Klintron: Weird & Wonderful Interviews

Reminder check out the MRD Game Jam- one entrant will have art and layout commissioned for their Poltergeist Form!

Klint and I have only met recently, but I've appreciated our conversations over our shared interests such as Buddhism, the Tech Industry, and Weird Worldbuilding.

Kid Minotaur: The RPG blog. (Also his drivethrurpg publishing name).

Sewer Mutant: The indie comics blog.

Klintron: The itch.io page.

Max: When we first met, we were discussing my game Maximum Recursion Depth, and specifically the Buddhist elements of the setting. It became apparent that you are much more so involved with Buddhism than I am, so I'd be interested to learn more about your relationship with it, when and why you became interested in it, and how you feel about it.

Klint: My current relationship with it is that I'm active with the local Shingon Buddhist temple here in Portland, Oregon. By active, I mean my wife and I attend the weekly Dharma talks (on Zoom for the time being) and meditate or chant mantras every day. We also attend the livestreamed Goma ritual as often as possible, which the Seattle temple hosts each month. And of course I do my best to follow the Precepts and the Eightfold Path.

It's hard to say exactly how I first got interested in Buddhism in general. It's something I've been interested in, off and on, for quite a while. I started a practice of meditating almost every day back in 2012. Though I was interested in Buddhism I wasn't ready to sign on the dotted line so to speak.

A major turning point for me was visiting Cambodia and Thailand in the fall of 2019, two majority Buddhist countries. It's hard to explain but I was left with a particular feeling upon leaving.

I didn't really act on that feeling though until early 2021 when I did a bunch of "temple hopping" on Zoom. I attended online sessions with several different local sanghas. I really felt the strongest connection with the teacher at the Shingon temple and my wife felt the same. So it was actually less a feeling of affinity with that particular sect and more of choosing him as a teacher. I think he brings the right balance of modernity and tradition to his Dharma talks.

I was raised Episcapalian, but not particularly strictly. I stopped going to church when I was a teenager. I went through several years where I was really interested in occultism and mystism, from around 2000 until something like 2007 (ironically, around the time I stopped being interested in it was when I was heavily involved in organizing a local esotericism conference). So I guess it's fitting I ended up with an "esoteric" form of Buddhism.

Max: It makes sense to me that you would lose interest in occultism around the time you tried organizing an event around it haha.

Klint: Yeah I have a habit of losing interest in things once I become too heavily involved with them. The other thing was that while organizing that it was increasingly clear that a lot of people who claimed to be powerful magickians weren't able to scrounge up the money to get a bus ticket to Portland, so that gave me a more dim view of their practices.

Max: Did you start to burn out on Grant Morrison and Alan Moore* around that time, or are those unrelated events?

* Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are both highly influential comic book writers who both identify with occultism.

Klint: Those were unrelated events. My initial interest in occultism was very motivated by Alan Moore and the industrial musician Genesis P. Orridge. I found Invisibles* just about the same time I was first starting to practice chaos magic, so one ended up reinforcing the other.

* Invisibles is a work by Grant Morrison and arguably the inspiration for The Matrix

My burning out on them later had more to do with reading too much of those particular authors to the exclusion of most other comics creators. And I suppose increased annoyance at the public personas.

Max: That makes perfect sense to me.

Klint: With Buddhism, I think a big part of it is that for some reason I was ready to be a part of an organized religion with a long tradition of practice. I can't say exactly why, but I suppose it was partially me getting older and partially the troubling state of the world.

Buddhism provides some tools for coping with one's own dissatisfaction and anxieties and so forth. I think of it as a religion, in the sense that you have to have faith that the practice actually works, that it is possible to reduce your own suffering and dissatisfaction. But it's not a faith in the existence of external beings and so forth. There are supernatural elements in the Buddha’s teaching and though I don’t want to say they’re unimportant, they don’t have to be true for the practice to be valuable. You can test the things you are supposed to have faith in through the practice. So in that sense, despite being quite old, it's a religion with  a very modern sensibility.

Max: So we haven't gone into all this yet, but you're a tech journalist, practicing Buddhist, indie tabletop RPG creator and blogger, and indie comics blogger and podcaster, and also a former occultist. That's a rather eclectic set of interests. Do you see these varying interests as being related, or at least, do you see some common underpinning in why you're drawn to these things?

Klint: I'm not sure there's a single underlying current but I suppose there are connections between the nodes there. I don't necessarily see those as all that eclectic. Tech, RPGs, and comic books are kind of a common suite of geek interests.

Max: Actually, anecdotally, I've noticed a lot of tech skepticism or outright anti-tech sentiment among some indie RPG creators. In fact, I think people like you and I may be in the minority in this regard. Perhaps you disagree with this notion in the first place, but I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or insights on the matter?

Klint: I don't know. I wouldn't necessarily think of myself as "pro-tech" or anything like that. And part of what drew me to get back into RPGs as an adult, after a large time away, was wanting a creative, in-person social activity that was also analog.

I spend a lot of time on the computer and my phone so it's always nice to do things that don't involve screens. Though playing RPGs tends to lead to creating RPGs, which leads to screen time, so it sort of backfired.

Max: Pro/Anti-Tech may be an overly reductive way of framing things, but I'm thinking about, for instance, some of the conversations around Kickstarter announcing they will be using blockchain technology. I realize talking about blockchain and NFTs are a whole can of worms and we don't need to get into the nitty gritty on it, but especially within the context of your game Mission Driven and Destiny City (and as a tech journalist!), I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on these things.

Klint: Yeah, the backlash against Kickstarter over that was sort of a surprise to me. It did seem a little knee-jerk, since we don't know what Kickstarter is going to do or how they'll use the technology—if they even use it. 

That said, I'm pretty skeptical of blockchain stuff. It's something I've been looking at for a long time. I wrote my first story on Bitcoin in 2010. At first blockchains seemed really cool and promising. But I haven't really seen a lot of really compelling use cases for blockchains that can't be addressed more simply in other ways.

And there's a lot more centralization in blockchain technologies than people acknowledge. These projects have centralized development teams that make the decisions that go into the design of these things and as we saw with the DAO heist way back in 2016, it's possible to "undo" transactions on a blockchain if the developers decide to. Users can revolt and fork a blockchain, which we've seen some of, but that just creates a new centralized project.

One of the big problems that blockchain-based technologies try to solve is the problem of having only one person or organization controlling something. But that's a problem that's already solved through things like foundations with multiple member organizations. It's a non-technical fix that arguably works much better than a technical fix.

I think a lot of what it comes down to is people wanting technical fixes to non-technical problems, and the fact that the original Bitcoin blockchain was a really clever piece of technology and people really want to find uses for it. But it's fundamentally a solution in search of a problem. Maybe someday someone will figure it out, and there could be use cases I'm not familiar with, but it largely seems like the equivalent of trying to use Rube Goldberg devices to do things just because they're cool, even if it's an incredibly inefficient way of doing things.

Max: As a software engineer, I am familiar with the "solution in search of a problem" phenomenon!

I'm perhaps somewhat more optimistic about its potential, but I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said. The decentralization angle is often over-stated, and whatever form it takes, if it does stick, I'm inclined to think will be something non-linear.

I had mentioned previously Mission Driven, the "Cyberpunk Adventure Game Set in the Modern World", and the companion book "A Pocket Guide to Destiny City".

Where so many scifi cyberpunk settings feel derivative and devoid of anything fantastical, you've created a game set in the real world, with explicitly nothing science fictional or fantastical per se, and yet it so elegantly portrays the Weirdness and fantasticalness of the world today, for better and worse.

What are your intentions for Mission Driven? What are you trying to do with it?

Klint: It dates back to 2010. Around that time I read a couple different articles about how we were now basically living in a cyberpunk dystopia. One was an Onion article, the other was written by a friend. There's the argument that we've been living in a cyberpunk dystopia for a long time. There's a saying that science fiction isn't about the future, it's about the present. Cyberpunk was largely a response to what was happening during the Reagan/Thatcher-era. The Soviet Union was in decline and it seemed evident that capitalism won. Corporations seemed more powerful than ever. There was a growing awareness of environmental degradation. Labor's power was on the decline. Etc.

But at the same time, I was sort of captivated by the idea of telling cyberpunk stories set in the modern world. Around this same time I read William Gibson's Zero History, which was set in the the then-present day. But it still read like a cyberpunk novel, which makes sense since Gibson helped create the genre.

So I thought I would create a game that would be to Gibson's present-day trilogy (known as the "Blue Ant" trilogy) what Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun were to Gibson's first trilogy (the Sprawl trilogy).

Originally I thought I would do that by creating a setting for a generic RPG system. I started with Mini-Six in mind, then Fate. I worked on it in fits and starts over a few years. Then I discovered Apocalypse World in 2016. I never quite felt comfortable with Fate, so I decided to shift gears and do a Powered by the Apocalypse game instead. But that involved a really different approach, one where setting was less important and classes and mechanics were more important. So the setting and the game diverged a lot.

I've reached a point now where "cyberpunk in the real world" feels a lot less clever and fun than it did in 2010. Maybe it's me just getting disenchanted with it, but it also just feels like, especially in the pandemic era, the world is just too bleak so I'm not sure how much further I will develop Mission Driven. There's a bit of a catch 22 right now where I'm not all that enthused to continue working on it because it hasn't generated much interest, but I suspect part of why it hasn't generated much interest is because I'm not that enthused about it.

So I don't know what the future holds. I'm pretty proud of parts of it. I released it under a Creative Commons license in hopes that people will find parts to scavenge for other games.

Like your mecha game for example.*

* I have been considering adding elements of Mission Driven / Destiny City into Get into the Machine, Shinji! or whatever that project becomes. If nothing else, I have found it a source of inspiration.

Max: That idea that science fiction is about the present rather than future, and specifically that we're already in the cyberpunk dystopia, is something I generally agree with and I think is part of what makes Mission Driven so interesting.

I am actually not a huge Gibson fan, but now you've got me potentially interested in the Blue Ant trilogy.

I hear you on that point about it feeling less clever and fun than it did in 2010, but at the same time, I almost feel like in a way, that's what makes something like Mission Driven even more powerful. 

There is something to be said for, even in acknowledging this kind of awful reality we've wound up with, that there is still Wonder in it. And I do think that's nontrivial- like I don't mean to make light of all the suffering that occurs as a result of the way things are, but at the same time, I honestly sometimes worry about a reaction that is just as bad or worse than what we have now, and one that could be avoided, with the right perspective- which isn't to say I think I have that perspective, but if we aren't all trying to think about these things, how can we expect to create something better?

Klint: I agree, I just think there might be better avenues for imagining solutions and so forth than Mission Driven 🙂. Destiny City on the other hand I think might have a future as a setting or implied for scenarios for different games, ones with more fantastic elements to them like urban fantasy or superheroes. 

Max: I am by no means opposed to adding fantastical or superheroic elements to Mission Driven / Destiny City, but I think that's still consistent with the general idea, of trying to recognize and analyze the world for what it is. I actually was not aware that that was how you felt about Mission Driven, but for what it's worth, while I understand and respect what you're saying, I hope I can change your mind. 

Klint: I hope I change my mind about Mission Driven too. I worked hard on it. We'll see. I've thought about doing versions set in the more recent past: cyberpunk adventures in the 70s or 80s, where phone phreaking, pirate broadcasts, radio jamming, etc. would be priorities. 

Max: That could be interesting as well, and could provide room for not just examining where we are, but how we got here

Klint: Yeah, I'd like to find other ways to do some of what I was trying to do with Mission Driven, but in ways that people, including me, will find more fun.

Max: You have three other adventures, Logomancy, Trypophobia, and Be the Media. Trypophobia is clever and very clearly commentary in its own right, and Be the Media, in particular, is a really cool, non-violent conflict-based scenario. They feel like they could be part of Mission Driven, or achieve similar goals. 

Am I correct in my thinking abut these scenarios? Do you have any other thoughts you'd like to share about them?

Klint: Be the Media is sort of a micro-game version of Mission Driven. It's like a one page game based around the Watchdogs crewbook. It was sort of an experiment in trying to break pieces of Mission Driven off into bite sized chunks. It doesn't feel like a successful experiment.

Trypophobia and Logomancy were scenarios I came up with for a Delta Green campaign I ran in 2018. I thought they were pretty interesting so I wrote them up as system-neutral scenarios. I also tested Trypophobia out in Cthulhu Dark.

Max: Well again, for what it's worth, I actually felt very inspired by Be The Media, I thought it was a cool idea for how to design a non-violent conflict-based scenario. 

Trypophobia, I don't want to spoil it, but I think it has a really cool conceit where, from the players' perspective, it may look like one situation, but then there's a nice twist. And I appreciate the subtext of it as well.

Klint: Trypophobia and Logomancy are similar to Mission Driven and Be the Media in that they were both meant to explore timely topics through RPGs.  But they do have fantastical elements. Logomancy more so than Trypophobia.

The high concept in Logomancy is that there's a role playing game that is driving people "mad" (to use the problematic Lovecraftian term), much like the fictional play the King in Yellow does. It includes a game within a game that the PCs can play.

Max: On an unrelated note, we haven't yet talked about Sewer Mutant, your indie comics blog and podcast. How did that all start?

Klint: A few years ago I started revisiting a lot of 90s comics stuff that I grew up with but also grew out of. Stuff like Rob Liefeld and the other early Image creators' work.

A lot of that stuff is bad in a lot of different ways, but I was realizing how important that stuff was to me growing up. Weirdly, I think Liefeld's erratic linework influenced my handwriting, as an odd example.

So my nostalgic interest in that stuff lead me to this YouTube channel called Cartoonist Kayfabe, where they do a lot of flip-throughs and discussions of different comics, a lot of it the same 90s stuff the hosts and I both grew up on. They did an episode on what they called "Outlaw Comics," which are these super dark, black and white, heavily inked (some might say over-inked) comics like Faust, The Crow, and Razor. I liked a lot of that stuff when I was 13 or 14, especially The Crow which had a profound effect on me. I never read Faust back then because I couldn't find it. 

All that Outlaw stuff was sort of mysterious to me and I found myself thinking a lot about the context in which it was produced: the era of tabloid television like Hard Copy, near-peak crime rates in the US, etc. 

And how that paralleled with the present click-bait hyperpartisan media and increased anxiety over crime even though at the time crime was at historic lows (though that's changed since the pandemic). 

So I started digging out a lot of my old comics and buying up stuff I wanted as a kid but never had access to. I grew up in a small town in Wyoming, so it was hard to get indie comics.

I posted pics to Instagram with various thoughts and research notes and people seemed to dig it.

And I also started posting stuff related to the Amateur Creators Union, which was a group that existed for a couple of years in the mid-90s to publish work by, well, amateur comics creators.

They published a newsletter, lots of ashcans, and one anthology. A few members, like Ale Garza, went on to bigger things.

It was utterly forgotten, there was no record on the internet of the Amateur Creators Union ever existing.

So I started posting about that as well.

I got laid off from Wired magazine early in the pandemic, so I had some time on my hands and decided to write some articles about all this stuff I'd been posting to Instagram. I tracked down people and did some interviews, and started pitching the story to various comics and pop culture publications. No one was interested, which is understandable. This stuff is niche and those sites are pretty dependent on covering stuff that has mass appeal. I didn't want to write about the Fantastic Four or whatever though, and I knew there were people who wanted to read the articles I had in mind.

So I started Sewer Mutant to publish them. I really didn't want to start a new publication since there are a million comics and pop culture sites out there already, but it was the only way I could get these articles out there in the form I wanted.

Which actually seems fitting because they're largely stories about people self-publishing stuff.

Max: It's funny you say all of this, as I think I have a very similar relationship with the post-9/11 era of superhero comics; stuff like The Ultimates, The Boys, The Authority, and Punisher Max (even though all but the latter of these I did not read until later, actually...). 

Also, I don't mean to derail things too much but I do think it's important to clarify, my understanding is that that's actually not entirely true about the violent crime relapse during the pandemic. It has increased relative to where it's been since basically the mid to late 90's, but it's nowhere near what it was previously. The violent crime wave of the 20th century and it's relationship with comics is something I'm also very much interested in though! Also, while I'm no longer as inclined to agree with the theory, the book Freakonomics has an interesting take on it, although there's a more recent theory that I'm not more inclined to believe (although it's likely an interaction of several things and not just one).

I'm sorry to hear about Wired. I used to work for Condé Nast as well actually.

The struggle with niche interests is so real, and so frustrating. A big part of why I give these interviews is to try to give a platform, however small, for other people out there who I think are doing interesting and unique things, that don't necessarily have that kind of mainstream resonance. 

Klint: Yes that's right about the crime rates, though it varies by city. I just mean that we're not really at historically low rates anymore. My point is that it’s about the perception, the anxiety that people feel regardless of the actual threat. Arguably, people were disproportionately worried about crime even in the 80s and 90s which is part of why we ended up with over-incarceration problems, but obviously, it’s all a bit complicated.

Max: That's a whole other conversation, but in any case, I think I'm developing a deeper understanding of your comics sensibilities, and it's really interesting!

Klint: I don't even know what my comics sensibilities are anymore because I've spent a lot of the past two  years revisiting all that old stuff, much of which is frankly not very good. My favorite stuff though does overlap with Outlaw Comics though: Grendal, Alack Sinner, Stray Bullets. I'm really into crime fiction and horror, basically. But my tastes vary a lot. Upgrade Soul and Blue is the Warmest color are also all-time favorites of mine.

Max: I actually have not read Grendal but I know of it, nor have I even heard of those others. To be honest, a lot of comics written before like the 80's, like even a lot of the really renowned stuff, I can appreciate it for what it is, but much of it I would not necessarily call "good" haha, but it still was the source of inspiration for all of these other amazing things, and I do find inspiration in some of those comics as well. I think it's ok for something to be not good or to fail, if it fails in interesting ways.

Max: I've really enjoyed this conversation and there are several things we've discussed which I'd like to follow up with you on later, but we should probably wrap up since I know you need to get going! Thank you for your time though. Do you have any last things you'd like to say before we wrap up?

Klint: I can't think of anything else. Thanks for the invite, it's always interesting to be on the other side of the interview table.

My "MRD" PCs

Should have included this in my last post after Sofinho kindly shared our interview, but reminder: MRD game jam is ongoing, and one entrant will have art and layout commissioned for their work. I've extended the deadline a bit further for the reason below:

I tested positive for covid. If you have not already been vaccinated and don't have a good excuse, fuck off. If you haven't gotten boosted yet, don't be lazy like I was, and go do it ASAP! Feeling mostly ok, pretty mild symptoms, mostly just feeling really tired. I was starting to schedule a bunch more interviews, apologies to those of you who were expecting to hear from me recently...

Anyway, on to our post of the week:

I'm usually a GM but I've been trying to be a player more in some drop-in games, and as part of that, I've had the opportunity to actually play MRD characters now, twice.

The first is from Mike's of (Sheep and Sorcery) Weirdways game, where I adapted the Crashing Rocket Nixie Poltergeist Form and took items from the MRD book, but applied to his game. We haven't quite finished that adventure yet but I'm really enjoying the character and the adventure as a whole.

Weirdways

Name: Mad(dison) Marceau

Questions

What are two locations you desperately want to go or things you need to do on the road?

Stand atop One World Trade Center.

Dive into the ocean from a lighthouse along the Oregon Coast.

What's different about you? Why don't you fit in?

Has numerous niche interests which they obsess over in bursts, and even within those niches, their sensibilities defy the norm still.

Are you a fantasy creature? If so, what kind?

A Nixie (sea fairy) who inexplicably also has wings.

Why do you have no money?

Has a tendency of finding great success... and then blowing it all up (sometimes literally).

Who is someone you know who you might meet on the road?

William Vita, the Eccentric Psientist.

Who, if anyone, owns the van? Who drives?

TBD

Why are your characters traveling together?

TBD

One of you has an aunt in the midwest who has told you that her house is haunted and she needs help. Which one of you is it? Why is she calling you?

TBD

One of you is dead set on going to Burning Man. Which one of you is it?

Seems like it could be Mad Marceau...

Aspect 1 (General Concept): Crashing Rocket Nixie

Aspect 2 (Something weird but cool): Their third eye expresses absolute terror

Aspect 3 (kind of like...): Harley Quin

Important Items

Nixie Sticks: Nobody's quite sure what's in them- what a rush! Just tear it open, pour on your tongue and come alive. Allegedly grants magic powers.

Rocket Kit: Your kit can make rockets, fireworks, and other sparkling and exploding things.

Weaponized Meme: Weaponized, Military-grade meme.

Gateway Chalk: Draw a door and it appears, leading to some previously visited location the user chooses. It must be redrawn after each use.

Bottle of Indigo Pills: Experience euphoria and third-eye awareness.

Soul Mate: One high calorie protein bar made by specially-trained Buddhist Monks. (this later got traded for an awesome magic unicorn horn using the top spinner below)

Top Spinner: Spin the top to train an ad-tech machine learning algorithm. Spins whatever you’re selling.

Discredit Card: Can wipe out any one debt—of any size including non-monetary debts.

The second was from a one shot with SageDaMage, where we actually were using MRD as the core system, but the adventure was a condensed version of Silent Titans beginning in a modern but mythical Wales. It was really cool to finally play Silent Titans, and I was glad how easily the two go together. Obviously I'm biased, but I think more people should try out using MRD with other weird modules like this ;).

Clerval Fritz
Former mergers and acquisitions specialist with a background in organizational psychology who became a senator. The acquisitions were scrapped for parts towards his esoteric ends, prematurely ending the dreams of many would-be entrepreneurs.
The last acquisition ended in an experiment gone wrong, a laser-light explosion, disturbing noises, and many, many dead. The fallout was contained and the story buried, but shortly afterwards Clerval, alongside his new Oracle Iolo, entered the world of politics.
Leveraging his corporate connections to secure non-competitive deals to acquire private resources, he intends to use technology, psychology, and metaphysics to birth a superorganism from the body of the government.
In a past life, he stored a PHYLACTERY in Wales, which he now intends to recover to use towards birthing the superorganism.  

Iolo (10 HP, the NS Pet Special Item): Pale blue furred ape-hominid with a missing eye, a notable scar at the back of its head suggestive of a projectile wound, and a skin graft over its mouth. It is bound in a restraining jacket and chains. It gnaws its mouth graft into bloody pulp to speak in profound gibberish (Wd6), after which the graft reseals in a process sounding like the mashing of raw skin and mid-coital fluids.

Pyramid Shining Brightly
NAT: 13
WIS: 14
PRO: 14
Karma: 3 

Career
12. Government, Politics, Public Administration 

Quirk
2. You are invisible when nobody is watching. 

Starting Karmic Attachments
1. You have a goal, and nothing will get between you and accomplishing it. Whatever it is, whatever must be done is always justified. At least one person suffered for being in your way and seek vengeance.
(In particular, the company sacrificed in the failed attempt at creating a superorganism, which also led to the creation of the SPECIAL SHINING LASER GUN and Iolo)
6. Your relationships are superficial and transactional. You have no real friends or loved ones, just people you want things from and want things from you in turn.
(The various aspirational entrepreneurs he's worked with, or Iolo) 

Reincarnation Ritual
1. Hold tightly to an item representing your value and rest.
(The SPECIAL SHINING LASER GUN) 

Poltergeist Features
0. POWER MOVE: You developed an intuition for manipulation through overt displays of power: a powerful handshake, biting apathetic humor or sarcasm. Pd8 but if attempted against somebody with higher PRO take Wd4.
4. PHYLACTERY: In a past life, an item of value to you was buried in a place of personal significance. So long as it remains undisturbed, PRO Damage against you is Impaired and cannot cause you to accrue Karma.
6. SPECIAL SHINING LASER GUN: An experimental gold and white limestone gun with a pyramidal shape at the muzzle’s end. It’s a fascinating story how you got it. Fires a Karmic force beam (Nd10) with a 1-in-6 chance of accruing 1 Karma. 

Special Items:
84. NS PET: Nature Spirit pet with animal intelligence, and usually one
Damage Die for one Ability at d6, 10 HP, and one utility special ability.
It has some behavioral quirk making it prone to trouble and frequently
imposes inopportune Karmic Attachments.
Usage Die: NA

The Profound Gibberish of Iolo
1. Drip drip walking down the blue lane one wonders why the sky hurts so and when the moon will just fall already GOD DAMNIT!
2. How am I supposed to LIVE LAUGH LOVE under these conditions!?
3. You fuck! How dare you bring such invisible joy to the souls of children not yet born into the indigo universe!
4. Clouds crying sunshine bring delirium to the prairie dogs who would otherwise kill themselves out of religious fervor. All hail the cloud emperor in his wondrous nudity!
5. In a moment of clarity, the man wonders what it all means. And then he poops.
6. I'm already spinning in corkscrew motions and rubbing my concave tummy and now you ask for the caviar of dragons?! Give me a week, ya rascal ;).
7. Turn on the telly I'm getting bored of this program and I can't find the mute button.
8. Are you bored? Afraid? In love? Insert other emotion here? Are you sick of these pesky emotions? Try life. Life! For those sick of being slaves to their own impulses. Life! It's like death, but not! Call 1-800-LIFE.

Alone in the Labyrinth: Weird & Wonderful Interviews

Max: I actually first learned about your blog in my very first interview, with Semiurge, who gave a brilliant summary of Pariah and what makes it so interesting. So it feels good to come full circle and finally interview you!

Semiurge: To go back to Pariah's setting, it's hit home a bit of what is conventional wisdom for osr settings that didn't previously land for me. The post-apocalyptic, social order has broken down sort of stuff. But in kind of the opposite direction, pre-civilization rather than post-civilization. Smaller cast, smaller world, no big powerful states to exist in the shadow of. More room for weirdos and weird doings.

Sofinho: I remember that interview well. I really enjoyed playing with Semiurge. hope we can get the campaign up and running again one day.

Max: While there are other prehistoric settings that either lean into "realism", or on the other extreme "cave man" aesthetics, or alternatively rooted in specific cultures, Pariah is to my mind unique in that it takes an understanding of the reality of that time, but uses it to create something Weird, or demonstrate the Weirdness of neolithic life. How did this idea come to you?

Sofinho: My first degree was in anthropology (confession: I only lasted one year before dropping out) and the programme was structured around a very broad base covering physical (or biological) and social (or cultural) anthropology, to give students a taste of the subject's possibilities.

It gave us a strong overview of a lot of topics ranging from primatology, human evolution, anthropology as applied to contemporary medical contexts, urban anthropology and (of course) we discussed contemporary indigenous cultures a lot.

For context this was in the UK in the 90s, but it was an incredibly international course.

Anyway, I was young and not nearly as clever as I thought I was and was really struck by the complexity and variety of cultures, past and present, irrespective of technological "sophistication".

Oh my god what a long-winded response.

"What inspired this rpg"

"Well, let me take you back to 1998 and talk about the entire human race"

Max: Haha no, I asked a very open ended question, this is a great response!

Sofinho: To answer your question succinctly, this idea came from the notion that human culture is always complex, regardless of subsistence strategy, "development" (technological/cultural/whatever) is not a linear progression or a railroad... but I also wanted to capture that notion of conflict between settled/transient or nature/culture but also individual/community. So PCs belong to one world (forager/gatherer-hunter) but have been exiled and now have to find their place in a new world, making a choice between settlement (neolithic) or wilderness (animist)

If that's not too long-winded.

Max: You could not have given a better response as far as I'm concerned, this is wonderful, I really appreciate your insights here.

I took a physical anthropology class in undergrad as well, and while I never pursued it further, I did think it was very interesting!

Sofinho: Yeah our ancestors were something else!

Max: The parts of the book that stand out to me the most, are the Realms, Magic, and Entheogens, and the way they all interact. Prior to Pariah, I would have thought of the Neolithic era as being overly limiting in scope for my tastes, but you show, as Semiurge said, how there's a form of infinite possibility there, but from the opposite direction of e.g. post post apocalyptic science fantasy, which used to be one of my favorite genres (I've recently gotten a bit bored with it but that's a separate conversation).

Focusing on the Realms in particular, I look at for instance There and Dusk, or Dawn and Moon; I think a lesser setting would have condensed these and taken a more generic and literalist approach. It's not just "The Dark Realm, The Land of the Dead, etc.", it's There. That's so much more powerful to me, and the nuances between that vs. Dusk or even Sun. 

How did you come to define these realms?

Sofinho: Yeah that's difficult because I'm not 100% sure. I think there's an element of the sephiroth in there- you could map moon to Yesod, dawn to Netzach, sun to Tiphareth dusk to Hod (and actually I did an NSR Planescape post a while back about Hod, following a format by Marquis Hartiss and Pandatheist but it didn't get picked up by any other bloggers... great shame!)

Malkuth is the here and now.

I mean, it's not but you could if you wanted.

Max: I hadn't necessarily considered that, but ya, I can kind of see it...

Sofinho: But then there's also some trad D&D bits lurking there (Dawn is sort of the Feywilde? The Beyond is the Far Realm)

But mostly I was trying to escape the four humours/ elements cosmology and try to see things a little from a paleolithic perspective.

Also it's not really supposed to be coherent, they're all just piled on top of each other.

Max: I was thinking of Dawn as more Midsummer Night's Dream but I guess that's fairly overlapping with D&D Fey.

Sofinho: For Sure.

Max: that latter point, about it not being coherent, is a big part of what makes it work so well to me.

I know this sounds weird to say, but there's almost something Lynchian about your Realms and the Entheogens.

Sofinho: Right. I don't really like settings where everything is rigidly defined and mapped.

Thank you I take that as a great compliment, even if it's only a trace of Lynch it's good enough for me!

What do you think makes it Lynchian?

Max: Who is supposed to be the interviewer here!?

But I think it was in a blog post you did a while back, where it was something about mapping out a Neolithic dungeon, and you had this dream maze thing... I really don't remember the particulars anymore, I just remember thinking it felt Lynchian, and it's colored my perception of Pariah ever since.

As you say, it's that lack of coherence, I guess. The idea of the Neolithic world as being one in which things are not as well understood as they are now, and then extrapolating what one's perceptions would be in such a world, it would be like a pre-lingual child, or a dream; something really alien and weird and hard to explain.

I was watching this movie the other day that had been recommended to me by Fiona Geist, On the Silver Globe, and without getting into all of the particulars, it felt very much like that as well- a pre-modern magical (sur)realism.

That's part of what appeals to me when you talk about wanting to avoid the humours or other preconceived notions or tropes- in doing so, you create something much Weirder and more interesting

Sofinho: I tried yet I still ended up referencing the western Mystery Tradition!

As you say, it's that lack of coherence, I guess. The idea of the Neolithic world as being one in which things are not as well understood as they are now, and then extrapolating what one's perceptions would be in such a world, it would be like a pre-lingual child, or a dream; something really alien and weird and hard to explain.

That was an idea I had for Dusk. .. and I'm glad it coloured your perception in that way, because the broader picture is exactly that: a world not fully formed or realized, that somehow the characters (and the players) hammer into shape.

Max: That may be why Dusk was the one that most appealed to me (well that and Moon), although I don't think I totally understood why- now I need to reread it with this in mind.

Sofinho: Actually there's another layer to that which was also part of the initial inspiration: turning non-diegetic elements into diegetic ones. Like this idea in the old school primer that the player isn't the character, they're more like the character's guardian angel. I wanted to have the players mean something in the game, or partially so; like they represent the ancestral spirits or something. I didn't really develop the idea much further.

That way you can put a layer between the player and the character but still allow them immersion in the world.

Max: That actually maybe gets at another cool thing you did in the book, which I very much appreciate as it's an idea I had forever ago but never did anything with, which is that you actually tell them to re-stat their characters with a different game- like for one of the realms, you tell them to play Cthulhu Dark.

Was that more so also a matter of RPG Theory and diegesis, or more so about inexplicability and evoking a feeling? Not that the two need be mutually exclusive...

Sofinho: Conveniently I think both!

Just the idea of feeling like you've changed lanes in some way, fallen out of your world.I'm 100% certain I read it first in either Ynn or Stygian Library but I cannot find it in either text upon re-reading.

I also get it could be massively jarring for some people, but not in a positive way.

The idea that entering the sun realm would burn away all your stats and leave you with just your essence was another thought, though I think in the end I said "break out the cards and play Our Big Show of Worth by Vivian Nguyen.

For the benefit of your urbane and curious readership I should like to add that none of those concepts were ever play-tested.

Max: That said, I like them as much as ideas as something to actually be tried.

Sofinho: Actually that's a lie: I did do the your character smokes opium and now we're all playing Dawn of Worlds bit that is suggested in the zine under Moon.

Max: How did that go?

Sofinho: It was a while back and it ended up turning into more of a collective mapmaking/illustration exercise than a game. The dice mechanic for Dawn of Worlds is pretty.

Not sure what to say.

It's sort of simple and it is mechanically appropriate(?)

But we kept having conversations about whether we had to add a bonus or not and it was quite boring so we just ended up drawing this big map and adding characters. It was really fun. We totally forgot about that pariah game as well.

Max: I think that's the right approach for that sort of thing, recognizing it'll be a bit messy and disruptive to the "main" game but just letting it be what it is and if it informs the future of the campaign, that would be great.

Sofinho: Yeah the evening just petered out and when we picked up the next session it was just "you come around from your stupor. It is the following day...."

So in actuality it didn't add anything to the campaign but it was a fun evening.

I miss face to face games.

Max: Ya... I mean online is convenient in a lot of ways, but still :/. I actually am putting together an in-person game again finally, hopefully starting in January.

Sofinho: Oh I am super grateful for the amount of roleplaying the internet provided me with last year, and to all the people I played with, they were all wonderful.

Max: On an unrelated note, you and I also have a shared interest in the criminally under-appreciated Brand New Cherry Flavor, which I would say is also rather Lynchian.

I know you've written about and are running a BNCF-inspired game. Do you see this as something you intend to pursue further?

Sofinho: BNCF was a brilliant show and I walked away from it feeling energised and inspired. I'm still in the process of getting a play-by-post group together... by which I mean I have a group with characters (using Esoteric Enterprises) and they're waiting for me to get it started...

Max: In retrospect I feel like my comment on that blog post came off a bit too strong haha, but have you thought about, or can you talk about, what you're doing with that setting? If or how you're making it your own?

Sofinho: Yes I can! And I will.

Max: Awesome :).

Sofinho: I'll confess I felt conflicted by Esoteric Enterprises first time round but I think BNCF inspired me to think about using an urban fantasy chassis to pursue weird fiction in an RPG context.

I like the Hollywood backdrop to BNCF and fame and/or artistic excellence are motivating factors for the protagonists.

They're also talented and successful to varying degrees.

I thought it would be fun to look at down-at-heel actors and musos trying to get by in a similar world- a world of sympathetic magic and ritual violence, but also scene rivalry and one-up-manship etc.

In this particular iteration the party are going to be various artists all connected by the same agent. Some have fallen by the wayside after an earlier brush with fame, others are new to the game and looking to make a name for themselves. All are kinda desperate, and that's what their agent is looking to exploit: so they'll be sent off on some kind of low-level heist scenario and then I'll just see where players decide to take it.

EE has some really great sandbox tools and I'll mostly be re-skinning them.

Max: I've written before about my idea of NPC Specialists, my main one being The Handler, which in this context would be something like the agent, but I like this idea of leaning into an adversarial relationship between The Agent and The Team. That's also a clever way to get at some of the dynamics in BNCF which I might have otherwise thought would be too linear to translate into TTRPG.

Sofinho: It's always difficult to adapt material that's so character driven. Like the world of BNCF is fascinating but that show is propelled by the dynamic between the core characters, who are all detestable and fascinating in their own way, but it's not exactly an ensemble flick is it?

By which I mean if there were more of an ensemble cast, it might be easier to adapt it to a trad rpg format.

But yeah I think The Handler is a very recognizable trope and one maybe underrepresented in gaming.

Max: To my mind though, the power dynamic and inherently predatory nature of highly competitive fields like the arts, is the throughline that can be dissociated from the specific character conflicts and worked into a TTRPG context as you're suggesting here

Sofinho: Yep, 100%.

Max: Another core theme to BNCF I felt like was disgust, and the way it leveraged disgust as a sort of primal emotion, alongside fear and arousal. I am admittedly not a horror aficionado so BNCF may not be anything special, but I thought they did it in a really conscientious and extremely well executed way. It would be difficult to maintain that tone or degree of excellence improvisationally, but I do think that's critical in some way to evoking the sensibilities of BNCF and also ties into those power dynamic themes.

Max: Do you intend to flesh this out into a larger project, or are you more so committed to Pariah still?

Sofinho: You mean publish it? I think only in "scrapbook" form i.e as blog posts.

It's a game I hope to run for my friends but I also enjoy sharing that experience with other people. I'm definitely more committed to pariah in the broader context of rpg design or publishing or whatever. But I've slowed down a tonne in the past year so who knows.

Max: It's all a lot of time and effort and you have to put a lot of yourself into a thing to publish, it's not something to be taken lightly for sure. I guess that was just a roundabout way of me saying I'd love to see you flesh it out into a full book, for whatever that's worth!

Sofinho: Thanks!

Max: Anyway I know we're running up on time, but I want to try again about that Gods in the Blue Doors* business...

* This was a comment I cut from the interview because it came up and then we went off on other things and I couldn't figure out where to insert it, but it was in reference to the BNCF-inspired setting.

Sofinho: It came up on the Random Adventure Generator that Chris Bissette made...but I already had Atop the Wailing Dunes so I set it aside. It's definitely going to pop up in the BNCF campaign.

Are you a fan of Britt Marling?

Max: I'm not familiar with them.

Sofinho: She came to Hollywood to be an actress and as a fairly good-looking blonde white woman had no trouble picking up some pretty boring parts so she decided to write herself some more interesting ones.

So she's an actress and screenwriter who collaborates with a director called Zal Bratmanjil on a number of movies (Sound of My Voice and East being two favourites of mine)

Anyway, Netflix commissioned her series OA which had some really interesting ideas (and multiple Borges references).

Max: Aah I forgot to mention Borges in this interview, thank you! But anyway...

Sofinho: Thought you'd appreciate that!

Season 2 features a character played by Zendaya, but also features this fucking weird house. There's time travel, elfin geometry and strange puzzles and I think that's what the Gods in the Blue Doors will be. An adventure site, a character, a rumour-mill, a portal to other worlds

Max: I think I've heard of OA but not those other ones, but I'll have to look into all of these, thanks for the recommendations!

I know it's getting pretty late for you, but I appreciate your time and this has been an awesome conversation.

Anything else you'd like to talk about, or anything in particular you'd like to say, before we wrap up?

Sofinho: I could spend another ten minutes trying to think of something pithy but maybe I should just say "thank you for having me, great questions!"

Max: I realize that question puts on a lot of pressure, I should probably come up with a better closer! This was fun, thanks for your time!

"Gacha" Mecha Generator

This is a Mecha generator for Get into the Machine, Shinji! although much of it could be treated as a system-free Mecha generator. The schtick in this case (not that you have to play it this way), is that these Mecha are created by a corporation that sells their Mecha as "Gacha" capsules, like the old Japanese toy dispensers, or many modern videogames. If you wanted to do a more OSR-style Mecha game, this could be a cool framing device for that, where players start off with randomly generated Mecha, that even within the setting itself were Gacha. At the GM's discretion, you can give the players new Mecha or upgrades using a mish-mash of this generator or other ideas, I'm just thinking this would be potentially a flexible and fun starting point for a Mecha game.

I plan to eventually create a more robust version of this, I guess this is the proof of concept, so please let me know what you think.

I googled "Gacha Mecha" and found this.

And then players could create their own Pilot Abilities in addition to whatever normal character generation stuff for the pilots, or alternatively, you can have generators for that stuff too but this post is just doing the Gacha Mecha.

Created with Spwack's List to HTML Generator

Kaiju

Reminder check out the MRD Game Jam- one entrant will have art and layout commissioned for their Poltergeist Form!

Weird & Wonderful Table of Kaiju. In typical fashion I tried to keep these Weird. Was aiming for 10, but the last one is always the hardest, so we have just nine instead.

Saruri-Man: Midsummer Night's Adventures

1. Mars en Venus: Massive ironwood tree rooted within the corpse of a titan. Flowers sprouting from its eye sockets, horn of braided branches punctured through the forehead. Shambles in jerky motions, roots and branches replacing necrotic muscles, veins, and arteries, and reinforcing the bones.
   
   
2. Mother at the Gate: An indescribably massive creature at the other end of Yog-Sothoth. From tears in reality formed from burst bubbles of The Gate, she can be seen pressed against the edge of reality. A vaguely humanoid figure with jaundiced skin, ill-defined fat, musculature, and bone structure- more like the abstract concept of the humanoid form. No hair, genitalia, nails, ears, or any facial features. Three glassy, two-dimensional planes project in front of her face, two displaying eyes and one a mouth, all oversized. The planes engage in repetitive actions such as saccadic eye movements, blinks, and lip movements. Produces no sound except for when crying and vomiting liquid starfire, from which skyscraper-sized "children" fall. Most of her appearance is inferred from these "children"- at the edge of the gate little more than her plane-eyes or mouth can be seen. A vague sense of maternalism or Munchausen by proxy aside, her behavior is in no way comprehensible to mortals.
   
   
3. Eerie White Light: Pillar of white light streaking with smoky tendrils as it elegantly glides across the city. Vaguely, an attractive androgynous ambiguous figure can be seen dancing or strutting seductively within the pillar. Those bathed in its light experience momentary overstimulating pleasure-pain as their lives wash away, leaving behind empty, smiling corpses.
   
   
4. Doctor Hand: Disembodied inhuman white hand. Too lithe, too many tight, roping muscles, too many veins and arteries, too many fingers. High-frequency nails emit surgically precise laser beams, cutting purposefully complex patterns towards unknown ends.
   
   
5. Encrypta Yaga: Living idea that hijacks screens, reflective surfaces, and other signals. It hides in broad daylight, subliminally influencing consumers. It has been on display in Shibuya Crossing and Times Square for some time, nobody is sure exactly how long. It's witches have invaded virtual realities, zoom meetings, and videogames. An unusual patch of blinking lights across the world, believed to be a message from Encrypta Yaga, are being recorded and analyzed from satellites in orbit. The message is yet to be fully decoded, and the satellites have begun to exhibit... unusual behaviors.
   
   
6. Dying Breath Banshee: Eldritch kaiju satyr in a translucent tube. Her chest is torn open and instruments pump air and fluids in the heart and lungs which pulse against the surface of the tube as if trying in vain to escape. The exposed head, not quite human nor goat, chokes and breathes in eerie, dissonant whistles like the violin strings of a horror movie score, and not quite human nor goat blood-curdling shrieks.
   
   
7. Macroversa: High-dimensional hyper-sphere magnifier. Inside the stadium-sized floating aquarium exist microscopic creatures across known and unknown spacetimes at macroscopic scale; tardigrades, human gut bacteria, long extinct proto-organisms, inconceivable aliens, cancerous cells, and extra-dimensional creatures.
   
   
8. Celestial Predator: A constellation of distant stars in the shape of a feral smiling face like an aggressive animal baring its teeth. Never seen in the same place twice. For thousands of years it has watched over us keenly, just out of sight, waiting until the perfect moment to strike and devour our world whole. As it looms closer, finally yet ephemerally in view, we each feel a single bead of cold sweat run down our necks, and smell the adrenaline of our collective fear in the air. Listen to that feeling- the danger is real.
   
   
9. King Kevorkian: Like a biblical angel by way of Jack Kirby and the Radiation Symbol. According to Psyr Psimon Stilton, it is the third god which the Monkey King could not defeat. It waits in Squaretime, fumigating Time Worms, serving either as the beacon of the <danger message>, or the executioner of its will, or both.
   

MRD Ectoplasmic Game Jam (with a prize!)

EDIT: I rarely edit posts after publishing unless it's a minor cleanup thing, but actually, I realized after the fact that rather than just reiterating the exact details from the game jam page, it might be better to first share Klintron's (Sewer Mutant, Kid Minotaur) excellent description:

Max Cantor is running a game jam for his Maximum Recursion Depth game, specifically for "Poltergeists" which are essentially the game's equivalent of classes/background. The winner of the jam will get their Poltergeist professionally illustrated and laid out. Submissions open December 16th 2021 to January 30th 2022.

If you're not familiar, MRD is a little hard to explain. The lazy way to describe it is Persona 5 powered by the Into the Odd system. Influences range from Doom Patrol and Invisibles to Bojack Horseman. I think I see a little Neil Gaiman in there too but maybe that's just me. The more esoteric explanation is to cite the game's full title: Maximum Recursion Depth, or Sometimes the Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing: The Karmapunk RPG.

With the release of Maximum Recursion Depth (available on drivethrurpg and itch.io), I'm running the MRD Ectoplasmic Jam! It's an itch.io game jam to create your own Poltergeist Form, but with this game jam, there's a special prize. For one of the entries, I will work with the creator, an illustration artist, and a layout artist, to create a two-page spread of the Poltergeist Form comparable to those in the book! The winner will still be allowed to sell the Poltergeist Form independently and keep all profits, they just need to state that it's fan/3rd-party/community content and reference the main game (there's probably a proper copyright way to do that but in lieu of knowing how to do it offhand...).

The winner will be chosen by a panel including myself, Fiona Maeve Geist, Semiurge, and Jones Smith. There are no specific scoring criteria, we'll just talk it over amongst ourselves and decide which we would most like to see made into a full product.

Given the nature of the contest, I'll ask that the entries include no art, and minimal layout- only as much as will facilitate readability. Since the art and layout are all going to be redone anyway, I want to start things out on an even playing field. That being said, I would encourage entrants to add art and layout after the fact even if they don't win, it would be really cool to see what directions people take with it!

I'm assuming there will not be an absurd number of entries, but if I end up being incorrect on that front, I reserve the right to adapt the rules and conditions accordingly; if there are a hundred entries it might be too much to ask from my panelists! Along those lines, please only one entry per person! (unless I end up with the opposite problem and there aren't enough entries, in which case go wild...).

While I would appreciate it if you bought the book, it is not entirely necessary, although if I get too many entries, I reserve the right to retroactively make proof of purchase a requirement.

While the overall quality and quantity of the content in the Pay What You Want Ashcan Edition is significantly worse than the main book in practically every way (much of the writing has been rewritten and all of it edited, the game mechanics themselves haven't radically changed but many of the Poltergeist Features and Special Items have been rewritten after playtesting, the Module itself was completely overhauled, etc.), that is one alternative to buying the full game.

Another would be to use the Poltergeist Form Hacking blog post and other MRD blog posts as a point of reference.

Finally, you can ask questions on the #mrd channel of the NSR Discord Server or on the #ttrpg channel of the Weird Places and Liminal Spaces Discord Server.

I realize there are a million TTRPG game jams and blogs and published games. I feel a little guilty leveraging my personal resources to provide a prize that might incentivize someone to choose my game jam over any number of other equally deserving game jams or to buy my book or read my content over many other equally qualified games because of this extrinsic incentive. At the same time, the winner of this game jam may be someone who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to have their work professionally produced. If you have feelings about this approach one way or another, please let me know.

Was It Likely: Weird & Wonderful Interviews

Was it Likely?

Max: I remember you talking about game design on your blog in a way that felt very FKR, way before the modern version of FKR was a thing. That's not a question, but I don't think you get enough credit for that. But anyway, is this still how you feel about game design? Am I misrepresenting your thoughts?

Jones: Well first of all thanks, it's been honestly pretty gratifying to see FKR catch on like it has (so like, in an extremely limited and niche way), though I'm not at all sure if any of its major proponents have even heard of my blog. But to the point, I would say that I probably prefer more procedure than the average FKR player, though I enjoy the hell out of a fully FKR campaign. I think that it's often the case that game mechanics, more than anything else, offer a way to keep track of information that might otherwise be forgotten, and can push for a type of play that might not necessarily occur intuitively to the players. 

Max: Can you elaborate on what you mean by procedure?

Jones: Sure, I guess another way to frame it would be "game mechanics or the relationships between game mechanics"

Max: I'm sure you have some thoughts on the "does system matter" debate then? (jk :p!)

Jones: God, apparently so judging from the absolutely rabid responses I've gotten on my thoughts around that. I think of TTRPGs as mainly an extension of playing make believe with toys; you can definitely use a toy dinosaur in the way the maker intended, but you might also decide it's a pretty good hammer if you're tired of playing dinosaurs and want to play construction instead. Furthermore, the toy isn't even necessary in order to play dinosaurs or any other game; it's just a useful prop, a nice locus for everyone's imagination to latch onto. Things that I think can often take the place of rules include like: a good playlist, pictures, poetry, selections from novels, movies, etc. Anything that's going to help everyone develop a shared imaginary space with minimal "hey wait I wasn't imagining this like that at all!"

Max: That latter point is very FKR haha. The former though, the dinosaur analogy, I find that one especially interesting. It suggests a type of abstract thinking that is fairly rare. It's like this problem solving task I remember, where one of the items is a box of screws or nails or something, and anyway, the optimal solution involves dumping the screws and just using the box, but most people don't realize that until after it's demonstrated. One could say they failed to think outside the box. Problem solving is often thought of as a core tenet of OSR-style play, but I think sometimes people are very myopic about  what counts as problem solving, or what kinds of problems they're trying to solve.

Max: Are there any kinds of problems in particular you're interested in exploring in games? Do you agree with this notion in the first place?

Jones: In a funny way, the questions I want to explore in games are all very selfish: most of my mechanics start out as a way for me exert the minimum amount of effort necessary to achieve an effect I want. How to consistently generate good ideas without inspiration, how to make the setting feel deep without creating a world bible. Hence my obsession with generators, tarot, divination, etc. With regards to "OSR Problem Solving" some would question whether I have any right whatsoever to weigh in on this, bc the games I run at this point could only be considered OSR in the same way a baby born with gill marks could be considered a fish. But I agree that essentially, tackling open ended problems is one of the things that TTRPGs do best; problem solving requires engagement with the fiction, creative thinking, and all that good stuff.

Max: There's certainly something to be said for efficiency. I was reluctant to use generators for a long time, because worldbuilding and the meticulousness it can sometimes involve is a major part of what I enjoy about tabletop RPGs, but I can also appreciate the ways that generators and other forms of randomness can spur creativity as well.

Max: What do you think makes for a good generator?

Jones: Word choice above all else. If you don't use evocative language, you're sunk, it doesn't matter how complex the generator is, it'll feel completely inert. I had a lengthier answer here, but I kept on thinking out counterexamples to my own points, so I think that's what I'm left with. I guess to add one further dimension I'd say "not overly prescriptive, not overly vague" which is another way of saying "well written" but you see examples of both all the time; giving me a pile of common nouns doesn't stir any imagination, but neither does a fully realized paragraph; at that point you're just writing table entries.

Max: I do think there's a bit of a distinction there, and both are good points. The latter is more of a practicality, whereas the former is about using language evocatively. I mean, there is still a logistical level to it too, in that evocative language is, in effect, encoding a lot of information, and in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and memorable, all of which is good for a generator.

Jones: Yeah, that's definitely the case. I think that honestly the best thing anyone who likes writing generators and wants to improve can do is just read a bunch of poetry. Even if you don't have a literary background, you'll pick up on methods of weighting language with meaning and aesthetic appeal. I think the ttrpg scene has really criminally undersold how important good writing is to making good games/game tools.

Max: It's funny you mention poetry, I've recently developed an interest in it myself. And specifically, it was when I realized how much structure there is in poetry. That absolutely makes sense to me, although I hadn't considered this! There are at least a handful of indie/OSR/etc. creators I can think of who do prioritize writing, but I agree that it's undervalued. It's also really hard to do, and also hard to do on top of everything else that goes into a game. But even so, the value of it probably outweighs the effort more so than most people recognize.

Jones: Oh, I'd go further; I think it's probably the number one thing that's gonna make or break a game, particularly when it comes to landing new players. 100% (and I say this without exaggeration) of the players at my table went from being skeptical about ttrpgs to fully enthused based solely on the quality of the writing in the books and games I showed/ran for them

Max: There's something to be said for that, it's certainly something I've thought a lot about with my own works. I look back on some of my earlier blog posts, and there were some good ideas, and occasionally bits of decent writing, but some of it is pretty rough.

Max: What does good writing in TTRPGs look like to you? I don't necessarily mean to name specific books, but what kinds of styles or sensibilities? Maybe that's too abstract of a question...

Jones: I think that the old OSR adage of "evocative and brief" has some merit, but maximalist long form writing can definitely be equally effective (think Luka Rejec, or the Grand Commodore blog) Whatever you're doing, you're going to want to prioritize atmosphere, style, and clarity, in roughly that order. Reason being that in a work designed primarily to inspire play, the work had better be inspirational, and if the GM can read something, not necessarily be clear on the details, but capture enough of an atmosphere/sensibility/vibe to improvise their own, then that's a successful bit of writing. Clarity of course is relevant when it comes to things that it's crucial that all parties be on the same page about, but that's often the easiest part of the job to be honest. I think a lot of OSR creators in particular tend to go straight for "clarity by way of brevity" which both neglects atmosphere and style and often doesn't even achieve a useful clarity, because the kind of clarity offered by "6 by 6 room, barrel in the corner" is not a kind of clarity that informs the players about what it's like to be in that room, and that sense of the game space having real weight is in turn necessary to facilitate the kind of play that most OSR/Fiction First fans claim to prefer 

Max: This is a very interesting perspective, because ya, most OSR sensibilities I think would put clarity first, and are very much about minimalism. One critique I might place with this though, particularly as someone who tries very hard to create novel worlds that don't lean on genre or preconceived notions, is that the more so one does that, the more importance must be placed on clarity; or at least that's what I've generally thought, but you may very well be correct that sufficiently evocative language would supersede this, or rather, sufficiently evocative language is by definition sufficiently clear.

Jones: "sufficiently evocative language is by definition sufficiently clear" is a really nice succinct way of putting it, yeah. I think it's also a case of people emphasizing the wrong kinds of clarity; creating clarity about what a place feels like is going to be of the utmost importance in an activity wholly contained in the minds of you and your friends, but it doesn't get a lot of attention as a rule.

Max: "but it doesn't get a lot of attention as a rule." Do you mean that literally, as in it often is not represented in game rules, or did you mean that more so figuratively? I would be inclined to agree either way, but what do you do about that?

Jones: Both, I suppose. And I think it's mainly a matter of really bearing down on the actual writing of a given game (are these words the best possible words? Is this the best possible place to put them?), as well as acknowledging gamefeel, (a term I think coined by Jay Dragon?) which is essentially just the aesthetic experience offered by a particular mechanic: rolling a dice pool has different gamefeel than rolling a d20, etc.

Max: Well the latter example also changes the probabilities, which is a very different thing. I don't mean that pedantically, it's an important distinction, since what you're talking about is much more so qualitative than quantitative, or at least harder to operationalize quantitatively.

Jones: Hm, I see what you're saying but I actually disagree, not with the fact that the probabilities are altered of course, but that there's a way to neatly separate the aesthetic experience of a game from its mechanical experience. Going back to poetry, I'd say the actual mechanics of a game are akin to the formal elements of a poem, while the writing of a game is analogous to, well, the writing of the poem. In other words; they alter how you consume the writing, the order in which you consume it, the context in which you place it, etc. I also think that this is honestly just not something a lot of people are conscious of in their own games. A lot of people would benefit from sitting down and thinking about what aesthetic experience they are trying to capture at the table, rather than how best to express the physical rules of their imaginary world

Max: Good points on both counts, and I definitely agree about the focus on rules vs. expression. It seems like, at least in my circles, most people are really focused on either the meta/theory-level of tabletop RPGs, or on PbtA- or storygame-style mechanics-as-expression mentality. And as you eloquently put, rules and writing are interactive. Even so, I see few people prioritizing worldbuilding or writing per se in discussion or design of TTRPGs nowadays.

Jones: I agree, and it's really a shame, especially when most of what comes of the "mechanics as expression" discussion is "we came up with another way to do ptba moves"

Max: I agree, but to be clear, I'm not trying to hate on PbtA or anything, in fact one of my favorite recent game releases was a PbtA game. But still, as I know you are aware, this is something I'm also passionate about and trying to bring back in some capacity; a place for worldbuilding and written expression.

Jones: Oh me neither; I have no particular love for PbtA, but I think it's a really good collection of good common sense practices for many games. I think part of the issue is that it's really rare that you see people truly innovating mechanically (and it's always obvious when they do, because it's always entirely out of left field), but that a lot of people insist on foregrounding their rules even when their rules are like, yet another way to make hitpoints more realistic or something. And ironically, the games with some of the most  innovative rules structures I've ever read are the ones that place primary emphasis on tone and atmosphere. I've been rereading Polaris, and its structured argument resolution system been blowing my mind, but that's like, the last thing the book cares about you paying attention to. 

Max: I tried to be conscientious of exactly these kinds of things when I was designing MRD- I understand how one can so easily lose sight of this, but I agree that at this point, I really don't care about mechanical "innovation" unless what I'm seeing actually has some degree of intentionality. As you're saying, it's the mechanics or game innovations that are most rooted in expressing some unique or well executed tone or atmosphere that I am most likely to find compelling.

Max: We're running up on time but I really enjoyed this conversation. In addition to any final thoughts on this topic, is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap up?

Jones: I've enjoyed this conversation a lot too! It's a nice way to sort out and make explicit some of my own beliefs that just ambiently inform my design. And I guess I'd just ask if you think this emphasis on "good writing" in games is potentially exclusionary/elitist? I've been criticized for that before, though for my money I think it's largely an empty critique: the ideas that a well written poem is better than a poorly written one, and that asking someone to purchase a poorly written poem is a bit of a fools errand, aren't particularly controversial, but we seem to violently drop our standards for written games and modules. Either way though, I'd be curious to hear where you stand.

Max: There is an extent to which what counts as "good writing" is subjective or may be elitist, and I think that's an inherent complication in things that can't be quantified and measured (that's not to say that quantitative fields don't have bias lol, but those same methods are how one would systematically identify bias- it's about methods, not institutions, but this is all a very long aside). That being said, in both game design and poetry, there is some degree of structure, and certain principles work better than others, and one who understands and leverages them will systematically outperform someone who does not, regardless even if they consciously understand what they're doing, although being educated per se (independent of being certified per se- as in having a degree of some sort) presumably helps. So that's maybe a longwinded way of saying I agree with you- not that there isn't room for debate or a need for further operationalization, but principally I agree. But anyway, this was a lot of fun, thanks for your time!

Jones: Back atcha, always a good time talkin shop with you.