Tell me a little about The Warring Kingdoms. What excites you about it?
The Warring Kingdoms Nostria and Andergast are part of The Dark Eye’s core setting, the continent Aventuria. They are two smaller realms caught in a hateful struggle that has been going on for generations. Taking a toll on the countries, depriving them of economic and social growth. Neither Nostria nor Andergast are in the focus of sweeping metaplot events or the plans of bigger realms. They are very much focused on each other. The setting very much is a down to earth approach to fantasy, going for a middle ages feel. It feels grounded, lived in and true to life and human experience. It is a setting where nature, history and magic have their own mysteries and where war has a real cost. But without going grim dark with it. There is room to be heroic and for good people to succeed in the end, even if not everything is black and white and there is room for moral choices to be made. This medieval fantasy feel is showing in the artwork and the text, making Nostria and Andergast into specific places and not just pastiche.
There are a lot of elements and plothooks in the setting that I am really excited about. Like the city of Nostria ravaged by a plague a few years ago and in decline since, with empty rows of houses that serve as home to gangs of criminals. The labyrinthine castle above the city home to the educated Queen Yolande, trying to be a wise ruler to her backwards country. The storm swept coast, where free farmers are holding back the sea by building dykes. Something that speaks to the northern German in me. The deep and endless forests and what might lurk within, places where nature makes all manmade borders obsolete and the woods themselves are the true sovereign of the land.Personally I also like how The Warring Kingdoms as a setting allows us to examine accepted fantasy tropes. There is a lot that sounds very familiar here. A feudal order, knights, kingdoms in endless conflict. But the way it is portraited [portrayed] and rooted in the setting gives it weight and allows to ask questions. The feudal order is just as playable from the peasant perspective and what it means for them. The wars take their toll, yeomen are recruited to fight, farms and castles are damaged. Conquered villagers have to swear fealty to a new liege. But there also is an emotional cost. The inherited hate and prejudice after generations of fighting, even if in the borderlands only the rulers are changing and cultures are mixing. Where often picking a site in the conflict would be the only way to go, striving for peace, however uneasy it might be, and an understanding between cultures is portraited [portrayed] as just as viable as becoming a war hero. War itself is, unsurprisingly with a title like The Warring Kingdoms, one of the big themes. It will never be truly won or over. The war is as much a force of nature and creeping background threat as a sandbox to play in. But to give a heroic fantasy aspect to it there is a totemistic aspect to the war as well. An ancient quarrel between Animal Kings, the firstborn of their species and a mythic Root of Hatred the players can engage and appease. But even if they succeed there still is the resentment of generations at war, looping back again and grounding it in human experience.
Another trope that gets examined is gender roles in the tropes of medieval fantasy. Aventuria as a setting has been explicitly equal rights since it’s development in the 80s. Allowing for female fighters, rulers and artisans on the same footing as their male counterparts. Andergast however is one of the few patriarchies on the continent. Which culturally isolates them from their neighbors. By putting them next to and in conflict with Nostria it put “medieval” gender roles in contrast with a emancipated society and shows their injustice. But without painting every Andergastan as an evil cliché. It is an aspect of their culture, that is hard to unlearn and without contact to others not often question. Cultures are an important part of a The Dark Eye character and have weight in the rules on equal footing with their species and profession. So you are not a human fighter but an Andergastan Forest Knight and the Warring Kingdoms gives this culture weight and a setting to use it in.
As a supplement, how does The Warring Kingdoms integrate into The Dark Eye? What makes it unique beyond other settings and supplements?
With Nostria and Andergast focused on each other and the region providing a lot self-contained of hooks and conflicts while on the surface level fitting the European flavored take on a medieval fantasy setting, The Warring Kingdoms work well as the first regional supplement. Before this we had the core rules and the Aventurian Almanac, describing the whole continent, in less detail for each of the regions of course. With The Warring Kingdoms we are zooming in on this two realms and the setting they provide. They are not only geographically in the same place but united by narrative themes and a similar feel. You will just need the corebook and to a lesser extend the Almanac to get full enjoyment from The Warring Kingdoms, everything that you need to know and all rules to play in the setting are collected in the setting supplement. But the setting book is not the only thing that we offer. In the Kickstarter it comes with a adventure modules for the region and playing into the themes. New Bonds and Ancient Quarrel for example is about securing an uneasy peace, starting with a political marriage. We also provide a novella and a comic set in the Warring Kingdoms and, if our backers are generous, a soundtrack album. So there is material to engage with the setting in a lot of ways. The setting book being the core and working on it’s own. So within The Dark Eye you are getting a lovingly detailed and ready to play setting.
I would say the european, specifically german perspective on a grounded, sometimes fairytale like medieval fantasy setting. Written by people who just need to walk a few steps to get a view on a real life castle. We are inspired by different landscapes, our own culture and history, when writing fantasy and I think it shows in a lot of small details.
more below the cut!
How have you made The Warring Kingdoms mechanically interesting, beyond just being part of The Dark Eye? Are there new items, new roles to play?
The Warring Kingdoms are introducing rules that support and reward thinking about your character’s culture. There are traits you can pick that give you a little bonus and a little drawback for something that is typical of your culture. Using this rules we are also giving an identity to the culture of smaller regions within the Warring Kingdoms. While the core rules only featured Nostria and Andergast as a whole. That way the verbose Nostrians can lose time when a skill check involves talking but depending on fishing for a living they get a small bonus for that. While Andergasters from the eastern Steppes are not just stubborn than the rest of their culture they also deal with horses for a living and get some bonus there, but their rough homeland and dealing with orcs gives them less courtly manners. So small mechanical benefits that also tell you something about what life in that character’s homeland is like.
We are also featuring new schools of magic for mages and new familiars for witches supported with some new spells. If you want to throw exploding fireballs as an Andergastan battlemage or if you want an owl friend as a witch of the Silent Sisterhood, this book has you covered. As a faction important to the setting we are introducing druids as a new school of magic with their own set of rituals, spells and tradition. Our druids, called Sumes in the Warring Kingdoms because they worship the earth goddess Sumu, are more like the priest of celtic and pagan Europe than the shapeshifters of D&D.
New items are featured with all the rules to use it and some description in the sourcebook. But if you want even more details we also offer the Armory of the Warring Kingdoms with illustrations for each piece of equipment and some optional additional rules and some deeper descriptions. There are of course weapons typical for the Warring Kingdoms. Like the Nostrian long bow or the Andergaster, a 7ft long two handed sword. But there are everyday items as well, like clothing typical for the Kingdoms, tools to build a dyke or works of art.
What inspiration have you used to develop the setting of The Warring Kingdoms?
We had a history to build on, since the setting, like most for The Dark Eye, has been around for some decades. People used it before, first as a setting for novels and later adventures. There has been another sourcebook describing it, as well as the computer game series Chains of Satinav. So we could build from there and expand on those ideas. But of course we did set the focus to support the themes we found interesting and wanted to put a spotlight on. Another goal was to describe those things that enhanced the play experience foremost.
As a feudal setting with knights, longstanding feuds and wars we of course took inspiration from classic tales about knights. So even if the setting is not Arthurian there is some inspiration to be found. We of course couldn’t ignore Game of Thrones. But Grimm’s fairytales and Ottfried Preußler’s Krabatt and Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja the Robber’s Daughter did lend a lot of inspiration as well. European history and the image we have of the middle ages as well as real historical research also played a big role. Some sources on inspired certain elements of the setting. You can find a lot of the hanseatic city of Bremen and its harbor Bremerhaven in the trading hub Salta and Slaterhaven for example. While the steppes of Teshkal in Andergast are in a lot of ways draw inspiration from Rohan in the lord of the rings, which is not as big an influence on the rest of the setting.
Do you think that there are significant differences between The Dark Eye and USian games like Dungeons & Dragons, and that this has influenced The Warring Kingdoms?
I think there is a difference in playstyle that developed over the years and influenced the design decisions that went into creating the rules for subsequent editions of The Dark Eye. TDE is less combat and encounter focused in it’s scenarios. Instead pushing for engaging with the background, it’s lore and NPCs. There are a lot of social challenges in adventures for the dark eye as well as a big metaplot that often is featured and engaged in published scenarios. But there is also room to just experience the world, featuring scenes of exploration, fluff and sight-seeing. Which is something our players enjoy. There are of course American settings that do similar things Glorantha comes to mind as a setting with very deep lore and the World of Darkness featured a metaplot. But The Dark Eye as the defining game of the market it changed what mainstream assumptions look like in Germany and is it’s own mixture of stylistic elements.
Players of The Dark Eye usually enjoy to have their character’s backstory and connection to the world of Aventuria represented on their character sheet. So there are mechanical representations of mundane things, that mostly offer flavor. They of course can feature in scenarios. We offer mechanics that allow players to zoom in as deep as they like. For some players it is okay to know their character is from Nostria. Others take one of the cultural personality traits, others arrange their stats to have their fighter be good at fishing or their mage to know how to build a dyke. Making the stats tell a story about your character is something the system has to do and something we expanded on in The Warring Kingdoms. Of course it still has to be able to also handle fights in a balanced way and all the other things a traditional rpg design demands. A character who learned how to build a dyke will be rewarded in a scenario where that plays a role, that is delivered with the Kickstarter. Even if it will not come up too often, it still feels important then. But it might define what the character is like, even if it never is the skill that saves the day. To allow for builds like this TDE has a pointbuy system with roles defined by the setting. Similar to Shadowrun I would say. [Beau says: Shadowrun 3e point buy is my favorite crunchy game build ever so this like, is totally my jam.]
Of course this influenced The Warring Kingdoms. To provide a working metaplot you have to give players room to do their thing and be the most important people in the setting, at their table at least. But you also have to give a few hints at what can happen in the future. So we have to decide what to hand over to the players and never touch again, so they are free to use it and what to point out as something that we will pick up in the future. We are marking NPCs with chess pieces for example. A pawn we will not mention again, a knight will remain in the setting but can for the plot be easily replaced with any npc the GM likes, a king will be important later on and it is important for later developments that this person show up in this scenario. So metaplot considerations featured into designing the setting. Within The Dark Eye the setting is trending towards being less metaplot heavy and leaving a lot in the GMs hands. We still put in a few hints that will keep people interested in what the future holds.
The description of the setting is providing plot details as well as challenges and conflicts as well as a lot of cultural details and interesting fluff. Necessary to explore and feel the setting through your characters perspective or to give a deep background to your character, even if you play them in another culture. So The Warring Kingdoms is not only describing a field to play in, a destination to travel, a series of storyhooks or a set of difficulties to measure up against but also a lens through which a character can experience the world.
What do you mechanically to handle social interaction in The Dark Eye, and how is it reflected in The Warring Kingdoms? What influence does the setting have on the understanding on the mechanics for social situations?
It can be done done as a skill check, where we have a variety of skills divided by approach. Either as a contested check between two characters (PC or NPC), just going for a success and seeing how good you rolled or a long time task, where you are accumulating points, till you reach certain milestones for a full or partial success. Each of these three core mechanics are there for every skill check. They can be applied to social interaction depending on what your goal is. The quick roll for a success works best if it isn’t too important how long a task takes and what the other character is doing. The contested roll is important if you want a defense and to compare two characters against one another. It is used between player characters or between player characters and important NPC. The long term task works well if you want to convince people over time, turn asking around for information into a montage or do other long term things like counseling someone in a time of grief.
There also is a ladder of attitudes people can have towards each other ranging from bitter enemies to unconditional love. You can roll to move people along that scale or to just get them to do something. Which gives more of a choice and makes a difference between long and short term goals. Those rules are covered more in depth in the Compendium, which is not yet released in English.
Your social status and other traits modify your roles or sometimes allow you to roll for things you otherwise wouldn’t be allowed to roll for. In The Warring Kingdoms it is important where you stand in the feudal hierarchy. A peasant will have trouble addressing the Queen in a forthright manner and it would be a harder roll for the player. But if the peasant plays into his lower status and pleads instead of demanding, that might make the roll easier. On the other hand the Queen will not have it easy if she is trying to speak with the peasant as equals or if she attempted to mingle with criminals to gather information. It is a medieval world, with distinct social classes, which is reflected in the mechanics. But we also allow characters to rise above that system and interact as people. There are a few scenarios where looking beyond the feudal system and showing compassion for both sides will lead to the best outcome. Still feudal rule is normal for most of Aventuria and certainly The Warring Kingdoms.
For The Warring Kingdoms specifically we used some mechanics to have the rules interact with the themes of resentment and enmity between Nostria and Andergast. The cultural personality traits we talked about can provide hints how to play a character from a certain region, also having a small mechanical impact. One trait you can pick up for any Nostrian or Andergastan is the inherited hatred between them. So interacting peacefully with someone from the other country gets a bit harder. There is a “animosity track” you can use to see how much a character is influenced by hate and to reduce it or raise it in steps by using social rolls. You can tie this into the mystical background of the Root of Hatred as well.
There are a lot of modifiers and use cases for the rules described in the core book that come from The Warring Kingdoms but the core mechanics remain. Rather traditional skill check, social class, culture and approach matter. There are a few ways to have more than binary success, like the animosity track, long-term tasks or the attitude scale.
Tell me more about the schools of magic! What can you tell me about new familiars and druids? How do they interact with the setting and mechanics?
The background of The Dark Eye determines what approaches there are to magic. There are different of traditions that shape how your character casts their spells. Shaping the general outlook a spellcaster has as well as some of the flavor of casting spells. Like if they need incantations, gestures or just force of will.
The guild mages have a scientific approach to spellcasting, write books and have academies. There are three recognized guilds of mages, all with protection by the laws. Except in Andergast, where those laws never were established. Still there is an academy in Andergast, the Combat Seminary. The mages trained there are ready for war and the rough manners of a rough land. They do not seem like your typical bookworm, instead often serving with the Andergastan troops, using their staff and magic as weapons in the skirmishes against Nostria. They have some of the most destructive spells in the system in their grimoire. So an Andergastan Guild Mage is a good pick for a fighting adventurer.
Nostrian mages are very different. Supported by Queen Yolande, who graduated from this school, they study the history and hidden magic of the land. Called the Academy of Light and Darkness they use magic of both as well as magic that transforms objects and the environment. The worldview taught at the Academy is one of strict dualism and a divide between good and evil. They are a good choice to play an academic character in the backwards Warring Kingdoms and someone whose assumptions about the world will be challenged outside the university walls.
The tradition of the witches is more guided by intuition, being in tune with your familiar and the sisterhood of witches that share the affinity to your type of animal. A witch can conjure curses on people they dislike, they can fly on a wooden item (not necessarily a broom) and of course cast spells. They lack the protection by the laws but in Nostria they are not persecuted or anything but respected as advisors and a power factor. We introduce the Serpent Witches in The Warring Kingdoms. A member of the Sisterhood of Knowledge they have snake for familiars and are hungry for knowledge, sometimes dangerous knowledge and known for knowing a lot of secrets. They have snake, divining and disruptive magic.
The owl witches of the Silent Sisterhood are secretive, at home in the wide forests of the warring Kingdoms and sworn protectors of all witches. They do hunt down witch hunters and other enemies of their tradition. They are seen as the best fighters amongst the witches and their magic supports this a lot it buffing her abilities in combat. Growing claws, running up trees or making branches attack their enemies.
The witches are the most important tradition in Nostria. Attuned to the land and revered by it’s inhabitants. Witches being predominantly female, even if other gender identities are found in their ranks, they are a good counterweight to the Andergastan patriarchy.
Andergast’s most important tradition are the druids or “Sumes”,as they are called in the Warring Kingdoms, they influence and advise the king and are seen on par with clerics of the gods, speaking for the earth goddess Sumu. They can influence people’s mind with rituals and use magical obsidian daggers in their spellcasting. Still their magic is attuned to the forests of their homelands which they protect. The Sumes speak for the forest and can decide if trees are to be cut down or animals to be hunted. A privilege that can get them in conflict with nobility.
There are two factions of druids in Andgergast, the servants of Sumu, who are like I just described them, whose magic is of the forstes and the elements. They usually genuinely want to protect the land and keep Sumu, who they see as a dying goddess alive.
The Augmenters of Power are different, in method and often motivation. They still are Sumes and seen as envoys of nature but their magic is more about influencing people. They can tell if someone is lying and cause fear or confusion. Most of their spells take control of someones body or reactions without outright dominating their thoughts. Their workings and intrigues are a big part of the setting and tied to the Root of Hatred. Even if they still try to save the land, most heroes will question their methods.
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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Today I have an interview with Graham Walmsley on the new Kickstarter project, Cthulhu Dark. In spite of all of my misgivings about Lovecraftian themed games, I do still love the aesthetic and a lot of the elements – and Graham is pretty considerate about topics that matter most to me in the setting. Because of this, I’m excited to share this interview with you all!
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Tell me a little about Cthulhu Dark. What excites you about it?
When you see Cthulhu Dark, the first thing you notice is how simple it is. But that’s not the thing that excites me. What excites me is how precise it is.
Take the Insight rule as an example. Your Insight starts at 1. Every time you see something that creeps you out, roll a die (that’s an “Insight roll”). If you get higher than your current Insight, your Insight increases by 1, until it reaches 6 and you lose your mind.
That sounds like a simple rule, but it’s designed very precisely. It means that your Insight increases fast at the start, then slower later. When it reaches 5, you’re on a knife edge, where every Insight Roll could send you over the edge but only if you roll a 6. (I did hours of thinking about probabilities for that rule.)
The whole game is like that. It looks simple, but it’s all perfectly engineered. And all of that feeds back into the game. Every so often, the dice throw out a little surprise that makes the story better.
That’s what excites me about the rules. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that excites me about the project: the settings, my cowriters, the art, everything.
What kind of settings do you have as a part of, or in addition to, Cthulhu Dark? What in them shows the themes of the system?
Cthulhu Dark comes with four settings: London 1851, the dirty, stinking capital of the British Empire; Arkham 1692, Lovecraft’s city in a time of witch-hunts; Jaiwo 2017, modern-day West Africa; and Mumbai 2037, cyberpunk India.
Each of them comes with a scenario that showcases Cthulhu Dark‘s trademark style of bleak horror. But there’s something subtler going on too.
One of the main themes of Cthulhu Dark is: you play people with little power, investigating horror at the heart of the power. For example, in London 1851, you play thieves, beggars and other slum dwellers, investigating monsters within the aristocracy. That’s a deliberate choice: in other games, you’d be more likely to play aristocrats, investigating a horror in the slums. Cthulhu Dark switches that around. It means you play Investigators you wouldn’t usually play.
by Matteo Bocci, Mumbai 2037
How have you developed Cthulhu Dark – a lot of playtesting, revisions, new ideas? Since the original two-page version of Cthulhu Dark, I’ve played it to death, and so have lots of others. It’s a robust, polished set of rules, so it didn’t need much revising.
What’s new is everything else in the book. There’s a section on how to use Cthulhu Dark‘s rules to full effect, with all the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years. There’s a guide to Writing a Mystery, which takes you step-by-step through the process of writing a horror story to play, starting with the things you fear and ending with the finished mystery. And there’s a section on Playing A Mystery, which tells you how to play horror at the table, and another describing the Threats of the Mythos and how to use them in your game.
And then there’s the four settings above. There’s a lot of new stuff.
You know that this is well within my interests, so I have to ask – anything with the term “Cthulhu” in the title approaches the question of how mental health and “insanity” are handled. How did you approach this concept in Cthulhu Dark? Instead of “insanity”, the new Cthulhu Dark talks about Insight. That’s your insight into the horror, the dark patterns behind the universe, the Mythos. Every time you see something that creeps you out, you roll to see whether your Insight increases.
To the outside world, your Insight looks like insanity. But you know better. You see things others don’t see. You understand things they don’t understand.
Cthulhu games haven’t always treated mental health well, but there’s no reason that they can’t. After all, Cthulhu is really the only genre that even includes mental health. You never think about mental health in a dungeon-crawling game, but you have to think about it in Cthulhu games. So, I think there’s the possibility of doing something really positive with mental health and Cthulhu gaming.
What sort of play does Cthulhu Dark do best? What can players expect when they sit down at a table?
Cthulhu Dark does bleak, mindbending horror. You can’t fight the Mythos: you can only run, hide or watch helplessly.
When you sit down to play Cthulhu Dark, expect your Investigator to spiral slowly down into darkness. Expect to be creeped out. Expect hyperpowerful creatures, which you cannot understand, let alone fight. Expect all that, then enjoy the ride.
by Matteo Bocci
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Thanks so much to Graham for the interview! I’m excited to see the final product, it sounds really great! Readers, remember to check out Cthulhu Dark on Kickstarter and share with your friends!
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Check out Episode 5 of Designer & Devourer by clicking the post title! We’ll be talking recent posts, upcoming stuff, and then some recent development work on Turn. The recipe this week will be road trip kebabs. J
Interviews coming are kinda being juggled right now, but they’re on the way. 🙂
Road Trip Kebabs
Beef, roughly cubed to 1”x 1”x 2” pieces
Chicken, roughly cubed to 1”x 1”x 2” pieces
Sweet onions, sliced
Sweet peppers, sliced
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
Paprika
Brown mustard
Skewers
Cut meat, chicken, vegetables, and thread onto skewers. You can do all one meat on each skewer, or mix it up. Grill until cooked to your preference of done-ness, but make sure the chicken is at least 165° F or there’s no pink left. Season while it’s still hot, right off the grill. Use mustard as a dipping sauce! Great hot or cold.
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This week we cover upcoming interviews about The Quick and Cortex Prime, and my past and current work with Cortex products, as well as how to make sun tea!
My stretch goal at $45k – Solarpunk! A post-scarcity setting where powerful corporate interests seek to destabilize the fruits of progress and the heroes try to stop them – it’s not about what you don’t have, it’s about keeping what you do.
Put 4 to 8 tea bags into a clean 2 quart or gallon glass container (4 teabags for a 2 quart container, 8 tea bags for a gallon container). Fill with water and cap. Place outside where the sunlight can strike the container for about 3 to 5 hours. Move the container if necessary to keep it in the sun. When the tea has reached its desired strength, remove from sun and put it in the refrigerator.
I add sugar and lemons, too! Lemons you add while it’s in the sun, and sugar you mix in while it’s still warm before refrigeration so it dissolves. Sugar is mostly to preference, anywhere from a half cup to a whole cup, in my experience. (Some people who LOVE sweet tea put in two cups!)
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This week we talk about upcoming interviews and features, as well as Turn (my shapeshifter game in progress), poverty in rural towns, and a recipe from my childhood, Brownie Stew!
1 lb ground beef (seasoned as preferred, optionally using garlic and/or pepper) ½ onion, diced to ½ inch or smaller 1 bell pepper, diced to ½ inch or smaller 4 regular size cans condensed Campbells vegetarian vegetable soup 4 cups of white Minute rice with 4 cups water (if using other rice, this is 8 cups cooked equivalent)
Brown the burger with onion and pepper. Drain grease from the mixture. Add into the mixture the cans of soup and add one soup can of water. Heat the mix until it is evenly hot.
Separately make the 4 cups of white Minute rice using the Minute rice instructions or the 8 cups rice otherwise cooked. Pour the stew mix over the rice. Salt to taste.
Note: I do really hope to get these podcasts on various sites like iTunes and Google Play soon but it’s a combination of energy and money to do so. I hope you understand!
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Tell me a little about FAITH. What excites you about it?
What excites us about FAITH the most is its very essence. We made it as a statement on how we think RPGs should be, however risky that was. It’s an RPG with a card based mechanic that lets players be in control of their actions; it makes the humans a minor species, at the sidelines of the main plot-events; it introduces gods in a sci-fi setting as moral scales to test the very fabric of which characters are made; and it dives right into an ideological conflict between two powerful alien species, without leaving aside morality, politics, or economics.
The fact that people have trusted us and placed their faith in our game, pun intended, is something that we take very seriously and it’s the most potent source of excitement we can imagine. We look forward to continue to expand the game into something greater than we could have imagined when we first started, and we are grateful to everybody who supports us in this journey.
How do you integrate gods with a world of sci-fi and humanity?
The five Gods of Faith are not the usual “omnipotent being” interpretation of deities. They are moral in nature, , and they can only interact with the world through their believers, by providing them with supernatural powers, thus shaping what actually happens in the universe by giving more power to those who follow one of the moral paths laid out by one of the Gods.
Living beings within the universe of Faith can’t really choose in which God they believe or which God they follow. It is each God itself who chooses certain people to grant powers, depending on their actual actions. Who you are and what you do determines whether one God or another will take notice of you and maybe grant you powers.
There’s little room in the way of “believing” in the Gods; when you see you have been granted a special power, you know that something’s definitely up. On the other end, Clark’s adage “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” may be applied, too. Within the lore of the game, there are people who question their nature and go on “Godseek” expeditions within the confines of the Labyrinth wormhole to try to uncover their mysteries. Similarly to how our A Garden in Hell campaign explores the origins of the Ravager, we plan to devote an entire campaign to this topic and we hope it will become an exciting perspective on Gods in a science fiction setting.
Tell me a little about this ideological conflict! What about it encouraged you to make it a major point of the game?
Similarly to forces of nature, the moral bearings rewarded by the Gods have ended up merging with certain civilisations, and shaping their progress and destiny. This means that there are species leaning towards the moral path set by some Gods, while others lean towards others, making them fundamentally different in their approach to cultural interaction both within their own civilisation and with other civilisations. This is the case of the Corvo and the Iz’kal, each leaning respectively to individualism or collectivism, and this is what sparks their constant conflict.
When two such species find each other, there are three options: they fight, they flee or they cooperate. Right now, the Corvo and the Iz’kal must cooperate if they want to avoid total anihilation: the Ravager, a powerful mutant species, is on a destruction sprue through the known universe. Of course, this doesn’t mean they don’t still have their conflicts, and they still fight clandestine, proxy wars to arrest each other’s development in anticipation to the defeat of the Ravager threat.
We made this conflict such an integral part of the setting because we believe it raises very interesting issues that are worth considering and discussing. Both these species have very different approaches to society, each with their rights and their wrongs, and thinking about alien societies can put things in perspectives that are not as apparent if one was to analyse the same issues in the real world.
How do the base mechanics of the cards work, and what do you think is expanded by including the miniatures?
The card mechanics are the aspect we are the most proud of. Many people are extremely skeptic about it at first, but after playing a couple of rounds most people gets it. We need to stress that we didn’t create this mechanic just to be different, or as a gimmick.
It is an honest to God attempt to make a game where the players are in charge of their efforts, as represented by the values of the cards they play. The hand of cards represents the stamina of each character, and, just like in real life, each character can choose when to make a big effort (playing a high card), and when to conserve energies (playing a low card, which often triggers a rule to draw a new card). As you run out of cards, your character gets exhausted and has more and more limited options.
A very common misconception is that people can just attempt banal actions to get rid of low cards. Because you only have the chance to play cards when you are contested, or, as we call it in Faith, confronted, there’s really no possibility for this. When you play your low cards, you will be putting yourself in danger.
Lastly, it’s important to mention that the cards are not proprietary: you can use any regular poker deck to play FAITH.
The miniatures do not change the core mechanics of the game. It’s just that it can be much more immersive for some people to play with a cool set of minis!
What are some of your favorite elements about the available species for play?
What we like the most are the different roleplaying possibilities that each of their civilisations bring to the table. If you are in the Corvosphere, you can basically do whatever you want, but nobody will look out for you. It’s like a cyberpunk jungle: each for their own, and only if you know how to get others to value your specific skillset you will manage to make a life for yourself. On the other hand of the spectrum, we have the Iz’kal state. There, all your basic needs are taken care of, but you can’t own anything, and you must comply with the state’s orders, which will use your skills for the benefit of the state. If you are in a Raag world, you’ll need to be very careful with your approach to technology and how you maintain it, and you may become a renowned scavenger. Lastly, if you are a human, you won’t be the center of the universe for a change. Humans in the universe of Faith have their work cut out for them: they must either bend their knee and serve the corvo; survive in the wasteland; or become part of the Human Front and seek the foundation of a free Earth.
— Thanks so much to Burning Games for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading and that you’ll check out FAITH: The Sci-Fi RPG and Miniatures on Kickstarter. Make sure to share the post if you think your friends might be interested in FAITH, too!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
I wanted to write a bit today about a technique I’ve been using for a long time now to design games and conceptualize sessions and campaigns (even if I’m not running, I know how I want my character to feel, or how to advise people who are running). The technique is what I call an “emotion map.”
Emotion maps use word clouds to establish what emotions are the most important to put into a game, and what ones you want to avoid. I have a few different ones I’ve used – one for designing a game itself, one for session planning (for one-shots), and one for campaigns. I’ve put together some examples of them to walk you through!
The first thing I do is grab a piece of paper and pen (you could do this digitally, though!) and title whatever it is I’m working on. Here’s the starting page for Turn.
Look at all that beautiful blank space.
A title is important because it reminds you of what you’re looking for when you’re stumped. You want to have a relatively big space to write on, because it gives some room to breathe or scratch stuff out if you need to.
(ETA:)
Emotion maps are kind of like our solar system, where the words all have different sizes and go around a point just beside what we consider the center (our system circles a spot right off center of the sun). You can choose to put them closer or farther away based on importance as well as based on desired impact, or you can scatter them. I generally use the mapped out on importance with bigger things.
The words are intermixed to show that they can conflict and interfere with each other. You could list them or order them otherwise, but this visual representation works best for me and provides an organic representation of the emotions I want present in the game. (/ETA)
From here, I’ll write in a few words in larger text. Let’s start with four!
Companionship, conflicted, desire, hopeful.
The words here are the most prominent emotions. I want the characters in Turn to feel these things during the game the most. The words don’t have to be consistent (verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives, whatever), they just have to mean something and relate to emotions.
The words I chose are companionship, conflicted, desire, and hopeful. You can see how these things would tie into a game like Turn, which is about shapeshifters in small towns struggling between their two identities, wanting to satisfy the needs of both, in need of support from their fellow shapeshifters, and looking forward to finding balance. Right?
More words! In smaller text! Use one more than the prominent emotions, to create some interference.
Hunger, wonder, rejection, isolation, trust.
These are secondary emotions. These leap off of other emotions or are in deeper and less often found, but are still vital to the story. They’re smaller than the prominent emotions in size to show their lessened influence, but big enough to start interfering with the others. The words are hunger, wonder, rejection, isolation, and trust. For Turn, PCs might experience love or greed, or just actual human or animal needs. They could also marvel at the abilities they use and gain, but be denied from the societies they live within – leaving them alone. That’s why they need to rely on their fellow shifters.
Final words! Smallest! Now use two more than the first (so six!), to make the sheet like a minefield.
These are avoided emotions. They are the emotions that can come from the experiences in the game that I want to have happen less, or not at all! They are the smallest because they can’t be forgotten but you don’t want to be reminded of what they really are until you look, because you don’t want to seek them out. The words are satisfaction, confidence, powerlessness, fear, pain, and loneliness.
Turn is about shapeshifters with significant power, so they shouldn’t ever feel like there’s nothing they can do. But, they shouldn’t ever feel like everything is done, or feel secure that they have everything under control. I don’t want players to struggle and feel like they’re in a bad state, and as much as there will be times when they are alone, I don’t want them without companionship (callback to the prominent emotions!) or someone to turn to (hey, trust!), components (from my translation) that when lacking produce loneliness.
Here are the notes I made on the sheet to give some context to the map:
Notes! I made them!
These notes are for a full game (obvs), but the point is that they’ll grow over time. You can expand the emotion map, adjust it as time goes on, and so on. You can also use the avoided emotions as reference for threats in the game – how do you have something bad happen without making someone afraid? These also will influence the core elements of my design.
The number of words is important because of where it places emphasis. You only have a few core emotions to focus on as the big ones, or else you’ll get exhausted trying to fill in every experience from just a top-level build. You have more of the secondary emotions so that there’s room to grow into them as the game develops. And you have even more avoided emotions to really highlight this is what I want to avoid, this is what will go away from the point of my game – when you know what you don’t want to do, it helps show what you do want to do.
You’ll notice in the final sheet that there are not just good emotions as prominent, nor are there only bad emotions as avoided.
Not all bad, not all good.
It’s important to know that in long term games, you’ll have good stuff and bad stuff, and when designing a game, you have to factor in all of those possibilities and figure out the big thing: if your players are going to have a negative experience – and they will! – what kind do you want it to be?
I also have in the following gifs the pages of the one-shot session of Shadowrun: Anarchy I conceptualized, and a three-session long-play of Monsterhearts.
Shadowrun: Anarchy Session – Prominent: Excitement, pressured, powerful, motivation. Secondary: Vindication, amusement, failure, anxiety (should have had 5). Avoided: Frustrated, anger, disappointment, boredom, lost, vengeful. Giphy Link
As noted in the gif and caption, I missed one in the secondary emotions, but I think the point still sits! This has a similar structure of fewer prominent emotions to more avoided emotions. The reasoning for this is that in a shorter game like a one-shot, you only have time to hit a few emotional peaks on purpose, but the secondary emotions might come in along with them or be good to throw in as additional bites. But you really want to avoid the emotions you focus on avoiding.
Here are my notes on the one-shot:
One-shot notes!
I noted here that this kind of structure is for one shots or single sessions, if you don’t plan out full campaigns or play an episodic game. It also has notes about having fewer positive emotions on it – if you look at the list, almost all of the avoided emotions are negative. This is totally okay! There are still some negative emotions in the secondary and prominent ones, but the point here is that hey, it’s a one shot of a bombastic game, and I super don’t want my players to get bummed out or bored.
The final Shadowrun: Anarchy one-shot emotion map:
Punchy!
Next, I did one of my more complicated emotion maps that I’ve used for both plotting game stuff, but also fiction! It’s for a three-session Monsterhearts game.
I feel terrible for the players in this game, honestly. Anyway, as you can see, there are some varying emotions all through the sessions, some that reflect off of each other, and some that conflict. This is good! You don’t want the same emotions every session, though you can have them evolve (no safety to finding comfort to building trust and having gratitude, suspicion to understanding to obsession).
My notes on the Monsterhearts emotion map:
In the Monsterhearts sessions, you have more prominent emotions and fewer avoided ones! Why change this? First off, you’re working with a full arc of story – this isn’t encompassing a potential of many stories or a single run in a one-shot, it’s a story told to complete emotional arcs for PCs. You could do something like this for a single session of Monsterhearts or similar games if you intend to go through a full experience, but if it’s a piece of time instead of a range, it’s not as useful.
I also think that it depends on the type of game. Shadowrun, for example, can have emotion in it, but it typically has fewer, focused emotions. Monsterhearts is a game about teenagers and sex and horror, so it runs the whole range of complicated emotions, especially in long play. And you want to welcome all sorts of emotions – it is less common to say “Oh, I don’t want the ghoul to feel that right now” because you really want to see what happens when a ghoul feels, say, absolution, or joy!
The final Monsterhearts long-play emotion map:
I am really bad at sizes of words. I’ll work on it. 🙂
You can go inside out, or outside in, with how many words you use. Just be super cognizant of what you’re saying with that construction!
Remember:
Too many prominent emotions can wear people out in shorter games.
Fewer overarching prominent emotions for designing full games is better because you can’t predict every session.
If the game is super emotionally intense, go wild with the desired emotions, but make sure to avoid emotions that really spoil the essence of the game.
I hope you find the emotion map technique useful! It’s been really valuable for me as a designer, as a creator in general, and as a player. I think it looks at games from the perspective that matters to me as a designer and player, where things feel. I might not be super great at math or anything, but I know feelings pretty damn well.
