Musings on Horror Games

I'm playing Alien: Isolation on PC right now. I'm not very far in, but I've found some stuff I wanted to talk about (which I recorded the audio of while playing but the file corrupted or something).

I want to make a horror tabletop RPG at some point. This is something I have been interested in for a while but have not had the capacity to do as I don't have a ton of experience with horror games. I've played some tabletop horror RPGs - Don't Rest Your Head, Black Stars Rise, and a fantastic game by +Nick Wedig that should be published if it isn't already (I'm a little behind on Nick's work.) (ETA: I've also played Dread, very late at night at a party, and it was pretty great). These games are good, but they require two things: good, experienced players, and a great GM. The systems do some of the work, but I feel like they wouldn't work as well without the support of the players and GM. I want to make a game approachable to new players, which is challenging for me in the first place, but I also want something compelling.

There are a few things I want to avoid that I have found to be way to common in various horror media (games, television, movies, etc.): boredom and sexually predatory themes. The former is just wasting time, but the latter actually kind of pisses me off. I feel like I should be able to avoid that kind of trigger in horror instead of being constantly confronted with it, so I've tasked myself with aiming for the kind of horror - maybe dread? - that avoids that specific trope.

Things I want to include: suspense, vivid descriptions, and the ability to run and play the game without tons of tabletop experience. Much harder than it sounds.

Part of me wants to interrogate the people I know who are good about horror, but at the same time, I feel like I need to focus on what makes me scared in order to satisfy what I want.

One of the feelings I want to incorporate is that feeling of "I know what's going to happen, I can't stop it, and it's terrible," that dread. One of the movies I was unable to finish because of how distressing and dreadful was Buckets of Blood (1959). Part of this is because I for serious cannot handle harming animals in film (we shut it off before the first icky part, admittedly), but part of it is that kind of dread just shakes me up. I would love to capture that in a game, but how do you do that? I feel like there needs to be a script, so I'm wondering how you include three things:

• The illusion of free will
• Freedom of description 
• Compelling story

I mean, part of it is that I'm just not a super experienced writer or designer. Part of it is I need to consume more horror media, but I don't want to consume too much and lose my focus, you know? I think video games are a really good place to focus because I am learning a lot about games and interaction from them (I'll eventually write another post about some of the games I'm playing now).

 Avoiding boredom is suuuuper hard. This is my biggest problem with horror movies and games. If the suspense isn't done right, or things are too repetitive, I totally lose focus and interest. Sometimes this is useful because there can be jump scares, but jump scares are not only hard in RPGs but can be kind of silly. I don't want players to be uninvolved enough that they want to start checking their phones or having side convos.

That's where I am right now. I'd appreciate your thoughts!

Five or So Questions with Avonelle Wing on Convention Organizing

Tell me a little about what you do as a convention coordinator. What's exciting about it?

What do I do? that's a very complicated question, because I wear many hats, and the list of things I do could read like a resume.

From the practical and very concrete perspective, my job is to make sure the resources are available for the convention staff to provide the most satisfying convention experience possible to the broadest segment of our population. Among the things I do are:

• Remembering to buy the right envelopes (peel and stick, #10), card stock, poster board, tape, packing tape, duct tape, and knowing which brand and why.
• Keeping track of ridiculous things, like remotes, wires, plugs, components - making sure everything gets packed to and from every con, and I know where each important piece is. all the time. 
• Refreshing our extension cord supply. 
• Counting bed spots accurately so senior staff and guests all have a place to sleep.
• Soliciting and tracking prize support and library copies of games.
• Keeping track of special guests and making sure they have satisfying experiences at the con. 
• Maintaining a social media presence so the conventions are people, not faceless corporate entities to attendees. 

My brain holds a million vital little details that mean we don't ahve to reinvent the wheel. and we never have to deal with the experience of buying the wrong duct tape again. (the whole Big Board system fell off the walls at DEXCON. Within hours of putting it up. It's my job to remember that horror and to make sure we avoid it in the future. 1,000 events on the ballroom floor. oi.)

I talk to game masters. I help piece the schedule together (my husband does the lion's share of the scheduling and I still get a little swoony when I look at the sheer magnitude of the task he takes on every convention.). I coordinate staff.

On a more ephemeral level, I get to be part of the magic of our community. I am the welcome wagon - I notice when somebody is looking a little lost and I loop them into something exciting. I forge connections, solve problems. When somebody is in the middle of a devastating breakup and needs to hide, they end up in my room, because that's a safe place to hide and I always feed you after I scrape your sobbing self up off a hallway floor. Our conventions are described by lots of people in our community as "giant family reunions" and I get to make that magic happen. It's akin to being the eccentric aunt who rents the pavilion, hires the magicians and buys 100lbs of charcoal. The difference is that our community has chosen to be here. and I love them for that.

I get to facilitate our evolution. When somebody comes to me and says "freeform. it's a thing. we need more of it" I get to say "ok! fill out the form and let's do it!"

When somebody says "gender. It matters in gaming and we need to talk about it." I get to say "OK! space, exposure, attention. let's go."

18 months later, somebody said the same thing about race. "Great. Let's talk. Let's talk long and loud and let's get angry and let's do positive things to change our world. Let's go!"

We hear "old school roleplayers feel lost. we want a home too!" and we launch a convention within a convention to serve them too.

Our job is to be responsive and supportive and encouraging. and I think we do a decent job of it. It's exciting to me to hear somebody say "I want to..." and to be able to say "and I can help make that happen. I'm excited! let's go!"

I am often humbled, watching our community support each other. and I get to know that they've come together because I've given them the venue and the opportunity and the reason to do so.


What is the biggest challenge to hosting a con?
The biggest challenges of any convention lie in the unknowns - will the air conditioning be able to keep up? how many bottles of soda will we blow through this year? The system and process stuff? We've got that down, and it's entirely on us. Once you set the machine in motion, you become dependent on other people to see things through, and on the universe to cooperate.

I drove all the convention badges, the printer and all the other registration materials to a convention once through a storm system that spawned tornadoes. As I drove down the highway, I watched trees falling behind me - it felt cinematic and not as terrifying as it should have been. Those things, you can't plan for. You just have to keep your head screwed on straight and keep moving.


What do you think is the most valuable advice you could give someone starting their own event?
Talk to other local events. Make sure you're not crashing their party. Ask them about venues - sometimes there's a reason an event moved suddenly. Schedule so you're not stepping on anybody's toes. Ask for help - Double Exposure is always happy to help a small even negotiate for space and sometimes we even help staff for your first couple of years.

Figure out a reasonable budget and double it.

Carry the best insurance you can possibly afford. Wait. what? insurance? Yes, insurance. Trust me, it's worth it.

Don't run by committee. Take personal responsibility for things that go wrong and be generous in sharing the credit for things that go right.


What are your goals with Maelstrom and DEXCON, which are two wildly different cons?

Maelstrom is an experiment, and I'm still sorting out my goals. I need to go back to my brain trust and discuss what worked and what didn't, and to set community-guided goals.

DEXCON's goal is, always, to provide the most action-packed, diverse, intense, intimate five days of gaming anywhere. We've got the excitement of one of the mega-cons with the comfort and friendliness of a local con.


What's big for the next year for Double Exposure?
Big... I'm not sure we are ready for much bigger than 2014! We're up to four conventions a year of our own, plus we're doing the First Exposure Playtest Hall at Gen Con.

I'm just getting my feet under me when it comes to talking about the importance of social justice - of advocacy and representation. That has become a bigger part of Double Exposure's program over the last several years, as I've realized that we were above the curve, but had more we could be doing. the rest of 2014 and likely most of 2015 is going to be continuing to present the best possible product to our community while refining and advancing our approach to outreach, education and representation. I have so much to learn, and so many brilliant people to learn it from.

I have a still-flickering hope that we will be able to do a larp-oriented project in 2015, but that won't be decided until we've gotten home from Gen Con, at the soonest.

Why do you run these conventions?
Riding home from Gen Con last year, I found myself pondering the fact that these conventions - even with their stress, financial exposure, physical toll, worry and effort - are as close to worship as I come. We create a thing that is ephemeral. It's temporary, like a play, and when we're done, we strike the set and we go home. But while they exist, we create something that is as close to a Divine act as possible.

Conventions connect people in a very tangible way. We step outside of our daily lives and enter a space outside of time. We storytell - one of the most human and most sacred of acts. We trade pieces of ourselves. We laugh. we cry. We see friends we only see a couple of times a year, and we pick back up right where we left off. There's an emotional resonance to conventions that is unlike anything else I've experienced.

Also, it's safe place to be a nerd - to love My Little Ponies. to know the dialogue to every Star Trek movie. to remember every model number of every Terminator to show up on screen, ever. There's very little fear of mockery or disdain. As somebody who was vexed for being a reader, for being a nerd, for having a grown-up vocabulary, sometimes it moves me to tears to watch folks (often younger folks) come in - a little awkward, a little wound up, a little too much - and to see them unwind, slow down, find their own unique pace. We create a space where we protect each others' weirdnesses, and share them. It gives folks who find themselves on the fringe at school, at work, in their daily life, a chance to be in the middle of the puppy pile - to be respected, to acknowledged and seen and known.

It's a calling, and I've known that since I first walked into a Double Exposure convention in 1997. I welcome each new face like a companion on this path to carve out a spot of acceptance, creation and joy every few months.

Five or So Questions with Steve Radabaugh on Dungeon Marauders

Tell me a little about Dungeon Marauders. What's exciting about it?

Dungeon Marauders is a dungeon delving digital card game for iPhone. A deck of cards represents your hero, and you go through short dungeons that are represented by five cards. You also get to create your own dungeon that people go through.

What I find exciting about Dungeon Marauders is that it's trying to focus on people challenging each other face to face. The only way to go directly to another person's dungeon is to scan the QR code from their phone. I've also taken that a step further to have special dungeons that companies can post at their booth at conventions as a Booth Beast.


What did you do to test Dungeon Marauders?

I started out by printing up some physical cards on my home printer and bringing the concept with me to Metatopia. I did a fair amount of ninja-playtesting there (There weren't any official events, just a handful of games with various people at the bar). After Metatopia, I knew that I had a solid concept. During development, I had a group of 25 or so testers that I frequently sent builds out to and solicited feedback from.


What was your inspiration for Dungeon Marauders?

It started out with the concept of a game that could be played at conventions. I wanted to make Booth Beasts that were QR codes that companies could put at their booth for an exclusive something. I was working with some other projects with QR codes, and had them on the brain. So I had the meta game kind of planned out before I had any actual game mechanics thought up. As far as the card game part of it, I'm not sure that I had a direct inspiration.


What suggestions would you have for people new to the app design industry?

Create the things that you want to have for yourself, don't create things just because you think that they'll make you rich. Also, keep your day job until you are making enough money to support yourself.


What's up next for you?

I'm actually really excited about the game that I did for GameChef, so I'm probably going to start doing more playtesting and development on that. I'm also going to start figuring out Dungeon Marauders as a physical card game. I'm hoping to playtests of both of those things over the summer and see where that takes me. I have some contract work lined up both in the RPG realm and in the app realm. Maybe when things quiet down I'll start working on that SHMUP game I've been wanting to make for years.

Five or So Questions with Wade Dyer on Fragged Empire

Tell me a little about Fragged Empire. What excites you about it?
There is a lot about my project that excites me. But most of all, is the dream of having my book completed & being enjoyed by others. I have a real 'artisan' approach to my work, pouring all of my skill, time & passion into this project. But I long for it to be completed, for people to not only hold it & read it, but for it to be used. I want it to be sitting at peoples gaming tables, in their bookshelves & being discussed on obscure RPG forums.


Before we talk about the game - your website and art are bangin'! Tell me a little about the artist selection, art direction, and overall feel you were going for with the art.

Ha ha, love the word 'bangin'!

I'm a freelance graphic designer (who also dabbles in illustration) by trade, so I made the website myself & have a lot of experience working with other creatives.

I'm very passionate about working with emerging artists, you will intentionally see no big names in my books credits. I must have went through almost 200 hundred (no joke) different artists galleries. I then sent emails or DeviantArt notes to those who met my criteria. While I have artwork from almost a dozen different artists in my book, most of it will be done by 4 particular artists who demonstrated a passion for not only my project, but for their own trade. Clonerh Kimura, Fyodor Ananiev, Alexandrescu Paul & Niam. These guys & gal have been fantastic to work with, so full of passion & dedication, they really get what I'm trying to do.

I really want the art in my book to show 2 things. Firstly, it needs to convey the tone of the setting; beautiful, modern, detailed, subtle depth, but vibrant & fun. That mix of energy & grit. Secondly, it needs to convey the passionate craftsmanship that has gone into this book. Visual art is so easy & fast to consume, reading stories & non digital game mechanics can take a lot longer to grasp. Its my hope that people will look at the art & the website, & see that I & my team have really poured our passion & skill into this project, in every way.


On to the game! Tell me a little about the different character types in Fragged Empire. What makes them unique?

Characters in this setting are not defined by a class, they are a person. Able to draw their identity from anything they choose. Which could be as straight forward as their profession or weapon, or it could be through their relationships with other characters. Each choice they make, is also a choice to not be other things.

Each character will also carry a certain amount of baggage, primarily from their race & culture. Prejudice, regret & hope run deep through every race, but in dramatically different ways.

What kind of mechanics did you use to emphasize the game's aesthetic?

This is quite a big question, so I will focus on just two examples.

Cultural tension; when you choose a race, you automatically gain prejudice from at least one other playable race. By default, that race will be suspicious of you, possibly even violent towards you. Who you are, not just how good you roll, will often define how other characters respond to you. You will also have a number of game options (Traits) that will be opened to you, while others will be closed to you, simply because of your race & cultural upbringing. It is not possible for one person to completely overcome their racial baggage.

Post-apocalyptic; a lack of readily available civilized infrastructure & self reliance are two major themes of the setting. This is highlighted through a Spare Time Points system, where each character only has a certain amount of spare time to spend on their personal hobbies & side interests. Including: Research, Trading, Modifying their Weapon or exercising. How your character spends their spare time is important, as time is a valuable resource. Are you a practical or theoretical engineer? Do you spend all your time modifying, maintaining & upgrading equipment, or do you spend your time researching ancient mechanical artifacts & exploring theoretical ideas?


What players do you think would most enjoy Fragged Empire?

If you like long, sandbox games with miniatures, then this game system is ideal for you.
If you like culture & art (both visual & narrative), then you will enjoy this setting.
If you like science fiction, you will love this book.

Five or So Questions with Moyra Turkington on Fastaval

Tell me a little about Fastaval. What's got you excited about it?
Fastival is a roleplay and boardgame festival that takes place yearly on the Easter weekend in Denmark (since 1987). New scenarios and board game designs are premiered there, and it is also a friendly competition. This year there were about 700 participants in attendance, playing 34 scenarios and 13 board games that were making their debut.

It was very exciting to have our own game on the program, and to travel there to see it live. They have a phenomenal culture of service and feedback happening in the Fastaval community – I’ve never seen anything like it. Every single person who lays eyes on a game – from the players to the GMs to the Jury who select the nominations for the Otto (Fastaval’s golden penguin equivalent of the Oscar) take the time to provide plentiful, constructive and really remarkably articulated feedback to the designers. They have whole subcultures of support staff that work tirelessly to make the venue happen: maintenance crews, Food and logistics volunteers. informational squads, and a fleet of translators for us international folks.

And the games were phenomenal!


What did you find most valuable about Fastaval's feedback process?
So many things! Because it is a place where giving feedback is an integrated part of the process, a lot of the feedback was extremely articulate and thoughtful. Because there was so much of it at once we could easily identify trends that would indicate a systemic issue vs. a place where one individual play style didn’t work with the game. Most importantly because there were so many runs happening in so short of a time, it really allow you to measure the breadth of the game and understand how many different stories it could tell, and how reliably. It’s definitely a design process that gets me excited and that I would like to explore again.


What game did you take to Fastaval? Tell me all about it!
Run Them Again is a scenario for five players and a GM. It’s a science fiction space drama about the indifference of the systems we live under, and the cold equations of life within their grasp. Essentially, it is a labour drama; It came out of a conversation Brand and I had when driving through rural Newfoundland, a place that was devastated in economic collapse once in the 70’s and again in the 90’s when the Atlantic northwest cod fisheries bottomed out.

We talked about fishers and farmers and miners and labourers. We talked about my dad working high steel and his dad having to pick up work as a janitor for a while. We discovered we both had mining in our blood: one of his great granduncles died in a cave in. My grandfather went into coma after three tons of rock ruptured his spleen and stayed there for three days till he was dug out. My grandfather’s cave-in resulted in safety reviews, Brand’s granduncle’s death resulted in union strikes and a resulting massacre. We talked about how random that felt. And we made this game.

The characters are long haul space miners, working much like deep sea crab fishers do... going on long dangerous runs to mine valuable minerals from asteroids on ships that have seen too many runs for wages that are shit but the best they can hope for. They wake from cryosleep to find something has gone wrong with the ship, and they have four hours to help right the course and save their lives as the universe gives not one fuck about them.

I was very nervous about designing a new style of game (Danish freeform) for an audience that I had never met before. It was also the first fully co-operatively designed game together. I was worried with all those unknowns that the Fastafolk might look at us like crazy North Americans (that we are), but the game was a hit! The players really enjoyed it, we scored two nominations (Best Storytelling and Jury’s Selection), and took home an Otto (Fastaval’s answer to the Oscar)!

I’m still blown away.

What did you find useful about the logistics at Fastaval?
It was a well run machine – there was always an answer in support of a game or event... and it seemed that no one minded pitching in on the work. Some came just to be part of the work! A side note on our logistics is that the Østerskov Efterskole made itself available for people to stay and we got to take a tour. This is a high school who’sentire curriculum is based on roleplaying! They play everything from steampunk to historical re-enactment to crime dramas and learn all of their math, natural sciences, languages, ethics, history... all of it through larps. They have a full medieval town on the school grounds! It was phenomenal. I can’t imagine what life would be like now had I been able to attend a school like that.

Are you planning to go back? What are you looking forward to doing next time you're there?
Yes! I hope so. It was amazing fun and full of creative energy and I met so many amazing people doing so many amazing things. I’d look forward to seeing them again, and having the chance to be part of that community for another glimpse in time. I didn’t feel like I had enough time to talk to anyone!

Five or So Questions with John Sheldon on (un)Common Adventure Gallery

Tell me about the (un)Common Adventures Gallery. What has you excited about it?

The (un)Common Adventure Gallery is a collection of free-to-publish* genre illustrations I've started with funding through Patreon. Right now I'm doing all the illustrations, but I hope to reach a level where I'm making enough on each of my pieces that I can afford to hire other illustrators to add more variety and subject matter to the gallery. I'm really excited to have an ongoing project that helps me focus on my illustration efforts, that allows me to get direct input from my supporters on what they want to see from me, and that will eventually let me hire some of my favorite illustrators from the indie RPG scene.

*Using the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.


What do you think makes you uniquely suited to this project, especially hiring other artists as well as doing illustration?

I love a broad variety of genres in illustration, and I love experimenting with different media and different styles of illustration (though I have certain sensibilities that always manage to bleed through). My time as the senior editor and producer of a daily TV newscast gave me a lot of experience working with other creative people and helping to integrate their work into a cohesive final product. Basically, I want this project to be a place where I can exercise many aspects of my own creativity, a place where I can help showcase the great work other people are doing, and a place where both happen in a coordinated way.


What motivated you to go Creative Commons?

I felt that releasing the art with a Creative Commons license would be a better deal for me and for the people in the communities I engage. Tons of people from game designers to authors and publishers find that they need art for their projects, and lots of the people I interact with don't have much of a budget for their total project (let alone to pay an illustrator to make custom pieces for everything they want). So, using the most permissive Creative Commons license lets them grab something to use as a placeholder, and if they can't find something better or can't afford something custom, they can still go to press or do a commercial release with the work they've designed around.

The Creative Commons Attribution license works for me on two levels. First, I happen to have a job that pays my bills. I'm not relying on the illustration work to keep the lights on or to put food in my belly, so I don't currently have to worry about what I could charge in the future for licensing these works. I'd be drawing anyway, and since what I'm drawing comes strictly from my own imagination I have little expectation of a financial return on it. The CC-A license lets a lot more people use it and feel comfortable sharing it, and means that I can show off the full size, high resolution versions of my art without distracting watermarks and without worrying that someone will steal it.

The second way the CC-A license works for me is related to that last point and feeds back into the reason I chose Patreon for this project. The more people that can see my work (in they way I intend it to be seen), the greater the size of my potential audience. As the audience grows, the number of people who might pitch in to fund my work grows. So, the CC-A license also works as a marketing tool for me by letting the full illustrations be my ads (which, of course, only works because I don't need the money to feed myself).


How do you think the Patreon model will help you meet your goals?

Patreon helps keep me motivated to do some good, fun art in the absence of other specific motivations. I find that without a school project or a paying contract, I end up with a whole lot of half-finished illustrations and semi-complete drawings. With just a little bit of money on the line, like enough to go see a movie or get a nice meal, I suddenly have a lot more motivation to work on those personal projects. Patreon also lets me interact with the people who back me so I can be sure to work on stuff that interests them, too. The payment model is also great because it is results-oriented. If I don't put out an illustration, nobody gets charged. If I put something out and nobody likes it, they can withdraw their pledges before getting charged.

Beyond that, the 'stretch goal' features of Patreon let people know what they'll get when each of the works I produce nets more money. For this project, a lot of those goals involve hiring other illustrators to create CC-A licensed art for the gallery.


What are you looking for when it comes to hiring future artists?

I'll be looking for three things when it comes time to commission work from other artists. First, I have to like their work. Luckily, this isn't too much of a limiting factor as I have broad taste in illustration. Second, their art style should be different from mine. One of the primary goals of commissioning other illustrators is to get a larger variety of work in the gallery, and the creative briefs I develop for the commissions (with help from my Patrons) will help me aim for different content and styles than I have been able to produce. Finally, I will be looking for people from different backgrounds than mine.

The reason that last part is important to me is in part because I am so tremendously privileged that I don't have to rely on this work to put food on my table. If I can put money in the hands of an artist who really needs it (and pay them a full, professional rate rather than the bargain rates they might otherwise bid just to get any work at all), it will be making a bigger difference than it would if it went to another illustrator in shoes like mine (comfortable ones that I could replace if I needed to).


What's the next project for your Patreon, as of this interview (early May)?

I showed some concepts to my backers on Patreon, and the community-level Patrons have selected an illustration tentatively titled Cherry Blossom Knight. I've already shot the photo reference for it (which some of the Patrons can see), and I'm headed to media testing now (picking what media to work in, e.g., colored pencil or watercolor). From there I'll proceed to different drawing and rendering steps, all of which I'll be documenting for my supporters with photos, time-lapse videos, and scans. I hope to have the final illustration done in early June.

Five or So Questions with Marissa Kelly on Epyllion

Marissa told me about her upcoming project, Epyllion, soon to be seen at Gen Con!

Tell me about Epyllion. What's got you excited about it?

Sure! First, the word Epyllion means mini epic. It is a "comparatively short narrative poem that shows formal affinities with epics," like the Iliad. I felt like the word literally captured the epic nature that a game about baby dragons should have... And yes! Epyllion is a Powered by the Apocalypse game in which you play baby dragons who must help each-other change, grow, and save Dragonia from the Darkness that has crept back into the land and threatens to corrupt all it touches.

I am excited to combine some awesome genres that I love, like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Lord of the Rings, under my all-time favorite system to play out an adventure of epic proportions.


What are you pulling from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Lord of the Rings to make Epyllion... well,epic?

When you first create your characters in Epyllion the game can seem very cutesy, but the threat of an ancient Darkness creeping back into the world tips the scales [pun intended] back to epic storytelling. Like in MLP or LotR the players are tested by this impending threat and are motivated to save the world they love.

I am a huge fan of both MLP and LotR so, as a designer, combining them and adding dragons into the mix has been nothing but fun. I wanted to make starting out as baby dragons feel like a hobbit being swept off on an adventure. I also wanted to make the friendships you develop with other PCs mean something, so like MLP's friendship = magic, PCs can spend Friendship Gems to call upon the moons and perform magical feats.


What does using the Apocalypse system bring to the table for Epyllion?

The AW engine has helped me design a game in which every mechanic supports the fiction that the table can create, from the playbooks to the Dragon Master moves. All of the AW-hacks have been built on such a sturdy framework of easy, no-prep, “play to find out what happens” gameplay that Epyllion fit in flawlessly.


Is this a kids game, a grown ups game, or both? What do you want players to get out of it?

Both! The great part about "play to find out what happens" is that it is shaped by the DM (Dragon Master) and their players. The game has mechanics that enforce a "feel good game," but the tone can be dark or light depending on who is running/playing it.


When can we expect to see Epyllion out in the wild, and what is up next for you?

I am planning to release the Epyllion: Drake Edition as an ashcan for GenCon this year. It will have all the rules you need to play the game and 6 playbook archetypes. Magpie will then run a kickstarter after that has some time to circulate.

As for what is next, I have a lot of fun ideas burning in my brain that I would love to get rolling on, but I am trying not to get ahead of myself.

Design Brunches and Collaborative Creation

Some of you may be aware that my local gaming community hosts semi-regular game design brunches. We basically get together on a Sunday and chat about game design, and everyone brings a problem with them if they have it, and we'll discuss things, do rapid playtesting, try out designs, bring prototypes, and all of that. I've discussed them before, but I want to delve a little more into some of the stuff I find valuable.

The first thing is that we have a wide variety of experience levels, backgrounds, and types of expertise in the group. I, for example, am mostly a writer and player (aside from now designing), with experience playing more traditional games as well as story games. Stras is an ace playtester, a designer, and has tons of experience with trad and story games alike. He also has a lot of technical knowledge and baseline design knowledge that I don't have. John, on the other hand, is our graphics genius, and is a really good designer, with traditional experience and the same level of story games experience as me - however, both he and Stras have GM'd WAY more than me. Paul is a designer (the only one paid-published of us, I think) and writer, with a ton of trad experience and story game experience, and one of his biggest points of value (imo) is that he plays with games that most of us have not or don't anymore (like GURPs and Gumshoe). Marc is almost exclusively traditional/OSR, and has a great mind for math, and is a designer who does most of his own writing. Rachel is mostly a player, but offers a unique perspective, is a great storyteller, and provides us with a good sounding board. Jeff and Heather both have traditional and story game experience, and both offer a good player perspective. Nick, who just started coming, is a really fantastic designer and writer with a lot of experience developing his own games.

I don't think I'm forgetting anyone! I hope not.  

Reading that, I think most people can see how we'd have a huge variety of input and different perspectives at every brunch, even if some people can't make it. We also have a good group that gets along pretty well.

It's awesome. It allows us a lot of opportunities to find flaws in design, or just redirect design that seems to be going away from its purpose. We also can focus on a variety of things: writing, graphics, technique, development, and prototyping.

This week, we playtested Nick's Medical Bay 3 creation, evaluated Tabletop Blockbuster playsheets, discussed Stras's Calamity Engine (super excited about that) and looked at his art inspiration for another project he's working on, and had a long discussion about scenarios for Clash. All in a few hours! (We also talked about Patreons, Creative Commons, power dynamics in the indie RPG industry, and gatekeeping.)

The conversation about Clash was really interesting for me. One of my first scenarios is based on Romeo and Juliet and written by Stras, and I am planning on doing a couple more in the main book with some as stretch goals if/when we crowdfund. I have some great creators in mind and a few already signed up. I am hoping to make this a successful product, and I think scenarios are essential to doing that.

Anyway, one of the coolest things about this is that with all of this variety in input, we have managed to create things by collaborating. Clash would not be where it is without the input of the group, nor would Tabletop Blockbuster. I know that we have put a lot of input into Stras's Hexes and Eights (which you should check out, btw). We also often run into solving problems for each other - I've written monsters for Marc's Paramount, while John has created character sheets, free-to-use dice icons, and other such things for the group. The others have contributed so many things, it's impossible to list them all.

We've had some shakeups in people's availability so we might have to start working around an occasional design dinner but I am hoping we can keep this up. I think it's really valuable.

Do you discuss design with your group? Do you have any regular get-togethers?

Do you find you design better alone, or with outside input?

Five or So Questions with Whitney Delaglio on Prism

I interviewed Whitney Delaglio about her game, Prism!

Tell me a little about Prism. What has you excited about it?
Prism is a paper & pencil RPG that uses a d10 system. Its world is based on a web comic series I have been working on called Prism the Miracle. There are six realms, each with their own God or Goddess. The Red Realm, and its Goddess that represents blood, and emotion. The Orange Realm, and its Goddess that represents the sun, and storms. The Yellow Realm, and its God that represents life, and light. The Green Realm, and its Goddess that represents the forest, and earth. The Blue Realm, and its God that represents the sea, and procreation. The Violent Realm, and its God that represents shadows, the moon, and death.

There are also seven available classes (Assassin, Brawler, Captain, Healer, Hunter, Knight, and Mage) and seven races (Barbed Fish, Chameleon, Humanoid, Mammal, Plant, Shark, and Weed).

I am a huge fan of aquatic creatures, so I am excited about bringing their neat characteristics to the game, as the world is primarily water-based. I also put in an element system. I always liked that feature in JRPGs. Prism also has a 'Loyalty' system where depending on who your character is devoted to, they will be rewarded, or punished for their actions. I put this in the game to encourage roleplaying. The populace of each realm behave in a particular manor, and each realm has its own dos and don'ts. Along with religion, there is also a royalty system if players would rather go into politics. Of course, there's also opportunities for adventuring, battles, and warfare.


What sort of research did you do or development did you do for the different realms?
When I developed the realms, I kept their elements in mind for their geological appearance. For instance, the orange realm represents fire and storms, so I imaged the realm surrounded by volcanoes. I also wanted each realm to have certain mannerisms. So I developed how a civilian of each realm would behave according to their realm's code of ethics. Developing classes actually helped me to do this. For instance, I imagined knights to be rustic, and friendly. A good amount of the orange realm's funds come from weaponry and taverns. So, it made sense to make the realm’s populace earnest in nature and hospitable to others.


How do the classes and races interact mechanically?
I didn't want any one race to sound less interesting than the rest or only be suitable for one class. So, I made sure each race had fun qualities that would make more than one class selection appealing. For instance, sea mammals have a quality that make then look extra adorable. Any class could use to feint being harmless.


Could you explain your element system?
There are nine elements: blood, fire, shock, holy, plant, rock, aqua, frost, and dark. Every element is either strong against, or negates each of the other seven (ex: fire is strong against plant but does nothing to aqua), save for blood. Mages use eight of them (save for blood) to cast spells. Healers use all nine to heal, buff, or debuff others. Chameleons use the elements around then to change their body type to give them an edge in combat. The blood element is used to manipulate the bodies of others. In this world, the inhabitants of the realms are not aware of the brain, so they believe that the heart is the center of all thoughts and emotions.


What experience do you want players to get out of Prism?
I want them to above all have a fun roleplaying experience. A player having fun playing the game is the most important thing to me. I want them to enjoy immersing themselves, and their characters in the world of Prism. As I said, I wanted this game to be very roleplay heavy, so as I complete the game, I want to give the players the opportunity to do so, even in combat.

Five or So Questions with Epidiah Ravachol on Swords Without Master

Tell me about Swords Without Master. How excited are you?

I could almost throw up, I'm so excited. And wracked with fear. This project has been on my plate for almost four years now, and it's come to mean a lot of things to me. It is one of the starting points for the journey that has led me to Worlds Without Master. So it's quite fitting that it should be a part of the ezine.

By the time this interview is up on the web, Swords Without Master will probably be out and I'll be feeling a whole different set of emotions. But right now I'm in the limbo between being done with my part of the game and awaiting its release. This is a tough place for me to be. I get real antsy and the brain starts cataloging the most annoying of all possible futures. I get in a lot of imaginary Internet fights during this time. History has shown that none of them actually come true, but a boy can dream.

But I am excited! I cannot wait to see what folks make of all the new stuff that's available for the game since "The City of Fire & Coin." And I'm eager to start working on the next step, even as I debate what that next step is. I have a trilogy of shorter games designed to teach the best practices for playing Swords Without Master that I may turn my attention to soon. Or I may indulge in my bestiary addiction and start putting together a Book of Perils for the game.

But there is no refreshing splash of cool water like writing fiction right after crossing a massive desert of game text. And I am secretly most excited about that.


Wolfspell was a huge hit. Tell me a little about your inspiration and design process. What made this cool game happen?

Wolfspell begins with the short story "One Winter's Due." The idea of two badass sisters who must transform themselves into wolves in order to fulfill conflicting oaths came to me at my own sister's wedding. The story was an absolute pleasure to write, but long before I had finished it the game designer in me began lamenting that I "wasted" such a good premise on, of all things,fiction. What followed was a mighty battle of guilt and passive-aggression betwixt the two halves of Eppy until an uneasy peace accord was reached with the compromise that both got to use the premise.

It's been a little bizarre since then. I've really enjoyed reading the play reports of Wolfspell. This is nothing new to me, and I often enjoy hearing what people are doing with my games. But since this one started as fiction first . . . it may be a bit like the difference between a composer hearing someone play their music and a musician hearing someone cover their song. Cool, but definitely a new experience that took a bit to get used to.


For those of us newer to your work, tell us about 'The City of Fire & Coin."

"The City of Fire & Coin" is a free preview adventure for Swords Without Master. You can download it here: http://dig1000holes.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-city-of-fire-coin/

It came out in June of 2012. It's a bit of an experiment in game text. The whole thing is meant to be read out loud as you play your first game. So it presents the rules in a particular fashion modeled on how I teach the game when I run my demos, which, as it turns out, is very different from how rules are typically presented in a game text.

This method has its advantages and its disadvantages. You can open the PDF and start playing right away, without anyone in your group having read the rules before. And many have done so. But it does not make a particularly good reference book. The rules are arranged in the order you will need to learn them, not by associated concept. That plus having to read as if the rules were being read to you, make things a little difficult to look up. A bit like having to find the right spot to watch in an instructional video.

"The City of Fire & Coin" is meant to be part of a larger whole. The idea is that the eventual form Swords Without Master will take a number of different approaches to the rules, so people can pick and choose the ones that work for them.

There's a lot more to the game what what's in the preview, but it gives a really good look at the basics. "The City of Fire & Coin" contains just about all the rules you'll find in the first half of the Swords Without Master text that appears in issue three of Worlds Without Master. And those are basically the only rules you should be using the first few times you play. Once you get a hang of the system, you can start adding some of the other stuff found in issue three.


What has been the biggest challenge of Swords Without Master?

I fell just a bit too in love with it. I can get caught up in big projects, in a recursion of revision, trying to hammer out one, giant, beautiful, perfect product. You can always add something to a project like that and it could go on forever.

Last year, when I put out Vast & Starlit and What is a Roleplaying Game?, both of which are about 500 words long, I had a bit of a crisis. The concept to execution times on those games were tiny. Especially compared to the four or so years I had been plugging away at Swords Without Master at that point. It started to seem a bit hopeless. Why the hell was I writing all these words for something that I've explained in 10 minutes? I honestly considered abandoning the project at that point.

That is, ultimately, why I decided to publish it in Worlds Without Master. To force myself to write a much smaller version of it--though it still turned out quite a bit larger than I had planned for--and to give myself a venue for future exploration. It turned out that last bit was the most important bit. As I was stumbling over my deadlines, it was helpful to remind myself that I don't have to shove all my design into this one text. I could leave some ideas out for now and concentrate on the most important parts.

In the end, I shoved a lot into there anyway, but it was still tremendously helpful knowing I didn't have to shove it all in there.


What did you enjoy most about creating Wolfspell - the mechanics, writing "One Winter's Due," both, something else?

That game fell together so easily. Or, at least, that's how I remember it. I think there was a few early drafts that were just wrong, wrong, wrong. But when I hit on what I was doing, it just flew out. And the early playtest was pure joy.

Oh, but the best part was researching the wolves! What a lovely excuse to sit down and watch whatever I could find on the Internet about wolves.

Five or So Questions with Sage LaTorra on Black Stars Rise and More

I got to interview Sage LaTorra about his current projects, like Black Stars Rise!


Tell me about Black Stars Rise and your other current projects. What are you excited about?

Black Stars Rise is a game I'm working on with Adam that draws on X-Files, the comics of Jeff Lemire, and certain parts of the Cthulhu mythos, especially True Detective. I actually started working on it last year but had some trouble explaining the type of game I was going for. Then True Detective came along and now it's easy to use that as a touchstone.

What's exciting there is mostly how we're messing with moves and relationships. It still uses a lot of Apocalypse World move elements, but how you get those moves, and how they change during play, is considerably different. We're also exploring some really cool ideas for covering the normal parts of life, though those are still in design.

Also with Adam, I'm working on Inglorious, our Dungeon World war supplement. For me the most exciting bit there is how we're approaching mass combat rules. I think most battle rules for RPGs are heavily influenced by adversarial tabletop wargames, things like Warhammer 40k. We're drawing on the adjudicated, anything-can-be-attempted war games that were popular training military commanders, in the vein of Verdy du Vernois. Instead of swapping to a more cut-and-dried balanced war game our mass combat system is about judgement and information.

Those are the main projects, though there's a few things that are either earlier or I'm less involved in. Adam has a Mass Effect-styled game in the works that I've given some feedback on, but it's so early I don't know what direction it will take, or how much I'll be involved. I also recently played Apocalypse World: Dark Age and immediately wanted to make stuff for it. I have no idea what the future of that is, since Dark Age is so early, but depending on where Vincent goes with it I could see my stuff ending up being a separate game, a supplement, or fodder for Vincent to make his own stuff.


What are the key elements of shows like True Detective and X-Files that you want to show through in Black Stars Rise? What are you doing mechanically to evoke them?

Well first it's probably worth mentioning that the way the X-Files connection is presented is "it's like The X-Files, but Mulder and Scully never show up."

With that in mind, BSR is focusing on people caught up in a mythos that's beyond them. You might be a detective, sure, or have a weird old book in your library, but you're not playing an occult investigator (or at least not when you start). You're a person who's caught up in a twisting world but you still have the touchstones of a normal life.

The other big element is the mythos. We're trying to make the game helpful in building your own mythos, like The X-Files black ooze and smoking man, or The King In Yellow. Your characters will see aspects of it, and across multiple characters you as a player will see more of it.

True Detective is a great example of normal people caught up in something bigger and stranger. While they are investigators, they're homicide detectives, not occult explorers. Then as this case takes over their lives it twists them.


Tell me a little about the website you have for Black Stars Rise. What motivated you to make it and have so much information for free?

Free is good. Right now what we need is play and feedback, and we want that from anyone who's interested, so why not make it free? Eventually, if we continue to like where the game is headed, there will be versions that aren't free. But at the moment the best arrangement for everybody is to make it free.

I'm also glad to feel like I'm giving back to gaming as a whole. These ideas are more useful when everyone can use them freely, not just read them for free.

I trust that, if we get to the point where we ask for money, people will help us out and pay. Money does help the game creation cycle going.


What do you think the benefits are to hacking games as opposed to creating your own core system? How far do you think you have to go before it's no longer a hack - and is Black Stars Rise going to go that far?

Everything's a hack, or nothing's a hack, depending on how you define the term "hack" (which probably depends how much you like the word). Play is hacking in a lot of ways.

Personally I tend to call it a hack as long as it still requires another game on hand to play or learn. Once the text is self-sufficient, even if it's re-explaining things from another game (like we did in Dungeon World) it's no longer a hack to me.


What do you think makes Black Stars Rise have such a unique experience for those who play it?

I'm not sure any game produces a unique experience. Games are tools, so I think what most games do is make certain experiences easier. It's possible to, say, do a fast-paced action game in d20, but you'd have to put a lot of work in to get all the rules down to the point where you could actually move at a fast pace.

The thing we're trying to make easy with Black Stars Rise is playing as a person who's entire world is shifting around them. To that end, we're doing a lot of things with hidden information. All the basic moves have a normal version and a number of 'wounded' versions. In certain conditions you'll wound a move, which means flipping it over and revealing the wounded version, which is different than the normal one. Each character may have a different wounded version of each move, so maybe under pressure your character gets shakey and mine gets panicky.

The other bit that's not quite there yet is that we want to make the everyday routines of life both useful and dangerous. These are the things that keep you grounded, but also the things that can drive you even further away when they go wrong. We haven't nailed that yet, but I think we'll have something to show soon.

One thing that I think needs to come out of that is the ability to both play day-to-day and to jump ahead years. True Detective does this wonderfully well, it's a huge inspiration. We see that these people have normal lives, and see how their priorities between all the things in those lives, plus all the elements of the case they work, play on them.

Thanks, Sage, for a great interview!

Five or So Questions on Piece of Work

I interviewed John LeBoeuf-Little, Kit La Touche, and Austin Bookheimer from Transneptune Games  about their current project, Piece of Work. Piece of Work is a cybernoir game, blending the grit and grim of noir themes with the high-tech punch of cyberpunk.


Tell me a little bit about your current project. What should I be excited about?

(JOHN) So, Piece of Work is set in the near future dystopia, with cyberware and megacorporations. You've been pushed out of society by an unjust system where citizenship is predicated on having a job. Now you have a grab-bag of personal problems and almost certainly a grudge against the people who've done you wrong. It's quiet tension punctuated by staccato action. We call it cybernoir.

But enough with the pitch. The game has a ton of things I'm really excited about. We've spent an amazing amount of time trying to get the tone just right - cybernoir is surprisingly fragile to maintain, so every mechanic we have is tuned to keep attention on the parts that matter. It's a pretty sweet mix.

I love the die mechanic particularly. We ask questions at the table about why your character is doing whatever they're doing. Based on how you're doing it, for whom you're doing it, and why you're doing it, you get better or worse dice. Each game I've played, there's been this wonderful moment when someone picks up the dice and thinks about what's about to happen and you can basically eat it with a fork because they say "No, damnit, this is about revenge" and everyone gasps. It happens all the time and I love it.


Give me a little more about cybernoir. What kind of play will I find in this genre?

(KIT) So, we start with the familiar near-future dystopia: corporations have become the de-facto powers of the world, everything and everyone is ground under them and their profit motive. (Of course, "near-future" is perhaps a bit optimistic; we keep coming across things we thought we made up for this in the news.) But instead of the usual "they supplant governments", we decided that governments are a useful tool for them—privatize profit, socialize loss, right? So, that's where the System comes in: citizenship, and all the benefits and rights that comes with, is contingent on employment, but there's a cost to having non-citizens around, so a system alarmingly like debt-bondage comes up, where the unemployed are given employment and limited citizenship benefits, but without real choice in what they do.

So that's the world, right? You are people who've fallen off the corporate ladder, and are dangling above the precipice of the System. You're probably doomed, like Deckard in Blade Runner, to be unable to make the world you want, but maybe you can help get someone else to safety, to salvation, to justice, and in the process, get yourself part-way to redemption.

There's a kind of beautiful hopelessness baked in—I've mentioned Blade Runner, but perhaps it's worth also comparing it to neo-noir cinema like Chinatown or Romeo is Bleeding. Everyone knows the end of Chinatown, right? "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." You're almost certainly gonna be dragged down into the mud and gutter, but you stand a chance of doing something selfless and good before that. You're in too deep to save yourself.


(JOHN) So all the things Kit mentioned are completely correct, but I thought I’d add that cybernoir is a complex of two other genres - noir and cyberpunk.

Much of old film noir is about proper ‘society’ and with the protagonists not really fitting that mold. Often, something has changed them to make them outsiders - they were falsely accused of a crime, or got mixed up with the wrong crowd, or they couldn’t let something go. They’re filled with iconic personalities, and everything is connected somehow.

In cyberpunk, there’s the disaffected oppressed, striving in spite of a massive, uncaring, inhuman world that sees humanity as a product to be commoditized.

In cybernoir, you get an interesting blend of these two - the characters are people who no longer fit into society because of these very noir reasons who are then exploited by the system for the benefit of those in power. They have very noir sensibilities - for them, everything is personal. But they also have very futuristic abilities - cybernetics and other advanced technologies.

What went into designing the die mechanic? How does it work?

(JOHN) Oi. We’ve been tweaking the die mechanic for a long time. It started out as a cool mechanical toy - roll three dice and take the best two. Each die was always intended to be scaled up or down independently, using any of the standard sizes (up to d12). Each of the dice represents a different thing - your character’s motive, what gear you’re using, and for whom you’re acting. But it didn’t used to be so cleanly delineated.

I forget who first suggested that there be a die for your character’s Motive, but it fit perfectly. You get a better die for motives that are more noir. If you’re doing it for money, you only get a d4. If you’re just in a hard spot and you have to roll anyway, that’s a d6. If you’re acting to get respect, that’s a d8. If you’re doing it out of passion - love or hate - you get a d10. And finally, there’s a motive that particularly drives your character based on its perspective, so you might get d12 when you’re trying to find out The Truth or you might get it when you’re trying to Clear Your Name.

In our earlier playtests, the other two dice were Gear and Cyberware. But it was pretty clunky. We tried a bunch of things - rules for gear breaking, ways of making cyberware more distinct from gear… what we finally came up with was that two dice dedicated to Things was a die too many. This was kind of a frustrating time for PoW; I’m pretty sure this was after Kit had returned from Metatopia, and at the time, the game kind of looked like a cyberpunk heartbreaker with a vaguely interesting die-mechanic. It was a misguided mess.

We had one of our famous kitchen conversations where it came out that I really wanted three specific stories for Piece of Work - noir and cyberpunk, but with an undercurrent of hope. I wanted players to eventually get charged about the world and to at least try to do something to make it better. And that wasn’t being reflected at all in the dice. That galvanized the third die as a kind of activism die - we call it Scope in the game. You get better dice for acting on a bigger scale - if you’re acting just for yourself that’s just a d6, but if you’re helping a friend that’s a d8. If you’re helping someone who’s innocent, that’s a d10. If you’re trying to save the downtrodden in general, that’s a d12.

Oh, and I guess I should talk about the other side of the roll - where you compare your result to something. We’ve had a few false starts with that as well; originally it was entirely set by the GM, then it was set by the GM but depending on circumstances might be increased or decreased, and sometimes if you had gear it might go up or down… anyway. What we have now is that you ask yourself questions about the situation and based on the answers, the target goes up or down in fixed amounts. Questions are a design theme that permeate through most of the game. In this case, it’s questions like “Is it dangerous?” or “Do you have back-up?”

The result of all this is when you want to break into a file cabinet for records about where the corporation moved your family after they fired you and you have a kick-ass lock pick set you scored while growing up, you get to roll better dice than if you just want to boost some intel in order to sell it for cash. And if it’s immediately dangerous or requires a light touch, then you need those better dice.


What's your favorite scene you've played out in playtest, and how do you think it's unique to Piece of Work?

(JOHN) There’s a bunch of really good ones. I think there was a great moment where our ex-assassin clone ended up wanting to get some information out of her friend’s father, but her Professions were shaped pretty narrowly - she was mostly a killer. So to get the information required her to beat up this old man, because she didn’t know how to be any other way. It was a very emotionally charged scene.

Another one that was really good was a scene at the end of a session mid-way through one of our playtests. The previous session the heroes had done a raid on a corporate research facility. They’d found out some uncomfortable truths and spent the whole session trying to damage control fallout from crises, but it didn’t really work out. The last scene was them in a safe house, staring at a pile of cash they’d ‘liberated', drinking scotch, and saying nothing to each other, because things had just gotten that messy.

What's up next after Piece of Work?

(KIT) OK, so I am really excited here. First, "Transneptune Games" is really a loose collective, so we're all working on things at the same time—John's spearheading Piece of Work, while Austin's working on a few different things, including his own take on cybernoir, where everyone plays facets of the main character's memory of an event, and you reconstruct things, in a world where memory is editable and pluggable.

But what I'm working on is maybe our next most far along thing. It's called Et in Aradia Ego, and it's a game about young people carving a space for themselves in the manner-bound world of Jane Austen, in a game of manners, madness, and magic. You're not perfect demur well-mannered people, and you've caught the attention of a fairy who wants to help you get what it thinks you want, all to its own ends.

This time period and topic are really interesting to me. It's easy and tempting and wrong for modern readers to see it as a very proper and laced-up period, but it was in so many ways acutely modern: you've got Romanticism and Byron, proto-free-love utopians like William Blake seeing ecstatic visions of magical beings, awesome feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, and the birth of modern scifi from her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. On top of this, the King is mad (and, worse, German!), and mumblings about Republicanism rear their head. That's without even getting into the fact that the country is at war with Bonaparte, but, just like recent US wars, doing its utmost to ignore that on the homefront.

So, there are a number of things I like about this period—it's really unstable, uncertain which way to grow, torn between the poles of the Enlightenment and Romanticism—and adding in a "helpful" fairy who's really trying to abduct you for its own amusement just heightens it.

The game focuses heavily on relationships, and asks you to make a lot of judgment calls about how interactions went, while building up dice from every interaction towards a moment-of-truth roll. At least, that's how it is now—it's been through many incarnations, and might take some more before it's ready.

Thanks to John, Kit, and Austin for a great interview!

Five or So Questions with Matt Weber on Gemstones and More

I interviewed Matt Weber on his work for his new project, Gemstones, and about his thoughts on gaming and music. 

As well as being a gamer and all-around cool guy, turns out you're also musically talented! Tell me about your current musical projects. What's up next?

I have two current composition projects.

I was hired last year by the talented writer, comedian, and ventriloquist April Brucker to turn her hilarious autobiography into a musical. We're about a half-dozen songs in, with roughly as many to go. This project is an opportunity for me to flex my jazz and pop muscles. We're not aiming to score for a full orchestra, for a variety of practical as well as artistic reasons; rather, we are using a small jazz ensemble of piano, bass (either electric or upright depending on the song), drums, and a multi-instrumentalist wind player who can rotate between flute, clarinet, and all four types of saxophone. One of the actors will also play acoustic and electric guitar, since that character, the main love interest in the story, is a budding rockstar. I've been working the guitar into the ensemble for the songs that are "in fiction."

I'm also working on a piece for Version Excursion Dance ensemble in Seattle. The director and choreographer of that ensemble, Erin Boyt, contacted me about an upcoming project of hers and asked me to write a new piece for it. This one is genre fiction related, as it is a dance adaptation of the famous early science fiction film Voyage Dans La Lune. The music I am writing alternates between a pounding, movie-soundtrack style and slower, more meditative and chromatic sections. One of the most exciting aspects of this work for me is that I am learning how to write for an instrument that is new to me, the accordion. (The full ensemble is piano, accordion, trumpet, and classical percussion.) Also, because it is so very different than the musical, it doesn't really occupy the same brain space and so I can switch between them with little difficulty—the one functions as a break from the other.

Over the past ten years, I've become increasingly frustrated by my compositional ability outstripping my performing skills. I do sing and play the piano, but not nearly as well as I compose. To remedy this gap I've just begun taking piano lessons again, for the first time in far too long. I found a great teacher who can help me with all genres of music and who is willing to work thoughtfully to accommodate my small hands. I'm still getting in the swing of a regular practice schedule again, but it feels really great to be doing it. In about six months to a year I'd like to begin performing my pop and musical songs in front of live audiences.

Finally, I have a live performance of one of my pieces coming up. The work that is premiering was actually finished in 2012 but I haven't had a chance to get it performed until now. It's called Gemstones. It's for string quartet (a very traditional ensemble consisting of two violins, a viola, and a cello) and you can hear a pretty good MIDI simulation of it here. Stylistically it's a fusion of Chopin (mid-19th century, very traditional Romantic), Ravel (early 20th-century, on the border between traditional tonality and modernity), and my own metric twists. It's going to premiere on April 22nd at 8 PM as part of a concert of the New York Composers Circle. (St. Peter's Church, 54th St. and Lexington Ave.) I hope to have a studio recording available soon after.

What was it like to work with a dance ensemble and with a new instrument, both at the same time?

I'm fortunate to have some great support with the "Voyage 2014" project. Erin, of course, will be doing all the choreographing, and she has been extremely clear and professional in terms of what she wants from me. We mapped out the scenes, I sent her some early sound-sketches and proposals for how I would expand those ideas as the plot unfolds, and now, with her blessing, I am working on fleshing out those plans. In a few weeks I'll send her a MIDI version of the full score, so she can begin working on the choreography, with the proviso that the rhythms won't be completely the same as what human players will do. She may also ask for any necessary revisions. In the meantime she'll begin gathering players to make a studio recording.

I've consulted with various online sources to figure out the scoring of the accordion, as well as talking to a friend of a friend who plays. One huge advantage of being a composer today is the vast number of free scores and guides available on the Internet. It turns out accordion is pretty similar to the piano in a lot of ways, so figuring out the interplay between those two instruments is one of the major challenges of this piece. Having them "double" (play the same material in parallel) is possible for some of the time, but not something you want to over-use. I'm definitely going to check in with the guy who actually plays again before I send the score to Erin. I also may need to make some revisions once we find our actual player, since accordions can be somewhat idiosyncratic in terms of their exact highest and lowest notes.

What is your favorite method of enjoying music as a consumer?

Great question. Ideally, it's going to concerts. Especially for jazz, I find the energy of the live ensemble to be unrivaled. Lately I haven't really had the time or money to go. (I used to write reviews foricareifyoulisten.com, an awesome site for new music founded by my former classmate Thomas Deneuville. That work got me free tickets and CDs, but I haven't had the time for awhile to really do the kind of quality writing that site deserves.) I've made some changes in my life recently as far as how I handle work and finances, and once that stabilizes a bit more I'm hoping to be able to go back to hearing concerts at least once or twice a month on weekends.

In the meantime, I use Pandora frequently. I curate my stations pretty aggressively. I have one for rock, one for softer folk rock (that's actually my favorite), jazz, modern classical, soundtracks, Broadway, and a few others. I'm listening to my rock station as I'm typing this. :-)

There's another thing I'm hoping to carve out more time for as my life continues re-stabilizing after recent upheavals, and that is score study. That's when you really delve into a piece, listening to it multiple times while looking at the printed score. It's a great way to get into the nitty-gritty of how to orchestrate certain sounds and take a piece apart, but it's pretty time intensive. Also, despite the wealth of material available online, I prefer to have printed scores so I can mark them up. They're expensive but I have a backlog of ones I still need to work on sitting on the shelf (much like with other types of books!).

What do you think are good examples of commonalities and relationships between gaming and music that you are familiar with?

I'm pretty much obsessed with the idea of emotional clarity in narrative, as explained brilliantly by Film Critic Hulk.

I look at the rise of folk, rock, and pop in the 1950's as a response to the increasing rarefication and inaccessibility of classical music at that time, as exemplified by composers like Stockhausen and Schoenberg. To some extent jazz was experiencing a similar audience disconnect, with the rise of the bebop style throughout the 40's. Bebop can get very dense and complex to the point of being off-putting, despite the virtuosity of the players. (The 50's is when the famous and influential "Kind of Blue" jazz album was written, with its very simple, modal harmonies, so within the jazz community, as well, there was a dialogue surrounding this problem.) Pop musicians plugged into what was going on at that cultural moment—the rise of youth culture, the civil rights movement, later on Vietnam—and helped people both to understand and to feel understood. Whether or not that's a good thing is beside the point, it's just how art works.

When I craft a piece, I always aim to make the emotional arc as clear as possible to the listener. With songs, this can be somewhat easier, since you have actual words to fall back on to get your point across, but it's no less important in instrumental pieces. An instrumental piece is absolutely an emotional journey just like a love song, a novel, a movie, or, yes, a roleplaying game (I'm getting there, I swear!). There are tons of examples but one that I find absolutely stunning is *Brahms' First Symphony. He was living with the pressure of insanely high expectations, including frequent comparisons to the antecedent genius of Beethoven, and it actually took him fourteen years to complete the symphony. It is full of doubt and tension but then, finally, after endless struggle and backsliding, ultimate triumph. It thus represents its own compositional process, the emotional journey of the composer, which in turn becomes that of the audience. Amusingly, Brahms' hard work paid off so well that the First Symphony is nicknamed "Beethoven's Tenth."

By the way, tonality definitely isn't necessary for a work to have emotional resonance. I've both heard and written some post-tonal pieces that I thought were very moving, but in that case the composer has to find some way of connecting with the audience other than through a traditional chord progression. (Good examples include Short Ride In a Fast Machine, Different Trains,Concerto For Orchestra, Ligeti's Requiem, and Threnody For the Victims of Hiroshima. Also, most people seem to like my Sequence No. 1.) Tonality is simply a very easy way of connecting with listeners' emotions because it has such a long history and there is so much ingrained, completely unconscious ritualization of our reactions to tonal music. But a lot of contemporary instrumental music doesn't give listeners much of anything to latch on to. Highly educated audience members may appreciate certain technical nuances of the playing, but they are no substitute for a melody, a rhythmic pattern, or even a recurring tone "color" that can give us some reason, any reason, to just care about the piece.

Now, at long last, let's talk about gaming. What is the bare minimum requirement for a roleplaying experience to be enjoyable? For me, and I suspect for most players, it boils down to a reasonable frequency of chances to make impactful decisions within the narrative. The exact definitions of "impact" and "narrative" can be enormously varied! For instance in jeepform games there may not be many opportunities to actually influence the outcome of the "plot," such as it is, but players have many chances to show how the unfolding events impact the characters' emotions. Whereas in an old-school dungeon-crawl the characters' emotions may be less important, but players have unimpeded freedom to approach the challenges of the dungeon in whatever crazy ways they can dream up. But every successful game I've either played in or run has one thing in common: the players are all on board with a single, central premise.

A recent example: at Dreamation I co-ran a Mouse Guard LongCon campaign with Mark Diaz Truman, Marissa Kelly, and Brendan Conway. Even though there were three to four tables of mouse PCs at any one time, with quite a few individual issues to deal with, part of the reason the game worked so well is because we started from a very basic premise: Pebblebrook, the westernmost mouse town, has suffered from an earthquake. Literally every single problem the guardmice faced, from labor disputes to possible weasel invasion, either stemmed from that initial situation or were a complication to it. So, throughout the campaign, everyone in all their diverse quests kept focused on the big question of the ultimate fate of Pebblebrook and the rest of the mouse territories. That unity not only helped everyone to invest emotionally, but also made it relatively easy for PCs to move between tables and quickly figure out ways to help each other. The PCs' actions felt weighty because they fully understood the stakes.

To talk more broadly for a moment, a great deal of the development in RPG design in the new millennium can be seen as a backlash against increasing convolution throughout the 90's. So many games from that era, such as Vampire: The Masquerade or Earthdawn, not to mention much of the material for 2nd Ed. D&D, had incredibly interesting premises, but didn't give gamers clear, concrete instructions about how to actually turn those broad ideas into specific campaign frames. Often the mechanics contradicted the intended themes of play. The worst game texts actually encouraged deliberate obfuscation, not just of specific NPC actions, but of entire plotlines! It's very hard as a player to buy into a game where it's clear there are many Important Things afoot but you have no access to or understanding of those Things.

Contrast those games, with their huge worlds and endless possibilities, with indie classics like Dogs in the Vineyard or Don't Rest Your Head. Both of those RPGs, and many others besides, are strong precisely because they are very limited. Some people may be turned off by the very idea of, for example, Mormon paladin gunslingers, and that's fine, but for those who do try it out, the game delivers exactly what it promises. Once again the value of simplicity is clear. Games of Dogs can get very complicated, of course, but those complications arise organically from a straightforward (albeit nuanced) premise that you have to buy into to even get started playing.

So that's how gaming and music are tied together, for me. It's not about writing songs from my character's point of view, or instrumental music to represent some piece of gaming fiction, though I've done both of those things and hope to do more in the future. It's about the importance of simplicity, and the inherent need for all successful narratives to have an emotional center.

What's up next for you, beyond Gemstones?

Well, Gemstones is essentially done, though I need to make arrangements to have a studio recording made. But once I'm done with that and the musical and the dance project, I'd like to put out an album of piano music. I'm looking at Kickstarter or a similar crowdfunding site for it. (I have ethical concerns about KS because of its links to Amazon.) I want to start with a relatively small, manageable project, which is why I'm aiming to make an album of music for just piano. The most important thing is for it to be very professional, in terms of the video, the look of the project site, and so on—all things that I'd really need to outsource to do them justice. So I'm going to take it slow, and aim to be the tortoise rather than the hare.

I've seen some pretty convincing arguments that crowdfunding is actually not such a great way to grow your audience; rather, it's a way of getting money from people who already know you. In all honesty, even if that's true I'm not sure if I care that much. I am working on other ways of expanding my name recognition, but in the meantime, my true goal as a musician is simply to be able to hear my own music as I intended for it to sound. If all I manage to do is get recording expenses covered, that's fine. Of course, some larger-scale (i.e. orchestral) projects require more formal, institutionalized support, but I figure that sort of thing will come in due course if I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Five or So Questions with John Harper

I got to interview John Harper about his current projects, including Blades in the Dark!


What are you currently working on? What projects have you excited?

I'm working on a game about criminals in a fantasy city called Blades in the Dark. It's set in the same universe as my previous mini-game, Ghost Lines -- vengeful spirits, weird electroplasmic tech, lost magic, strange cults, etc. I expect Blades will be a larger product (by my standards, anyway), maybe a 32 page booklet or something along those lines. Like a lot of game designers, I'm very inspired by the Thief video games and this is my stab at a game in that vein.

(Two other current game projects in a similar style are Dagger & Shadow by Matt Snyder and Project: Dark by Will Hindmarch. We're all playing in that shadowy sandbox and it's inspiring to see what they're doing as I work on my thing.)

Blades is currently in closed playtest, but will open up for public playtesting in a few months.

I'm very excited about a few projects my friends are working on. Undying, by Paul Riddle will hit Kickstarter this year. It's a beautifully designed diceless game (hacked from the bones of Apocalypse World) about the deadly predator vs. predator world of vampires. It's my favorite take on vampires I've seen yet. One of the most fun mechanics allows you to actually play out centuries of existence for the vamps, with each game session representing an important night in their immense lives, with decades passing between each. Our playtest game was set in Paris in 1899, 1920, 1944, and would continue on to 2010, 2065, and possibly beyond. So cool.

Sage LaTorra is working on a modern day game of weirdness, somewhat like The Twilight Zone or True Detective, called Black Stars Rise. It's about ordinary people who are confronted with something totally inexplicable and how they deal with it. They don't solve a mystery or anything, they just try to cope with it and survive. You play different people in different places over the course of a series, seeing the weirdness manifest in different ways and gradually building up a picture of some larger horror. It's in playtest now and we're having a lot of fun with it.

And off course Dagger & Shadow and Project: Dark, which I already mentioned. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many exciting indie games in the pipeline I could fill this whole interview talking about them. :)


Blades in the Dark sounds interesting. Can you tell me a little more about it?

It's a type of game I've tinkered with a lot. Most of the games I run tend to be about a team of freelance criminal types operating in a sandbox of some kind: Our long-running Stars Without Number game, the prohibition-era Bootleggers game (another RPG project of mine), the original World of Dungeons series... even all the way back to old Talislanta campaigns. So it's something I enjoy doing and have a lot of experience with. I'm trying to incorporate some of that experience and the lessons learned into the design and procedures of Blades.

For example, I've found that I like to have a flexible central mechanic that can suit a wide variety of situations. But most generic mechanics are pretty bland and the GM has to do all the heavy lifting to convey the tone of the game (gritty, in this case). So I designed a set of three core rolls, representing a spectrum of fictional positions, from worst to best: A desperate gamble, a risky maneuver, and a display of skill. The results of these rolls are primed to spark outcomes that suit the tone and style of the game, so the GM can focus on assessing the fictional situation and choosing the right roll for the moment.

Because the selection of the roll is a judgment call, though, the GM and the players use that decision point to craft their own unique instance of the game. When your blade-master fights three thugs in a dark alley, is that a desperate gamble, a risky maneuver, or a display of skill? The game provides a procedure to determine this, but it's dependent on which particular details of the situation the group values most and gives the most weight in the assessment. So (hopefully), you end up with a mechanic that's consistent, reliable, and responds to fictional details, but is nevertheless a unique construction refined and ratified through the process of play by a given game group.

I'm pretty excited about it! There's lots of other stuff too, like managing your criminal enterprise and dealing with your character's vice and lifestyle considerations. It's been a long process of weekly playtesting and refinement, but it's really fun and the game is starting to come together.


What do you think is inspiring the interest in stealth games recently?

If I had to guess, I'd say it's the impending release of the new Thief video game. We've all been following it through its development for years, and it's influenced our thinking, surely. Also I have to acknowledge Dishonored, as well. The style and feel of that game is incredibly cool and has taken up permanent residence in my brain.


What is the motivation for releasing so many products for free, and what benefit do you see from it?

Most of the games on my site have been created for play by my local game groups. Lady Blackbird was originally made in an afternoon so it could be run later that night for someone new to RPGs. I released them for free because I had already done the work of making the materials, so why not just post the PDF for anyone else who wanted it?

In the case of something like Agon (which I charge money for), the situation was slightly different. It was also born out of play, but the actual product involved writing and publishing a book, which was additional work that I wanted to be compensated for. I have some loose plans to do some work on Patreon, for this reason. There are several projects which I've never committed time to finishing, since the materials I made for local play are not very useable by others. With some patrons, I'll invest the extra time to make them more polished and complete.

The main benefit I see with free games is exposure. Free games reach lots and lots of people They're easy to share. Lady Blackbird has been played by thousands and has been translated into over a dozen languages. I want my games to be played, first and foremost. More play equals more success. So in that sense, giving the games away has helped them become more successful. Not that it's entirely altruistic, of course: that extra exposure helps draw people to my other games that I sell for money. So it's a marketing strategy, too.

(Quick aside: Lady Blackbird is also shared and talked about online for another reason, having to do with its specific construction: it's an adventure module with pregen characters and situation but it has absolutely no spoilers, so everyone can freely talk about everything that happened when they played it, without worrying about ruining it for other people. In fact, it's extra fun to compare your particular game of LB to other people's.)

Years ago, my friend Clinton Nixon made a game called The Shadow of Yesterday, and decided to give the entire text away online, in addition to selling the printed book. People thought this was nuts at the time, but of course it totally worked. Dungeon World has followed in his footsteps by releasing their game text under a Creative Commons license.


Do you have any suggestions for people wanting to layout their smaller games?

Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Find layouts that you like and studiously reproduce them. I don't mean steal the actual art, of course. I mean, measure the text boxes, page proportions, type sizes, etc. and use them yourself. Page layout is a craft, like building a bookcase. Study the canons and classic methods and copy the masters, like an apprentice carpenter. Also, be very suspicious of any typeface less than 50 years old. There are lots of good modern ones, but the glut of crappy internet fonts has lead more than one novice designer astray. When in doubt, stick with the classics.

Graphic design and layout are deep, complex art forms. They're worth learning, for sure, but don't expect to pick them up quickly or easily. Whenever I see someone online ask "How can I learn to do layout and design for my game?" I translate it to "How can I learn to compose a symphony?" It's just as vast a question, with no simple answers, just hard work.


What's next for you after Blades in the Dark?

I'm not sure! There are several projects on the back burner that will come back around again, especially Danger Patrol. I've been tinkering with some board game designs too, which is a new thing for me and quite fun. But there's really no way to tell. I just follow wherever my inspiration leads me.