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!