{"id":1591,"date":"2019-10-17T09:51:47","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T13:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1591"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:41","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:41","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-under-hollow-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/10\/five-or-so-questions-on-under-hollow-hills\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on Under Hollow Hills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I generally try not to be so under the wire, but life has been hectic lately! Here’s an interview.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I have an interview with Meguey and Vincent Baker about Under Hollow Hills, which is currently on Kickstarter! It’s a game about traveling performers and explores a new realm of Powered by the Apocalypse design. Check out what Vincent and Meguey had to say!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All art by Vincent, after Rackham.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me a little about Under Hollow Hills. What excites you about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meg:<\/strong> Traveling together as a group, seeking audiences, dealing with a stuck wagon or a friend in trouble, showing up at birthday parties to just utterly dazzle a human child and leave them with a touch more wonder than before – that’s all real neat to me. What excites me most though, perhaps, is the core ethic of this game, of paying attention to how we are together when times are good and when times are bad. Fairies often get portrayed as either all sweetness and light or all threat and magical terror, and I’m excited to see MORE than that. We’re drawing on a lot of different fairy stories, and I look forward to the new stories that come from this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VB:<\/strong> In Under Hollow Hills you play the performers and crew of a circus that travels through Fairyland and through the human world, through good times, bad times, and dangerous times. I’m excited about the tour of Fairyland that the game offers – but it’s like a working tour, not a tourist tour. You’re behind the scenes, you see what goes on in the Wolf King’s Court, you perform for audiences who think they’ve commanded you, but really you’re playing them. You see through the glamor to the mystery, if that makes sense!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m also excited by how much the game loves words. Metaphor, poetry, wordplay, puns, it’s a game that loves and plays with language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of fairy tales that people might be familiar with. Where are you pulling influence from, and what are some examples of the things you’re spinning of your own? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

VB: <\/strong>Yeah! Meg’s history with fairies is older than mine. I think I started, these decades ago, with Alan Lee and Brian Froud’s book Faeries<\/em>. For me my main sources have been Yeats’ Fairy Tales of Ireland<\/em>, Sikes’ British Goblins<\/em>, and Kirk & Lang’s The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies<\/em>. These all mix collected stories and folklore with the speculations of their authors \/ editors, much in the mode of a bestiary or field guide. This is where the idea of fairy kinds <\/em>comes from, I think, these marvelous old collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m also influenced by Shakespeare, by Norse myths, and by\nmore contemporary fairy tales and fairy tellers like Francesca Lia Block,\nTanith Lee, John Crowley, Jane Yolen, and even Jack Vance per Lyonesse<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, we’ve tried to keep our interpretations fresh and\nplayful. In the playbooks, for instance, we always try to mix and cross\ninfluences, not narrow down. The Chieftain Mouse has elements of Reepicheep and\nDespereaux, and also of Rob Roy. The Crooked Wand harks back to the three old\nwomen who share an eye, and to Odin, and then to Yubaba from Spirited Away<\/em>\nand Nora Cloud from Little, Big<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meg:<\/strong> I had a beloved storytelling teacher in 4th grade, Janet Glantz, who gave me Nancy Arrowsmith’s 1977 Field Guide to the Little People<\/em>, which leads off with “In high summer meadows, nestled in the moors, near old castles, or behind the kitchen stove\u2014these are the places where the Little People may be found.”. If I had to point to one clear influence alone, it would be this book and this line. The earliest fairy-tales I remember are the ones in Olive Beaupre Miller’s 1928 edition of My Bookhouse<\/em> books, particularly volume two, which has fairy tales from around the world, and the first book I remember reading for myself is Midsummer Night’s Dream, when I was about 6. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Muppet Show, of course, and Labyrinth. I saw the 1962\nmovie Gypsy a surprising number of times as a kid, so the backstage parts of a\ntraveling show were there, and when I was learning to walk and talk, my parents\nwere crew in a Shakespearean diner theater company, which was of course FULL of\nfairies and actors and stage effects. I spent 8 years in the 1990s doing hair\ndesign and costuming for our local Hampshire County Shakespeare Company, too.\nApples and trees, you know. Decades of thinking about the natural world in a\nway that invites the possibility of fairies also fit into the game design, and\nnoticing the playfulness of bees, the enthusiasm of the berry bramble, or the\ndetermination of a stream. Then blending all of that so that there are layers\non layers of influence, so players can bring their own influences to their\nunique portrayal of fairyland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Under Hollow Hills like mechanically? It seems like it might function a little differently because of the types of stories you’re telling! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

VB:<\/strong> It does!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The structure of the game is, you travel through fairyland\nand the human world, and everywhere you go, you put on a show. On the GM’s\nside, this means that between sessions, you prep up where the circus is going\nnext. You don’t prep what’ll happen – there’s no way you could guess! – but\njust what the place is like, and who’s there. There’s a quick system for this,\nrules you follow in prep that help you decide who the audience is, what they\nwant from the circus, and what they have to give the circus in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In play, then, you arrive at this new place, and you know\nthat you’ll be performing here, but before you do, you want to get the lay of\nthe land. As much as your audience here wants something from you, you want\nsomething from them too. So you introduce yourselves, enjoy your hosts’\nhospitality, get people’s stories out of them, and meddle as you see fit. When\nyou’re satisfied, then you plan your show and perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Planning and performing your show are distinct phases in the\ngame, and they give you a lot of power. In your performance you can change the\nseason of the place – “season” here includes mood, fortunes, history,\neven who rules and who’s ruled over. You can win from the audience what they\nhave in plenty, or win from them what they hold most dear. You can also change\nthe circus, switching up the performers’ jobs, welcoming new performers or\nbidding old ones goodbye, and opening the way forward from one world to the\nother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now this is the large view, the overall structure. Your\ncharacter has cycles and structures of their own. Your capabilities include,\nyes, ways to get the lay of the land, and ways to plan a show and perform in\nit, but they also include your own angle on things. Ways to get what YOU want,\nwhether you line up with the circus or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meg:<\/strong> A lot of game mechanics are designed in terms of a linear progression, from point to point to future point. Under Hollow Hills mechanics cycle and spin, as we spiral through the seasons and through our own emotions and the characters’ emotional relationships with each other. Players may come back to things that feel familiar several times in the course of play, but from a different angle each time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Leaves<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I’m intrigued by the implicit theme of transience in these stories because of the traveling nature of the troupe and the temporary nature of performance. How does Under Hollow Hills address the concept and experience of transience by the characters, and naturally, players?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meg:<\/strong> Playing with time and space is part of fairyland, as well as of stagecraft and performance. The magical thinking of childhood when summer never ends, and how it takes forever for a special event to arrive, and the way time moves oddly when you are fully engrossed in the current moment even as an adult, are all part of the game. All those can be tiny windows into fairyland, that may open only for a fleeting moment. We all change over time, in myriad ways. Major ways that come to mind are gender fluidity and variance and how that permeates Under Hollow Hills in reflection of the actual world we live in, and seasonal cycles as they affect all life on the planet. There’s a third, of course, which is mortality, and the questions around death that come up from the fay viewing it as a game and the mortals knowing that for them it is the biggest and most permanent change. Shifting through these moments smoothly takes practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As characters pass from moment to\nmoment, in terms of Under Hollow Hills game design specifically, we built in\nways to shift your character’s expression fluidly across their summer aspect\nand their winter aspect, and we recognize the impact people have on places (and\nvice versa) in the way that the Circus can move the place they perform towards\ndifferent seasons. Illustrating the pinwheel of the seasons, choosing as a\ngroup how you move the circus and spaces through the pinwheel, helps convey the\ntransient but also the cyclical nature of the game, and therefore of life.\nMovement is a basic part of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a game where travel is\nintrinsically part of the story helps address some fictional issues in\nstorytelling as well. Have you ever encountered a detective series you like,\nset in “a small country town” where there’s multiple mysteries and\nmurders in each book? For heaven’s sake, get out of that town! It’s a\nhell-mouth! Making the circus mobile, building an interconnected group that is\ntraveling together, with the inherent community needs and relationship\ncomplications that arise when people come to rely on each other, and when they\nare constantly encountering new groups of people wherever they go, allows for\nvery different stories than having the characters in a fixed location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another topic that interests me is the diversity found in traveling troupes in history, and the prejudice with which they’ve been treated. A hard topic, I know, but have you addressed it at all in Under Hollow Hills, and why or why not?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

VB: <\/strong>Not so hard a topic! Historically, traveling people, especially traveling performers, have been treated all different ways – with horrifying violence and racism, with glory and celebrity, with suspicion, with reverence – all different ways. Right now in the US, for instance, a lot of carnival workers are seasonal migrant workers, vulnerable to the US’ racist anti-immigrant policies and sentiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Under Hollow Hills, we’re\ndefinitely presenting a romantic version of the traveling circus. When the\ncircus travels, it’s usually easy. Where it arrives, it’s usually welcome. When\nyou come into conflict with your audience, usually it’s a personal matter, a\ndisagreement or personal animosity. It’s possible in the game for you to come\ninto town to find a racist hate mob waiting for you with knives and clubs, but\nthe way violence works in the game, it disarms even this kind of situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our goal isn’t to examine real-world racism and violence, or even just the real-world difficulties of taking a show on the road. Those are different games, and ones we’d love to play!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to Meg and Vincent both for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Under Hollow Hills on Kickstarter today!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I generally try not to be so under the wire, but life has been hectic lately! Here’s an interview. Today I have an interview with Meguey and Vincent Baker about Under Hollow Hills, which is currently on Kickstarter! It’s a game about traveling performers and explores a new realm of Powered by the Apocalypse design. … Continue reading “Five or So Questions on Under Hollow Hills”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[390],"tags":[140,90,20,10,4,17,25,8,15,12,26,41,23,18,56],"class_list":["post-1591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-fairy-tales","tag-fantasy","tag-five-or-so","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-interviews","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpg","tag-rpgs","tag-story-games","tag-storytelling","tag-tabletop-games","tag-tabletop-rpgs","tag-worldbuilding"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/UnderHollowHillsGreenFlatImage.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-pF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":327,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2016\/02\/five-or-so-questions-with-vincent-and-meguey-baker-on-apocalypse-world-second-edition\/","url_meta":{"origin":1591,"position":0},"title":"Five or So Questions with Vincent and Meguey Baker on Apocalypse World Second Edition!","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"February 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I had the pleasure of interviewing Vincent and Meguey Baker about their new release and Kickstarter, Apocalypse World Second Edition. Apocalypse World itself came out in 2010, and has been used as the baseline for a ridiculous number of hacks over the past years since then, including Monsterhearts, Dungeon World,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Archive"","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1694,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/12\/thoughtys-a-new-year-for-aven-bundle\/","url_meta":{"origin":1591,"position":1},"title":"Thoughty’s A New Year for Aven Bundle","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"December 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I'm starting a bundle to support the awesome Aven, a great game designer and one of the people who makes Big Bad Con a great space for people like me, in this coming new year - check out work from Aven, me, Meguey Baker, Paul Czege, and many other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Archive"","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":339,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2015\/11\/five-or-so-questions-with-meguey-baker-on-playing-natures-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":1591,"position":2},"title":"Five or So Questions with Meguey Baker on Playing Nature’s Year","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"November 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I was lucky to get a chance to interview Meguey Baker about her new project, Playing Nature's Year, which is currently on Kickstarter.\u00a0Tell me a little bit about your project, Playing Nature's Year. What excites you about it?\ufeffA couple things really stand out for me. I love the old songs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Archive"","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1657,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/11\/thoughty-bundle-up-for-whitney-bundleup4whitney\/","url_meta":{"origin":1591,"position":3},"title":"Thoughty Bundle-Up for Whitney #BundleUp4Whitney","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"November 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Whitney is the creator of Prism, currently available on DriveThruRPG. I started this bundle in support of Whitney Delaglio, to provide financial relief after a back surgery. The funds will be processed by Beau Sheldon (me) through Thoughty and be rewarded to Whitney after the end of the bundle. Whitney\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Archive"","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/kickstart.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/kickstart.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/kickstart.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/kickstart.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":439,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2014\/01\/favorite-games-evar\/","url_meta":{"origin":1591,"position":4},"title":"Favorite Games Evar!","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"January 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Title coined by Meguey BakerI realized recently that I\u2019ve been gaming for about 10 years! Like, wow. I know I\u2019m still a n00b in comparison to many people out there, but that\u2019s a pretty long time for me to keep up with any hobby. It\u2019s so cool to realize I\u2019ve\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Archive"","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":80,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2018\/06\/five-or-so-questions-on-champions-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":1591,"position":5},"title":"Five or So Questions on Champions Now","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"June 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi all!I did an interview with Ron Edwards on his Kickstarter project, Champions Now! Ron prepared our audio recordings and edited everything into a video, so you get to hear the interview on the following video. I hope you enjoy it and that you'll check out Champions Now on Kickstarter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Archive"","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}