Mario | La Esquina del Rol Games: Leo Hunt, welcome to La Esquina del Rol. I’ve been listening to a few of your interviews, the latest one with my friend Iko. I really enjoyed the way you’ve brought VAULTS OF VAARN to life, and I was incredibly surprised to learn that you’re a professional writer. That connection suddenly made a lot of sense—understanding the setting in a deeper way and appreciating how interesting and layered it is.

I have many questions that came to mind while listening to your interview, but since this conversation will also be shared with Spanish-speaking readers, I’d love for them to get to know you. So, who is Leo Hunt, and how did you get into tabletop RPGs? What kept you engaged in them all these years?

Leo Hunt | Vaults of Vaarn: Hey Mario thanks for having me here! So my name is Leo Hunt and I've been a professional fiction writer for 10 years now, starting with a series of YA novels back in 2015. There was actually a Spanish translation of my first novel 13 Days of Midnight although I'm not sure it's in print anymore. I have been working in the TTRPG space since 2020

My very first encounter with TTRPGs was finding my mother's old B/X D&D books as a child. I really didn't understand them but I have always liked monsters and I enjoyed looking at the pictures. I have especially vivid memories of the white ape and carrion crawler illustrations for whatever reason. I think TTRPGs are kind of difficult to get into unless someone inducts you: reading those books when I got older didn't really help me understand why playing the game would be fun. It took until around 2017 when I started listening to some actual play podcasts (amusingly the very first one I enjoyed was some episodes of the comedy podcast Chapo Trap House where they play Call of Cthulhu). From there I started GMing Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green for my friends, and playing in a 5E campaign weekly. A couple of my rules issues with 5E led me to the OSR/indie TTRPG scene in 2019. I was intrigued to find out that those red and blue booklets I'd found in mum's attic as a child were actually kind of revered products. From there I started reading blogs like Goblin Punch and False Machine regularly and was really amazed by the size of the imaginations you can find in the scene. I knew I wanted to run something that had similar creative scope.

Mario: I didn't know one of your novels had been translated into Spanish. It genuinely fills me with joy to hear that. I've translated several role-playing games into Spanish, and it makes me so happy when I find these linguistic bridges that bring Spanish and English speakers closer together through cultural products we can clearly enjoy in our own language.

So, I'd love to talk a bit about the interdiscursivity between fiction writing and role-playing games—how that dialogue has been established in your work and how it led you to create such a passionate setting. Honestly, the conversation with the art of Mœbius, Wolf, Herbert, among others, is very clear when one looks at Vaults of Vaarn.

Leo Hunt: Thank you! I think fiction writing has an interesting relationship with TTRPGs. I think that being good at writing in one form doesn't always translate to another form, and that 'story telling' in it's purest form is still the preserve of fiction. TTRPGs require a different mode of creation which I don't totally have a name for - it's less about plotting and more about preparing the ground for a plot to happen (or not). So obviously some of the same instincts that guide you towards a plot in fiction writing (looking for places where conflict could arise) are used, but instead you're kind of passively creating these situations for the PCs to encounter.

There are other skills that I think are shared of course. If you're in control of your tone and form, then you can transfer that skill from one medium to another. Likewise being skilled at concise, vivid description of characters or places will serve you well in almost any written medium.

Mario: Leo, how was the writing process for this second edition? What aspects of the game’s setting are you most proud of in this new edition?

Leo Hunt: The writing process has been quite involved. I knew that 2E had to be the same thing people enjoyed in the original edition, but have enough expanded content to make it worth picking up even if you have the zines or the Deluxe Edition hardback. The Second Edition is currently 304 pages long and 80,000 words, more than twice the size of the Deluxe Edition! At this point I'm not sure it even counts as a minimalist game anymore, especially when you consider that the original zine was 48 pages.

What I've been doing is looking for conceptual gaps in the ruleset; places where GMs wanted more guidance or more content but didn't have it. Happily there are enough players and fans that I've heard plenty of feedback in the past five years, so it was easy to know where to start. A good example would be rules for followers and mercenaries: there's now a more complete system for hiring NPCs to fight alongside you. These rules are totally optional and some groups won't even use these pages, but the rulebook now covers it. So I've been trying to find spots like this where some added content will fit in seamlessly.

However I want the system to be approachable so every new addition has to justify itself. It's difficult because some groups want lots of extra rules and some want the system to be even simpler!

Regarding the setting itself, I've had fun expanding the anti-canon lore through some added dice tables. As an example, you can now generate random Autarchs, the fallen god kings who once ruled Vaarn. You get details of the length of their reign, how they died, and how they're remembered in folklore. So if your players are exploring Autarchy-era ruins, you can generate the Autarch who decreed the structure be built and learn something about them, which you could then integrate into the location if you like. And since it's another set of dice tables, you aren't bound by having to remember a big list of these dead rulers.

Mario: Awesome!. I can't wait to roll the dice on those tables. It's clear that the art of the original zine was inspired by Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, Kilian Eng and the comics of Stathis Tsemberlidis and Lando. Tell me, what decisions you have made in the art direction of this new edition - will you keep your illustrations, as in the original, or will you include commissioned art?

Leo Hunt: Yes, the illustration and layout will continue to be done by me. Although there are definitely more experienced artists out there I think my style is part of the appeal of the setting and I want to write every word and draw every line myself. For some of the oldest pieces I may be looking to remaster or redraw them, depending on how much time I have. There's going to be plenty of new illustrations, and I'm going for a limited colour scheme in blue and red to make them really pop.

Mario: I'm really glad you said that. I honestly can't imagine the game without your art. I think it's a wonderful decision. Your words and your artwork go hand in hand, shaping this fascinating world. I congratulate you on that—a wise choice.

Leo Hunt: Thank you! I do feel my art is quite integral to the tone of the project, I'm always striving to make the books look exactly how I want them.

Mario: On another note, I'd love for you to tell us more about the crowdfunding campaign you're planning. What can you reveal about what's coming to leave us on the best cliffhanger and get us excited to sign up and support the project?

Leo Hunt: Regarding the crowdfunding campaign, it will be launching at the end of July. I am raising money for an offset print run of the core 2E rules. There will also be a referee's screen and limited art print. I have a few stretch goals in mind including new ambient music from Out On Our Own, who have already recorded two Vaarn albums already.

I am not offering lots of components and add-ons because this is my first time coordinating international logistics and I want to keep the project lean and efficient to make sure everyone gets their books as soon as they're printed. However I'm really happy with the quality of the draft material and I think this is going to be the definitive version of Vaults of Vaarn. There is so much extra content in the new edition, and it keeps the streamlined rules while still expanding on the original zines and making them easier to run. If you're already a fan of the setting I think the updates will be welcomed, and for people who don't already know Vaarn, this is a chance to find out why it's been played and talked about for the last five years.

Mario: Oh! Leo, it’s truly great to know that the crowdfunding launch is coming soon, and I’m really excited about it. I’m very grateful for the time you took for this interview, and I just want to deeply thank you for taking the time to develop the second edition of the game.

Leo Hunt: Thank you Mario!

Our friends at The Weekly Scroll Tabletop Podcast had Leo Hunt as a guest to run a session of Vaults of Vaarn—if you haven’t checked out the game yet, this is a fantastic place to start!

Mario | La Esquina del Rol: Sam Mameli, welcome to La Esquina del Rol. I’m thrilled to have you here. When I interviewed Mark Conway about a year ago, I discovered that you illustrated the cover for Meatheads, and that’s when I first learned about you and your art. Then, I started hearing you on B2C over and over again, hahaha, and it’s been fantastic to listen to you there.

Sam Mameli (Skullboy): Hello! And thanks for having me!

Mario: Last week, I visited your website and checked out your portfolio—I was absolutely blown away! It turns out some of my favorite covers for games and adventures were illustrated by you, and I didn’t even know it, hahaha.

Thank you for the opportunity to learn more about you and your work in the tabletop RPG scene. To get started, I’d like you to introduce yourself to the community, so they can get to know who Sam Mameli is and what you do in the world of RPGs?

Sam Mameli: My name is Sam Mameli, and I go by "Skullboy" on the internet, I've been drawing things for TTRPGS since around 2013 and I've been a professional full time illustrator since 2018. My work is spread out around the OSR and DIY rpg scenes and I've also done some work in boardgames, videogames and lots of show posters for bands.

I'm glad you like the work, and the experience of "oh wait he drew that?" Is one that is very familiar to me lol. I try to adapt my style to fit the projects I take on and I think it makes me a little stealthy sometimes.

Mario: Honestly, I'm a bit absent-minded myself and don't always look at the credits page. But when someone says to me, “This is Sam's work” and I look at the artwork, it all starts to click. That moment when I realize that this is REALLY Sam's work is truly remarkable. What strikes me most is your ability to maintain your unique style while giving each illustration the flexibility to be exactly what it needs to be. I really admire that stealthy quality, like you say, which highlights your versatility and incredible skill as an illustrator, allowing you to create such diverse and distinct works.

Sam, at what point did tabletop RPGs and your art intersect, and what inspired you to explore that combination?

Sam Mameli: Thank you! That's very kind of you to say. I think ultimately no matter how hard I try to emulate something else it's always going to be done through the same visual language that I'm always working with so it will still look like me a bit- when I was younger and getting started this drove me crazy! (I wanted to draw just like all my heroes! Moebius, Akira Toriyama, Mike Mignola, ) but I see it as more of a feature than a bug these days, and I tend to like the things I make more now than I used to.

I've been playing TTRPGs since my freshman year of college in 2008. I played in a game of 4e the week that the books came out and I've been hooked ever since. Sometime later in college I found the OSR and Google+ and the Blogosphere and all that after getting fed up with a game of 3.5 that I was playing in. I've always done drawings for games that I played in but it wasn't until after I graduated with my art degree that I actually started doing commission work for people. At that time I was active on Tumblr and I found Sword & Backpack, the print it yourself "dungeonpunk" RPG by Gabe Soria. It struck me as a really cool little system and I really loved the tone that he wrote it in, so I did some fanart and he reached out to me to make some stuff for the next adventure he was working on. We still work together on various projects now, but it was doing that work that sent me down the rabbit hole for doing things like custom character sheets for people- I always did home made sheets for my games when I played so it was a fun way to make some extra cash while I figured my post-collegiate life out. The art school I attended spent a lot of time on theory but not much on business so I found myself working a lot of coffee shop jobs. While I did that I played in games online with folks and evetually started doing more and more paid work for peoples games. It all just sort of spun out from there!

Mario: Yeah! the truth is that the community is amazing. I started translating Yochai's game and I haven't stopped since. Things have flowed and it's gratifying how among the same people I've met there's a great sense of community and taking part in projects. It's really great and I totally understand you.

So, Sam, how has working in the TTRPG scene shaped your artistic style and creative process over the years? Are there any specific collaborations or projects that have left a lasting impact on your work?

Sam Mameli: I think TTRPGs are just one of the places that my style makes the most sense? I've been drawing weird monsters and characters for as long as I can remember, and I think TTRPGs gave me the framework to do a lot of art and text work together, and in doing that led me to finally making comics as well. I've been reading comics my whole life, and while I think I'm a good illustrator, my ability to plot out a story has always been really shaky. TTRPGs gave structure to storytelling for me and that's how I've been able to do comic work now. In terms of projects I think there have been a bunch that have just made me level up my artmaking- some that come to mind are the characters I did for the OSE rogues gallery, that was a lot of drawings and by the end I felt like my style had improved. The wimmelbilderbuch piece I did for Barkeep on the Borderlands book is another one, I had never done a piece like that but I really loved reading Richard Scary stuff as a kid, I learned a TON from that piece. And in some cases the lesson is to go fast and not think too hard, by far my best known work is Adventure Game in Need of Translation and I did all the work for that over a weekend.

Mario: Many illustrators have a distinctive style that consistently shines through their work, no matter the circumstances. How would you define your style, and what are the influences that have shaped it into something unmistakably created by Skullboy, rather than anyone else?

Sam Mameli: I'm more of a cartoonist than antyhing else in terms of style. I studied art in school and I'm able to do realistic portraiture and things like that but ultimately I enjoy the act of simplifying things into cartoons. It's tough for me to define myself but I think my style is always trying to take a freeze frame of a chaotic or soon to be chaotic moment. I try to make my characters feel relatable, so that even though they're usually in fantastical situations they look kind of like regular people? I'm influenced a lot by looking at crowds of people and how they interact and what everyone is wearing and doing. I really love people watching, and I think that influences my work a lot.

Mario: This is always a tough question. What are the three pieces that have represented a milestone for you or that have simply been a before and after in your career as an illustrator? If you can tell us a little bit about why you chose them, that would be great

Sam Mameli: This one from Phantasmagoria #2 by Chance Phillips comes to mind. I think I did this in 2019 or so? It might have been earlier- It was a piece that I saw in my head as soon as the prompt was delivered and I think I did the whole thing in a weekend. I think this is the first one that I did that really went crazy with detail work and it set the tone for a lot of work after.

This is one I did for an issue of "Rolled and Told" and I think was a really good piece for me in terms of color palettes. I still really like the lighting in this.

This one was a milestone not just because it took ages and was fairly complicated- but it's my first Album cover and I always really wanted to have done an Album cover. It's also legit a great album I highly recommend it.

Mario: You won't believe it, but those images are the ones that first called me when I saw your portfolio. You've done wonderful things I can't say otherwise, but there's something about them that makes them great. I would like to know how you approach your creative process when creating your art? do you have some steps already defined or does inspiration just find you working?

Sam Mameli: Well it depends on what I'm creating for. I do a lot of contract work because I'm a professional illustrator, so I have a process for that and I also still make art that's just personal work that no one is paying me up front for. When it comes to client work it usually goes like this:

A client approaches me and says that they would like to work together. If I have time for the project I ask for more details and a budget that we're working within. When I have that information I usually do a couple of thumbnails and give the client a chance to give their input and then from there I proceed with the finished piece. It's a lot of back and forth and it tends to be more on the mechanical side. When I've been working with a client over a long time this process is far more fluid and intuitive. There are some folks I've been working with for many years now and it's much easier to know what they're looking for.

When it comes to my own work it's a really different process. Usually I'll be trying to read a book or watch a show and I'll get an idea that sort of interrupts my day and I have to work on it. It's almost annoying. Like a buzzing fly or a hungry cat. So when that happens I kind of just have to drop what I'm doing and draw. Usually this things take less time because the image is in my head already. When I do work for others I have to build the image in my head to meet what they're looking for. When it's for myself it's just committing the idea to reality.

Mario: Of everything you have illustrated, what topics would you like to explore or are excited to do but have not been commissioned to do so far?

Sam Mameli: I think right now most of my interest is in comics. I think it would be really cool to do some comic collaborations with game designers to showcase how their worlds and systems work. I think the portion of gamebooks that deal with "example play" are really useful and I think doing something like that as a comic could open it up to a bigger audience.

Mario: There is a very cool example of what you say at the beginning of the Echo Mofos book and I think it's a great idea. Hopefully what you said will reach more designers, I would love to see those comics explaining about the game.

Hey, and why the Skullboy alias? Where did that alias come from?

Sam Mameli: haha Skullboy came from when I was trying to be an art streamer, I don't remember why I chose it but it felt like it fit. I always liked when artists took cool pen names like Moebius though, so it's in that tradition.

Mario: hahaha that's the origin of the best aliases, La Esquina del Rol stands for RPG Corner and it was the first thing that came to my mind when I created my Twitter account hahaha.

Sam Mameli: It's important to leave the heavy lifting of names to the sleeping mind, first answer is almost always best!

Mario: And currently, which three role-playing game artists do you like the most about their work and why do you like what they are doing?

Sam Mameli: I think Amanda Lee Franck is doing some really incredible work. She has a a flexible yet distinct style and her art just has so much SOUL. It's mythic and horrifying and charming and her linework is superb.

Another favorite is Peter Mullen. His work excels at showcasing the scale of OSR play. The figures are always crawling around in these massive and beautiful spaces. He just really knows how to make something look perfectly gnarled and twisted.

Bruno Prosaiko is another one that just GETS it. Like, you look at the work and you can just see the type of game we're all striving for. It's a perfect blend of comedic and mythic tones and the way it flows is just amazing.

A few quick shoutouts to some of my other favs though- Goran Gligovic, Mun Kao, JP Coovert, Jason Thompson, Alex Damaceno, Marie Enger, Stephan Poag, Doug Kovacs, Skullfungus, Chaoclypse, Dave Hoskins, Shafter Brown, Stonedrunkwizard, Nate Treme, and I'm sure a bunch that I'm forgetting.

Mario: There are a lot of really amazing people out there, all my support and love for their work! What is "made by humans" is really unique and amazing!

Now I would like to talk about your participation in B2C. I don't remember when I first heard you there but I do remember the many times you have been there. How did you meet Yochai and Brad?

Sam Mameli: So Brad got in touch with me a while before I was on the pod to work on a piece for his book Wyvern Songs. I liked working with him and later I listened to the podcast. I was immediately charmed by the dynamic of the two of them and I sent them an email saying that I'd like to make a sticker for them if they were interested. They said yes and also invited me to be on an episode, It has since spun out of control entirely lol. I was originally only doing occasional guest spots to review old modules but I have since become a regular member- so I am now the 3rd guy on a 2 guy podcast.

Mario: I love listening to you on the podcast, you three seem to get along great and it's fun to listen to that two person podcast with three haha.

Now, I'd love to learn what you like to play when you have time?

Sam Mameli: We do have a lot of fun, and I'm really happy to be a part of it.

In terms of games I'm currently running a Swords and Wizardry game for my wife and inlaws. I also play a solo dungeon crawl game from time to time that I use to fuel the story of my comic Delvers. Other than that I've been embracing mostly lots of convention games because I really prefer playing with people IRL to online. I played in several really amazing games over the pandemic though that I wouldn't trade for anything. Other than that I like playing cribbage with my wife and occasional board games with friends. I'm in the process of trying to get into the rhythm of running a weekly open table game but so far this year is proving to be pretty busy so I haven't managed to lock that in yet.

Mario: Nice, what can you tell us about your work with comics and where can we get them?

Sam Mameli: I've only recently started making what I think of as traditional comics, but looking back at my work I think it's the best way to describe a lot of the books I've released- not all of it is panel structured but it's all pictures and words and much of it is only gameable if you decide to put in the legwork to do so. You can get the .pdfs of them on my itch.io page and you can get physical copies of some of them on my webstore. Delvers, my ongoing adventure comic is also now available in webcomic form here https://delvers.thecomicseries.com/

Mario | La Esquina del Rol: Thanks for sharing that with us. It's been great to learn more about you and get to know a little more of your work. You are really very kind and I have enjoyed talking with you. For those interested in commissioning art or other types of collaborations, where is the best place to reach you?

Sam Mameli (Skullboy): Thanks so much for having me! It's been great and I've enjoyed talking with you as well. You can get in touch with me by going to Betterlegends.com - all my info is there.

Mario | La esquina del rol Games: Chris Air, Welcome to La Esquina del Rol. It's been a while since I met you thanks to Iko's discord. It's amazing how many great people are there. Today I'm honored to have you as a guest. I'd like to start by asking you to share with our readers who ChrisAir is and what you are currently doing in relation to the hobby?

Chris Air | 5 Million Worlds Press: Hi Mario!! I'm honored to make it onto your roster of interviews with La esquina del rol! Thank you for having me.

So yeah, I'm Chris Airiau, a.k.a. ChrisAir, a neurodivergent game writer living in Alsace, France, publishing games under the 5 Million Worlds Press moniker. Whether for 5MW Press or as a freelance writer, I write adventures for Mothership RPG, The Lost Bay RPG, Cloud Empress RPG, and a few small adventures for other indie systems.

Right now, I'm working on several different Mothership adventures with various publishers, giving Eryk Sawicki a hand with Milk Bar RPG development, and writing my very first tabletop roleplaying game, 5 Million Worlds RPG for deep-future, transhuman space adventures.

Mario: It's great to know that you reside in France, Chris! I like your country, I spent a short time there finishing a master's degree.

When I talked to Johan Nohr he told me that he grew up without direct influence from dnd because in Sweden they had his own game version. In your case, in France, how did you venture into the hobby?

Chris Air: I immigrated to France in 2010, but it was here that I played my first real ttrpgs—not counting those no-rulebook, Toonami- and JRPG-fueled games I played in high school. I've actually never played any D&D, whether TSR or WotC, ha. (Even those insane homebrew high school games were more Outlaw Star than Final Fantasy.) I'm a spacehead, through and through. For as long as I could read, I've been obsessed with sci-fi, and sf lit especially. Fall 2016, I was actively seeking out how to curate and experience new science fiction stories with friends.

This research helped me uncover the first game I played, the GMless Shock: Human Contact by Joshua A.C. Newman: a first contact game heavily influenced by Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. I had a lot of fun, but I think it was a bit "much" for the board game friends I'd roped into it, haha. It took another two years after that game ended before I tried running another ttrpg, the OSR standard Stars Without Number. I played in a year-plus long campaign, and ran two campaigns of my own homebrewed setting, the first couple 5 Million Worlds sectors.

In 2021, I backed The Desert Moon of Karth, and started playing Mothership 0e about a month or so before the 1E Kickstarter. The kind reception and encouragement to create in the Mothership community is what truly brought me into the indie ttrpg scene.

Mario: First, where are you really from?

Chris Air: Alpha Centauri.

No, I grew up on food stamps in Indiana, managed to land a good uni scholarship, and lined up a job in France just after graduating. Sometimes, even after so long, biking through these streets feels just as dumbfounding as interstellar travel. Like, how am I even here? What have I done? Cue: "Once in a Lifetime"

Mario: LoL! You made me laugh…

So, unfortunately, we still don't have Mothership translated into Spanish, but it's amazing the community that has emerged around this game. What do you think is the reason for this great community?

Chris Air: Ha, honestly at first, being embraced by the Mothership community felt the same, but over time I learned that this kindness wasn't luck, but purely intentional. Everyone who makes Mothership stuff wants other people to make the best games possible. They want to help others do their best. These creators strive for high quality in gameplay density, and strong vibes through design. And they share their practices. Without folk like Marco Serrano, Violet Ballard, and Christian Sorrell, and so many more friendly souls who encouraged me as I stumbled through learning game design (a stumbling that's still rolling on), I'd have never dreamt to try to make it this far. So why is the community great? Because the people are not only immensely creative, but generous with their kindness as well. I can say the same thing about The Lost Bay community. At least, that's been my experience, and the experience I've been trying to pay forward too.

But yeah, Mothership hasn't been translated into French either, which is a real shame. Sans version française, I can't nearly as easily spread that excitement for this game to the francophone ttrpg community.

Mario: Something that really stands out to me is your adventure writing - how do you approach designing these adventures for so many amazing games (TLB, Mothership, etc.)?

Chris Air: Thanks, that's what I dig most, the adventure writing. For sci-fi stuff, I've just been obsessed so long I know what I want to mash together, what trope I must twist, untread ideas to explore, or overdone ideas to subvert. For any game though, making that conscious effort to inhabit the setting is essential for creating.

My brain never shuts up, so the ideas are the easy part. Making them good, useful at the table, this is the real work.

Write, play, repeat.

Mario: For those of us who are just starting to write science fiction adventures, what would be the best advice you could share with us for writing a good adventure in keeping with the genre?

Chris Air: I feel like there's no easy way to advise someone how to be literate in a genre other than "Read, read, read," which to be fair, is the same advice I'd give to any aspiring writer. For sf: Read Science Daily and other academic/scientific journalism. Read novels outside your genre. Read nonfiction. Read modules for the system you're writing in. Then read even more.

You can learn tropes through play, sure. Video games, tv and film are very good at boiling down genre trappings. This is especially useful for ttrpgs, where ideas gotta be big to engage with players. (Subtlety is great for fiction, but I find it's quickly lost at the table.) Everyone knows Alien, though, right? My favorite sf ideas live in sf literature. And the new stuff, not old white man sci-fi. So I would recommend familiarity with the sf lit scene to improve sf game writing.

In my admittedly limited experience, sf game writing becomes about how to seed novel (or less common) sf ideas to players, and skirt expectation in fun, digestible ways that folk can engage with.

I feel like my adventures fall into two camps: "What a weirdo, yikes!" and "What is this place?" Or, NPCs/creatures and locations, arguably the components players engage with most. This is the writer's chance to express their ideas to the players in a module. GM-facing mechanics can amplify those ideas, e.g., your doom clocks, infection tables, overloaded encounters, etc.

In short, learn how to use the tools of the craft to express sf ideas. Experiment! Create a one-page adventure to test out a mechanic, and move on. Hah, just add a constant cloud of "read" to that same mantra: write, play, repeat.

Mario: If you don’t mind, I’d like you to tell me a bit about your game 5 Million Worlds RPG. Honestly, I haven’t played it, but I’ve read it several times. I would love for you to tell us why this game came about and what you intended when you wrote it?

Chris Air: 5 Million Worlds RPG is a deep future space adventure game, using the Panic Engine (from Mothership RPG fame) to give player characters Limit to replace Stress. Players can risk keeping Limit for downtime character and project advancement, or use Limit Breaks during adventures to overcome adversity.

In 5MW RPG, Earth is myth and Terran descendants live across the titular 5 Million Worlds. Before they disappeared, the Serpents created incomprehensible technological wonders that still remain, affecting the lives within 5MW Space. Player characters are Avatars, an outcast cadre of highly-skilled people who travel the worlds. Most do so in reply to the Serpent's Call: Help those who ask.

In that spirit, free community copies of *5MW RPG: An Avatar's Primer* will always be available.

I am currently working on kitting out the rules with transhuman backgrounds, called Forms, with the amazing Roque Romero as illustrator. When they're ready, these five transhuman Forms will be added to the A5 zine: Trad, Looper, Emulant, Flesher, and Visard.

I spent the whole of 2024 writing short 5MW adventures for my newsletter to begin testing out 5MW adventure writing. I'm preparing these seven adventures for release on itch in the free 5MW RPG Adventure Archive. I hope to supplement the base rulebook with 5MW Sector zines that contain worlds inspiring sense of wonder, new transhuman & posthuman (as alien) Forms, and adventures focusing on social clashes within discrete locations.

Mario: First of all, I have to congratulate you! Since I read 5MW (by the way, I love the name), I was amazed that with only 8 pages, you can actually run something incredible in a science fiction tabletop setting. That is truly fantastic. You've done an excellent job synthesizing exactly what is needed, and I admire that greatly.

Also, I think the twist you've added with the concept of "the limit" and how breaking that limit can even help in the face of adversity is something I really like. And, well, the second thing I truly enjoy is the setting. Tell us a bit about it, as I think it adds to a very well-rounded product that's definitely worth bringing to the table.

Chris Air: Thanks for your kind words about the 8pg ruleset. Honestly, I cannot accept credit for that, as the rules are a reskin of the Mothership 1E Pocketzine that Sean McCoy released a few years back. My sole addition was dividing Limit into a boon/bane table. Well, that and the single spread adventure, I suppose.

Not only is Earth a myth, but even the origins of the ubiquitous Serpent Tech left over in 5MW Space has mostly been forgotten. Yet all peoples of the 5MWs are Terran descendants.

I'm aiming to get all essential lore into the tables. Ended Careers / Mementos replace Trinkets / Patches. Each Mind has its Serpent's Call & Loadout. Each Form has its own duo of Background tables and Limit abilities. The skills, weapons, equipment all carry the responsibility of communicating lore so GMs don't have to spend time explaining a the setting.

If I've learned anything through NSR game design, it's that you want folk playing and immersed in the game as quick as possible, just "It's far future space, and look at all this stuff that makes you weird. Ready to go visit some worlds?"

Mario: Sure, I get what you're saying, but it needs to be acknowledged anyway. For example, I'm using the trophy system for my space horror RPG and I've added a stat called “Rust” to abstractly represent equipment and armor wear, supply depletion, and oxygen deprivation. It works like Ruin, but when you run out it starts to consume your Ruin, then a race against the clock begins to try to survive. At first glance, it may seem insignificant, but it actually ends up adding something new to the depth of gameplay that the system already has in and of itself, haha. So I give you the credit you deserve hahaha!

Personally, I really enjoy settings that play out through tables. I appreciate how, in such a compact format de 5MW, you've managed to define an attractive scenario for the game. Tell me, what direction is 5MW going to take in the medium and short term? I know you're eager to move the project forward, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on where it's headed.

Chris Air: Thanks Mario.

The first and most important goal is to finish the beta of 5MW RPG: Avatar Primer. That's the main piece of work to get through the door. Otherwise, I have one 5MW Cluster zine in the works to release alongside another upcoming project, the first of the adventure setting modules.

I have lots of plans and ideas for the GM guide, solo protocols & games, Form zines, adventures, etc. But ideas are cheap. For now, I'm going to focus on finishing the game writing, trying to find my sci-fi people, and playing.

Mario: That sounds truly amazing, and you have my full support to achieve it. To learn more about you and your upcoming projects, where can the community follow you and even reach out to you for collaborations?

Chris Air: Folks can reach out to me on bsky, follow my monthly newsletter 5MW Rokaner Reports for game and development news, and check out my published games at https://chrisair.itch.io/

5 Million Worlds Newsletter

The 5MW Press Newsletter, run by Chris Airiau. Covers ongoing game development, sf microfiction, creator highlights, sf lit & zine reviews.

By Chris Air

There are people I hold dear in the following projects, if you can support them, please do!

Liminal Horror Deluxe Edition

by Globlin Archives, Josh D and Zach Hazard Vaupen

Back it!

Liminal Grimoire

by M. Allen Hall

Back it!

Midnight Muscadines

by Pandion Games

Back it!

🗣️2. Our Latest Interviews

On March 21st, we celebrated one year since the first interview I conducted on the blog. I'm so happy to keep this project going and to have the chance to meet such amazing people. Thank you to everyone who has taken a moment of their time to help make this little project a reality.

Read the interview

Read the Interview

Read the Interview

🆕3. Broken Lands is on the wild!

Carlos Ferrer, an acclaimed Spanish writer, designer, and a friend of mine, has released the English version of his role-playing game, which has been widely recognized in the Spanish-speaking market. Let me share a bit about the release and the game with you.

Broken Lands: Adventures between Law and Chaos is a dark fantasy roleplaying game where you will play as heroes and antiheroes in a world shaped by religious strife and the ambitions of the gods. You will face secret cults and conspiracies, demons and automatons, forgotten ruins, deceitful pacts, moral dilemmas, and beings from other planes.

The present Quickstart Guide will help you become familiar with the basic rules, get a glimpse of its universe, and try out the gameplay experience of Broken Lands. It includes:

• A summary of the basic rules of Broken Lands, including combat and magic.

• An overview of the setting.

• The adventure Hearts and Masks, ideal for two gaming sessions.

• Four pregenerated characters with their character sheets.

Download Now!

📻4. The Weekly Scroll Podcast!

To me, these two guys, Ryan and Hunter, are doing something truly amazing with their podcast. I’m a big fan of their lengthy reviews and spot-on commentary. If you don’t know them yet, I’m sharing their latest episodes with you.

You can find everything about them at: https://linktr.ee/TheWeeklyScroll

The guys read and review MINIBX from Lucas Rolim, a minimalist hack that may in fact be a disruption, subversion, or even a profanity against D&D B/X!

The guy read and review NEVER GOING HOME from Wet Ink Games, a party-focused eldritch horror roleplaying game set in the trenches of the First World War, inspired by the World War Occult art of Charlie Ferguson-Avery.

The guys sit down with games educator and award-winning game designer VIDITA VOLETI to chat about A Land Once Magic, a conversational game of post-fantasy worldbuilding.

The guys read and review RAD from Hipólita, a tabletop roleplaying game set in a post-nuclear Soviet wasteland and inspired by Metro 2033.

💀5. Fallen Bundle

Buy it now!

We are pleased to announce, to the delight of the tabletop gaming community in Spain and Latin America, that our partnership with El Refugio de Ryhope, consolidated at the beginning of 2025, has already begun to bear fruit.

The team behind the project will be integrated by:

• The fantastic crew at El Refugio de Ryhope,

• Our dear Tania Herrero (a remarkable pillar of the Mörk Borg universe),

• And, of course, yours truly: Mario | La esquina del Borg.

See you next time!

💀1. In Ruins is now on KS!

In Ruins was wrote and designed by M. Allen Hall. Currently the project has reached its funding and We are really excited with the concept of the game and We can't wait to play it. Grab your copy now!

Back it now!

🦕2. Primal Quest: Factions

We've shared our faction rules for Primal Quest that were originally published in the Spanish edition of Primal Quest in 2022. We've finally decided to publish them in English. If you like Primal Quest, you might be interested in reading these rules.

Read more...

🗣️3. Our last interviews

In February we had the honor of talking with two great friends for our blog.

Alan Bahr is the publisher and founder of Gallant Knight Games. He’s a prolific and award-winning RPG designer and writer. The best place to find updates on his GKG work is at gallantknightgames.com where you can sign up for his newsletter.

Read The Interview

René-Pier Deshaies is a CRIT-nominated and Canadian TTRPG Designer. He made Stoneburner, Breathless, Firelights, etc. You can learn more about him at farirpgs.com.

Read The Interview

👽4. Caligaes' XENO is on KS!

XENO is a minimalist RPG in which you take the role of a XENO, an Alien lifeform that serves MOTHER. You are sent to Earth to atone for your sins and conquer them in the name of your creator. The game is designed for 2 to 5 players, including the Alien Master, who can enjoy one-shots where they hunt humans, fight demons, and fulfill MOTHER's objectives.

Back it now!

💪🏽5. Mascaritas Sagradas

Read more...

🧑🏽‍🚀6. Dark Space Society RPG

An update of the rules (V. 0.2.0) is coming soon, stay tuned!

😱7. Blackthorn is coming on KS!

Blackthorn is a role-playing game designed to collaboratively tell pulp horror stories. It's not a game where player characters are destined to be the heroes, but rather one about the highs and lows characters experience when confronted with a seemingly insurmountable terror. It is deadly, in and out of high-tension moments, and dripping with horror.

The new project of our friend Marco from Spicy Tuna RPG release March 13th.

Back it Now!

🖌️8. Víctor J. Merino's Patreon!

Our friend Victor opened his Patreon a while ago. He recently shared Fantasy Portraits: The Pointy Ears Pack [Batch 1]. If you can, subscribe to his Patreon or hire him to make commissions!

Read more...

💗9. Love for Valencia!

Thank you for your support!

Donate!

We are aware that Substack is undergoing a process of "enshittification" and we are exploring alternatives to continue distributing our content through other channels. Our blog is becoming our main focus for interaction, but for now, we will use Substack until we find a way to become independent from any other corporate entity.

🧉1. Bring on the Discourse

2025 will be a year of migrations for our community. We have already seen how harmful social networks can be on other occasions, and I do not intend to delve further into them.

I firmly believe, as Yochai Gal shares in his latest blog post, that we must take our community's discussion to safer and more independent places. I know I'm not the only one who doesn't see Discord or Bluesky in a positive light at the moment.

Yochai Gal's call to bring the conversation back to forums has resonated with the Spanish-speaking community, and we have now taken a subforum in The Cauldron. I invite everyone who wants a safe and corporate-free space to start the discussion in English and Spanish in The Cauldron. We're waiting for you!

Join The Cauldron!

🅱️2. 2025 Is the Year of the Beta

We start the year with this Prismatic Wasteland challenge. I invite you to join. If you have an idea in the drawer that you haven't published yet because it seems endless, then this is the year to bring it to light and see what happens. Join the Year of Betas!

Entries to the Beta Challenge (in no particular order):

1. Mulberry

2. Oozes and Oubliettes

3. Everything You Are Must Be Found

4. The Doom that Came to Wizard City

5. Dark Space Society (This is mine!)

6. Tombstone - Grit & Determination

7. NO GOOD DEED: Bleed 10,000 Hit Points

8. LEVEL: Adventures in a Virtual Fantasy

9. The Explorer’s Guild

10. 5 Million Worlds: Avatar Builder

11. Wormtooth

12. Bill Posters Will Be Prosecuted

13. Gasmasks & Goblins

14. Fate of Faltera

15. Absurd Lands and Curious Creatures

16. The Demon of Dogwater Gulch

🗣️3. January Interviews

Thinking about what might happen with Substack, we have moved several of our English interviews to our blog. If you missed any, you can now find most of them here.

An Interview with Goblin Archives

Excited by the announcement of the upcoming deluxe edition of Liminal Horror, I'm thrilled to share an interview I did with one of the authors, Goblin Archives. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Read Interview

An Interview with Patrick Buechner

It was a blast chatting with about The Soloist, the future of TTRPGs and Solo Borg!

Read the Interview

🎲4. 1d10 Crowdfundings to Follow!

1. Solo Borg by Patrick Buechner

2. Midnight Muscadines by Pandion Games

3. XENO Invasion by Caligaes

4. A PERFECT WIFE: TTRPG Adventure + Fundraiser! by Zedeck Siew, illustrated by Amanda Lee Franck and Scrap World.

5. Liminal Horror Deluxe Edition by Goblin Archives, Josh D | Vaulted Pyramid and Zach Hazard Vaupen

6. Out of Orbit: A Troupe Survival TTRPG by Andrew Beauman

7. Pirouette - A Ballet Horror TTRPG by InnocentGoblin TTRPGs

8. Mum Chums by Tanya Floaker

9. Dungeon Bound by

10. Roll the Dice Twice Again!

One of the amazing things that happened to us this month was talking with Alan Bahr and learning more about what he's working on now. We also had the honor of him gifting us a copy of Siege Perilous, which We find really awesome. The system it uses is Firelights by Rene-Pier Deshaies, but instead of a standard deck of cards, it uses a tarot deck.

We really liked the new mechanics he added that fit perfectly with the Arthurian theme. The Quests add a lot of depth and narrative elements, which We greatly appreciate. We also enjoyed how he incorporated aging and romance into the game. We are happy playing it and can't wait to receive our physical copy, especially because We think the artwork is fantastic.

🎲2. Cairn 2nd Edition into Spanish

We still can't believe it, and We hope we are not being too boastful with this. This year, We translated many games into Spanish, but two of them are our favorites: Liminal Horror and Cairn. It's an honor for us that our Spanish edition of Cairn is the first official translation of the second edition of the game into another language. We are incredibly grateful to Yochai Gal for the opportunity and for always being so kind to us. We are also immensely thankful to the 4,649 Kickstarter backers who funded our work. Thank you so much for gifting us this Spanish edition of such an important game!

🗣️3. Our last two interviews this year

We had the opportunity to talk with Johan Nohr, and we can't stop saying how kind he is and how open he is to sharing his thoughts about his own work and what he's done in the role-playing game scene. Although it's currently only published in Spanish, We highly recommend reading this interview.

Additionally, in November, we published the second part of the interview with Antonio from California Games. If you haven't had the chance to read the full interview, we highly recommend it. Antonio is an excellent solo role-playing game designer from Spain, and you can find all of his published works for free here.

👩🏽‍🚀4. Cosmophobia

Ricardo Montesinos and Eneko Palencia are working on Cosmophobia, a space horror game that will be illustrated by our friend Penny Melgarejo. We can't recommend enough that you learn Spanish to be able to play this. We suggest keeping an eye on their page for more information: https://grapasymapas.com/

💰5. Help us to reach our goal!

Every year, we warmly invite the international role-playing community to join us in supporting and collaborating to cover our operating costs at La Esquina del Rol. Your support is what keeps this project alive and thriving. We truly appreciate any help you can provide. Thank you for being an essential part of our community!

🆕6. Dark Space Society (playtest) is in the wild!

This simplified ruleset, written by us, is part of the Lo-Fi Space Horror TTRPG we’re making called Dark Space Society (coming Q3 2025). It’s strongly inspired by Jesse Ross's Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold, Diogo Nogueira's Primal Quest, and Goblin Archives' Liminal Horror.

It was designed to play adventures or modules from other well-known games in the genre, but with a rules-light system and an emphasis on modern, narrative-first principles. You can read it for free!

English Version

😊7. A new partnership

We are thrilled to announce to the community that we have begun a partnership with the Spanish publisher El Refugio de Ryhope, who have translated games from various authors into Spanish. Some of the authors We can remember off the top of our head include René-Pier Deshaies, Pandion Games, Iko from The Lost Bay, Ben Robbins, Scott Malthouse, Jim Pinto, Isaac Williams, Tim Hutchings, Kimi Hughes, among others.

We are grateful for the invitation they have given us and, above all, for believing in our project and principles. Thanks, Antonio!

Subscribe now

Mario | La esquina del rol: Antonio Ganfornina, welcome to La esquina del rol! I have the pleasure of knowing you for a couple of years ago, but we have never had the chance to talk about role playing games. Today, I think it's a great day to start. How is everything?!

Antonio Ganfornina | California Games: Hello Mario, thank you so much for your kind words and for having me around. The routine has been a bit of a slog lately. I'm trying to put the brakes on some creative endeavours to keep up with all the hustle and bustle within academic research and other aspects of my life. The dogtor (yes, for all of you that may not know, it is how Mario and I usually call to my canine companion) appreciates that decision (and so do I!), since it means longer walks for both of us. He seems very happy. But I'm trying to keep game design among my regular hobbies.

Mario: Glad to hear you're taking things slower. Real life is always complicated. Those times out and taking deep breaths always helps the ideas flow better.

Well, for those who don't know you, I'd like you to introduce yourself and tell us how you started roleplaying and what you do in the indie roleplaying scene...?

Antonio: Is a long story to tell I would say, but essentially my foray into this hobby dates back to 2012, or maybe 2013.

In the 2000s, I played many story-driven games (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate, Arcanum, Vampire, Fallout 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, etc.) and others that rewarded player creativity (Deus Ex, an usual representative of a genre called Immersive Simulators). They had a powerful effect in me, beyond keeping me glued to a screen; they had the ability to make me imagine those untold portions of their stories and want to explore their worlds more. Something that, due to the limitations of the format, wasn't possible in those days with video games, but rather in my imagination.

Curiously, I wasn't a stranger to tabletop role-playing games (pen & paper games). As a child, in the late '90s and early 2000s, I used to frequent a bookstore where I could read the Star Wars D20 saga edition (well, just the back cover), and I recall reading Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 on the library.

Years went by, and in 2012, one day, a mate mentioned they were playing a role-playing campaign (Vampire: The Masquerade), and my curiosity was piqued once again, this time with more intensity. The moment came to buy my first role-playing game manual. So, I did a Google search, read what I could, and based on my preferences, I bought my first role-playing game manual: Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North by Ben Lehman.

I was clear that if I wanted to delve into this hobby: 1) I wasn't going to spend a lot of money. The manual cost me 15€ ( approx. 15$) including shipping, by contacting the now-defunct spanish publisher ConBarba directly. 2) I wasn't going to dedicate myself to learn rules about things that I had already seen well implemented in video games. 3) Therefore, it had to be something more focused on the interactions between the main characters and the stories that form based on these. Polaris was the obligatory starting point for me.

On the topic of what I do in the indie roleplaying scene, I made a shift the last year, since my contributions have varied in terms of curiosities, design, layout notions, and so on, but I noticed a prevalence of certain constrains that, to be honest, only existed in my head, as it is said; the pressure of social media platforms (currently I almost use none of them) and a frenetic pace of creating over 200-page manuals for free, in a single year, even receiving recognition from videogame developers; the tragically hijacked ZAUM (owners of Disco Elysium).

Now, I like to describe my contributions as timid games that start from scratch, with a blank lead sheet, help sharpen the focus on game loops. As long as the mechanics lead somewhere new, they won’t let you fall into complacent during the gameplay. Yet, they also provide a balance with moments of relaxation, giving you time to contemplate the future of your game interactions along the way.

Mario: It is very interesting what you say. I have always thought of you as a shipwrecked person writing games on reusable paper and throwing them in bottles into the sea to find the hands of that person who really needs to play it. Poetically it is a beautiful scene. Your ideas and games seem to me to be cured of this vertiginous capitalist production that we live in these times that seems to be a mercenary of the moment of the game because it suffocates it with so many games available that it seems that the hobby is to buy and not to play, you know?

In this sense, I would like to ask you what is your design philosophy and what are those principles that give meaning to what you do as a TTRPG designer considering what you said before?

Antonio: And yet, I would add that, none of us is immune to internalising those dizzying production logics, whether as a workforce, or for recognition and social gain.

A beautiful analogy you’ve crafted, by the way. Not just for the prose, but for its validity and description of reality. Some of my games have reached others' hands years after being published. The response takes less time to come back than a message in a bottle; surprise, admiration, curiosity, unease, the conscious decision to dedicate part of your time to someone else's work.

Regarding my design philosophy, although always adapting in a always evolving manner, I would summarise them as it follows:

1) Use a CC license.

2) Cite your references.

- Do some research before starting to design something "new".

- Take care of others publishing as clear and accessible as possible.

3) All the rules must convey the aesthetics of the game.

- I think that the layout is part of not just the game text, but also the rules.

- Accessibility and aesthetics can, and should, coexist.

- As a designer, I have to provide a framework. As a game designer, I have to provide a framework to play with. As a game designer concerned about aesthetics, in an academic sense, I have to provide a thematic framework to play with.

In other words, I like to approach to game-design considering games as:

1) A work of art with a properly conveying aesthetics (in a academic sense of the word) through their pages.

2) A design document where each content has a reason to be there to translate not only instructions but ideas to the reader.

3) A playable experience that asks a question. A decision is an answered question. Here I fully agree with Sid Meier's dictum: "a game is a series of interesting decisions".

Mario: I really like what you say. I agree that the roleplaying game is more than a consumer product, you know? although it still one. It also seems to me that the aesthetic intent, the layout design, the art and the gameplay experience are all intertwined and fundamental to the design process of a roleplaying game. It's not just about coming up with a setting and writing some cool rolls. I got that very clear from my conversation with Johan Nohr, the intention is fundamental to what we create, nothing is there in a decorative way. As you say, what game designers give us are frames of reference that more or less define a game experience. For me, role-playing games have to be understood as cultural products, because there are too many aesthetic, symbolic, social, etc. values involved.

In this sense Antonio, in the day-to-day life of TTRPGs there is always this dichotomy about whether it is possible to play a role-playing game good or bad. What is your opinion?

Antonio: I think you've hit the nail on the head, despite these terms often slipping by unnoticed in conversation; role-playing games are "cultural products." They don't exist in a vacuum separate from the culture surrounding them, nor is the surrounding culture unaffected by the author's intent. Since childhood, I've been fascinated by "interaction" within complex systems, and I believe the term "cultural products" captures this interaction in our complex system, simplified into three parts:

(1) the author, (2) their audience, and (3) the interaction between both through the game. It is in this interaction where I believe the most interesting information as "cultural products" resides.

This ties into your question, which is rather thorny and demands a commitment in my response. Without mincing words, I believe it is possible to play a role-playing game extremely bad—especially when playing with a group—when the respect of other participants is undermined, with open displays of any form of hatred (insults, aporophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, etc.).

Mario: It really is a thorny question, but it is a question that is avoided in many circles because of the idea that role-playing is played the way you want it to be. But, it does raise doubts in my mind when we talk about there being an authorial intention about the game experience. So, in terms of design it seems to me that it is possible to determine whether the experience is right or wrong in terms of the decisions the author made about how they wanted something to be played. This is not to say that playing what you want to play is wrong, it's just stating that according to the author's intended experience you are not playing the way he expected you to play. At that point I don't know if it's a design flaw, it's actually a very complex thing to think about in rational terms hahahaha

Antonio: Yes, I fully agree with you in that is a thorny question. That said, I also believe it’s possible to play a role-playing game bad, especially when the author isn’t explicit about their intent. This has nothing to do with our personal preferences as players, which I wholeheartedly celebrate. What I’m saying has nothing to do with whether we’re dealing with a rules-light or rules-heavy game, whether it rewards player creativity or or the rules admirably constrain the course of the players' actions, or whether it expects the game master to prepare vast amounts of content (or not) for each session, and so on.

As one of my favourite childhood characters said, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park), "everything is chaos." Interactions are widely chaotic, specially in a kinda of niche culture. I think that gameplay culture and game text are colliding constantly, and that's great! In those moments of collisions, sometimes we can spoil bad terms of play, eventually leading to better terms of play, for both players and game-designers.

I really love that we can play roleplaying games badly (in the sense of their rules and intentionality). That means that There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom to learn and discuss about them.

Mario: Of course, it couldn't be said better. And I always get to that point, it's not bad to play badly when playing a role-playing game. On the contrary, it brings more life to the discussion and creation of role-playing games in terms of design. At least I think so.

Well, moving on to more creative topics. I would like to know how you approach the creative process when creating your own role-playing games?

Antonio: That's a jolly good question, one to which I sometimes wish I had a clear and definitive answer. So, the most honest thing for me would be to talk about how I've tackled the design of the games I've published so far. But I reckon I'd sum it up with other questions that I try to answer when designing a game:

1) What's my game about?

2) What do I expect people playing to DO, generally?

3) What sorts of fiction should happen in this game?

4) What sorts of things shouldn’t happen in this game?

5) What do my rules do to support ALL of the above?

I would say my first step when thinking about a new game is to offer a reference framework for codify the interactions between the players' characters and the fiction that arise from them.

This can be seen, for example, in the games I made about Star Wars, where character creation explicitly declares to establish emotional bounds between characters; that is, they are not created in isolation but, beyond group intention, the character creation process indicates that their lives are bound in misery. Similarly, in Route 65, the game resides in the conflict of interests of the characters when visiting the setting of The Zone (based on the novel Roadside Picnic, the film Stalker, and the video game of the same name).

Checking my games published on itch.io, I think this is a common starting point in all my designs. In fact, in Glossolalia, where I take the reference framework from the philosophy of Jason Tocci's 24XX games, I give great weight not to what can keep a group cohesive, but to those factors that can completely derail the course of a mission due to opposing stances on the question that guides the playable experience: How would you proceed in a First Contact situation with an alien species indifferent to any human interaction (a theoretical scenario known as the Dark Forest theory)?

When I have those questions mentally visualised, I proceed on a quest for visual sense that will permeate every page of the manual. I know there may be disagreements at this point, but I'm part of that strange group you want to keep at a separate table for your own good and theirs (I am joking at these, but who knows), who first lays out (no pun intended) the layout, and then, with those constrains, proceeds to write the text.

This has an advantage, at least for me—you know the explanation must fit into a specific space. However, this poses a serious problem: reshaping the text and layout as a whole can be a real headache. Moreover, as if that weren't enough, this constitutes a HUGE challenge; you might end up falling in love with a complete composition, but here comes a small jewel of wisdom from another video game character (Kreia/Darth Traya) who precisely inspired me for Star Wars Betrayal: "to believe in an ideal, is to be willing to betray it."

Mario: I find your approach to writing your games very interesting. I'm one of those who first start with illustrations of what I want and from there I start to build. That creates other problems for me, I have paid art waiting in the drawer because the idea didn't work out or it's in the other drawer of pending projects. But, having the layout design ready and filling it in, as you do, is a really important challenge for me. I don't know if I would be able to do it that way.

But now I understand why your layout design flows beautifully with the writing in your games. It's really a very particular characteristic that I've found in you. You've made games that aesthetically are really beautiful, but mostly you've made games with an intention. How do you decide on that art direction or what inspires you to approach each project aesthetically in a certain way?

Antonio: For me, there's no reason beyond seizing the motivation of the moment and giving it direction. I'm not a huge fan of persevering in the search for a source of inspiration. In this, I believe I align with my work routine as an academic researcher. When I design a game, the process is similar but not identical. Most of the time, I'm accumulating information; reading books (academic works, role-playing games, novels, poems, etc.), articles on Reddit (there are some truly astonishing threads there, in some of which I've even become quite radicalised as a designer, in the sense of getting to the root of game design aspects), and listening to very contrasting opinions.

Eventually, the most complicated part is resolved: posing THE question. And when I pose the question, what follows is a murky, artistic quest filled with trial and error among compositions of tones, colours, shapes, and especially, fonts. It’s astonishing how much our impression and understanding of a game can change from one typeface to another (so much so that some are dreadfully inaccessible for many people).

To give a concrete example, in Una sola y triste Isola, the question was: How would it be to tell everyday local stories that are easily distorted? That was the question I posed, and of course, there could have been several answers. At that particular time, I was motivated by a series of Italian neorealism films that had been recommended to me. And so, I remembered a common childhood scene in Mediterranean areas where grandmothers would take their chairs out onto the street on summer nights to chat about the divine and the mundane. Naturally, the divine and the mundane are the primordial clay of any good gossip. That was the purpose once I found it.

The art, of course, couldn’t be just a disjointed collection of illustrations. It had to be something that could almost be visualised as the menu of a seaside restaurant or a tavern on a pier, complete with a chequered tablecloth, blue and white, or red and white, I’m not too fussed about that, but there definitely had to be a glass vase with a flower on the table... and a menu... and that menu was what I wanted the manual of Una Sola y triste Isola to be. For this, the best representation I found was in black and white illustrations on Pixabay, and it seems to have worked quite well.

As you can see, despite all the -maybe- abstract and -definitely, too much- elaborated explanation of my approach, I tend to work in a very concrete visual plane. That solves your first question. For the second one, I think it is a mix of both current motivation and a coherent purpose.

Mario: It is very interesting what you share with us, very illustrative of your whole visual process of composition. I have an interesting question. Of all your published RPGs, which page or spread layout is your favorite and why?!

Antonio: I would argue that the podium is shared between three of them: Una Sola y triste Isola, The Furiae, and Of Whites & Reds. The first one due to the reasons I have mentioned previously. It is a simple, clean, and yet well delivered sense of the a la carte menu. The second one, in its first edition, it has a composition that involves a personal quest of finding those draws that match the intention and the texts on their corresponding pages. In its second edition, the purpose is crafted beyond, since the original 60 pages horizontal zine is distributed among 4 booklets (the rules, the game itself, a full game-play example, and a booklet of art analysis of all the draws in the game-book). The latter one, I think is my finest composition since it is simultaneously three things: a game to be played, a game design document, and a delivered aesthetic based on a concrete style. Those three are intertwined: rules, texts, and illustrations. But you have asked me for my favourite one. Thus, I have to make a choice... I would say Of Whites & Reds

Of Whites & Reds is a narrative competitive game where the players who portray the Characters (using the instructions on The Reds Manifesto, the player's pamphlet) must seize the means of narrative production, finally overthrowing the Storyteller (the player who dictates the game-plot as it was a script, and who follows the instructions of the Psalm of the Whites, the storyteller rules). It is all about class-struggle, and dialectical materialism.

The main inspirations of this game draw on the videogame The Stanley Parable (by Davey Wreden and William Pugh), where the Narrator tell us (both the character and the player) what we must do to in order to end the game, but as soon as we refuse to follow its guided narrative, the plot crumbles into interesting ramifications, while the Narrator establishes a desperate dialogue with us.

Of Whites & Reds uses Character moves (you can see them on the picture I attach) and Storyteller moves [Mitchell, A., & McGee, K. (2009). Designing storytelling games that encourage narrative play] which are heavily based on the videogame The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales (by Oleg Sergeev). In this videogame we are a book-walker, a wanderer among fictional tales, and we can inject our ink to overcome some objectives, and also interfere with the adversities of the unfolding, yet scripted plot.

Finally, Of Whites & Reds cannot be stripped of its political perspective. Well, of course someone can ignore this, but that statement is far away to be the point of anything to be said. As anyone can see on this work (since I also explicitly state that on its pages), the illustrations and some of the texts I made are heavily inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky and El Lisitski, who merged their works together in 1923, with the publication of the former's poems interspersed with the latter's illustrations, giving shape to For the Voice (Для голоса).

This text, for example, was purely written on a pamphleteer format, along most of the others that conform The Reds Manifesto. In contrast, since I consider the Psalm of The Whites as a "set-in-stone commandments", I wrote those pages as Psalms of the Bible, but instead of religious topics, they contain information to the Storyteller.

Mario: I love Of Whites & Reds, I think the premise of that game is really cool and the composition you share with us is very interesting for me. Thank you very much for sharing with us all this.

Well, Antonio I know you are currently working on a new game, where did the idea of writing Do not go gentle into the American Dream come from?

Antonio: So, the curtain has fallen. Truth be told, I hadn't mentioned this via developer blogs, neither to anyone else, with the exception of you and a friend of mine…

X/Twitter sucks! We are now on bluesky (@laesquinadelrol.com).

XENO by Caligaes is a Mexican minimalist TTRPG in which players take on the role of a terrifying alien creature sent to Earth to atone for its sins.

The game is designed for 2 to 5 players, including the Alien Master, who can enjoy one-shot missions in which they hunt humans, fight demons and fulfil MOTHER's objectives.

TOUCHSTONES

• Alien (1979)

• The thing (1982)

• X-COM (1994)

• Carrion (2020)

  Download DEMO Xeno RPG

FEATURES

• Fast, violent, and deadly battles.

• A two action combat system.

• 4 XENOS, 4 OBJECTIVES, and 4 different NEMESIS that are randomly selected each game.

• 3d4-based mechanics with a unique hit point system.

• Free to download, easy to print core rules in a pamphlet format.

EXPANSIONS

Subscribe now

Z-KOM VICTIMARY: 

The Z-KOM VICTIMARY is a collection of tools, victims and mechanics for the Z-KOM NEMESIS.

In this expansion you will find: 

•  8 different Z-KOM VICTIMS

• "Combat Analysis" Z-KOMs unique faction ability.

• New mechanics for exploration and world interaction.

• Experimental Equipment to shake every battle.

• Squad mechanics so that the soldiers survive a little longer.

Everything packed in a printable pamphlet format, with killer art by Raúl el Ghoul.

HENS & CHICKS

HENS & CHICKS is the first official module of XENO, which takes a group of newly spawned XENOS through the genetic research lab "MONOD," with the sole objective of rescuing MOTHER from the clutches of Z-KOM.

In this 38-page ZINE, you will find:

• A story filled with reverse horror, drama, and extreme violence.

• Rules for Combat Against Multiple VICTIMS and for ALLIES vs VICTIMS.

• A glimpse into the world of XENO and its lore.

• Random tables for VICTIM names and dangers in the ventilation DUCTS.

• Brutal artwork by Raúl el Ghoul.

  Download Xeno RPG!

A XENO RPG Backerkit will be announced soon, if you are interested you will join the invasion here:

Join the invasion on Backerkit!

Mario | La esquina del rol: Spicy Tuna RPG, welcome to La esquina del rol! I am very happy to have you here, I think your projects are really spectacular and the way you resignify elements of Mexican culture in your work is really beautiful. But first of all, how are you?

Marco Serrano | Spicy Tuna RPG: Hi, Mario!! Thanks for having me, and thank you for the kind words. Today is a great day! I'm doing well. How are you?

Mario: Not bad, not bad. The rains are starting where I live in Yucatan and the smell of humidity is reviving me. But let's talk about you.

When I first heard about you, you were working with A Butterfly Dies, and then you started funding some amazing projects of really impressive quality. But for people who still don't know who you are, I'd like you to introduce yourself and tell us how you got into tabletop roleplaying games?

Marco: I'm glad there's revitalization going on! That's always great!

I'm Marco Serrano and I publish under the Spicy Tuna RPG imprint. I'm a father of four, I'm a graphic designer with a horrible work flow, I like to write worlds that are surprising to explore, and I'm trying to learn how to draw well again.

I got into the hobby by watching friends play dnd, and finally "finding the time" to run a game after 7 or 8 years. The first game I ran was Feng Shui 2, then Dredd, until I finally landed on Mothership as a mainstay in 2021 maybe... Now I read a bunch of indie games, and am starting to write them.

Mario: That's great. Hey Marco, how do you approach your creative process when you're writing about these worlds and these adventures?

Marco: My creative process is all over the place currently. It's something I'm trying to be more mindful and deliberate with because I struggle to stay focused and avoid creative block when writing larger interconnected areas.

For instance, I think my best creative work comes when I'm working within certain constraints. When I was writing Constant Downpour I had a single reference piece, "The Long Rain" by Ray Bradbury. So it was a psychological thriller set in rainforest and high prairies split by a latticework of rivers caused by relentless rain.

I divided up the areas and the unique location types (sun domes, bunkers, landmarks). I wrote random tables for the different environments, and I wrote all the like areas together so they would be unique from each other while sharing familiar elements.

I've been going through a similar process when writing the planet layers for Greenhorns. I write several random spark tables that associate with the planet layer and use them as inspiration (sometimes randomly rolling) for each threat, area, loot, etc you'd find in the layer.

I'm also a daydreamer. I think about a particular world or area or adventure repeatedly in short spurts, shower thoughts etc., until I finally write it down.

Mario: Before the interview, we talked about your Mexican heritage. I really think it's great what you are doing with your art and that Mexican artistic legacy. Tell me a little bit about the ways you have represented Mexican culture in your creations and why you decided to do it?

Marco: Honestly, I have a crap memory so I might be missing some stuff. But here's a bullet point list, maybe most significant to least:

• A Butterfly Dies is inspired by the Orozco's mural "El Hombre de Fuego" as well as the Mexican myths about butterflies. It takes place in a mythical and prehistoric Michoacan, Mexico/Sierra Madres. I have an introduction in the book that includes core concepts for readers to understand and a a bit about how the adventure itself and the writings are an alternative mythos, rather than actual Mexican beliefs. The whole story is about how the chaos and destruction of fire can cause amazing rebirth, an important part of the cycle for harmonization. Of course humans are threatening it.

• Cocoxoca is the pamphlet adventure I wrote and released with A Butterfly Dies. This one I didn't really have the room to write an intro, but is inspired by Mexican myths of crocodiles, being tied to fertility, the rain and the land. There is both Xa, The Crocodile Lord (Good, provider of knowledge, but ruthless) and Char, The Caimankin Wizard (Arguably bad). Cocoxoca is also a Nahuatl word meaning to make a sloshing sound / for water to be shaken. Which is appropriate because it takes place in the wetlands and the current conflict threatens to shake up the status quo.

• In Greenhorns: A Weird Space RPG the three NPCs in the Malls of Humanities are based on, and named after Rufino Tamayo, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Frida Kahlo. They are each artists and have wants related to the factions threatening the status quo on Kruxor (their home planet), which may lead to a possible uprising.

• Yucatan Tech Co is the weapons manufacturer in the Mothership universe all of my 3pp modules make together. They focus on weapons and gadgets that increase survivability so they are all equivalent to starter weapons but have specific features that may become useful in life-threatening situations. Of course, they are a weapons manufacturer, and have a long write up in the upcoming The Hands That Feed hardcover, and are bad overall, but kind of ambiguously so.

Other than that, especially in scifi modules, I include a mixture of worldly names, including pre-hispanic Mexican names, to represent a more diverse humanity in the future.

As far as the why, I include it primarily because it's interesting and worth referencing. It's an amazing part of history, and art, not often seen or talked about across the world. It's part of my heritage and something I wish to and continue to explore more of.

For context, and a little bit more about me. It's kind of weird because I didn't grow up with this, the study and interest came in my later teens probably starting with the Mexican Muralist Movement (I studied studio art at university and promptly stopped making art for a decade after my final year in 2014). My dad immigrated here when he young and is, in a lot of ways, a stereotypical immigrant father. He started a business (a bakery) and worked excessive hours so my mother could stay at home. We rarely saw him, and what I learned of being Mexican has more to do with traits than stories and cultural beliefs. We were one of a few Mexican families in a small Catholic school growing up and my parents used Spanish to have discussions we couldn't understand, so the language bit was not really taught or pushed on us as hard as I wish jaja. I have a very American accent because I was not wise enough as a kid to learn earlier.

I write scifi horror and fantasy modules, and in general the types of roleplaying games I play there is reason for taking sides, joining forces, becoming adversaries, probable combat etc. It's important to me to treat any Mexican influence respectfully, to be direct with communicating that these are reimaginings, alternative mythos, and sources of inspiration, rather than direct implants of historic or current beliefs. Part of that respect is not to default every Mexican or Mexican-inspired piece or NPC as good. There is good and bad, and in betweens just as there is when I might include any other part or NPC from a different culture.

Just as important to the why, is I want my adventures and games to be approachable and inclusive to players and GMs regardless of their heritage, and avoid as much of the hesitations they may have regarding that aspect. Rather than tiptoe, just know these are settings inspired by these tellings just as most fantasy, and often scifi, has roots in other peoples' cultures and myths. I hope the adventures create incredible memories, something worthy of remarking on, and knowing it has roots in Mexican myth it might make it into the conversation or interest.

Mario: I really like what you have said. I think the way you portray those Mexican traits and the heritage of Mexican culture in your adventures and supplements is really very appropriate. I have never liked the traditional mode of reproduction, I think that cultures are in movement and it is important to glimpse from a perspective of change and transformation those "Mexican heritage traits". You know?

I know Mothership means a lot to you. You had already told us that it was a turning point when you found it as a role-player. But, tell us what it has meant to you as a designer and why it has obsessed you so much? why do you like that setting and the game in general so much? Well, I'm talking about a good obsession, of course. hahahaha!

Marco: My publishing journey started with a system agnostic zine called Constant Downpour which is inspired by Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Long Rain” – a psychological thriller where the relentless rains of Venus slowly whittle away the characters' sanity. Constant Downpour used this as a single source of inspiration and reimagined the setting and various ways the environment and experience would dilute the characters moral. If you know anything about Mothership, you know this fits pretty damn well.

For me, Mothership was an a-ha moment of dice mechanics cinching in the emotions of an adventure. The Panic Engine does a wonderful job ramping up the disparity of situations while the lethal combat are a reminder to play cleverly. It fits my interest in play a lot, which is why it fits my interest in writing.

Mario: Nice! Mothership is so rad! I love the community that keeps it so alive and dedicates all their efforts to publish so many supplements. It's a marvel what you can find written for this game. Sadly it's not in Spanish yet and it hasn't finished permeating all the Spanish space.

Back to you. I see that your adventure writing is one of the areas you've been working on the most and where you're really doing amazing work both in stories and in how beautiful the modules are.

For our readers who want to start writing adventures for Mothership, from your experience, what advice or recommendations can you give them about how to build modules for this game and how to make them real in a publication?

Marco: It really can't be overstated how great the community has been in my experience. Sean and Alan at Tuesday Knight Games and the 3pp publishers are incredibly kind and helpful. That'd be really cool for it to get a good Spanish treatment.

I appreciate the kindness about my adventures! I've had a lot of fun exploring different spaces for adventures in Mothership. If you're considering writing adventures for any system I think the easiest way to get into it is to use your favorite adventures as templates. Same goes for layout as far as making the publication real. For writing, abstract it into parts. So you might look at a pamphlet adventure and "frame out" the places for the map and room descriptions, NPCs, introduction, random tables, etc.

If you've ran it, or played it, you might realize - hey each room works well with just 3 or 5 sentences, NPCs worked well with just a few, etc. Then frame your adventure out in the parts your interested in writing, the ones essential for making your adventure interesting, and fill them in using your template as guidance.

For layout, it's quite literally placing a two-page spread you like into Indesign or Affinity Publisher, and remaking the elements so you have a base to work off of. If you watch a good video about grids you might integrate that into the document to better guide your placement, but it's not necessary. You probably want to bring out a guide to mark margins though (the space between the edge of the page and what's being printed). Then delete the reference image and move the pieces around and make it your own with different fonts, weights, new elements, etc. Eventually, when you've done enough you'll start developing a feel for how to start from scratch, but learning from the best is a great way to start. Also use references from all kinds of media, cookbooks, design books, Art of books, etc. Not just ttrpgs.

Once you have writing and layout, scribble in drawings, surf the public domain to find some great images, or hire out some art and you have something real. You can sell PDFs on itch.io, drivethrurpg.com (drivethru seems to have better reach for Mothership modules), or your own site. I print zines with Printivity.com and highly recommend them for their customer service and return policies. Mixam is probably the most widely used service because of their price, but I've heard a lot of horror stories working with them. I've heard good things about UPrinting also.

For Mothership you need to submit your finished manuscript in order to receive permission to use any of the compatibility logos. And before you print with those logos you need final permission by submitting your ready to print files. Other licenses such as Primal Quest don't require any submissions.

Mario: Wow, everything you have shared with us is truly a gold mine for anyone who wants to get into writing. Thank you so much. Speaking of layout design, out of everything you've published, what are your 3 favorite two-page spreads you've done and why?

Marco: O geeze...that's tough. I have a special affinity to other people's wonderful layout and I'm constantly trying to experiment and get better in the area (I might actually, finally, start using grids soon!!).

As far as in print work goes I think my favorite work is in Outsourced (1), Constant Downpour (2), and A Butterfly Dies (3), so maybe I'll pick a spread from each, and since I usually commission full page illustrations from artists I'll omit those spreads and only include spreads I illustrated too - because let's face it, when you have a wonderful piece from Evangeline, David, or anyone else I've hired on it it's better.

Mario: Thank you for sharing your favourite layout designs with us. Well, it's time to talk about what's coming up. Tell me what the next Kickstarter you are launching is about?

Marco: The Hands That Feed is our next project funding on Kickstarter in October 1st. It's an anthology of powder keg missions and societal controllers for the Mothership RPG.

It's been in production for two years and is our biggest collaborative project yet. I got to hire some of the people I look up most to in the ttrpg scene and I'm stoked to share more of it with everyone.

The book structure is a modular campaign with several plug-n-play and long-lasting elements. In this case the core of the book is eight plug-n-play corporations written to act as recurring antagonists, short term allies, job providers, suppliers of goods and knowledge, etc.

Each of the major corporations have their own storylines for warden's to craft adventures out of, two of them have their own one shots, and two separate adventure writers took four corporations each and implemented them into two unique and quickly escalating alien horror missions.

Wardens can start with any mission or start implementing the corporations into their ongoing games.

The team is killer, and there's a ton of surprise to be experienced throughout.

Mario: It sounds really great. From the list you gave me of who's involved I can only think how awesome this anthology is going to be. What can you give us spoiler-free previews of these corporations and adventures that are about to make up the book?

Marco: Definitely! The corporations range from a worker-owned produce company that manufactures instability into megacorps to garner more dependence on the co-op, to cult of alien worshippers on the search for alien relics masquerading as a mining company. From a hypnotherapy and memory suppression corporation to a weapons manufacturer and arms dealer trying to maintain positive public perception.

Each corporation is written to have player- and public-facing activities and "behind-the-curtain" services that are far more sinister.

I'm especially excited about the missions Chris and Christian wrote because it glues together everything the corporation writers created. Their task was to create a scenario where four of the corporations are active, to provide escalating tension, and situations that offer interesting player-choice with who to side with, who to avoid, and places to go.

So Chris Airiau's adventure In Vino Captivitas centers around Nisei Pharmaceuticals (drug and genemodding corporation) and Juicy Family Co-op (produce corporation) vying for power over a vineyard for sale - which of course has some alien activity going on that makes the specific jerryvine desirable. Hypnaxus (hypnotherapy corporation) handlers are on the ground putting the vineyard workhands in hypnotic stupors to maintain secrecy of how nefarious the situation actually is, and a camera crew with The Slice News (news corporation) shoots an expose on the vineyard's current familial conflict.

The players can act as VIPs, part of The Slice News crew, recent vineyard harvesters, and more. Regardless of their starting professions they have to navigate the changes brought about by the corporate conflicts and from the progressing danger in the vineyard.

Christian's adventure Between a Corp and a Hard Place begins with a distress call. KV KORP (mining corporation) partners promise credits and an object of great value for immediate offworld rescue, while a second signal from a Yucatan Tech Co (weapons manufacturer) war frigate offers the crew significantly more for the retrieval of "technology of unknown origin" held by miners on planet. Once planetside, the crew may find the Oxygen-On-Demand installatin site and the Weevil (spy and intelligence corporation) camp.

Both missions pit the crew in the center of converging corporate and alien powers offering all the danger and surprise you want out of Mothership adventures.

Mario: Wow, You have really worked on a very interesting module. I invite our readers to back Marco Serrano's Kickstarter, and make this wonderful module for Mothership a reality!

Back it!

Marco: Thank you so much, Mario! I really appreciate the interview!

What is Crown of Salt?

A compatible with Mörk Borg scenario, with 120 pages loaded with full color illustrations, each of them will take you closer and closer to madness and weirdness. An exploration of the unknown, a strange and otherworldly journey where the player characters chase after a legend buried under Grift's salt plains. Very easy to insert to any on-going games, while also providing several hooks for the player characters for a stand alone game. 

Initially developed for the spanish OSR "La Marca del Este", Crown of Salt has been translated to english and adapted not only to the system, but to the Mörk Borg's setting. Being a rules light game, Crown of Salt is easy to convert to the OSR of your choice.

Back it!

Mario | La esquina del rol: Jesse Ross, Welcome to La esquina del rol! I am so happy to chat with you.

Honestly, I love Trophy RPG, I think is a TTRPG very interesting and I know that in Spanish community was a successful when it was released. I know you have written and released other games like R’lyehwatch RPG and Girl Underground, which I would like to talk more about later on. But, I would like to start this interview with the next question.

Who is Jesse Ross and what do you do in relation to the indie TTRPG scene?

Jesse Ross: Hi, Mario! Thank you so much for having me!

I’m the founder of game publisher Hedgemaze Press where I do game design, graphic design, and illustration. I focus on making games that are easy to learn but have a strong theme. My start in the indie world of game design was as a contributor to the Gauntlet’s former magazine, Codex, and from there I expanded out to make my own games. Outside of making games, I’m a web designer/developer who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA) with my wife, two daughters, mother-in-law, and our dog, Jellybean.

Mario: Nice! I love the name of your dog!

Well, last weekend I watched you in an AP where you ran a Thropy Dark one-shot on your YouTube channel. It was very interesting to see you as a GM.

So, I was wondering how you got into TTRPGs as a player/gm. What kind of game did you like at the beginning when you started playing, and What kind of game you like now?

Jesse Ross: I started playing RPGs when I was 12, and started with AD&D 2nd edition. My friends and I played that for a few years, and then we mostly transitioned over to Vampire the Masquerade and other World of Darkness games. My friends and I all took turns GMing (though we often had our own GM-PCs in the games we ran). One of my favorite games from high school was a version of the World of Darkness where we all played as supernatural versions of ourselves. Grounding it in the reality of our lives made it more horrifying (and caused a fair amount of bleed, a term we wouldn’t have known about at the time).

I took a break from gaming during college and afterwards as I was starting my career. When my oldest daughter was in middle school, she and her friend got really into Stranger Things, and she knew that I had a bunch of old D&D books. I offered to run some games for her and her friends and that got me back into the hobby. I discovered that a lot had happened in the 15 years or so since I last played, and got really into the indie side of RPGs. I found myself drawn to the philosophy of Apocalypse World and other Powered by the Apocalypse World games, as well as other stuff that had come out of the Forge. The simplicity of those rules and the desire for emergent, player-driven games also got me into OSR games.

Right now, I play a lot of my own games (including playtesting new games I'm working on), but I also run a fortnightly Monster of the Week game and am looking to pick back up a Dolmenwood campaign that I started running for some friends earlier in the year.

Mario: You have a very interesting gaming background. I see games you have mentioned with dark settings or horror, they are very good games, I like it.

Also, I love that you play Monster of the Week, it is a game I like a lot, but unfortunately I have not played it much.

So, What is it about RPGs that keeps you interested in them and why did you decide to make your own games?

Jesse Ross: As I shared earlier, my day job is as a web designer/developer. One of the things I draws me to that work is also one of the things that draws me to making RPGs: it’s a good balance of right-brain and left-brain activities. There’s artistry and storytelling, combined with information design and rule-building. I love being able to build worlds for me and my friends to play in, and I enjoy sharing those worlds so others can play in them too. RPGs are an inherently collaborative activity, and the culture of sharing that’s so strong in the hobby is something that I really love being a part of.

Mario: I loved your answer! Now I'd like to talk a about game design. You've told me before that you were very interested in the PbtA design philosophy when you came back to play and, also, you really liked the rules-light approach. That shows in the direction your published games have taken. But what do you consider to be the design philosophy and principles that frame the way you design and write your role-playing games?

Jesse Ross: Oh, that’s a great question!

I have a digital journal on my phone that I has dozens and dozens of documents of little fragments of ideas. Sometimes a document is little more than a few sentences or bullet points of setting or character ideas, or they might be a bit of mechanical inspiration (I have a lot of snippets that include dice odds I’ve made using anydice.com). I find it hard to move forward with really building out a game until I have a name and a tagline for it. Those serve as the “north star” for me to go back to as I work on the game, to make sure what I’m creating fulfills the promise of the name and tagline. Ultimately, I like making games that have a clearly identifiable theme and aesthetic. I like games that are specific, where the rules reinforce the themes and visa versa. And all of that needs to work together with the game’s brand and art and design.

One thing I also always try to do is make games that are easy to teach and learn. Before I was fully immersed in the world of rules-light games, I just picked the current edition of D&D to introduce my daughter and her friends to RPGs. After losing our whole first session to analysis paralysis and struggling to make characters, I vowed to make sure my own games had a lower barrier to entry. I love the PbtA “everything on one sheet” playbook model of character creation, as well as the OSR “roll to discover” random table-based model of character creation. Humans are meaning-making machines, and so I found you can do a lot by just offering up a few evocative character snippets and letting the player make the connections themself.

Mario: How do you approach your creative process when you design a new game or write a new adventure?

Jesse Ross: I start with a lot of research! I’ll watch movies and TV shows that reflect the theme, I’ll read and play games to find inspirational mechanics, I’ll sift through Pinterest to find images that represent scenes I want to see in play or that capture the mood of the game. I always have lots of projects in various stages of development at the same time. Some of them will work, but most of them won’t, and there’s always stuff I can loot from those “dead bodies” for other games.

I do really like having a design partner on a project though too. It’s so helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off of, and most ideas are made better when you have another brain thinking through them.

And sometimes it just takes the right deadline! For years I had wanted to make a Powerpuff Girls-like game about superheroic kids with a 1950s retro vibe, but I never really knew what form it should take. Last year, I ran into the One-Page RPG Jam (thanks to Richard Woolcock, creator of Tricube Tales), and used the constraints of that jam to finally make Cosmic Ray Kids.

Mario: ha! I didn't know that you had a page on itch and that you have the game "baywatch" there that I want to read and play. Thanks for sharing the links with me.

The truth is that what you say about collaborative authorship is very interesting to me, very few authors have actually mentioned it to me. I also think that it is important to have someone to discuss what you are creating with. I think it greatly enriches the process and makes it less selfish.

Before talking about your games. I'd like to know how you approach the mechanical design of games. What you said really resonated with me that you like that the mechanics should reinforce the themes of the games. At what point in the design do you start to think about the mechanics and how do you reinforce their themes with them? Can you give us an example of how this creative process happens for you?

Jesse Ross: Haha! That game is called “R’lyehwatch” , which is a play on “Baywatch”, the melodramatic lifeguard show from the 1990s, and “R’lyeh”, the name of the fictional sunken city where Cthulhu is. It’s a really silly game that I made with Jayme Antrim from Third Chair Games, and is a prime example of how having a good design partner makes a game so much better. In this case, he had the initial concept of a game about lifeguards fighting Cthulhu, I suggested the name, and then we cranked it out over a span of just a few months. I literally wouldn't have made the game without him, and in making the project with him, I ended up with a really great friend and game design collaborator.

I can say the same thing about Gabriel Robinson of Glowing Roots Press. He was one of the major contributors to my game Trophy, and he and I have been slowly working on a new game for the past few years called “The Piper’s Call” which answers the question, “what if Robin Hood and his Merry Men lived in a haunted, monster-filled forest?” He’s just one of the most creative, poetic, kind, and generous people in the world, and I feel so lucky to have him to bounce ideas off of.

I don’t always have a co-designer on my games, but I’m always sharing ideas with my game designer friends and trying to get my games in front of playtesters. All that early feedback is so helpful.

When I start creating a new game, I usually start by having in mind the type of stories I want the game to help tell. As an example, when Lauren McManamon and I were working on our game “Girl Underground”, we knew we wanted to make a game about being a curious girl going into a wonderful world and learning about herself while she was there: stories like “Alice in Wonderland” and “Wizard of Oz”. And we knew we wanted a Powered by the Apocalypse game because we knew the playbook structure would work well for the various fantasy companions the girl would pick up along the way.

Two features of those stories that we really wanted to emulate were 1. that the girl would learn about herself and change along the way, and 2. that the girl would face some significant challenge toward the end of the game and be fairly certain of overcoming it. The way we solved both of those was with our “Manners” system. The game offers a bunch of stereotypical Manners that girls are supposed to behave, such as “young ladies must never brag or show off” and “young ladies must never take up too much space.” When the girl pushes back against these Manners, she crosses them off and writes a Belief about herself and the world, which could be things like “I have talents worth sharing with the world” or “I can tell a king when he is acting foolish.”

Normally, when the girl does something in the game, she rolls 2d6 to see how she does. However, when the girl stands strong in her convictions (typically at the end of a session, when she's facing a powerful adversary), she rolls 1d6, plus another 1d6 for each Belief about herself she can incorporate into her action, then she takes the highest 2 dice to see how she does. By building up these Beliefs over the course of the game, then using them at the end, the mechanics reinforce the arc of the stories that inspired the game: growing up, learning about yourself, and using that new self-knowledge to face big challenges.

That's a long example, but I hope it helps explain how mechanics and theme can pair together and reinforce one another. And again, it all starts with researching and thinking through what kind of stories you want to see come out of the games you make.

Mario: Wow, that's a great example and I love that you linked it to the Girl Underground game. I appreciate you sharing this with us.

If you'd like, I'd like to talk about Trophy. The first time I read it was in English and, recently I read it in Spanish again (in fact it was when I tagged you on Twitter), I have to admit that a good job of translation and editing was done. Plus, the setting is really incredible and it's so simple to explain that I can't believe it.

I would like to know how the idea and concept for Trophy was created? Is there a story behind it?

Jesse Ross: I fell in love with the setting of the game “Symbaroum,” but I wanted a ruleset that focused less on combat and more on the horror of being an adventurer exploring an overwhelmingly large and frightning forest. I came to the realization that the forest could be seen as a kind of cosmic horror: impersonal, dangerous, and too big to fully understand. I was already a fan of Graham Walmsley’s microgame “Cthulhu Dark,” so I adapted the rules of that game to play in the world of Symbaroum.

Multiple playtests lead me to push the rules and setting further in my own direction. Importantly, I was inspired by the idea of the Devil’s Bargain from “Blades in the Dark” and the creative chaos that mechanic could introduce. So I brought all those influences together and created “Trophy” (later renamed to “Trophy Dark”). I was lucky enough to have it be selected by Jason Cordova—editor at the Gauntlet—to appear in the Gauntlet’s magazine “Codex,” specifically the issue “Codex Dark 2.”

Mario: And the rest is history. Wow, it really is amazing! I had no idea it was inspired by Symbaroum (one of the best settings I've ever read, by the way). There is one quote in particular from Trophy Dark that I love and that to me means what the game experience is: 《Fight to survive, but know that you are marked. You will be claimed. You will be the forest’s trophy》. It's a really powerful quote, I really congratulate you. And I really like it because it sums up the reason for the name of the game, would you mind tell us how you came to name it Trophy Dark?

Jesse Ross: Of course! The game was originally named “Trophy,” which has the dual meaning of being about treasure-hunters searching for trophies, but the treasure-hunters themselves being the trophies of the forest. When I decided to adapt the game rules for campaign-style play in the vein of the OSR, I named that game “Trophy Gold.” It made sense to me to change the name of the original game so that we could more easily differentiate the two games and use the name “Trophy” as the general name for both games in the collection.

The name “Trophy Dark” comes from a few different places: 1) it reinforces the dark and tragic tone of the game, 2) it shows the game’s connection to its two mechanical influences (“Cthulhu Dark” and “Blades in the Dark”), and 3) it refers to where the game first appeared (the “Dark 2” issue of Codex).

Mario: The truth is that you gave a great name to your game. When I understood the dual meaning of the name I loved it. Speaking of trophy gold, the Spanish publisher that translated you into Spanish announced this week that we will finally have it in Spanish. Can you tell us a little bit about this edition of the game and the adjustments you made to adapt it more to the OSR style?

Jesse Ross: Well, it started because I had a bunch of old-school modules I wanted to play, but I wanted to use something other than D&D or a retroclone. So I made a list of what I wanted for a game, and this was my list:

I want an OSR game that:

• only uses d6s

• only uses player-facing rolls

• has level-less spells

• uses conditions instead of HP

• doesn’t rely on levels

• doesn’t need rolling for damage

And then I said, “Hmmm... that sounds an awful lot like a game I already made. I wonder if I could take the core of Trophy and turn that into what I want.” The biggest change was creating the Hunt Roll and introducing the Hunt Token economy. The Hunt Roll was my replacement for the old-school random encounter roll, and took some inspiration from Brendan Strejcek’s Overloaded Encounter Die. The Hunt Token was inspired by Jason Cordova’s Labyrinth Move for Dungeon World.

One of the rules in Trophy Dark was that if you try to fight a monster, you die. I knew this new game, Trophy Gold, would at least have to allow the possibility to fight monsters (even if it wasn’t always smart or profitable). So I designed a new roll for combat, using some of the structure of the rolls from Trophy Dark.

To attack a monster, everyone in the fight says how they’re putting themselves in danger, then they roll 1 light-colored die, called their Weak Point. They hold onto that die, because the number on it will be important later.

Then, everyone rolls a dark-colored die to attack and we look at all the dice as a single pool. The only stat that a monster has is its Endurance, which is typically a number from 6–12. If the two highest dark dice in the roll are greater than or equal to the Endurance, the monster is defeated. If the dice don’t meet or beat the Endurance, then the players can add 1 more dark die to the pool and try again. However, anytime any of the dark dice matches a player’s Weak Point light die, then that player gets hurt. Each "round" of combat gives players a chance to narrate how the fight is going, and decide if they want to risk more harm by continuing the fight.

I’m really proud of the way the Combat Roll turned out, because it has tension, it has that risk-taking quality, and the roll itself goes very fast. It’s not a "war of attrition" you sometimes find in more traditional D&D-style games.

Whereas Trophy Dark says that you can’t fight monsters or you die, Trophy Gold has a rule that says if you don’t collect enough gold, you die. Your character is desperate and needs gold to survive, and you do that by making the dangerous decision to go into an ancient forest and the haunted ruins there. You can arm yourself with whatever equipment you think you might need, but you get all that gear on credit, so you need to come back with that much more gold. In Trophy Gold, the monsters are dangerous, but the need for more and more gold is the real killer.

Mario: For me trophy gold is still a mystery in terms of gameplay experience because I haven't played it. I had read about it before but I haven't had the chance, I think the modifications you have made sound very good, but I agree that the combat roll is what I find very interesting. I'm looking forward to see how it will be received in the Spanish community.

On the other hand, I see that the last two ‘smaller’ games you have successfully funded and published use the Apocalypse Engine. Both games seem to me very interesting and more risky in their approach if I'm honest. You have already published a well known game and translated into Spanish as the trophy series, what's next for Jesse Ross in terms of role playing games?

Jesse Ross: It's true, I do like Powered by the Apocalypse games, and even when I'm not using that system, the philosophy behind it inspires a lot of my work. My problem is that I always have too many ideas and not enough time, so I put a little bit of time into a lot of different games. Then when I feel particularly inspired, I push one of them to completion.

I have a couple of OSR-style games in the works right now, both of which I built up while playing duet games with my younger daughter over the past few years. One is called “Folktale” and is based on B/X D&D, and the other is called “Dragon Mail” and is about being a dragon-riding mail-delivering adventurer exploring a dynamically-created hex map. Those are still probably at least a year or two away from being available to the public.

In the more immediate term, I have two Trophy-adjacent projects I'm working on. One is the one I mentioned above: “The Piper’s Call”, which I'm working on with Gabriel Robinson. I'm also one of the organizers and the layout artist on a project called “Rooted in Crisis”, which is an eco-horror anthology with 5 different games based on Trophy, all exploring the climate crisis from different angles and in different environments. One unique feature of the project is that each game has been created by a game designer paired with a climate scientist or an environmentally-focused academic. You can learn more about that project at https://rootedincrisis.com/, and sign up for the Kickstarter here:

Rooted in crisis

I have a few other things in the works: a messy and dramatic superhero game, a solo game about being a knight in the vein of the film “The Green Knight”, a setting and series of adventures for “Monster of the Week” and other urban horror games, and lots more stuff. Hopefully one day I’ll get to them all!

Mario: Oh I love the premise of Dragon mail! I'm really looking forward to those games!

Jesse it's been really awesome to talk to you and get to know you a little bit more as a designer. It's been very interesting and fun, thank you so much for your time.

Jesse Ross: Thank you so much! It's been a delight talking to you, Mario!

Mario | La esquina del rol: Peter Eijk, welcome to La Esquina del Rol. I'm very happy to be able to talk to you. Ever since I read your interview with John from Exeunt Press, I knew I want to talk to you at some point, and coincidentally the opportunity came with the same game that was discussed in that interview. hahaha what a coincidence, I just realised!

Well, I'd like to start this interview by asking you who Peter Eijk is and what he finds in RPGs that keeps him doing interesting things for all of us?

Skeleton Code Machine

Interview: Peter Eijk

What I thought might be a single interview with a creator who used Python to help develop their game, turned into a series of three interviews! Previously I shared my recent conversations with M. Allen Hall and Spring Villager…

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3 years ago · 11 likes · 3 comments · Exeunt Press

Peter Eijk | Jimmy Shelter: Thanks for the invitation! I love your interviews, and I'm honored to be interviewed.

I'm Peter, but I go by Jimmy Shelter on most online places. I'm from the Netherlands living at biking distance from Amsterdam with my partner, two kids and three chickens. My day job is writing code.

I've been playing roleplaying games for a long time. I joined some classmates in their D&D campaign in the early 90s, using the D&D Rules Cyclopedia before switching to AD&D.

While in college I discovered online forums were people were discussing and playing play by post games. I tried some, but found it a hard medium to get a game going. In real life games were a bit sparse during that time. I felt a bit self conscious about having such a nerdy hobby. So, most my play was through collecting and reading roleplaying books, but without a group I slowly fell out of touch with the hobby, with my books winding up in a box when we moved.

Coming back to recent years: we had to hurry up with our home office suddenly due to the pandemic and after we finished, I unpacked some boxes and found my gaming books... I started selling some of them (GURPS and AD&D mostly), but kept a few. I joined some online groups again to sell my stuff, and then I learned about ZineQuest!

ZineQuest really opened my eyes about what TTRPGs could be and do. Rules light, very specific, solo, coop world-building games, so many different takes on what could be achieved through games. I backed quite a bunch, discovered TTRPG Twitter, Discords and, very importantly, game jams!

I published my first game jam entry in March 2021, and my first bigger game, A Visit to San Sibilia, a solo journaling game later in June, and I never stopped making games since.

I had been writing before, mostly short stories, but writing games clicked in a way that writing fiction never did. (To be honest, San Sibilia first appeared in a short story before it became the setting of a game).

Mario: I notice that making games is very important to you, almost a hobby in its own right hahaha! I like that a lot and, also, I like that you design solo roleplaying games!

I was looking at your website and social networks. I noticed that you are part of the Good Sleep Collective and I have that name stuck in my mind because when I translated Skyrealms I read that you, as a collective, were listed in the acknowledgements.

What is this collective, what does it pursue and how did it form into what it is today?

Peter: The Good Sleep Collective is a small group of TTRPG designers, writers and artists from Europe. We started at the end of 2021. We noticed we were often disconnected a bit from spaces we were in, due to timezone differences. It can be intimidating to log on to a big ttrpg discord and see hundreds of unread messages, and it can also hard to log off when it's getting late and the discussion is still on going.

Our objective is to create a small, supportive, diverse and uplifting private space with people with compatible time schedules (hence the Good Sleep!). We have about 25 members. The main thing we want to have is a safe space to post work in progress, and to share each others projects online. We have done some collective projects, but that's not the main goal.

Mario: oh! Very Nice! I love the idea, communities of designers are always great.

Back to you, as a game designer. Why did you decide to design solo RPGs?

Peter: Necessity! Well, that's part of it. When rediscovering roleplaying games in 2021, I learned about solo journaling games and got quickly fascinated by them. I loved how with cleverly crafted prompts, you can allow players to create such immersive, and original experiences.

For me the reading games and imagining of possible ways to play them has always been as much a part of play as actual playing the games. And creating prompts and tables for solo games for me also feels like play in a way.

While I've been creating solo games for a while, I saw solo games and group games as separate for a long time, seeing solo gaming as more introspective and group play as social.

Recently I was reminded of when I bought my first game book, the D&D Rules Cycloplodia. I asked in the game store if I could also play it alone, and I was told, yes, for sure! But I never found a way, it felt like I was missing something. A few months back I slowly started to learn more about HOW people were playing group games (or at least games I thought of as group games) in a solo mode.

Watching some youtube streams, and learning about oracles, and especially seeing/hearing how people used them, suddenly made it click for me. This was the impetus for my recent blog series about the elements of solo games, and the creation of solo procedures for Pine Shallows and the Passkey system.

Mario: Nice! I love your answers to my questions. You mentioned a lot of talking points for this interview with your last answer. Ha ha ha! But let's go step by step. First, let's talk about solo journaling games.

From what you've learned as a solo journaling designer, what is the philosophy and principles under which you currently design your own solo journaling games?

Peter: For my solo journaling games there are a few things I try to achieve. The first is having a specific ending. A lot of solo journaling games don't work towards a goal or ending, and while that makes picking them up anytime or pausing them easy, in my experience often play then peters out. That felt a bit unsatisfying.

When I encountered The Machine by Fen and Adera Slattery, I knew I wanted a similar feeling of an impending end. In A Visit to San Sibilia you know your visit to this ever-changing city will end at a point, and likewise in Hiria: The Eternal City you either catch up to your prey or they escape permanently.

Next is the very fine line between giving players prompts that are open enough for them to create their own story and world, and consistent and thematic enough to evoke a certain type of story.

When encountering actual plays and stories of people who played A Visit to San Sibilia I do see very common themes in peoples interpretations, but I am really surprised by the different directions players have taken their stories. It's so awesome to see what people do with your games!

For Hiria: the Eternal City I also tried to add a bit more player agency, which is something largely missing from journaling games: you draw or roll a prompt, interpret it, but there's not much choice. I tried to add a bit more places where a player can chose between different actions. It's up to the players if I succeeded with that!

Mario: It is very interesting what you mention, the idea of a specific ending, the curation of prompts, and the player agency in journaling games. So interesting! The first one was not clear to me before until now. Thanks for that.

The second point I want to talk about is a bit of a meta reflection. I've been reading your blog on analyzing solo procedures, and it seems wonderful (and I invite my readers to read your blog).

But, what have you learned from all these reflections on designing solo procedures for games that are not specifically for solo play?

Peter: For most roleplaying games you don't actually need that much extra work to be able play it solo, a small game loop and an oracle to help you answer any questions you might norally ask your GM. Of course with the addition or more random and oracles table you can make the experience smoother, but the basic elements are reasonably simple.

I'd advice any game designer to try it out, as it's a great tool to be able to playtest games!

Also it's great fun. I have to take my daughter to her sports two times a week, and I've been playing a solo game of Eco Mofos with just my phone (for rolling dice), a notebook and the rulesbook and it's a blast. A great way to kill some time in a relaxing way. Beats doomscrolling!

Mario: oh! Nice! Eco Mofos is so rad! I love that game!

Well, something we explore in these interviews is creativity and the creative processes that our interviewees follow. So, how do you approach your creative process when you design games?

Peter: Even as a kid I wanted to become a writer, I've always loved stories and creating them. But with a full time job and two small kids it's hard to find time. Somehow I always was thinking, when this happens, or when that changes, that is when I'll have time, but it never felt like enough time to actually start.

Four years ago, about a year before I started working on games, I did have a realization that I could wait until I had time to write, or I could just write in the time I did have.

I started doing the 100 Day Writing Challenge by Tim Clare, which is a great way to get started writing. Each episode is about 20 minutes long with a 10 minute exercise in the middle. A lot of exercises are very simple, just to get your creativity going, also very helpful for game writers.

Long story short: this is still how I work. A few nights a week I find a bit of time and work very piecemeal on a few projects. A few words, a few entries for a random table, one or two pages of layout. Sometimes I try to approach it a bit more structured, but to be honest, always tinkering on a few different projects might not be the most productive, but productive is what I am at my day job, this is something I do for fun!

Mario: Of course! A lot of what I do, like La Esquina del Rol, I do for fun and I totally understand what you're saying. What I have learnt over the last 4 years in this project is that the best time to do things is always now.

Talking about what you have done so far, what can you tell us about what you have written? What games can we find on your itch page?

Peter: Of course!

There is a bit too much to mention them all, but I can mention my bigger games.

A Visit to San Sibilia and Hiria: the Eternal City are both city focussed solo journaling games. What can I say, I like weird, ever changing cities. Especially San Sibilia has a special place in my heart, it being my first 'real' complete game.

With Pine Shallows I set to to create a rules light game inspired by movies like the Goonies & series like Stranger Things & Gravity Falls. In Pine Shallows you portray small town kids going on adventures and solving mysteries.

If you like the genre of Kids on Bikes, but are looking for something less crunchy, check it out! I just released a solo supplement for it, so it's now playable as a group, either with a GM or coop, or on your own. It includes a setting and enough random tables to provide enough material to play hours and hours.

Besides those games, it's mostly small adventures, jam entries & experiments. Creating stuff for game jams is a great way to get started as a game designer!

Mario: I love your Pine Shallows game, I recommended it in my monthly news in Spanish.

Well, finally Peter, what are you working on now that we can know about, can you share us some scoop?

Peter: Thanks for the recommendation!

As usual I'm working on a few things at the same time. I've been playing Eco Mofos solo recently, which sparked some ideas. I'm working on an adventure for it, which required some chase & vehicles rules, so I started with those. That's my current project that's closest to completion.

Next to that I have two other major projects. The first is another solo journaling game: The Unease, in which you found an artwork by a long forgotten artist. The artwork has a weird effect on you and you slowly uncover more of its history. The idea of the Unease has been with me for a long time, but I still haven't cracked how I want to do this mechanically.

Another one is the Forevernever, which would be the second Meddlesome Kids game, after Pine Shallows. The Forevernever is inspired by portal fantasy like Oz, the Narnia Chronicles, Neverland, Labyrinth, etc. I actually started on Pine Shallows and the Forevernever at the same time, but focussed on finishing Pine Shallows first. The current version is almost 3000 words, but the system evolved quite a bit while focussing on Pine Shallows.

I wouldn't dare to predict which I finish first, but I'd love to hear which of these people look forward to the most!

Mario: Oh I'm really looking forward to those games!

Peter it's been really awesome to talk to you and get to know you a little bit more as a designer.

It's been very interesting and fun, thank you so much for your time!

Peter: Thank you so much for giving me this space!

I'm loving the interviews you published so far, honored to be among these great people!

Mario | La esquina del rol: Jim Hall, welcome to La esquina del rol!

I see that you have been actively publishing since 2021, and that your illustrations have appeared on several relevant and award-winning products within the scene. But let's start at the beginning.

Why did you decide to work in the indie scene and how did that decision lead to the creation of ?

Jim Hall: Leading up to Covid, I was really into board games and D&D 5E. So I started trying to create board games. My goal was to make games in public on TikTok, having the belief that anyone can make games. That’s when I started Brooklet Games.

During Covid I started making magic items and releasing them on my Patreon account. Mostly for 5E. Around this time I was introduced to the OSR. I fell in love with the art and innovative feeling of the community on Twitter. It inspired me to write system agnostic items and my “Mysterious Location” adventure hook generators. Around that time I got a hold of Cairn and my first issue of Knock! That sealed the deal and I started writing OSR inspired adventures. 

All the ideas and creations from the scene kept inspiring me to make more things, and still do. So I have stuck with it ever since!

Mario: It seems that Covid has brought us all together at the table of the indie  scene. Also, I started as 'La Esquina del Rol' around that time, and for some similar reasons.

I am surprised that in such a short time, since 2021, you have so many beautiful and interesting projects published (20 projects). Many of them are illustrated by you. I see that Cairn was a turning point for you. (Also, it was for me).

The themes in your projects are very clear: forests, swamps and really small creatures. What inspires you about them and what has been your creative process to create adventures, mini settings and role-playing games from those themes that seem to be your leading edge?

Jim Hall:  The locations and inhabitants of my projects are greatly inspired by those places I have loved the most. The damp, lush environments of my home. I grew up in South-East Michigan, an area with many low hills, marshes, swamps, ponds and streams. These places were my escape as a child. It’s no wonder they should continue to be as an adult in my writing/illustrations. 

For my process it usually starts with a simple idea or inspiration. For example, Worldlings was inspired by Okro’s artwork which made me think of tiny spirits. Also, for a while I wrote prompts and had my Patreon patrons vote for their favorite. Then I would write an adventure for the prompt. That’s where Vortex Isles, Escape the City, and others came from.  

Next I will usually create some artwork. The act of drawing pulls me into the world and gets me excited for writing. Maps are a useful place to start as well because they provide some structure to the writing. 

I try to include some sort of rising tension throughout my adventures. Whether that’s going into more dangerous territory like in Vortex Isles or the dragon triggered spore bursts in Arbon. I also try to keep locations quick and easy to read. The goal is to make something easy to use at the table. 

One thing that I enjoy is role play based interactions. Non-combat social encounters are very interesting to me, especially when playing as a group. It’s one of my favorite parts about GMing. Also, it is a fun way of feeding information to the players. So I will usually start adventures in those situations and then raise the risk levels from there. 

Writing Beetle Knight, a full game, has been quite a different experience and a much slower burn. It still started with art as inspiration, in this case the work of François Licata. I was inspired to make an illustration, the cover art for Beetle Knight. Next, instead of diving into a map, I started creating mechanics. I had some ideas for dice contest rolls so I decided to write them down and combine them with a bug filled society. Around that time I was also running a bug-centered game. We were playing a wacky Cairn hack but my friends were gracious enough to play test Beetle Knight. That’s when I started iterating on the rules. It took off from there!

Mario: It is very interesting that your creative process is very flexible. Also, apparently, it has given you very good results hahaha! I really like everything I've read these days about your work!!!

But, well, let's talk about those Beetle Knight mechanics. The contest rolls for me are really very elegant. It was what made me fall in love with your game. Tell me, how did you come up with those contest rolls, and what were the elements that inspired you to make them that way? 

Jim Hall:  Thanks for the kind words!

So, contest rolls are made when you try something with an uncertain outcome. You roll your ability die (like a d6+1 or d10) and the arbiter rolls a challenge die. If you beat the Arbiter’s roll, you’re successful. 

Where did this idea originate? I had an idea inspired by Ursula K Le Guinn’s Earthsea novels of two very powerful wizards in distant towers casting epic spells at the other and their surrounding areas. The idea goes something like this: You learn words of power. As you combine the words of power you can build up large combo spells. The opponent can do the same though, and can counter yours as you cast.

At this point I’m trying to imagine how to mechanically represent this. Perhaps each  word has a die associated with it.  Perhaps you roll against an opponent’s word die using another word die to see if you can counter it. And there it is! A Contest roll. 

I had never seen this resolution mechanic anywhere before but it turns out I’m not the first to think of these types of rolls. For example, Lost in Fantasy World by Diogo Nogueira uses a d6 versus roll.

Mario: Ah, yeah!, I remember that game created by Diogo, yes, you're right.  But, I think I like the contest rolls even more because of the difficulty levels that are assigned through different dice. And well, that mechanic is very good for solo games.  I like that a lot.

Another thing I like is the emblem and resolution mechanic.  Tell me a little bit about how it works and what was your source of inspiration for this, which together with the contest rolls make them the heart of the Beetle Knight game.

Jim Hall:  Emblems started as something interesting to do during a tie. It used to be that a tie was just a failure. However, they happen pretty frequently so I made two boon tables and had players roll a boon on it on a tie. It made the game more fun. Hooray! 

But then I had the opposite problem, it didn’t happen enough. Also, rolling on the tables seemed to restrict player choice and creativity in one of the coolest points in the mechanics. So based on a recommendation from Chris Shorb I created a resource called “Resolve” which builds up when you hit a tie. Resolve is used to activate magical tokens called “Emblems” either as an action by spending Resolve or on a tie. I removed the previous spell casting mechanic and that brought us to the current state. Now, ties are more interesting and players have plenty of options, especially when you start combining Emblems in cool ways. 

Mario: I really like to dig into the mechanics of the game. It is very interesting to know those decisions that generated interesting and fun game mechanics...

But, before finishing with the interview, the Quickstart of Beetle Knight will be translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Also, you published the system under an open CC license (for which I thank you).

What plans do you have for Beetle Knight in the future, and what other plans do you have for Brooklet Games?

Jim Hall: Right now, I’m really focused on finishing the accompanying zines to the Beetle Knight core book so that we can ship everything this winter. Those include “Elmroot Glimmer” and the “Litterfall World Guide”.

After that I hope to encourage others to hack Beetle Knight (it is under Creative Commons) and make adventures and other things compatible with the system. 

I would like to write more for Beetle Knight too. I have lots of ideas! Also, I have a project in the works tentatively called “True Tales” which is a hex crawl generator through a land of fae magic. Who knows if I’ll ever finish it. Generally speaking, I aim to put out around 1 big project a year for the next few years. 

Mario | La esquina del rol: Hodag, welcome to La esquina del rol! I am so happy to chat with you. I have been a follower of you for a few years now, and I really love your art and your own style!

I would like to start this interview by asking you (for those who live under a rock and don't know you), Who is Hodag RPG and what do you do in relation to the TTRPG scene?

Hodag RPG: Hi, Mario! It's a great honor to be interviewed by you. Thank you!

I'm Hodag, I am an OSR/NSR illustrator originally from the Great State of Wisconsin! Born about an hour outside of Lake Geneva, The birthplace of Dungeons and Dragons itself!

I've been really fortunate to work on many awesome games and collaborate with so many awesome people.

Mario: Wow, I didn't expect you to live so close to Lake Geneva, hahaha! that's so rad!

Hodag, I'd like to know how you got into tabletop roleplaying, was it as a player/GM or... later as an ilustrator?

Hodag RPG: Haha, yeah! I was born in the Racine/Kenosha area south of Milwaukee. I claim Sheboygan as home, as that was the place I had my first ever solid friend group who happened to be my first ever DnD group!

I was invited by my first ever DM to join the group at an overnight fundraiser in Fountain Park, called Shanty Town my Freshman year of High School (9th Grade). It was a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser sponsored by a local church, but we used it as an excuse to play DnD all night in a cardboard castle we made with Duct Tape and old refrigerator boxes! It was 2nd edition, just stiff my friends cobbled together via disparate books, written down from old Baldurs Gate games and lots of "Rulings" on the fly.

One game and I was HOOKED! The next week I took my paycheck from bagging groceries to by the 3e Player's Handbook and the rest is history! This October will be my 24th anniversary of Roleplaying!

Mario: Wow! 24 years! That's quite a long time. I think it's great that you remember it so well and how meaningful it was to you.

I wonder at what point you decided to take the plunge and start writing things and illustrating tabletop role-playing games.

And... maybe another question I'd like to ask you is how did you get from there to where you are today?

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Hodag RPG: Great Questions! Well, I'm a lifelong artist, starting with an I'll fated attempt by my Paternal Grandmother to draw Batman for me (the first thing I ever drew was out of frustration, as she didn't draw his ears long enough, to my liking). I took matters into my own hands, Haha.

Most of my childhood was spent drawing my favorite DC Superheroes and Star Wars fan art, and as a teen I decided I wanted to Draw Comics. I tried at that from my early teens until my early thirties, when a conversation with a comics professional hero of mine relayed a story to me that made me realize I didn't want to draw Comics, I was an artist who liked to draw Superheroes.

I stopped pursuing Sequential Art and Started gearing up to do my other favorite subject: Sci Fi and Fantasy RPG illustrations. I learned a lot trying to break into comics, and the speed necessary to draw comics actually helped my prolific output. I was actually planning on debuting my art and looking for gigs at GARYCON in early 2020... which was canceled one month before the whole world shut down due to the pandemic.

But, with the online boom during Quarantine, I was actually able to meet and work with people across the world just starting out! Lemonade from lemons and all.

Writing is always secondary, to me. I'm not very good at it, but my games do have an "auteur" quality to them, they say!

Mario: In an interview I was talking to Johan Nohr, he told me that since he was very young his illustrations have always been as we all know them, of course they have been perfected over time and experience, but in essence he has always illustrated in this very particular way. He had been doing it since he played role-playing games with his friends when he was a teenager.

In your case, how did you find that particular style that characterizes you? At what point did you say this is my style? And who do you consider your biggest influences?

Hodag RPG: I always describe my style "Y2k meets B/X"... definitely old school in form and function, but with a flair of that 3rd Edition "Dungeonpunk" style, and heavy undertones of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings when it comes to fantasy, which is now and has always been my preference. I love all the old DnD art from Bell to Brom, and especially Titans like Trampier, Otus, Dee, Elmore and Jenell Jaquays, may she rest in peace.

My ALL TIME favorite DnD Artist is Justine Mara Andersen, who I have adored ever since I bought the 3e Herobuilder's guide. Her very clean, very evocative and highly emotive illustration style captured my imagination early in my interest in the hobby, and I've been lucky enough to make her acquaintance and express that love for what how she illustrates.

I always hear that I have expressive characters, and people like that I give my characters alot of personality and context clues via wardrobe, posture, facial expressions, etc...I thry to make each Character or Setting unique!

I didn't really develop into a "serious" illustrator with a style or set of styles until about 2018/2019.

Mario: Nice! I love how do you describe your style!!!

Well, something we explore in these interviews is the creative processes that our interviewees follow. So, how do you approach your creative process when doing what you do?

Hodag RPG: This is going to sound a little like I'm bragging, but I promise you I'm not: I don't really have a process.

I might have to consult specifications or prompts, but usually I just start drawing and it's almost like I turn my brain off and it just pours out of the pen itself. Can't explain it. Unhelpful, but true haha.

Mario: hahaha that's fine, no problem. Actually, just because there is no process, doesn't mean there isn't one. In itself, not having one is having one.

It happened to me, when I wrote an adventure for the core book of the Spanish Edition of Primal Quest, that I realised in writing I simply don't have a real process. I just had the ideas in my head and started writing. But, this doesn't happen to me in other things I do.

I've seen that on your Itch page you have some adventures, games and other game supplements of yours. Although you've told me you don't really like writing, but I think it's interesting to see how flexible your creativity is in another task.

Is it the same with writing or do you have a process when you write?

Hodag RPG: I feel like writing is hard, but my friend Alan Bahr (namedrop) gave me some good advice when I was stuck on BEYOND! THE HYPERTRENCH!..."Just keep writing". Great advice honestly. I just keep going through and then doubling back to edit and fix errors, scrap ideas, and rewrite. I guess everyone does that tho? Maybe.

I like to "make" more than I like to "write", but the writing is part of the "making" I guess. I have a lot of fun making, but I'm a big headache for the editors, haha.

Mario: So when it comes to writing you are like me hahaha I understand you perfectly, I am very unstructured when it comes to thinking creatively and sometimes I just get carried away. The more I think about something, the less I advance in its development. I like to do. Part of starting these interviews has been knowing how others do it and it is interesting to find people who do things like you.

Let's move on to another topic, I would like to know why you have decided to become known as Hodag? Can you tell us the story behind them? (of course, if there is one).

Hodag RPG: In 2002, as a sophomore, I met a kid in my second ever DnD group after moving to the Fox Valley Area in Wisconsin. We got along okay but weren't friends, just kind of like, acquaintances. I moved away and came back after I graduated at a different place, but he was still finishing up his senior year and he was good friends now with another one of my good friends I had made up there. We got reintroduced and from 2005 to 2013 we were best friends. We used to make all of kinds of comics and games, watch movies and hang out constantly. In a lot of ways, we were polar opposites... he joined the military and fought overseas, I was an anti-war peacenik. He was guarded, I was open. He believed that the only way to become better was to "hack away at the unessential", my philosophy was always keep expanding upwards and outwards.

We really had a yin/yang thing going on, we just flowed together. There was just such a strong friendship that from the day we became friends to his last day on earth, we were just completely in sync. When he was overseas, and I don't know why, we started calling each other Ursa Minor and Ursa Major-Little Bear and Big Bear. He wanted an older brother his entire life, and I was blessed to be that person in his life.

After he returned home from the War, he spent some time at a Veterans Hospital in Milwaukee. We talked alot and we created THE HEROIC ORIGINAL DICE ADVENTURE GAME in a weekend in October of 2013. In December of that year, he unfortunately lost his battle with depression, and now belongs to the night sky.

When I decidedly to become a fantasy illustrator, I wanted to honor his memory so I became Hodag in honor of our last project, to keep his memory alive. The HEROIC ORIGINAL DICE ADVENTURE GAME can be found on my itch page, Hodagrpg.itch.io, which includes all of our original text plus stuff collated from notes and plans and almost entirely art I did for it in 2013 if you want to see my earliest attempts at old school art.

For publication. I miss him every day, I will always carry him with me. He was a brilliant creative mind lost too soon, and I can't even imagine what we'd have been able to create together if he was still alive.

Mario: That is a really great story. And that your alias was inspired by the name of the last project you did with your friend, it really seems like a great way to honour his memory. You left me speechless, honestly. It's a great way to honour someone's memory.

Well, let's move on. We all change over time, and what we do changes as well. Looking back your art from this moment, what are your three favourite illustrations, and why are they?

Hodag RPG: I like this piece called (1) "Struggle" a lot. I was practicing some old timey techniques and it's got this awesome warrior woman going toe to toe with like a kind of Orc guy.

I also love (2) "Spike Pit' from You Meet In A Tavern/You Die In A Dungeon, where an unlucky Dwarf is falling into Spikes.

There is of course, also (3) "Wilderness Classes" which was a Sorceror, Ranger, Barbarian and Druid that I did just for fun a few years ago

Mario: I like your choices, although I personally like your pieces that are science fiction. hahaha! I find them very interesting!

Well, we are currently facing situations that are generating tension in the community. All social networks are being used to train AI. Before, social media was a means to promote the work of illustrators like you, but now the rules have changed for the worse. What do you think the future holds for your colleagues and what can we do to continue using social media as a meeting point?

Hodag RPG: My honest reaction is that we SHOULDN'T have to worry about it. My only hope lies in that AI now seems to be eating itself, becoming an abstraction of an abstraction.

I would like to send a message to all artists fighting the good fight that we can and will win. The one thing they never counted on was people being able to tell what was made with a soul behind it and what wasn't.

It's illegal, it's theft even if in the public domain. If a person can be attributed, it should be attributed to them.

Mario: I agree with you, I think it is important to regulate in this sense and that no one is affected. I have many illustrator friends whom I appreciate, and they have my full support as a collective.

Changing the subject a bit, I would like to know what you are working on now. Both in terms of the projects you've been collaborating on and what you're working on as your own.

Hodag RPG: Wow! Yeah, I'm doing loads of work right now. I don't know what's all been announced yet but I can point out stuff like Deadbeats, Footfall, Wheels of the Wasteland, BX Bestiary Vol.2, No Nazis in Valhalla, Death Game, Campfire Scouts, Nuked!: Adventures, Smacked Down: Book of 1000 Holds and Advanced Fantasy Dungeons if you're looking for stuff I've done the last two or three months.

As for my own projects, alot of them on on the backburner now, but I've got a secret Superhero game in the works that leans heavily into the Superhero Films from the Aughts and A New Edition if BENEATH! THE DUNGEONFLOOR! called Dungeonfloor Accelerated funding in late Autumn, and a setting adventure in Candle 4 based in my campaign notes for "The Wheel Cities", which will be compatible with most OSR games.

Mario: So rad! There are a lot of very interesting projects you are involved in. But, Hodag, how can our readers contact you for commissions or to follow your work?

Hodag RPG: I'm reachable online almost everywhere as HodagRPG! Also, feel free to contact me at hypertrench(a)gmail.com!

Mario | La esquina del rol: David Blandy, Welcome to La esquina del rol! Thank you very much for this opportunity. It's an honour to have you here. Seriously, thank you very much.

I've been fascinated to learn who you are outside of the scene. It was something I really didn't know about you.

But, for those who don't know you, I'd like to start by asking you about you. Who is David Blandy, who is he in the indie scene and why are you doing great things in the scene?

David Blandy: No thank you very much for the invitation! I’m really happy and honoured to be talking like this in the company of so many great designers.

So outside the scene I’m a video and performance artist, trying to make work about how we make ourselves, through the stories we tell ourselves and the images we create and consume. That’s meant thinking a lot about inequalities and how malleable the world is, how it can changed through thinking of new ways to live. As an artist, life is constant flux, and money is never certain, something I’m very aware of with my two now teenage kids.

I rediscovered roleplay with my kids. They were getting older (this was around 2015), and I wanted to do something with them that wasn’t screen-based. Fifth edition had just come out, and my friend Dan (artist for Eco Mofos) showed me a 1980s D&D red box that he’d just got off eBay. I realised that all the images in those booklets were seared into my mind. It wasn’t really nostalgia, more a recognition of an intense emotion. So I decided to try playing again. My kids and I had some wild adventures, and Dan encouraged me to start a group with friends in Brighton where we live, which is still going after 7 years, and was really important over lockdown. Anyway, I saw a potential in roleplay, the way that it could take a group to other worlds, to inhabit other bodies. Maybe I could try to bring some of my art ideas, of changing the world through collaboration and challenging power, of finding hope in sometimes hopeless times, to RPGs. Mostly this was an act of ridiculous hubris- there are so many better designers making incredible stuff - but I fell in love with the process of trying to craft these worlds, and making spaces that I wanted to explore and share. Within the scene? I don’t know. I think a few people know who I am through Lost Eons and now Eco Mofos. I got really into the indie/OSR scene through discord, especially the FKR Collective server. Lost Eons really came out of that space.

I’ve been taking TTRPGs into art spaces. I think it’s an incredible art form that has been ridiculously underappreciated. The difficult thing is that for me one of the important factors of the “art” is the intangible thing that happens at the table. Its internal, inside the minds of the players, and galleries are places so focused on the visual, the spectacular. The thing I’m most proud of is an event I put together with writer Jamie Sutcliffe at a gallery in London, where we held a day symposium talking about the space between art and TTRPGs, with designers Chris McDowall, Chris Bissette, Samuel Mui, Zedeck Siew and others. It was a good day.

Mario: Wow! As I told you before the interview, your background and the links you establish with the TTRPGs outside of our scene caught my attention. Many artists are designing and experimenting with role-playing games. That seems great to me because we are seeing really interesting artistic and gaming proposals. In my opinion, without being an expert on the subject, art went from being a decorative element to accompany the rules to becoming a fundamental element of the game itself that tells us more than just stories. A manifesto. How do you perceive this space of coincidence and innovation between art and TTRPGs?

David Blandy: I think a lot of artists becoming interested in games, particularly TTRPGs, are coming from performative or participatory practices, seeing that a lot of the problems that they are coming up against when engaging an audience are being dealt with by an art form that’s already 50 years old. Many of these artists come from a place that is looking for a way to create that both imagines a different way to run society and doesn’t create yet more commodities for the world. They make things to sell, but I guess we all have to eat.

If I think about my (very long) journey into ttrpgs, I started making paintings, but wanted to connect more with my lived existence, so started using “found objects” (art term for using things you find lying about to make your work). Then I realised the objects that meant the most to me were pop cultural artifacts, comics, records, games; so I started doing performance where I’d try to embody the games, videoing myself doing fighting game moves for real, and embodying songs, lipsyncing to songs that I love, often by people from very different socio-economic backgrounds. I then wanted to immerse the audience in the work, inside a found object of sort, so started making installations, artworks that the viewer could walk around in. So for me ttrpgs were the next step, making a space the audience, the players, could live in.

Mario: Wow, I hadn't thought of it that way until now. What an interesting approach to role-playing games!!!

One thing I'm looking for with these interviews is to understand the creative process of creators like you related to TTRPGs. You have two very interesting long games, even one of them I didn't know it was yours until I started my research about you (lost eons). How is your creative process to create those worlds and games that you want your players to play?

David Blandy: Both Eco Mofos and Lost Eons began from the same idea; how do we have hope about a future after inevitable climate change? I wanted to build a space so players could experience a little pf what it's like to live as a posthuman, where the human body has drastically alterered, but also in a world that has recovered somehow, and changed, from the stress that humanity has put it under. My approach to worlding is very simple. After researching, through looking at history, science and sci fi, I try to imagine a particular place and think about what it would be like to live there. What would I see when I woke up in the morning? how would it feel? What would the people around me be doing? What are the different environments and creatures I'd encounter? Of course, tied in with that are thoughts about how people and their creations, like corporations, technology, social structures and norms, shape the world around us, and equivalents of those may evolve into things that we'd encounter in that future world.

These more abstract worlding ideas went together with some gaming principles that I wanted to explore. How do you make a game quick to start, quick to play, preferably with no prep, and yet still feel fun and make you want to explore more? How do you minimise book-keeping, so it's not hard to keep track of things, yet have a rich evolving world to inhabit? With Eco Mofos, I was also conscious of wanting to make it easy to convert old modules into this world, to have it be an extension of OSR play into a near-future space. This is why I ended up working with the bones of Into the Odd and Cairn as a starting point, games that had already thought through that issue and had come to very elegant solutions. The more I study both Chris McDowall and Yochai Gal's work, the more impressed I am. Every facet of the minimal rules works like a cog in a larger machine.

Mario: Nice! Hmm... I think I'm still obsessed with Into the Odd and, of course, Cairn. Right now they are two pillars that I can hardly get out of my head when analyzing new tabletop role-playing games.

However, Lost Eons is very interesting to me. I love the concept, it calls me to play. You say on your itch page: "Lost Eons is an innovative FKR-inspired combination of Blades in the Dark and 24XX, with an improvised card-based magic system".

And I have to tell you that the magic system using poker cards fascinates me. Tell me a little about the innovations you brought into Lost Eons mechanically and how are these mechanics related to the concept of the game?

David Blandy: Ha, thanks for looking into that! I had a lot of fun with Lost Eons mechanically, and the magic system was at the heart of that. I wanted magic to be strange, dangerous and mysterious. Magic in Wizard of Earthsea (one of my favourite fantasy series) is incredibly visceral, and defined by True Names of everything in the universe. So I created a word-based system, a bit inspired by Maze Rats, but mostly just by discussions I’d been having in the FKR Collevtive Discord, and had the words linked to cards. I liked the idea of these being hidden words that came to you as you slept, and were forgotten at the end of the day. And this aligned with my constant preoccupation with reducing book-keeping between sessions. If someone forgot what cards they had last time, no problem, it’s a new day, here’s your new cards.

So each of the cards indicates a word on the table of Magic, some pretty standard, (Fly, Speed, Grow) others a bit more funky, like Cheese, Spurt, Egg, Stink. Players really enjoy it, trying to find ways to use the words they’re given, or combine them for fun effects- Grow Egg to grow an egg around the party as a protective shell for the night, or Rewind Flood to clear the way of water. Thinking now, it would have been nice to introduce something like this as an alternative magic system for Eco Mofos, but I was keen to have it be very compatible with both old OSR adventures and Into the Odd and Cairn.

I put lots of ideas into Lost Eons. Adding a “Soul Die” to the Skill dice of 24XX to create a bell curve of success, creating a little dice pool, and having wounds to track rather than Health Points (or nothing in 24XX, which I actually love as a system). I was trying to consolidate all sorts of ideas around improvised and no-prep play, which might be accessible for players who had never used that style before.

Conceptually I suppose it was trying to introduce a new way of playing to more traditional gamers, for the new world, the post-human world that I was introducing with the setting in Lost Eons, the flooded land that used to be the fenland of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. I wanted people to experience what it would be like to live after the effects of climate change have really been felt.

Mario: Yes, of course, it's something that is also perceived aesthetically. That's why I love the layout and art direction of Lost Eons. It makes me feel something different, something close but distant at the same time (or maybe not?!), like a be in a posthuman environment. It's really weird feeling. And I think you wanted this, didn't you?

David Blandy: Yes, that was what I was trying to create, a way to feel what it’s like to live in a radically different time in a radically different body. A weird empathic dream, something that ttrpgs are really good at. Ttrpgs are empathy engines, they place you inside a different self. In some ways the character is an avatar, but in many ways it’s just you, like Sam in Quantum Leap.

Mario: Nice! Then we have eco mofos. Something thematically similar but with a totally different chassis. You mentioned looking for more compatibility, if I remember correctly. But what's different about this proposal?

David Blandy: Yeah Eco Mofos was a few things. One of them was exploring the idea from Lost Eons of the ones left behind. In Lost Eons everyone is emerging from vast underground silos after millennia living and evolving below ground, discovering this verdant world above. Eco Mofos was about the people who didn’t make it into the bunkers and had to find their own way, the dispossessed, the weirdos, the Punks. And you’re exploring this reviving world to try to find a safe space to found a new community, like in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. There’s something a bit ethereal about Lost Eons, and I wanted to make something more direct, in your face, maybe a bit stupid. It started as a hack of Micah Anderson’s bastards. which I called Solar Bastards, a solarpunk game with attitude, basically as a shitpost. Then it got out of hand, and became this big thing that had almost no relationship to Micah’s game, so I felt I had to rename it to avoid confusion. Thus Eco Mofos was born.

Mario: I have now read the ASHCAN version of Eco Mofos. There are several things on my mind that I am trying to process. The first one is the art by Daniel Locke. Wow! wow! That vibe the illustrations have, it's just amazing. How was it working with him? Did you work on it together or how was that creative process?

David Blandy: Dan and I have known each other for 20 years- we met at art school in London, and he was a big part of why we moved down to Brighton. He’s my best friend. We’ve worked on a few projects together before, including a graphic novel (called Out of Nothing). As I mentioned before, Dan is a big part of why I got back into ttrpgs. So we’re on a very similar wavelength. So I was working on Eco Mofos, talking about it for a while. He was really busy doing illustration for his graphic novels and stuff. Then he got Covid and in that weird state decided to read Eco mofos. And he got really excited about it. That’s when I did the itchfunding for the game, to try to buy a bit of Dan’s time to actually work on some images for it, to see what he would make of the world. And what he came up with was so cool, mixing all sorts of references to folk movements like the Kibbo Kift, Spanish revolutionaries and twists on classic D&D images. He really understood the text, and took it in unexpected directions sometimes, which is what I love about collaboration- seeing what an idea sparks in someone else’s mind. I’m not really interested in illustration, trying to get people to make an image I have already formed. I’m much more interested in the image the words form in another’s head, especially a head as eclectic and wild as Dan’s. As Dan started making work to fit this thing, this strange near-future, I kept trying to encourage him to go weirder, to not be worried about fidelity but make it his own thing, to fully own what he was doing. To the extent that I now think we have a shared vision of the world of the game, that neither of us came up with, but was born through the collaboration.

Mario: I ask this last question a lot in my interviews because I like to explore these collaborative creative processes. I've found very good examples in my other interviews, and I see I've found another one in the two of you. You both have achieved a very interesting synergy. The results are there.

So the second thing that strikes me is the twist you gave to ItO. Having luck as a stat and the mechanics of it is great to me. And introducing it into your game was a very interesting choice. (It's something I really like about Bastards. Also, the simplicity of presenting each dungeon). But. tell our readers what other adjustments and additions you made to the system to adapt it to the game concept you had in mind?

David Blandy: Giving Luck as a stat was a nod to other British games, like the Fighting Fantasy choose your own adventure books that I grew up on and Troika! that Daniel Sell built on that engine. Luck is there in Into the Odd, as a flat d6 roll, but I thought it elliot be interesting to turn it into a resource like in Call of Cthulhu, where you can choose to use your stat to bolster a bad roll. But the consequence is things can be very difficult from there on, as Luck affects the Weather and other in-game events. So the player is faced with an interesting choice in the moment. But it’s a stat that tends towards the mean (10) as it goes up when you fail a roll, up when you succeed. So if you get lucky, it’s harder to get lucky later on.

The main twist is Burdens, which I borrowed (with permission) from early builds of Mythic Bastionland. Instead of Fatigue, itself a hack of core Into the Odd from Cairn, Burdens are emotional states that fill up your inventory, the idea of being burdened by internal difficulties. And they are removed by player action. Like if you’re burdened by Sad, you have to share a deep secret or indulge in a shameful vice to be rid of it‭.‬ Or if you’re.

Enraged, you must unleash your anger on the world or refuse to engage in violence‭.‬ I introduced the double resolution to create, again, interesting choices, but also to add character and heart to the game. The Punks aren’t just avatars, they’re living beings with emotional motivations. It introduces something that people might call Storygamey into an OSR chassis.

Mario: I like what those burdens bring to the story and character growth. I notice you are very interested in exploring those elements of character growth and now I understand it with what you were explaining to me before. I really like this interest in design that I notice you have.

The third thing that caught my attention and is related to what I said before, was this mechanic of life paths. What was your design idea regarding these elements, because I see that you touch them independently from the idea of character growth?

David Blandy: Life paths are there as an aspect of worlding as much as character building. It reinforces that this is a dangerous place- each decade you’ve got a 1-in-6 chance of dying in the wastes! It’s a mini-game to get the group or a solo player into the world, ready to make difficult decisions- “well I’ve made my character, Jolt Winter. Do I want to risk her existence for the possibility of an extra ability? Maybe once. Twice?” It’s broad strokes where the direct influence, Traveler, is quite granular. It was a way of trying to encourage players to understand that these are fragile people in a hostile world, but also just poses the question “what was their life up to this point” without necessitating reams of backstory writing. It cements the character’s place in the world.

Mario: I like that very much. Let's think ahead. You will finish the shipments to your backers. You'll be happy and more relaxed at home. What do you think will follow for you as a designer? Will you complete the trilogy of games you already started with Lost Eons and Eco Mofos? Or where will you direct your creativity?

David Blandy: Ha! That’s hard to imagine right now, in the thick of sending the final files off to the printers… but once we’re there, for me it’s all about adventures and settings. I’ve been doing some bits of adventure design, like reformatting Palace of the Silver Princess for Cairn and making A-Hole in the Ground and the Art Lover, but I’m really excited about the possibilities there. And Zedeck Siew, Daniel Locke and I have plans for something that could be really interesting, but I probably can’t say more than that yet. But then I’ve just put out World Engine, a little 4 page diy guide to making games in the vein of 24XX and What’s so cool… and I really enjoyed putting that together. So just continuing to follow the work I guess, seeing what comes next. I’d love to start publishing other people’s work through Copy/Paste Co-Op, that’d be fun. To help more weird things into the world.

Mario:We will keep an eye on your work. And to finish this interview that has been a lot of fun for me, what are you playing or reading right now about the hobby that you really like so much that you would like to recommend it to all the people who read us?

David Blandy: It’s been really great to talk, thank you for all the questions and looking so deeply into the work. I’m really excited by adventures right now, so I’d like to mention Feast by Chris Bissette, The Isle by Luke Gearing, Wet Grandpa by Evey Lockhart and Rise of the Blood Olms by Yochai Gal, Garbage Barge by Amanda Lee Franck. All of them work as both tight adventures but are also really evokative spaces, implying an entire setting. Wet Grandpa’s movement from weird west to quasi-mythological is particularly inspiring. I also have a real soft spot for mini skirmish games (that’s something else I’d like to have a go at designing actually) and yet again Chris McDowall has made an incredible ruleset in The Doomed. I’m going to try to persuade Dan to make some stuff to play that with- he’s an expert scratch-builder along with his art skills. I’ve also got to mention Iko, who has been doing great things in the space- Skyrealms is so beautiful and the Lost Bay is a visceral and inventive take on weird suburbia. Oh and the podcast Between 2 Cairns lights up every Thursday for me

Mario | La esquina del rol: Croaker RPGs, welcome to La Esquina del Rol!!! Thank you very much for be here! I am big fan of your Solo Actual Plays, and your The Lone Toad Newsletter!

I'd like to start this interview by asking you about Who Croaker RPGs is, What your background is, and How did you get into TTRPGs?

Thomas Lopez | Croaker RPG: Hello and thank you so much for having me on your newsletter for this interview. It’s an honour to be included among such excellent TTRPG designers and creators.

Croaker RPGs is me, Thomas Lopez! A solo design shop where I focus primarily on Solo RPGs through my Newsletter the Lone Toad and my own designed RPGs such as Queenless and The Lost City of Cargoth.

I have quite a background, I’m originally from California but followed my heart (and my wife) to Australia where me and my family live. I don’t have a particular background in design, writing or games, but I consider RPGs a fantastic creative output for myself and something that I’ve become quite passionate about.

Like a lot of people, I discovered RPGs during the pandemic. The city I live in had the distinction of being the most locked-down city in the world during the pandemic. Going slightly crazy stuck at home, especially during our long winter nights, I decided to give that whole ‘D&D’ thing a shot. Well, I played a few D&D games, and while that was fun in all I felt D&D didn’t quite fit with the kind of games I wanted to play.

I quickly started looking for other RPGS to play, which was where my love of Indie RPGs started. I had a great time GMing some excellent campaigns such as Spire: The City Must Fall, Alien, Mork Borg, and many more.

Mario: What a coincidence! When I was a teenager, I knew a friend whose name was almost the same as yours: Tomás López. I remember him very well. I haven't seen him for a long time because he moved away (not to Australia, of course hahaha!).

Thomas: Wow! What a coincidence! I would like to explore my Hispanic ancestry a bit more and I think it would be interesting to do it through an RPG. It would also give me the motivation to explore my family tree and connect with that side of my heritage.

Mario: Now, I understand what you were telling me before the interview about your hispanic ancestry. That's great. I've been amazed at the number of creators and designers who have Hispanic heritage or even speak a little bit of Spanish. It is very interesting. My next question is about your name Croaker RPGs. Where did this idea of calling you Croaker RPGs come from?

Thomas: Croaker RPGs comes from a favourite character I have from the dark fantasy series the Black Company by Glen Cook. Croaker was the surgeon and also the chronicler who kept the history of the Black Company that was the company's soul. That character spoke to me and when it was time to pick an RPG design name that is what I chose.

I quickly discovered people that I just loved frogs a lot. So I leaned into that, making my logo a Frog on a D20 and naming my newsletter the Lone Toad.

Mario: Well, I think your logo is great!

Thomas: Thank you! This logo was drawn by my friend and fellow solo designer and Actual Play writer Eric Dill. He writes a newsletter also that I recommend!

The Dragon's Den

A solo ttrpg gaming blog

By Eric Dill

Mario: I love your actual plays that you share on your blog, and your newsletter. I would like to ask you What is your approach to play SOLO RPG?

Thomas: For me, Solo RPGS are internally driven. Since there isn't anyone around to hype me up on playing a game, I have to be inspired to pick it up and put pen to paper. This is the reason I play solo RPGs that have a ton of theme and art to go with it. So like Mork Borg, every time I pick that book up I immediately want to start playing it solo or with a group.

Sundered Isles, the recent expansion to Starforged by Shawn Tomkin was the same. The idea of building a whole world with dangerous isles, rough seas and rampaging pirates inspired me to immediately start playing.

Mario: Do you like to play with official solo friendly supplements or do you prefer generic oracles?

Thomas: I tend to rely on games that have custom built oracles. I am starting to prefer games built solo first or that are created solo friendly as a start. I find when a designer considers solo play at the start of their design, the following solo play is well done and more entertaining.

When that isn't the case I like official or unofficial solo products. Free League has done a number of great solo modules for their games, especially for Dragonbane and The One Ring that I've enjoyed in the past. In fact Strider Mode for The One Ring was the first solo game I wrote an actually play for.

Only when a game isn't built for solo play and doesn't have a module will I find a more generic GM emulator. I had a great time using the Game Master's Apprentice by Larcenous Designs and pairing it with Basic Dungeons and Dragons.

Mario: I see you mentioned more “traditional” games in your previous answer for solo RPGs, what do you think of journaling solo RPGs, What experiences have you had playing them, and Which of this type of game do you prefer: traditional or journaling?

Thomas: Oh, I love journaling games! The first game I ever designed (I Come From a Land Down Under about a post-apocalyptic landscape based on the lyrics from the song Down Under) is a journaling game. The other journaling game I've done is called Dead Stick and has you take the place of a flight crew member during a world war.

Journaling games are fantastic for creating thematic games where you ask players to think and feel deeply about a subject, story or other aspect. Some people would argue that journaling games aren't really RPGs, but more like creative writing prompts. And I see their point of view to an extent, as many journaling games lack RPG mechanics. I don't get hung up on labels so much. They are fun and I love getting stuck into one when I have a chance.

I'm playing a solo game right now (well not right now) called Princess with a Cursed Sword.

I wouldn't say I prefer a traditional RPG vs a Journaling games. They are different types of games for when I'm in different moods. Plus, you can take many traditional games and do journaling play with them. This works well for a game like Ironsworn/Starforged, but you could do it with Dungeons and Dragons or Cyberpunk just as well. I have struggled to journal play games that have extensive mechanics and lots of dice rolling like 4 Against Darkness, but people have certainly done it.

Mario: I like to know this flexibility you have to choose the game according to your mood, I think that's important. For me, I find it a bit harder to play the journaling RPGs, I like them but there is still something I am working on to enjoy them more. Speaking about your published games. One of the goals of my interviews with game designers is to unravel their design processes. With that in mind, I wanted to ask you how you approach the design process for your games?

Thomas: My design process can be pretty chaotic, especially when view from the outside. It all starts with the spark of an idea. That spark, I really can't predict it just hits me. For Queenless it was watching bees from my daughter's bedroom window, for The Zoo it was based off an adventure I made for my group.

After I have a spark of an idea I work on it a bit, do some free writing to turn the spark into a game concept. I get distracted easily so I do a lot of writing on the train when I'm commuting to work. I don't write for hours at a time but often come back to the project to 'peck' away at it for a number of weeks.

Solo RPGs have a built-in advantage because you can play-test them on your own without having to include other people, at least in the start. So once I have a first draft done I do some play testing to see if the game works how I think it should.

Oh and at some point I make a mock cover page. That is an important part of the process. A cover for the game makes it feel 'real' to me, more than just writing but a project waiting to be completed.

Following that it's off to layout and design, which I used to struggle with but I think I've come a long way.

Like I said, it's all a bit chaotic but that's the way I like it. If you locked me in a room for a week and asked me to make an RPG and do nothing else I'd probably go crazy and make a bad game.

Mario: Something that has caught my attention about you are the adventures you write to play Ironsworn in solo mode. I would like to talk about it because they have really worked well for me and the truth is that there are no things like that in Spanish to play. What design principles and philosophy did you have when writing them that made them work so well?

Thomas: Creating scenarios for the Ironsworn system is a pretty big challenge actually. The key to the Ironsworn system is the ability for player to create adventures that are completely customisable to their own interests. When you pick up dice in Ironsworn, you can take the story in any direction you want. So how do you design an adventure for that type of game? Well I've tried two different methods.

The first method is creating a setting for people to play in. So for Sea Beast! I created a village that was under attack from a monster. I created the area around it, people in the village, a threat and some potential enemies. And then I tell the player to go and have fun! They can decide to hunt down the monster, or see what else is going on it in village. They may step into the village, and then decide the solution is somewhere else and leave immediately. When I'm designing these settings (sometimes called Fronts in PBTA games) you have to hope the threat and the setting are interested enough that players will follow through with it.

The second method is challenging and I'll admit I'm still working on it. In this method I create an adventure site, a Lost City far from civilisation or a space station floating in the black of space. This means the players cannot easily take their character away, they have to play in this adventure. Then I create a premise that hopefully demands to be completed. In the middle I try to make the location as interesting as possible, with NPCs, foes, points of interests and side quests.

In the second method I'm banking on the story being compelling, because if it isn't player won't just take their characters to a different location, they will stop playing. But if the player guys in, I'm confident they will create their amazing story and have a fun time.

Mario: Honestly, it would be great to have them in Spanish at some point. I think you have solved in very interesting ways how to write adventures for Ironsworn. Now, I would like you to tell us a little bit about the solo games you have written.

Thomas: Yeah, I've written and designed a few games, solo modules and other supplements. I'm probably most proud of Queenless, which is a cozy exploration game where you play as a Bee trying to save their colony after their queen has died. It's built in the Firelights system created by Rene-Pier Deshaies or Fari RPGs. For Queenless I wanted to make it look like you are reading a nature magazine, down to the art I found which is all from the public domain.

Another game I'd like to highlight is Dead Stick, which I did for a game jam. It is a solo journaling game that puts you in the shoes of an aircraft ground crew member in a world war. It asks you to think about all the stressful and awful things they would experience through that time.

I've also just made Sea Beast and Night Terror Pay What You Want in celebration of getting 500 subscribers on my Solo RPG newsletter.

Mario: Night terror is awesome! I love that you write solo adventures. Hey Thomas, what would be your three favourite mechanic, in terms of SOLO RPG design?

Thomas: That is a great question. The first mechanic that is useful for Solo design is the weak hit. Often used in PBTA games, it represents success but at a cost and gives the RPG designer and the player something more to work with than a binary pass or fail system you'll see in games like Dungeons and Dragons.

The second isn't a mechanic as much as a design tool, and that is a gameplay loop. So Solo RPGs obviously don't have a Game Master to keep things moving along, so it's important to show players exactly what they need to do at each step of the game. A strong and expressly mentioned gameplay loop is essential for Solo RPGs. Ironsworn has a great example of this (called the Flow of Play).

The third is the use of random tables to inspire creativity for the solo player. Random tables go all the way back to Original D&D but I think they are especially important for Solo Play. Designing solo RPGs you want players to always have an idea of what is next and hopefully not get stuck because you've drawn a blank with the next scene. Useful random tables in the form of oracles can help inspire that creativity and keep players playing!

Mario: Those are very good answers, Thomas. Sometimes people come up to me and ask me, "What is solo role-playing and how do you play it? When someone asks you the same question, what do you say?

Thomas: It's hard to define solo Roleplay in any concrete way. Many people consider reading RPG books, thinking about them and preparing to play a game is play, so Solo Roleplay is just taking all those daydreams about potential RPG characters and stories, and playing them out in some structured way by yourself.

I try not to get hung up on the whole 'Solo roleplay isn't real roleplay'. For the record, I think it is roleplay, but I don't debate people or get caught up on labels.

My advice for anyone thinking about solo RPGs is to give it a shot! I was a sceptic too once. It took a boring night and a copy of Ironsworn to convert me to a solo RPG fanatic! So try a few Solo RPGs- a journaling game, a traditional game with a GM emulator, and a solo first game, and see how it goes. If it isn't for you? Fine! But you may find you've opened up a whole new way of exploring fictional worlds and amazing characters.

Mario: Thank you for this advice for our readers. Now I would like to move on to another topic. What is the idea of your newsletter and what can people who read it find in it?

The Lone Toad - Croaker RPGs Newsletter

The Lone Toad - Croaker RPGs Newsletter is a monthly newsletter focusing on Solo Table-Top RPGs, such as Ironsworn, Starforged, Colloste, and hundreds of others.

Thomas: The Lone Toad is all about solo RPGs! I think about, play and design Solo RPGs so I felt people might like to read my thoughts about them. I write two newsletters a month. The Lone Toad Monthly Edition covers a specific a solo RPG topic or has a bunch of recommendations, along with updates from my game designs and a smattering of RPG news from around the world.

Ribbiting Adventures takes a specific topic from solo RPGs and digs deep into it. I interview solo RPG creators, do game reviews, or dive deep into a specific aspect of solo play. It's a great mix of fun light-hearted subjects with deep intellectual analysis of solo RPGs.

And I give away free games to people who subscribe to the Lone Toad. I gave away The Lost City of Cargoth, my Ironsworn adventure and in the next couple of months Identity, a dark game of introspective horror will be free to readers also!

Mario: I really enjoyed talking to you, it was great. I've told you before: I really like what you do with your newsletter and your games. Besides your next game, called Identity, are there any other projects or things you want to share with us?

Thomas: I have more game project ideas than I can count! The hard part is deciding which I have time to publish. But yes, I have a few projects I'm working to. The Lost City of Cargoth (free if you subscribe to my newsletter) will be getting an enhanced version calle Cargoth: Ruinious Edition. It will have 25% new content including a trap mechanic, new assets, and more adventures!

I've mentioned Identity already which will have a free version for my newsletter in August.

Then later this year my newsletter will get a large Starforged: Ironsworn supplement called The Void Chorus. In that game you'll be stuck on a space station where insane and unethical experiments have been done. Will you escape, destroy it all or take the experiments for you own?

After that I'm not sure. I have some ideas but nothing concrete yet. I want to create a sequel to Queenless, and I have ideas for a horror film-based solo RPG. Like I said, too many ideas and not enough time!

Mario | La esquina del rol: Zach Hazard Vaupen! Welcome to La Esquina del Rol! I'm looking forward to talking to you. You're a fascinating artist. You illustrated the covers of my two favourite games: Fallen and Liminal Horror. But, before I ask you about those two covers and your art in general, I want my readers to know Who you are and What you do in relation to the TTRPG indie scene.

Zach Hazard Vaupen | Emo Sludge: Hey Mario! Thanks for having me. Thanks for the kind words about my work! I’m a freelance illustrator, mostly for TTRPGs, and I also make comics when I can. I’ve been working on TTRPGs for almost 4 years now and have had the wonderful opportunity to work on many great games like Mothership, Liminal Horror, Fallen, and various 3rd party projects for the games mentioned above as well as DCC, Mork/CY Borg, OSE, and possibly others. I’m starting to lose track! Right now I’m working on the Liminal Horror Deluxe Edition with the rest of the LH crew, as well as a Mörk Borg setting of my own design (with help from Micah Anderson) called Frog World which will be published by Exalted Funeral.

Mario: Hold on! I'm going to have to skip some questions out of curiosity and come back to them later, hahaha! But why haven't I heard about this setting before? What can you tell us about it?

Zach: Oh yeah I only just announced it last week, so you got the first scoop. There’s still a lot of work to be done on it, mainly on my end, but I was approached by Exalted Funeral at the end of last year to work on a supplement for any system I wanted. I picked Mork Borg and started developing ideas for a setting I decided to call Frog World. We hired Micah Anderson to further develop and expand on the concepts I’d already developed, which they’ve completed their part at this point (quite spectacularly) and right now I’m editing it and continuing to expand and write more myself as I work on the layout and the art. It will be a fully illustrated setting with 20 new enemies, several different species, new spells, a big hexmap with tons of keyed hexes, and 2 major dungeons: Frog Heaven and Frog Hell. I’m not totally sure on the release date yet, but it will hopefully be out either by the end of this year or the beginning of 2025. Here’s a couple pieces of art I finished from the bestiary which I already shared on social media:

Mario: The art is amazing!!! I love your style! You have me hooked already! But, would you mind tell us what is the pitch of the setting?

Zach: Of course! It all takes place on Frog World, which is a floating interplanetary open air prison, its main operation taking place in its bowels (Frog Hell) and ruled by an overclass who live on a luxurious satellite orbiting Frog World called Frog Heaven. PCs essentially wake up to discover they’ve been kidnapped and imprisoned on Frog World for various trumped up charges and are doomed to explore (and possibly escape) the awful Frog World where everything is frog themed and gross.

There’s a lot of NPCs (other prisoners) of various species and factions from other planets Frog World has also visited, so there’s a lot to do there.

Mario: That sounds super cool! I'll be looking forward to it, Zach! It's exciting news. Well, back to you and my initial questions. You're a freelance illustrator doing some very interesting things in the scene. It's very noticeable the unique style you have. I'd like to know what are your artistic influences that you recognize so far?

Zach: I always have a lot of trouble answering this question because my influences are so varied and different things have influenced me at different times in my life. I really love horror comics from Japan, which probably is the most apparent influence on my style. Suehiro Maruo, Katsuhiro Otomo, Kentaro Miura, Kazuo Umezu, Taiyo Matsumoto, Usamaru Furuya, Kengo Hanazawa, Inio Asano, and Junji Ito are all big influences on me from that world (I could list more but for the sake of brevity…). I also really like underground comics from North America and Europe too. Lots of artists that worked on Metal Hurlant are big inspirations for me as well as a lot of the artists who were in the Fort Thunder collective or have worked with Le Dernier Cri in France. I also love horror and sci fi movies. David Cronenberg and David Lynch are both big for me. I’m also obsessed with the films of Gakuryu Ishii and Shinya Tsukamoto. Lots of video games too. And too many of my peers to list, but my illustrator and cartoonist friends are all my biggest inspirations. I frequently share their work on my social platforms. I could really go on endlessly so please stop me.

Mario: Hahaha yeah, yeah, it's a difficult question because we don't stop taking influences from various things; but it's a way to portray yourself in a moment. You know, like a picture. Something that We explore in these interviews is creativity and the creative processes that our interviewees. Maybe this is another tough question hahaha but, I hope we get to some very interesting ideas, How do you approach your creative process when doing what you do?

Zach: At this point in my life and career, I have a good handle on what I enjoy drawing and the types of images I want to make. So it’s not too difficult to come up with ideas for drawings. I usually start with really loose sketches—putting in the details and objects I like to draw—and that helps me start seeing what the picture will be and ideas start to really flow. If I’m really having trouble thinking of what to make, I’ll refer to a document of random ideas and notes I jot down when they occur to me and that is really helpful. If you ever have a good idea, write it down! You never know when it will come in handy. I also keep a Pinterest board of references and stuff to inspire me. I’m not great at keeping or collecting reference though compared to a lot of artists. I often search for reference materials at the last minute. This is what led me to learning 3D modeling. I always do 3D modeling and sculpting for the base of my drawings. I find that it helps me create my own reference material and it gives my art a more stylized and unique look. I like my art to have a lot of form and depth and texture, but I’m not interested in realism really. Here’s an example from a recent piece I made for my patreon subscribers showing the 3D base and the final drawing:

Sometimes if I feel really creatively burnt out, I’ll enter a period I call “inspiration mode” where I just watch movies and play games and read books as much as I can to kind of refill the creativity tank.

Mario: The way you handle the depths blows my mind. The reflection of the mirror encapsulating you inside the scene and showing all that depth. It's crazy. I don't know much about art because I'm not an artist, but when your Kitty passed away (I'm really sorry for that loss) I noticed you using 3D to model an image and it became very interesting to me. Also, I noticed that you started sharing very interesting pictures on twitter, I remember a picture of Winnie Pooh. Besides photography, what other artistic expressions have you had with your art?

Zach: Yeah after the passing of our cat (Fanny) I found it hard to work for a bit, but needed a creative outlet so I started teaching myself photography. When I’m down or in a rut, I always find that learning a new skill is really helpful for me. I also went to school for printmaking so I love making prints (screen prints, relief prints, intaglio, etc). Before the pandemic, I ran the design department at a large format print shop, so I used to experiment with scraps from jobs we couldn’t use for anything else to make really interesting prints cut to shape on rigid materials like plexiglass and pvc/sintra. I also like to write of course and I’d like to find time to paint again. I know how to hand bind books and sew and knit. I built the bed I sleep in. I think I just love making things and want to know how to do everything eventually. Next I want to learn video editing.

Mario: Video editing, that’s sound very cool! Hmmm… What are the 3 pieces of art you have made that are your favorites and why?

Zach: I’m bad at favorites haha, but if forced to pick from my portfolio, I like these 3 pieces because they do a really good job of showcasing both my abilities and my taste. The first is a piece I made early on for the Mothership Warden’s Operation Manual (I think, it could be in the PSG, I forget), the second was a piece I made for my patreon subscribers, and the last of course is the cover I did for The Mall for Liminal Horror. I had a lot of freedom in all these pieces so they really feel like me and what I like to make.

Mario: I love what you have picked! So It is inevitable that I would ask you about this. I'm a big fan of Liminal Horror and I'm looking forward to the deluxe edition. I've seen the preview of the new cover in my last interview with Goblin Archives and the changes are striking, although the essence remains. How have you approached this revisitation of your own work?

Zach: I’ve had a lot of people tell me that the original cover for Liminal Horror really set the tone for how they view and approach the game (and I’ve also had a lot of people tell me it’s their favorite rpg cover), so I knew that for the deluxe edition I didn’t want to stray too far from the original artwork, but I also wanted something that felt…well “Deluxe”. I felt like making things spiral out more could give a more interesting composition, and I thought I could push the depth and “coming at you” feeling by having the art breaking out of the frame. Otherwise I just added stuff I thought would be fun. Things occur to me as I work. Otherwise I think of everything going into the deluxe edition as a continuation of the work we’ve been doing rather than a reimagining of it.

Mario: I really love it! I find that it keeps my mental representation of the game and adds new elements that fit very well with the central idea of the game. it's great! How has the experience been working with Josh and Goblin on this edition?! I understand you're more involved with the internal art.

Zach: Thanks! That’s exactly what I’m going for!

Working with Josh and Goblin is always a pleasure. They’re very easy to collaborate with and are both really skilled at generating ideas. They think a lot about what makes the game good and work really hard to ensure it is. There doesn’t feel like a huge difference between this project and previous ones we’ve worked on where I was hired as a freelancer. For the Deluxe Edition I’m a full partner with an equal share of the project, but I was always given a lot of freedom to decide how the images look previously, and it’s the same now. It will be a lot of artwork though. I’m not limiting myself at all in terms of how much I can pack into the book, only time and energy will determine that. Basically I’m doing as much as I can and Josh, Goblin, and Jarrett (our editor and publisher) cheer me on as they all work on their parts of the deluxe edition (and I cheer them on in turn).

Mario: I have not yet had the pleasure of knowing Josh and Jarrett (although with Jarrett I will collaborate translating the second edition of Cairn thanks to Yochai Gal). But, I can only say great things about Nick. It's very exciting to know that you guys are together on this project. I would like to get to know you a little bit as a player. Before you started illustrating role-playing games, how did you get into role-playing games and what types of tabletop role-playing games do you like to play?

Zach: To be honest, I had only a mild awareness of TTRPGs before I started doing illustrations for them. When I was in middle school I played AD&D a couple times but didn’t get into it really. I played magic the gathering for a while after that, and by high school I had completely moved on. I think honestly working on liminal horror and reading the original PDF with the rules and everything that Nick sent me, I was like “wow wait, there are games like this?” That made me aware of OSR and the indie tabletop scene and I realized people were making a lot of cool stuff! And even better, there’s a big zine culture. I’ve been making zines since I was in high school. So it really was a perfect fit for someone who likes to play games, write, draw, and make zines. I don’t get as much time to play as I’d like—especially in person with local friends—and I’m not confident enough to GM myself. But I always have a lot of fun with my Liminal Horror play group (Nick/Goblin Archives GMs, so it’s always a blast), I love playing mothership, I was in a really fun play by post for The Lost Bay for a number of months last year, and I’d really like to try my hand at running Cy_Borg when I have the time and energy to get a session and crew together.

Also awesome that you’re translating Cairn 2e!

Mario: Since 2014 I started to play sporadically tabletop role-playing games. But it was in 2020-2021 when my interest in games went further, I became more interested and I found the first edition of Cairn. That game changed my way of understanding games so much that I translated it into Spanish and then I decided to translate all hacks I could find. That's how I found Liminal Horror and your art. Today I'm here talking to you, I can say that I've done very well hahaha

Although I confess that from now on I envy your table hahaha. From playing with nick as gm and your experience as a player, what can you recommend us for those who start playing Liminal Horror?

Zach: Yeah Cairn makes so much sense to me. Of course I found it in reverse because I checked it out after reading the first Liminal Horror draft, but it’s still my fantasy system of choice. And yeah we have kind of an all star group haha. I don’t take it for granted. In terms of advice for new players of Liminal Horror, I find the best sessions are always the ones where everyone makes the most interesting decisions (as opposed to safe or rational decisions). Do what will make for an interesting story. Winning (which I guess would count as surviving) the scenarios is the least of my concern when I play. I just want to have fun. Don’t be afraid of getting a fallout either. I think a lot of new players view fallout as a punishment, but to me it’s the spice of the system. It’s what transforms each session from being a typical detective scenario into something otherworldly.

Mario: I see you chose the MB system for frog world and you are interested in running cy borg. (btw, I am now chatting with Johan Nohr) What do you think about what he and his group have done with these proposals in terms of game system and art/layout design art?

Zach: I love it! I think Johan is an incredible graphic designer, both for wild out of control designs and also tight and utilitarian designs. I think the layout for the Rotblack Sludge section of MB is my favorite way to have a dungeon laid out. I haven’t gotten to play Mork or Cy Borg unfortunately, but I’ve watched APs and they seem like fun systems to me! Not too far off from typical OSR stuff, but I really like the mood and atmosphere. For Cy_Borg especially, they provide you with so many assets and materials to make your own sessions easily. It’s great all around!

Mario: Johan is fantastic. I love how versatile he is. It's an interview I really enjoyed, just like yours. Well, your full name in Spanish sounds very cool when pronounced. Also, I see you use an alias “Emo Sludge”, what's the story behind that alias?

Zach: My birth last name is Vaupen (pronounced V+open) but when I was 14 I started to go by Zach Hazard because I was so cool and punk and needed everyone to know, and I didn’t like my last name and that people struggle to pronounce it correctly (now I don’t care so much). Over the years I discovered there are other Zach Hazards in the world, and you can google them, and they probably have more claim to the name than I do, so I added Vaupen back onto my name. However “Zach Hazard Vaupen” is too long for usernames and website addresses, so I needed a different “brand name” (so to speak). Simply put, I enjoy emo and sludge metal and at some point I felt like that really spoke to my sensibilities, so I started using Emo Sludge. I really do just think of it as my brand name though. If I release a comic, it’s from Emo Sludge Press. If I release a game, it’s Emo Sludge Games. If I release music, it’s Emo Sludge Records (I’m not a very good musician though). You get the idea.

I like having a couple different names to be known by because it creates more opportunities for people to remember haha.

Mario: Well at least there is an interesting story behind it. I called myself La esquina del rol because it was the only nickname I could think of, and it was available on Twitter hahaha. Well about your comics, what can you tell the Spanish-speaking community that they can find in them? (Btw, La esquina del rol = The role-playing corner)

Zach: My comics usually deal with strange environments/situations and psychological issues. They’re kind of horror and sci-fi, but I think mostly they’re just weird fiction. I’ve been making comic books for almost 20 years, and sadly I don’t have as much energy for it as I used to. It’s very difficult and requires a lot of work to make a comic. I started working on a comic called Therapy Gun at the beginning of the pandemic—a story about a guy who tries to get therapy, but due to lack of adequate insurance, all he qualifies for is a gun—and managed to finish the first issue (about 50 pages I think?) at the end of 2022, but I haven’t had time to work on it since. I really hope I can get back to it sooner than later though. All of my comics are available on either my itchio page or my website and I encourage people to check them out! I was hoping that my patreon would eventually be enough to give me the space I needed to work on comics more, but it’s been stagnating for a while and I’m nowhere near what I would need to do focus on comics more right now. There are more real opportunities for me in TTRPGs and I’m really happy with the work I’m able to do here. That said, comics will always be my first passion.

Mario: Wow! I liked the premise of Therapy Gun. I'll make a note of it.

Before ending the interview I'd like you to share with us your perspective as an artist on this whole situation with AIs.

We see that social media has become training grounds for such things. But I know many friends who thanks to IG, Facebook, Twitter managed to contact clients and spread their work. This whole situation is giving them very complicated dilemmas to spread their portfolio and find future clients. How do you see all this developing for better or worse for our community?

Zach: I think anyone who follows me online knows I have serious misgivings about AI for a number of reasons. When I say AI, I mean the current batch of what’s being called “Generative AI” like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion. It’s a term that does not advertise what it is at all and is designed to create a lot of hype for a technology with no good use case. I don’t see it ever replacing artists—or even lasting very long to begin with—but it’s being used as a smokescreen to lower the already abysmal rates artists face, and is an excuse for big tech companies to try to remove artists’ inherent copyright to their works—for the good of the world of course wink wink nudge nudge. Beyond the labor issue, generative AI requires an absolutely staggering amount of energy to both train their models and maintain their servers. It’s such a large magnitude that it’s become a huge contributor to climate change and will only get worse. Despite all this, every corporation across the globe is investing billions upon billions of dollars into the (impossible) promises of this technology. The entire US market has taken a strong bet in favor of AI. The belief is that AI will solve the infinite growth problem posed by late stage capitalism. We’re due for another major market crash, and capitalists believe this is our ticket out. However, beyond the fact that AI as it is now is not sustainable from an energy standpoint, no company has figured out how to make AI actually profitable. Consumers aren’t interested enough to pay for it because it’s a novelty item and not a utilitarian solution to anything, and it’s already poisoned much of the internet in a way that is making the web more and more unusable. From my perspective and research, this AI tech bubble is going to create the catastrophic market crash that it’s intending to somehow mitigate, and that’s my biggest fear with AI. My fear is what the future will look like after this devastates the world economy and heating the planet a few more degrees.

Mario: I continue to be amazed at the billions of dollars that continue to be invested in the development of this technology, all that money could solve a lot of things in the world. More important things!!! I don't know where it's all going, I've never thought about it like you say and I think it's a possible scenario. Sometimes I feel like our hands are already tied, I hope at least we are not already in the bathtub feeding our energy to a super powerful AI. Anyway, all I can say is that it's been a pleasure talking to you. I still envy your table and I don't think that feeling will go away anytime soon hahaha. Zach, where can people interested in hiring you contact you, where can they keep an eye on what you're doing and follow your posts in these dark internet times?

Zach: The pleasure is all mine! Thanks for chatting with me. The easiest way to find me and my work is on my website https://emo-sludge.com/ which has my contact info and all my socials are also linked. I also highly recommend signing up for my newsletter through my site if you want to know when Frog World and the Liminal Horror Deluxe Edition are coming out.

Mario | La esquina del rol: Hey Ennio! Welcome to La esquina del rol! Thank you for accepting the invitation, How is everything?

Ennio: Hey! I'm doing well, thanks for having me.

Mario: It's a pleasure to having you here. I'd like to start this interview by asking you who Ennio is and why he's doing such cool TTRPG stuff for all us?

Ennio: I’m a TTRPG and layout designer from Puerto Rico. I started off with writing D&D adventures and now I'm making my own games, which are typically short form solo or duo games.

As far as why, that's a tough one! As a kid, I moved around a lot so it was hard to make connections. I found that, through gaming and collaborative story telling, it was a lot easier to make those connections. Working on TTRPGs now might be an extension of that. There's a lot of creative folks in the TTRPG space and its fun to see what they're working on and hear their stories. Honestly, I make things I like and hope its cool!

Mario: I've been a fan of Solo RPGs for a while now and the truth is that I got to know them thanks to Covid because I played more with a group and online before. But in your case, how did you approach solo role-playing games? Did you know them first as a player or as a designer?

Ennio: I had a similar experience! Switching to online play didn't work for my regular gaming group, but of course, I still wanted to play something. I started with a solo 5e adventure, which was ok but it was missing something. I only really got into solo games after playing Ironsworn, love that game! After that I dove headfirst into solo games, Her Odyssey and RUNE, being some of my all time favorites.

Mario: A months ago I interviewed Andy from . He told me that for his new game Substratum Protocol he was working a lot with playtesters. It was a nice surprise to know that you were among them, how has that experience been?

Pandion Letters

An Interview with La Esquina Del Rol

Hello, everyone! We had the opportunity to sit down with Mario from La Esquina Del Rol, a Mexican publisher who interviews game designers and translates their answers for the Spanish TTRPG community. They asked if they could interview us about our upcoming game…

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2 years ago · 4 likes · Pandion Games

Ennio: Oh Andy's great! (Buy Andy's games They are neat!) Yeah, Substratum Protocol is incredible. I didn't get to playtest it as much as I would have liked though. Unfortunately I got got caught up with other things at the time.

One thing that stood out for me was how organize and clear the material was. The text was solid and easy to read through, which made it fun to pick up and play. It was also very visually appealing, which I love!

By the way, Andy played a pretty big part in making physical copies of Bloodless happen. I hadn't worked on physical copies before that point and he gave me some super useful advice on printing and reaching out to publishers. I would have made a lot more mistakes with that first print run, if not for his help.

Mario: Oh! Yeah! Andy from is a great person. Also, he was one of the people who supported a lot the micro-crowdfunding we did to edit the Spanish edition of Liminal Horror. I am very grateful for all his support. Besides, he is sincerely a very kind person and always open to talk about many topics.

Well, back to you… One of the goals of my interviews with game designers is to unravel their design processes. With that in mind, I wanted to ask you how you approach your game design process?

Ennio: That's incredible! I didn't know that.

I'm a very visual person so I typically start by gathering images or video references that loosely fit the idea for the game. I also create an idea document, its a page where I'll put in random concepts and lines of text. That document is very messy and I don't always use what I put in there but it helps me get the game out of head and on to paper.

Afterwards I start the outline of the first draft, pulling from my references and idea document. I tend to jump around the draft a bit, filling out the sections of the outline that interest me the most first. Once everything is on the page, I start editing, and making sure its all cohesive. My second draft is much more legible, and less chaotic then the first draft.

I do have a hard time writing in general, which is funny to me since I'm choosing to spend a lot of time doing it. I often get stuck trying to find the perfect way to say things. Somethings that helped me a lot recently is switching to working on the graphics or the layout of the game during the writing process. So if I hit a block, I'll open up Affinity, turn off my editing brain, and draw a bit, which usually helps clear up the block.

Mario: It's interesting how you get out of those creative blocks that are very common. I remember once I read that said he liked to work on more than one project at a time because it allowed him to do just that, if he got stuck he would switch between projects and keep working.

Well, I would like to talk a bit about your game Bloodless that thanks to you we now have it translated into Spanish. I have to admit that the approach is very interesting and the mechanics work very well for the concept of the game. How did you come up with the idea of Bloodless?

Ennio: Thanks again for translating it! Bloodless came about because watching a lot of Vampire the Masquerade playthroughs and the series What we do in the Shadows. Pretty much every episode involved one or more characters getting mixed up in a dire, though sometimes comedic situation, yet they would always barely make it through, often time landing in a more dangerous situation. I had an idea floating around for a while of a game with a fixed time limit, so those two concepts just clicked.

During this, I found that the Caltrop Core game jam was going on. The light mechanics made it an easy fit to what I wanted to do. Plus it helped that the jam had a deadline, so I couldn't spend too long trying to get it perfect, and just make a game.

Mario: Nice! But, for those who don't know Bloodless, what is the game about and how do you play it, Ennio?

Ennio: Bloodless is a solo journaling game where you play as a vampire, but instead of being a powerful creature of the night, your character starts off at a low point. Its a survival game where something drastic happened to your character recently you're trying to make to a safe area to recover.

The game starts off with character creation where you decide who your character is, what they are known for, and why the ended up in trouble. Gameplay is split up into six rounds where you roll on a table for prompts and build out a narrative. At the end there's one final roll that determines if your character makes home safely or not.

Mario: The truth is that I really enjoyed translating bloodless. I think it is a good game to take with you and play it in the time you have available. I highly recommend it to my readers. Moving on to another topic, I know you are working on a new game. What can you tell us about what's coming?

Ennio: Thank you so much! My new is called Crux, and its solo ttrpg inspired by roguelike video games that's themed around mountain climbing. The title is a term that often comes up when climbing, its the hardest part of a route, a high point, or challenge to overcome. And that's my goal for the game. I want trying to overcome a difficult challenge again and again is a core mechanic and you're rewarded for doing so. Ideally, it'll be a game that's meant to be played multiple times.

Right now, its still in its early stages. I'm still working on the outline and its going to need a lot of playtesting. The current main mechanic is "building a mountain" out of a deck of cards. Each suit represents a unique obstacle and the value of the card determines the difficulty. The deck is setup in a way that each round gets progressively more difficult. You have character skills that can change the deck a bit though there's still risks involved. I like this sort of mix of luck and skill base gameplay. We'll see how it turns out!

As my own challenge, I decided to make all the art in this game myself. I'm not a professional artist by any means but I can make a few doodles here and there. Figured it be a great way to improve my own skills and put a more personal touch on this game. Plus I enjoy the process!

Mario: The premise of your new game is very interesting, I'll be watching to see where it takes you.

I'd like to know a little bit about what you're playing now and what game you're looking forward to coming out this year?

Ennio: Due to a lack of free time, I've been reading through games more than playing them. Some of favorites so far are Gubat Banwa, Hellwhalers, and Lordsworn. I'm trying to setup a game for Last Train To Bremen, just got to sort out everyone's schedule. If you haven't played that one, I highly recommend it! Its based on Liar's dice and has a self contained storyline, so its perfect for a one-shot.

I'm looking forward to Godkiller and Pelogos! Both games have ashcan versions out right now, but the full release coming up sometime this year and I can't wait.

Mario: Nice! Very good choices, I like several of these games. It has been very interesting to learn a little more about you and I hope to talk more about your new game in the future.

I would like to end with a great tip for our readers. I know that you are an autodidact in layout design and that you usually use affinity publisher. At some point we talked about this on X I think. But what advice do you have for people who are just getting into the design field and want to start experimenting?

Ennio: Thank you so much! I really enjoyed this conversation. Yeah, I think you've said it there. Start playing around and start experimenting!

I think its vital at the beginning to just throw stuff on a blank page and see what shakes out. As you go, you'll start figuring out what interests you and what you want to do. Looking at references and calling out what appeals to you helps with that. Afterwards, make your own stuff and do the same!

If you want to know more about Ennio, I highly recommend you to subscribe to his monthly newsletter!

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