{"id":2055,"date":"2020-08-24T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=2055"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:32","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:32","slug":"mnemonic-with-the-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Mnemonic with the Team"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Hi all! Today I have an interview with Dee Pennyway and the Mnemonic team to talk about <a href=\"A Weaver's Almanac, which is currently on Kickstarter\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"Mnemonic: A Weaver's Almanac, which is currently on Kickstarter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mnemonic: A Weaver&#8217;s Almanac, which is currently on Kickstarter<\/a> and sounds fascinating! Included in the interview are:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><em>Dee Pennyway (they\/them) &#8211; DP<\/em><\/li><li><em>Lexi Antoku (they\/she) &#8211; LA<\/em><\/li><li><em>Nicholas Masyk (he\/him) &#8211; NM<\/em><\/li><li><em>Pam Punzalan (they\/she) &#8211; PP<\/em><\/li><li><em>Sinta Posadas (they\/them) &#8211; SP<\/em><\/li><li><em>Synxiec (he\/him) &#8211; Syn<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Thank you very much for joining me to talk about Mnemonic! Before we talk too deeply about the game, I\u2019d like to introduce you to my readers \u2013 your debutante, so to speak. What brought you to games? Why do you choose to design?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DP:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been playing games since I was 10, when my friends and I would walk down the halls between class and talk through \u201croleplaying\u201d stories in the Star Wars universe. We tinkered with the design ideas from video games like <em>Gauntlet Legends<\/em> and <em>Legend of Zelda<\/em> to imagine what other stories might look like. Sometimes those stories were capital s Stories; sometimes they were just aesthetic ideas, like \u201cWhat if a game like Gauntlet but you\u2019re all summoners conjuring big magic beasts?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It wasn\u2019t until high school that I touched a tabletop roleplaying game with mechanics and character creation. My group of friends played D&amp;D every Friday for four years, because D&amp;D was the game we knew. The <em>Mnemonic<\/em> setting came out of a play-by-post game twelve years ago, and it\u2019s been growing steadily ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LA:<\/strong> I started formal, written RPGs\u2026 sometime in middle or high school? Thereabouts. But I was introduced informally through improvisational dungeon crawling in (ugh) Boy Scouts. I tolerated entirely too many years of that, but at least I got this out of it. Next was, of all things, freeform forum RP in the GameFAQs Metroid Prime social message board. For formal systems, I got started with D&amp;D, as many are, because it was the cultural monolith that people recognized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent a long time reading Vampire: the Masquerade core books and sourcebooks in a bookstore nearby, but never played it because I didn\u2019t have a group for it. D&amp;D was interesting to theorycraft, but I never got a regular group for an extended campaign. Shadowrun was the next game I played seriously and the first I had a real extended campaign of. Shadowrun has a complicated relationship for me, one that I don\u2019t have nearly enough time or space here to address. The much abbreviated explanation is that they made me aware that my TTRPGs could <em>say<\/em> something, <em>mean<\/em> something, <em>be<\/em> something, not just be the aesthetic trappings for a series of ever-escalating violent encounters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>NM:<\/strong> I played my first TTRPG at 14 in highschool &#8211; D&amp;D, naturally &#8211; and my experience was so bad I didn&#8217;t play again until I was 19 or 20! Through Games Club at university I was introduced into Dark Heresy, Deadlands, Vampire: the Masquerade, and Legend of the Five Rings (they also tried hard to get me to give D&amp;D and Pathfinder another chance but I never did, really). But we always ended up house-ruling our games to do the things we wanted them to do that they didn&#8217;t. Designing games from the ground up was the next step: something I&#8217;ve done for over a decade without ever imagining myself a &#8216;game designer&#8217; or participating in TTRPG Twitter!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s only in the last year or two I&#8217;ve really called myself a &#8220;game designer&#8221; or thought of what I do as design, let alone dreamed I could do it as a job!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PP:<\/strong> I grew up reading more tabletop and wargaming books than \u201cproper\u201d literature: AD&amp;D, L5R, Mechwarrior, Warhammer, and oWoD all introduced me to interesting possibilities that I could make my own rather than stories that were set in stone. This is interesting to me in retrospect, because this was the 80s in Vancouver, and that period was the height of the Satanic Panic. You\u2019d think that my staunchly Catholic Filipino parents would have despised such books as works of the Devil, and would have then barred my older brothers from playing. Turns out that they didn\u2019t mind because tabletop games meant that they got to play with friends. Brown kids in a very white section of town needed friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, I was too young to join any of their games. My first forays happened much later in high school, with close knit circles of friends from my school and with my younger brother plus some cousins. There was a long period where I was disillusioned from tabletop because a lot of my peers were cishet, male, and\/or sexist &#8211; which led me to the new World of Darkness books, and had me making my own campaign on my own terms. Did a copious amount of kitbashing and homebrewing for WoD in particular, and I always got the same comments. \u201cThis is such a cool world!\u201d \u201cThis doesn\u2019t feel like WoD, but in a good way?\u201d \u201cWhy don\u2019t you make your own games?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s been a pretty wild game design journey for me since last year. I don\u2019t think I can answer why I design in so many words, but if I were to try\u2026 I think I design to find myself, and make more room for other people like me. There are always stories to be told, and each one of us brings something different to our tables. I like exploring the many things I can offer, both for my own pleasure and for anyone who may read my works and realize they could make their own things from the tools I can give them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SP:<\/strong> I started playing Tabletop RPGs in 2015, but I\u2019d been curious about it for much earlier, there was just no time. Mid 2014 was the beginning of my thesis year in college and I really wanted to finish college because at that point I was already about 5-6 years in University. When 2015 came, though, I was just about to enroll for my last semester when I was told that some of my units that I took in the University\u2019s constituent campus were apparently not going to be credited. It meant that I\u2019d need to retake some classes before going for my thesis. Funny circumstances, because that\u2019s what gave me the time to actually get into games. I had a boyfriend at the time who had friends that were coming together for a D&amp;D campaign which was how I got invited. They were taking up the same course (Library Sciences), so by majority, we agreed to meet at their college building (which was\u2026 the University Library). My college building was across the campus so I was often arriving <em>just<\/em> when everybody was settling in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My first campaign was, in a word, chaotic. We were fifteen players, what can you do? But surprisingly, my DM was really good at it. So good, in fact, that I thought this was just\u2026 normal. I thought the normal table count was fifteen players and that any less was\u2026 just a little lonely. I was very wrong. I think having such a great DM at first also gave me very rose-colored lenses for every DM that I played under afterwards. There were lots of DMs that I experienced afterwards that were\u2026 not so great, but I thought \u201cOh, maybe my first DM is just <em>exceptional.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp; Unfortunately, this mindset paved the way for me sort of\u2026 allowing myself to be thrown around under games and tables that were not so respectful of my boundaries with players and DMs that felt less than safe to be with. Exhausted, I broke away from that and later fell into a game design project that soared for a bit, but eventually also moved away from due to differences in direction and principles. It was here that I think where I really started. I met some great people from the Gamers and Gaming Meets, an organisation that hosts TTRPG events here in Manila. They helped me move towards design and expand my horizons.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I still remember when my friends took me to their place and showed me all sorts of TTRPG books and how the layout was done and how the mechanics were presented. The art, the themes, the dynamics all spoke so deeply to me and I was hooked ever since. I began creating games with ideas and themes that were close to me (plants, haha) and I\u2019m now trying to explore making games that mean a lot to me. I\u2019ll admit that while my first gaming experience wasn\u2019t terrible, the ones that followed for a long time were exhausting and far from ideal. I want to make games that touch on ideas that are important to me, like the struggles of&nbsp; growing up in this country that seems to love making it hard for people like me (queer, non binary, not part of the upper class) to exist. I want to create games that inspire others to also make games so that their voices can also be heard.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Syn:<\/strong> Gaming had always been a thing for me \u2013 Mario, Sonic, Tetris, etc. \u2013 but tabletop games and design is a bit more recent for me. I started playing tabletop games somewhat seriously around 2016 and started DM\u2019ing after some encouragement in 2017. It was a wild time learning how to handle all of that, but the further I progressed in learning how to DM and looking into the lore of these systems, the more questions I asked about why things were as they were. As I put those thoughts out into the world, the responses that came back were \u201cHave you thought of designing a game?\u201d I hadn\u2019t. I thought I was just asking average questions that someone had surely thought about. They were, but the people who thought those things were, in fact, designers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I asked about skill checks, dice rolls, worldbuilding, and kobolds and so much so that I ended up here, writing about this friggin\u2019 exciting game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" data-attachment-id=\"2059\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/fire-wm-1\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?fit=1920%2C1080&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1920,1080\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Fire-wm-1\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?resize=840%2C473&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"An illustration of a colorful stained glass window.\" class=\"wp-image-2059 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Fire-wm-1.png?w=1680&amp;ssl=1 1680w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 840px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 840\/473;\" \/><figcaption><em>Illustration by Sinta Posadas.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>To follow that, I\u2019d like to ask a little about your background. What are your areas of expertise, your storied histories? What makes you the designer to make Mnemonic and make it the perfect experience it\u2019s meant to be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DP:<\/strong> Mnemonic is the world I play in when I think about stories; it\u2019s the universe of fantasy and magic that exists in my head, and most of the characters I create exist somewhere within that universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mnemonic is a setting where memory has power, both as a life force for the world itself and as a source of magic. A lot of the setting\u2019s ideas come from my own grapples with memory, things I remember from childhood that look a lot different in retrospect. Some things are happy remembrances; others, less happy. But giving people the space to explore that recontextualization is important to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m also White, which means I have a healthy load of unexamined biases when it comes to what stories can exist and what an imaginary world can look like. Would you believe me if I said I\u2019m <em>not<\/em> the ideal person to tell stories in this setting? A lot of my design process for this world comes from a place of enabling players to tell stories that are personal to them, with as little White European Colonialist Bullshit as possible. For Mnemonic, this means asking questions to invite the player to bring themselves into the world. But I can\u2019t do that alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For my first game in this setting, <em>Cracks in the Mirror<\/em>, I hired a sensitivity consultant to help me identify the spots where I was stumbling into presumptive or harmful tropes. They were immensely valuable in helping me realize everything in the previous paragraph, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For our <em>Weaver\u2019s Almanac<\/em>, I wanted even more help, and not from people with the same unexamined biases as me. Which is why most of the members of our team are BIPOC.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LA:<\/strong> I\u2019m a high-generation mixed-race Japanese American. The relation between memory and reality in <em>Mnemonic<\/em> is interesting to me because of a particular story I have about growing up. Whenever I went to visit my grandparents, they would have documentaries about the Japanese internment camps on the TV. I learned a key part of my heritage through passive absorption. They never addressed it directly until I was much older. It was just there, lingering in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of the basic premise of <em>Mnemonic<\/em> as a broader world is that memories, and how they affected people differently, are lingering in the world. They affect it. Their impacts, not just by their objective truth but by how people feel about them and even by how people manipulate when those are looked back on, are real, in a way even more real than the idea of a thing that happened some time ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>NM:<\/strong> I&#8217;m mixed-race Black Canadian. I&#8217;m very interested in the shifting negotiations, interpretations and the power of memories, particularly in the way different groups and cultures remember their histories. Worlds where those cultures and their histories come alive through the power of memory and of story &#8211; particularly collaborative story &#8211; are so compelling to me because they allow us agency in how our histories are told in ways that we so rarely are allowed in reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the reasons I find <em>Mnemonic<\/em> so compelling is because of how it leans into tools for telling stories, rather than simply telling them. For me part of designing games is about creating gaps for the players to fill and create their own stories and memories. Players are really the game designers, if you think about it &#8211; I can write this and that, but those stories are no longer mine the second someone else picks them up. All I&#8217;m doing, hopefully, is opening windows they might not have noticed, and asking &#8220;what do you see? And what does it remind you of?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PP:<\/strong> I\u2019m a queer Filipino woman born in the Philippines. My parents fled from an oppressive regime, full of dreams of a better future for them and their children in Canada. My memories of Canada as a child are beautiful flashes &#8211; some I can see, some I can taste, some I can feel, and some I can smell. What\u2019s much sharper is the jarring sense I had with my family\u2019s return to Manila. The past few years have been an intriguing yet at times painful study in turning back towards those feelings I had, and realizing, now, what my past self was wrestling with: displacement, confusion, never fitting in even if I was as \u201cFilipino\u201d as my peers. Then, of course, there are the extra tensions of me being polyamorous (and discovering it late, after years of thinking I was bisexual and had \u201cbad, extra\u201d feelings towards multiple people), me being a woman in a hypermasculine, Catholic society that will take every opportunity to tell you that you and your body are nothing without the approval of men, and me being the only daughter out of six children in a rather traditional Filpino family (thus making me someone both in constant need of protection, and also someone who was expected to put their dreams and ideas aside if they were offensive or improper to her brothers). People will constantly try to rewrite you in the hopes of fitting you into easily digestible parts for themselves. They\u2019ll try to ignore the fact that you have your own stories, and your own desire to write it the way you want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that brings me to why I was happy to join Dee in designing <em>Mnemonic<\/em>. This was one of the first games that was capable, with every word, of telling me, \u201cHey. I see you. This is a story for you, that you can make as you like. I am a game that respects you for you.\u201d Memories are things that transform, shift, break apart, come back together, write, and revise themselves as we grow older with them. Bringing that sort of beautiful process into a game is something I\u2019m really into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SP: <\/strong>I have always viewed <em>Mnemonic<\/em> with fascination. The dream-like feeling, the exploration of memory &#8211; that\u2019s always what has drawn me to it. When I fully read it for the first time, I felt that idea of being able to become <em>something<\/em> &#8211; I don\u2019t know exactly what, but the concept itself, to me, seemed necessary. As someone who often has to be A Certain One Thing in their daily life, it is comforting to have a game that exists that allows you to shift, be different, reform along with the memories that you explore in the game. I haven\u2019t played it but I wish to someday.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for the art, I wasn\u2019t actually expecting to do the art for the project. I thought I was going to do writing and then suddenly a discussion for artists was happening and\u2026 I decided to shoot my shot. And it happened! Before I knew it, I was designing art for the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art has always been a complicated thing for me. I don\u2019t talk about my art a lot because my feelings for my art and my skills are Difficult. I started making art when I was a tiny kid watching Powerpuff Girls in our living room back in my grandparent\u2019s house in the countryside. I really took to it and enjoyed making drawing after drawing, filling one notebook after another. I was a hungry mind stuck in a small child\u2019s body. I wanted to learn to make better art and I kept pushing myself so, so hard to as far as my small hands could possibly take me. Much like many of my peers, my skills were forever unrecognized by my mother (she raised me and my brother on her own) and I was constantly told to wake up and concentrate on more \u201cmoney-making\u201d pursuits. This constant push and pull made me hate my art but also made me unable to stop. My struggle with this continues to this day. My mother also still hasn\u2019t recognized my skill and I don\u2019t think she ever will. I don\u2019t really want her approval anymore anyway, but I hope she knows she\u2019s wrong. My art is going to be part of a kickstarter that will definitely touch hearts and also, bluntly,&nbsp; make money. I didn\u2019t become a doctor like she wanted, but I\u2019m sure the project will heal others in a different way.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Syn: <\/strong>I\u2019m just a person with questions. Lots of them. So when you mix my innate curiosity about every single thing with my utter fascination with worldbuilding, I guess this was almost destined for me. I remember when I was asked to join the team. It felt surreal; I\u2019m just a guy with questions about the worlds we build and the systems that support them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Dee asked me if I would like to build in a world of memory, I was still learning what it was that I wanted to do in the world of tabletop games and the stories I wanted to tell. I read the mechanics and a bit of the lore and it was just\u2026 obvious. The stories I want to tell are the kind where you dig into yourself and ask questions and deal with the challenges that come from those answers. Everything in Mnemonic speaks to that need.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1_XUSErjBUXtuXVFYl97JTUIOf5BNIjST\/view?usp=sharing\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"813\" height=\"633\" data-attachment-id=\"2061\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/annotation-2020-08-23-204852\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Annotation-2020-08-23-204852.png?fit=813%2C633&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"813,633\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Annotation-2020-08-23-204852\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Annotation-2020-08-23-204852.png?fit=813%2C633&amp;ssl=1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Annotation-2020-08-23-204852.png?resize=813%2C633&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"A page from The First Gathering, a part of Mnemonic, by Dee Pennyway that is giving instructions for play.\" class=\"wp-image-2061 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Annotation-2020-08-23-204852.png?w=813&amp;ssl=1 813w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Annotation-2020-08-23-204852.png?resize=300%2C234&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Annotation-2020-08-23-204852.png?resize=768%2C598&amp;ssl=1 768w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 813px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 813\/633;\" \/><\/a><figcaption><em>An excerpt from The First Gathering written by Dee Pennyway, layout by Dee Pennyway. Click the picture to check out the draft (work in progress!)!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cool! So, now that we know a little about you, tell me a little about <\/strong><strong><em>Mnemonic<\/em><\/strong><strong>. What excites you about it? What spurred its creation?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DP: <\/strong><em>Mnemonic<\/em> emerged from a question I had in a play-by-post game a dozen years ago: <em>If I have to spend Experience Points to use this ability, what do those Experience Points represent, and what does it mean to lose them?<\/em> I settled into memory as a source of power, which evolved over the years into a world concept where the world <em>itself<\/em> has memories that exert themselves on occasion. I\u2019ve played around with characters who lost their memories after abusing magic, characters who trapped unpleasant memories inside of powerful relics to try and forget traumatic events, characters who sang songs to resonate their own memories with the memories of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m pleased with the current version of the world that exists in my mind, which is that memory is inherently fluid, not something that can be spent or saved or stored but something that we engage with and observe on a constant basis. We remember things, we misremember things, we forget things&#8230;and the world does too. There\u2019s something really neat to me about a world that remembers the things we do, even if no one else sees us do them. What memories does the world choose to hold onto, like keepsakes? What memories does the world try to forget?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Synxiec and I have talked about what happens when the world <em>wants<\/em> to forget somebody but <em>can\u2019t<\/em>. Like a kind of cursed immortality. The story gets a lot heavier when we start exploring trauma as a world event, but it\u2019s a thing my mind drifts to when I think about stories I want to tell in Mnemonic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PP:<\/strong> I mentioned how Mnemonic is a game that spoke to me, and acknowledged me as someone full of stories that I wanted to tell. What excites me most about this project is the fact that by design, the emotions, intent, and player understanding of \u201cmemory\u201d will change according to who joins you for a session. My first game had us exploring our gender identities, how we connected with other people, and how we viewed family and love. Being guided through the session with prompts and a constant reminder of \u201cYou don\u2019t have to answer if you don\u2019t want to; respect the silence\u201d felt magical. The thought of being able to expand upon these experiences for more players, this time as a member of the dev team, really excites me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other big thing that I\u2019m looking forward to would be all of the subsystems that the Almanac will have, plus all the gameable lore that our team will be bringing to the table. As a designer who is extremely comfortable with either systems that use dice or systems that are purely narrative, playing around with fascinating card mechanics is uncharted territory. The things we have planned make me feel like I can both contribute well to the Almanac, and challenge myself to design for new things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Syn:<\/strong> The thing that excites me about the game the most is a hard question. At first, it was the die. Each of them having a distinct purpose. Then as I looked more closely at it, I found what excited me the most: <em>the questions<\/em>. Did I mention I like asking questions? Because I really enjoy asking questions and Mnemonic\u2019s challenges are unique in that respect. What game asks a question like \u201cWhat lies do you tell yourself?\u201d as part of character creation? These are the kind of foundational things that build worlds I like to explore and get lost in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re not even going to talk about how every other thing this game gives you has safety built into it. I\u2019ve already thought about the many stories I want to tell in this world of memory, but don\u2019t tell Dee that. It\u2019s a surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, the people I get to work with are people I have so much respect for and many of them are people I just enjoy for their own sake. I\u2019m happy to work with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>NM: <\/strong>Unreliable narration, anti-canon and player-collaborated and -created game history, lore, and content are things I\u2019m particularly invested in. Games are shared storytelling endeavors, after all &#8211; it makes it that much more enjoyable when everyone is empowered and able to contribute to communal worldbuilding rather than passively experiencing those worlds.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mnemonic excites me in the way Dread and Trophy excite me: asking pointed questions of ourselves and others to build a shared world and a shared experience, as it pertains to memory &#8211; which is both a very personal thing and a communal one. Any time I\u2019ve ever spent with friends, half the conversation is inevitably \u201cremember that time?\u201d Mnemonic, to me, is an entire game of <em>that<\/em>, and that excites me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LA:<\/strong> The anti-canon nature of the setting is particularly cool to me because it more explicitly invites the players to make the world theirs. Most settings are fruitful not just for standing on their own, but for inviting players to be part of it, to participate actively. Mnemonic takes this a step further by saying that the instance the players are in is as true, as valid, as real, maybe even <em>more<\/em> real, than anything imagined by anyone else, up to and including the creators of the setting. It ties back to a core theme of the setting that the memories of something &#8211; the feelings and echoes and the ways they affect people &#8211; are more important than a theoretical objective truth. It\u2019s about the experiences, both in-game and for the players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"813\" height=\"632\" data-attachment-id=\"2064\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/the-tale-of-five-strings-page\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-tale-of-five-strings-page.png?fit=813%2C632&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"813,632\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"the-tale-of-five-strings-page\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-tale-of-five-strings-page.png?fit=813%2C632&amp;ssl=1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-tale-of-five-strings-page.png?resize=813%2C632&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The Tale of Five Strings lore piece and story arc from Mnemonic.\" class=\"wp-image-2064 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-tale-of-five-strings-page.png?w=813&amp;ssl=1 813w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-tale-of-five-strings-page.png?resize=300%2C233&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-tale-of-five-strings-page.png?resize=768%2C597&amp;ssl=1 768w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 813px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 813\/632;\" \/><figcaption><em>The Tale of Five Strings lore piece (one of 26) and story arc, draft, by Synxiec with layout by Dee Pennyway.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>When dealing with memory, we can encounter some bumps along the road. How is <\/strong><strong><em>Mnemonic <\/em><\/strong><strong>designed to respect player\u2019s agency and consent, and allow them to control content to avoid any triggers, squicks, or <\/strong><strong><em>undesirable<\/em><\/strong><strong> unhappy times?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DP:<\/strong> Agency and consent are two of my biggest guiding targets in game design, and <em>Mnemonic<\/em> is no different. Everything in this game gives players permission to paint their own picture of the events, and character creation asks each player to name at least one <strong>boundary <\/strong>for something they will not include in the story, with some guiding language about how to best take care of not just their character\u2019s needs, but the needs of everyone\u2019s characters, and of every player at the table as well. I\u2019ll drop the excerpt from that section here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-black-color has-text-color has-background\" style=\"background-color:#dbfbee\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Boundary<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When we tell stories, we inevitably leave some details out, some rooms unexplored, some doors closed. We do this for our own safety and for the safety of those around us. What is a boundary you will not cross in this story? How close to it are you willing to wander before you turn away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Your boundary can be something your character would want respected, or it can be something you care about personally. For example, Dee has a fear of heights, but their character does not. They might say, &#8220;I&#8217;d like to set a boundary on detailed descriptions of vertigo or other feelings of being up high. We can go to high places, but I as a player don&#8217;t want to experience that feeling in my imagination.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can set more than one boundary, and you can add more as the story progresses or as you think of them. If privacy is a concern, you may want to consider some form of anonymization, such as a shared digital document or a trusted facilitator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Respecting boundaries is about more than just not crossing the line; it&#8217;s about knowing when a boundary needs to remain entirely outside the scope of the story, even in reference. If your character has a pet and you want to set a boundary around that pet&#8217;s safety, you may want to establish that as a convention of play: that this pet will never come to harm, and will never even be perceived to be in any danger, no matter the stakes of the scene.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Mnemonic<\/em> doesn\u2019t directly present players with descriptive content; instead, we ask questions that guide the players to the <em>kinds<\/em> of themes we want them to explore, in their own space and at their own comfort level. We also include language that makes it explicit that players are allowed to change any aspect of the story, whether it\u2019s something that\u2019s happening in the current scene or something that happened three sessions ago. I don\u2019t want anyone to feel like they have to commit to a traumatic consequence of a piece of fiction they established before they recognized it would be a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I take a lot of inspiration from Script Change on that, actually. The idea of being able to Rewind a scene to take a different approach was incredibly influential for me. I hope that players are able to build that kind of agency into their play groups when they play <em>Mnemonic<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing we do that I\u2019m quietly excited about is how we handle \u201cA thing happened in the mechanics that you don\u2019t like.\u201d If it\u2019s something that happened because of the dice, you can&#8230;just reroll them. Dice are an abstraction, a story generator. There\u2019s a ritual quality to rolling a die, but I want players to know that if the Fire Die says <em>you set fire to the entire world<\/em>, you can opt out of that outcome and roll again until you get <em>you send up a bright signal to let your friends know where you are.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Your character also can\u2019t be removed from the story without your consent, which seems like a small thing but <em>so many<\/em> of the biggest games out there have some form of \u201cGame Over\u201d scenario where my character can be taken away from me by a cruel GM, or fickle dice. In <em>Mnemonic<\/em>, the only way your character can die is if <em>you<\/em> make the decision for them to leave the story. We have mechanics for it. It\u2019s a big deal. You can do it. No one else can do it for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s a lot of words to dance around the fact that at the end of the day, we can\u2019t completely protect players, we can just offer tools and guidance. If you\u2019re a player who experiences <strong>bleed<\/strong> in a significant way (where the events of the story affect you on a personal level in a way that lingers after the story ends), I\u2019d encourage you to check in with yourself regularly; don\u2019t feel like you have to choose the \u201cheavy\u201d answer to every question. This advice appears in just about every game I write now, so I\u2019m gonna put it here too: <em>Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" data-attachment-id=\"2062\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/rain-wm\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?fit=1920%2C1080&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1920,1080\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Rain-wm\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?resize=840%2C473&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"An illustration of two arms reaching out of a freestanding raincloud that's pouring down rain.\" class=\"wp-image-2062 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Rain-wm.png?w=1680&amp;ssl=1 1680w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 840px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 840\/473;\" \/><figcaption><em>Illustration by Sinta Posadas. (I love this one!)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>It&#8217;s clear you&#8217;ve dug deeply into the world and what the action and reaction mean. What made you elect to use the mediums you do &#8211; cards, the particular art style, etc. &#8211; to represent the world to people and to have them interact with? How does the medium give meaning to the art?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DP:<\/strong> I want Mnemonic to be&#8230;hm, accessibility has its own connotations, and I have goals on that front as well but when it comes to the use of cards, what I\u2019m aiming for is, \u201cCan a person play this game with the things they already have\u201d. And my family never played roleplaying games, but we did always have a deck of poker cards ready to go. And I know that a lot of general-purpose stores have decks available for less than $5, which means that if you don\u2019t happen to have a deck at your home, you can probably find one even if you don\u2019t have a \u201cgaming store\u201d near you. That was pretty important to me early on. That\u2019s also why our dice are six-sided; I love polyhedral dice sets, but until very recently you couldn\u2019t just go to Target and pick up a set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The artwork is important here too, but for me it\u2019s more about conveying the sense of \u201cthis is something that someone might have drawn or painted directly into their notebook while traveling.\u201d Sin\u2019s illustrations are wonderful and intimate, full of&#8230;I hesitate to tell people what they should be feeling when they look at these pieces, but I know that when I look at them I get a strong sense of \u201cthe person who painted this cares a lot about the subject.\u201d And I hope that comes through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We care a lot about the stories we\u2019re telling. And I want players to care, too. About their stories, and about each other sitting around the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"467\" height=\"716\" data-attachment-id=\"2063\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/the-rain-die-pdf-page\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-rain-die-pdf-page.png?fit=467%2C716&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"467,716\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"the-rain-die-pdf-page\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-rain-die-pdf-page.png?fit=467%2C716&amp;ssl=1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-rain-die-pdf-page.png?resize=467%2C716&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The rules pages for the Rain Die including the previous illustration of the arms coming out of the raincloud pouring down rain and the detailed roll rules for the die in play. \" class=\"wp-image-2063 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-rain-die-pdf-page.png?w=467&amp;ssl=1 467w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-rain-die-pdf-page.png?resize=196%2C300&amp;ssl=1 196w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 467px) 85vw, 467px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 467px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 467\/716;\" \/><figcaption><em>The Rain Die draft written by Dee Pennyway, layout by Dee Pennyway, illustration by Sinta Posadas.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>As someone who has personally struggled with memory loss but also finds beauty in the ephemeral and has things they&#8217;d like to forget, I am genuinely curious how a session of Mnemonic plays out. What are an example or two of your experiences with the game and what did you take away &#8211; or leave behind?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DP:<\/strong> Mnemonic usually feels&#8230;weighted? I sometimes describe it as the feeling of holding your breath in anticipation, of choosing your words carefully in a space that allows you to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ve been playing on the Actual Play twitch channel the past few weeks, and there are some things that I\u2019ll hold onto forever, and at least one thing I wish I could take back (and probably would, if we were playing a longer-running series).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing I cherish is how readily everyone at the table takes ownership of the group\u2019s well-being. Sean introduced his character, Warren, as a habitat for a community of rabbits, and after what was probably about a minute but what felt like only an instant, Synxiec announced that we were now, us, the storytellers, the players on stream, committed protectors of the bunnies. And like&#8230;yes, of course! Mnemonic, the game, is about being careful storytellers and recognizing when it\u2019s your job as a player to look after the characters in your own story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A thing I would change is that Misha introduced a piece of local folklore around a dragon living nearby, and it was super interesting&#8211;but then when I tied our first session together with my character\u2019s closing scene, I used my own character\u2019s backstory as a vehicle instead of connecting it to hers. It would have been a much more compelling story beat, and more personal to the entire group, and more meaningful to the town we were in, to make that moment about something someone else had introduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was one of those things that I didn\u2019t even think about until the next day, when it was already too late to go back and change. And the nice thing about Mnemonic is that if something like that happens in your home game, you can just&#8230;change it. You can go in next week with your group and say \u201cHey, this happened last time but I kinda want to retcon it to something else if that\u2019s okay?\u201d and then work out how the change might affect everybody, and the story you\u2019re telling together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"840\" height=\"667\" data-attachment-id=\"2057\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/logo-transparent\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?fit=1600%2C1270&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1600,1270\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Logo-transparent\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;The Mnemonic: A Weaver&amp;#8217;s Almanac logo which is the title in red text with three lines coming out of the word MNEMONIC on either side and coming to points.&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?fit=1024%2C813&amp;ssl=1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?resize=840%2C667&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The Mnemonic: A Weaver's Almanac logo which is the title in red text with three lines coming out of the word MNEMONIC on either side and coming to points.\" class=\"wp-image-2057 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?resize=1024%2C813&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?resize=300%2C238&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?resize=768%2C610&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?resize=1536%2C1219&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?w=1600&amp;ssl=1 1600w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 840px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 840\/667;\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Thank you so much to the whole team for the interview, including those unable to participate because of life &#8211; see you next time! I hope all you readers enjoyed the interview and that you&#8217;ll <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/mnemonicrpg\/mnemonic-a-weavers-almanac\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/mnemonicrpg\/mnemonic-a-weavers-almanac\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">check out Mnemonic: A Weaver&#8217;s Almanac on Kickstarter today! <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi all! Today I have an interview with Dee Pennyway and the Mnemonic team to talk about Mnemonic: A Weaver&#8217;s Almanac, which is currently on Kickstarter and sounds fascinating! Included in the interview are: Dee Pennyway (they\/them) &#8211; DP Lexi Antoku (they\/she) &#8211; LA Nicholas Masyk (he\/him) &#8211; NM Pam Punzalan (they\/she) &#8211; PP Sinta &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/08\/mnemonic-with-the-team\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mnemonic with the Team&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2057,"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":[111,30,90,221,10,4,17,25,46,8,15,12,26,41,23,18,56],"class_list":["post-2055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-dice","tag-diversity","tag-fantasy","tag-feature","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-interviews","tag-queer","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\/2020\/08\/Logo-transparent.png?fit=1600%2C1270&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-x9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":388,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2014\/07\/brie-sheldon-interviews-julio-matos-and-igor-toscano\/","url_meta":{"origin":2055,"position":0},"title":"Brie Sheldon Interviews Julio Matos and Igor Toscano","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"July 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This was such a fun interview!\u00a0+Julio Matos\u00a0and\u00a0+Igor Toscano\u00a0were fantastic to talk to, even though I butchered their names when I introduced them.\u00a0The Brazilian scene is fascinating, and I'm looking forward to seeing more in the future!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Archive&quot;","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":2055,"position":1},"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 &quot;Archive&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2030,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/07\/thoughty-update-july-2020\/","url_meta":{"origin":2055,"position":2},"title":"Let&#8217;s Talk: A Thoughty Update&#8230;among other things","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"July 31, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I apologize if this is the first some of you may be hearing of my current health status, but the quarantine has made communicating really difficult. Please watch this video and feel free to reach out, but do not feel any obligation to give platitudes. Things have been rough but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Archive&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Beau at their desk with their mic and the Thoughty logo and the text \"Let's Talk: A Thoughty Update...among other things.\" There is a lens flare over the scene, and a grey background.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/thumbnailsmol.png?fit=666%2C375&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/thumbnailsmol.png?fit=666%2C375&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/thumbnailsmol.png?fit=666%2C375&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":200,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2017\/02\/thoughty-talking-companions-tale-with-laura-simpson\/","url_meta":{"origin":2055,"position":3},"title":"Thoughty: Talking Companions Tale with Laura Simpson","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"February 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Check out my interview with Laura Simpson on Companions' Tale, currently on Kickstarter!This post was supported by the community on patreon.com\/briecs. Tell your friends!To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http:\/\/paypal.me\/thoughty.If you'd like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Archive&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":382,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2014\/07\/hangout-with-brie-and-pulse-creators\/","url_meta":{"origin":2055,"position":4},"title":"Hangout with Brie and PULSE Creators","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"July 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Archive&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":251,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2016\/10\/city-of-mist-loot\/","url_meta":{"origin":2055,"position":5},"title":"City of Mist Loot!","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"October 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm posting an interview on Monday with Amit Moshe about his upcoming game City of Mist, a superhero noir game hitting Kickstarter this month. Amit sent me some of the incredibly beautiful character playbooks in the mail, and combined with those and the free downloadable starter set, I'm pretty amped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Archive&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Archive","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-5P6TClR5gJI\/WAV--NWkUZI\/AAAAAAAAzZg\/zq9BNb2YVlU1PvGpwWJJPSYzHyAS-lteACLcB\/s320\/BrieIMG_20161017_213802.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055","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=2055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}