking is bad, nor do I think it’s lesser than making new, original games, nor do I think that hacks lack innovation.

Here’s the second thing, though.

I worry about stagnation. I see tons of games being made, but so many are from the same core. I want to see more games being made that are original, or that come from different things. While Powered by Apocalypse games are great, and it’s awesome that +Vincent Baker made the system available to people to make more games, there are a few games that have come out recently that are simply flavor laid over the original system without new mechanics or innovation, and I worry we’ll see that more and more. I also see games being created that use Powered by the Apocalypse, but lack the issue of scarcity. This is something Stras could talk about more than me, but if there is no real scarcity in a game, then the Apocalypse doesn’t work as well. This is a case where system really does matter. I’m not saying that no one should make games Powered by the Apocalypse, I’m saying that not everyone needs to use it if they have the capacity to do otherwise.

What I’d like to see: designers who have the capacity (which is technically everyone, but potentially moreso experienced designers) creating new, original games and making them open source/Creative Commons. Not just because new games are awesome, but because new games enable future innovation. When we have more games that are original, we have more games to hack, so new designers who are trying to figure out the way games work can hack those original games, and it creates a cycle of creation and innovation, because people will add on mechanics of their own to those original games, or tweak them, and make new things once they know what they’re doing.

I’m sure someone will see a flaw in this, but I admit I don’t care much. That doesn’t change the fact that we’re seeing tons of games Powered by the Apocalypse, some of which don’t make sense to be powered that way, and not seeing as many new and original things as I personally would like to see.

So, make new games. Hack those new games. Then make more new games. This is a fun cycle. It’s exciting.

Let’s do it.

Brie Sheldon Interviews Julio Matos and Igor Toscano


This was such a fun interview! +Julio Matos and +Igor Toscano were fantastic to talk to, even though I butchered their names when I introduced them. 

The Brazilian scene is fascinating, and I’m looking forward to seeing more in the future!