Game Design Pattern: Concept Crafting

As part of WORDS!: The July 2024 Blog Carnival hosted by Beneath Foreign Planets, I thought I'd revisit one of my favorite game mechanics of all time: 

Concept Crafting

Credit to Saker Tarsos, his Crafting with Concepts post from 2020 was the last TTRPG mechanic that truly inspired me. I'm sure there's other really innovative things I haven't given sufficient consideration or am not aware of, let me know in the comments, but this one was a game changer.

I have been under-inspired lately so I'm not going to re-hash too much. 

The core mechanic is as follows:

WORD1 + WORD2 = WORD3

e.g.:

FIRE + BALL = FIREBALL

Go read his original post or any of the following.

In my original Mecha Gear post I describe a system for building Mecha with Concept Crafting, but this could easily also apply to Power Armor or Battleships or other mechanical things.

I created three spark table posts for creating various kinds of weird mecha:

• Superorganism Mecha
• Embodied Cognition Mecha
• Nihilistic Mecha

I also wrote Pre-Gens for a Super Robot Wars (videogame series)-style crossover Post Apocalyptic Mecha setting including the Ichinana from Mazinger Z, Jet Alone from Evangelion, and Hyakku Shiki from Mobile Suit Gundam.

The final play report of my Maximum Recursion Depth Volume 2 Campaign has a writeup of an awesome Concept Crafting-based Mecha boss fight, with an index to all the other PRs. The penultimate play report also had a really cool sandbox survival module that leveraged Concept Crafting for a variety of things like salvaging resources and constructing a base.

I also proposed a "monster" collecting mechanic using Concept Crafting (e.g. Pokemon, Dragon Quest Monsters, Shaman King) in the form of Anima Crafting for Maximum Recursion Depth Volume 3.

I've talked to people who were not aware of Saker Tarsos' post but had independently come up with a similar idea for things like a magic system (Maze Rats' magic system may have worked similarly, I don't remember anymore), or for something like Zelda Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom.

I hope this blog carnival brings more awareness to Concept Crafting and that more people begin to design around this mechanic. I imagine there's a whole lot more that could be done with it if people put their minds to it.

Maximum Recursion Depth Vol. 3, or Everybody Wins if We're Having Fun: The Animapunk RPG

The new and hopefully improved MRD Vol. 2 (Gameplay Loop, Dev Log) is still in the works, but I think it makes sense to just call the Animism Setting MRD Vol. 3, which I'll be working on simultaneously.

In wanting to have my cake and eat it too, it's running away a bit from the original idea of being like a Weird & Wonderful take on Pariah, but it should be clear how those ideas and others I've blogged about previously are all getting rolled into this; it's still true to the original spirit of the thing.

Previous posts of varying degrees of relevancy:

Anima Concept Crafting (the actual Anima stuff is in this post)

Termina: Animist Necromancy

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix (the psychedelic "cyberspace" stuff is in this post)

Appendix N for Animist Setting

We are Building a Religion

The Game is Alive

Worlds out of Phase: There is Only Forward Here

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Tl;dr

Psychedelic Time Lords across a bunch of mini-Krakoas in frozen moments collecting Pokemon and going on adventures across spacetime, stalked by horror monsters, facing punk rock moon witches, Infernal insectoids, Orwellian pigs, The Imperium of Man, an alien dark web, and the oppressiveness of a world unexamined.

The Surrealists believe that the place of dreams is as real as the material world, and in some ways they are correct. The Dreaming observe the moment. Really, observe it, the full canvas of it, phase rotating it so that what is normally fuzzy and obscured in peripheral vision is brought to the center of focus. It's like rotating around a Penrose Triangle Sculpture, except it's all of reality around a single moment.

Penrose Triangle Sculpture for reference. It only appears like a paradoxical triangle from a particular angle.

It's amazing how different things can appear when observed from different angles.

The Dreaming are a living community. When The Dreaming coalesce around a moment, the ecosystem uniquely transforms around them, pooling into a geologically transient Dream Lake. 

But most of the time, they wander in small bands from moment to moment like ships passing in the night, like blood cells or worker bees, independent yet coordinated on a scale beyond what any individual can perceive.

The Dreaming explore moments out of want, not need.

The only universal meanings of life are those that can be mutually agreed upon, an absurd and seemingly irresolvable problem. In lieu of a solution, The Dreaming embrace the Sisyphean struggle, making meaning for themselves. Nonetheless each of The Dreaming, in their own way, are working towards the betterment of The Dreaming as a whole.

‘Weirdness for weirdness’ sake’ is a criticism that has often aimed at my own work over many years. It’s a phrase I find lazy and borderline meaningless.

I’ve yet to read ‘it’s weirdness for story’s sake’ or ‘for effect’s sake’ or ‘for fuck’s sake’…

Grant Morrison

The Dreaming face opposition.

The problems The Dreaming invite upon themselves are faced with joy, but otherwise conflict is generally avoided. Even so, some uninvited problems must be faced eventually.

The Personal Horror

Everyone has a Time Self (current incarnation), and an Eternity Self (superorganism across time).

The Eternity Self stalks the Time Self patiently, sometimes hiding and sometimes allowing itself to be seen, to strike fear. The Time Self knows there will be a moment when it must defend itself in mortal conflict against the Eternity Self, and that moment will likely not be of their choosing. Until that moment, the Eternity Self is their Personal Horror, an uncanny reflection of everything about themselves they must overcome.

Defeating one's Personal Horror is a rite of passage for The Dreaming, and a gift of choice, whether or not to continue the struggle or allow it to transform them.

To be defeated by one's Personal Horror is to be consumed by the Eternity Self and reincarnated as a new Time Self.

Termina

Termina is to Anima as Undead is to the Living. It is "Unnatural", animation without meaning or only a hollow pretense, and incapable of growth or change. Like undead, no single Termina is as threatening as the idea it represents and its ability to spread like a disease.

Supernature

The myth of humanity's supremacy becomes undeniable when one rotates a moment and sees for themselves the vastness that surrounds them.

Humanity, Anima, the Natural World, Physical Laws, and all the other things compose Supernature.

The Pigs are useful allies who capably handle the dirty work The Dreaming generally don't like to deal with. Things like fighting, politicking, and worst of all "leading" (when one must engage with hierarchy). Even so, The Dreaming have faced no threat greater than when a Pig Warlord consolidates power. The Pig Gangs raid, pillage, and enslave, but also disseminate misinformation, engage in political sabotage, and foment populist revolution.

The Dark Forest is like a shadow of the Mycelium Matrix, a distributed psychedelic superorganism hostile to The Dreaming, seemingly by design.

The United Spacetimes of America is a multiversal empire that  believes it is their manifest destiny to colonize all of existence, including The Dreaming. Their size, rigid hierarchy, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and single-mindedness make them easy enough to outmaneuver, but if caught in their grasp, their mad weapons and unstoppable bureaucratic inertia make them a dangerous force of supernature.

The Radioactive Hive are both empowered and consumed by a grudge they've long ago forgotten. Their sheer biomass, explosive nuclear power, and algorithmic genius would destroy all of existence, if not counterbalanced by the aimlessness of their endless rage; rebels without a cause; the dog that chases a car without thought towards what ends. Incapable of being reasoned with, their only means of communication is their chemically infectious anger which spreads exponentially like wildfire or explosions.

The Infrasonic Moon Witch is a living presence, like the qualia of a song or skin to skin touch. It oscillates in beams of light, the gravity folds of spacetime, and the Humanist interrelationship between all Anima. The tides and moonlight are its greatest familiars, but most beings with a cyclical nature pay some homage to it. A nurturing force that must be relied upon even when one knows, inevitably, it will betray them.

Anima Concept Crafting: Pokemon-like TTRPG Game Design Pattern by way of Animism

Following up on my "Animism Appendix N" for my still unnamed "Pariah by way of Maximum Recursion Depth" setting (although the setting might be running away from that a bit...), this is a game design pattern using Concept Crafting for Anima, the spirits of things, from an Animist perspective. I'm still deciding whether / how the setting will be some combination of modern, the imprecise state between paleo/neolithic, or post post apocalyptic, so this is written in a setting neutral manner, but all of it assumes a dream-like, surreal, psychedelic, Weird World.

Appendix N aside, it's also inspired by Shaman King (almost too literally...), Pokemon, Megaman Battle Network, the Dane Komljen movie Afterwater, and the Rolando Klein movie Chac: Dios de la Lluvia.

In Worldbuilding with Pokemon I actually tapped into this idea quite a while ago, I even specifically make the Shaman King and MMBN connections and the connection of Pokemon as like nature spirits, but this takes it in a more specifically Animist direction, which works even better.

As mentioned in that post as well, my old micro-settings I-Cons, Monsters and Madmen, and maybe even Stonepunk Adventures (as Enziramire keeps reminding me!), may be influencing this setting as well.

This setting, and by extension this Anima Concept Crafting system, reflects ideas I'd had well before I really had any meaningful understanding of Animism. It's really cool how we can converge on all of these big ideas from multiple directions, and also how each brings some new facet, or makes certain aspects more salient.

Shaman King. Never finished this manga when I was younger but it deeply influenced me. The recent anime on Netflix was just ok. I suspect the manga is better, but also that it's probably not quite as good as I remember it either. One could argue there's dicey stuff around cultural representation and appropriation, but I think it was coming from a good place.

Some previous Concept Crafting posts

Mecha Gear Concept Crafting

Gematria (Jewish Mysticism) Concept Crafting and Divination

Science Fantasy Mecha PoC Game with Pregens

MRD Vol. 2 Campaign Play Reports

Anima and The Dreaming

NOTE: None of this has been playtested, and I'm sure much of the terminology and other particulars will change over time or be adapted for the setting as I build it out.

There is a will in all things, the Anima. A rock, lake, animal, person, idea, celestial body, divine being; all of these things have Anima. The Dreaming are curious, they ponder the universe; they see the beauty in the interconnectedness of things, and in understanding the nature of these interconnected systems. Most people acknowledge the Anima, and perhaps 10% of the population are among the Dreaming, developing Relationships with Anima and Manifesting as a way of life. The only thing separating the Dreaming from the rest, is the willingness to Manifest.

When a Dreamer develops a Relationship with or Manifests an Anima, they are not expressing dominance or ownership over the material origin of the Anima. Manifesting requires understanding, a submission to the will of the Anima; at its worst, a kind of para-social relationship. Even so, given the interconnectedness of things, the Manifestation of Anima can materially effect its origin; there is a balance of power, a dance or ongoing conversation, between the Dreamer and the Anima they Manifest, and also to its material origin. Every time an Anima is Manifested, its true nature changes, even if just a little bit.

Anima

Anima are composed of WORDs, the number of words corresponding to their level. The power of Anima scale geometrically by level at base 2, i.e. a level 1 Anima has a power of 2, level 2 has a power of 4, level 3 has a power of 8, and level 4 has a power of 16; however, these numbers don't effect rolls, it's merely conceptual.

Level 1 Anima (Power 2)

One WORD. Trivial or circumstantial, may be Manifested at no cost and don't require an ongoing Relationship. Manifesting the flavor of a MEAL, the number of skips of a ROCK tossed against a body of water, the LUCK of the draw.

Level 2 Anima (Power 4)

Two WORDs. Manifested through some object of personal importance or utility like a staff (STRENGTH+SUPPORT), pair of glasses (SALIENCE+GLASS), fetish/token (LUCK+FOCUS), utility knife (UTILITY+KNIFE), etc. 

They may be used freely, and are integrated into daily life. 

There is no limit on the number of level 2 Anima Relationships, but they must be Manifested in some meaningful way at least once every three sessions or else the Relationship is Broken (if the Player can't remember, they're Broken, so keep track!).

Level 3 Anima (Power 8)

Three WORDs. Manifested through spiritual communion with a superorganism, a collective consciousness representing one or more other Anima as an Anima in itself. A lake (LOVE+WONDER+TRANSIENCE), apex predator (HUNT+FEED+BALANCE), or venerated ancestor (DEEP+TIME+GIANT). 

Level 3 Anima may be Manifested with the passing of seasons (i.e. once per season). Usually, they require some sacrifice, appeasement, or quest. 

There is no limit on the number of level 3 Anima Relationships, but after Manifesting any one level 3 Anima, all other level 3 Anima Relationships are Broken.

Level 4 Anima (Power 16)

Four WORDs. As with Level 3, these are superorganisms Manifested through spiritual communion, but also requiring greater material cost; the attainment of many rare commodities, the recruitment of true believers or a greater number of paid workers or an even greater number of those servicing under the threat of violence. Freedom (INFINITY+CHAOS+IMAGINATION+UNKNOWN), Economy (MONEY+TRADE+ENCRYPTION+VALUE), Community (PEOPLE+SOUL+SELF+OTHER). 

Level 4 Anima may be Manifested as one crosses forks in the roads of life (perhaps once a decade, or reflecting some major life transition). 

A Dreamer may have only one level 4 Anima Relationship at any one time.

Although the material origin of an Anima influences its level, ultimately the level is determined by the Relationship between the Dreamer and the Anima. It is possible to have a low-level Anima with a profound material origin if the Relationship is trivial or para-social, and likewise it is possible to have a high-level Anima with a simple material origin, if the Relationship runs deeply enough.

Megaman Battle Network, a more scifi/modern take on the idea, no less valid. Megaman Star Force didn't hit the same tho.

Anima Concept Crafting

While not the exclusive means of building Anima Relationships, Concept Crafting may be used to create Anima.

Anima Crafting

Any two Anima of the same level may be combined into an Anima of the same or one higher level by taking at least one WORD from each Anima, and for creating level 3 Anima or higher, at least one new WORD inspired by the context or by the interconnectedness of the two component Anima.

Crafting a level 2 Anima may require a day or a few days, level 3 Anima a moderate quest, and level 4 a paradigm-shifting, life-changing adventure.

Anima Mutation

Given the interconnectedness of things, any time an Anima is Manifested, its very nature is subtly changed. Likewise, if the material origin of the Anima is itself changed, depending on the degree of change or how aware the Dreamer is of the change, this may also cause Mutation. Manifesting two Anima within temporal proximity frequently, or any Anima Manifested under some extreme or traumatic context, is likely to Mutate. 

This merely involves replacing one (or more) WORDs of the Anima with one from or inspired by the other Anima, or the context.

Examples

"What Would Taylor Swift Do" Charm (DISTANCE+LOVE): Manifests an Anima of Taylor Swift, whose wisdom is based on the para-social relationship between the Dreamer and Taylor Swift. While the real Taylor Swift would not acknowledge the Relationship, often her actions will align (or notably fail to align) with the nature of the Anima.

Anaglyph 3D Glasses (DIMENSION+PERSPECTIVE): Red and Cyan anaglyph 3D glasses that when Manifested allow one to frequency-modulate into the Positive and Negative Planes. Each lens has a different flavor of Anima, one more manic, and one more depressive.

Twin Mask of Play and Win (PLAY+WIN): A mask of two faces merged together, one of the iconoclastic spirit of Play (dolphin face), and the other the disciplined spirit of Win (dragon face). Manifests as suggestions like the Devil and Angel over the shoulder.

Serenity Plugs (SERENITY+NOTHING): Waxen earplugs Manifesting an Anima like the shadow of sound. An inner peace deriving from the absence of sound and a willingness to absolve oneself of willful action.

Cancer Carapace (ABOMINATION+INEVITABILITY): Carapace armor crafted from a large aquatic arthropod. Manifests as the mutant monster Cancer, an Anima of a pitiable abomination. Empowered by acts of humility and love in the face of perceived evil.

Forgiveness Bow (ACCURACY+REGRET): A bow that will always hit its mark, but its mark is driven by the unconscious of the wielder. The bow Manifests as a time Anima, a frozen moment infinitely trapped between being an non-being.

Dragon Quest Monsters. Watabou, that little fuzzy blue guy, is actually plant-type, and if I remember correctly, one of the hardest monsters to get, one of the most powerful, and was strongly implied to be some kind of eldritch god, and I love that for him. Dragon Quest Monsters is Pokemon by way of Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragon Ball), with a really interesting monster breeding (in later games fusion) system, and it was awesome, I really loved these games when I was younger.

Summary

Probably unconsciously inspired by Shaman King long before I made the conscious connection, but also my general love of the collecting and generative/crafting aspects of Pokemon-likes (even more emblematically, Dragon Quest Monsters), and of settings where humans have personal relationships with "magical" beings (including Megaman Battle Network in this), it seemed logical to me to combine the Pokemon-like gameplay loop with Animism.

I like this philosophically as well, in that while one could choose to simply treat it as a re-flavored Pokemon-like if one so chose, because of the nature of Relationships and Manifesting, there is an intentional emphasis on this system as not one of ownership and conquest, but of intra- and inter-personal examination, which is obviously my jam.

Pokemon-likes in TTRPGs tend to struggle because of the multiplicative complexity it imposes on other gameplay mechanics, or even in rules-light form, it's just a lot for any Player or GM to keep track of.

Given the soft-limitations on Anima, that any level 2 Anima must be Manifested at least once every three sessions, that Manifesting any level 3 Anima Breaks the Relationships with all other level 3 Anima, the way acquiring Anima generally involves some kind of quest, I'm hoping it will lend itself naturally to a certain balance, but it will likely need to be tweaked during playtesting.

I allude to the philosophical aspects of Animism more in the Appendix N, and in future posts I'll discuss the setting and by extension philosophy in more detail, but this post is focused on this Anima Concept Crafting game design pattern.

Considerations

1. I've intentionally chosen not to use the word Shaman, or Druid for that matter. I had originally wanted to call the "Dreamers" the Wisdom, but since I use Wisdom as an Ability Score in MRD I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to that term. Dreams tend to hold a lot of significance in Animism and other kinds of spiritualism, but I dunno for some reason it feels maybe too generic or too corny, I'm just not sure how I feel about it.

2. I'm very comfortable with Concept Crafting and the abstractness of the Anima as presented here, and also in calling them Anima, but I'm not sure if I'm overly limiting myself with the levels of Anima and some of the constraints in terms of the gameplay loop.

Also, you know I intentionally chose not to include a Pokemon image in a post where I specifically call it a Pokemon-like because that is how I roll.

Worldbuilding with Pokemon

An earlier version of this post was first shared on The Cauldron. I've fallen behind a bit and digging into my backlog, but I do have a few upcoming blog posts in mind that are more directly RPG related.

Pokemon is obviously a huge decades-long phenomenon of a franchise requiring no introduction. Yet despite this fact, I am surprised by just how little impact it has had on fiction, how little regard is paid to the fact that it is a unique science fiction or fantasy sub-genre. My intention for this post is to describe what I think makes Pokemon unique as a sub-genre, and using that as a case example for how to go about thinking about works of fiction and how they might be extrapolated into new kinds of sub-genres, which can then be explored in tabletop RPG form.

I am aware of the rash of Pokemon knockoff videogames or anime and manga, some of which have come into their own, or for that matter Pokemon-inspired TTRPGs or unofficial Pokemon fan TTRPGs, but that's not really what I mean. Yes, there is a unique gameplay aspect to the monster collection / monster battler genre, but I'm speaking more to the setting aspects.

Pokemon is a world of magical creatures that are not quite animals but also not quite human, even when they have human or superhuman intellect. They're more like nature spirits or fey creatures from mythology. The Detective Pikachu movie characterized it really well, such as the interrogation of Mr. Mime, where it could only communicate through mimery. It made really salient the way that, even when they look humanoid and seem to have human-like intelligence, they operate by a different, magical kind of logic. I had been interested in exploring the concept of Pokemon much earlier, such as the Monsters & Madmen micro-setting from my old micro-setting post (I'll come back to this later), or even when I was ~10 years old or so first playing the videogames and watching the anime, but Detective Pikachu was where this idea that they're more like magical creatures really hit me.

People have of course talked about the questionable ethics of monster collection and battling, and I don't think this idea of them being magical creatures totally mitigates that, but it does put an interesting alternative perspective on it. Pokemon are magical creatures, metaphorical extensions of humans; they can be examined from a human-centric approach and the monster collecting and battling can be recontextualized as a form of ritual and reverence towards nature and humanities place in it, as is often the case in animist religions and hunting in animist cultures.

There are a few not-obvious equivalents to this I can think of. Another series that I am shocked has not had more longterm resonance, is the Megaman Battle Network videogames (the micro-setting I-Cons in that micro-setting post linked above was inspired heavily by MMBN), where the internet is basically a virtual reality space where human operators use AI avatars called net navi to traverse the internet as if it were a physical space, and where the net navi usually reflect and exaggerate the characteristics of their operator. The manga/anime Shaman King also did a similar thing, where the ghost or spirit companions of the Shaman usually reflect some aspect of their personality or identity, and in this case the mythological elements are overt and literal. There's actually a recent ongoing Netflix remake of Shaman King, but sadly it's kind of mediocre (maybe Shaman King just doesn't hold up as well as I remember :(?).

So as I'm listing it out, I guess there were some other settings, it seems almost exclusively from Japan, around the early 00's, that either consciously or unconsciously got at these same sorts of ideas, but it was like a flash in the pan- maybe more exists out there, but not much I can think of, and nowhere near proportional to the continued popularity of Pokemon as a game or singular franchise.

So let's return back to Monsters & Madmen. That name is not great, it was always a placeholder, and I still have not developed this setting much or done anything with it, so here we're just using it to examine the thesis of this discussion.

The big war; the cities bombed and nations EM-pulsed; civilization as we know it is on the way out, but adults still cling to the old world from only a few years ago. On the other hand, the children wish only to leave their homes, to travel the empty, broken roads, and to collect and battle the monsters that have surfaced (or, perhaps, resurfaced) in the wake of humanity's decline. The world is in anarchy. Some of the magical creatures the children geas are intelligent, some infinitely more so than humans. They bide their time as anarchy ensues and humanity dissolves under its own weight.

I was inspired by fan theories discussing "The Pokemon War" that canonically exists in the setting, and how a world could exist where 10-year old children travel the country or world alone, towards this seemingly frivolous goal of becoming a Pokemon Master, where the protagonists are missing fathers (who likely died in the war).

I was also inspired by Mad Max. Not Mad Max: The Franchise as it is popularly conceived, but the first Mad Max movie, the one that still looks and feels mostly like the real world- where an apocalyptic war occurred, but where there is still conceivably a chance of a return to "normalcy", where the adults still remember "normal", but the children live in a very different world.

One can imagine why I was thinking about this in 2018, but it is perhaps an even more relevant idea post-2020.

On the surface of it this could be a dark and dystopian setting, and that was more so the idea at the time that I first conceived it. But even then, I wanted there to be that possibility of hope- again, it's no Mad Max Fury Road, it's Mad Max 1. But also, adding in this human-centric approach of the monsters as extensions of people, as a part of nature- it's still a bit half-baked within the context of this setting, but I believe this has legs.

So this is just one example of how Pokemon could be extrapolated into something fairly novel, and gameable, and how one might approach thinking about extrapolating other popular series into new kinds of sub-genres that have not been seen before.

SageDaMage: Weird & Wonderful Interviews

SageDaMage is an indie tabletop creator who I first properly got to know from the Funnel Jam which Sage hosted. I had intended to create a Superhero Funnel for the jam inspired by My Hero Academia, which later became my Superpowers 2.0 post. Unfortunately, I ended up overengineering the game a bit and it just didn't quite come together the way I would have hoped in time for the deadline, and I've always felt a little guilty about that.

However, since then Sage and I have played in several games together. He playtested the Superhero Funnel and also an extremely rough draft version of MRD2. I have also played in several games of his, including an Into the Odd one-shot based on World of Horror, the Into the Odd adventure The Iron Coral, and a condensed version of Silent Titans using MRD as the system (see my PC for that game here).

We also touch on some fairly heavy topics, a little bit at the beginning and especially at the end. I really appreciate what Sage had to say, so I hope others find this interview as moving and inspirational as I did.

This interview occurred before the official announcement or launch, but Sage is currently crowdfunding Discordantopia on itch!

Max: Your games trend towards being rules-light and mechanically distinct, even to the extent that they build off of other systems. Can you discuss your history with TTRPGs and your approach to game design?

Sage: My history with TTRPGs is fairly standard for people in my niche, I'd say. In 2014, my dad ran the 5e starter set. Aside from the fact that I nearly died IC for charging into battle as a wizard, I was absolutely enamored by being able to tell stories collaboratively. Specifically, that my dad could exert such control over the story and what we saw and interacted with. In 2014 I was a little too young, but I got back into it a few years later with Play-By-Post. I've been doing PBP for at least 5 years now. That's the basic history, although I can certainly go deeper into how I came to where I am today, at least in terms of game philosophy.

I started practicing my modern approach to game design well before I really knew how to run what I was writing, funnily enough. For example, my first two systems, Indexx and Anime Messerspiel, I couldn't run it if you wanted me to, at the time. I just knew that there was an audience for that sorta thing, was inspired by the systems I saw, and pressed publish! 

My gateway into learning more about how to actually run the games I wrote as well as designing more of them came through the FKR Collective, although the NSR discord was an important role too, although more for feedback than anything else. In about a year, I went from running structured games fairly tightly to, now, being able to run anything the way I like, including running no system at all!

Anyway, my approach to game design is more out of necessity than it is out of (initially, moreso) wanting to design small games. I have ADD it makes me constantly all over the place, bouncing from idea to idea. Most of what you see on my itch was completed in a short period of time, where I just kinda had a burst of motivation and finished it. I ALWAYS have grand ideas for RPGs. However, it's hard to get the attention to finish them. As well, although more recently, I've been preferring the lack of a grand RPG.

Max: Refining those grand ideas into something manageable is difficult with or without ADD, although I can imagine that only makes it harder. I did not realize you had ADD, but with that in addition to you being so young, if you don't mind me saying, it's impressive to me how engaged you are with TTRPGs and how much you've already created. So as far as the grand ideas go, take your time!

Sage: Thank you! I'm also autistic (might as well throw the big diagnosis out there), a symptom of which is hyper-fixation. Combined, though, with ADD, it's more of a scattered hyper-fixaton. And, I am taking my time! I have the luxury of it, and I certainly use it. I've been working on some big stuff, that I've surprisingly stuck to.

Max: Oh ya? Anything you would feel comfortable talking about?

Sage: The longest one so far is Spectrum, my therapeutic RPG, which I'm working on with an actual therapist. It was initially more for her than me, but as I've come to appreciate both wholesome RPGs as well as RPGs that deal with sensitive topics, it's kinda become my baby.

Max: Oh wow, that's super interesting and also a really admirable thing to put out in the world. I used to do research in psychology and neuroscience, not therapy or clinical work, but it's still something I deeply appreciate. Can you elaborate on the kinds of psychological concepts that will be explored in the game?

Sage: I want to make basically "playkits" for different types of therapy, which will guide the therapist (who probably hasn't touched an RPG before) to tailor the game to those themes. The therapist I'm making it for generally explores social anxiety and that sorta thing with her kids, but also does more generalized therapy, so the RPG medium ticks the first box, but then the RPG itself needs to be tailored to different players/groups. In the FKR fashion, it will be procedure heavy with minimal rules. 90-100% of them will be GM-facing. Undecided if there should be a way for the players to gain agency through a mechanic or not.

Max: Procedure-heavy is a good term for what I was referring to before. I'm less well read on the FKR scene so it didn't immediately come to mind but I think I've heard that phrase used before in the context of FKR.

You had mentioned starting with 5e and then moving in the direction of FKR, but what is it about the procedure-heavy, rules-light approach that appeals to you especially?

Sage: Part of what I don't like about 5e is that most of the players have expectations that need to be met on how the game is run. In order to solve that, I moved away from 5e. Then, I had players thinking quite mechanically, wanting to push mechanisms to progress in the story (I was running Dungeon World and other PbtA stuff for a bit). I had a problem with that, so I moved to the OSR. I felt that the OSR was a bit too into itself for my tastes, so moved to the NSR and Into the Odd. From there, I kept exploring the boundaries of my limits on what was too little or too much. Turns out, it was all attitude. I like the FKR because it's style can, theoretically, be applied to any game. To really enjoy myself, I just needed to sigh and let go the importance of rules.

Max: I appreciate the eclecticism for sure. Again, being less well-versed in FKR (if it had been a thing a couple of years earlier I probably would know more about it but I sort of missed the window...) I may lack some of the language or I may ask some rudimentary questions, but in any case, are there any specific kinds of procedures, or approaches to designing procedures, that have influenced you?

Sage: Out of everything, the one thing that stuck with me throughout my entire GMing career was a page from Worlds in Peril, a superhero game I played in, about narrative scale.

Basically, it talks about thinking about the scale at which you are having a conflict. Are you fighting mooks, or the main villain? If mooks, conditions (a mechanic in the game) applied should be lower in danger. If a villain, conditions applied would be a lot higher in danger.

Despite being mechanically bound, the advice was quite great for thinking about a combat narratively and how results could be reached.

A lot of it was "use common sense," which, up to that point, I'd never really heard before in an RPG. Shouldn't you rely on the mechanics to determine that stuff? I remember thinking to myself. Turns out, no. "Use common sense" is my biggest "procedure" when I GM, now.

When I talk about procedure, honestly, most of it is so ingrained in my mind from practice, that it's hard to put to words. Muscle memory, if you will. Also part of why Spectrum has taken a long time. I'm not used to putting the procedure I commonly employ to words.

Max: Designing on a larger scale like that is definitely a different beast from just playing or running games, you start to realize all the holes in your understanding, or how the writing and organization of a game like that requires a whole separate skillset on top of everything else.

It's funny you say that about Worlds in Peril, while I haven't played it, I actually had a similar experience with Mutants & Masterminds- it was also one of the first games to make me realize how "common sense" and narrative construction can go into TTRPGs and it's not all just the typical D&D stuff.

So in addition to the kinds of systems and procedures, what about narrative, genre and worldbuilding? You've discussed Worlds in Peril and you have a superhero game of your own. You've run a World of Horror-inspired Into the Odd one-shot which I was a player in, and several of the games on your itch page are inspired by anime, Japanese videogames, or Japanese culture. From a worldbuilding or narrative perspective, would you consider these to be among your primary influences? What else might you consider to be primary influences?

Sage: I would, I really love epic moments in anime, and doing that collaboratively at a table just amplifies that love.

Speaking of my dad again, after running some 5e, he decided to try out Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This was while I was still futzing around with 5e not understanding why the square doesn't fit in the circle. Over like 3 years now, he's created an amazing acid fantasy campaign with his friends, and it's always endlessly inspiring to me.

Specifically, outside of the genre itself, the idea that the story becomes more and more grand over time. After 3 years, the players have done a lot to shake the city they've been playing in for the majority of the time. They might even go on to save the world from galaxy-hopping snake people that help strange mythical demons hatch at the core of the world to then consume them!

I've had a peek of this a bit later than his game, through a 3-year Play-By-Post game in the Pokemon universe. It used to use Pokemon Tabletop United, and now uses my own Pokemon Zero.

Max: It's really cool that this is a passion you get to share with your dad. So he's the one who got you into TTRPGs, but is it because of his interest that you became passionate, or the other way around?

Sage: Yeah, he did get me into it, at least 5e. But then, before doing the Lamentations game, I was really passionate about RPGs, and inspired him to start the Lamentations game, thus going on to inspire me once more.

At some point down the line when I'm more confident in layout or can pay a layout artist, I want to make a system-neutral zine with my dad making the city he's been running into a thing other people can use.

Made a little layout plan, but haven't gotten too much further. Awhile ago, our goal was this ZineQuest to have something up, but that's far from happening now LOL!

Max: That's too bad that it may take a while longer, but that would also be a nice thing to be able to do!

Sage: Definitely!

Max: So we've talked about game design and procedures, worldbuilding, and even zines. What about adventure or campaign design? I know this is a thing you and I have discussed privately before, but I'm wondering if you've since thought more about it at all or changed how you think about it.

Sage: Adventures are tough for me, but I'm trying! I want to make a Liminal Horror mystery (again inspired by World of Horror), and finally finish my Mausritter adventure. Exciting news, recently; I'm going to have a little teaser of the adventure in ManaRampMatt's Bernpyle: YEAR ONE! It'll be in the hands of a lot of people, including myself, which is quite exciting! Something I want to do with future adventures (and the mystery I'm making) is make them more like DW Dungeon Starters than a rigid story. Asking questions to players, making the GM come up with explanations on the fly, that kinda thing. That's not really easier, but it does excite me more, which I guess makes it easier in the end.

Max: Motivation is a major factor! By Liminal Horror are you referring to a particular system (it sounds vaguely familiar), or do you mean that as a genre? And I have literally no idea what you mean by ManaRampMatt's Bernpyle: YEAR ONE, if you wouldn't mind explaining for me...

Sage: Liminal Horror is what I used in that World of Horror-inspired ItO one-shot 😉 

Bernpyle is a series of fan zines for Mausritter by Matt, who is making a compendium of them from his first year doing so, that recently funded on kickstarter.

Max: Ooh that's why it sounded familiar! Ah ok, ya I know of Mausritter but am not especially familiar, good to know.

I see on various discord servers, you seem to run more games than practically anyone else I know. Often it seems like the people who are into game design, myself included, spend more time talking about games, blogging, reading, etc., than actually playing them! How do you balance engagement between these different aspects of TTRPGs?

Sage: Well, for one, I've gotten very good at running PBP near-prepless. I only do as much prep as I want/have time to do. So, really, I only need as much time as it takes to write a post. And my PBP games aren't super fast, either, which helps me having many of them.

I generally do PBP earlier and/or later in the day, when I have less energy, and devote my actual writing and theorizing to the middle when I have the most energy and my brain's working. For voice games, well, I haven't been doing a ton of them recently, mostly one-shot stuff since the campaigns I try to do with randos constantly fizzle out and they take more work for me.

Max: It can be really hard to get a campaign off the ground with a new group of randos, I find that I have to cycle through a few people before something actually sticks.

I used to do some completely free-form PBP stuff when I was much younger, but have never done PBP within the TTRPG scene like what you do. How would you describe the differences between running or playing in PBP games vs. real-time games?

Sage: The main pro of PBP is that you can actually think of responses instead of having to do something rushed. However, due to everyone thinking of responses, the pace is definitely a lot slower or more just "throughout the day." The main drawback is similar. Just having conversations surrounding the game is hard. Generally, in PBP, you just think to yourself and do your action. Unlike voice or IRL games, there's very little discussion happening about what to do. Someone just does it. This can lead to some slogs where no one knows what to do but doesn't talk about it. Most of the time it's fine, it's just quite different in that way.

Max: There's something to be said for that for sure, real-time games can be really demanding and exhausting, but I can also imagine the drawbacks of PBP that you're referring to.

We've covered a lot of ground, but is there anything else you'd like to talk about, or like to say?

Sage: I'd like to say a couple things to the readers real quick, while I have some eyes on the interview. Feel free to also discuss it yourself, Max.

Instead of doing boring self-promotion (which I'm sure Max has done for me anyway), I want to instill two things to readers of this interview. I'll start with the one that's outside of the indie TTRPG sphere. My mom has Dercum's Disease. I implore you to research it, I won't go into it too much, but I will say that it is a chronic, incurable disease which causes immense pain and is an autoimmune disorder. An important detail is that it is invisible. While my mom is permanently disabled and near-handicapped, no one would really know looking at her. The literal only way to tell is to feel her skin and find the fatty tumors in her lymphatic system. I mention this because, even as someone that lives around someone with an invisible disease, it is very hard to give them the sympathy they deserve because there's no visual cue to do so. It is a problem that is near and dear to my heart, and this opportunity to platform a bit is one I want to take helping. Even if 1 person has been reached by this, that's one more person than I wouldn't have reached had I not wrote this. To get on something happier, there's one other thing I wish to mention: how amazing the TTRPG community is. We are a part of an emerging medium that could revolutionize entertainment. I truly feel that. I just want you, the reader, to know that you're lucky to be a part of this community at this time. After the slump of 4e, within the massive spike of popularity from 5e. It allows us to leave a unique impact on the hobby as a whole. You just need to take the steps to do so. And many people are! In fact, it is awe-inspiring to me how reachable these "indie titans" are. While definitely not titans outside the sphere, never forget that your TTRPG hero is a Discord/Twitter DM away. It's very humanizing, to me, that people I basically idolize for their design are a click away. Anyway, that's enough of me giving my Valuable Life Lessons(TM).

Max: Wow, you really caught me off guard with this I have to say. I appreciate you saying all of this. Like what you were saying even with ADD and autism as well, there are a lot of ways people can be struggling or suffering right in front of us, without it being obvious. I'm sorry that that's a thing you've had to deal with in multiple regards. It's all the more impressive to me now, how much you've already accomplished for someone so young, and for having such a positive attitude, and having this kind of perspective about the importance of a healthy community. I hope others appreciate what you have to say here as well, this was really wonderful. In practically every one of these interviews I do, at some point I say, "this is why I do these interviews", but I don't know if anything can top this, you've well deservedly taken the crown!

Sage: Thank you! I appreciate the opportunity. Being nice pays off so much in so many ways, it's a wonder to me sometimes why you'd be any other way! I mean, there are a lot of reasons, and I've been there myself, but moreso just... choosing to be mean. People don't choose to have an anger issue or something, but they can choose to do something about it.

Max: I definitely agree with that. Without putting more pressure on you, I really look forward to one day seeing Spectrum. At the end of this interview, I can see how you've really got a good perspective on what TTRPGs can do and how they can be used to help people. Thanks for your doing this interview!

Sage: Not a problem. Lots of fun.

More Half-Formed Ideas from The Onenote

Over a year ago I made a post Half-formed ideas from the onenote. Crazy to think how much my life specifically and the world in general has changed in that time. Anyway, some of those ideas I eventually incorporated into other things, many of them I never did, but now I have more!

Setting Ideas

• Post-humanity travels back in time as invaders, forcing their past selves to grow more savvy and powerful, until they are defeated, to then repeat the process until post-humanity is powerful enough to defeat some greater threat in the far future.


• A fully interconnected multiverse. It's about as easy as taking a plane, and it's been around long enough that culture and politics have adapted around it. Certain nations across the multiverse have merged or allied, new interuniversal communities have formed.


• Heavy Metal Haiku of the Machine God.


• Nurglopia: Nurgle wins (came up with this idea pre-covid; could either be really good, or in really poor taste)


• Ithaqua = frost giants, wendigo, Loki (?)


• What is the original species of Yuggoth before the Mi-Go invasion?


• Carbuncles as infant outer gods. Most are stillborn, or get eaten by other outer gods or beings of equal power, or take so long to develop that they are irrelevant. Some become true eldritch beings. Others land on celestial bodies and instigate life, or become absorbed into a pre-existing biosphere. In such a case, they may first develop a symbiotic relationship with a lifeform on that world, morphing into something more like that species. On Earth, this would be the basis of anthropomorphic gods, magic, or superheroes. Maybe tied into Lovecraftian Dreamlands?


• Golemjammer: Like lichjammer... but golems.


• Something with the Black Dragon Society (kokuryukai) and the Black Panthers.


• A superhero setting where superpowers are heavily regulated, so rich guys like Batman and Iron Man types use their lack of superpowers as a loophole around the rules. They lobby to keep advanced-tech and non-super vigilantism relatively unregulated.


• Cyberpunk where there is technically a government but nobody even knows who it is anymore. There are two police forces, both claim to be the government (as opposed to corporate). It's not even that corporations run things, it's just chaos. Clearly there are people profiting, it seems like there are people on the Foucault Flow, but the moon is completely obliterated and the tides are coming whether someone rides them or not.


• Sarugami Japanese monkey cult.


• Polterzeitgeist.


• A fantasy setting of super-OP species. 
• A species of humanoid / cold iron cyborgs mad rage geniuses like Carnage Kabuto with beetle, horseshoe crab, mantis shrimp, etc. cold iron carapaces.


• A holographic aerial species of nephilim pixies/nixies with Divine magics (closer to the gods) and aerial dominance.


• Demons from a dimension of sulfur and mercury, beings of pure explosion animating corpses of extinct species pickled in mercury and gasoline.


• Landfill animals / plastic beach.


• Heaven and Hell vs Martians; Heaven and Hell vs Humans; Vampires vs. Zombies.


• Kingdom of Oudh.


• Mother Earth expresses her will through technology. Rare Earth Metals are her medium. Teleological technological goddess.


• Gasoline Swamp: The Primordial Soup from whence hyperlife evolved. A fungus-like species covers the Earth, a constant hazy explosion of spores and heavy diesel energy. Most animal-like life in their adult form are tiny "pixies" with manic energy. They have no mouths and other than absorption of some transient energy, they have only the energy they absorbed in their adolescent / larval / tadpole state. The dominant lifeforms are hyperplants, tesselating undulating monsters which branch, root, fruit, and leaf in real-time. They are not photosynthetic and instead are mainly carnivores (fungi and animal eaters) or predators (herbivores), or some are omnivorous. Their biology is inextricably linked with plastics and microplastics, like if humans wore their microbiome on the outside. Their blood is diesel and most consumption is vampiric; diesel being the most nutritious substance for all hyperlife.


• Fantasy "salt lick" / oasis setting.


• A pocket universe that exists as a liminal space between life and death.


• How would a nocturnal intelligent species mythologize light and dark?
• Blinding to their dilated pupils.


• Vividly, grotesquely colorful (cone cells less effective in the dark).


• Those who go out during the day must wear sunglasses, a hat, or other eye protection.


• Monsters and demons more so like diurnal species, angelic / majestic creatures more so like nocturnal species.

Random Scifi / Fantasy Ideas

• Flower / pollen / spring apoptomancer.


• A reverse werewolf / Hyde / Hulk. Temporarily shift into energetic, manic, ambitious, strong, intelligent, etc, but somewhat unempathetic and detached- like detox Morty.


• "Butterfy" / pixie chaos(-theory) magic.


• Parasite of the Gods.


• A perpetual chain reaction of causality from another universe.


• Twister Troops: Create whirlwinds and ride them. High mortality rate.


• Gorgon / Medusa / Basilisk petrification as metaphor for anxiety, depression, or stagnation.


• A species that births different offspring depending on whether or not the eggs were fertilized.


• Kawauso as Kappa / Deep One transformation of otters.


• Mani Jul as Kappa butt ball as Dragon Quest-style Slime.


• Rocket / impulse deceleration boots.


• Soft Mother / Wire Mother.


• Biological implications of a creature with a pocket dimension inside of it.


• Fossil Golem.


• Starbarian.


• Bodhisattva vampire. By rejecting immortality and burning in light, they become "something else".


• Dog Mutants: Dogs are adaptable and have been relatively rapidly mutated in ways physically and behaviorally unique.


• Temporal "memory sense"; some alternate memory system as a sensory mechanism.


• Spellbeasts: Based on the GLOG idea of living spells. These have taken physical form and take various shapes and sizes.


• A Borg-like cyborg / transhuman hybrid species that loses its technological abilities and has adapted / evolved into a solely organic species.


• Protobeings: A fantasy pre-history setting. The world is new, low entropy, there is an inherent order to things. The protobeings lack knowledge and history and advancements, but are magical and fey- or god-like, more in tune with nature, but a kind of nature that is uncanny to our perceptions because of its orderedness. Whereas we think of Order=Civilization vs. Chaos=Nature, the relationship between the protobeings and nature is the inverse.


• Carnopolis Cyborgs: Organic internals have evolved into a robot shell. Mostly nerves and cardiovascular system and brain, and fat as padding. Higher thought mostly digital, brain used more for autonomic processes and memory. Those damaged are sometimes reshaped and given more primitive, animal intelligences.


• Massive, slimy, dirigible-like floating predator-plant propelled by noxious gases.


• Coffin monster and/or pocket dimension.


• Saint as "Holy Vampire".


• Colorful, iridescent shadows.


• A city of "exploded" architecture like a multidimensional diorama space.


• Dragon Mole.


• Mustard Men: Humanoid plants with balloon-like heads full of toxic mustard gas.


• Weapon made of a compressed universe or spatial dimension.


• Rainbow ape fae.


• Geistlos: Superhumans with no souls.


• Pugmen: Not actually pugs, just heavily inbred species.


• Whistle of the Giant Rat.


• Metallic / Chromatic Bats.


• Hippo-Ogre.


• Laughing Gecko.


• Aye Aye knocking on the wall (weird finger).


• Neon Dolphin.


• Living Missile.


• A creature with spiders / octopi for hands.


• A lich except with other things instead of a soul like brain, heart, brawn, etc.


• Souldier ("soul soldier").


• Bomb bees. Their stingers inject explosive chemicals.


• Missile shark / robo-bulette.


• Gun Worm.


• Caveman weapon of mass destruction. Weapon of Darkness. Debilitator and danger as a relative concept, independent of technology or other forms of progress. Liminal state between human / conscious and "the wild" / beasts.


• Emoji-Men.

Game Mechanics Ideas

• Track every killed monster on a character sheet. Can temporarily revive defeated monsters to fight for you, but lose that experience.


• Garudas and Gaussians: Binary-outcome system.


• RPG Madlibs.


• Eightball resolution.


• Final Form: A game hack or set of tables to generate a DBZ-style "Final Form".


• Ending Quest: A play on my dissatisfaction with never-ending RPGs.


• Dice mechanic where you have to roll between two values (probably percentile). This allows you to instantiate both the properties of the PC and their opposition (e.g. roll under attribute, but roll over AC, creating the range to roll within).


• Vector / Decision Tree mechanic for multi-step action resolution such as heists.


• Rules-light OSR-style game built around random dungeons with an Enter the Gungeon / Rogue Legacy-style time or generational-based ludo-narrative, and some mechanics to tie each player's characters together in that sense.


• Some sort of storygame meets tactical combat / strategy wargame wherein events in the past are retconned through time-travel as a function of narration / game mechanics.


• A framework for creating X-crawl systems.


• Stagger Stress System (i.e. FFXIII). Morale-derived? Another kind of HP abstraction?


• Tactical positioning game (i.e. Into the Breach).


• Jax-based resolution mechanic. Can it be diegetic?


• Birdwatching / Pokemon Snap-style game.


• Spaceship bridge crew game inspired by the LAN game Artemis. Rather than sitting at a single table, ideally, the players should be spread out. Each player operates some stations (engines, weapons, piloting, etc.). The captain receives specific information from the GM, and because the players are spread out, generally the captain is the one who will coordinate between the different stations. There is perhaps an "event deck" that the GM draws from periodically and/or at a fixed rate so that there is a semi real-time element to it, creating tension.


• A combat resolution die (e.g. d4 for short, d8 for medium, d12 for long) rolled at the beginning of combat. Combat always resolves at the end of the die, with the outcome determined by the amount of progress made e.g. if enemies were mostly defeated, they are entirely destroyed or run away; a critical mission is failed (failed to deactivate the bomb, an enemy sniped the prince, the boss arrives, you were spotted, etc.).


• Spells tied to an attribute and/or HP e.g. a level 1 spell costs 1d4 HP/int/wis/cha, level 2 costs 1d6, level 3 costs 1d8, etc.


• A super-fast creature that behaves physically fluid-like and exists in a gameplay sense "between actions". It moves so fast that it resolves its actions between the resolution of other actions.


• Animal setting generator: Roll ten animals from a random animal table. Two are humanoid and intelligent, two are intelligent but not humanoid, three are mundane, three have fantastical properties (roll twice on a magical quality / mutation / etc. table).


• Rainbow beasts puzzle: Monsters are color-coded ROYGBIV, and can only be injured if a wand / lasergun is set to the corresponding frequency. The enemies may be a mix of colors, so the party would have to decide which colors to target on each turn.

Discussion on Korean TTRPGs with Gearoong

I had a conversation with Gearoong, another one of the Bastionjam submitters. Gearoong is a Korean TTRPG creator, and his entry was an English translation of the Striders SRD. I was interested to learn more about the Korean TTRPG community and the role of Korean culture, history, mythology, etc., and they were kind enough to discuss the topic with me.

Note that this discussion was taken from the bastionland discord. For the sake of simplicity, I cut it down to only the messages of my own and Gearoong's, although there were a few responses Gearoong made to other people which I include as well. I received Gearoong's consent to share this on my blog, but did not reach out to everyone else involved in the conversation, which is why I chose to cut it down in this way. There is some light editing for stylistic purposes but the intended meanings have not been altered.

I googled for Korean Tiger, based on our discussion below, and found this evocative piece of art.

Max: I would be interested to learn more about the Korean TTRPG scene if you have any insights. It seems like there is a lot of really interesting creative works coming out of Korea right now in general, so any insights would be appreciated. I recently started reading the manwha Tower of God after getting really into the anime adaptation, and I've been hearing interesting things about God of High School which is also an anime adaptation of a manwha. I've listened to some podcasts about Korean TTRPG creators and I think I follow one or two on itch, but as someone who does not speak Korean, my exposure is limited. I don't know how much influence manwha has on the Korean TTRPG community but I could imagine that or any number of other factors having an influence creatively.

Gearoong: I think manwha and anime, and also Japan TTRPG scene influenced Korean TTRPG community VERY MUCH. In early 80 to 90 they had golden age of the manhwa & anime... and DnD B&X! Lots of works dubbed and B&X published in Korean, also had a conference. Pretty many rule designers influenced on that period. (But I'm not the one). But in late 90s and 00s there's Blank Period because of economic problem... And on 10s, Japanese play reports of Call of Cthulhu have translated and introduced to Manhwa & Anime communities. Also with Japanese TTRPG Rules like Double Cross, InSANe! Lots of people played TTRPG again.

Max: I have not heard of inSANe

Gearoong: So, there's Two Root-B/X and Call of Cthulhu(CoC). InSANe is TTRPG about the horror genres. It's play feels like Japanese horror movies. Also DnD 5th are published here recently, but it have serious typo and translation problem...

Max: Are there any prominent hacks or adventure books of D&D/CoC/other games or prominent original Korean RPGs? If not, do you see that happening eventually in the future?

Gearoong: Maybe CoC! There are lots of scenarios and hacks for CoC. and also, CoC have the largest community on Korean twitter! And their design and layouts are very hilarious, because they are based on manhwa communities which drawing their own arts.

Gearoong: Like this: a hardcover book for CoC scenario. It is my friends'.

Max: Oh that's awesome! I'm curious about the playstyle of Korean gamers, if there is more of a focus on "narrative" gaming, "challenge" gaming, or all sorts of types? Also, what ideas, in terms of mechanics, layout/art, setting, etc., you think may be unique to Korean TTRPGs, if any?

Gearoong: "Narrative" gaming will take the place. the emotions between characters, or problems between NPC... is mainstream of Korean CoC scenarios-and published rules, too. But it doesn't mean there is no room for "challenging" ones.

Max: That seems like what I've heard about the Japanese TTRPG community as well, so I guess that makes sense if the Korean TTRPG community was partially influenced by the Japanese community.

Gearoong: Yes, but we have Blades in the dark, Apocalypse world, Beyond the Walls, and GURPS-and I think these make difference from Japan. Korean TTRPG Publishers are sensitive to western TTRPG trends, and it influences pretty many rule designers. Maybe the position that Korean TTRPG has are same to the position that manhwa have-Middle of Western comics and Japanese manga. We have AWE / FitD / FATE / OSR based rules, but their play feels like Japanese TTRPG because of their themes.

Max: Ya, most people don't realize this but historically, many American cartoons were animated by Korean studios, and I believe this is still somewhat true today. And Korean animators do many of the interstitial (don't know if that's the right term) animations for Japanese anime as well. So Korea is like a connective tissue in that regard, which I find interesting.

Gearoong: Yes, I think it is interesting, too!

Max: Are there any aspects of Korean culture, history, politics, mythology, etc. that you think does, or potentially could, influence the Korean TTRPG scene? I realize that's a heady question, but I could even think about, like I've heard of the monster from Korean mythology, Pulgasari, that infamously was used as the basis for a North Korean Godzilla ripoff if I remember correctly. I learned about it because there's a Pokemon based on it... It's possible I'm mistaken and Pulgasari is an entirely North Korean creation and not relevant to South Korea, but my understanding is that it's originally from Korean mythology well before the split. I apologize if I am mistaken.

Gearoong: Oh, it came from the same country- and pulgasari legend is older than our civil war.

Max: Ok cool, thanks for the clarification.

Gearoong: There's lots of aspects: someone use Japanese Imperialism's pain, someone mix Pansori(판소리) and Korean-Asian Occults, someone use Local rites like Yongwangje(용왕제)

Max: I am going to have to research all of these things! I recently read the novel Pachinko, about a Korean family that moves to Japan during World War 2, and their experiences as Korean-Japanese up to the "present" (I think the book ends in the early 00's) where they suffer a lot of discrimination and oppression. Is that what you are referring to by Japanese Imperialism's pain?

Gearoong: Yup, that's good reference.

Max: I am somewhat familiar with Chinese mythology and Japanese mythology, but less so Korean mythology except where it intersects with those two, unfortunately. In the same way that there is a fascinating interplay between Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and other beliefs in China, and Buddhism and Shintoism (and other beliefs) in Japan, I imagine Korea also has some unique religious and mythological intersections as well.

Gearoong: Yes we have, but we lost pretty lot during colonization by Japanese.

Max: That's really unfortunate, but I suppose makes some sense.

Gearoong: Somewhat only Korean Confucianism and Taoism are remained with Korean Shamanism(무속신앙). Ah, and the story about Tiger (but now they are extinct on Korea).

Max: Oh wow, I had no idea there used to be tigers in Korea. That's amazing, but also really sad that they no longer exist.

(Another member of the discord group asks about Korean Actual Plays and Play Reports)

Gearoong: And yes, we have "actual plays"! But it does not have translation unfortunately: https://youtu.be/FSBrcERJ8Mg

(Someone else mentions that the video does in fact have English subtitles)

Gearoong: It is the one about the myth of tigers!

Max: For sure I will watch this then, thank you! This is exactly the kind of thing I was curious about, where, yes it's Call of Cthulhu, a Western TTRPG, which was popularized in Korea by way of Japan, but it's about a Korean folktale. This is amazing and I'm really looking forward to watching it.

Gearoong: We have lots of folktales about the tiger... Maybe it will be the reason why Koreans lacks legends of scary ghosts.

Max: Ah, so you think tigers fill a similar niche as ghosts and other boogeymen in Korean mythology? This is already getting my imagination going. I could imagine a Korean fantasy TTRPG with a humanoid tiger species, or maybe tigers as magical monsters or nature spirits.

(There was a side conversation that picked up about rakshasa in D&D vs. in actual Hindu mythology, worthy of its own discussion down the line)

Gearoong: Oh we say Rakshasa as Nachal (Yes, like China and Japan, we also have influnce of Buddhism). Now I must go to sleep because it is 6am here.

Max: lol ya I was wondering about that. Thank you so much for taking the time to share all of this!

Gearoong: And Thanks to you to hear my story, It was fun!

(After the conversation in the discord, on a subsequent day, I asked Gearoong one more question)

Max: Can you tell me a bit more about your game? I understand that it's an SRD for a Korean game that does not include setting content, but I'd be interested to hear more about your thoughts on the game, and also the setting that it originally comes from, even if that setting is not available currently in English.

Gearoong: It was designed from simple idea: Make GM changeable. The idea was started on McDowall's post: Collaborative Bastionland. And that time I've played The Legacy of Earenean(이어리니안의 유산, Korean rule which have original world setting of my rule: Frontearth Strider). With Earenean's setting and their idea of Arguing rule and Collaborative Bastionland, I can complete Frontearth Strider and made SRD from that game. The original setting of Earenean was about sword and sorcery, but my Frontearth uses 700 years after it and it is about pistols and magic technologies. and these have pretty anime-styled atmosphere.