{"id":25,"date":"2018-11-19T16:21:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T16:21:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:39:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:39:12","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-metal-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2018\/11\/five-or-so-questions-on-metal-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on METAL WORLD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi all, today I have an interview with Nick Zachariasen on METAL WORLD! It’s currently on DriveThru!<\/a> I normally don’t include game pitches here, but the METAL WORLD pitch is so rad, I had to! <\/b><\/p>\n

METAL WORLD takes the breadth of the heavy metal genre and throws it all into one game world. It doesn\u2019t care how much sense something makes as long as it\u2019s awesome. It has a demon-possessed lawman who rides a rocket-powered robot horse and carries a pair of 666-shooters. It has an undead ship made of the bones, sinews, and skin of the sailors it kills. Hell is a continent you can get guided tours of from the MegaDevil himself. The cherry on top? It has a volcano made of dragons, which shoots lava and more dragons when it erupts. The game system\u2014 including character building\u2014 are as loose as possible to allow your group to play the way you want.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

With that in mind, check out Nick’s responses below!<\/b>
<\/b>
<\/span>—<\/span>

<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Boris Vallejo’s Kalevanpojat<\/i>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Tell me a little about METAL WORLD. What excites you about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/div>\n
The germ for the idea that became METAL WORLD came about when I looked at the Boris Vallejo painting Kalevanpojat <\/i>(above). There\u2019s this giant half-man\/half-dragon thing posing like he\u2019s trying to impress this only nominally-dressed woman who could not possibly be interested any less. She has an expression as if to say \u201cYeah, buddy, just get down the mountain, already. Three of whatever you are have passed through in the last half hour. They\u2019re probably at the tavern.\u201d I imagined what kind of world that must be for such a fantastic sight to leave her completely unfazed. Fast forward to after the premiere of Metalocalypse and I finally come up with the vague idea of a world of heavy metal in all its breadth. Of course, a couple weeks later I learn about Br\u00fctal Legend, which was sort of what I\u2019d conceived spiritually but for the most part not even close aesthetically, although I did draw some inspiration from it all the same.<\/div>\n

METAL WORLD, then, takes every kind of metal\u2014 whether basic, \u201cclassic\u201d metal like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest or just about any subgenre you can think of like doom, black, pirate, or whatever\u2014 and throws it all into a blender so that you can have situations like a barbarian riding a nightmare steed charge a tank crewed by cyborgs and actually have a chance at winning! It\u2019s everything Ronnie James Dio ever sang about. It\u2019s anything you might see in a Dethklok video. It\u2019s everything power metal sings about, with valiant heroes, fire, dragons, The Gods\u2122, and all that. In short, METAL WORLD tries to bring everything awesome into one place without regard to piddly details like \u201cWait a minute, how does a region with this ecology sustain a tribe of human-hunting giants? They\u2019d strip the population bare in months and then have no food source!\u201d<\/p>\n

 METAL WORLD ignores pesky things like so-called \u201ccontinuity\u201d or \u201ctravel time\u201d unless it\u2019s important for the overall story you\u2019re telling with your group, and I think that\u2019s what excites me most about METAL WORLD. I\u2019m not aware of anything quite like it, where any play style your group could want is not just possible but encouraged so long as everyone\u2019s on board, and the game actually mechanically encourages it with a rule set that\u2019s just vague enough to be accommodating but specific enough to be playable while also having fun with its readers to keep from taking itself too seriously.<\/p>\n

What are the mechanics of METAL WORLD like and how do they relate to the theme?<\/b><\/p>\n

The mechanics try to be simple and stripped-down. You have five main stats, each named for a subgenre of heavy metal: Death (your health), Power (strength and \u201cpersuasion\u201d), Prog (intelligence, perceptiveness, and actual persuasion), Speed (agility, reflexes, and overall coordination), and Thrash (combat ability). I kept it that simple because A) it keeps creation easy and B) on the eventual character sheet I can put each one at the point of a pentagram.<\/p>\n

The design philosophy is that instead of worrying about how far you can move in a round, exactly how long a round is, and that sort of thing you see some other games get bogged down with, METAL WORLD tries to focus in the in-game exploits of the characters and what they bring about in the world around them. It didn\u2019t grow out of a wargame and god-of-your-choice help me if it grows into one. METAL WORLD\u2019s main concern is giving people a setting that facilitates telling an interactive story with evocative imagery. That\u2019s one reason I don\u2019t have classes; they pigeon-hole characters into a predefined type without allowing for a player\u2019s creativity to show through.<\/p>\n

You can have a band (METAL WORLD\u2019s term for an adventuring party) containing traditional sword-and-sorcery fantasy characters like elves, humans, dwarves, and so forth alongside robots, cyborgs, Atlanteans, and METAL WORLD\u2019s gnomes, which are a race of mad geneticists called ge-nomes\u2014 essentially, they\u2019re a race of Bioshock-style Splicers. The environment contains everything from fantasy\u2019s quasi-medieval environment to near-ish future tech and references galore to metal, its inspirations, and occasional random other things. You need complete freedom to be able to have that kind of spread in characters and environment, so METAL WORLD focuses a lot on group consensus as to the tone of the game, which means the Metal Lord (the GM) has very wide latitude of what to allow or to rein in if it proves unbalancing. <\/p>\n

Another important thing I think bears mentioning about that latitude is that the guiding metric of METAL WORLD is \u201cas ______ as it needs to be.\u201d Because everything worries more about the story than thinking about ensuring you have enough provisions for the trip or how much you can carry, let\u2019s say an invading army approaches. Your story is about the epic battle that ensues like the battle of Helm\u2019s Deep, so the band and NPCs have plenty of time to prepare defenses and have a grand old siege ahead of them. Now say you have a story in mind where the focus is more on evacuating those who can\u2019t fight and making a stand to buy time. That same army leaving from the same place will take less time to get to the same destination. In METAL WORLD, space actually dilates or contracts depending on the needs of the narrative, though no character is ever aware of this\u2014 it\u2019s just a cognitive blind spot created by reality itself. Similarly, a character can carry as much as (s)he reasonably could.<\/p>\n

Then you also have Metal points, which reflect the favor of The Gods\u2122 like Fate Points in d6 Star Wars or bennies in Savage Worlds. They serve two purposes. First, they fuel magic use for those who know how to do that that as well as other effects, like maybe the powers of a magical item. More generally, though, they serve to allow characters to (usually) unconsciously generate special game effects depending on what they want to accomplish. You get them by doing particularly impressive things or just because the Metal Lord feels like it.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/div>\n

What kind of player characters exist in the game, and what are they like?<\/b><\/p>\n

As I said before, you can make pretty much anything you can think of within reason and even perhaps a bit beyond. Your band can have an axe-wielding barbarian who rides a nightmare steed, a mad scientist who raises and otherwise experiments on the dead, a lizard man martial artist, a shroom-addled shaman who drives a wicked van with amazing scenery painted on its side, and a dwarf who\u2019s replaced both of his hands with chainsaws. Mind you, all of these are among the sample characters I\u2019ve created\u2014 the dwarf is named Angus Mac Chainsaw Hands. You truly are bounded only by your imagination and what the Metal Lord will allow. I haven\u2019t statted minotaurs for use as PCs, for example, but if you want to play one, work with your group\u2019s Metal Lord and figure out how to run one so it\u2019s balanced with the rest of your group\u2019s characters. Maybe you want to play something I haven\u2019t even provided for yet at all. Make it up and work it out! Again, I want people to be able to create the most awesome things they can imagine so everyone can have fun with it.<\/p>\n

How do you handle topics like violence, sexual content, and so on in a game themed so wildly and intensely?<\/b><\/p>\n

bviously, violence is going to be present given that heavy metal isn\u2019t exactly known for diplomacy over tea and crumpets. I mean, Hell is a continent you can physically go to and get a guided tour of, possibly by the MegaDevil himself. As far as sexual content, I do make a note about that in the introduction when I mention the traditional scantily-clad women you\u2019d see in the artwork of Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell, and other fantasy staples who inspired much of METAL WORLD\u2019s aesthetic. I tell people to play it up to their group\u2019s taste. This game tries to encompass the breadth of metal in its entirety. Some of that will involve mature-audience content and if you end up playing those kind of things up to the point where they become ridiculous, that\u2019s totally fine if you\u2019re enjoying yourselves.<\/p>\n

As you say, METAL WORLD is indeed wild and intense and I feel the form that takes should be subjective, determined by what you want out of it. It\u2019s like how if you\u2019re listening to metal and you want something dark and brooding you listen to doom metal while if you want something that fills you with a sort of positive energy, you\u2019d listen to power metal. It\u2019s clay in your hands. If you want to make that clay look like something you might not want your parents to see, what\u2019s important is that it\u2019s what you want, not what somebody else wants. When you get right down to it, that\u2019s one of the classic themes of metal as a genre.<\/p>\n

What is one of your favorite moments from playtesting or designing METAL WORLD so far, and why?<\/b><\/p>\n

I honestly haven\u2019t gotten to playtest METAL WORLD nearly as much as I\u2019d like. I mean, having to work a full-time job will necessarily do that, especially when you have a family. That\u2019s why I hope people run through some sessions on their own (via downloading METAL WORLD: The Rough Cut) and give me feedback so I know what makes sense to people who don\u2019t already know what it\u2019s supposed to mean.<\/p>\n

That said, I guess I have a few\u2014 deviating from your question just a bit\u2014 favorite design moments. The first is when I was writing about skills. I mentioned meteorology and added a footnote (the work as a whole is peppered with them throughout as asides, whether for comedy or to clarify without disrupting flow) that the Meteorology skill also teaches you about space because that\u2019s where meteors are. This game is at least 20% puns and that\u2019s probably my worst\/best. The one with the best result as far as the overall work is how I added a chapter between the world (the fourth) and the creatures (then the fifth) so that I could have Chapter 666: The Number of the Bestiary. That chapter lists some adventure hooks and an example of play, which I think it really needed. I think the ge-nomes are one of my most clever ideas, having come to me as one of those thoughts that pops into your head about 15 seconds or so after your head hits your pillow at night.<\/p>\n

That said, though, I am aware of a moment from a friend of mine running a playtest session. Someone commented that METAL WORLD \u201creads like it was written by a madman with a law degree.\u201d I don\u2019t know what this person\u2019s clue was, but apparently it caused \u201ctear-inducing laughter\u201d when my friend informed this person that it reads that way because it was written by a madman with a law degree!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The METAL WORLD logo concept rough.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

—
Thanks so much to Nick for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out METAL WORLD on DriveThruRPG pay-what-you-want<\/a>!<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com\/thoughty<\/a>. Tell your friends! <\/p>\n

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http:\/\/paypal.me\/thoughty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, follow the instructions on the Contact page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi all, today I have an interview with Nick Zachariasen on METAL WORLD! It’s currently on DriveThru! I normally don’t include game pitches here, but the METAL WORLD pitch is so rad, I had to! METAL WORLD takes the breadth of the heavy metal genre and throws it all into one game world. It doesn\u2019t … Continue reading “Five or So Questions on METAL WORLD”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[58,20,10,4,17,25,59,8,15,12,42,23],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","tag-art","tag-five-or-so","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-interviews","tag-music","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpg","tag-rpgs","tag-tabletop","tag-tabletop-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-p","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1562,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/10\/five-or-so-questions-on-visigoths-vs-mall-goths\/","url_meta":{"origin":25,"position":0},"title":"Five or So Questions on Visigoths vs. Mall Goths","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"October 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi all! 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