Tell me a little about The Midderlands. What excites you about it?
The Midderlands is an OSR mini setting and bestiary for Swords & Wizardy although as with all retro clones, it’ll work interchangeably with minimal effort.
The setting itself is based on the area in England where I live, the Midlands. The idea of taking this area and turning it into a more twisted, darker fantasy-land excited me. I could take landmarks and towns and run riot.
All that said, the idea of the book started as I was drawing weird creatures. I thought it would be good if they lived in and around where I lived, kind of like the Spiderwick Chronicles by Terlizzi. The idea evolved from there.
Tell me about weird creatures! Bestiaries and monster manuals are a favorite of mine. What will we see spilling forth from the pages?
The book contains a bestiary section which contains 25 new monsters. These include the Muckulus, Oorgthrax, Mud Cow, Thorned Briarling, Six-headed Sewer Gripe, Mawling and Nobblin to name a few. Each of the 25, also have a pre-generated NPC. Of these 25, 18 have defined race-classes that you can play. Now don’t get me wrong, some of these are bonkers but they have a lot of fun gaming potential. Some favourite monsters are the Conus Ogre that feeds on electricity, and the Six-headed Sewer Gripe with its decapitation attacks. Edwin Nagy has done a great job of adding flesh to the bones of the monsters. I would give him the art, tell him some things I wanted it to do/be like – and he would create these monsters of wonder.
Slitherling by Jim Magnusson.
What sort of elements are you bringing to your home of the Midlands to make it darker, to find a deeper root?
I wanted an undercurrent of something chthonic, dark and unknown going on beneath the earth. The spinning core deep below the land is made of Gloomium – a green substance which leaks to the top and taints things. The sky is green-hued and fires burn with green flames and such. There are black-clad folk about and their intent is shadowy. I don’t elaborate too much on stuff, allowing the gamemaster to take it where he wants to go with it – to fit their own agenda, or campaign ideas. I just wanted to create enough “game-juice” to give the feeling that there is untoward stuff going on.
fishy fishy fishy oh
How do you find inspiration for different monsters and game elements?
I’m never quite sure where the inspiration was coming from. I spend lots of time going through G+ and some people post some great art. In terms of the monsters whatever appeared on the page as I drew it. The drawing of the head happened first. Once I had all the heads, I created a set of headless bodies. I then printed them all out and matched up heads and bodies till I got something cool. Then I would come up with a concept and send it to Edwin for stats.
The setting just kind of fell out. A good example is that there is a ruined windmill on my way into RL work. I decided to add that the location section as Bognock Windmill. Many RL landmarks were harmed in the making of this book.
What are you doing to make The Midderlands accessible for multiple systems (OSR to Pathfinder, even) – freedom from mechanical trappings is one thing, so what in the setting makes it work for more than one system?
As it’s written for Swords & Wizardry Complete, it is easily moved to other retroclones. S&WC is generally single saving throw and doesn’t use Morale so there is a tweak needed to use in LotFP. Most OSR folk can pick this stuff up and go on the fly.
Pathfinder, D&D5E and DCC would be a little more tricky in terms of stats, but The Midderlands is not intended to be overly complicated. The setting contains no real stat stuff at all – so that can be taken and used anywhere. Other than the bestiary stats, there are magic items and oddities that can easily be used in other non-OSR systems. As an example, a Wodensblade is a +1 longsword, +3 vs green-skinned creatures. That kind of thing can be used pretty much anywhere 😊. Spells are referred to such as Charm Person, so that will be understood in most systems. Monster stats will need a little more work for non-OSR systems.
So far, the support for the Kickstarter has been fantastic, given the ambitious funding total. I want the book content and production quality to be something people get in their hands and go “whoa, this is so cool!!”, so I’d rather fund something memorable than a PoD offering if I can. That does have a cost though. We are almost half-funded at this stage and still over 20 days to go, so it’s very-promising and myself and the team are massively lucky to have such great support.
Thank you for your hosting hospitality, great questions and for your interest in the project!
#themidderlands 😊
— Thanks so much to Glynn for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading and that you’ll check out The Midderlands on Kickstarter, and remember to share the post around!
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Recently, I participated in a game on Twitter with Caitlynn Belle (@weirdcaitie). She had a weird picture, and for a month, I made daily guesses to what that picture was of. I sadly lost (I believe it was in part on a technicality due to legume furries, but that’s neither here nor there), and had to make a game.
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Alex Hakobian on the new game Broadsword, which is currently on Kickstarter! It looks like a fun romp and I wanted to give you all the opportunity to check it out. See Alex’s responses to my questions below!
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Illustration by Gary Chalk (originally drawn for (IINM) Lone Wolf and licensed for reuse in Broadsword)
Tell me a little about Broadsword. What excites you about it?
Broadsword is a tactical adventure game in the format of a hybrid boardgame/RPG – a “roleplaying boardgame,” if you will. It’s about a group of valiant Heroes working together to defeat the evil forces of the Abyss.
What excites me about it most is the foundation on which it was conceived and built. Although Broadsword takes evident inspiration from many sources ranging different genre, its greatest asset is its direct bloodline to the classic 1989 Milton Bradley/Games Workshop boardgame HeroQuest.
Like many youngsters in those days, I have very fond memories of the game. It was, in fact, my personal gateway drug to D&D and similar roleplaying games later in life. It was only natural that some of that deeply engrained experience bleed though into Broadsword.
What are the aspects of HeroQuest you found valuable enough and important enough to bring forward into Broadsword?
In the most basic of terms, Broadsword is my love letter to HeroQuest. As such, it was important to me that the spirit of the game stayed intact. I wanted you to come away from a session feeling like, “Wow, that was just like the original. But better!” Thankfully, this was easily done in great part because my game originally started out as an expansion on the original, but quickly grew into its own entity.
Speaking specifically, I knew I had to keep some of the key boardgamey elements. Foremost among these were the custom pictographic dice, known as Combat Dice. I felt these were the backbone to the whole thing. Remove the dice and the entire thing falls apart, severing its legacy bloodline.
Going hand in hand with that was the tactical, grid-based combat. It simply wouldn’t be itself if I were to, for example, have it use narrative, storygame or “theater of the mind” type rules.
There are a couple other, much smaller assets or concepts brought forward, but the two mentioned above are far and away the ones that carry the most weight.
Illustration by Gary Chalk (originally drawn for (IINM) Lone Wolf and licensed for reuse in Broadsword)
How are you venturing out into different genres and sources, both mechanically and flavor-wise?
I’m not sure I would qualify it as “venturing out” into different genres and sources so much as experiencing them, internalizing them, then funneling it through into the game. For example, if you hear “Fireball,” “Lightning Bolt,” or better yet, “Magic Missile,” you are going to think “classic D&D Wizard spell.” So I consider: What makes them so great? Once I believe I’m come up with the essence of the answer in mechanical terms, I can then move forward with including it in some form in the game in a way that makes sense for the system, mechanics, and flavor.
Let’s take “Fireball” as an example. The Pyromancer class has a spell called “Explosion.” The flavor text reads, “A massive fireball explodes, doing great damage.” Mechanically, that translates to: “Any figure on one square you can see takes 2 Body Points of damage. All figures in the surrounding squares each take 1 Body Point of damage. Elite monsters defend the attack normally.”
Now, when compared to other systems where PCs or monsters will have Hit Points typically reaching double digits or beyond, a paltry 2 points of damage seems like nothing. But for Broadsword, that’s really quite tremendous. Even the beefiest classes in the game only top out around 8 Body Points. And that most monsters in the game generally only have half that. Seen in that light, “Explosion” can easily completely eliminate or severely damage a crowded room of monsters.
Getting back to the question at hand, however, I extend this same process to aspects of games from other genres and systems – video games, books, what have you.
Can you tell me a little about the classes in Broadsword and how they interact with the core mechanic and the game itself?
Sure. The game starts with a dozen different classes (with more being supplemented in the near future). In order to provide niche protection to keep the core theme of each class as unsullied as possible, I came up with a system of keywords that I applied to each piece of equipment. I then took each class and sussed out which keywords would make sense for that class to be restricted from using. This process quickly gave way to the need for categorization of the classes themselves, eventually ending with 3 categories of classes.
There are 5 Fighter classes (Berserker, Hunter, Paladin, Ranger, Warrior), who have the least keyword restrictions and can use the most types of gear. Each of the Fighter classes also have their own Class Ability, a talent unique to that class. 5 Caster classes (Aeromancer, Geomancer, Hydromancer, Necromancer, Pyromancer) have the highest restrictions on usable gear. (This is, of course, balanced by the fact that Casters have lots of spells.) And 2 Hybrid classes (Cleric, Druid), who dabble in both melee combat as well as a little magic usage, but they can’t use the very best weapons and armor, nor can they cast as many spells as often as their Caster counterparts.
Your choice of class determines what gear you start with (and by extension, how many Combat Dice you can attack and defend with), what your spell list looks like, and what types of items you are restricted from using. It also provides the baseline for your Body and Mind Points – which may be modified slightly by your choice of race.
What are the experiences and discoveries you have enjoyed most about designing Broadsword?
I found that, despite there being a number of different systems interacting with each other at any one time, the game remains incredibly simple to pick up and learn. This is good, because while I did indeed want to add some granularity and “crunch” on the RPG side of things, I also wanted to keep it streamlined, with a low barrier to entry.
Running the playtests were also a lot of fun, and I don’t believe the level and quality of fun I had ever really diminished through the process, even while testing some new mechanic I wasn’t sure of. It certainly helped that my playtesters were HeroQuest junkies themselves! They quickly learned the ins and outs of the game nearly as well as I did, so it was painless to run a half-baked idea by them before putting anything down on paper and see if it was an idea worth pursuing.
Illustration by David Lewis Johnson
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Thanks all for reading, and thanks to Alex for answering my questions! I hope you all will check out the Kickstarter for Broadsword and share this around in case anyone else might enjoy it!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hi all, I had the chance to speak to Danielle Lauzon about her work at John Wick Presents, and wanted to share with you what she had to say. Danielle is a staff developer and design lead for the 7th Sea live-action roleplaying game, which is at Gen Con this year and should have a few spots left!. Danielle shared with me some of her background, too, so get to know her below!
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Danielle Lauzon
Tell me a little about yourself! What is your background in games, non-game work, and what do you love about what you do?
I’ve been playing RPGs since I was a kid. First trying to get my older brother to let me play AD&D or Magic: The Gathering with him, and then playing Nintendo with my mom. I finally got someone to play a tabletop with me in high school, which is also where I was introduced to Vampire: The Masquerade. When I got to college, I played in my first larp, and well, I’ve been playing pretty much whatever I can get my hands on ever since. I have played in, run, and organized games on every level from small table-tops to large larp events.
I have a Master’s degree in Animal Nutrition and worked as a neuroscientist for the past eight years, until I slowly transitioned to writing for games full time. I had originally wanted to go to Veterinary School, but when faced with a decision between Graduate School and Vet School, I jumped at research. I loved it, except no one told me that if I wanted to really practice my degree, I’d have to move to the Midwest. Let’s talk about how when I lived in Dallas, the place was too cold and dry for me. Anyway, I made due and put my research capabilities to work anyway. The rest I learned as I went. Now I use my degree to tell my friends why the new fad diet they are on is probably no good for them.
To say that I love what I do now is pretty much an understatement. My hobby has become my life, and it’s pretty damned cool. I get into high level game design discussions with people, and they actually take what I say with gravity. I get to go to larps all across the country as research for my job. I mean, other than the isolation of working from home as a fully fledged extrovert, it’s pretty cool.
It isn’t all fun and games though. Deadlines cause a lot of stress, and anyone who has ever written can tell you that writing every day is really a job.
What is happening with the 7th Sea larp? You have a broad plan for it, and I’d love to hear more.
Oh man, I’m so excited about the 7th Sea larp. We’re looking to create a multi-chapter Chronicle that can run for several years. Our goal is to create a meta-plot that incorporates the actions of individuals in different cities to steer it and give it life through over-arcing Stories. These Stories will be high level decisions that generally take place between games, something like inviting an important character into town, or directing troop movements. This isn’t something the characters do immediately, but their immediate support will go towards influencing the outcome of the Story. Some Stories will only be locally focused, but many will tie into that overarching meta-plot.
For the basic gameplay, we’re marrying some American Freeform/Nordic styles with some of 7th Sea Second Edition’s player facing action. I.E. the players mediate actions between themselves as much as they can. And when it comes to characters taking actions against Game Master threats or characters, they simply do, just like in the tabletop. The indecision comes from how the other players may react to what you do, or how your actions push the story forward, and not from whether or not you can do a thing. Of course you can do the thing, you’re a Hero!
As far as setting, I’ll have to refrain from saying too much, other than it’s going to be set mostly in Theah. Though, characters from other areas of Terra may be allowed in the future.
What exactly does a staff developer do in a games company? What is rewarding about it?
You ever wonder how a game book goes from a seed of thought in someone’s head to that beautiful 208 page, full-color supplement sitting in your hands? Well, that’s what I do. Developers in general take the seed of an idea, figure out how it looks in book form, outline the book including giving direction on themes, moods, and overarching story. Then I hire writers to take my ideas and direction and make them into chapters. Then I work with an editor to polish that writing. Then I work with the layout artist to make sure that stuff looks good on the physical page. I work with the art director to make sure the art they ask for fits the themes and mood of the book. Mostly, I’m like a project manager, I take the book from project to project and work with the person doing the work to make sure it fits the vision. If there’s a hole that needs filling, I write it. If there’s a question about the project, I answer it. If there’s feedback from the thousands of Kickstarter backers, I go through and incorporate it into the book, or cry about how I can’t rewrite the whole book to accommodate it.
As a staff developer, I do this for multiple books at a time. I also get to wear the unofficial hat of “Theah expert” here at John Wick Presents. Which really just means that I know where to find that piece of information about what year Eisen tried to invade Ussura and failed miserably.
What’s rewarding about it? Well, these books are like my babies. I get to see them out in the world, and people exclaiming over parts they love, and lamenting on how I cut out their sacred cows from the First Edition. (Something I’ll admit gives me great joy.) But really? I get to work with so many talented people each time I develop one of these books. I get an insight into so many different people’s writing styles and thought processes, and then I get to take the best parts of that and teach them to everyone else. Everyone learns, grows, and as I do more and work with these same people, I get to see them grow as professionals. That is by far the most rewarding part of my job.
What challenges do you encounter working over multiple projects and just keeping it all together?
Oh man, there are all sorts of challenges associated with it. The first being that it’s really hard to switch gears in a single day. I try to schedule stuff so that I can work on something different each day, but sometimes a lot of things come up in one day. I have two methods. The first is bullet journaling, where I make a monthly and daily task list and try to keep up with it as best I can. The other is spreadsheets. I keep project deadlines and schedules in spreadsheets so I don’t lose track. Between that and google calendar, which sends reminders for me (yay!), I am keeping it together. For the most part. Though sometimes things slip through the cracks. :/
Are there specific techniques, software, habits, and/or methods you use to go through the larp design process and separately, the development process?
Google Docs is a great invention that lets me share working projects with other people to get input. Larp writing is a collaborative process, no matter what anyone says. And beyond just converting rules into something larpable, I’m always coming up with scenarios for running the actual larps. And that need collaboration. The same is true with development. I use Dropbox and Google Drive the most for collaborative work, and word or excel files for stuff I keep locally.
As far as habits? Man, that one’s harder. I try to work when I can. Some days I get really distracted, or I can’t concentrate. On those days I make lists of stuff that need to get done to help me organize myself. I may make shopping list for larp props, and I might crowdsource questions I’m having problems solving on my own. Other days, I put my nose to the grindstone and write, edit, and create.
Have you ever had your background education and experience lead to a “whoa, this does not work!” moment when doing development work?
Never directly. I’ve had some moments where I think “science doesn’t work like this” and I might correct something small. For the most part, working with 7th Sea, I don’t have to worry about that. They weren’t known for their scientific genius so much during the Renaissance. Especially not in the fields of nutrition or neuroscience.
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Thanks so much to Danielle for answering questions and sharing so much about her work with me. Remember to check Gen Con schedules for the 7th Sea larp and watch for more from John Wick Presents!
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Today I have an interview with Robin Laws on his new game,The Yellow King. The Yellow King is currently on Kickstarter, and looks absolutely fascinating. I asked Robin some questions about how he’ll be handling content and how the mechanics flow with fiction – check out his responses below!
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Books and slipcover
Tell me a little about The Yellow King. What excites you about it?
The four slim stories that make up Robert W. Chambers’ King in Yellow cycle offer a rich, elegantly creepy starting point for an ambitious new game of literary horror. We’re used to seeing his work through the lens of Lovecraft, who championed these stories, and later expanders of the Mythos like August Derleth. Tackled on their own, they present an shockingly contemporary set of themes. Central to the stories are a visual symbols and a work of art that, once you are exposed to them, break you down and change you. In this game I take that a step further and explore the idea that reality itself is coming apart.
I’ve always come at Lovecraftian themes and cosmic horror as a whole from a diagonal, because the themes of “insanity” and “breakdowns” are ones I’m intimately familiar with. How do you address this in The Yellow King? What are you including in the game to both carry the gravity of the impact of cosmic horror, and are you examining real-life trauma parallels?
When you remove the Lovecraftian overlay from Chambers, it ceases to be cosmic horror and, especially in YKRPG’s take on him, becomes what we’re calling reality horror. Lovecraft proposes that when you really see humankind’s absolute insignificance in a vast and utterly random universe, the mind cracks, plunging you into insanity. The King in Yellow cycle by contrast focuses on an idea, an artistic expression, that can rewrite people’s personalities and sense of reality—but can also change objective reality itself.
This allows me to lean away from the idea that the characters are becoming literally mentally ill, or that sanity is a resource you lose over time. There are no insane cultists, but rather people who have been altered or compelled by the exposure to the play The King in Yellow or the sight of the Yellow Sign.
As characters you encounter Mental Hazards, rolling your Composure ability to resist them or take a lesser effect. Rather than losing Sanity or Stability points you get Shock cards, which you try to get rid of as play continues. When you have 3 Shock cards, your character loses her bearings and leaves play, to be replaced by another.
In framing the text, particularly of the Shock cards, I’m steering away from the real life terminology of mental illness. So there’s no Shock card that tells you you’ve suddenly developed, say, paranoid schizophrenia or clinical depression. Nor is there an indication that becoming mentally ill turns people evil or violent.
Now it’s entirely possible that folks who struggle with mental health issues either directly or through the experiences of the people around them still won’t want to explore reality horror at the gaming table. And if it’s not fun, you shouldn’t do it. But a great function of pop culture is as a vehicle to safely process life’s horrors and traumas through a protective veil of outlandishness and the fantastic. Godzilla movies help audiences come at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 9/11 reverberated through comics and spy movies. SF TV shows or a movie like Get Out can get at racial hierarchies in a disarming and metaphorical way. When constructing the treatment of trauma in YKRPG I aspire for it to work in a like fashion.
Ultimately though it all comes down to personal tastes and limits, which can differ even for one person over time. What you might be into at one point in your life could be too close too the knuckle in another.
Aftermath interiors
What are the elements of the new combat system, and how do they influence player interaction with the setting?
Combat is fast and player-facing, meaning that each player rolls only once and the GM never rolls anything, just establishes a difficulty for the foe at hand and modifiers for the situation.
Before starting you decide what your goal is—which might be to kill your foes, but could also be capturing one of them and running away, driving them off, getting through them, and so on. If your Fighting roll fails to overcome the opponent’s difficulty, which varies based on your objective, you take on either a minor or major Injury card. Even as victor you might take a minor Injury if you decline to pay a toll in Athletics, Health or Fighting points. Like the Shock cards Injuries have various ongoing effects, and conditions allowing you to discard them. These often require you to do something in the narrative. Here’s an example (note that the published versions will look much better than my primitive graphic design abilities allow for):
Example Injury
As with Shocks, having 3 Injuries in hand requires you to permanently retire your character.
Tell me a little about each of the books. What makes them unique in theme, and what were their inspirations?
Like two of the Chambers stories, Paris takes place in the City of Lights in 1895. It gives you your classic historical horror experience of interacting with the rich details and personalities of a classic time period, in this case the Belle Epoque, as you deal with supernatural menace.
The Wars follows one of the stories in my collection New Tales of the Yellow Sign by setting itself in a fractured timeline caused by the influence of the play. It’s 1947 and the Continental War rages across Europe. Characters play a squad of soldiers whose military assignments draw them into weird mysteries. They must duck not only monsters from Carcosa but bizarre Jules Verne war machines.
Aftermath, again based on a story from NTYS, proposes that the bizarre then-future described in “Repairer of Reputations” was the basis of an actual reality. A century after the events described in that story, you play revolutionaries in an alternate present who have just toppled the tyrannical and supernaturally-backed Castaigne regime in America. Your investigations confront you with eerie holdovers of the old regime. At the same time you choose a way to help rebuild your nation, involving yourself in post-revolutionary politics.
Finally, This is Normal Now is our modern day, with an emphasis on the glittering, the new, and a horrific spin on contemporary trends. It brings the cycle back to basics, and in full campaign mode, leads you to connect and wrap up the big arc resolving the parallels between your characters from the four settings.
Four books, so many stories to tell!
I’m somewhat familiar with GUMSHOE, and I know that there is a lot of mutability, but it can be challenging to really hammer out the best final decisions. What has your development process been like for The Yellow King? Did you have any moments of clarity that you appreciated?
The key revelation where mechanics are concerned came from
the desire to take the Problem and Edge cards from the GUMSHOE One-2-One engine from in Cthulhu Confidential and translate them back into multiplayer GUMSHOE.
a longstanding Pelgrane goal of making combat player-facing, as discussed above
Since then it’s been a matter of refinement, which is ongoing as I move from the preview draft backers get as soon as they join to a version ready for out-of-house playtest.
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Thanks so much to Robin for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading about what’s coming withThe Yellow King! Make sure to check it out on Kickstarter & tell your friends!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Today I have an interview with Hannah Shaffer on her game Damn the Man, Save the Music! which is currently on Kickstarter kicking ass. Damn the Man, Save the Music! is an exciting, thoughtful, 90s-music-filled game and I hope you all love hearing what Hannah has to say.
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Cover by Evan Rowland
Tell me a little about Damn the Man, Save the Music. What excites you about it?
Damn the Man, Save the Music! is a game about a bunch of weirdo outcasts trying to save their ’90s record store from collapse. It’s inspired by one of my favorite movies, Empire Records, which everyone should go watch right now. What excites me about Damn the Man is that it uses ’90s nostalgia as a way to explore the best parts of ’90s media while challenging the worst parts.
I watch a lot of ’90s movies, and while I love their structure (like where did action-romance movies go? Why aren’t those getting made anymore?), it was a weird time for minority representation. Queer characters started to appear in ’90s movies, but they were often there just to add a bit of edgy humor. And you’d find people of color in most ’90s comedies, but their roles were at best “token” and at worst, the same deal, there for stereotyped jokes. Empire Records is a movie that celebrates the music of its time, but the only reference it makes to hip hop is in a line that disses rap and makes a homophobic joke at the same time.
I love Damn the Man because it provides this opportunity to play out a ’90s movie but better. It asks people to think about what ’90s nostalgia is all about, and to explore that nostalgia with a critical eye—without even realizing that’s what you’re doing.
In-progress art by Evan Rowland
What is the gameplay like in Damn the Man, Save the Music!? What kind of action do we see?
Damn the Man is a single-session game and all of the game’s action takes place over the course of one day. The day is divided into a three act structure—the store opening, a big record signing event, and closing shop at the end of the day. During each act every character gets one Schedule Scene. That’s a scene where the spotlight is shining on your character, even if there are other people in the scene with you!
There are a few different things you can do during your schedule scene: you can try to heal a relationship with a friend (all relationships start off damaged in the game), you can try to double down and accomplish a task your boss assigns you, or you can shoot for your goal.
Choosing to heal a relationship might look like taking a smoke break with a friend you’ve been avoiding after learning you’re both secretly gay. Doubling down looks like diving right into a store task, like trying to catch a shoplifter before they make off with an entire rack of new CDs. And shooting for your goal looks like finding the time to confess your love, or pay back a debt, or find the lost cat… right in the middle of your schedule scene.
Every scene ends with rolling dice to see if you accomplished the task your boss assigned you. Winning lets you accomplish the task and functionally prevent a store trouble, losing means you failed to accomplish the task (like screwing up everyone’s coffee orders) and a store trouble escalates as a result.
The game’s action is centered around the scenes. Trying to juggle increasingly absurd retail tasks while also trying to accomplish your heart’s true goal and heal relationships with the people you love. There’s a real sense of not being able to do it all, and things getting wackier and spiraling out of control as the day goes on!
What sources did you pull inspiration from, aside from the ’90s as a whole?
The most obvious inspiration for Damn the Man is the movie Empire Records, a movie about a bunch of teenagers working at a ‘90s indie record store, who take a dramatic shot at saving their store when they learn it’s going to be bought out by a big corporate record chain. The game follows the structure of Empire Records pretty closely, but it also follows this ‘90s movie coming-of-age structure, where everyone totally freaks out and then undergoes a major personal transformation in the course of a day.
I really liked movies by Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater during my high school years, so you’ll see that inspiration in Damn the Man as well: Dazed and Confused is a surprisingly poignant movie, Slacker, Clerks, and Chasing Amy, a movie about how things break down when we try to force our own expectations and demands on someone else’s identity.
Finally, I think the game is inspired by my complicated relationship with nostalgia. We’re in a golden age of ‘90s nostalgia right now, but the ‘90s really sucked for a lot of people. Nostalgia can be this way of reframing history through a rose-colored lens that privileges certain types of experiences. I wanted to make a game that celebrated ‘90s music and counterculture that wasn’t just another Buzzfeed “remember when” listicle.
How did you move from “hey, this is a thing that matters” to “this is a game you can play” with the game – did you do a lot of playtesting, or spend a lot of time privately testing mechanics?
I did do a lot of playtesting! The game started as kind of a joke hack of Questlandia, when I was re-watching Empire Records and realized it shared the exact structure of a Questlandia game:
A big personal goal you have to accomplish today, only three scenes before you’ve got to accomplish it, characters who are just trying to do their best with what they’ve got, and then a big collapse—or not!—at the end.
Questlandia was the first game I made, and I think the mechanics need some work. I just kept bringing Damn the Man to conventions and playing it with friends, watching closely for the places where people got stuck. I took away mechanics and added them and took them away and added them until finally I was seeing games that regularly had a great flow, a good energy, and rules that supported exactly the types of stories the game is trying to tell.
Art by Sarah Robbins
Tell me about some of the important themes of the game. Weirdo outcasts, queer characters—what matters about them beyond representation? What strength lies in their stories for Damn the Man, Save the Music!?
I talked a little bit about nostalgia before, and how it paints over the past with these “everything was great” rosy-colored brush strokes.
I wanted to make sure Damn the Man told these stories that captured the feel of a ‘90s romance-comedy, without erasing the experiences of queer people and people of color. Beyond the importance of representation (which is really important), these are coming of age stories, whether or not the characters are teenagers.
Everyone in Damn the Man is searching for something. They’re trying to make things right with their friends, they’re trying to manage the demands of retail and the people who treat you crappy while also trying to find meaning in their lives. I really like telling those kinds of stories. I feel like there are a lot of big hero stories, but not a lot of “people just trying their best” stories. I wanted a story that shines a light on a single day, or a single moment in time, that maybe changes everything or maybe just gets lost to history.
Fictional Damnster Fire band poster by Sarah Robbins
Tell me a little about Clink. What excites you about it?
The official pitch: “Clink is a coin-based non-linear RPG about mysterious drifters”. However to me it is a balm for GMs.
I’ve GMed a lot of games, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Too many games offload most of the rules and burden of play onto the GM. They design the story, the dungeons, the encounters, the monster, remind players of the rules, etc. As much as I love that stuff, I’m always on the lookout for games that give the GM tools and make their job easier.
I’ve played in games where the players will write pages of epic backstory, but contribute very little during the game. Some of this can be solved with good communication and helpful guidance from the GM. But that’s just one more thing the GM must initiate and work through. Clink simply cuts backstory out entirely. The game requires players to make a blank character with no history and discover their character as they play.
Everyone discovers it together. The players get the spotlight to come up with interesting tales, and the game automatically works it into the narrative. In fact, the GM doesn’t even need a good story. A cliched plot will still offer chances for the players to tell interesting stories and have fun. I love that.
Clink is a game I want to play, sure, but it’s mostly a game I want to GM. It takes a lot of the narrative burden and expectation off of my shoulders. I get to sit back and watch players come up with their own interesting stories. And after playing, I’ve found that players carry those lessons into future games of other systems. They are better about speaking up and contributing to the story during the game, rather than waiting for GM exposition.
The western/noir/shonin theme is perfect for this sort of mysterious history roleplaying. It’s like a movie; you learn the characters as you watch. You don’t need to read a novel before watching Fistful of Dollars; things are explained during the movie itself. Clink aims to replicate that same method, and I’ve seen it succeed wonderfully during playtests.
I’m excited for people to try it out, and I hope it provides some much needed relief to GMs and players who struggle with backstories and narrative.
How do characters start in Clink? You say they are blank, but what do players and the GM know to start with – names, skills, etc.?
Every Drifter begins with:
Name : This probably isn’t their real name, but something that reflects their appearance or personality (Dusty, Pearl, Gruff, Hope, etc) Creed : A driving goal or motivation. Creeds are shared by the entire group. They can be simple like, “The Dusty Riders will pay”, or more complex like, “We will defeat Mordin to close the portal and save Haven.” 2-3 Mementos : Special objects from their past that can be used to inspire memories later. 2 Triggers: These are personality quirks that can get your Drifter into trouble. For example: “When someone tried to reward me, I rudely refuse, mumbling something about honor.” or “Whenever I enter a new town, I head for the bar and get a drink before doing anything else.”
As they play Drifters will gain Flashbacks (helpful memories or skills) and they will gain Scars (Dark moments, trauma) to describe their past and define their Drifter further.
What are the base mechanics for action like?
Clink’s mechanics revolve around coins. This is partly in keeping with the western theme, but also means anyone can play it, anywhere.
Players can spend coins to gain helpful Flashbacks, and then use these flashbacks to automatically succeed at difficult actions. The danger of using Flashbacks is that they will sometimes remind your Drifter of the darker parts of their history, giving them a Scar.
If your Drifter doesn’t have a useful Flashback then the coinflips involve escalation. Situations often begin simple and straightforward. Your Drifter is trying to talk their way past the guard. They flip a coin. If successful, then they get past the guard with little trouble. If the flip fails, then another player describes how the situation gets worse and your Drifter flips again with this worse situation.
There’s a little more to it, but the coin-flips can trap your Drifter in an ever worsening situation until a resolution is chosen. This escalation keeps the action moving and lets everyone contribute to what’s happening.
You call Clink nonlinear. Expand on that – how is it nonlinear? What does that look like at the table?
Clink is a game of telling stories; not only as a group but also individually. Inspired by classic campfire tales and spaghetti westerns, Drifters often gain Flashbacks and Scars from their past. Whenever this happens the player gets the spotlight and tells a short tale about what happened and why.
As I mentioned earlier this takes a lot of the narrative weight from the GM and lets each player hog the spotlight and tell some fun stories. I love all of the chances to tell stories of my own and hear stories from other players.
Finally, what responsibilities remain for the GM? How do they influence the game?
The GM’s primary responsibility is to provide obstacles for the players. Drifters can’t die, they don’t have HP, so a traditional dungeon crawl/resource management gameplan doesn’t really work. But Drifters do have a timer. When Drifters have gained more Scars than Flashbacks, then they are in danger of losing their Creed.
The more obstacles the GM adds, the most Flashbacks, coins, and Scars will be spent and gained, bringing Drifters closer to their limit.
The coin-flips make it easier to determine the outcomes, and the escalation mechanic provides dangers and obstacles automatically.
(Okay, finally-finally) What words of advice or encouragement do you have for players sitting down to flip a coin in Clink?
Let the coins fall where they may. Don’t plan ahead. Backstory and character content can be extremely fun and addicting, but Clink promises a different kind of fun. You may not end up with the character you dreamed of playing, instead you’ll end up with a character you didn’t fully expect; that’s fun!
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Thanks so much David for the interview! I hope y’all will check out the Clink Kickstarter and share the interview around with your friends. Enjoy!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
While I’m doing active playtests on my own, I wanted to share the beta document I’ve prepared for Turn. It will be updated as the main private document is updated, but has quite a bit of information together now! If you read or play it, please let me know and share any of your feedback via the contact form.
photo by John W. Sheldon
What is Turn?
Turn is a story-based roleplaying game about shapeshifters in small towns who must try to go through life balancing the needs of their Human and Beast identities, while pursuing the goals that will make them happy and content. The game is primarily focused on social interaction and storytelling. The mechanics are d6 dice-based and have structured actions using low-number ability penalties and bonuses. Turn may approach some difficult emotional experiences and it’s advised to be used with the Script Change content tool, included at the end of this document.
EDIT: The Turn Beta is no longer available but you can find the game at any of these links:
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Megan and Sean Jaffe from Nerdy City on their new game, Rememorex, which is currently on Kickstarter! It’s a modern game with an 80s theme and sounds like a really good time. Check it out!
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Tell me a little about Rememorex. What excites you about it?
Sean:Rememorex is a passion project that grew out of a massive lightning-bolt of inspiration. My wife and I are both old-school gamers, and we watched Stranger Things while constantly repeating how this story itself works like a tabletop game. My wife and I actually created Clearfield on the road from NJ to Chicago, and named Clearfield, DE ,after the town we were passing through on I-80. Out of idle curiosity, I asked some friends online if anyone would be interested in doing tabletop game set in the mid-‘80s, and the response was very positive. The game became an institution on our Jersey City Tuesday nights, and from there, things just gained momentum. My wife and I are very much 80’s kids: I’m a NJ Metalhead, and she’s a Chicago New Wave girl, so we cover a lot of ground.
There’s no denying that ‘80s are hot right now. I think it’s because Gen X is starting to produce a lot of entertainment so we’re lionizing our pasts the way the Boomers did for us (Seriously, how many of our Saturday Morning Cartoons were about letter jackets and drive-ins? What the hell did that have to with Q-bert of Galaxy High school? Now cartoons all have cassette players and Nintendos in the background.) So I guess we got lucky. Still, things are so garbage right now that any escapism seems to be welcomed by people. I get it. As for Nerdy City, well, we just wanted to go back to a time when there were still music videos on TV and the Transformers actually looked like something. Horror and mystery are just more fun when you can’t immediately look up what kind of asylum used to stand where your house was built, or call the cops when you’re the middle of the woods.
What are the mechanics like in Rememorex? How did you match the mechanics side of the game with the fiction?
Sean: Mechanics are intentionally simple and light. Characters are based on three simple stats: Type (Who you are), Training (What you know), and Talent (What makes you unique.). Dice are rolled, totaled, and compared against a target number. Action is super fast and easy. A fun mechanic we have is the “Tracking Error,” wherein players who’s characters aren’t present in the scene can affect their friends characters by changing things in it, helping or hindering things as they see fit!
Megan: Sean developed the Omnisystem a few years ago, I don’t even remember the original setting, but then decided it went well with this time travel idea he’d had, and that became Tempus Omni. It’s a very freeform, rules light system. You do roll dice, but your stats aren’t things like dexterity or charisma, it’s something that describes your character; a short sentence or even a phrase. We have a player who has stats as “The Actual Worst.” The rules that were added were both to keep on theme (nothing more 80s than a Montage) and also to both up the immersion and to help a larger than usual tabletop group work together. Tracking Errors is the best example of this; you have to roll a handful of dice, but not for the numbers, just for the sound, to alert the other players. Then even though your character is not in the scene, you can affect it in different ways. It helps to keep a larger group involved with the ongoing story, when they feel they can have some agency.
What are some cool experiences you’ve had while testing and developing? Is there something that really sticks out as really “on theme” for the game?
Sean: In Jersey City, we’ve had a Tuesday night Rememorex game for over six months and everyone in it is just brilliant. it’s really like a TV show- hell, I’m running it and *I* can’t wait to see what happens next. One of my players introduced a new mechanic when he had an unexpected bug show up in Orlando during a Tracking Error. Another started a running gag about glow-in-the-dark ninja stars. Megan and I carefully develop a playlist of synthwave and retro hits for each game, and that really helps maintain immersion. Some of my players have started games of their own, creating new towns full of weirdness in Jersey, Arizona, Ohio, and Minnesota, and I can’t wait to explore what they’ve created.
Megan: One of the non-mechanical mechanics that I love best about Rememorex games is the opening. Every time a game is run, the lights are dimmed, and everyone puts their phones away and gets quiet as the Special Presentation video plays, and then the theme song starts. It provides a sense of separation from the world outside the game, and a more visceral pull into the setting. Sean then went further and cut a credits video, with the player’s names as actors and he and I as directors. We played it for them for the first time in an actual movie theatre, and watching their faces and hearing the cheers as each name came up was really special.
In the Kickstarter, you talk about some of your inspirations. How did you choose what you’d draw from specifically? What themes really called to you?
Sean: Well, like I said in the KS, Stranger Things was obviously a huge influence, but I also took a lot from some of the more forgotten films of the “80s kids vs. the world” genre. Everyone remembers ET and Gremlins, for example, but The Last Starfighter (an underrated gem) and The Wraith (a deeply cheesy b-movie with some really interesting ideas) are really worth checking out. Hell, even Labyrinth fits into the genre, although it’s sort of a subversion of the theme. Rather than the supernatural coming to the suburbs, the suburban girl comes to a world of impossible wonders. In all of these stories, kids win out against impossible odds through teamwork, determination, and heart. How goofy is that? It was bizarre, growing up in a time that almost seemed to idealize itself while it was happening. There was no shame in being unabashedly sincere or even cheesy. It just felt like cynicism hadn’t… metastasized yet, you know?
Megan:Obviously Stranger Things. Many of the classics of dread; Twilight Zone, Creepypasta, YouTube horror. Then the whole pantheon of 80’s movies we love; music from the time, tv, etcetera. Every single named business and most of the notable town personages are some deep deep cut of an 80s reference. That’s one of my favorite memories from our first burst of inspiration on that long drive; the laughing and excitement as we tried to outdo and stump each other with subtle name-checks.
As far as the more serious themes, paranoia is definitely a strong thread. In this current age, there is a pervasive, day to day dread that is affecting a lot of people. The lens of the Cold War as seen through by kids and teens puts you in that same place, where something is WRONG, and even though you are seemingly powerless, it’s still up to you to do something to save the day.
How do relationships work in Rememorex?
Sean: There is a table of connections. The first player on the right rolls a die to determine the type of relationship, and the first on the left rolls what it is, on down the line until everyone is connected. Your character might secretly be dating one person, share a shift at the Video store with another, and carpool with a third, but you’re embarrassed to be seen with them for some reason. You’re a kid, so your social life is much sloppier and more full of unnecessary drama. When junior high school is your dungeon, secret crushes, bullies,and best, best friends are your traps, monsters, and treasure. Rememorex doesn’t underestimate this.
Megan:There is an entire relationship mechanic in Rememorex, meant to intertwine people before the game even starts. It was heavily influenced by Fiasco, which is a game we both really enjoy, and also by older games where you roll to set up your character history.
Once the initial rolling is done, relationships continue organically.
— Thank you very much for doing this interview, Megan and Sean! I hope you all enjoyed reading the interview and that you’ll check out Rememorex on Kickstarter now!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
