Hey, friends, supporters, consumers, and colleagues. this one is a little important.
I hope the best came for you in major holidays for each culture and religion or lack thereof that came before this post, and the same wishes for you in the festivities (or lack thereof!) to come. Please stay safe in the continuance of COVID-19 and the many dangers all marginalized people face, and seek joy in every moment – even if it’s fleeting, it heals more than all the rest.
That being said, this is me. Beau Sheldon.
Me. 2020.
Content warnings for discussion of mental illness, physical disability, financial insecurity, gender identity, gender dysphoria, mention of hallucinations, mention of schizoaffective disorder, mentions of political and social issues in the United States, and details of creative dysfunction.
Thoughty remains! So does Script Change. I still hope to do some interviews, as mentioned, very periodically. I want to talk more about design, and about leadership in games. I want to talk about the things I personally enjoy in games, break them down, see if I can make them make sense. I hope when the worldsuck eases I’ll release more games, though I doubt anything I do solo will be as big and fancy as Turn. I’ll be separately supporting my partners with their projects. Oh yeah, and I’ll still be accepting guest blogs here when I can build up a larger fund for paying creators!
Times do change.
My first interviews were before Thoughty – on my previous and now defunct site that I ported here with Systir Productions & 616, and on Gaming as Women with attendees of a Gamerati game day and then Judy Bauerof all people. I kicked off Thoughty and Five or So Questions in 2014 as a continuation of the original blog, but only the interviews really stuck around.
Me in 2013 at Gen Con with F. Wes Schneider, Paizo’s then Editor-in-Chief, who I had interviewed for GAW.
I have done over three hundred interviews on Thoughty, about 250 of those being Five or So Question interviews. I have only had a few interviews fully fail to be completed due to scheduling, and one pulled by the creator. I’ve interviewed people about not just tabletop but also card, board, and video games, plus lonely solo games, huge collections of tabletop and live action games, their artwork, their design process, their Kickstarters, and more. I have had an exceptional opportunity to pick the brains of the most brilliant designers in tabletop games, from legacy designers like Ron Edwards to genius women designers like Dr. Jessica Hammer and Meguey Baker to groundbreaking modern designers like Jay Dragon and Rae Nedjadi. Many of these people I have grown to consider friends and colleagues, and I’m so grateful for the amazing things I’ve learned from them and shared with you.
I have been supported by my Patreon supporters primarily for these interviews, enough funds to pay for my website and a bill every so often, some busy months enough to help me pay medical expenses. I am incredibly grateful for my supporters, for everyone who has shared an interview, recommended a creator to reach out to, or praised my interviews, regardless of whether they supported me financially!
You may ask, if this is so great, why does the title say you’re ending interviews? What does this mean for Thoughty? Why has the site been so slow recently, anyway? Well, that’s what I’m gonna try to answer here. This is… a bit long. I’m still me, you know.
Hi all! Today I have an interview with the creators of Into the Mother Lands, a new project being performed on and sponsored by Twitch and released on YouTube, developed using the Cortex Prime RPG system. You can keep up to date on the project through their Twitter or Discord, and until then, check out the responses from Tanya DePass (T.D.), B. Dave Walters (B.D.W.), and Gabe Hicks (G.H.) below!
Catch Into the Mother Lands, a Cortex Prime RPG actual play using a new sci-fi IP created by Tanya DePass, leading a team of veteran Black & POC creatives as they build the world and its stories together at twitch.tv/cypheroftyr, Sundays at 4pm Pacific/6pm Central/7pm Eastern/5pm Mountain time.
What an amazing team, and with Tanya at the lead! For our readers who may be new to your work, could each of you introduce yourselves and talk about your experience and specialties that you’re bringing to the Into the Motherlands RPG?
B.D.W.: I say words about things! I have been playing games for about 30 years now. I’m the writer and co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons: A Darkened Wish and DM for the streaming series of the same name. I also have written for Werewolf the Apocalypse 5th Edition and some other unannounced World of Darkness projects.
I have also consulted on increasing diversity and inclusion in a number of well-known gaming properties.
T.D.: I’ve been a diversity & inclusion consultant in RPG’s for the last few years, have writing credits with Green Ronin, Paizo, Monte Cook Games, WotC and have been playing RPG’s since I could hold a D6.
G.H.: Hi, my name is Gabe Hicks! I’m a voice actor, streamer, and designer who works in digital and tabletop. I have written for MOBAs, worked with Paizo, Zweihander, a plethora of other companies and systems and narrative work and taking those experiences and working with different worlds is part of how my design and narrative process have helped me in building this world for Into the Motherlands RPG. It’s learning a little bit from each piece that I’ve done and considering how it all blends in the world together.
There is hype for Into the Motherlands already, but what are you most excited to explore? How does your use of streaming and your varied backgrounds impact your presentation of these exciting elements?
B.D.W.: I am most interested in being able to explore a sci-fi setting that’s not ultimately a bland retelling of the Westward Expansion! We have the privilege of painting an entirely new portrait of a civilization completely free from colonialism, and that has been an incredibly satisfying mental exercise. I can’t wait for you to see it!
TD: I’m excited to tell a story without colonization and slavery as part and parcel of the world’s lore and history. To see where our folks wind up and how their choices become a canon part of our world.
G.H.: I’m really excited to give a core premise for worlds and then see how people build onto them or build their own. There’s a lot here that we have to build up and create more and more, and it’s an opportunity not often given to really have a whole fresh start especially when it comes to world’s imagined specifically by people of color. With the different skill set and experiences of the team as a whole when it comes together it’s beautiful. We’re able to figure out and design a game that plays well in a show format but doesn’t have to be a show to be fun.
That sounds great! So tell me about Into the Motherlands. What is different about it from other sci-fi settings? How are you demonstrating the unique elements?
TD: It’s different in that we’re not going for super grim dark, it’s populated by a variety of cultures and does its best to invert a lot of tropes.
G.H.: We built this system with such a heavy emphasis on storytelling in a sci-fi setting. So many people try to make games that are combat in space without as much emphasis I’d like in story, world building, and creating entirely just new ideas rather than playing off tropes. Not to mention, when we do see these things there is almost never African inspiration tied into them.
What is it like debuting a game on Twitch? Are there unique challenges or benefits that come from this platform as your showcase?
TD: It’s hard because we discovered people will backseat literally anything, including a brand new system and even the production of the show. Benefits are that people can see it done real-time, but also you get to see the weird commentary and other things people are throwing around. For me, it’s hard because all these theories are so incredibly wrong, but you can’t stop playing to address it in chat.
G.H.: I honestly think I’m spoiled now with development. We get a chance to see LIVE what people are interested in, what people want to see more of, what people want to know more about and it honestly makes my job so much more interesting. It’s an opportunity to literally focus on the things people want and then create extra on top. This isn’t a circumstance where we have to wait and see what gets people interested during development. It’s such a fortunate thing.
Where did the inspiration for Into the Motherlands or your work on it come from? How have you workshopped ideas when you’re working to avoid colonialism? Does that come naturally to your team?
TD: We just talked, and decided there would be no colonialism, slavery etc. It’s not that hard and we didn’t need to workshop it. With an all Black & POC writing team, we just opted out off that, simply because Sci fi and fantasy don’t need those to tell a compelling story.
G.H.: It does come pretty naturally. It’s a team effort and that’s so clear when we sit down and work. Like Tanya said it was just a straight up choice, none of it. I’ve literally been reading into the different biomes and environments in Africa, the way flora and fauna interact, and how much variety there is in life. It’s been a never ending supply of inspiration and stuff to share.
What’s it like working on an inclusive and diverse team that’s got such varied perspectives? Does it feel more freeing to work in this way, and does it help on this specific project to be such a diverse team?
TD: Absolutely it’s more freeing. However, we assembled this talented team of Black & POC creatives not just to be ‘diverse’ but because everyone is super talented and capable. While it’s being pointed out that we’re an all Black & POC team, by us because for me (and maybe others) it’s the first time we’ve had that option. But it’s not the only thing about our group, game and show.
G.H.: It’s freeing. Someone always has a new perspective or an insight. IT’s not just one point of view but it’s like knowing we all have some different experiences in some of our similar views. I feel a bit like I have less to prove of myself, a bit like I can already say “These people get it.”. On this project especially, having a diverse team is huge part of why this game works as well as it does. It’s a testament to diversity being such a boon in creation.
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Thank you so much to all three of those able to respond for this interview! I hope you all enjoyed this interview, and that you’ll check out Into the Mother Lands on Twitch each Sunday!
Catch Into the Mother Lands, a Cortex Prime RPG actual play using a new sci-fi IP created by Tanya DePass, leading a team of veteran Black & POC creatives as they build the world and its stories together at twitch.tv/cypheroftyr, Sundays at 4pm Pacific/6pm Central/7pm Eastern/5pm Mountain time.
Here at Thoughty, I believe that Black Lives Matter. I believe Black History Matters. Most of all, I believe that Black Futures Matter.
I support Black trans and nonbinary people.
I support Black queer and LGBTQIA+ people.
I support Black disabled and mentally ill people.
I support Black people in poverty and in wealth.
I support Black people who are incarcerated.
I support Black veterans and soldiers.
I support Black homeless and in need.
I support Black sex workers.
I support Black game designers and artists. I also encourage any Black game designers or artists to reach out to me for an interview over the next few months. I want to feature your work and prioritize you!
What is Winter Harvest, both as a product and as your vision?
Winter Harvest is a small roleplaying game set in a small world. Players are woodland animals using the power of memories, food & community to thrive as the seasons turn. The game runs 4 sessions based on the seasons. Session 4 concludes the game with a real-life (and in-game) Midwinter Feast. Goals of Winter Harvest are to focus on domestic life within an inter-connected community, and to have each table develop custom lore for their home through invoking oral history that will be recorded by the Librarian. It should feel horizontal because no player “keeps” the role of facilitator/Storyteller, it rotates each session. The physical product will be a 20-30 page, black-and-white handmade zine with custom ink art of adorable animals at work and play, publishing around October 2020.
This sounds great – I love food, and I love woodland creatures! How did you develop the perfect mood for play to help encourage the interconnected nature the narrative demands?
Before jumping into play, a group beginning Winter Harvest will make two types of choices that set the stage for feeling that they are part of a close-knit and inter-reliant community. First, each player developing a character card will choose two professional skills. For example, if I were making a rabbit gardener character, I might choose skills like physical endurance and herbal knowledge. Any time I use my skills from my gardening job to confront a challenge, I’ll get bonuses to help the group resolve problems.
Defining what characters do day-to-day instantly sets the stage for relationships–my gardener character probably knows the cook quite well, for instance. Second, the table will have to reach a consensus on the key features that define their home in the Burrow, which sets the stage for understanding that protecting and caring for your shared space is essential to everyone’s wellbeing. Throughout play, these choices will interact with narrative decisions, including when players confront challenges stemming within the Burrow that have social causes and consequences each session.
A rotating facilitator role is so great. What does Winter Harvest do to help support the facilitators and bind together their unique perspectives?
Mechanically, regardless of a facilitator’s style or experience level, each will be physically writing in the same book as players invoke stories & legends to have a connected record evolve (which is why the role is also called The Librarian). Players can revisit stories that were invoked in past seasons to get powerful bonuses without spending a limited resource, which adds incentives to have past themes and stories brought up several times as the game progresses.
There’s no obligation for every person at the table to take a turn as facilitator, and hopefully taking on this role will feel voluntary and exciting rather than intimidating. Since Winter Harvest is a compact and quite simple game, it should not be time-consuming for facilitators to become familiar with the whole text. Running it requires no memorization or math. I’m very interested in thinking further about how the game can be designed to ensure that facilitators feel well-supported throughout!
Tell me a little about Red Rook Revolt. What excites you about it?
Well, that’s sorta like choosing between my babies. There are three things which really excite me. The first is the combat system, which is inspired by the game Hyper Light Drifter as well as Strike!: A game of heedless adventure! It uses a single d6 for every roll, almost every attack deals one damage, and people have very low hit HP. In playtests, it has given us fast, tactical, and dangerous combat. Melee attacks always hit, but expose you to danger, while ranged attacks can miss, and require you to spend Dark Power, which you get from melee attacks, which forces people in and out of dangerous situations and helps ensure more dynamic encounters.
Another thing that excites me is the memory and corruption system. For a long while, I struggled with making a cool way both to portray relationships and the creeping demonic corruption that happens once you start powering up the summoned demon in your gun. But I solved both, by having a system where you have specific memories with the other party members.
During each adventure, you can gain more, but you can also draw on those personal connections to keep away the demon’s whispers. If you fail, however, those memories can get twisted. Memories of your brother supporting you through hard times get reinterpreted to into memories of your bother being smothering or controlling. Memories of supporting your friends when they needed you become memories of your friends being needy and needing constant support, and so on. This isn’t necessarily permanent, but the fight against the demon is one of the central conflicts of the game.
The last thing I wanna mention here that excites me is the setting, which i am currently writing! I’m drawing on English and Roman history, and focusing down on a single empire and the rebellion happening there. That allows me do to more than just a cursory look at the place, and detail culture and religion to a greater extend, show some of the ways the rebellious areas differ in culture from the main empire, but also the ways they are the same, the things they share. Some central cultural concepts are birds as ancestors, and the actual, literal magic which is at work in most things of cultural significance, including community rituals and festivals, and a strong tradition of communal stews.
What inspired your interest in these cultures to build this specific story, and how are you building this story while being respectful to the cultures themselves?
To be clear, when I say I draw on British and Roman history, I mean mostly – but not entirely, as I’ll get to! – in terms of structure, in terms of how the empire works, how they extract resources from their conquered territory, how they justify their imperialism. That also helps answer the first part of your question: I needed empires to draw from for my evil empire. I had already decided on guns as an element, as the game started as a small combat engine and I didn’t want modern time, so 19th-century England was right there. As I worked on the culture and the history of the people of the empire, I had some ideas which resonated with Roman history, and the empire ended up as something like a Roman empire that had evolved into a modern empire, though more territorial.
I do use some roman culture – aspects of its religion and visual aesthetic, the importance of the Familias, the prevalence and importance of omens and minor magic. I have a friend working with me on some of the writing who knows his Roman history very well, so I’m not afraid to accidentally misrepresent it, though much of it isn’t what I’m using as inspiration. And while there are possibly some that would have issues with using, say, roman gods, I’m not doing that, just some aspects of how society was structured in antiquity.
Tell me more about memories! How do the players typically respond to these when they play them out, and how do they interact with other parts of the game?
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able playtest this part of the game at the time of writing, so how players typically respond is unknown to me, but I will have the chance to playtest it soon!
I can talk about how they interact with other parts of the game, though! The memories represent the character’s relationships with each other, and during their adventures, they get strengthened and weakened.
The game is structured around a mix of downtime and adventuring. During the adventuring portions, the players get into battle and accrue corruption tokens as they draw on the dark magic of their demons. Afterward, they roll to determine if they get corrupted. If they fail, their friends have to help them, reminding them of their relationship with a memory; if that succeeds, the memory is simply exhausted from the emotional stress, and can’t be used for a while. Otherwise, it gets corrupted, twisted somehow, and the relationship weakens. Actions in battle and their willingness to win at all costs thus affect their relationships and their memories.
This, in a sense, forms the central conflict, and a central theme of the game: the importance of relationships, friendships and organization as you struggle for liberation, and resistance to forces that would separate you, make you try to fight the world alone with just you and your gun. During downtime, exhaustion and (with more difficulty) corruption can be healed, as can physical wounds, and new memories can be made. Downtime, in a bigger way, ties into what adventures you go on, what battles you fight and so on, which feeds back into corruption and memory.
What is the general activity of the game – like what do the players mostly do in each session, or are they intended to do? How does the game support these actions?
The general activity of the game is fighting imperialist scum. You play as members of the red rook commune, which is under attack from the cruel Imperium Alarum, and throughout the game, you keep the pressure on to prevent them from turning their full attention towards the commune. You sabotage railways, distribute propaganda, organize general strikes, assassinate generals, and lead battles against the enemy. When things go wrong and the empire turns their full might upon the Red Rook Commune, you man the barricades and drive back the invaders! In between hectic fights and missions, you rest at the commune and rebuild your strength. This is when you heal and reaffirm your friendships.
As for how the game supports these actions, it is built around that structure of mission/rest/mission with the first result of failure being an attack on the red rook commune. If you aren’t putting the pressure on the empire, they will attack your home and deny you the chance to heal and rest.
What made you elect to use Hyper Light Drifter and Strike! As inspirations for design, and how have you differed from them?
I didn’t so much choose to use hyper light drifter as an inspiration as the other way around: the appeal of Hyper Light Drifter’s smooth, flowing combat rhythms is what inspired me to start working on what would become Red Rook Revolt. Hyper Light Drifter is a video game with an incredible combat loop, and I wanted to capture that particular loop, that particular flow, in a tabletop game, something, quick, smooth, and tactical.
That’s why I turned to Strike! for inspiration for the combat. That game uses a single D6 for combat, rolling on a table of hits, misses, and critical hits, and It goes rather fast for that reason. Strike, of course, also has a lot of other things going on, but I liked that particular idea and I took inspiration from that in designing my combat system and combined it with the things I liked and wanted to replicate from Hyper Light Drifter.
Content Warning: Mention of suicidal ideation, self harm, online harassment, face to face harassment, reference to racism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism.
Photos by Brie Beau Sheldon Copyright 2019.
The games “community” or “industry” – I’ve taken to calling it a “scene” because lordy, the drama – is constantly full of nightmarish amounts of discourse, especially of late. This happens. We have stuff to discuss, which I get. We got a lot of shit going on.
However, there’s some stuff I need to address because I have been in the indie scene specifically since around 2012 and some particular behaviors I’ve seen of late are not acceptable. Here are a few things I have heard of or seen happening that I, as a person in this community who tries to promote the good works of others, don’t want to see:
the purposeful triggering of others with legitimately triggering material or falsified/exaggerated materials for any reason
public naming of marginalized individuals in a manner that put them at risk for harassment, as well as outright doxxing of individuals for assumed (and falsified) differing political views
the goading or bullying of others to pressure them into making public statements or engaging in public or private social discourse with people who may or may not have greater social power than them
the further growth of a culture of fear for marginalized people in the name of “art” by implying, outright stating, or falsifying the bigoted or fascist perspectives of people or organizations with power in the scene
the reinstatement of typically men who have done harm into positions of power or the passive acceptance of their continued control of organizations or social groups in spite of their lack of repentance and lack of changed behavior, especially in light of continued bad behavior
the brushing under the rug of bad behavior and bad management at conventions and organizations that particularly affects marginalized people (like people of color, Black people, disabled people, and queer people) for reasons unclear
These are just like, the tip of the iceberg. This is just what I can remember right now, without doing excessive research. This is just the stuff that recently has been sticking in my craw. And you know what, I’m a white person! I have a safe place to live and some security. There are people in less privileged positions who are at greater risk and have probably encountered far more issues than me, been hit far harder with discourse sticks, and who have fewer places to escape to.
I am ashamed of this scene right now, for the actions I’ve seen in the past few months. These kinds of behaviors are not acceptable, they’re incredibly harmful, and we are extremely lucky that no one has died because of it yet – and I am not being an extremist when I say this. I have been in communities that lost people because of discourse. I have been, because of this scene, pushed to self harm and suicidal ideation.
At the start of this year, we dealt with a massive, horrific trauma as an industry,* and it’s still ongoing. We are scarred and constantly bleeding from reopened wounds. We are cruel to each other in ways that are so unnecessary! We do not need to hurt each other like this.
*I’m referring to what some people call our “Me Too” moment that doesn’t even come close to covering all of the predators in our industry.
I am begging, as this year comes to a close, that we try harder to do better. Look at your life, look at your choices – what harm have you done, and how can you undo it? How can you instead do good going forward? Do better, and operate with care and passion and love, not vindictiveness, siloed group secretiveness, and desires to keep yourself and your favorites elevated at the cost of the wellbeing of others.
We could blossom. We could grow, and flourish, and become something more amazing than we’ve ever been, but we will not if people start turning inward, hurting themselves in self-loathing and desperation, abused by their own fellows and afraid of falling short or worse, doing well enough that people demand more of them.
I am not a perfect person. I have fucked up so colossally and terribly, and I have tried to make amends and become better. I am still trying. I’m asking you to try with me. We can operate with hindsight. We can develop some foresight, even, with just the slightest bit of introspection, into how we could improve.
I will do better. Please hold my hand and do it with me.
The title sounds angry, but like. Readers, you know it’s time we had this conversation.
I talk to marginalized designers in games all the time, and to like just straight cis white guys like a lot, too. There’s a common theme of not being paid well – paid fairly even – that I’m seeing, I’ve been seeing, but like we don’t really write it down in a place and say it to the point sometimes. With the way social media has become our method of communicating, it’s rare that we put it down in a blog post or something linkable. SO I thought heyyy, why not Thoughty?
Note: A large number of the accounts in this article are anonymous. This is because the industry itself can be so vindictive and brutal that people don’t feel safe talking about pay and bad experiences, even if their complaints are fully justified. All of the quotes within are used with permission, and remained anonymous unless otherwise permitted.
ETA: I did reach out to some artists for their perspective, but wasn’t able to gather sufficient information. I intend to have a followup article by artists to address artist pay.
THANK YOU to all of my contributors for this article, named and anonymous.
Speaking of social media, there have been article-length Twitter threads about how to make your own rates for freelancing, including this one by @XCK3D which includes a lot of things we don’t typically think to calculate. Like having an asshole rate, for when you have to work for that person who is an asshole but you need the money.
Consulting: $30.00 USD/hour. Per-Word Work: $0.10 USD/word. Player Streaming, 4-hours: $80.00 USD flat rate. Facilitator Streaming, 4 hours: $160.00 USD flat rate. Panels, Speaking, Facilitating Events: $200.00 USD flat rate, and the inclusion of room, board, and travel assistance.
We could also use rates for hourly design work that includes playtesting and for project management, something we don’t often address. My base suggestions are below, based on what I’ve been paid for design work with playtesting and prorated upwards for a fair wage and looking at some national salary data for project management.
The document didn’t mention editing, but as an editor I’ve done some research. The EFA rates are pretty fair, though, and are available here. The rates I suggest are:
When I read the document, my first thought was “hell yes!” My second thought: How do we make this the norm?
That’s a pretty hard question in the industry we have today. Every time I bring up fair pay for everybody, I run into the same brick wall: people not knowing why it matters to pay fairly, or not knowing why it matters to charge fairly. We all fear not being able to make our dream come true, and capitalism is a freaking stale bagel supreme. So where the hell do we even start?
I have an interview today with L A Wilga and James Lader on the new roleplaying game Sundown, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds like a really interesting new game and I’m excited for it. Check out the interview below, and the Kickstarter too!
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Sundown’s cover art by Mayara Sampaio.
Tell me a little about Sundown. What excites you about it?
L A: So, Sundown is a rules light tabletop roleplaying game. It’s set in a pre-industrial frontier where, instead of magic, we have “science.” Science is the intersection of two things. Wonders: inventions that just make everyone’s life easier, and changing: the art of taking someone and reshaping their flesh. In fewer words, engineering and biology
There are two main facets to the game: surviving the wild, with fauna just as changed and dangerous as the folk, and surviving the politics, with a power struggle in every town and a populace that needs you but doesn’t want you.
I certainly get excited to face down giant winged frogs and angry murderbirds, my pink undershave flowing in the wind, but I find catharsis in the politics. You have to navigate finding work, getting paid, finding a place to stay, making friends, and avoiding the authorities as someone disdained by most of society. It’s an experience I think most in our queer rpg community will recognize.
It’s kind of like a cyberpunk game with the punk aesthetic, the politics, and the transhumanism, but if you took away its technology and sent it to the West Marches.
J L: I’m really excited about how much control you have over your body in Sundown. Changes are probably my favorite part of our game, because as a trans man, being able to reshape your body on a whim is the ultimate fantasy. And I’m sure other people think that’s super cool too.
The other thing I’m excited about is intentionally including politics in the premise. Social strife is the lifeblood of this game, where more of the people are monsters than the fiends. I really like that the direction of your career can be toppling the ruling class in Cragsmouth, or becoming a thief-assassin who saves themselves at all costs. You make your way through Sundown by surviving how best you can, and it really mirrors to me how to navigate a world where a lot of the power isn’t yours.
You talk about the Changing. How does Changing work, and are there any special benefits or consequences from it?
L A: This is a good question, because people tend to assume that you just drink a potion and seconds later you have claws or something.
Changes are made by a scientist specialized in changing, and in a laboratory devoted to changing. You get stuffed into an egg-like pod with the changing agents and a medium called lungwater that keeps you alive for the weeks or months your changes take. Breaking down flesh and building it back up takes a lot of time and energy. When you break out of your egg, you’re ravenously hungry, everything is too bright, and you just want to go back to sleep.
Changing agents are derived from plants and animals out in the wild that have already been observed to do… something to people. Indigoji turns your skin purple, for instance. Modern changes were discovered by blending random assortments together and logging the resulting effect on humans, not all of them consenting test subjects.
J L: Changing is arduous. It really does mirror the transition process in the real world, but it’s less limited. It’s expensive to get access to changes. Special equipment and making sure you don’t die in stasis isn’t cheap. The time cost, too, matters. And some changes can stress your body. It’s not a perfect science, and you can end up with additional things that identify you as a changeling, like black nails when you asked for super strength.
We also did name the pods where Changes happen eggs. That’s not a very subtle metaphor I think. If people know you’re a changeling, too, they’ll treat you very different. The best reaction you can expect in most of Sundown is mild disdain, which is very real. So if people know you’re a changeling, that alone is a consequence.
This was labeled frogbeast, which I think is such a fun name!
How do your identities as queer and trans (or queer/trans identities in general) reflect in the broader world beyond the Changing? Do they relate to Wonders, or even to the politics?
L A: We didn’t really use wonders to say anything about queerness or transness, they’re kinda just neat things, like goggles that let you see at night. We definitely do intend, though, for guns to be a symbol of the class war. Did we mention there’s guns? They’re more like railguns than gunpowder guns. They use a fictional material called floatstone.
There is this wonder called pitch, though. It’s a black syrup thing that’s injected, and it knits your body back together after some nasty injuries. The catch, though, is if you use too much, you run the risk of becoming a pitchblood. Basically, your blood is replaced with pitch. You lose twenty years off your life, but you’re near invincible. I think some folk can sympathize with that sort of deal-with-the-devil transformation?
Beau’s Note: This specific one reminds me of my own experiences with lithium as someone with bipolar disorder, to be honest.
L A, continued: The politics is really where our queerness comes through. For one, if you have any sort of visible change, which includes things like colored hair, over half of the people in Sundown won’t really want anything to do with you. Not to mention you’re already othered because of your profession. The isolationists of Sundown really don’t like outsiders doing their work for them. Too bad they need drifters like you for things like translation, bounty hunting, and trailblazing.
J L: Definitely. The otherism experienced in Sundown based on being a drifter is pretty much a direct metaphor for how it feels to be disdained and desired. Very much as a queer person it’s easy to feel consumed and discarded at the earliest opportunity, and since you’re a travelling contractor, it’s even more direct.
I think, honestly, the other parts of the system also show some of the good parts of being queer, too. When you create your character, for example, your character is rooted in the people at your table. One of the traits that embodies who you are is defined by your relationship to another character at the table. Drifters often are building an intentional community, a network of people who know where the good work is, who you should work with on what jobs, where it’s safe to travel, and sharing stories of your best exploits. I think that really reflects how queer and trans folx band together to keep each other safe and loved in a world that is otherwise hostile to them.
James Lader.
How are things like changing and wonders, and those politics you discuss, mechanized or formalized in the game?
J L: So all of these things involve infamy, which is the currency we use in Sundown. Infamy isn’t coin, though, it’s a representation of your influence in the area, and how well people know you. The more infamy you have garnered, the more leverage you have. Political action that earns infamy takes place during heats, the jobs drifters take on every month. You might slay fiends, debate a public official, steal from a guild, or lead an uprising.
Getting wonders and changes requires you to spend your infamy to obtain them. Some wonders are special and rare enough to use your downtime between heats as well as your infamy to obtain them. Changes always take downtime, and usually cost infamy.
One of the neat things about infamy is that you only have so much influence you can gain, and once you use that leverage, it’s gone. You have to think carefully about what you want to achieve and use that influence wisely.
L A: Ok so James mentioned heats. That’s basically an adventure, and downtime is the time between them. We intend for downtime to be played kind of like play-by-post between sessions
When you make improvements to your character that involve big investments of time, like learning a new skill or rebuilding your fleshy prison, you do that during your downtime. Spending your infamy on changes is just one of the things you can spend your downtime on.
J L:Downtime is when most of your character improvements can happen, so you have to choose really carefully what you want to spend your time on between jobs. Sundown is a hard place to be and choosing to better your traits or gain cat ears can be life or death. It’s really tricky because you can also only get so many things before not having any more infamy to gain.
What have you done with the game to support players in exploring these relatively serious subjects, including consent and safety mechanics and other aspects of your design?
J L: One of the first sections of the book is a consent tool we developed based on our stress mechanic. Stress is sort of a measure of your character’s health, and it worked really well to measure how safe a topic was for the players.
We also reinforce throughout the book to be mindful of others at the table, to use additional safety and consent tools you might be more familiar with, and to check in with your fellow players.
These are really hard topics and not everyone wants certain themes in the game, and we went out of our way to remind people to check in, and check often.
L A: Regarding serious subjects, I wrote from my own experience as a poor queer person, and I think the queerphobia and classism and Sundown really reflect that
For the experiences I haven’t lived, we took on two non-white sensitivity editors. Their input was invaluable for fleshing out the cultures that have made their way to Sundown in a respectful manner.
Even though I’m disabled too, James has far more lived experience in that regard. The section on disabled drifters in the intro section is entirely his doing.
Every time there’s a “make sure you check in with your fellow players” regarding a marginalized identity, all four of us had a hand in it.
