Sandstorm Productions began in April, 2010 and immediately partnered with four  game publishers. Glowfly Games, Closet Nerd Games, Wildfire and Posthuman Studios.  It is important to understand that Sandstorm, while a traditional game publisher in many respects,  also markets itself as a business service provider for small game publishers.

Business services that include:

• Business administration
• Sales & Marketing
• Convention support
• Production Management services
• Bookkeeping services

This is not a comprehensive list, but it gives you an idea the kinds of services available.  All of these services are provided on an a la carte basis, so you pick which ones your company needs.

Sandstorm’s goal is to partner with between 7-10 game creators/publishers at any given time. As a game publisher becomes more successful, they “mature” out of the Sandstorm relationship and move on as independent entities. This model means Sandstorm is always looking for new game ideas and new publishers to work with.

At this point, we moved on to the game studios  currently working with Sandstorm

Closet Nerd Games:  Closet NerdVersion produces euro-style strategy and board games, and had its resource management/market board game “Globalization” for sale at Gen Con.  Here is the game description:

Globalization brings the exciting world of big business into your living room. You are the head of a multinational corporation with one goal in mind: to make money. Outbid your competitors to acquire businesses within six different industries and grow your conglomerate.

Glowfly Games: “Hecho” is a new card game from Glowfly. Glowfly focuses on the educational game market and “Hecho” is a light, family game that introduces some  Spanish vocabulary, basic math and lots of personal interaction.

Wildfire Studios: Publishers of the “Cthulhutech”  RPG, branch out in to family games with their new “WildThing” imprint. “WildThing” launched with the award-winning game “Poo” and plans future releases in the casual games arena.

Posthuman Studios: “Eclipse Phase,” the oddly fascinating posthuman game with cybernetic octopi and orbital habitats made of bacon. Yes, bacon.  I just finished reading “Eclipse Phase” and will have a review up in the near future.

Jessica also mentioned some secret, upcoming releases from the Sandstorm family. Including a new family game from Glowfly and a storytelling game that serves as a gateway for younger children in to role-playing games.

I would like to thank Jessica for taking the time to speak with me about Sandstorm and I will keep you apprised of  their new releases.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

D&D RPG

Stuart Greenwell (SG): The Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game, also known as “The Red Box” is coming out next month.  This is the full D&D rules, but at an entry level?

Mike Mearls (MM): Yes. One of the things we wanted to do with the red box was to make a solo adventure that you play through. And as you play through the adventure, it fills in your characters sheet for you based on the choices that you make. So, if you decided to grab a sword and start fighting in melee, it helps you fill out the fighter information on the character sheet. By the end of the adventure you have a full completed character sheet. It even has you make a choice with some story items that determines your alignment.  For example, a guy could asks you for help with something that was stolen. If you volunteer you are a good character. If you say “whats in it for me”, you are an unaligned character.

SG: If you hit him over the head and steal his gold?

MM: Yeah, evil isn’t really covered in this yet. Maybe in the black box. But seriously, overall it tried to show you the entire D&D experience, not just the tactical combat parts.

Dark Sun

SG: Dark Sun was released here at the show. How is it unique in the 4E landscape?

Rodney Thompson (RT): For Dark Sun we wanted to take it back to the original second edition boxed set. It had a magic to it that was very unique. So, that was our story starting point. For 4E, the most interesting new mechanic is the Themes mechanic. A Theme is a way to describe what your social role is in the world. For example, You can be an elf and a rogue and that defines a lot about a character. But in Dark Sun you could also be, for example, a Dune Trader. You can travel the deserts as a merchant, and that is your social role. Themes will help in making your character more unique in Dark Sun.

SG: Are their associated powers and abilities that are tied to Themes?

RT: Yes, there is one for free. This is like a racial encounter power. This is to help remind you, every encounter, that you are a certain Theme. As you gain levels, you have the option to swap out power your class powers for Theme powers instead.

Gamma World

SG: Gamma World is coming out in October. is this going to be compatible with the other D&D products?  Gamma World is post-apocalyptic earth compared to the fantasy worlds in other D&D products. How would they tie together, if at all?

RT: There are degrees of compatibility. We made it so the monsters in Gamma World are very similar to D&D monsters. If you are a DM, and you are running a Gamma World game, you can use, for example, a Beholder or a Dragon from the D&D books.

By the same token, we want to give players a very different experience in Gamma World. So, on the players side the character creation isn’t necessarily similar. But, you will recognize similar terminology and types of mechanics. For example, if you play D&D you will instantly know what an at-will power is in Gamma World. There have also been some numerical tweaks to the system to change gameplay slightly. For example, because we want Gamma Word to run a little faster, we upped the players damage so they can kill monsters faster. Conversely, we also dropped character’s hit points, so monsters can kill them a little faster too.

SG: Gamma World has what will be called Expansion Kits. Are those adventures or supplements or both?

RT: If you think of Gamma World, it is a stand-alone game that has compatibility with D&D. These expansions are a lot like board game expansions. They are a thing that you buy to expand your core experience. They do include new adventure content. But, they also include new rules, monsters, and locations. So, its more like they are expanding the whole experience rather than one particular aspect of it.

SG: Can you describe the card aspect of Gamma World? How do the cards tie to the RPG experience?

RT: In the classic Dark Sun RPG, you had tables in the book that you rolled against to determine random stuff like mutations and mutant powers. The cards are used to replace that design. Unlike a table in a book that you can’t change once printed, the card element of Gamma World makes it able to be altered or expanded by adding or subtracting cards. In Gamma Word, the idea is that you have mutations that are coming into effect throughout the game and you are also finding ancient technology that you can use. The cards will just facilitate that mechanic.

SG: I know the core box set comes with cards. Do the expansions have cards as well?

RT: Yes, and in addition there will also be packs of cards that can be purchased on their own.

SG: Are those are randomized packs?

RT: Yes. The idea is that if you are sitting down to play a Gamma World Game, the DM could tell the players to each get two packs of cards. Then you would crack them open at the game, and those are the random mutations for that game.

SG: So Players and DMs would buy them specifically for random elements in the game? It is won’t be something people would buy to collect?

RT: Correct, it is designed to be part of the play experience. It is not a collectible game. You could pull cards in a non-random way, there is some discussion in the books about that.

MM: Yeah, you can do that if you really want to. But power gaming in Gamma World doesn’t really matter. It is a very lethal game. It would be like power gaming Call of Cthulhu. You can do it, but it doesn’t really make much sense.

Fortune Cards

MM: Similar to Gamma World cards, we are going to be doing fortune cards for D&D. They are collectible cards that give the same kind of random dramatic element to the game. The player can alter the action a little bit by using a random benefit. As a whole they make the game a little more unpredictable and makes things work out in an interesting new way.

Also like the Gamma World cards, they aren’t designed to build an optimized deck to get a more powerful character. they are designed to be random and add chaos to the game.

RT: If you are familiar with TORG and their drama deck, it is similar to that concept.

—–

At this point I was evicted from the tower.  My time had come to an end.  But I have dreams of next year, again scaling the Keep for the wealth of information inside!

I want to thank Mike Mearls and Rodney Thompson for taking time out of their Gen Con to talk to me. And a special thanks to Katie Page for arranging the interview.

Stuart

Gen Con WOTC Booth

Gen Con WOTC Booth

I climbed “The Keep” on Gen Con Saturday. When I reached the top, I saw a table at the center, with the latest WOTC games laid out upon it.  This table was surrounded by comfortable  couches and chairs. This was gamer paradise. The view from the top was spectacular, as it overlooked the entire vendors area.

Looking out over the vendor floor

The reason for this ascension did have purpose. I did not break through the guard trolls and climb up in secret. No, I had a summons.  An appointment  to talk with D&D designers Mike Mearls and Rodney Thompson. The purpose of the interview was primarily to talk about the new D&D Boardgame line that is launching this month. However, with the attention of these venerable game designers, the topic also shifted to the new happenings in the D&D RPG line as well.

I will publish this interview in two parts. Next will be our discussion on the D&D Boardgames.  Following that will be talk about the D&D RPG.  Stay tuned over the next few days for some interesting conversation!

Stuart

Trask: What is "Alpha Omega?" Could you give a brief introduction to the world?

DC: Alpha Omega is a table-top RPG that takes place in a dystopian, future Earth, about 200 years after the apocalypse. Those that survived, sought refuge amongst the remains of the old world and started to rebuild. These societies developed in isolation from one another and all have varying forms of government or corporate governance. Some of these cities grew into towering, vertical arcologies that became akin to city-states, replacing the nation-state system of the old world. Everything in between the remaining cities is known as the Wilds or Freezones. These areas are filled with a variety of nasty creatures of all types (see The Encountered: Volume 1 for more info!) as well as rural societies that have managed to establish a threshold in the dangerous wilderness, despite the harsh, lethal environment. In the setting of Alpha Omega, these cities and civilizations are just starting to communicate with one another, establish trade and of course, fight over natural resources.

On top of that you have two warring alien species, the Seraph and the Ophanum, that have been misrepresented by history as being angels and demons. These species, known collectively as Elim, are about to come back to Earth to wage war once again. This time, however, they find that man is not the insignificant creature they encountered 10,000 years ago during their last visit to Earth. Now mankind may be able to influence the outcome of the Elim’s war due to our technology, but also because some people, namely PCs, are evolving at an accelerated rate and are developing supernatural powers.

Trask: What is your history in the game industry? Is "Alpha Omega" your first professional effort?

DC: I’ve been playing table-top role-playing games since I was a kid. I’ve GM’d D&D 2nd Edition and 3.5 and played in many other games and systems, however Alpha Omega, written with co-creator Earl Fischl, was my first professional effort.

Trask: "AO" has an elaborate mythology. What did you draw upon for inspiration while writing "Alpha Omega?"

DC: A lot of the early developmental work was done by Earl Fischl. He drew from books he read about ancient astronaut theory where extra-terrestrial species visited Earth thousands of years ago and may have played a role in the development of man. We also wanted to create a platform for any sort of near future, post-apocalypitc, horror or high sci-fi role-playing that people may want to do. We established a world and a system that allowed a multitude of popular genres and themes were blended in a single world, which is of course, Alpha Omega.

Trask: "AO" uses the "6-6" system, an original system. Why the decision to go with a new system, instead of something off-the-shelf?

DC: We felt that the systems that currently existed did not have the ability to present a Matrix-like "bullet-time" feeling that the 6-6 system creates. We also wanted a system where players could split their dice pools, allowing them to use more/less dice during each turn as required by the action they were attempting.

Trask: How difficult was it to balance ease of use and the simulation quality of the "6-6" system.

DC: Well, this is always tricky. We tried to use a series of optional rules that could be used to increase realism but made the game more crunchy, or left out to make the game more stream-lined and faster moving but not as strategic or realistic. Although the game appears crunchy at first glance, it plays quite smoothly and simply as the core mechanics of the dice pools vs a difficulty rating is quite easy to grasp.

Trask: What was the most difficult part of developing your own gaming system?

DC: The most difficult part was creating a progressive dice pool system that used all the common dice types, allowing players to get better and better dice as their characters advance while combining this with a combat cycle system that is broken down into 6 segments which allows experienced characters and creatures to act much more often than average humans and therefore providing them with supernatural abilities.

Trask: The art is very impressive in both the core rulebook and "The Encountered," the first bestiary supplement. Did you work closely with the artist(s) on the look and feel of the illustrations?

DC: Definitely. I was very involved in the creation of almost every image in both books. I would write up a short paragraph detailing what the creature.character/scene should look like and then send that to the artist. They would then send us sketches which Tom, Earl and I would review. I would then send our feedback to the artists

Trask: Magic plays a key role in "AO." However, the magic system is a bit unusual. First, please explain how the magic system works and could you elaborate on the reasons you chose not to have spell lists?

DC: Our magic system is known as Wielding. It works by taking one of 6 Wielding Sources and combining it with one of 16 Wielding Intentions to create an Effect. This way players can pretty much use magic to do anything they want as long as the end result affects some sort of statistic or game mechanic.

For example: If a player wants to create a Fireball, they would combine the Elemental Source with the Agony Intention to create a Fireball Effect. The player determines the Range, Damage, Area of Effect or whether it will do damage over time. The more powerful the Effect, the more difficult it is to successfully Wield. In our game world, if a Wielder tries to harness more power than they can control, the results can be disastrous!

We wanted to use Wielding to replace spell lists as we wanted the theme that runs throughout character creation and character development to be one of choice without boundaries or limits. Spell lists restrict what caster can accomplish in a given amount of time or at a certain level of character experience, but Wielding frees them of this, leaving the possibilities and accompanying risks to the player controlling the Wielder.

Trask: What is on the horizon for the "Alpha Omega" world? Are you currently working on something?

DC: Well, we have a variety of modules and short stories that are being created by some established authors. We’ll be announcing these shortly. We are also working on a new supplement that is tentatively titled Prelude to War, which will contain stats and information about the Elim species, particularly the Seraph and Ophanum. This book will also contain rules for a table-top wargame where players will be able to have large-scale battles using a system that is fun and stream-lined. This book will contain information for everything involved in the Evolutionary War and skirmishes fought on Earth when the Seraph and Ophanum arrive.

I would like to thank Mind Storm Labs for their cooperation with this series of interviews.

If you have any questions about the interview for David or myself, drop me a comment or email and I will do my best to get it answered.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Trask: First off, could you talk about your own background in gaming. Is Mind Storm Labs your first foray into game publishing or are you a seasoned professional?

Tom McLaughlin: Mind Storm Labs is my first venture into game publishing but not the first time I have started a company

Trask: What moved you into the game publishing business?

Tom McLaughlin: I guess I look at this in a larger scope, I see us more in the business of developing intellectual property. The RPG is just the first iteration of the Alpha Omega universe. Dave Carter and I have been friends for a long time and we had always talked about starting a company together. When I mentioned to him about developing an intellectual property he told me about a guy he worked with named Earl Fischl who had a really cool concept for a setting. I was skeptical but we decided to set up a meeting. Sure enough he had a pretty cool idea for a setting and that first meeting started us down the road to creating Mind Storm Labs and developing Alpha Omega. We built the business plan, raised some initial capital, Dave and Earl came on board full-time and they got to work fleshing out the world.

Trask: How long from initial meeting to the publication of Alpha Omega?

Tom McLaughlin: From the first meeting to having books in our hands was about 15 months. Actual development time for the core rulebook was about 9 months. We spent a few months developing the business plan then printing adds a month or more at the end.

Trask: You mentioned that Alpha Omega has other iterations planned. Are you planning to move into other media, ie comics or film?

Tom McLaughlin: Yes. I always use the analogy of a sand box. Our hope was we could create a compelling, interesting world that other people and companies would want to play in. The world of Alpha Omega is a large enough and rich enough setting that you can tell a lot of different stories. So far we’ve seen a great reaction from players and companies that want to play in this sandbox.

Trask: Alpha Omega has a strong web presence with the NWSEC site for player interaction and the very impressive Alpha Omega site itself. Was the strong online component something you planned from the outset?

Tom McLaughlin: Absolutely. From our initial marketing campaign, “Ethan Haas Was Right” which attracted millions of people to the Alpha Omega world, to our forums, the wiki and a few other projects we have in the works that will take advantage of new web technology we have always wanted to keep our online presence at the forefront. We’ve also used the web to attract a global audience for AO. We have players in Australia, the Netherlands, Eastern Europe and South America and all places in between.

Trask: “Ethan Haas Was Right” was an alternate-reality game meant to promote the Alpha Omega universe. Somehow it became attached to a blockbuster movie. Do you happen to know how that happened?

Tom McLaughlin: We never considered it an alternate reality game. It’s definitely a viral marketing campaign, which is how it was conceived. In terms of the cross over with Cloverfield the first time I heard about the connection was a film site that published a story saying they were connected. Within 24 hours every site was running that story, then it got picked up by the mainstream press (USA Today, Time Magazine, etc). It was great exposure for us and for Cloverfield. I like to think we added a few dollars to their opening weekend. ;-) With a viral marketing campaign you have to plan it in advance and it’s typically building towards a specific event so you don’t really want to come out from behind the curtain in the middle of the campaign and give away the ending so all parties agreed it was best to let the campaign run its course.

Trask: I have to ask about the Alpha Omega website. The design is very impressive and arguably one of the most elaborate RPG sites on the web. How long did it take to develop?

Tom McLaughlin: We are actually in the process of revising it. The current site took about four months to develop.

Trask: Did the Mind Storm Lab team do it in all of their free time between writing books or did you outsource?

Tom McLaughlin: Yes. We developed the look and layout that we wanted for our sites then we had a team build it for us. It’s all run in-house now.

Trask: Alpha Omega currently has two books out, the core rulebook and “The Encountered Volume 1.” What is next on the horizon for the Alpha Omega universe?

Tom McLaughlin: We also have a module called, “Milk Run”.

Trask: Sorry, forgot that one.

Tom McLaughlin: Quite a bit. Now that we have the core rulebook and creature manual in stores we feel like the foundation is laid and we can start to explore new areas of the Alpha Omega world.

Tom McLaughlin: We are currently working on a weapons & equipment guide, a supplement to The Encountered, a guide to the Wilds, several short stories and a few more modules. Our next major release will be a miniature war game that will delve deeper into the history between the Seraph and Ophanum. We are also developing our own line of miniatures to be used with the game. We are bringing in several great writers to help us expand the world. We’ll also continue to grow our Warden program and start attending a lot more conferences around North America and Europe.

Trask: Do you have tentative release dates for any of your new products?

Tom McLaughlin: We don’t like to announce release dates. We prefer to release products when they are ready but I can tell you there are a few new items that should be ready before the end of the year.

Trask: Just a clarification: the Wardens is your volunteer demo team, correct?

Tom McLaughlin: Yes, The Warden program is our volunteer team that helps us promote Alpha Omega at local retailers and conventions.

Trask: Does Mind Storm Labs have any plans to license the A/O game system or intellectual property to other game companies? To allow 3rd party modules, for example.

Tom McLaughlin: We aren’t actively pursuing that but we are certainly open to good ideas. We built our own game mechanics for Alpha Omega, the 6-6 System, so we have always considered licensing the game mechanics to other publishers.

Trask: What was the greatest challenge in getting Alpha Omega to market? Art, printing, writing or something else?

Tom McLaughlin: I wouldn’t say there was any one challenge harder than the rest. Once you make the decision to get started every element you mentioned will have its own challenges along the way. You can’t forsee all of the risks or “what ifs” before you start. It’s more a question of how you deal with the challenges when they arise and keeping yourself focused on the end goal.

Trask: Was there anything you would do differently?

Tom McLaughlin: I don’t think so. We’ve learned a few lessons along the way but I think we are a better company from experiencing them so I wouldn’t want to change them. Never look back. ;-)

Trask: Ok, last question and this one is easy. Why the landscape format for the book?

Tom McLaughlin: We wanted to create a beautiful, rich setting for players and we felt the landscape setting does a better job of that. When you look at the amazing images in either book landscape simply does a better job of showcasing the artwork. Its like the difference between watching a movie in a theatre or on your tv at home. From a functional point of view we also like it because it takes up less space on the table.

Trask: I predicted the art portion of your answer, but the space issue is something I had not thought of.

Trask: Do you have any questions for me before we sign off?

Tom McLaughlin: I don’t think so. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me and if you think of any other questions let me know. If any of your readers have any questions about Alpha Omega or the industry in general they can contact me at: news@mindstormlabs.com

If you have any questions for Tom, please drop me a comment or contact him directly at the email above.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Trask:

Talk about yourself a bit. What is your background in gaming and miniatures?

EJ:
I started with painting actually back early in college, in the late 90′s, just doing miniatures to role play with. My painting was quite poor, but I enjoyed it. About a year later I had a friend introduce me to Warhammer 40k, which is where both my miniature gaming and painting really started taking off. I played a LOT of 40k, tournaments and such 2-3 times a month. After a while I did burn out on it a bit, and just settled into painting, and did that exclusively for many years, and working to take that to a competitive level as well. And I actually started at Wyrd as a painter, doing some of the first minis released. As I got more involved here, I branched out again, into gaming, and took over development of Malifaux

Trask:
Before we touch on Malifaux, from where did Wyrd Miniatures spring? I read some interesting information on the site that implied Wyrd as a business evolved into being rather than a conscious effort to start a company.

EJ:
Largely that’s right. It started when Nathan one day decided that he thought he could put together a few fun minis, as he had gotten friendly with a sculptor, and myself, a painter, and figured why not release a few and see what happens. So the first 4 miniatures happened very much without any ambition to become what Wyrd has become, but really just grew out of our love of all things miniature related. Well, those first 4 did quite well, particularly the Viktoria Swordmistress model, and that of course gave us encouragement to do another set, and then another, etc…So yes, it was quite an organic growth from the start, and wasn’t really until about 2 years in that we really had to sit down and decide what we wanted to do, and either go forward as a real company, or just leave it on a back burner, slow it down, and leave it a hobby. Of course we decided to try to push it forward, this was also the same time we decided to make a game to go with.

Trask:
So you started producing miniatures. When and why did you decide to add your own game rules to your miniature line?

EJ:
That happened in about Summer ’07, just over 2 years ago now. The line was going quite well, and we had people constantly asking if there was a game to go with them. We had always created minis to fit into our fictional world of Malifaux, and we realized that with the minis, and the background fluff already in place, the next step really was to get serious about development of rules for it

Trask:
Can you give a little background on Malifaux? What is the world like?

Malifaux Cover

EJ:
We’ve always enjoyed a mix of genre’s so it’s always been hard to classify Malifaux neatly into any. But the world takes place through a magical breach to another world, which people have ventured, people from many different origins. which created a vibrant mix of genre’s, including western, Victorian, horror, steampunk, historical, with a good bit of humor thrown in as well. The result is something both richly diverse, and with the freedom to really let both our serious and fun sides find a place. I suppose that is about it in a nutshell.

Trask:
I noticed a distinct feeling of humor throughout the Malifaux line, including miniatures with names like “Hog Whisperer” and “Bayou Gremlins.” Is this a comment on miniatures game that “take themselves too seriously?”

EJ:
I think that going into it we certainly decided that we certainly didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously! I suppose the fact that we had to make that a conscious decision, might indicate that the general focus of the industry is on much more serious settings. But also we knew we were working to make something different, and something that could perhaps give people a laugh while playing. So I think primarily it reflects the personality we wanted to reflect of ourselves into the game, more than a reaction to everything else out there.

Trask:
Although I have not played Malifaux yet, I did get in a demo at Gen Con this year. Rather than dice, you went with a card-based combat system. Could you elaborate a bit on the thinking behind this choice?

EJ:
To some degree this is another thing that grew organically. As we started to work on a game, it was at a time that the market really was flooded with new games, and our goal was to create a mechanic that was different from the other dice games that were out there. This lead to a moment where in our frustration, we just decided to toss the dice, and go with cards, as it was something that had not really been done in seemingly every possible way…or really any possible way, yet. This was a big headache in many ways though, as we were really left trying to re-invent the wheel, creating a conflict resolution mechanic using something completely different. We also wanted to be sure to justify this decision by working in mechanics that would be unique to a deck of cards, things you couldn’t do with dice. It was a hard road, and one we didn’t know we were starting down when we first decided to toss out the dice, but I think despite the headaches, we’d make the same decision. We’re very happy with the results.

Trask:
Malifaux has different levels of games, from small skirmishes to large battles. Did you feel the market lacked a game that scaled well?

EJ:
I think we felt mainly that the market lacked a good small scale skirmish game, so we started there. The scalability was worked into the game in order to give people additional options, so while they could get into a game which did offer a skirmish level game, they could also play slightly larger games as well. However, due to the system itself, I don’t feel that the game would scale much larger than we’ve already developed. (To all those people worried we’re going to keep growing it in size until it’s up to 20-30+ models a side)

Trask:
What is the largest army supported?

EJ:
The largest is a 70ss brawl, meaning 2 masters and 70 soul stones worth of minions. I think we figured that the absolute maximum models that could be is about 35…BUT that would be a very gimmicky list. Usually 70ss would be 10-15 models max for a balanced selection. A more standard game is usually about 5-10 models though, as those 70ss brawls would take quite a bit of time to play out.

Trask:
I would like to ask about the more mundane logistical aspects of publishing a miniature game. Did you have any challenges as a new company with mass production of miniatures or printing books? Did you have to recruit outside help?

EJ:
It was literally all a challenge! Everything we did we had to learn from scratch. Like I said, at the time we started, the industry was really very saturated with games, and miniature lines, and more people wanted to get involved every day, so we actually found quite a lot of unreceptive people in the industry that did not want to give a helping hand. But Nathan and I are both quite stubborn, and pushed ahead anyway. It of course started with learning about making miniatures, and we had quite a few examples of learning from trial and error. Once we got to making a game book however, I was able to use my background as a graphic artist, and my many years of working with printing presses to really race through that part of it. But even with my background, there has been a lot of learning, everything from figuring out how to print custom decks of cards, to getting used to the turn around times on everything. We’re still learning in fact! Since Gen Con, the learning has changed to figuring out how to scale up to meet the supply created by the game…something we’re still working on!

Trask:
Since you started from scratch and moved in to the game publishing business, do you have any advice for potential game publishers? Did you make any mistakes you could warn others to avoid?

EJ:
I think the biggest piece of advice would be to be prepared to do it right, and be prepared for it not to be cheap. It really is a leap of faith, and you have to believe in your product enough to order in enough quantity to make it worth doing. (The more you print, the less it costs, and the only way you can make it work!). Also be prepared to give it A LOT of your time and dedication, as people can tell if you cut corners in any way. So you have to give it your best…just be prepared for that! The biggest mistake is to not be very persistent in following up with people to get what you need. Don’t just let things slide and hope they’ll work out right, you really have to stay on top of things, and people, to make sure the final product is up to that standard you set.

Trask:
Now that Malifaux is released, what are Wyrd Miniatures future plans?

EJ:
Of course we are working hard to release all the rest of the miniatures that are introduced in the game book, and we figure that will happen over the next 8-9 months. So we figure we had better get started on the next Malifaux book, to expand the game, expand the miniature choices, and add more to the Malifaux world. That next book is already in development. Also we have 2 other projects in the works for other games, that are related to Malifaux, but go in different directions from the table top skirmish game. At the moment these 2 are top secret, but I think you’ll be hearing more about them soon. Also we’re working on updating our website and forum. And of course we’re working to continue our tradition of supporting Malifaux and the miniature hobby with our Painting contests and our online magazine – Wyrd Chronicles.

Trask:
Great, thank you for your time. I think I have enough to fill up a post and keep the content hungry readers of my site happy. Do you have any closing thought? Or questions for me?

EJ:
The obvious question is…When are you going to give in and play a game?

Trask:
Sadly, I have fairly good writing skills, but the painting ability of a monkey. I am interested in the game mechanics, but unless someone builds the army for me, I am useless.

EJ:
Fair enough! But we always like to hear peoples impressions! I guess for closing thoughts, I’d just like to thank everyone who has shown us such strong support over the last couple of months. The positive feedback has been very much appreciated and has given us a ton of energy to get back to work and make it even better!

Trask: Thank you for your time.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Dragonborn Martialist

edition, I politely begged off.

Then, in the dark of the night, I read the book and it impressed me. Most PDF supplements fall in to the “adequate” to “terrible” category, but this one was distinctly above average. The original art, layout, editing and depth exceeded my expectations. However, I have a distinct bias against 4e. So, rather than do a review of the supplement, I interviewed the author and company owner Nicholas Kristof instead. My reasoning is simple; regardless of my feelings on the system, talented writers and publishers deserve attention, regardless of the system they choose to use.  “The Martialist“ demonstrated that  Fantasy Cartographic had that talent.

Nick currently lives in Europe, so we did the interview through email. Here are his responses. I think this is one of my more informative interviews because he talks about the PDF market, as opposed to a dead-tree publisher. I learned quite a bit. Enough Trask prattling, on to the interview!

Nick: Trask, First I wanted to thank you for taking the time to interview me. As you can imagine, “getting the word out” is vitally important—especially for a small company such as mine. I think that The Fantasy Cartographic is going to be doing some nice things in the coming months and this interview will help us to become a little better known.

Trask: Could you give us some of your gaming background? What is your history as regards to gaming?

Nick: I’ve been playing D&D since 1980 or so, although my earliest recollections are trying to watch my older brothers and their friends play when I was too young. My oldest brother played AD&D with me and then helped me DM him in my first campaign. I also played D&D (the Red Box set) with my best friend Mike for a few years before he and I moved up to AD&D. Even when we first started, Mike and I were creating our own stuff. I created a barbarian character class and he created a samurai class for the Red Box set. Also played some Champions, some Robotech, and one or two others. Played a lot of board games as well—Risk was probably my favorite. Some complain about it as too simplistic or too long or too this or that, but I still love a good game of Risk.

Trask: How did your company “Fantasy Cartographic” come about?

Nick: Like most people who play rpgs, I’ve always wanted to try my hand at actually producing ‘professional’ gaming material. For awhile, that took the form of submissions to Dragon and Dungeon magazine. Then college and the real world pulled me away from gaming for many years. When I found the time to get back into it, the 3E age was in full swing, and, due to the OGL, anybody could publish gaming material. Websites like RPGNow.com made it (and obviously still make it) easy to distribute material. I had some maps lying around and got together with the group of guys that I gamed with many years ago. We wrote system-less descriptions of the fantasy locations detailed by the maps, put them all together, and that became our first product, “Locales, Volume One”.

Trask: Your previous releases were map/plot hook supplements like “Locales, Volume One.” Why the switch to character supplements?

Nick: As I said, “Locales, Volume One” was written system-less because none of us had any experience playing 3rd Edition D&D. In fact, there was a significant portion of that group of guys who were still interested in D&D but had no interest in 3E. I felt much the same way. Between us, we started (and for the most part stopped) playing D&D with the Red Box set or AD&D. I felt that it would be stupid to try to learn a new system just for the purpose of publishing material. That changed with the release of 4E. I felt that in some ways the playing field had been leveled, and we could jump into producing material for 4E at the same time as everyone else. As for why the switch into character supplements? Probably because it seemed the most interesting to me. Although in hindsight, also the most difficult.

Trask: Tell me about the “Martialist.” What does the book contain? What is the class theme?

Nick: Fantasy Class: Martialist details a single new character class for 4E D&D. It includes everything that is needed to play the class up through the epic tier, including all of the exploits (about six per level), feats (60+), paragon paths (8), and epic destinies (3). It also includes sixteen new magic items and optional rules for playing the class. Finally, it includes power cards for all of the exploits. Basically, I included everything that I felt was necessary to provide a complete character class. One or two of the other websites that reviewed the Martialist commented that I must really be into martial arts, because there is so much material. Actually, I’m not that into martial arts at all—I just felt that if I was going to do a class that is basically a martial artist, I wanted to do it right. As I said, the theme of the character is one of martial arts, but I wanted to stay away from the Oriental trappings of your typical monk. The martialist is just a tough character who knows how to use his body to damage yours.

Trask: What was your inspiration for the Martialist and the prison origin of the class?

Nick: Honestly, when I first started work on it, the main inspiration was professional wrestling. I was experimenting with 4E power creation and trying to create mechanics for the signature moves of some of the wrestlers that I watched when I was a kid. I was thinking of creating a player vs. player wrestling game based upon 4E combat mechanics. About a third of the way through the process, the prison idea popped into my head, and I realized that I had the makings of an actual fantasy character class. For your readers’ benefit, the martialist class arose amongst a population of prisoners in a prison where all personal belongings were outlawed and what objects were readily available would crumble if used as weapons. The idea is that if all you have to use as a weapon is your own body, you’re going to get very good at using it.

Trask: The class goes all the way to level 30. How hard was it to create and balance that many different powers?

Nick: Creating the powers up to level 30 plus paragon and epic powers was the hardest part of the project. For each power, I came up with a name or I wrote the flavor text first. Then I determined the mechanics. In most cases, between the PHB and Martial Power, I had enough exploits from other classes to judge the approximate damage and effects that would be appropriate. I then subjected them to playtesting, of which you can never do enough. Ultimately, whatever success we had with the balance of the powers (and I believe that we were successful in this regard), I owe to a very good mechanics editor who I brought into the project fairly early. His knowledge of the rules and mechanics is top notch, and his feedback was almost always spot-on. I know this for a fact, because there are instances where I went against his recommendation, and some of the other people who have reviewed it commented on things in their reviews that he recommended against. His name is Alex Mont by the way; I highly recommend him.

Trask: Who did the cover and interior art?

Nick: VShane did all of the art. We are indebted to him for his abilities and willingness to work with us to achieve our vision for the project. Check out his art at http://www.pen-paper.net/artgallery/V_Shane/ or at http://vshane-art.com/. He is talented and professional, and we will use his services for as long as he will work with us.

Trask: What was the biggest issue with getting the book published? Editing, art, layout or something else?

Nick: The biggest issue was layout. I made a lot of rookie mistakes in the process of creating the document. I say rookie mistakes, because although the Martialist was not the Fantasy Cartographic’s first release, I wanted to really up our game in terms of appearance and design, so I was trying a lot of things that I had not done before. The biggest mistake was that I started layout before writing was complete. I always felt that I needed to know how it was going to look, so I’d lay it out. Then the text would change, and I would have to re-do the layout. I’m embarrassed to say that that happened a lot, even after I realized that it was a problem. I just couldn’t help myself. As you can imagine, editing and art played a part in this, because as the text gets edited or new art becomes available, the layout would have to change. Aside from the art, by VShane, I did all of the layout and graphic design for the entire project. I learned a lot. Hopefully, the Martialist looks good on the computer screen or on paper, and I’ll be able to repeat that quality in the future.

Trask: Any future releases planned from “Fantasy Cartographic?”

Nick: Yes. We are currently working on our second character class supplement. This time, I have partnered with an individual to release a class that people who frequent ENWorld have probably seen before. I can’t say too much at this time, but it is a “homebrew” class from ENWorld that really caught my eye. The format will be similar to the Martialist; it will also include art by VShane. We are also planning to revise, update, and expand on the Martialist in the next month or two. My plan right now is to re-release it at RPGNow with updated cover art, more material, and a slightly tweaked layout (I can’t help myself). A great advantage of RPGNow is that those who have already purchased it will be able to download the update for free. And hopefully, we’ll drive more sales as well. We’re also going to be setting up a website. I’ve come to the conclusion that a web presence is almost required for a company that sells only PDFs. Finally, I’m probably going to start a blog, the main focus of which will be my experiences running the Fantasy Cartographic: a no-holds-barred look at the business from my perspective. I plan on discussing pricing, sales, our successes and failures—all of it. I hope that by detailing what I’ve done (mostly wrong, I would say), others will learn some lessons and maybe do better for themselves. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed every minute though.

Trask: Do you have any advice for a potential PDF RPG publisher just starting out? Did you run in to an issue you did not expect and might warn a new publisher about?

Nick: Here are a couple thoughts, in no particular order:

1. Don’t underestimate the time that you will need to spend on the business side of things. The creativity and writing and art are the fun parts of doing this; but it is the other stuff (advertising, working with freelancers, worrying about the finances, communicating with everyone and anyone) that will determine your success, much moreso than people might believe.
2. Start small. A line of five, ten, fifteen page products released over time will probably be more lucrative than one 75 page product in the same time period. This is for a number of reasons, but I’ll list two:

• Steady releases over time will build awareness of your company and drive sales—momentum is important.
• Smaller products can be priced higher for an equivalent number of pages. As a brand new company, you can release a 5 page pdf and sell it for a buck, a 10-15 page product for two, but if you release a 75 page product as a brand new company, you won’t get many sales if it costs over 4 bucks or so. People just aren’t going to spend several dollars of their hard-earned cash on a name that they do not know, period.

3. I’m always looking to work with new people. If someone out there has a class that they want to publish, contact us (click here and solve captcha for the email address). If someone wants to do something else mapping or 4E related, contact us. We’ll take a look. My model is to split the profits evenly between all contributors in proportion to their contribution to a project. The individual that we are working with on the next class supplement might earn more than the Fantasy Cartographic if sales do well.

I would like to thank Nick for his time and great responses. If you would like further information about Fantasy Cartographic, you can find their products on RPGnow or contact them directly.

Full disclosure,  I do receive a small affiliate credit for anything you buy using the RPGNow links on this page . All of which I promptly use to buy more PDF products for review, including the “Locales, Volume 1” listed above for a future review.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Untold the Game

to keep track of the characters name and other notes. Interest thoroughly piqued, I contacted one of the developers, Brannon Hollingsworth and submitted some questions to him about his company, “Wandering Men” and “Untold.” Here are his responses.

1. Before we get into “Untold,” can you tell me a bit about “The Wandering Men?” What are your origins?

We’re a group of best friends, writers, backpacker/adventurers, gamers, and brothers-in-Christ who’ve been blessed enough to have some real success in some of our creative endeavors. The concept of The Wandering Men was actually created on a hike wherein one of our number suggested we form a group of writer-explorers. We thought it a very cool idea at the time, but it was little more than just that – an idea. It was not until an opportunity to write for a fiction anthology came up (which later became our first novel) – that the idea resurfaced. After that, it just seemed completely natural. We do lots together already, so why not write as a group, too? It was after we’d written that first novel that we had the idea for Untold. Right away, we saw the immense potential for Untold, and created a company to underpin the game. So, Wandering Men Studios was born!

2. Your current project is “Untold” a role-playing game with unique mechanics. What inspired the Wandering Men to create “Untold?”
Well, that’s *one* of our current projects. We’re also working on a sequel to our first novel, Skein of Shadows, and each of us has a number of side projects in the works as well. In terms of our inspiration to create Untold, it grew out of an unrest at the increasing complexity of most other RPG’s and the way we saw the market moving towards forcing customers to buy more and more to play the same game. We decided that we wanted to create a game that we would love to play. The idea for a modular, flexible and fast card-based roleplaying game had its birth in the center of that unrest, I guess you could say. I recently answered this same question with a bit more detail for the members of our mailing list, I’d like to quote that story here:

Where did you get the idea?

The answer, as with most questions posed to the Wandering Men, requires a bit of a story. We’re all gamers and Ashy had a long-running game which used a very popular rule-set of which we’re sure many of you are familiar. However, with multiple rules revisions and more looming, as well as with the complexity of the game’s rules, Ashy decided that he’d had enough. He decided that he would create a game of his own. After all, he’d done a fair amount of game design, so nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

Armed with his well-rounded knowledge of gaming systems on the market, Ashy’s noble quest soon lead him to a system that was close to his goal, but still lacked something. You see, Ashy wanted a system that was both easy and offered nearly endless flexibility and ease of play (no short order in any type of game, much less an RPG). After several botched attempts at hodge-podging his own system, and one not-so-successful playtest, one of his players and fellow Wandering Man, Nathan, made a comment about distilling some of the effects of his system into cards. Ashy thought this was a cool idea, after all, some of the larger companies in the world at that time were doing similar things.

The game ended; everyone left.

Then the idea hit him like a ton of bricks. If you could distill one part of the game into cards – why not do that with everything? Make every element of an RPG character into a card and then — it would be easy, right?

Ashy immediately called Nathan and told him the idea. The excitement was palpable. They knew they had something.

Now, all they had to do was to discern…

How to make it all work?

But that is an entirely different story!

3. “Untold” is a “CBRPG.” Could you give us a short introduction to a “Card Based Role Playing Game?”
Certainly! Basically, a card-based role-playing game is the exact same as a regular role-playing game except that cards become the single “accessory” that you need. You have no rulebooks, no character sheets – all you need is a deck and a die! Everything is on the cards!

4. System and rules aside, what is the genre of “Untold?” Fantasy, Sci-fi, or a hybrid setting?
Definitely a hybrid setting; we designed the “default” campaign setting of Untold, Splintered Serenity, as a hybrid setting on purpose – for a couple of reasons. The first was we wanted to, as designers, tackle the “big rocks” of RPG game design right up front. I.e. we wanted a fast, flexible, fun and simple game that would handle pretty much any genre of role-play. So as part of Splintered Serenity, you have every tech level from Stone Age to Future Tech along side magic, elemental, spiritual forces and you can be anything from a sentient, talking animal to a clockwork robot! The second reason we wanted to do this was to provide unlimited flexibility and possibility to gamers out there – in Untold, if you can dream it up, then we want you to be able to play it! Further, we call Splintered Serenity our “default” campaign setting because we’ll be introducing new ones in the years to come – more “tailored” campaign settings: Cyborgs and Six-guns, Vampires and Werewolves, Call of Cthulhu type settings, etc.

5. “Untold” is still in development. If a potential player wants to get involved in the development process, is there a way they can contribute as a playtester?
Oh, that and then some! Yes, we’re nearing the final run of play-test but you can still get in if you’re interested – just contact our Play-test/Demo Coordinator at demo@untoldthegame.com and he’ll get you started. Also, we’re looking to fans to help us influence and grow the game and the world. For instance, if you create a cool new race and we approve it, it becomes an official part of the game and you’ll receive credit right on the card! We’ve already had some of our fans submit content and it’s already been added into the game! We’re looking forward to expanding this model as the game grows, in fact!

6. How will game supplements be handled? Will the game use randomized “booster packs?”
First – let me clarify something: there’s NO RANDOMIZATION in Untold. When you buy cards from us, you’re ALWAYS going to know EXACTLY what you’re getting. We’ll have the contents of the packs listed on the web and on the package itself – we’re adamantly against randomization of any kind. We hate paying for stuff that we don’t want or need, and we’ll never do that to our customers. That aside, we do plan to expand our settings by releasing Packs, Decks, and Boosters – these various packs will cover things like various environments: mountains, oceans, swamps, etc.; as well as thematic elements: Scrappers & Survivors, High-Tech Wonders, Tooth & Claw, etc; of course there will be packs to supplement the adventures we release (which will be free to download). Also, as other Campaign Settings come on board, you’ll see specific world packs come online.

7. Art is a critical component of card-based games. Who is doing your illustrations?
We have a whole stable of awesome artists from all over the globe and are very proud and happy to be working with each one of them. John Gonzalez was our initial artist and you’ll see a bulk of the work from him, however, we’ve recently added a whole list of other awesome artists: Anthony Cournoyer, Aviv Or, Brannon Hall (a Wandering Man), Chris Fason, Chris Miscik, Coran “Kizer” Stone, Derek Benson, Edward Frayna, Greywulf, Laura Sloan, and Patri Balanovsky. We’ve got new artists coming on board weekly, in fact!

8. What is the release date for “Untold?” Are there any demo events planned in the near future?
If the play-test goes as well as we’re hoping, then we’re looking for an early Fall 2009 release. We’ve been demoing the game all year and we’re headed to Gencon and Dragoncon in the months ahead. However, you don’t have to go to a convention to get a demo; we’re happy to try and schedule one nearby you if we can. We’re building a “grass roots” demoing network currently and have folks signed up to do demos all the way from California to the Philippines! If you’re interested, please contact us at demo@untoldthegame.com – we’d love to show you the game!

9. As someone going through the design and publish process, do you have any advice or hard-earned lessons that you can share with other aspiring game designers? Would you do anything differently?
Absolutely; in fact, I could probably write a book on this one topic alone! I would say that as a designer, you need to be as flexible and as open minded as you possibly can. When you’re creating something new, change needs to become expected and embraced rather than avoided and refused. Nine times out of ten, a stronger, better design will come from a totally unexpected direction; a change will hit you from left field and if you are flexible and capable enough as a designer to let it shape you (and not break you) then you will benefit from it in the end. Also, if you’re also creating a business at the same time you’re designing a game, (as we are) then expect to become an expert in stuff outside the realm of game design. If you’d have told me that I would be learning about international distribution agreements and talking to folks in the Federal Government about exporting to foreign countries when I started working the initial design for Untold, I would have never believed you… Would I do anything differently? Very good question. I think I would have reminded myself to be more patient overall. More patient with the design process, more patient with my fellow Wandering Men and more patient in general. When I’m working on something I believe in and am excited about, I tend to get very impatient – I want the coolness to come NOW. This is good sometimes, but most often, it does not help the overall process much. So, I would probably have written myself a reminder to daily be more patient.

If you are interested in further information, check out the “Untold” web site and download the free “Untold Primer.” If you are desperate to try this game, the “Wandering Men” will also be at Gen Con 2009 running some games of “Untold” in the  “True Dungeon” waiting area.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Trask: Tell me about your gaming background. What made you want to start Arc Dream?

Shane Ivey: I started gaming in 1979 at age 10. A friend and I picked up Basic D&D after hearing about it from some other kids, gave it a shot, and fell in love. We started playing non-stop, and I’ve really been gaming pretty much non-stop since then.

In 1982 the same friend and I picked up Call of Cthulhu, because it sounded like an intriguing change of pace from D&D. We fell in love with that even harder than D&D.

Not quite 10 years later, I stumbled across a copy of The Unspeakable Oath in a game store. The Unspeakable Oath was a little fanzine-looking magazine dedicated to Call of Cthulhu. It looked like it had been photocopied and bound with thin cardstock paper, really cheap looking. It was amazing. These guys obviously loved Call of Cthulhu as much as me, or even more, because they went to the trouble of printing a magazine about it. So, again, in love.

I tracked down the earlier issues and started corresponding with the guys who made the Oath through America Online, which was really high tech and fancy of us at the time.

I joined their stable of play-testers, and started dabbling with writing, which I hadn’t really done up until then.

In 1992, they published Oath #6, which included a modern-day Cthulhu adventure called “Convergence,” which was about this fictional government agency called Delta Green. It was FBI agents secretly investigating weird Cthulhu cases and going insane.

At the time I was in college getting a degree in criminal justice, about to start law school in New York with an eye toward being an FBI agent.

So, Delta Green wasn’t just falling in love, it was love on Valentine’s Day with a system full of Spanish Fly. It was like they’d written that stuff just for me.

We’ll skip ten years again, and in 2002 I had been working with Pagan Publishing, the guys who did the Oath and Delta Green, for quite a while. I ran the Delta Green website since 1998, I still play-tested and proofread a lot for them, I had written some things here and there. I was a really enthusiastic booster for Pagan and Delta Green.

In the meantime Dennis Detwiller of Pagan Publishing had written a new game that Pagan developed and that some friends of his were going to publish. The friends created a new publishing company called Hobgoblynn Press with plans to publish this new game, Godlike, as their debut title, and they had another one or two in development by other authors. I started running the website for Hobgoblyn.

And around this time I had made the transition from working in my day job as a webmaster/editor to a magazine editor.

Dennis and I worked really well together. After a while he started getting frustrated with Hobgoblynn Press. And eventually we decided we could start our own thing, combining my editorial experience with his established audience and reputation as a creator.

So in 2003 that’s what we did. We borrowed our company name from a secret agency in Delta Green and launched Arc Dream Publishing. We bought all the remaining Godlike books that Hobgoblynn Press still had, got Greg Stolze’s permission to use his rules set in further publications, and started publishing for Godlike and for spin-off projects.

Trask: You mentioned “Godlike” the game. Can you briefly describe it?

SI: Godlike is a World War II role-playing game, with superpowers. Its tag line is “superhero role-playing in a world on fire,” but we always have to add a caveat that it’s only about “superheroes” in the sense that they have powers. People who come to it wanting to play muscle-bound guys dressed in colorful tights with strong jaws and ludicrous plot immunity are inevitably disappointed. It’s more like “Saving Private Ryan” meets “Heroes.”

As a player, you play a Talent, who’s basically a normal man or woman of the 1940s who’s drawn into the war for whatever reason — most games are about commandos or other soldiers — and you have some weird power.

Some of them are really useful, like Healing or Flight or Invulnerability. Others are just strange, like the commando team captain who can inhale hundreds of pounds of material and then spit it back out again.

The game takes the war’s history fairly seriously, so the metaphysics behind superpowers serve to keep history more or less on track. Super-powered “Talents” tend to cancel out each others’ effects.

And because it takes the war seriously, it’s very dangerous. If your character gets shot, it’s entirely possible that you’ll be maimed or killed. Players learn pretty quickly to keep their heads down and move fast.

And it has a very effective “mental stability” mechanic that kicks in if you try to pull off heroics that your character can’t quite live up to. So you get player characters who break down in the middle of combat because they’re overwhelmed by the carnage and fear.

It’s awesome.

Bear in mind, this is superheroes done by Dennis Detwiller, a history buff who won awards for his horror game writing; and by Greg Stolze who was best known for the occult underground masterpiece Unknown Armies.

So it’s a kind of superhero gaming that I just love. As with Call of Cthulhu, it gives you a chance to play characters who are genuinely heroic — not because they’re so bad-ass, but because they put their lives at risk trying to do what they have to do.

Trask: There are some “Godlike” supplements available, such as “Saipan.” Do you plan any future supplements for this game?

SI: We have two in the works right now. One is Operation Torch, which has been in progress for years but keeps getting overtaken by higher-priority projects. Torch is mostly written but it needs a couple of chapters. My goal right now is to finish the current slate of books for one of our other game lines, Wild Talents, and a Delta Green book that’s in progress, and then spend a month putting Torch to bed. Operation Torch deals with the Allied landings in North Africa in 1942. Historically they were really kind of a cake walk for the Allies, but in the world of Godlike there are German Talents nearby in force who might make things very tough for the Allies if the Allied Talents can’t stop them.

And Allan Goodall is currently writing a Godlike source book called The Black Devil Brigade, which is about the First Special Service Force in Italy. The FSSF was a joint American-Canadian commando unit that just kicked all kinds of ass in our history. They do in Godlike, as well, but they also become famous for spawning an unusually high number of Talents.

Beyond those two we will certainly have more for Godlike, but I want to get those out the door before I get too excited about others.

Trask: Could you clarify the difference between “Godlike” and “Wild Talents?” Are they related in any way?

Wild Talents was inspired by fans of Godlike who loved the way the powers worked and the game worked but wanted to use them in settings other than World War II. So Wild Talents from the start was an attempt to distill the game mechanics of Godlike’s superpowers into a more flexible form that you could tweak to fit any setting and any tone of play. Wild Talents includes an extensive chapter on the history of the world of Godlike after World War II, but more in the way of an example than an official setting. And it includes a terrific chapter with guidelines for creating alternate histories that suit the tone of the game you want to play. Ken Hite, who did the excellent Suppressed Transmissions column for Pyramid Magazine and wrote a couple of books on alternate history for Steve Jackson Games, wrote that chapter for Wild Talents, and it’s amazing.

It breaks down four common themes in superhero settings such that you can dial them up or down in your own setting until it feels just right. It’s really cool. Since Wild Talents is all about taking this rules set into other settings, the first batch of sourcebooks present a wide variety of settings and style of play. “This Favored Land” is a serious game about Talents fighting in the U.S. Civil War, trying to keep their superhuman Gifts secret to avoid persecution and superstition. “The Kerberos Club” is about Talents in Victorian London, all of them members of a social club that was founded just for their kind — outcasts and misfits with unnatural abilities, not to mention the occasional immigrant from Her Majesty’s colonies in Faerie and Australia — and which performs secret troubleshooting missions for the Queen. “Grim War” is a modern-day setting where super-powered mutants — widely regarded as superheroes or classic supervillains — vie with underground sorcerers who specialize in summoning and striking deals with bizarre spirits. Grim War, written by Greg Stolze and Kenneth Hite, brings in the “company” rules from Greg’s game Reign to also allow the players to focus on spreading the power of the various factions, government agencies, and secret societies to which they belong. It’s pretty wild, and the spirits and magic system are fascinating and creepy.

Those three are all very close to release right now, along with the new Wild Talents hardback rulebook. There’s also a paperback version of the Wild Talents rules, which is stripped down so it includes just the core rules, not the chapters on the World Gone Mad history or the chapter on building alternate histories — it’s meant to be the thing for players who want the essential rules for cheap. It’s only $10, or $5 in PDF.

Later this year, we have plans for a Wild Talents sourcebook set in medieval Japan, called Silver Pavilion, that puts the folklore and magic of that period, as the people of that era understood them, into game terms. So just as This Favored Land kind of does for the Civil War what Godlike did for World War II, The Silver Pavilion will do for medieval Japan.

And we have a couple of other Wild Talents projects by Benjamin Baugh, who wrote The Kerberos Club and our game Monsters and Other Childish Things. One of them is a game about sorcerers whose powers literally change the world around them. Another is a guide to running Wild Talents in various historical eras, adding mythological monsters as the primary supernatural element.

And I would love to get Dennis to do a sizeable project about the world of Godlike in the modern day, too, but he’s pretty busy the next few months with other things.

Trask: “Godlike” is a game I can understand, but your other game “Monsters and Other Childish Things” begs for more explanation. I read the book description and am not quite sure I understand what the game is about.

SI: It’s “Calvin and Hobbes” meets “Call of Cthulhu.”

As a player, you play a more or less ordinary kid in the modern day. But your best friend is a super-powerful, horrible monster. Kids depend on their relationships with other human beings, so you need to keep your monster in check. But monsters love destroying things, including each other, and generally getting into mischief. And all that stuff is very fun. Which can reduce the incentives to protect those precious relationships by keeping the monster in check. And the world is filled not only with the usual things that make life difficult for kids — homework, drunk birthday-party clowns, school cliques that don’t want Your Kind around — but also people who know about monsters and are out to capture, kill, dissect or control them. Including your monster.

So, as a kid, you try to protect your monster from those nefarious forces, and the monster tries to protect the kid from lunch-money-stealing bullies and peer pressure and creepy substitute teachers. In some games, the players are all kids and the GM runs the monsters, the better to generate mischief and offer dangerous advice — but if the monsters get into a big fight, the GM hands the monster sheet over to that monster’s player to run the action. In other games, you might have one player play a kid and another player play the kid’s monster. Lay down some ground rules to make sure the monster player knows to behave in an alien, troublesome, monstrous way, and the fun pretty much writes itself.

I’ve run Monsters several times at conventions and it’s a blast. Especially when you let half the players play monsters, and you emphasize that monsters all are pretty hostile to each other, even when their kids are friends. Add in some secret anti-monster conspiracy to keep things hopping and it’s gold. It’s very fun, very funny stuff. I’ve also run it for my own kids, who are 10, 12 and 14, and they love it to death. They’re always pestering me to run it for them. And since my wife works in the local schools (she’s a DARE officer for the sheriff’s department), she’s talked about the game to a lot of teachers, who are usually fascinated by the whole idea. Just this afternoon, in fact, I ran Monsters for a 5th-grade teacher who had never played a role-playing game in her life, along with my wife and my daughter. They had a blast.

For Monsters, we have published two source books already and have a couple in the works now.’One of the source books already out is Curriculum and Conspiracy, which is a setting and adventure that puts the kids (and their monsters) in a high-scoring, achievement-obsessed middle school that is loaded down with dangerous, monster-related secrets. Ross Payton wrote that, and it’s a really fun setting for a more serious, sinister kind of game. The other one is “The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor,” which kind of turns Monsters on its head. The kids in Candlewick don’t have Monster friends or relationships with other people, or even memories of their lives before they got adopted into this big spooky orphanage; they have weird monstrous powers themselves and echoes or memories of events, which they can turn into relationships during the game.

Monsters and Other Childish Things is a game that really captures people’s imagination, and is a very fun read. But honestly, Candlewick is even better. I’m really proud of the work that Ben did with it. It’s alternately creepy and hilariously funny.

Trask: Tell me about the “Monsters of Oak Mountain” project/contest?

SI: Around Halloween 2007, one of the classes where my wife Rachel teaches was doing this big creative writing project where each kid was supposed to invent a monster who was his or her friend, draw a portrait of it, and write a page about it. At the time we had the hardback core book of Monsters and Other Childish Things at the printer, so the project — kids with monster friends — caught Rachel’s eye. She told me about it, and she told the teacher about our game. It seemed like it could provide a really fun way to show off how our game works on the Internet, so I worked out a deal with the teacher where Arc Dream would donate a little money to the classroom fund for each kid whose parents signed off on a permission form for us to use the kid’s monster and drawing online. In the end, every kid in the class got their parents to sign off on it. And then we promptly got buried in the Monsters release, in writing for the new edition of Wild Talents, and in convention season, so the actual online thing went on the back burner for about a year.

But we’ve launched it now. Every school day, I put up a new monster — a description as written by the students, with first names only to protect their identities, plus the kid’s own art — and we have a form where gamers can create “Monsters and Other Childish Things” stats for the monsters. We put our favorite sets of stats online, and after all of the monsters are up, the gamer who had the most sets of stats put online wins a custom piece of art work by Monsters artist Robert Mansperger — a portrait of your own kid and monster, for instance.

It’s running now at http://www.arcdream.com/monsters/oakmountain

Trask: Do you have any new “Delta Green” material coming out this year?

SI: We’re working right now on a new sourcebook called “Targets of Opportunity.” We’re following the same scheme with this one as we did with “Delta Green: Eyes Only” in 2007: It’s published by Pagan Publishing, but Arc Dream takes the helm on editing, hiring artists and writers, and putting the whole thing together. We’ll sell a limited run of 1,000 copies of a hardback edition, then we’ll print a larger run of paperbacks for retail distribution. “Targets of Opportunity” will have several all-new organizations for Delta Green to face.

There’s a Deep One colony that’s heavily entrenched in the Pacific Northwest; think Innsmouth, but you don’t have the entire U.S. Navy to come help when you stumble into it and have to deal with it. There’s a ghoul family that’s held tremendous power in New Orleans for centuries, and which has thwarted Delta Green before. It’s so dangerous that for Delta Green, Hurricane Katrina is not just a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, it’s also a chance to strike at this threat that’s kept them at bay for years. There’s an order of immortals, and a pharmaceutical company that thinks it has a way to bottle and sell their immortality, without looking too closely at the hideous price they have to pay for it. There’s a Canadian covert organization dedicated to fighting supernatural threats. It comes across kind of like Delta Green but with fewer mistakes, but it has plenty of skeletons in its own closet.

And there’s the Cult of Transcendence.

The Cult of Transcendence is a massive, world-spanning cult that seems to be everything conspiracy theorists are afraid of — political and economic influence spread to every corner of the globe. In reality it’s both more and less than that. But it’s tremendously dangerous, and it’s a threat that makes the men in black of the Majestic group seem tame. The Cult of Transcendence was originally. The Cult of Transcendence was originally written by Greg Stolze more than ten years ago, when Delta Green was brand new, and in fact it was mentioned in the original 1996 Delta Green book as an “upcoming” sourcebook.For the last year or two Greg has been working with Kenneth Hite, Scott Glancy and me to finally bring the material up to date and into the light of day. Delta Green fan that I am, that’s very exciting.

With that, I thanked Shane for his time and concluded the interview.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Crafty Games

made a name for itself with its “Spycraft” line of games, but is now working on “Fantasycraft” and the new “Mistborn” rpg, based on the books by Brandon Sanderson for next year. Scott Gearin, Alex Flagg and a mysterious character known only as the “God King Emperor of Happy Happy Fun Time,” hereafter abbreviated as “GKEoHHFT” logged on for an in-depth chat. So in-depth that it is too long for a single post. I will post the second part of the interview Monday.

I know, I normally post interviews on Monday, but I thought it might be nice to let a fresh post loose on a Saturday morning for some weekend reading. Depending on feedback, I may do more weekend blogging. For now, read on to learn about Crafty Games latest efforts!

Trask: First question. Tell me about “Crafty Games.” What are its origins and how long has it been in operation?

Scott Gearin: The name part was easy – “Crafty Games” seemed obvious given our origins.

Alex Flagg: We were the design team on AEG’s Spycraft line for 3 years. The company started up at the very end of 2005, releasing our first product, in May 2006 – the weekend of my wedding, actually.

Trask: So you are no longer affiliated with AEG and “Spycraft?”

Alex Flagg: It’s sort of a long story.

GKEoHHFT: Spycraft (the first edition, or what we call “Classic”) was something I pitched for AEG, and developed there way back around 2001. It launched in 2002. It ran for 3 years, as the guys have said, and they went from talented freelancers to invested partners quite rapidly. So when we started work on the second edition – what’s now called Spycraft 2.0 – I brought them in at the ground floor of the rebuild.

GKEoHHFT: That went well and we got what lots of folks consider a successful offering out to market in 2004.

Scott Gearin: Successful offering or 2-handed weapon. The Spycraft 2.0 book is one of the largest in table-top RPG history.

Alex Flagg: AEG was doing some downsizing in summer 2005, and Spycraft was on the list.

Trask: So, in 2005 you find yourselves without a publisher and decide to go it alone?

Alex Flagg: Yes, a little tongue in cheek version is here: http://www.crafty-games.com/about. So we did what any passionate design team would do; license the property from AEG, where Pat (the true name of the GKEoHHFT revealed! ed.)had been employed for 8 years, was it? – and strike out on our own. Then we released the 2.0 second printing, with serious revisions, in may 2006. Our intent at the start was to do PDFs exclusively or almost exclusively.

GKEoHHFT: We wallowed.

Scott Gearin: Threw ourselves into the chipper-shredder that is publishing.

GKEoHHFT: Followed by a string of PDFs, the long-gestating World on Fire print book, and now the upcoming Fantasy Craft.

Alex Flagg: We had seen the success of Ronin Arts and other PDF publishers and thought it was a safe model to follow

Trask: Once you were free of AEG, what specific issues/challenges did you have getting your own publishing company up and running?

GKEoHHFT: Well, for starters, we’re writers.

Alex Flagg: Let me count the ways…creatives are not, by their nature, excellent businessmen out the gate

Scott Gearin: Turned out Mongoose publishing was looking for studios to publish, and offered to partner up to produce print books. We had Spycraft 2.0 in hand, but we also hade the majority of World on Fire ready from time spent at AEG.

Alex Flagg: We love our product, but we have some learning to do to get up to speed, at least, we did. Now we have experience…and scars

Trask: So you had help with the logistics of printing/ laying out the books?

Alex Flagg: Yes, we were quite fortunate in that way.

GKEoHHFT: Mongoose handles the sales and distribution of our print books. They’re our print house.

Trask: Did you learn any important lessons from your “start-up” year that you would like to share with aspiring publishers?

GKEoHHFT: Assume everything will take 3 times as long as it should.

Alex Flagg: Then double it

Scott Gearin: GOOD benchmark, that.

Trask: What did you find the most difficult, other than writing the content? Most publishers I spoke to mention custom art and the graphic design as particular headaches.

GKEoHHFT: Absolutely.

Alex Flagg: The ramping up on the business side, learning how to work well and profitably was a challenge for our first year or two

GKEoHHFT: We’re a little fortunate, in that I spent a lot of time in other departments at AEG.

Alex Flagg:We’ve been lucky that way

GKEoHHFT: I had laid books out, worked with artists, and budgeted already.

Scott Gearin: We’ve had to build up a stable of artists. That takes time and and patience.

Alex Flagg: But the fact is, you’re very often at the mercy of those graphic designers and artists. I mean, you can’t do books without them, no matter how good your ideas are

Scott Gearin: I’m used to seeing out books as word processor documents – functional and bland. It’s actualyl quite amazing what layout and graphic design does to bring an idea to life.

Alex Flagg: …and to market

GKEoHHFT: But on the flip side, a lot of AEG’s artists and graphic designers weren’t necessarily in our budget or particularly well-suited for what we wanted to accomplish, so it was still something of an uphill battle. Time is your greatest enemy

Alex Flagg: We did our own graphic design for quite a while

GKEoHHFT: At Crafty, we don’t have the luxury of full-time in-house graphic designers and artists, nor do we have other folks handling the business end of the gig.

Alex Flagg: Pat re-laid out World on Fire, our first PDFs and second printing of Spycraft 2.0 in addition to editing and writing

Trask: Before we start talking about “FantasyCraft,” could you talk about the development process for your games? How do you begin the process of moving from idea to book (or PDF?)

Scott Gearin Step 1 is idea – which really is the easiest part. We keep a pretty good sized folder of all the things we could do.

Alex Flagg: Step 2 – “can we sell it?”

Scott Gearin: We also usually couple ideas to snappy titles so we can talk about them

Alex Flagg: Step 3 – “how long will it take?” Because there are lots of great ideas that aren’t either a) marketable enough, b) that have a large enough audience to justify the time, or c) that will expand the brand in the right way. We come at spycraft from a brand angle, really. It was a pretty big game in the d20 boom, and we’ve always thought bigger though we’re indy-game company sized.

Scott Gearin: And I think an important part of step 2 that we’re looking at more as we mature as a company is is it somethign that can be written by our pool of freelancers or is it something we have to take on personally.

GKEoHHFT: Well, a play experience angle – one that develops the brand – but yes.

Alex Flagg: What I’m saying is we have a large view of the property. We look at it all in context. Rather than jumping from stone to stone, we ask “how big is the river” first

Trask: I am familiar with the “Living Campaign” that Spycraft ran. Did you find this a useful tool to expose the game?

GKEoHHFT: Living came around during Classic. A bunch of our fans back then got together and convinced me, and by extension AEG, that there was an untapped market for it – and there was, for a while. Living really informed a lot of the late Classic material, and heavily informed the design process for 2.0. Which was a good and a bad thing. Spycraft 2.0, as a result, was extremely exacting – in its approach, language, and content. That really spoke to a lot of people, and it earned us a reputation for being one of the leading “crunch” manufacturers on the market. Tournament games have a very specific set of requirements, and one of them is that the game master exercise comparatively little control over a scenario. But it also closed some doors, which took us a while to accept and address. So we may the rules especially robust so that a GC could generally always find a ‘right answer’ in the books. So, as a result, a lot of people felt that Spycraft 2.0 – for its power and utility – didn’t really allow for much GM manipulation. So it was a mixed blessing. There are elements of Living I really miss. And elements I think have never been properly exploited.

Trask: Any fear that you might “over-crunch” the system?

Scott Gearin: We are certainly ramping down the crunch a little bit in our new designs.

GKEoHHFT: Our books from here on in will feature “Mastercraft,” an offshoot of Spycraft 2.0 that’s much more user-friendly, and a lot more open to player and GM personalization.

Alex Flagg: Without throwing out the baby with the bathwater

Scott Gearin: We want all of the crunch to be available, but for it to enter use in smaller chenks, and with it more clear that some of those extra rules really are optinal and only there for groups who want or need that extra level of simulation.

GKEoHHFT: Plus, the language is significantly more organic.

Scott Gearin: We’re lookng at things like having some of the character options come into play after first level so you can get statted more easily.

GKEoHHFT::Everything is framed to be easy to remember and use at the table.

Alex Flagg: I work in the internet industry, so we’re trying to improve the user interface design,if you catch my drift

Scott Gearin: That’s one of the strengths of our design – we look at rules less as “who can this mimic real life” and more as “what behavior will this inspire t the gamming table?” The goal is not a precision simulation, but a fun GAME.

Trask: During the design process, did you look at other games and see things you absolutely hated and would try to avoid in your product?

Alex Flagg: I don’t think we’re quite as jingoistic as that. There are lots of good ideas coming out from designers all the time. We can learn from all design – good AND bad

GKEoHHFT: Wow, that’s… a very tricky question. It’s kinda backward from how it’s usually phrased.

GKEoHHFT: Things we hate (without naming products): mind control is a biggie. We’re not into taking power away from the players. (We consider the GM a player BTW, which is another one.) (If he’s not having fun with everyone else, what’s the point for him?” None of us are fans of mechanics that are entirely suggestive.

Scott Gearin: Huh. I try not to define my environment by what I hate. I’d much rather give kudos to annother designer for an elegant piece of work than to mock a bad piece.

GKEoHHFT: Any rule that involves debate is generally out.

Alex Flagg: Or mechanics that don’t actually have a tangible effect on the game

GKEoHHFT: This isn’t Diplomacy

GKEoHHFT: I think the things we dislike create our boundaries, while the things we love inform our content.
“We won’t do that, but we’ll do anything else – and this over here looks pretty kewl.”

Trask: Your new game, “FantasyCraft” is coming out soon. What made you decide to create a fantasy game?

GKEoHHFT:: The fans They’ve been asking for it since Day One.

Alex Flagg: We’ve been taunting them with it for years

Scott Gearin: 25 years of liking fantasy games?

GKEoHHFT: We didn’t originally plan to do fantasy at all. We started doing some fantasy-related PDFs to give folks some tools to build their own fantasy heart-breakers. Which we felt was the best way to approach the subject at the time. And somewhere in the middle of it all we realized we had a book about it waiting in the wings.

Scott Gearin: Fantasy is one of the strongest RPG environments because you’re not expected to have a lot of ties to the environment. It grants a sense of freedom when you play a character who is their own boss and probably doesn’t even have any family they have to put ahead of their own interests. It’s also a simple environment – limited tools, limited options, easy to grasp.

Trask: Competition in the fantasy RPG market is intense. What sets “FantasyCraft” apart?

Scott Gearin: We’re bringing our strengths to it – a lot of options for characters. A sense of skill and competence to the heroes you play.Challenges of all sorts not just fight scenes. And an ability to interact with the society that runs deeper than selling your loot and restocking on potions.

GKEoHHFT: Completely open-ended critter creation

Alex Flagg: Plus lots of tools for world building

GKEoHHFT: Mix and match skills and artifacts.

Alex Flagg: The important thing we noticed with fantasy is everyone wants to make it their own. So you can control not just the world but the play environment using “campaign qualities”

GKEoHHFT: Massive world building toolset, with six examples to get you started

Scott Gearin: We’ve been working in a modern setting environment where you have that kind of complexity, and we think it can be used to make a fantasy experience that is a little richer than the norm – mostly by getting players and GMs to think about there being more to life.

GKEoHHFT: And our general helping of bad-assery

Alex Flagg: Basically, the fan-favorite stuff from 2.0 is in there for sure. Yes, action dice are there. Mix and match character origins

GKEoHHFT: Origins, classes with something new every level, feats with multiple tangible and broadly applicable uses. And some of the most incredible art in the industry. Ben McSweeney is a GOD.

Scott Gearin:The art is really good. GenCon before last I was very inspired by Hidden Earth Expeditions and Qin. Both had really excellent art and production values. I made the case that our books need to look that good. Fantasy Craft is one we’re gonna be very proud of.

Trask: Tone is a very subjective term when it comes to games, but could you describe the “feel” of the game? High fantasy, gritty and realistic or somewhere in between?

GKEoHHFT: Less dreads, more adorable songs.

Alex Flagg: We actually let GMs set the tone using mechanical devices in addition to narrative ones. These are the aforementioned campaign qualities. They actually mutate the rules of the game, evne on the fly. So you can run with gritty games or super high action if you want

Scott Gearin: Why would we want to dictate that? Every table is different, so while we provide example,s we also offer tools to set the tone you want for your game.

Alex Flagg: The book will both illustrate the differences using the same ruleset with these campaign quality tools as an overlay.

GKEoHHFT: I think tone is something you can emulate in more ways than flavor. It’s about sculpting gameplay, offering tools that engender certain styles of play and various behaviors from GMs and players alike. This comes up a lot in our behind-the-scenes chatter – how do we help folks capture this or that mood at the table, not just with art and graphic design but with rules that bring it out. The difference is, we do it several times with each product, showcasing many different tones of play. Thus our several setting examples in Fantasy Craft. That’s all about showing off different tones and genres. And how Fantasy Craft can do them all.

Trask: When will the book be released?

GKEoHHFT: Winter. We don’t really offer more specific dates until the book leaves our hands.

Trask: Sometime in 2008?

GKEoHHFT: Not until January at the earliest.

Trask: How has the playtest been going?

GKEoHHFT:: Very well. The long-ish production cycle on this one – necessitated by us developing Mastercraft – has offered us a lot of room to fold feedback into the book.

Trask: Any plans for a “Living campaign after release?

GKEoHHFT: Not by us, but a group of fans are working on one. It’s called Wyrmstone. Same crew who currently do Spymaster, which is sort of an extension of the old Living Spycraft cycle.

Scott Gearin: We keep showing them the rules as they’ve evolved so they’ll have a good grasp of the rules even before launch day.

Trask: Any plans for Fantasy Craft supplements yet?

GKEoHHFT: God yes. I was just looking at this yesterday actually

Trask: Care to drop a few hints?

Alex Flagg: First off, some of our settings will be supplements.

GKEoHHFT:Yes, two settings in the book – let’s explain those first.

Scott Gearin: “Sunchaser” is light hearted adventure. Like Tolkien, but not as “imminent peril of end of the world.”

Alex Flagg: Classic high fantasy stuff. “Epoch” is pretty much the opposite. Barbarians battling demons in a prehistoric, Mesoamerican world. Mastodons, saber-tooths, dinosaurs and bloodletting mages are the big bads, in addition to the demons who are despoiling the world, of course

This concludes part one of my interview. Monday we discuss some more supplements for the upcoming “Fantasycraft” rpg and I glean some information about the new “Mistborn” rpg.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer