Tell me about Free Spacer. What excites you about it?
Free Spacer is a sci-fi starship roleplaying game. You play the crew of a contracted starship. The Exploration Wars have recently ended due to outside intervention and a cold war has replaced it. Free Spacers are the tool of choice in this new conflict. You take contracts, perform operations, and hope that you can retire to rejoin society… someday.
To me, the most exciting aspect of Free Spacer is that is it feels like sci-fi. Everything from the way you modify rolls to the core setting stem from the science fiction. For example, while the tasks you perform depend on your crewmember’s skills and specialities, you can gain advantage from the situation and route additional charge to your tools to gain additional dice. In play, this feels like tweaking levels to get the output you want.
How do you take action in Free Spacer? What does an average resolution look like?
Free Spacer uses a task system, every task is a set of related actions that includes the appropriate movement. For each task, you as the player roll a pool of dice we call a Salvo. The Salvo is made up of d10s opposing d6s.
The d10s are task dice primarily from your appropriate skill and specialty plus situational advantage; additionally, you can spend a Charge resource on a tool to gain its rating in dice.
The d6s represent the threat faced, beginning with its difficulty and disadvantages. The Gamemaster can also spend their complication resource to add more threat dice.
When you roll the Salvo, you minus the number of d6s that roll 1-3 from the number of dies that roll 5-9 (0 is worth 2). The results determine the Outcome of the task, which the Gamemaster, uses to determine how you alter the scene.
1 = a partial success
2 = a complete success
3 = critical, which gives you a charge resource and 5 a double crit!
0 = a fail
-3 = Consequences
Tell me more about the science fiction. What’s different about Free Spacer from other media, and how does it remind us of sci fi we love?
Together, you and friends decide what sort of game you want to play by choosing a ship flag, each flag refers to a type of play:
Agent are social; think spies, negotiators, com artists, and assassins
Bounty Hunter bring rough justice to a frontier, like Killjoys or Cowboy Bebop
Courier is the rogue trader, they smuggle, speculatively trade, and run blockades. Think Firefly or Traveller.
Mercenary are military sci-fi. Your crew are space marines and fly combat ship. This is like Dark Matter or Space Above and Beyond
Scout is the exploration flag. You chart new systems and discover new worlds. The flag that is the most Star Trek.
Technicians are scavengers and tech experts. Think Farscape or shadowrunning.
Free Spacer is my attempt to speculate on the future based on contemporary science. This future has the internet, biotechnology, and space-time folds. The societies of this future are unequal mixing of different alien Sophonts with many factions that struggle to control each sector of space. You have to deal with the difficulties of space, alien worlds, and the situations that come from faction conflict. Your most potent way to deal with these situations are projects. Projects are the advanced mechanics of the game, which use science to enable your crew to work together and get outcomes that you cannot get alone.
Beyond the type of flag you fly, what kind of characters do you play in Free Spacer? How do they fit into the world?
As the title implies, you play Free Spacers. Free Spacers are outsiders, they are set apart, above, and beyond the ordinary people. You are above the people—distant in space, advanced in technology, and legally superior. Conversely, this also separates you from local worlds; you do not fit on any world, you cannot participate in local culture, invest in a business, run for government, or live a normal life. Before you were a Free Spacer, you might have been anyone living through the Exploration Wars from an ordinary citizen, a drifter refugee, veteran soldier, or even a powerful leader.
How is space represented in game – narratively, mechanically, both? I’m curious how players interact with it.
Space is the central motif of Free Spacer. Space divides worlds from one another, isolates the crew from support, and delays communications. Conversely, space grants you independence for operations and self determination to distant settlements. Scientifically, Zero-point technology manipulates spacetime to forms shields, project blaster pulses, and fold space to travel between systems. Space is a danger, an empty void of exposure. Finally, Spaceflight is a type of Encounter in which you and your crew work together to operate your starship.
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Thanks so much to Christoph for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed hearing a little about Free Spacer and that you’ll check it out on Kickstarter today!
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hi all, today I have an interview with Monte Cook Games on Your Best Game Ever, a new project on Kickstarter that’s brought together a variety of consultants to develop guides for the best tabletop game experience. I asked questions about Your Best Game Ever of Monte Cook, Darcy Ross, Sean Reynolds, Tammie Webb Ryan, and Bear Weiter, and I’m sharing their answers with you!
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Tell me a little about Your Best Game Ever. What excites you about it?
Monte: This is a book that is for everyone, no matter what game you play. It’s a book that basically celebrates tabletop roleplaying. It talks about every aspect of the hobby, from hosting a game to finding a group to building characters and worlds for fun (and your friends’ fun).
Darcy: I’m thrilled that it will be a resource for literally anyone who is interested in RPGs. New folks just learning about RPGs, experienced players wanting to stream their game for the first time! One of my favorite things about RPGs is how many avenues of skills it brings together–there’s always room to become a better player, GM, and storyteller. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start, however, so this book will make it easier by giving people hands-on tools and techniques to try out.
Tammie: As a relatively new GM, I’m excited about the concrete examples and recommendations that Your Best Game Ever will contain, which will help me–and all GMs, no matter their skill levels–be better at all aspects of creating and running a game.
Bear: As someone who gamed a lot during the 80s and early 90s, only to then step away from tabletop gaming for almost twenty years, I feel like there’s a big hole for me to fill to be where I should be as both a GM and player. And as the art director for Monte Cook Games, I’m extra-excited to work on this book and make it a beautiful item that people are proud to have on their bookshelves, coffee tables, and game tables.
So many topics!
What are some of the awesome things we’ll see inside Your Best Game Ever? How is the book structured?
Monte: Basically, it’s divided into sections pertaining to everyone (picking the right game, finding a group, hosting games in-person and online, solving problems that can arise), players (creating an interesting character, working within the group structure, dealing with other players), GMs (building a world, creating an adventure, managing rules, running games) and aspiring game designers (making your own game, playtesting, marketplaces, selling and marketing your creation).
Darcy: A recent stretch goal just funded an accompanying video series, too, which will begin in early 2019! Multimedia goodness.
What are some qualities and bits of experience each of you are bringing to the project?
Darcy: I’m excited to bring to this project my experiences of being a relatively new gamer, a brand-new Twitch streamer, and my role as someone who works to welcome new people into the hobby. I’ve run 30-minute demos of Numenera for dozens of people who had never heard of an RPG before at a planetarium, and I’ve also brought acquaintances over for dinner parties to try it out. I can’t wait to make it easier for people to grow their local gaming community!
Monte: Well, I’m not exactly new to this. I’ve been writing rpgs for 30 years, and gaming for 40. I’ve written a lot of this kind of material, although most of it has been aimed at GMs, so I’m even more excited about the player-focused material, particularly because I feel like a lot of things that have traditionally been put on the GM, like dealing with player problems or conflicts. I think in actual fact such things are everyone’s responsibility.
Tammie: As I mentioned, I’m relatively new to GMing, so for the material dealing with running games, I bring a newcomers perspective.
Sean: I’m a few years behind Monte—gaming for almost 40 years, writing for about 25. I’ve played and run in many games with friends and strangers, at home and conventions and organized play, been the steamrolled player and done a little steamrolling, seen some great games and train wrecks, run games with published adventures and a ton of prep and completely off the cuff, and I’ve brought too many snacks and eaten the last of someone else’s favorite snack.
Bear: I can’t compete with most of my co-workers gaming experience in years, but I am a writer, and I know how to craft and pace stories. I’m also cognizant of some of my own bad habits, which I believe is important to look at and work on. And of course I’m bringing thirty-plus years of graphic design to the table to make sure the book is both beautiful and usable.
I couldn’t choose between the Stay Alive! and The Stars Are Fire covers for which one is the best looking, so we’ll have to see which ends up the most useful!
What looks to be your personal favorite bit of the project, where you get to dig in and really see something you love about gaming shine?
Darcy: CHARACTER ARCS. Okay, deep breaths. One of my absolute favorite parts about running Invisible Sun has been the way it empowers, and in fact requires, my players to bring narrative to the table. One of the ways it does that is by linking character progression to Character Arcs that the player chooses, like Justice, Solve a Mystery, Romance, Finish a Great Work, or even Fall From Grace. As the character progresses along those arcs (whether successfully or unsuccessfully, for ultimate good or for ill), the player is rewarded with advancement currency for their character. I love that players come to the table with lots of ideas and momentum. Your Best Game Ever will include how to use this Character Arc system in any game system you might be playing!
Monte: I’m excited about a lot of it. I think the thing I’m most excited about it just approaching this from the point of view that rpgs are a group experience and so all the various issues and problems that might arise are for the group to deal with, not just the GM. Likewise, the understanding that a great player can have as much positive effect on the game as a great GM, and offering ideas and suggestions on how to be that great player.
Bear: The depth of the offering. This will be a significant book.
Significant books it looks like! There are now five books included when you back the I Want It All! level. If you have the funds, it’s a pretty impressive collection!
What are some of the challenges and some of the bonuses of working with other consultants on a project that might bring to light differing opinions?
Darcy: There’s no one right way to game, and Your Best Game Ever embraces that, leading you to a host of advice, ideas, and tools to curate for your specific best gaming experience. Even so, the text is going to be one cohesive piece, but we wanted to make sure we’re not stamping out the unique voices of our experts either! To balance this, each consulting expert will weigh in on the text as a whole, and will have a short section all their own.
Monte: I’m the main author, but I’m just one person. I try to look at games from different directions and different expectations and perspectives (that’s just part of being a good game designer), but if we really want this book to be for everyone–and we do–we want to ensure that we have as many different experiences and points of view represented as possible. I’m thrilled that not only do I have the whole MCG team helping with this, but that we’ve assembled a great team of consulting experts who all bring their own perspectives and backgrounds to the project. Everyone involved is incredibly intelligent and talented, and I’m positive that each person will make this a better book.
Sean: I love hearing different perspectives on gaming. I’m lucky in that my regular gaming group is people I’ve known for years and like very much, but other people don’t have that luxury and may be sharing a table with a stranger or someone they don’t associate with outside of gaming. Hearing from the consulting experts is like sitting at a table with a bunch of skilled gamers I don’t personally know, like at a convention game—there’s an anticipation and excitement to see how the individuals mesh together into a group.
Even if I disagree with another person’s playing philosophy, I like to understand what they’re thinking and how they got there. It’s quite possible they might change my mind about how I want to play or run games, or they’d at least give me some perspective about how to interact with another player who thinks like they do. The trick to incorporating their ideas is to present it as either a complementary or contrasting point of view to the other material in the book.
Tell me a little about Prism. What excites you about it?
Prism is a roleplaying game about relationships and conflict resolution set in an aquatic world. Instead of using dice, players will rely on predetermined levels of expertise to solve narrative conflicts, and interact with others. The rules rely less on crunch, and more on negotiations between players and the GM. I’m excited about it because in most games, characters are stuck on land, so it’s difficult to play characters that thrive in the water. I’m also excited about this project because it encourages sensuality and social combat.
What makes the aquatic environment different for characters, mechanically and narratively?
I am a huge fan of sealife, so it was important to integrate an underwater environment to Prism. I designed the game to give players an opportunity to play as merfolk, or humanoids that turn into tiny sea creatures. Since all six humanoids in the game are amphibious, it also means there can be unhindered underwater exploration. It also gave me the opportunity to draw plant folk with the attributes of a water lily, and merfolk with the qualities of a shark, wearing their own teeth as a necklace.
How do the negotiations work between players and the GM? What kind of power does each player hold at the table to influence the results of a conflict?
I’m not a huge fan of rolling dice with the exception being Lady Blackbird. I didn’t like how you could dump all your points into something you really want to excel at, roll poorly, and not get the results you want. So instead if a character doesn’t have enough expertise, the player can either agree to have their character succeed at a cost, or make a case that it takes more than one skill to resolve the conflict.
For example, a Chameleon (has the ability to cast cantrips) wants to impress someone with a lavish meal, but doesn’t have enough expertise to do so. They could make argument that a fire cantrip (which requires the use of another skill) could help them cook the food more evenly.
What techniques did you use for the art in Prism, and how did you conceptualize the designs – did you do drafts of the illustrations, get inspirations from playtests, etc.?
Most of the artwork in the book are pinups. My goal was to draw sexy people and not sexy objects. The rest is either revamped artwork from back when Prism was a video game concept, or inspired by the comic that preceded the game (such as the symbols that represent the six realms). The artwork in the game either started out as a pencil sketches, a sketch on my phone (S Note), or were started from scratch using Adobe Animate.
What’s the most challenging (but promising!) part of putting Prism out there for the public, and how do you feel about the final product? What parts of it stick out to you as your favorite?
I wanted to make a game about relationships emotional intimacy, but that presented me with the challenge of making a game where a player can feel safe being vulnerable. I’ve mentioned elsewhere how consent is sometimes conveyed as a rigid negotiation. Where you add and remove filling from the sandwich, until it’s a sandwich no one involved wants to eat anymore. I tried to make Prism a game where you discuss consent from the beginning, and it remains a fluid conversation that continues during play. So, the sandwich starts off on the table, and anyone at any given time can say…you know, I usually really like this to be in my sandwich, but today I don’t have the appetite for it…or, my friend and I really want to add this to the sandwich, but we can change our mind if either of us want to.
I think the final product looks gorgeous. My favorite part is the Tea Party (character generation). It really takes you gently by the hand and walks you through the process.
I love the art <3
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Thanks so much to Whitney for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading about Prism and that you’ll check it out when it’s live on Kickstarter!
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hey all! Today I have an interview with Greg Stolze on Reign, which is currently on Kickstarter! I asked Greg some challenging questions about the role of a game like Reign in modern day, which I hope you enjoy reading!
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Tell me a little about Reign. What excites you about it?
REIGN really was kinda my baby. UNKNOWN ARMIES was great, but that was me and Tynes, so REIGN was really the first thing I did that was all Stolze all the time. Also, it’s high fantasy sword ’n’ sorcery, which I love, and which I don’t get to do as much — somehow, between UA and all my WoD work and DELTA GREEN, I sort of got pigeonholed as a horror guy which is… not inapt. But REIGN is close to my heart.
On a less squishy emotional level, I liked the idea that REIGN took events that had always been matters of “Oh, the GM will hand-wave what’s happening on the wide-scope political scale” and bolted them to dice and stats so that the players can have a new arena in which to go nuts and wreak havoc. I remember in old D&D where, if… fighters, I think?… got to a high enough level they got a keep and I really thought that was interesting! But it didn’t give you any options to liberate peasants or go to war against your neighbors or any of the dramatic stuff of governance. I hadn’t played PENDRAGON or BIRTHRIGHT or gotten into the covenant stuff in ARS MAGICA, but maybe that’s just as well. Having not seen the way anyone else handled it, I built it myself from scratch. I just knew I wanted the collective your characters lead to be as important to the game as any individual PC.
And, well, I had this nifty set of rules I’d built for GODLIKE that seemed like they’d work just as well for castles and crossbows as they did for superheroes in WWI, so I built out from that. I think it worked pretty well.
What are some ways has Reign grown and changed between 2007 and today? What is new, what’s been refined?
In those intervening years, I released a LOT of supplements online, after getting them collectively crowdfunded. Sixteen of them, in fact. Rather than burn all that to the ground and rebuild on the foundation, I thought what the game needed more than anything else was (1) better art in the supplements — that’s kind of the dark side of my “one man show” approach, (2) organization so that you can find what you want to use in a tangle fo optional systems and rules tweaks and (3) a nicer print version, since the hardbacks have been unavailable for some time.
It’s not a big reinvention, and the first two books don’t have a lot of new material, because I honestly didn’t think it needed a ton of work. I’m going through and making the language clearer, finding those decades-old typos and homonym errors, but mostly it’s taking this mess of parts and putting them in an order to be more useful. REIGN was written with the expectation that a lot of people would be using it to toolkit their own settings, and that hasn’t changed.
One change, though, is my willingness to let other people play with the toys. One reason I didn’t write anything for UNKNOWN ARMIES for a while was, quite simply, I didn’t have an idea I thought was really top notch, and I didn’t want to write something just to dump it on the market. Partly, that’s a matter of pride, but it’s also a matter of greed. I don’t want to serve lukewarm stuff because I don’t think that’s how you keep an audience. But when I got a bunch of new writers working on UA3, their new perspectives and experiences and approaches really pushed me to keep up. So I’ve gotten a bunch of fresh new voices and salty old wordsmiths to give me their takes for stretch goals.
How do you replicate leadership in Reign? What do players do when they’re leading? What is leading?
OK, these are three very different questions.
Leadership in REIGN is replicated with die rolls, the same way that mighty sorcery and deeds of martial renown are. One of the big pleasures of playing a game (as distinct from running one) is the opportunity to imagine myself as someone with very different skills and behaviors. Someone who’s not shy, for example, or someone who doesn’t get embarrased and uncomfortable with confrontation. Or, y’know, a ninja.
To take the third question second, leading seems, to me, to be a lot of listening to people and understanding them. Good leaders — and I’m thinking certain editors and developers here — inspire a sort of loyalty. You want to give them your best. It’s not just a paycheck. Good leaders draw the best out of you. They see you, not just as the role into which you’ve been thrust, but as the individual adapting to that roll. Good leaders know the strengths and weaknesses of their people, and put them where the strengths are leveraged, and where their weaknesses do the least damage. In real life, I’m a terrible leader. Not the world’s greatest listener, surprisingly dense about people’s feelings sometimes, something of a hermit. But the idea of playing someone who’s listened to and who can organize people into a greater whole… yeah, that’s my fantasy. One of ‘em.
What players do when they’re leading is that sort of organization, understanding and inspiration. Only instead of having to really get through to people with charisma, you can create a character who has that sort of compelling presentation. Your characters can be the kinds of people who make the St. Crispin’s Day speech, even if you yourself are plagued by podium paralysis.
I mean who hasn’t, at some point, fantasized about being listened to and obeyed? That’s the wish-fulfillment REIGN offers.
The special edition covers are really beautiful!
I asked Greg two sets of questions and then I got a collective response: Sixteen supplements is a lot! How do you keep all of these things connected and consistent – the fictional themes, the mechanical structures – when there is so much information? Does that amount of stuff end up paralleling to bookkeeping in game?
AND
You discuss modularity on the Kickstarter page, basically explaining options for different ways of playing. Tell me more about this! How does it work?
Hah, the answer to these questions is really the same thing… the modularity from the KS is the solution to having the giant pile of supplemental rules and setting material. It’s like when you have a bunch of different LEGO sets, and you build them, and that’s fine, but eventually (if you’re like me) you take them apart and wind up with a giant bin of undifferentiated components. So then you sort them so you can make something new.
In this metaphor, the original supplements are like individual LEGO sets. You can get the sort of… pre-planned experience. The chaotic pile is where the material, as a whole, is now. The organization is what we’re going after with the KS, cross-referencing different stuff so that you can find the thing you were thinking of. Just as importantly, perhaps, we can also help you figure out what to exclude. Not every group needs every rule, so getting that clarified is a pretty high priority.
Why do you think a game about leadership and strategy like Reign has an important place in play in the modern era, during a time that’s so tumultuous for so many people?
Hoooo boy…
OK, I’ll start with something from Lynda Barry — I read her book WHAT IT IS, although it feels more like I should say I “witnessed” or “experienced” it? It’s this deep-dive art book about creativity and her intense personal history with it, and it’s very strong medicine. One thing she touched on was the idea of art as “escapism,” and she said she doesn’t think we create or engage with art in order to escape from reality, but to change our experience of it. She didn’t draw to get away from the sharp edges of her childhood, but to survive them.
So we’re in a tumultuous time and I’m writing a tumultuous elfgame. Am I just a little white ball on a golf tee, waiting for a driver labeled “accusations of frivolity” to come slamming down on me for a power drive? Eh, well maybe. Maybe for some people, playing a game where they’re the powerful bosses can be a distraction from doing the gloomy, necessary, unmeasurable work in the real world. But maybe, for some people, playing that game could let them (or help them) believe that change is possible, that individuals do influence these looming power gangs.
Or, maybe it’s OK to just have fun playing the game.
But our creations are always mirrors of our concerns. If roleplaying isn’t INEXTRICABLY creative, you have to work really hard to do it without any aspect of acting, or authorship, or imaginitive innovation. So your feelings about the villainies of modern politics are just about certain to make their way into REIGN, whether you do it deliberately or not. Maybe that’s also OK. Maybe the satisfaction of decapitating an imaginary evil king is just the catharsis you need to avoid screaming at a co-worker about politics until both of you cry.
I’ve thought a lot about why we engage unpleasant themes, intense stories, fictions of tragedy… After all, now more than any time in history, we can access genuine tragedy all the time. Why horror stories? Why make up more of it? Maybe it’s the relief of knowing that THIS awful thing isn’t real. Or maybe when an issue is painful to handle, putting a layer of fiction around it allows the mind to contemplate it more coolly. Consider the game RED MARKETS — it’s about zombies, but it’s REALLY about poverty. John Carpenter’s movie THE THING is about a gnarly space alien, but it’s REALLY about the dangers of trust and mistrust in a cold and uncaring universe. A lot of media that’s about X is REALLY about Y, and REIGN can certainly do that. This clash between the trade guilds of Uldholm while the Dindavarans sharpen their swords can be about how liberals persecute radicals while white-power revanchists snicker up their sleeves.
I don’t know. Maybe creativity shouldn’t teach lessons, but I think it almost always does. Maybe in an intensely political reality, an intensely political game can offer a framework for disentangling complicated feelings. Or, maybe it just promises some kind of paradoxical relief.
Hi all, today I have an interview with Jonathan Tweet on Over the Edge, an RPG currently on Kickstarter! I hope you learn something fun about Over the Edge from Jonathan’s responses below!
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Tell me a little about Over the Edge. What excites you about it?
Of all the RPGs I’ve designed, Over the Edge is the one that means the most to me personally. It started as a pet project of mine, not meant for publication, so it’s weirder than anything I would have conceived for a broad audience. The rules are also free-form and story-driven. That was a rarity in 1992 when the original released, but it’s more common these days. It’s exciting to be able to reboot this game and update it so that it’s ahead of the curve again like it was 25 years ago.
The team I’m working with is also really good. Atlas Games published the original, and they’re doing the new version, too. The producer, Cam Banks, is a big fan from way back, and so is Chris Lites, who contributed a lot of creative material.
What have you had to do to make Over the Edge modern, both in consideration of real life issues and what we conceive as paranormal or “weird” in the modern era?
In terms of real life, I had to ramp up the stakes. The setting is now set up with the expectation that a final reckoning is on the horizon. The world of 1992 was relatively peaceful, when the Soviet Union was defunct, Francis Fukuyama was touting the end of history, and Samuel Huntington’s so-called “Clash of Civilizations” was a new idea. These days, things are worse. Teenage girls who revere the Peacock Angel are burned to death in cages for refusing to be sex slaves in the army of the “Caliphate”. Carbon is heating the planet and killing the coral. Russia annexed territory by conquest, which no other country had done since 1975. Inequality has skyrocketed. Nationalism and racism are in fashion from one democracy to another. To compete with all this nightmarish stuff, the setting had to become more menacing.
The original game debuted just before the worldwide web, so the online aspect of modern life was missing. Interacting with the online world in Al Amarja usually means logging into the corrupt, State-run social network called Reba Online. Yes, the State is logging all your activity, but how else are you going to find a coffeeshop that has soy milk?
The paranormal elements of the game hardly needed updating. Paranormal beliefs reflect consistent human biases, such as magical thinking, so 25 years later you’ll still find ESP, interdimensional visitors, past lives, subliminal messaging, curses, etc. One new thing to add is epigenetics. Lay people tend not to understand what epigenetic changes really amount to, so you can sort of invent all sorts of weird abilities and say that they’re epigenetic.
The Over the Edge cover is quite nice!
How does paranormality affect the average person in Over the Edge, from a narrative perspective and from a mechanical perspective?
The paranormal of Over the Edge is the sort of paranormal that fits right into everyday modern life. It’s like the paranormal that people actually believe in: prayer circles, horoscopes, alien contact, mind-control chemicals in the drinking supply, a parasitical skin disease from outer space, chakras, past lives, energy vampirism, subliminal mind control messages, chem trails, exorcism, reiki, rebirthing, or even child slavery on Mars. These sorts of paranormal elements are the sorts of things you find in Over the Edge, only in the game they’re weirder and more powerful.
The island of Al Amarja is a paranormal power center and a weak point in the reality manifestation matrix, so there’s more crazy paranormal events going on beneath the surface there than anywhere else. The people take it for granted that the government’s propaganda posters are some sort of mind control program, that messages are hidden in television broadcasts, and that the Internet is haunted. The most public face of the supernatural is Sister Cheryl, the leader of the Temple of the Divine Experience. Seekers who turn to Sister Cheryl can find all manner of shrines, disciplines, rituals, penances, psychoactives, prayers, book clubs, and animal sacrifices to help them progress along the spiritual path.
For players, the paranormal opens up a degree of freedom when they invent their characters’ traits. A player in my campaign, for example, invented a Christian Necromancer with a YouTube following. The game is set in the modern day, so players can bring in references to anything happening in the real world, and including references to the paranormal, such as necromancy. An important point is that the game doesn’t have mechanical subsystems. It doesn’t have a combat system or a magic system. It has a system for determining success and failure, along with possible good and bad surprises. That system works for psychic powers, street fighting, counterintelligence, and Christian necromancy.
What does the resolution mechanic feel like in play when supporting this rich fiction – is it punchy, does it leave a mark? What are any differences from previous versions?
From now on, that’s my new tagline for the dice mechanics in Over the Edge: a dice mechanic that leaves a mark! In the new system, players throw dice only when the results are consequential. With every throw, in addition to succeeding or failing, the player might get a “good twist” or a “bad twist”, which are surprising results that are outside the binary succeed/fail dichotomy.
Every throw of the dice matters. Fights, skullduggery, and paranormal efforts that would have taken several dice rolls in the original version are handled now with a single throw. A player’s dice throw determines how the conflict turns out, so a failure for the player is a success for the enemy. That’s a trick I learned from Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World. So every dice throw matters. For most throws, everyone at the table stops and watches. Each throw is that important.
Mechanically, a conflict is resolved by the player rolling two dice. If the player-character has a big advantage, the player can reroll a die once or twice. If the PC is at a serious disadvantage, the GM can force the player to reroll a die once or twice. After all the rerolls, the total on the dice indicates success (high roll) or failure (low roll). In addition, if a die shows a 3, that’s a bad twist, and if a die shows a 4, that’s a good twist. Good twists are more common with a higher roll, but you can fail the roll but still get a good twist, as when you throw a 4 and a 1 for a total of 5. Likewise, you often get a bad twist even with a success. The twists add a new dimension to the resolution system, a discontinuous result that can take the action in a new direction. The old system was serviceable, but it didn’t “leave a mark” like the new one does.
What are you doing in narrative and mechanical design to support a more inclusive, respectful play environment, considering the content you have in the game?
My roleplaying games have been marked for the way they have promoted women and people of color, especially Everway from 1995. It’s been gratifying to see the rest of the RPG industry follow the lead of those of us where on the front lines 20 or 30 years ago. In the original 1992 game, I made the leaders of the island women. That was back when D&D had officially removed the pronoun “she” from their rules, and it felt great to push back against “the man”. Putting women in charge was one small step toward counteracting the preponderance of powerful men in RPG settings. The great news is that today it’s no big shock for there to be powerful women, such as our own President Clinton. In order to continue to challenge stereotypes, I changed the ruling family, the D’Aubainnes, from French to black African.
More generally, the Atlantic island where the action all takes place is a mish-mash of germ lines and cultures. Seekers, fugitives, and spies from all over the world converge here, and the local population includes genetic contributions for all sorts of ancestries, including Neanderthals and probably Homo erectus. (It’s a long story.)
If you’re asking about respect, however, you might be asking the wrong person. Have you looked at the manuscript? The whole island is a mess of exploitation, lies, mind control, personal excess, social neglect, narcissistic self-aggrandizement, mental dysfunction, and conspiracies. Respect is hard to find. Instead, I’m an equal-opportunity disrespecter. The most powerful public figures on the Island are two black sisters, and if they’re powerful, that pretty much makes them villains. That said, if any GamerGater thinks that this is the game for him because the most prominent villains are black women, I hope he buys the game so he can be harshly disappointed. In Al Amarja, all sorts of people are terrible.
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Thanks so much to Jonathan for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Over the Edge on Kickstarter today! Remember to share the interview with your friends, too!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
An August tradition, I suppose, is to respond to the prompts for RPGaDAY, and the 2018 prompts have a lot going on. I figured something I could do today is use one of them as a prompt for a blog post, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about, too.
Today’s prompt is How can players make a world seem real?
Character sheets from a game of Turn I’m currently playing.
I think this can be a bit of a personal thing, but one way to do it for me is to give everything reasoning and give everything a story. NPCs, events in game, etc. all should have some flavor to their existence. It ties directly into collaborative worldbuildimg. This has been really growing for me while working on Turn, a game where everyone has loads of narrative control, and while playing D&D with my partner Dillon.
I’ll talk about Dillon first, because it’s super exciting to me. I’m not naturally a huge D&D fan – honestly, it’s a big game and a lot of the fiction bums me out. But, in the game I’m playing with Dillon, we’ve been rewriting a lot of it. The mechanics mostly remain the same, tho were using house rules and I’m playing cosmic horror investigation type fiction instead of the average adventure. But the fiction!
Dillon let me be a part of the world building for the main setting. This is something I once did in a game run by my husband John, where I got to make up dieties and religions and contribute to the fiction for the different species. Dillon is letting me do much the same thing! Collaborative worldbuilding means I get to see things I’m interested in integrated into the world I’m playing in, which inherently makes it more real to me.
For example, we were building up my character’s family and Kelt, my PC, is half tiefling, half half-orc, and I was talking about Kelt’s dad being a cleric. I said how it felt to me, due to some of the other background stuff we’ve done for the game, that tieflings aren’t demonic, they’re more druidic, nature based.
You know, more mountain goat than Black Phillip. Photo by Brie Sheldon.
Dillon and I discussed it, and he liked the idea, so we changed the way teiflings work in the game to have them even physically be more based in nature with antlers and ram horns rather than demonic horns, and it suited their culture that we’d developed, too. Now I have more knowledge about my PC’s dad’s history, the world around him, and I have a personal touchstone because I got to be a part of it!
And it reflects in that “everything has a reasoning, everything has a story” too – my character takes public transportation as we’re set in a near-industrial world, so Dillon had a newspaper I could read and gossip I could listen in on, but also he does something that’s important: when I suggest a frivolous detail for the scene, NPCs, etc., he considers it and often accepts it!
Like if I were to pass by someone and they rudely bump into me and I say,
“I bet they’re rushing off to a meeting with their mistress!”
Dillon runs with it, something like “actually, it’s his boyfriend and it’s their anniversary!”
I may never encounter that NPC again, but it feels real.
This is likewise with how Dillon’s treating Kelt’s dog, Orion, who is his familiar and tied to the Void (Kelt’s patron). It’s awesome when I play knowing that I’ll get to have my character deal with stuff like making sure Orion gets enough play time, or that his leash works in spite of his magical ability to phase through objects (lead lining helps!). Things like how Orion always wakes up to bark at the window-knocker and trolley actually make my in-game experience feel real!
So as a player, I engage back with these things, bring them up, ask questions, offer input. Making the world mine is part of the experience!
And this is all relevant to Turn. In Turn, I’ve tried to design some of this in. The worldbuilding you do with the town creation gives players deep engagement to the roots of the town and all its trappings, letting you understand the relationships and founding and themes before you start play, and you can add to it.
A town map from Turn.
You also have vignettes each session with NPCs and the town dealing with real life needs that can be stressful and risk exposure of your shifter identity, even if it’s just going to pick up milk at the farmer’s market or trying to have coffee with your cousin. When players are engaging with Turn, I’m hoping they’ll ask questions of the town and NPCs too, and give reason to things that might seem otherwise random.
As a player in Turn, I’ve been lucky enough to have all of these experiences. John is often my GM in games and in Turn he does a spectacular job executing these ideals I have for a “real” world. He is the source for my researching the Storyteller section of Turn, and will be consulting heavily on it.
I’m so lucky to have two partners who are such amazing GMs and who let me make the world real from the role of a player!
Hope you enjoyed the post today and that you find it useful!
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
This is the last 46 hours for the game zine I’m curating and contributing to, Behind the Masc, which is currently on Kickstarter. I wanted to write a quick post to remind everyone!
Behind the Masc is a collaborative effort with a team of great creators: Eli Eaton, Patrick Lickman, Raiden Otto, Adrian Heise, Lemmo Pew, Alex McConnaughey, Lawrence Gullo, and Tracy Barnett. They’re all making something new and original for this project! And they’re all non-cisgender masculine people like me, across the spectrum.
To my knowledge, Behind the Masc is a first of its kind as a crowdfunding project in indie games focusing specifically on our goal of reenvisioning masculinity – especially one by entirely non-cisgender creators. We’re using historical and mythological archetypes to show our perspective on masculinity and do so while making cool game products that work with existing games like the Demi and Minotaur skins for Monsterhearts 2, the Apocalypse World Trickster playbook, and the D&D 5th Edition male Baccae character background and Sorcerer recreation.
We’ll also have standalone products with a Twine game about the protector and my audio-text game, Echoes, about the hero. It means a lot to me. Last night, I wrote the first draft of the text for Echoes and I’m really excited to make this game!
My only stretch goal for this project is a higher pay rate for the contributors at $3000. We’re not trending toward that on Kicktraq, but we’ve raised those numbers a bunch throughout this campaign! We can work toward it, with your help!
Behind the Masc is new, and niche, and I knew that going into this project. We’re a collection of creators that make cool things but might not otherwise be noticed – and that’s part of the point. I would love to see more people back the project and potentially raise the pay for the contributors, but I will say now that I’m grateful we’ve come so far, that we’ve funded, and that the community has shown enthusiasm for the project!
Please back the project on Kickstarter if you’re interested, or share it on social media if you’ve already backed/can’t back! Tell your friends and colleagues about it, post it to message boards and raise awareness! We have less than two days to raise funds, and I’d love you to have a copy in your hands when we fulfill. Thank you!!
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Bebarce El-Tayib on Power Outage, a superhero game for kids that’s currently on Kickstarter! Bebarce has given some excellent answers to my questions, so please check it out below!
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This is a logo that was announced post-launch!
Tell me a little about Power Outage v 1.4. What excites you about it?
Power Outage 1.4 is a large leap in a series I’ve been developing for the past 4 years. It’s a Super Hero themed tabletop roleplaying game designed to be played by kids and GMed by adults. This would be the first attempt at making the book something I’m comfortable with being available in Print.
It’s exciting to me for a ton of reasons aside from the fact that it’s probably the largest and longest running creative endeavor that I’ve ever taken on. But I would have to say that the biggest excitement comes from the scope of change between 1.3 to 1.4. It’s a monumental shift. There is a completely revised mechanic system, much greater resources for crafting your own adventures, and the biggest thing of all is the expansion of guidance to not only include differentiation, but also a focus on creating more accessible gaming tables. Plus its just the inherent potential of creating something that introduces a new generation to a hobby that I and many others love.
An example of the result of the Kickstarter funding on the character sheet.
When making games for kids, your point about a accessibility is super important. How do are you designing and developing Power Outage to be accessible, and why does it matter to you?
My work in Public Education as a technologist has me dealing with data often. Part of that involves creating considerations for Special Education, and managing Special Education Data. So when it comes to creating accomodations I realize the monumental task in front of me. As soon as I started I realized there was no end, so I’m tackling it from two fronts. In the book I have a section dedicated to Accessibility guidance. I broke the sections into 5 specific domains outside of general guidance. Physical, Communicative / Receptive, Behavioral, Cognitive, and Emotional. What I’m essentially doing is tackling the topic from a symptomatic approach, rather than a cause approach. Tthat limits me to an extent from the specificity inherent with conditions, but allows for the broadest spectrum of guidance. I have 2 directors of special education I’ve worked with helping to ensure that the information I’m providing is safe, sound, and that the terminology is effective.
Seperate from that I created a wiki called www.accessible-rpg.com It is currently under developed, and tailored primarily to children, but eventually I’d like it to become a free resource to people developing games or running tables, to create a more accessible gaming table. It’s a larger goal than Power Outage itself, and its only going to be successful with community involvement. That’s why it’s built in the wiki format. It has to be populated with information from the people who are directly effected. It has to be live, and continually changing. I plan on jumping right back into it once I’m done with the kickstarter, and pulling in as much guidance as I can get.
As to why it’s important to me, I could try to relate to work, or family members, or some forms of tangible relationships to be people I know that have disabilities, but in all honesty, it is something that we should ALL be working toward. Roleplaying games allow all of us to not only break free of the limitations we find in our every day lives, but express our real selves through our avatars. We bring our strengths and our perceived weaknesses and allow them to shape a world we actively create. The absolute NEED to make that process available to everyone is imperative. We need to be accessible. We need to be inclusive. We need to bring everyone to the table, and if we can’t, then we need to drag that table over to them.
What are the mechanics like in Power Outage? How do you encounter and overcome challenges?
So we’re working with kids. That takes “expectations” and throws them into the waste bin. So the idea behind Power Outage’s mechanics is in compartmentalizing game play so that kids can be playing their own individualized game while still contributing to the greater narrative. It’s taking the concept of differentiation from the classroom and applying it the gaming sphere.
What it boils down to is the idea that the game is more a guide then a hard set dogmatic codex that must be followed. GMs provided guidance to players based off of their capabilities, and to do this effectively, the mechanics have been made so that it’s easily accessible to everyone involved.
Characters have 4 attributes. IMPACT – which effects basic human characteristics POWER – which effects their super heroic capabilities OHMER – which is the stat that IMPACT and POWER compare againsts and YP – Yield Points – which is the point pool that Heroes have before deciding them must Yield or regroup. There is no death in Power Outage.
The 4 attributes covers a lot of types of conditions, but is a reduced amount of record keeping so that not only are kids able to focus more on roleplay and story elements, but so that GMs can more easily manage groups of kids who for instance may not be able to read yet, or add large sums.
In order to allow creative freedom for kids to make the heroes they want, Power tables are provided with effects are provided and grouped to Combat, Support, and Utlity. Kids work with the GM to determine what their heroes can do, and the GM helps match the power to an effect on the table. So if you’re doing 1d4 damage from up to 20 spaces away, it doesn’t matter if that effect comes from a flame torch, or a snow ball, or lightning bolt or psychic shock. In short, Power Outage provides the effect, and the hero provides the flavor.
One last thing I’ll mention is the CAPE system (Combat, Alternative, Puzzle, and Exploration) It’s a way to compartmentalize adventures so that you can cherry pick what you want for your play sessions. In the prewritten adventures (to be released, although one is included with the core book) it becomes a choose your own adventure mechanic. Do you prefer to not have violence in your session, Alternative Components match up to every Combat Component. Are puzzles too difficult? Move around them directly to exploration. It allows GMs to build adventures that pertain to the needs of their group.
All of this comes from the game kids want to play, rather than the game kids are forced to play. And it happens at all levels. From something as simple as the character sheets “Character image” section being enlarged because kids want more room to drawing their characters, to color/symbol coding Attributes so that a GM can easily say “Tell me the red number” or “Tell me the number with the boot symbol”
The five regions for playing in sound really fun! What are they like to play in? What exciting elements do they have in store?
So not only are the 5 regions different stylistic settings, the settings themselves allow for potentially uniquely suited playstyles as well.
The Atomnyy Zavod is a always night gothic soviet atomic punk city. It’s gritty, and confusing, and the some of the starker elements are only highlighted by the oddity of it’s semi-futuristic elements. You’ll see old-timey vehicles driving under nuclear battery powered street green glowing street lights. But this is the perfect setting for gritty noir mysteries. You’ll use Exploration and Puzzle solving components just as often if not more often then Combat/Alternative.
Shorai City is it’s opposite in many ways, with it’s soaring Neo-Japanese inspired towers, flying cars, and robotic servants. This city has become a gathering point for many big heroes and villains, and often becomes the setting for large confrontations. This setting is great for large Beat Em Up style baddies that hearken back to the Golden Era comic days. Villains include Mrs. Roboto and The Tempuritan.
The Overgrowth is by far the most expansive region of Outage. The product of Outages once barren but strange landscape, had tests done on it in the early stages of American involvement causing the worlds largest forrest to grow. That forrest however was both invasive, aggressive, and sentient. Still outpost seem to coexist within the Overgrowth. A musical troll city, a city of Outcast Powers (the name for people with Powers in Outage), and a School for Sandwich Magic are just a few examples of what is discovered, but certainly more mysteries lie within under the canopy. This setting is great for all sorts of Campy Adventures or Mythical Fantasy type games. One area might hold dragons, and the other might hold dinosaurs. Ancient civilizations come to light or scientific outposts. Villains include Treestache and Swagneto.
The sink is a geological anomoly. It is a peninsula on the south eastern coast of Outage. One end appears to be sinking steadily in the ocean while the other side of it emerges from the ground far inland, seemingly with intact ancient structures. At it’s tip, the sink features a floating shanty city of disreputable individuals known as The Scum. Under the ocean as the sink delves further into it’s depths lie ancient cities under the water, sealed off from the ocean that surrounds it (for now). This is a great city for acting a bit rebellious enjoying some not so squeaky mission, confronting morale dilemmas, or just outright exploration. Whether you’re in the muddy bayou, exploring submerged catacombs or getting into naval battles with or against pirates, it’s usually a nonstop adventure. Villains of note include The Boat Rocker and InstaGator.
Finally, Seward’s Refuge is central to the island continent. It is an American run scientific and military facility, that serves often as a waystation between regions, a central government, a barrier to the Overgrowth, and it’s Space Elevator even provides access to the stars. This region is great for multi-region adventures, political intrigue, science gone wrong, or incursion/spy missions. Villains of note include Agent Orangutan and General Specific.
Each region has areas that aren’t directly drawn out leaving exploration up to the imagination and creation of the GM. There is also a section in the book detailing potential other locations including Dimensional and Temporal options. It’s a huge sandbox that kids and adults can play in. You can build just about any game you want to in the world.
With all of the efforts that you have put in, do you have any hopes moving forward for Power Outage and even other games to become more accessible for kids?
Yes, I think you’ll see a lot more of this cropping up. There is a positive shift in the culture of gaming that not only lends to more voices being heard, but a general awareness of the roles we play in inclusiveness, accessibility, and security. A lot of people grew up with these games, and are looking to share it with their kids. In he end, getting families around the table and talking and gaming with each other was the seed that my game grew out of. And as we learn more and more how games effect the ability to understand and retain knowledge, to become flexible and willing to learn new things. It’s becoming an imperative.
What a nifty cover!
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Thank you so much to Bebarce for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Power Outage on Kickstarter today!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hi all! Today I have an interview with John Scott Tynes on Delta Green: The Labyrinth, which is currently on Kickstarter! I pushed John on a few things I’m curious about with the game so I’m excited to share the answers below!
Notes: Mental illness and its handling in horror and cosmic horror media, including Lovecraft, is discussed in this article, as well as the general topic of inclusivity in this type of horror media. Also, John uses the term “savages” in quotation marks in this, referring to the stereotype of “savage” people in historical media. This use does not intend to validate any racist perspective, but is used in context of the fiction being discussed. —
Tell me a little about Delta Green: The Labyrinth. What excites you about it?
I love building new worlds and new mythologies. When we took twenty years of Delta Green sourcebooks and fiction and brought them all forward into the present with Delta Green: The RPG, we wrapped up and killed off nearly all of our old enemies. Villainous groups like the Fate, the Karotechia, and Majestic-12 really defined the classic era of Delta Green, but it was time to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. The Labyrinth is where I’m rolling out a whole new set of enemies that will define a lot of Delta Green campaigns for the next decade, and that’s incredibly exciting.
The new enemies I’m designing aren’t just targets in a shooting gallery. They’re in it for the long haul and they have their own story arcs to work through as your campaign continues. Each group has three specific stages of growth or change they go through in response to the actions of Delta Green.
Just as an example, and I’m going to avoid spoilers here by not using any names, there is a nefarious group I’ve designed who on the surface don’t seem too terrible. They have horrible origins, and long term they’re a huge problem for humanity, but they’re not trying to blow up the White House or whatever. Yet as Delta Green begins to tangle with them, the group reacts. First they start securing everything they’re doing to avoid detection. Then they start hiring muscle to defend themselves and even proactively try to assassinate the Agents. Finally, if Delta Green is still hitting them around the world, they launch a crash program to train large numbers of their members as sorcerers and dramatically escalate their supernatural power.
In other words: because Delta Green attacked them, they actually become more villainous and more powerful than if they’d been left alone. But if you leave them alone, then long term they’re a huge problem for humanity.
That’s the approach I’m taking as a game designer. When the players try to solve these problems, they will generally make the problems worse before they can make them better. I think that’s a much more interesting and dynamic way to think of enemy organizations and one that really lends itself to campaign play. It also ties directly into some of DG:RPG’s key mechanics, where the more time you spend as an Agent, the more your own connections to life, family, and home corrode and fall away.
And the book isn’t just enemies. I’m also designing a bunch of groups who can be allies. But as with the enemies, the allies also go through three stages the more they interact with the Agents. So a character who starts out really helpful may eventually turn on you, or let their life fall apart because they buy into your crusade, or they may endanger themselves and others because you haven’t actually told them the truth about the dangers they’re facing. Over time, you’ll see these allies rise, suffer, and fall — or even become your worst enemies.
And finally, I’m excited that The Labyrinth is all about America. Delta Green has always resonated with the mythic American themes of sheriff and outlaw, the civilized East and the wild West, and the power of the government versus the freedom of the individual. But today we’re seeing more schisms, more oppression, more prejudice in this country than I’ve seen in my lifetime. It feels like we’re tearing at the seams. And it’s those conflicts and those tensions that are driving my thinking with this book. I want to capture what this country feels like in 2018 and transmute it into inspiration for a new generation of tabletop storytellers to shape in their own directions.
When you talk about capturing this country in 2018, how are you approaching that? The US in 2018 is volatile, and hard for a lot of people. Fundamentally, Delta Green is in the horror genre. That means that for any avenue I explore, I end up looking for a particularly horrific version of it. That doesn’t always mean monsters and cultists, however. In some cases it’s the horror of a good person who starts falling apart. In other cases it’s a completely non-supernatural situation that is nonetheless genuinely awful.
Horror is by its nature triggering. What I work to avoid is being exploitative. As much as I love the horror genre in principle, in practice I have little interest in most horror media. So much of it repeats the same tropes over and over and often in ways that feel deliberately, even leeringly exploitative. There’s a thread of horror creators who seem to take joy in the depiction of suffering or degradation, who cross a line between shining a light on the dark corners versus snuffing out that light to entrap and even victimize the audience.
I’m writing some horrific material, but I really work to come at it from a perspective of humanity. I want the reader to be not simply triggered, but moved. Fear is a powerful emotion, but at the end of the day I can do a better job of scaring you if you’re emotionally engaged by what you’re experiencing.
As for America in 2018: the news regularly outdoes my best efforts as a horror writer. I could never outdo the wretched things humans actually do to each other every day. What I want to accomplish with this book is to take some of those situations and agendas and put them into a fictional framework that challenges the players. I want to give them hard problems, even human problems, and see how they respond. I want them to question the society they live in and even the narrative structure they’re playing in: because as much as Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos is presented as corrosive to those who encounter it, the same can very much be said for Delta Green itself. As a creator, my own creation has things to answer for.
What themes are you engaging with, and how are you addressing your own potential blind spots?
My work is largely intuitive rather than planned. I get the kernel of an idea, I start drafting, and I usually can see just far enough ahead to steer in the right direction. This means themes tend to emerge organically. To some degree I learn what I was writing about in the rear-view mirror and then it’s in the revision process that I flesh out what has emerged and shape it into coherency.
At this point in the project I’d say that an emerging theme is embodied in the ancient Roman question, “Who benefits?” When you look at any conflict in American society and study the actors involved, that question can illuminate their motivations. Who benefits when women are bullied? Who benefits when the right to vote is eroded? Who benefits when nascent social norms are opposed and rolled back?
The question of blind spots is a good one. I’m a middle-aged cis male caucasian and I surely have them. Life experience is part of the answer. I have made my own journey — bumpy at times — into greater understanding and awareness of how multifaceted humanity is and that happened because of many different people and moments in my life.
When I create characters for this book, I take time to think about each one: where they’re from, their family’s culture, their perceived race and gender. I’m not trying to tick boxes on a checklist but when the fictional context coincides with a particular character trait and some kind of frisson occurs, I go with it.
In college I got my degree in journalism and my first step with nearly any idea is simple: do the research. For my 1999 novel Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement I interviewed several people including a staffer at the Ft. Leavenworth military prison and a random guy I found online who’d recently taken a vacation to Vieques Island. I think the most fundamental trait any writer needs is curiosity. The more you want to know about the world, the richer and more diverse your writing can be and the likelier you are to fill in your own blind spots. And we live in a golden age for satisfying our curiosity.
In the current chapter, I have a female character whose parents moved here from India before she was born. I wanted her to grow up in a mid-sized American city and Tulsa, Oklahoma, came to mind. So then I wondered what life was like for Indian immigrants there and an internet search led me to the India Association of Greater Tulsa. My conception for her character blossomed the more I learned and curiosity is what drove me.
In what ways do the enemies and allies in The Labyrinth differ from earlier Delta Green work, narratively and in inspiration?
Delta Green’s original antagonists were great but also fairly straightforward. I mean we literally had Nazis you could go punch! Plus sinister government conspirators and evil occultists, all straight out of the villain playbook. We did great things with them and we brought a lot of historical context and creative juxtaposition to the table, but that was twenty years ago.
When I look at the world now, I have to see the Cthulhu Mythos not as an end but as a means. Why would someone start worshipping a tentacle god? “Because they went insane!” is just not a good enough answer for me anymore. Everyone wants something — who benefits? — so when I look at the supernatural in Delta Green I ask how people would exploit it, not just worship it.
Even so, those kinds of rational motivations only help you understand how people start exploiting the Mythos; on a long enough timeline, they really do go insane and howl at the moon because that’s Lovecraft’s universe. But these days I’m much more interested in that early phase, when they have one foot in the unnatural and one foot in the mundane and you can still see the terrified human behind the mask of insanity as the door of reason closes on them forever.
The concept of insanity is one I often get curious about with games, as a person with bipolar disorder and PTSD, both of which often get made into a mockery. How do you write about these kinds of cosmic “insanities” – minds overwhelmed by some supernatural force – without sounding hackneyed, and without repeating previous work you’ve done for the game?
Unlike a novel, in game writing we mostly deal with externalities. We don’t typically get into inner monologues or thoughts or even much dialogue, so the usual ways writers depict mental issues in fiction don’t come up. Instead we rely on actions, agendas, and backstory to communicate character and that is where, in Lovecraftian gaming, we express our ideas about the mental states caused by exposure to the supernatural.
Fundamentally, the mental issues Lovecraft described were what “normal people” experience when their rational minds encounter the supernatural and experience an existential crisis that challenges their religious faith, their sense of the natural order, their belief in humanity’s primacy, and their logic and reason. At the climax of “The Rats in the Walls,” for example, the narrator’s discovery of his family’s ancestral secrets causes him to regress to a wild, primitive, and cannibalistic state.
But it’s noteworthy that Lovecraft does not necessarily treat his cultists this way. Wilbur Whateley in “The Dunwich Horror,” for example, is a half-human child of an Outer God and a human cultist mother, but he has no serious problems checking out library books or navigating human society. Herbert West, while not exactly a cultist, is a classical mad scientist but is fully functional and even rational in his extreme experiments. The unnamed cultists around the world in “Call of Cthulhu” are presented as typical “savages” — dancing around bonfires, conducting sacrifices, that sort of thing — and are probably the closest to the RPG’s conception of madness in this sense. But I believe their behavior is presented more as a cultural phenomenon, the result of their secluded upbringing and indoctrination, rather than madness per se.
I think where Lovecraft was coming from was that ordinary people who experience this kind of crisis may break down, but those who have accepted the truth of reality can live their lives even if they’re unusual ones. The Whateleys are doing just fine. And even some ordinary people, such as Doctor Armitage, can challenge the supernatural and emerge intact through force of will.
When Chaosium first created the Call of Cthulhu RPG, they took Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu makes you crazy” idea and applied fifty years of psychology to present a diverse array of game-able mental problems that went far beyond the general hysteria or depression Lovecraft evoked. Of course, they were generally neurotypical designers writing for a hypothetically neurotypical audience and weren’t necessarily considering the reaction of people who fall outside that range.
Our Delta Green RPG’s focus on Bonds is, I think, a more productive approach for the future. You can stay away from the cliches of diagnoses but still demonstrate the trade-offs our characters make in this fictional context between home and work, family and obsession, socializing and isolation. We didn’t jettison the old Sanity approach by any means, but Bonds are a narrative way of expressing the fundamental corrosion and I think a more frequent and meaningful tool at the table.
With The Labyrinth, I’m not concerned with specific labels or diagnoses. When I write of a character who is slipping into obsession and madness, my interest lies in how this impacts their life and what it means for the Agents who have to deal with the consequences. From a narrative perspective, that’s much more useful and interesting than declaring that a given character has Borderline Personality Disorder, for example.
I’m really interested in the stretch goal with props! How do you plan to create those props and interesting bits and pieces? How do they integrate with the sourcebook? The Labyrinth is a sourcebook, not a set of adventures, so it’s somewhat unusual to create handouts for it. But my hope is that for many Handlers, the Labyrinth will infect their campaign and even hijack it. The characters you meet from the book have their own agendas and arcs, and even when the Agents aren’t thinking about them, they’re thinking about the Agents. And every organization in the book has connections to several other organizations, so once you enter you can really go in all kinds of directions.
Our hope is that the handouts will transform the Labyrinth’s organizations into an organic, dynamic campaign that just goes even if the Handler isn’t using a prewritten scenario for a given session. They will provide clues and connections that can lead from one group to another, introducing more characters, opportunities, and challenges.
Ultimately, I’d love for a gaming group to have a corkboard covered in Labyrinth handouts with push pins and strings connecting them together so that their friends and family wonder: are they totally losing it?
— Thank you so much John for such a fun and informative interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Delta Green: The Labyrinth today on Kickstarter!
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Bastion, one of the GallantVerse Iconics! Art by Nicolás Giacondino
Tell me a little about Tiny Supers! What excites you about it?
Oh, that’s hard to answer. I grew up loving Superheroes. I’ve struggled with mental illness for a very large part of my life, and comics were a big part of that recovery and healing process for me. I’m a person who needs a goal and aspiration, and superheroes provide that to me. Tiny Supers and the GallantVerse are my love letter to one of the most formative parts of my life.
How do the narrative bangs and pows of Supers integrate with the mechanics of TinyD6? What have you done to create the heroic “feel”?
Well, Narratively, the powers in Tiny Supers aren’t focused on “ranks” or who is stronger. It’s focused on the needs of the narrative. Much like comic powers vary based on the writer, Tiny Supers has some “flex” inside it’s system, due to it’s nature of a minimalist game line. We’ve worked extensively to make sure powers are flexible, interesting, and dynamic.
Ryker Swift, aka Velocity! One of the Iconic GallantVerse Heroes. Art by Nicolás Giacondino
What is the GallantVerse like? Who are some of the major players and what’s at stake?
Well, the GallantVerse is a fledging supers universe. Most of the supers are under 5 years of tenure. A majority of the lead-in stakes revolve around heroes learning the limits of what being a hero means in the eyes of the public and their own conscience. It focuses on hope, optimisim, and being a beacon. There’s a lot that can feel oppressive, cynical and bitter, and while we shouldn’t avoid confronting the harsh and hard things in life, having a place to escape where it’s a little easier to be a hero can be fantastic. That’s the Goal of the GallantVerse. We have a slew of Iconic Heroes like Gallant (our Paragon), Velocity (a Speedster), Bastion (the leader of our teen hero team The Bulwarks), and so much more.
What does a typical Super look like in Tiny Supers, mechanically?
TinyD6 functions on a simple system of 1, 2, or 3 six-sided dice. Heroes will roll a number indicated by their abilities/powers and if any dice results in a 5 or 6, they’re successful. Power Traits often will increase chances of success, either by granting the third d6, giving a better range of success, or allowing a unique set of actions. Heroes will have an Archetype that gives them a special Trait, and then they’ll select 3-6 Traits/Power Traits. That’s it! It’s very easy to make a character.
What makes a Tiny Super look the most different from a character in another Tiny d6 game?
The Power Traits, and Nicolas Giacondino’s fantastic art! Our book is so beautifully illustrated because Nic does such great work.
The Iconic Hero and paragon of the GallantVerse, Gallant! Art by Nicolas Giacondino
