Hi all! Today I have an interview with Nicolas Ronvel, a.k.a. Gulix, creator ofFacing the Titan, a game that just successfully funded on Kickstarter! The crowdfund may be passed, but you can still follow the Kickstarter and pick up the game upon release! It has amazing titans and I’m excited to feature some work from the French gaming community! Check out Nicolas’s responses below!
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Tell
me a little about Facing the Titan. What excites you about it?
Facing
the Titan is a GM-less RPG. It features a group of heroes, the Company, against
a gigantic being: the Titan. The Company’s fate is to defeat the Titan, and the
goal of the game is to tell that story. But it’s not a tactical game. In Facing
the Titan, the Companions will remember the past, share their memories, tell
each other their journeys and what they prepare for the grand finale. Then, and
only then, they will face the Titan. It’s a lively discussion game.
Facing
the Titan is my first “big” game. I wrote several micro-RPG over the
past few years. But this one is the first I push to get a full RPG that will
get a physical life through a book. It’s a big achievement for me. That’s what
excites me.
And I want to see Facing the Titan get its own life. I playtested it while always participating in the game. I want to see actual plays, to read stories from the game. I want to see how people use the game and maybe change it.
Since
Facing the Titan isn’t a tactical game, what are the mechanics and gameplay
like?
The mechanics of Facing the
Titan are based on those from Swords Without Master.
First, there are the Tones.
When, during the discussion, you want to be at the center of the attention, you
grab the dice (or someone give them to you), and you roll them. During each
Phase, one specific Tone is associated with each Dice. For example, in the
World Phase, you play with the Tones Ruins (Black Die) and Wonders (White Die).
The higher die tells you which Tone to use. And you frame what you say around
the Tone. You can use it for the subject you talk about, for the mood of your
story, the way you tell. It’s open to interpretation.
If you roll a Double, well,
the Titan steps in and you use one of its Tones. And special rules apply.
Then, there are the Motifs.
During play, you will record words, expressions, feelings, images other players
are saying. And when you got enough Motifs, the current Phase ends and you can
get to the next one (there are 5 Phases). The further you get in the game, the
more Echoes you will have to write as Motifs. Echoes are Motifs that recall a
previous Motifs, while being different. That will bring a common thread in the
game, with the end game reflecting ideas and themes seen all through the game.
Those are the Mechanics :
Tones and Motifs.
What kind of threats do the
Titans pose – what are they like, and how do people feel about them in the
fiction?
It depends on the Titan. Each one of them has a different story, a different stature in its Setting. And each one comes with a different Setting.
Generally, they pose a threat by their size. They crush villages, destroy buildings and wanders without even noticing it. But some are evil or malevolent. Some are causing damages knowingly.
The Titans are described briefly, because I wanted to give prompts, ideas. Not fully fledged creatures. So each group, each game will set what is the level of threats the Titan pose. The illustrator was chosen because of this. I didn’t want photorealistic pictures of the Titan. I wanted pictures describing them broadly but leaving a great place for the players imagination. Roger Heal managed to do that with great talent.
What is an average session like, in the
rise and fall of play?
First of all, a game of Facing the Titan is not prepared. Of course, you will need at least one person who knows the rules, but that’s all. As with Fiasco, we choose a Playset and go for it. Here, we choose a Titan, the associated Setting, and we go for it.
The first part of the game involves choosing the elements of the setting that you want to use. Then we really start the game.
The first Phase, the Companions Phase, allows us to create the characters, to start discovering them. This Phase is in two parts. We start in a disembodied way, and we tell the story of the successive entrances of our characters into a place that we have just defined. Then we play our characters. They haven’t been together for a long time, and they’re going to discuss the past.
The second Phase moves away from the characters to focus on the Titan. Who is it? What is it? What is it capable of? Through vignettes told like scenes from a movie, we will show it.
The third Phase goes back to the characters and their discussion. Through them, we will share about their travels and talk about the world.
The fourth Phase continues the discussion but changes the subject: what have we prepared to face the Titan?
Finally comes the last Phase of the game, the Clash Phase. In this one, a player will lose his character to play the Titan. Then, like a choreographed duel, the Titan then the Companions then the Titan again then… will take control of the story and narrate the duel. With the objective of making it epic, memorable and giving a beautiful exposure to all the characters.
Finally, the game ends with an Epilogue, where each player can tell what happens to his/her character.
This division into five Phases forces the story told and the scenario that will be created around the table, even if each game will turn out to be different by the choice of the Titan, the Setting and the ideas that the players will bring with them. Each Phase also offers different Tones. The dice roll will determine the tone to be used when speaking, and each Phase will have a very different theme.
What sort of media do you use as reference
to help inspire you while designing a game about something fantastical like the
Titans?
When I started working on the game, I didn’t have any graphic resources. Just ideas, images. Then as I went along, I accumulated images of gigantic creatures in various monster manuals, on the subreddit /r/ImaginaryBehemoths, in galleries on DeviantArt and ArtStation. I also used landscape images a lot. Nature and its power have inspired me for some of the most raw Titans.
Contrary to what some might think, I didn’t really take inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus. It hangs around in my subconscious, of course, but I had to use at most one fan art of the game in the process of creating of the game. The game was called Facing the Colossus at first. But I didn’t want to mention Shadow of the Colossus too much for the difference in the way the game was played (a group game against a solitaire game, a narrative game against a riddle game).
When I found Roger Heal and started receiving the first drafts of Titans, the game’s different worlds began to take shape. Some Settings have been extensively modified following details of his illustrations. Illustrations that were based on my concepts of Titans. There was a very interesting ping pong on that side.
The people living in those flatlands, they don’t know true horror. They’ve never heard its sound. They’ve never had to run, run downhill to the flats and hope there ain’t just another hill to come, hearing the growls, hearing the scream, the baaaaaaah it roars, the sound of its four feet pounding unevenly behind you. In the hills, we know. The hills don’t have eyes. They have the phimf.
Tarnin Covalesky, woodsman
This blessed image is of the Hillside Phimf by Thomas Novosel.
Background
The Hillside Phimf is a cryptid. The most elusive kind, that is, until you’re on a hillside at night. Then it’s just nearer than near, its hot breath just bristling your hair and its rage tenable, just behind you. It’s a perilous beast, and like none you’ve ever heard of. There are some who try to compare it to a sidehill gouger, but those beasts are sweet creatures in comparison to the giant Phimf.
It might sound the opposite of terrifying when it’s stuck to hillsides, but you’ll only think that until you spend some days in a region where there’s more sideways than straight. The creature walks on two short legs and two long ones, gripping the hillside, and reaching out with four arms to capture anyone caught unawares on the slope. It rarely goes hungry, and only ranges where dips and valleys make their home.
The screaming roar it makes seems to echo through the hillsides, but is never heard inside the thick-walled homes. The trees buffer its baahhhhing, its cry to the wind. The Phimf is said to be half gorilla, some sort of ape, with large grasping hands and fearful teeth, and half goat, with clopping hooves that find even steep cliffs no trouble at all. Where it comes from, no one knows, but we do know where it goes – ’round the hills, soon as dusk falls, and not stopping until its growls turn into satisfied grumbles from a good meal. If there’s no folk around to have a bite, it’s not afraid of partial cannibalism, eating everything from other goats to spare possums trying to find their way home in the night. All along it stalks the hills.
The Phimf has their weird goat eyes, rectangular pupils and wide, with a legendary ability to see in the dark. Bright lights shy them away, but if they’re hungry they’ll just eat the light. Goat gut’ll digest anything, so they say. They might yell while they do it, truth be told. Their bleating yells reveal squat, square teeth that crush more than shear. They batter on their chest with apelike hands that have long reach and strong grip.
The way to get at them, supposedly, is a crew with strong stomachs who can round it up onto the flat. Its strengths become weaknesses then as it’ll topple to the side, struggling between its short and long legs. It’s still grabby as all get out, but it’ll eat anything you put in front of it – even if that snack happens to be sleep-inducing or worse. No one knows for sure whether it’ll work, but someone had better do something to protect these hills.
All Arms. The Phimf has four arms and is always counted as having reach in all directions, and cannot be flanked.
Actions
Multiattack.The Phimf makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its hands. It can make both attacks against the same target.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 33 (4d12 + 7) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 17). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the Phimf can’t bite another target.
Grasping Hands. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 17). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the Phimf can’t grab another target.
Disgusting Roar. The Hillside Phimf has eaten ungodly things and its stomach works hard to digest it. When the Phimf roars to frighten its prey, anyone caught in the 20ft. cone must make a DC 10 Constitution save or suffer nausea and dizziness for 1d4 rounds (Temporary Constitution & Dexterity Penalty of -2).
Facilitator Notes
Drives
Driven by unending hunger.
Driven to find the tastiest food the most easily.
Doggedly pursues anything that smells like food regardless of when it last ate.
Interactions & Reactions
The Phimf is almost never seen during the day, seeking caves, shadowed cliffsides, and abandoned houses or barns to hide in when the sun is out.
If attacked, the Phimf will only try to fight back or resist. It will never try to run away. At most, it will seek cover when the sun is rising.
The Phimf is always hungry, and has no restrictions on its diet.
The Phimf is a large – some would say gargantuan – beast that has four cloven hooves like a goat, two short on the right and two long on the left, that make it easy for them to travel over hillsides, with a stout torso that’s heavily muscled and four gorilla arms and hands, as well as a ape-like face that’s long in the snout like a goat, and four pointed horns – perhaps the creature’s only point of pride.
Other System Notes
The Hillside Phimf has 8 hit dice.
Grasping Hands equivalent damage: Maul or Heavy Two-Handed Weapon.
Bite equivalent damage: Greataxe – three attacks for each bite.
Hillside Phimf for Monster of the Week
Monster: Devourer (motivation: to eat everything tasty)
Powers
All Arms: The Phimf has four arms and is always counted as having reach in all directions, and cannot be flanked.
Disgusting Roar: The Hillside Phimf has eaten ungodly things and its stomach works hard to digest it. When the Phimf roars to frighten its prey, anyone caught in the blast takes 1-harm close messy.
Teeth and Hands Attacks: Bite: 3-harm hand; Grasping Hands: 4-harm hand close.
Armor
Tough Skin: 1-armor.
Harm Capacity
12.
Weakness
Hunger & daylight: If the Phimf is tricked into eating something that could harm it, it takes harm more easily (no armor against ingestion). It also is weakened in daylight, but mostly in that it will cower and try to hide.
Tell me a little about A Town Called Malice. What excites you about it?
Nordic Noir is a great genre. It refers to more than just an international import, it’s an approach to ensemble-style drama where characters of different backgrounds all deal with the same dramatic tension equally. The BBS series “Broadchurch” is a great example where everyone in the same small town comes to terms with a murder over multiple episodes, and the first run of “Twin Peaks” is the same way. From a game mechanics perspective, it’s something I hadn’t done before – my previously credits used the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. It’s excite to explore a new style of gameplay.
What are the characteristics of Nordic Noir and how do they show up in A Town Called Malice?
Nordic Noir is more character-driven, I find the tragedy or crime to be
solved becomes a prism to show the internal conflicts the characters are
experiencing. Both the original and US version of “The Killing” show
how multiple backgrounds are affected by a terrible death and as the series
progresses, we as an audience see the story go deeper beyond just the basic
“Whodunnit” type of mystery. By going with a story game format, (as
opposed to something more stat driven), it emphasized the relationships the
player were building within the narrative. That seemed more of the portrayal of
the genre.
How do you ensure the players are comfortable, while still unsettling
them as appropriate, in a Nordic Noir game?
We of course make sure to highlight appropriate safety measures and basic responsibility when dealing with both the horror and relationship elements. Because the players cooperate in building the narrative, they also lead the drama to the levels that best suit their gameplay tastes.
What are the characters like and how are characters built for the game?
Characters are guided by several things – Each role has a Personal Goal which should influence the player’s actions. These guidelines are intended to be neutral to how the player feels they’re best served. The Personal Goal of the “Criminal” role for example, is to “Gain the Advantage”. This can be interpreted by the player, and can be either a good or a bad trait depending on the situation. Gaining the advantage can be interpreted into helping the Law in solving the bigger problems of the Town for example.
Characters are also developed by the relationships they have with the other players at the table, through the use of Heit and Kult dice. These dice are placed in between the players at the table, representing the immediate relationship around them. Both players have input into that relationship, so a relationship can be a mixture of both good and bad feelings. This allows the players to expand on the overall narrative and determine what they need to personally overcome in order to succeed.
If players wanted to play the game and get the most out of it, how would you suggest they prepare for it?
I have really enjoyed watching players going deeper than
they normally would’ve in say, a straightforward dungeon crawl. I think people
will enjoy it most when they focus on the relationship aspects as much as
trying to overcome the supernatural threats to the Town – what does your
character feel? What do they need? How can they overcome these things together?
It’s a really different focus for me as a creator, and I’m glad to see people
get excited about the prospects of what Malice can be.
And for fun, what would you suggest as the ideal murder?
Wait. Who talked to you? I wasn’t there, no matter what you’ve heard! (laughs)
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Sophie Lagace, PK Sullivan, and Ed Turner about Fate of Cthulhu, which is currently on Kickstarter. I am impressed with some of the changes they’ve made to the Mythos and to Fate for the project, and I hope you do too! Check it out!
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Tell me a little about Fate of Cthulhu. What excites you about it?
Sophie Lagace: It’s a take on Cthulhu I have not really seen before, where the heroes are seriously out-gunned and out-tentacled, but not hopeless. Maybe you can’t save humanity from an apocalypse, but you can save it from complete extinction, for example. It’s a game about fighting back even when you’re a tiny person against a monstrous evil, giving it all you got and having a chance to make a difference. I can seriously relate, these days.
Also, we acknowledge the glaring flaws in the source material and in H.P. Lovecraft himself, take the good, and reject the bad. I love critical examination of our faves rather than pretending everything is fine
PK Sullivan: This is the first genuinely hopeful take on the Cthulhu mythos that I’ve seen. That’s something really important to me. Sean Nittner reached out to me in July 2015 asking if I would be the lead designer for this Fate Cthulhu game that Evil Hat wanted to make. My first response was, “Me? Are you sure? I’m not a Cthulhu fan.” Ultimately I think that worked in my favor. Stephen took point on the mythos story while my job was to design a system that reinforced the themes of the mythos. But I need hope in my stories — I made that very clear early on — so Fate of Cthulhu started to lean more toward the good you can do in the timeline
It can still be a pyrrhic victory, or you can still completely screw things up and make the future worse but there’s always the chance, the possibility, the hope that things can be better. And ultimately that’s what you’re trying to achieve as a character: a better future.
Which is surprisingly easy to achieve when the timeline starts as dark as possible.
Ed Turner: Sophie and PK already adequately covered the joys of cosmic horror with a side of hope, so I’m going to be a bit more mechanics-focused: it’s corruption that excites me. As characters deal with phenomena related to the Great Old One, they’ll slowly be corrupted by the sheer wrongness of eldritch forces. Left unchecked, corruption takes the form of horrible mutations. You want claws and tentacles and dripping ichor and other body horror shenanigans? Eat your heart out. Maybe literally… corruption can do weird things.
I love corruption for so many reasons. It’s a way to convey the danger of these alien entities without falling back on tired and problematic notions of “madness.” It’s a way to give players actual hard consequences when things go awry—having a character die is almost never as interesting as having a character’s very humanity get twisted. But more than anything else, it’s a way to empower characters… as bad as corruption is, your new tentacles are also tools in your arsenal, a way you can use the Great Old One’s own malevolence against itself. It ties back to that all-important sense of hope: the worse things get for a character, the better they are able to fight back. As bad as the threat you’re facing is, it contains the seeds of its own destruction.
And of course it means your character can have tentacles. Nothing wrong with more tentacles. The heroes need to even out the tentacle playing-field.
Sophie Lagace
What is your role in the project, and what did you especially enjoy working on over the course of the project?
SL: I have had three roles. The project stretched on for nearly four years (with almost a year out of that devoted to the playtest rounds), so many things changed along the way. I started on quality control, a sort of sounding board for “Does this thing fit as a Fate game?” Eventually the project management work was rearranged across all Evil Hat products and Sean Nittner asked me to take over project management for this one. And as of almost a year ago, when Lenny Balsera didn’t have time to be Fate Line Developer, I have taken that on as well.
I tremendously enjoyed working (once again!) with top talent, and this will continue with our stretch goal collaborators. On a personal level, I had a flash of elation when, after compiling the mass of data from our beta playtest round, I suddenly realized that we had objective confirmation that we had addressed the problems revealed by the alpha round. We all had a vague, hopeful sense from the comments received that maybe we were on the right track, but it was great to get hard data
PK: I’m the lead designer and I love weird challenges in game design. The first four or five months of design was very collaborative. Sean, Sophie, Stephen, and I (wow, am I the only not-S on the original team?) had a bunch of Skype calls where we hashed out the parameters of the game, both fiction and mechanics. The thing we hit on was that the meat of this game would be in an ever-changing, non-deterministic timeline. Which is hella tricky because we have characters coming from the literal future who know the timeline as a matter of fact.
The first iteration of our timeline mechanisms pretty detached from any role play the characters made. At the conclusion of an event (more or less what we call an adventure) one of the players would get slapped with paradox and suffer terrible visions of the new future they’ve created. This involved a skill check against an epic difficulty that was almost sure to cost resources (Fate points, etc.), followed by rolling four Fate dice with modifiers based on how well that skill check went. If the player had been able to shake off time’s assault just fine, then they got to improve dice. If they blew that defense roll, then one of the dice was guaranteed to be a negative. The dice result became the new rating of the event the players had just completed (more or less how badly it screws humanity) and those dice rippled out to the other events in the timeline. This did two things: it gave the characters valuable information about the new state of the timeline and made sure no one could game the system for the best result.
Playtesters hated it
So I had to go back to the drawing board. I redesigned the timeline mechanisms so that the heroes and the squamous horrors of the void are competing on a track for changes to the timeline. As those rack up, ripples get made across the other events. But! Now it’s up to the GM to interpret what those ripples mean. This was a really clever solution to a problem I didn’t know we had. I was leaning too hard into the action element of the action-horror stories we set out to tell. By making the timeline changes a GM element, while giving them tools and guidance to convey those changes to the players in thematically appropriate ways, the uncertainty that players faced dramatically increased. Uncertainty is key to horror stories. We need to keep the players in a state of imperfect information, even if other Fate games rely on perfect information.
That was the biggest challenge in the game and one I hope goes over well. Fred and some of the early readers have really responded to the condensed, concise Fate Core rules set I’ve put together for the game. The first stretch goal was to put that into the Fate Core SRD so people can build their own Fate games using those 50 pages of rules. That’s very flattering. I really hope people build tons of great games off this chassis I put together. It would be the greatest reward so far in my game design career.
ET: I got pulled into the project relatively late, to help get it ready for the second round of playtests, and after that I was part of the writing team. In practice, most of my energy went into the detail work: example text, spells and rituals, corruption stunts, things of that nature. Whenever you see a list of things, I probably had a hand in it. It’s not easy to pick a favorite part—by the time I started working on the project, the core of it had already come more-or-less together. It meant that I was given a wonderfully ghastly playground to explore.
Perhaps my favorite part was helping to finalize the timelines themselves. Stephen wrote some wonderful apocalypses, which are just an absolute delight to read; my job involved statting up the NPCs and horrible monsters that populate his world. In short, getting them ready for a GM to pick up and throw at their players, while still being as weird and scary as Stephen envisions. It’s a fun challenge.
Ed Turner
What are the unique challenges of a timey wimey affected game? You’ve talked about the timelines – what do those mean to the players?
SL: For one thing, it means being able to play some pretty unusual characters, whether by having corruption aspects and stunts, or by confronting temporal paradox. We had playtester groups who reported that some of their members played different versions of the same character, and that seemed to generate a lot of fun moments for them.
For another, it means that the heroes will be dealing with high stakes; for example, if you can’t change the timeline, you have not the possibility but the certitude that everyone you ever cared about will suffer a horrible, ah, fate.
Finally, the fact that a group can tackle any of the four key events in a timeline in any order in turn makes each story truly unique to that group. It’s likely that two gaming group taking on the same timeline and Great Old One will have a very different narrative, so replay value should be good.
ET: It means that players and GMs alike will be contending with an interesting juxtaposition of knowledge and uncertainty. The timeline gives players many, though not all, of the essential details about what they’ll encounter during an event, but their actions ripple forward, changing subsequent events. The knowledge they were so sure of at the outset grows less and less helpful as time goes on. And it gives the GM room to really mess with players’ expectations. Of course, that does also suggest part of the challenge: rationing out that change. PK pointed out earlier that uncertainty is key to horror stories, but uncertainty requires a solid baseline, otherwise things change so rapidly that they stop being unsettlingly wrong and start being pure static. In other words, the GM can’t mess with players’ expectations if things get so chaotic that the players don’t have any expectations anymore. Timelines, and the timeline track, help contain that chaos, so players will always know more-or-less what’s going to happen, but can be shocked by the details.
PK: The biggest challenge was finding a way to have timeline actually matter. We decided early on that a timeline would play a significant role in the game. That’s why the whole structure of Fate of Cthulhu is built around the timeline. When I started mucking about with possible timeline systems, I realized that for it to work it needed to do two contradictory things: the players have to know the timeline and the timeline has to change and shift. From there it was a tightrope to walk of having the changes be unpredictable and Lovecrafting while letting the players feel like they earned the changes to it.
How did you approach making an inclusive game in something that most marginalized consider volatile, the Lovecraftian mythos, both mechanically and in the fiction and in presentation of the game rules?
SL: It was clear from the first moment that to make this a game which Evil Hat could publish, we would have to face the true monsters in the Lovecraft story. It just would not have been compatible with our mission to gloss over racism, ableism, and other -isms.
It may be tacky but I’m going to toot my own horn here regarding the concept of sanity: I was the first to suggest a corruption mechanic and the high cost of facing the horrors being the slow transformation into a monster yourself. I’m very fond of RPGs that ask the question “What are you willing to sacrifice in order to succeed?” instead of just “Will you succeed?” I think it’s central to Fate, a game where PCs have lots of resources to draw on in order to achieve goals.
That said, I’m certain someone else would rapidly have come up with the corruption idea, but I felt good about being the one to pull it out of an evil hat.
ET: I think Sophie really hits the nail on the head: getting rid of the tired and thoughtless treatment of “sanity” pulls a lot of weight. I think it also helps to be absolutely explicit when we call out Lovecraft’s bigotry. It’s so commonly elided over, or dismissed as being a product of its time. And that’s no good… his writings often, and with varying levels of subtlety, other real-world groups, and that’s something we don’t want to lazily perpetuate.
And of course, we can’t forget the contributions of our sensitivity reader, Misha Bushyager. Sensitivity consultation is great idea in general, but on something like this, it’s invaluable.
PK Sullivan
How is Fate of Cthulhu different from other experiences in Fate, from your perspective? What do you hope people enjoy in the variation?
SL: I think it puts in doubt whether you will achieve success like no other Fate game we’ve released before. Also, there are not that many role-playing games that provide mechanical support to allow time travel and changing the future, and I don’t know of any other based on the Fate engine. In fact, most time-travel RPGs I know of have a lighter tone: TimeWatch (Pelgrane Press), Doctor Who (FASA, Cubicle 7), Time & Temp (Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing), etc.. On the other hand, Fate of Cthulhu can have funny moments, but it’s not meant to be played for laughs
ET: The timelines give the game a very strong narrative superstructure; there is a very clearly defined end point that you are building to: eventually the moment of the Great Old One’s rise will arrive, and it’s on you to be ready for it. It means there’s a grand finale always on the horizon, which gives the campaign an ongoing sense of pace… the characters might not know what the best next step is, but it’s impossible for them to lose sight of their greater goal. It’s not the very first Fate game to do something like this; Uprising has a built-in narrative arc leading to an end point. But Fate of Cthulhu pushes the concept even further, diving really deep into the short, focused campaign concept. I also hope that people take advantage of the focused, relatively brief campaign by going through multiple apocalypses. Not only by re-trying a timeline, hoping to get a better result with the next iteration, but by trying out the variety of timelines in the book and coming out as stretch goals from the Kickstarter.
PK: Most Fate games have characters change laterally, sometimes gaining in power but only in small doses. Because a given campaign is really just four adventures — four events on the timeline — and a denouement in the form of the final event Rise of the Great Old One, we actually put advancement on the fast track. PCs get a new skill every milestone. But… that’s tempered by the corruption mechanisms. This is the only Fate game I know of where you can end up in a mechanically reinforced spiral of self-destruction. Corruption stunts offer you great power but at the cost of further corruption. Not to mention many of the horrors you’ll face can push you down that path, as well. It’s another interesting dichotomy where characters can get very powerful very fast but also just wind up taking themselves right out of play by getting too dark.
One last question! If you could be in the Fate of Cthulhu world, what would you most want to do and see? What would be the wildest adventure you could want?
PK: Is it a cop out to say I don’t want to go there? We made the worst future! Futures! There are five of them! They’re all completely terrible. War, plague, famine, pestilence, and unending subjugation await anyone who lives long enough to see the future. If I had to be someone in Fate of Cthulhu, I think I’d want to be a modern day mystic. Maybe someone who has visions of the future. Being haunted by nightmarish visions of things yet to be is about the most chill thing you can be in this world.
SL: I’m with PK! But I would want to see success in avoiding a cataclysm, righting things to the point where humanity can build a better future. So, ++++ on the timeline!
ET: Yeah, there’s definitely no great place in the Fate of Cthulhu world. But I dunno, I think the Dagon timeline might be pretty okay? I mean, assuming you survive the horrible transformation into a Deep One. Sure, you’d suffer eternal subservience to a giant paranoid fish-monster at the bottom of the ocean, but you’d get to breathe underwater, and that’s pretty cool. That’s about as good a trade-off as a Great Old One is going to offer.
What is the Deck of Many Names, both as a product and as your vision?
The
Deck of Many Names is a 120-card deck designed to help flesh out minor NPCs on
the fly during a game of Dungeons & Dragons (or similar fantasy games).
Each card has a name, fantasy species, gender, rough age category, and quick
roleplay tidbit. When players engage an NPC who was originally a faceless bit
of background, you can just draw a card and immediately have enough information
to handle that unexpected bit of conversation. The deck is big enough that you
could generate two such NPCs every week for over two years before repeating
anybody.
I’ve seen big names like Matt Mercer suggest having a list of names prepped for the same purpose, but I thought the solution could be better. After all, with a prepared list of names (or online name generator), you’re still left having to decide details like gender on the fly. In addition to that being a bit of work, I’ve seen too many games where every such NPC turns out to be a human man. With the Deck of Many Names, you can skip some of those decisions while also ensuring that your array of NPCs includes a spectrum of genders, fantasy species, and age ranges. Basically, it’s a project meant to make D&D games both easier and more inclusive.
What kind of information about the characters are on the cards so you can easily reference it?
Each
card includes a name (given name only), gender (depicted on a spectrum), an age
category (young, middle, old), fantasy species, and a short bit of text
offering a quirk or other roleplaying cue.
The information is not extensive, because things like combat stats or personal history/occupation are likely to either not come up or already be established by the time you draw a card. For example, you may have just finished a combat against a group of bandits but your players surprised you by taking one captive to interrogate. You already know they’re a bandit and you’re done with their stats, but now you need to be able to play out a dialogue. Just draw a card and you’ve got their name and other relevant details. Or maybe you thought your players would just stop into the shop and get what they needed, but instead they try to start a relationship with the shopkeeper. You already know they’re a shopkeeper, but now you need those personal details that will enable a conversation; that’s what you get by drawing a card.
Of course, you can use these cards other times besides on the fly. Are you planning a campaign about an evil necromancer and don’t know how to decide their name, gender, etc? Draw a card. Do you need a starting point for creating your next PC? Draw a card and go from there. It really helps with a lot of things!
What kind of NPCs will we see in the deck, in background, ability, etc.?
You might draw a card and discover that the NPC in question is a younger human man named Abdul, or an older nonbinary gnome named Umpen, or a medium-aged tiefling named Osah. Each would also include a minor roleplay hook, like “can’t stop moving their hands when they talk,” or “uses verbal fillers a lot”. There are all sorts of combinations!
Content Warning: Since this article was posted, multiple individuals have come forward with statements credibly addressing Swordsfall a.k.a. Brandon Dixon’s abuse of power and violation of consent. With respect to their shared experiences, I am putting a note on this article to ensure that their voices are heard and future readers are aware. Many statements are not public so I’ve only linked to the public statement. Please do not direct any harassment to the survivors who have raised these concerns.
What is Swordsfall’s Tikor, both as a product and as your vision?
Swordsfall is almost like a platform. It encompasses the setting book, “Welcome to Tikor”, a RPG, a comic book and even novels. So it’s truly a world that I can use to do all sorts of creative projects with. As fans start to find favorite characters and place, I want to be able to go to those things and do EVEN more. The setting book is my way of opening the door to that world.
How do you consider Swordsfall and Tikor to be special in their content and design?
Well, no one else is
really doing Afrofuturism like I am. It’s why I’m saying its part of the
Afropunk sub-genre. It has it’s own style. That punk style. But instead of
being anti-capitalism, it’s anti-colonialism. Or really, a world re-imagined
where that was never a factor. Then you have the art. T’umo Mere has a style of
his own. His art is bold, striking and dripping in real African lore. He’s from
Botswana so he’s been happy to dig into his own culture and the ones around him
for source material.
What were some choices you made in the art and presentation of Swordsfall and Tikor to show the values and style of the setting?
A couple of big things we’re focusing on are color and patterns. African cultures have almost used color to tell a story. You’re never going to a picture where everyone is draped in black. Those colors and what they mean are important, and we’re making sure they’re in Swordsfall. The other big thing in African cultures are patterns. Different cultures had their own symbols and patterns, but almost all had them. And they meant something. It could be mundane, it could be a call to a spirit. But the combination of colors and patterns often told a story. And Tikor will have that as well.
Tell me a little about Mysthea: Legends From the Borderlands. What excites you about it?
So! Mysthea: Legends From the Borderlands is a game of post-war rebuilding and divided loyalties in a geomantic fantasy world. It’s set in a city that’s in territory contested by two major powers, and now those powers are at war. The war front has passed over this city and is now a distant rumble, and the city is free again – though much worse for wear. Each player creates a faction active in the city, whether they’re an ancient order, a new organisation dedicated to refugee support, or sent by one of the great powers to rebuild the city and pursue their patron’s agenda. You’ll make a viewpoint character from your faction, dive into the politics and struggles of the wounded city, and see how it changes from flashpoint to flashpoint.
I’m excited about:
Telling a zoomed-in story: your group will find out how a single city grows and how its people change over the span of a few decades. You’ll craft this city and get to know its districts, its politics, its festivals.
A dive into weird fantasy: Mysthea is a world defined by the crystals scattered over it by a prehistoric impact. These crystals warp the environment and its creatures, but also resonate with human thought. What does a society look like where everyone has limited telekinesis, and can use these crystals to build, fight, control beasts, craft prosthetics, etc? I’m interested in finding out!
A game of empire and liberation. At least some of the player factions will be coming into the city as liberators, having ousted the previous occupiers. But the ousting wasn’t clean, and the faction’s patrons aren’t altruists. As you play you’ll deal with what happens after liberation, as each faction must reckon with their obligations to their patrons, the city, and each other. We’re hoping the fantasy setting will provide the needed distance to really dig into this thorny topics, and have hired cultural consultants to try and ensure we do so respectfully.
I like this zoomed in look, and I’m curious about the
flashpoints! What does it feel like in play to go from moment to moment in this
world, and how is that represented in the game?
A flashpoint starts with
you defining its core issue: why have we decided to pick up this city’s story
here? Maybe a battalion of soldiers has arrived at the city and demanded
supplies? Perhaps a shower of crystal meteors have hit the city, causing destruction
and warped the area? Or maybe one of the player factions has decided they’ve
had enough, and is going to try and seize control of the city?
So – you’ve set up this
flashpoint. To play through it, you’ll jump between the actions of Houses
(slow, ponderous, and vast) and Heroes – agile and dynamic, but with their own
priorities. We’ve designed the two layers to feel very different in play. House
actions add new elements to the map and reshape the city’s balance of power,
but use up a limited pool of Decrees. The hero phase feels more like standard
PbtA, something like Monster of the Week. Your group of characters have a
mission to deal with, and as you play out the moment-to-moment drama of that
conflict you’ll test your bonds with your fellows and discover new truths about
the world. The two phases flow into each other. Your Houses’ actions set up
threats and opportunities for your Heroes to deal with, while your Heroes’
on-the-ground experience of this city and its people can completely change your
Houses’ priorities and goals.
How do you approach the
idea of consent and agency in a world where people can control things with
their mind, able to break rules with a thought?
One of the interesting things about magic in Mysthea is that it adds agency, and its most powerful effects need close friends working together on a common goal. It’s a link between the mental and the material and has been used in-setting to craft crystal prostheses amputees can telekinetically control, and literally give agency to constructed beings of stone and crystal.
There’s the other element
too – consent and agency. One person acting on their own can only perform a few
tricks with crystal shards and boost their normal actions – to do more, you
need to work together. By calling on the aid of those who have strong bonds
with you you add their wisdom to yours, letting you work together to go beyond
human limits, evoke world-warping auras and more.
The fact that magical
potency comes from close bonds and common goals instead of years of arcane
research and expensive components is really interesting! What sort of society
does that lead to? How does that change how minority groups organise and lobby
for their rights? How do autocrats maintain their power, knowing what power
lies in their subject’s hands if they work together? I’m interested to find
out!
I didn’t ask questions about the monsters but this thing is RAD.
I was just asking people
about making games that happen after the liberation! What do you think are the
challenges in designing a game with this focus, and what’s exciting about them?
One challenge is definitely
the messy complexity of these situations. You can’t turn back the clock – the
occupation happened, and it and your ‘liberation’ left scars on this place.
Among the city’s citizens you’ll have those who want to restore the old ways,
and those who suffered under that regime and want to keep moving forward. Among
the liberators, you’ll have isolationists wanting to minimise investment and
occupiers trying to claim this city permanently.
That’s a really interesting
social situation to drop players into, but it’s vital to keep the difference
between dogma and the true situation clear. Part of our solution is to make
sure the game prioritises humanity over ideology. We want to humanise all
parties involved, though that definitely doesn’t mean presenting all positions
as valid.
Finally, we’re aware of the
limits of our own perspectives, and have hired consultants to make sure we
treat sensitive matters with the appropriate degree of tact and care.
What are some of the more
complex aspects of designing a game focused on a whole city, rather than just a
few characters?
First, you have to treat
the city as a character in its own right, and give it a presence at the table.
The map of the city is central to the game: you begin by placing down its
districts and landmarks, and as you play you’ll introduce factors to it
representing people, places and events crucial to the current flashpoint.
It’s also important to
maintain the link between people and their community – to the extent that one
of the GM’s principles is ‘name everyone, and know who backs them’. There’s no
lone wolves in Legends From the Borderlands, and no faceless mooks – everyone
has their own identity, and their own place in the city’s cultural fabric.
Of course, the easiest way to make something feel alive is to have it change. The timeskips between flashpoints are here to establish that, letting the city grow physically and culturally – each time you jump ahead, you’ll describe ways the city’s appearance has changed, and a new festival that’s sprung up to remember the previous flashpoint.
Tell me a little about vs. KICKSTARTER. What excites you about it?
vs.
KICKSTARTER began as three small roleplaying games based on Phil Reed’s vs.
Monsters. More accurately, they are inspired by his vs. Outlaws, a
pared-down Wild West-themed version of his original game. That game was
produced on both sides of a multi-panel screen that folds down to a 5-1/2″
square.
A
bit over a decade ago, Phil opened the vsM Engine up for others to use. At that
time, I had worked a bit on three games based on vsM, but I wound up focusing
on completing a BFA and plans for development were pushed back. A few months
ago, there was a discussion on twitter about one of the settings I had
developed as a vsM-powered game. I looked back at the old files and while that
particular game needed a lot of work, I saw that vs. MARS was nearly done. So
much so, that a bit of trimming and it would fit on that folded screen
template. From there, the other two initial games featured in the campaign
followed.
vs.
MARS is a game about an alien invasion in a small town. I’ve always been a fan
of survival fiction — things like zombie movies where the focus and threat is about
the other survivors but there is some external threat pressuring the survivors.
vs. MARS really slots into that role. The unlocked expansion opens the game up
to leading a resistance on occupied Earth.
vs.
MIRRORSHADES is a fast-playing cyberpunk game. I love the cyberpunk genre and
my hope is this game falls a bit more into the social change/punk part of
cyberpunk rather than the chrome fetishization side. An unlocked two-panel
expansion to this adds fantasy races and magic to the MegaCity — it’s the
most-requested addition to any cyberpunk game.
vs.
PIRATES is a game in the golden age of piracy from our childhood memories. The
already-unlocked expansion came first: I’ve always wanted to play a game that
was a mashup of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and The Pirates of the
Caribbean. Without the expansion, you’re playing more of a Treasure
Island or Black Sails game. With the expansion, you’ve got undead
pirates, the kraken, and cursed treasure.
We’ve
recently unlocked vs. EMPIRE, a game that isn’t so much “Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off” as it is “Star Wars with
the serial numbers filled in Play-Doh”.
Initially, I thought the campaign would need $400 to fund and would probably top out at $600 or about 40 or 45 backers. I am excited about the response to the campaign so far! As I write this, the campaign is 500% funded and we are nearing 100 backers — that’s twice the number of backers and nearly twice the amount pledged past a point in my initial spreadsheet where I wrote “we’re probably dreaming at this point”. That these small games are inspiring people I don’t even know to come on board and help make them a reality is just something that surprised me — it really impressed me.
Great!
What about this particular mechanical system appealed to you to use in such a
variety of settings, and what have you changed to suit them?
When
I started designing my initial vs. game, I was interested in survival fiction.
Rather than being the proactive monster hunters of vs. Monsters where
your characters decide to hunt down monsters, having a setting where you are
forced to take on that role appealed to me. You’re a regular person and then
something happens: how do you react to that?
I
had two different main games I was developing which had the same underlying
elements: normality is interrupted by an invasion; you are simultaneously being
hunted and take on the role of the hunters. One game was somewhat campy, the
other somewhat serious. They combined and the theme of vs. MARS wound up
engulfing the other.
Since
my initial designs, my preferred game style has changed from one where we’re
just players reacting to the twists and turns of the GM’s story to more of a
style where there is player collaboration in they way the story is shaped. In
vs. MARS, there are rules for scene framing where a player answers two
questions: “What is this scene about?” and “Where does it take
place?” Adding an element like this helps to emulate the type of fiction
vs. MARS emulates — in a setting like an alien invasion, one major element is
isolation or separation. By adding scene framing, our protagonists don’t have
to be in a small clump of adventuring heroes all the time.
When
there is damage involved, conflict resolution now incorporates the suits of
cards drawn to speed up determining damage taken. The cyberpunk game, vs.
MIRRORSHADES, has a Metal stat that is used whenever cyberware augmentations
are used. To reflect the setting’s concept that cyberware is an improvement,
using Metal makes the highest card revealed a suit that trumps all others. It
effectively guarantees that you’re going to have some effect on the scene if
you use these augments.
You know I love small towns, so I’m curious, what do you do to make the town small and still feel worth being in for vs. MARS?
During
character creation, one of the things you would choose for your survivor is
their concept: something about what they did before the invasion and what they
want. This desire is something that should tie them into the town. The current
example character is Tabitha Masters, a French major at ETU who wants to get
home to make sure her family is safe.
Stock
locations are listed for a few things found in and around the town that convey
the theme of isolation.
What have you done to make fantasy character types exciting and respectful for cyberpunk, mechanically or setting-wise?
To
get to that, I have to work through the constraints of the project. Whenever I
see a new game come out the first question I always see asked is: “Can I
play Star Wars with it?” (Which is where vs. EMPIRE comes from.)
The second question is: “Can I play Shadowrun with it?” When
developing the cyberpunk vs. game, it seemed that a straight cyberpunk game
with an option to add on the fantasy elements would fit the limited space I had
available.
With
vs. MAGICSHADES, a player chooses their character’s heritage, which adds a
simple one-use bonus to the character. Some implied setting material, such as
the elf nation of Tir nAill claiming all elves as citizens, start to bring in
some classic tropes of pseudo-Shadowrun.
How are your pirates and their world different from and the same as those we most commonly see in media?
The
tagline for vs. PIRATES says the setting is based on the way we remember tales
of pirates from our childhood. I feel it is more cartoonish than serious. Even
though you could play something straight like the Black Sails television
show, I anticipate the default play style would be more like The Pirates of
the Caribbean if one stripped out all the supernatural aspects.
The
way vs. PIRATES works is we establish the approach one will take to a
situation. Our stats in the game are Swashbuckling and Parley. Basically if
you’re fighting, your approach uses Swashbuckling. If you’re not, it’s Parley.
An antagonist also has approaches, but they are based on their role. So a
pirate antagonist would be drawing more cards if they were doing something
piratey and fewer if they were doing something outside their role.
Going
back to that default play style, adding in the vs. DAVY JONES expansion bumps
the game towards that Buffy + Pirates of the Caribbean game, so
we can add some more supernatural elements to the antagonists and their goals.
What more do you have in store both for those already-achieved stretch goals and anything else to come?
I
really don’t want to overextend myself on this, which is the first Kickstarter
campaign I’ve handling myself. While I have been collaborating and working on
over a dozen others, I’ve seen a few easy ways how a successful campaign can be
twisted into become a financial nightmare.
I’ve
spoken to a few other campaign creators when it looked like we were close to
unlocking the vs. EMPIRE stretch goal. Nearly every one told me to not add
anything else that I don’t feel comfortable with. At this point, the project is
funded and will be delivered — with the planning I’ve done for the campaign,
it’s all good. I don’t want to take on additional costs that could disrupt
fulfillment of the project.
So
right now, the last stretch goal was “I’ll add a second topping to a
celebratory pizza when this is all over.”
However, I have plans for further developing some of those earlier vsM games into this format, including one game designed to be a 1-on-1 one-shot. I’ll see how fulfillment goes for this campaign first!
What is CAPERS Noir, both as a product and as your vision?
CAPERS Noir is the first
supplement for my award-winning CAPERS RPG. It provides new character options
and new GM tools as well as an alternative setting for the game. It takes the
core game setting of the 1920s Prohibition era and moves it forward
twenty years to the WW2 years. This alternative setting shifts from
gangster shoot-em-ups to moody, atmospheric, crime noir stories filled with
mystery and some horror elements. The additional rules and tools help fill out
this noir setting but are also perfectly usable in the core Roaring Twenties
setting.
This supplement is a test case for me, to see if CAPERS has the legs to become a full game line. The early success of the Kickstarter makes me feel it does. The fan base (old and new) have been very enthusiastic, supportive, and looking forward to seeing more. I have plans to publish at least two more supplements, each about the same size as CAPERS Noir. Each will take a similar path of being an alternative historical period/setting/theme while also expanding options for all other versions of the game. My hope is to explore a variety of “cops vs robbers” themes and tropes with these supplements.
What are the Noir rules like and how do they change CAPERS?
The core rules of
CAPERS Noir are still the same (and you need the core book to play). There are
some new powers, and I’ve tried some different things with how you gain
abilities and boosts, flexing the powers system a bit. The first big difference
is that CAPERS Noir includes investigation rules using the core playing card
mechanics. This rule subset allows an investigation to move forward (that is,
clues keep getting found) without shutting down the whole thing over one bad
trait check. Success and failure on the investigation checks instead describes
how you gain additional information or add complications to the story.
Additionally, the horror elements brought to bear in CAPERS Noir provides for the possibility that your character’s soul will be corrupted. Temptation lies around every corner. Committing terrible acts at the wrong time can bring you a bit more power, but at a cost. A “shade track” defines how far your character has fallen to darkness and what benefits and hindrances this causes. You can pull yourself back out in a few different ways, most commonly by paying attention to and pursuing your “beacon,” a person, place, or thing that you hold dear and seek to help and protect.
What have you put
together to flesh out a 1940s setting and explore that complex era?
Noir fiction and film
that developed in the 20s and 30s (and feed forward into the 40s and 50s) are
at the core of CAPERS Noir. The crime noir themes of the alternate setting
explore the darker side of humanity, nihilism, fatalism, cynicism. Things
aren’t what they seem, morally gray characters are everywhere, and the
protagonist doesn’t always “win.” It’s a world of mystery and
darkness, where the good must struggle simply to stay good and the darker
characters are at risk of falling deeper into darkness even more easily. Plus,
lots of characters smoking cigarettes in the rain.
The supplement doesn’t deal directly with World War 2, but the ravages of war and its aftermath certainly are on characters’ minds in the game. (And that’s not to say I won’t ever explore the actual war, with super-powered characters taking part, in some future supplement.)
The following is an essay by John W. Sheldon, someone you may know as the art director for Turn, or as the creator of Roar of Alliance, playtested at Big Bad Con and elsewhere.
The Roar of Alliance playmat, photo by John W. Sheldon.
My name is John W. Sheldon, and I’ve been working on a tabletop game called Roar of Alliance for a few years (I used to call it Armored Reckoning). The game is about crewing an Allied tank in an alt-history World War Two and fighting through waves Nazis to set things right. What could be more anti-fascist than that? Lots of stuff, it turns out. The problem is that Nazis aren’t the only fascists, and my game does some things that potentially support fascist ways of thinking. In the political climate of the United States in 2019, it is especially important that we be aware of these things and work to mitigate them as much as possible. I’m writing about my process here in the hopes that others might find a useful example in the steps I’ve taken, and so that people with more experience can point out ways I can further improve.
What My Game Does Wrong
How does a game about destroying Nazi tanks and blowing up their infantry risk supporting fascist modes of thought? One cornerstone of fascist ideology is that they (the fascists) are oppressed by an enemy that is numerous, pervasive, powerful, and simultaneously inferior (stupid, incompetent, or morally weak). Another cornerstone is that the only appropriate way to deal with that enemy is by force.
The rules of my game do specifically these things:
The enemies you face in Roar of Alliance are numerous (outnumbering the players in just about every engagement), dangerous (their vehicles are often more advanced and better armed), and lack intelligence (their actions are automated by simple if/then statements that they never deviate from). The only way players ever interact with these foes is via deadly force. You will lose the game if you do not destroy their vehicles and disperse their infantry.
So, in these ways at least, my game actually promotes a core set of fascist ideologies. Some of this is hard to avoid, given that the game doesn’t have anyone in a central directorial role to moderate portrayals of the enemy or to restrict player behaviors in direct contact with the enemy outside combat, therefore no character in the game is ever confronted by a Nazi outside the specific circumstance of combat. This is a conscious choice to make sure nobody at the table is ever tasked with portraying a Nazi, and it keeps torture* and certain other types of violent fantasy outside the scope of the game as written. Players also have some leeway in narrating the effects of their actions on the enemy: when enemy infantry are removed from the field, players can choose to narrate the enemy’s retreat or death, and players do the same for surviving crew of disabled enemy vehicles.
Since violence and a portrayal of the enemy as numerous and unintelligent are essential to the way the game functions, and I don’t want to scrap the whole thing and start over, how do I make sure the rest of the game refutes fascism?
Focusing on Diversity
by John W. Sheldon
I start with something nationalists and fascists hate: I make sure that every other aspect of the game supports and emphasizes diversity and demonstrates how it creates strength. This paragraph kicks off the rulebook:
This game is set during the 2nd World War in Europe, a time when even the historical victors were rife with bigoted beliefs and policies. You should not let those real world bigotries limit the characters you choose to portray and accept. People of all races and genders from six continents and countless backgrounds fought against fascism and Nazism in Europe, and your characters should reflect some of that diversity.
Moreover, players are asked to identify their character’s country of origin, to help emphasize the diversity of geographic origin of the people who challenge fascism. Some of these choices are informed at a basic level by the themes of the character archetypes the game offers. In particular, the Partisan archetype was a resident of Nazi-occupied territory and a resistance fighter before joining up with the crew, the Collateral is a member of a population oppressed by the Allies and nevertheless pressed into service against the Nazis (e.g., Black Americans or colonial subjects of the British Empire), and the Duty was someone who volunteered for the fight because they new defeating fascism and Nazism was the right thing to do.
For actually producing the game, I’m doing what I’d never recommend: I’m doing the rules writing, layout, and illustrations all myself. What this does mean is that I can make sure that all of the art upholds my stated dedication to multiple axes of diversity. The art within the rules documents already portrays people of multiple genders, races, and body types as members of the player tank crew. Additional art I’m working on will include crew members with visible disabilities, crew wearing items of non-European traditional dress, and different cultural grooming standards.
by John W. Sheldon
Part of my plan for taking the game to crowdfunding is to offer backers the opportunity to have their portraits included as the card back art for some of the character archetypes, and as the face cards in the crew deck. Since I believe the audience for my game (one about Tanks in World War Two) skews significantly male, white, able-bodied, and cis, simply offering all of these art opportunities on a first-come, first-served basis would further skew the art for my game towards a monolithic default. To maintain my dedication to diversity, I need to give up potential sources of revenue and pre-stack the art with diverse portraits. I’ll won’t be offering backer levels for the Jacks in the Crew Deck, or for half of the character archetypes. Instead, I’ll be creating those portraits before the crowdfunding campaign begins. The portraits for the Jacks will be portraits of non-binary volunteers, and those for the first half of the character archetypes will be of volunteers who are one or more of non-white, queer, or visibly disabled.
Heroes that Need Help
Most fascism thrives on mythologizing heroes as paragons of strength, capable of facing great hardship alone and without aid. The heroes of fascism also contain within them a paradox: the enemy they face is terrifying, but they never actually feel fear. Roar of Alliance refutes these mythologized ideas of heroism idea on multiple fronts. The very nature of combat in my game requires players to rely on one another at all times (no person can operate a tank single-handedly). The player characters also begin the game by admitting fear: one of the first tasks of the first session is to identify a fear your character has about the fighting to come.
During the game, player characters will take Stress (the game’s unified resource representing both physical toughness and mental resilience). Characters who max out their Stress during an engagement play out a Last Stand for significant effect, then leave the Crew (the player decides whether they have died or simply become unable for whatever reason to continue on as a tank crew member). While the characters have a limited set of resources called Motivations that the players can expend to avoid stress, the only way to actually recover Stress relies on spending time with the other characters between battles. Only by working together, by comforting one another, and by acknowledging their own dependence on others can characters reduce their Stress and gain new Motivations to help them engage in future battles.
by John W. Sheldon.
Every archetype has scene prompts that show them needing help, and the whole game requires players to rely extensively on one another. Even the player’s Crew is supported by a company of non-Crew characters that players will occasionally be called on to portray between battles. No lone strong hero, or even small group of heroes, can accomplish the monumental task the players are facing.
Humanizing the Enemy
Fascism dehumanizes its enemies, making it easier for its adherents to attack, belittle, and eventually exterminate those that oppose it. You can see this in language comparing enemies to animals, assigning them undesirable traits as a group, in racist and anti-Semitic propaganda images that exaggerate enemy features to cartoonish extremes, or even in recent online language where some members of right-leaning web forums call people who oppose them “NPCs” – implying that there is no real individual personhood in those that disagree with their fascist ideology.
In my quest to make the game as hostile as possible to fascist ideologies, I must design the game to humanize the enemies that players face. Everyone should be reminded that the Nazis and members of the Wehrmacht were not inhuman monsters – they were regular people who became willing to commit evil acts because of an abhorrent philosophy. Reminding players of this is important because dehumanizing even Nazis creates an easy defense for modern fascists and authoritarians to mount, in the form of a “but I do these good things over here, I’m not a complete monster” defense. Reminding people that Nazis were regular people, even while they did terrible things, reminds us that we must examine ourselves for the kinds of behavior they exhibited.
Next Steps
Is there more my game can do? Almost certainly. In fact, I’m extremely open to suggestions for additional ways to improve. You can get in touch with me on Twitter, Pluspora, or Mastodon if you want to give me some feedback.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in ways to make your own game hostile to fascist ideologies, check out these twoessays that helped inform my own process.
*Despite everything pop culture tells us, torture does not work. It is immoral and wrong in every circumstance, and this would still be true even if it worked – which it categorically does not.
