Think Like A Game Designer - James Introcaso — Game Masters, the Rise of Indie RPGs and Showing Up for Luck (#81)

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

James Introcaso is an award-winning tabletop game designer and storyteller whose work has helped shape the modern landscape of roleplaying games. As the lead game designer at MCDM Productions, James was integral to developing roleplaying systems that captivate players worldwide. His design credits include co-creating Burn Bright, Roll20’s first original RPG, co-authoring seven official Dungeons & Dragons books, and leading design on Draw Steel, an upcoming RPG that raised over $4.6 million on Backerkit.James’s journey into games began with a childhood love of D&D, a theater background, and a stint writing and producing for television, including Adult Swim and National Geographic. A former podcaster and blogger, he got his start in RPGs by self-publishing content on the Dungeon Masters Guild and building an audience through thoughtful commentary on 5e design. His freelance hustle and creative drive opened doors with Wizards of the Coast and later landed him a full-time role at MCDM.In this episode, James shares lessons from his creative path—from making shark-themed heavy metal promos to designing some of the most beloved TTRPG content today. We talk about how to turn passion into a profession, the realities of freelancing in gaming, and what it really means to “get lucky” in the industry. Whether you’re a theater nerd, a math nerd, or someone dreaming of making your own RPG system, James’s story is packed with insights and encouragement for every kind of creator. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with James Intracoso. James is MCDM production's lead game designer, the co-creator of Roll 20's Burn Bright RPG, author of multiple best-selling products for the dungeon masters guild and drive-through RPG and co-author of seven official Dungeons and Dragons books. He is also worked on the upcoming RPG draw steel, which made over $4.6 million on Backer Kit. James is so much fun to talk to. He's got a background in podcasting,

background in theater. He's got a ton. He even had a production in TV commercials. So you can tell how enthusiastic he is, and we have so much fun in this episode. We talk about what it takes to get lucky. We talk about Shark Week and Shark Fest. We talk about a lot of how you can bring your passions, pop culture, love of theater, love of nerdiness, and how you can turn those things into a career and the processes along the way. We also get into the deep dive and what an Ascension RPG might look like. And so you can see the design process, how he thinks about it, how I think about it. So it was really a ton of fun, lots of great useful tips, really entertaining episode. I really enjoyed this conversation and I know you will as well. So here is James Intracaso.

Hello and welcome. I am here with James Intracoso. James, so excited to have you here, man. Hey, thank you so much. I'm really, really pumped to be here. This is like such a fun thing that you all reached out and want to do. So thank you for inviting me on. Yeah, you know, I really try to get a lot of different designers from all across the industry and you have done some pretty amazing things in the RPG space and but before

we get into all of the super impressive things I always like to bring everybody down to earth and talk about your origin story where does your radioactive spider bite come from that got you into gaming like how did you kind of go from there to being a professional. Yeah you know

I have like the most prototypical RPG developer story in that like watching my older brother play D&D in my parents' basement and being a kid right and we had played Nintendo and I remember playing the old Nintendo entertainment system

watching the game and being like I wish there were things that I wish I could make Mario do that Mario wouldn't do right because all Mario could do was jump and run and throw fireballs and save princesses and it was like but what if like what if you could do more with this turtle shell that you had. There should be things I should be able to do.

Like I should be able to surf on top of it, right? And that kind of thing. And D&D was like, wait, I've never seen a board game like this where the rules allow you to surf on top of the turtle shell if that's what you want to do or do whatever you want. And I just remember like sitting on the basement steps, because he and his friends didn't want me bothering him,

right? I was the little brother and like listening, watching it go on. And then eventually somebody leaving and they needed a cleric. And so they were like, all right, fine, you can play, right? And sitting down and playing.

And that's, so that's how I like got into it. And I was like nine years old when that happened. Oh, my God. I love this so much. I let my little brother play when he as the cleric too. This is exact, I'm the exact the other side of this story. That is hilarious.

You got to have the cleric. Nobody wanted to be the cleric. Okay, fine. You can join the game. All right. I love it. And like sit here and roll when we tell you to roll dice and don't speak otherwise, right? but just to like be part of it.

You're basically an MPC. Just keep quiet. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. But everybody has a vested interest in like protect the cleric too, right? So there's this, uh, a fun thing that happens where they still need you, which is never a thing that happens when you're a little brother that you're needed in some way. Um, and so, uh, so yeah.

And then I told some friends that I had about it. And one of them was like, I think my dad has those books from college, like upstairs. in the attic, right? And so we started to play ourselves, me and my friends then. Played a game called the Fantasy Trip, which is a precursor to GERPS from Steve Jackson games, and

they just had a Kickstarter to like relaunch it, and you could get the old books and stuff. It was awesome. And so from there, I just kept playing, right? I had weekly games and introduced a bunch of new people throughout high school and college to it, playing, playing,

playing, playing, and eventually, after college, I was working as a television writer-producer. I wrote and produced TV commercials. And I had a lot of free time where I was really excited about the launch of this new edition of D&D. And I had written pitches for Dungeon and Dragon Magazine before and gotten rejected. And it was like, well, these are going away.

What's the road in? How do I do stuff like this? And my wife was like, you know, you love talking about this so much. And you're at the time, there weren't a lot of podcasts discussing D&D. Now there's tons of them. And she was like, you should, you should do that with your friends. You know, you have the wherewithal. You know how audio recording equipment works like.

You could make a podcast where you talk to your friends because you want one so bad. And so I did. And I started to do that. And while I was doing that, I reached out to a guy named Jeff Greiner. for help. Jeff Greiner runs a podcast called The Tome Show, which was the only D&D news podcast at the time that one could get.

And when I wrote to him, he said, your idea for a show, like a weekly discussion of the news with a bunch of people, sounds great. Do you want to come do it here on this feat? Which already has listeners and is established. And he didn't know me from Adam, right? Like, there was no reason for him to offer that other than he was nice. And I guess I made a decent pitch

over email to him. And so I was like, yes, absolutely. And so I started to do that and I realized with this built-in audience, hey, I want to, what I really want to do is write and make these games. What if I started a blog? And then I could direct the audience that I have now that Jeff Greiner has very graciously given to me over to this blog, right? And so I started to blog twice a week about D&D and like looking at Fifth Edition and

breaking it down and making stuff and what was my homebrew world going to be when it came out. And that blog then started to gain traction. And eventually, like two years into blogging, the Fifth Edition then launches and then the DMs Guild launches. And they're like, hey, if you've got stuff for the DMs Guild, come put it on. And this was the early days of the DMs Guild. Now everything's really nice on there, well laid out art and everything. but this was like there was nothing on there and I had all this stuff on my blog and I was like this is my chance right so I'd like put together word documents quick and dirty they're real bad you can still find them on there and put them up and they got some traction because the market was small at that point right and the marketplace was not flooded with a bunch of really good stuff so my okay stuff stood out um and then uh from that started to get freelance jobs uh and then eventually worked with Wizards of the Co

on Waterdeep Dragon Heist, which is an official hardcover adventure. I did six more books after that with them. And then I started, that got my name out there. And I started to work with a bunch of different companies. And I eventually got to work with this company, MCDM, which is Matt Colville. He's a YouTuber, who is also a game designer, has his own company. I started to work with them and was freelancing with them. And then they said, hey, we're starting up a magazine that's going to be 5E content.

Would you like a full-time job with us managing this magazine? And I said, yes. And now I've been there for four years, and I'm the lead game designer now at MCDM Productions. Amazing. I had so many times I wanted to interrupt you, but you were in such a good flow that I did not. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. No, no. No, it's a great story. It's awesome. And don't worry. I take notes so I can dissect this to my leisure. So what I want to talk about is, you know, there's a couple different factors,

and I always like to pull apart kind of universal principles in areas where your story can both apply to other people, in areas where things have changed and maybe people should be approaching it differently. So, you know, kind of one of the things,

there's plenty of people out there. I would suspect a majority of those listening to this podcast that have had that awakening experience when they played a game like Dungeons and Dragons, whether it be an RPG or a TCG like magic or something else where they're like, oh my God, this is so cool, I can tell my own stories, I can build my own experience. And that's pretty, you know, all the guests on this podcast in 75 some odd episodes,

that's far and away the most common starting point. But very few people that have that experience go on to then make and create and feel like they can build something. And you went from there to producing TV commercials, which I'm interested how you got into that, as well as then pitching, starting to pitch to Dragon Magazine, hitting a wall, and then continuing to go forward. And I want to kind of just dig in a little bit to kind of what was it about you

or that kind of got you the feeling like you could do this and how did you keep that? Maybe there is some tensions between your creativity and in TV and this. So yeah, I'd love to just dig into that side of things a little bit more. Yeah. I mean, I've always been interested in like leading a creative life. Yeah, so as a kid, right, I always did things like theater and writing. And I think, you know, for RPGs in particular, it appeals to a lot of theater kids, right? And you can see that with the rise of things like critical role and stranger things, more and more people who thought maybe it was just for math nerds got into it.

Now, I've also always been a math nerd, right? And that's why RPGs are a strong pole for me because it's like, oh, this appeals to the power gamer in me, right? because you can sit there and you can craft a character and you can get it perfect. It appeals to the storyteller in me and that's a huge draw for me. And I think

in terms of what really appealed to me, right? I remember being 10 years old and my mom asking me what I wanted to do and saying like, I want to write RPGs. And so that's always been a thing that I've wanted

to do. I learned as I got older, right, that that's hard. Like, it's not, there aren't that many people who do this full time. And I think the appeal, but there are a lot of people who want to do it. And the reason is that, like, when you play these games in particular, when you

play a role-playing game, if you're the person running the game, right, you're a game designer. You're putting together combat scenarios, you're designing levels for players to go through, you're designing stories and games. You're often instituting your own house rules, right? You're doing what I do, right, already on the basic

level professionally. And so I think a lot of people do that and they think like, well, I already do this. I could write these books. And many of them are right. Like I, you know, a lot of my circumstances have to do with things like luck and being in the right place at the right time. You know, I don't have, I am married and I don't have kids, which is sort of the ideal scenario for, hey, I have this full-time job and I'm also pursuing this other job, right? Because you have someone in your life who's splitting, you know, chores and

bills and stuff like that, but you also don't have extra responsibility. And so like, it's a perfect storm and stuff. Yeah, the, the dink double income no kids situation is a, is a very flexible one. Yes. Yeah.

But I think one, I've never heard the role playing games as the as the sweet spot for math. nerd theater nerd overlap which is great love that um two i want to just dive back you know you said you always wanted to live a creative life and then you kind of dismissed it as i'm not to get too highfalutin and i just want to pause because for me it is like this is important i think i don't want to diminish or shrink the value of a creative life i think some amount of creativity in our lives is essential to a meaningful fulfilling life it's essential to our own personal growth like

I don't think RPGs are just about, you know, just about kind of telling stories that are disconnected from you. I think RPGs are ways you tell stories that help you learn more about yourself and your friends and who you are. They let you take on different roles and personas and attitudes. I think these things matter a ton and us, our collective storytelling is as old as, you know, the human language. And this is just new ways to express that.

So when you say, and I think you're right, the third point I want to kind of tie all this together is that people, when they're making these games, when you're, you know, a, a dungeon master or game master or even when you're playing in the game and you're coming up with creative things like surfing on a turtle shell or whatever your is you are co-creating you are designing you are getting to be creative and part of what I want to encourage is people to take that exercise seriously and make sure that they put it as part of their lives so you know I'm glad that you kind of had that drive and I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't diminished in any way as part of this narrative yeah definitely and I'm glad I'm glad that you're encouraging that

because it really was, right? Like, that's one reason why I, I've had a lot of careers so far in my life. And I started in theater, working in theater in Philadelphia, right, professional theater, in casting offices and directing plays and stuff like that. And then I got this job at Adult Swim where I was making, you know, cartoon content helping produce stuff. And from there, which cartoons did you work on over there? So I worked on Aquatine Hunger Force and the Squidbillies.

Oh, man, I love Aquitaine Hunger Force so much. So ridiculous. That's amazing. Oh, yeah, it's great. It's great. And I, you know, very like production assistant stuff that I was doing there. And then from that, I worked on a show that was actually a cartoon network show called Run It Back NBA, which was a sports show that lasted for a season where they would take, like, the NBA game, the hot game of the week,

which at the time, like, it was like LeBron James and Dwayne Wade on the Miami Heat, right, with Chris Bosch. And it was basically whoever the heat was playing that week, right? You'd cut it down to 45 minutes and we'd add all these like pop-ups and interstitials to help kids improve their game. And then we would also add special effects. So I'm sure you're familiar with NBA Jam.

You know, he's on fire, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We basically like lit the ball on fire and did stuff. like that. So it was a lot of fun to be able to do that. And there was a lot of creative freedom where they'd be like, all right, you have one quarter of the game,

cut it down to this length, and then add special effects and facts and stuff like that. It was great. So it was a lot of fun to work on. Yeah. And then I ended up working on commercials after that. It started at National Geographic. I would do promos, right? Like write and produce promos

that, you know, coming up next, Wicked tuna, blow. And I had so much fun doing that. I got to write a heavy metal song about sharks. And, you know, I got to do... Do you remember any part of that heavy metal song about sharks? That you'd be interested to share with our listeners. Yeah.

So it was a show. It was a show that was called... Well, all right. So here for the context, right, Discovery Channel has Shark Week. National Geographic channel Nat Geo Wild has Shark Fest and it relies on

brand confusion right that you you are turning on the TV just because you want to see some sharks and you don't really remember which channel it's on and as long as you see a shark documentary you're happy right?

Yeah. And so you might check Nat Geo Wild first and that is true like that's when you see the ratings they go up they go higher and so they were like look we have this show shark kill zone. And it's basically about

sharks eating stuff, right? And so the heavy metal song was all about, hey, you're going to see all these sharks. And then it was like, sharks eating stuff. That's what this show's about. Right? And then, and there's probably some science, but it's mostly about

sharks eating stuff. Oh my God. Yeah. This is, I haven't had this much fun doing it recording in a while. So thank you. I'm having a blast. This is great. No problem. No problem. Well, okay. And then Now, for those that aren't as am used as I am by this tangent, I actually, I'm purposely been going down this road and I'm doing it for a reason because you also, one of the other notes I have is, you know, you talked about, well, I got kind of lucky, you know. And I think that what you have done is a, is another trait that I see in a large number of successful people, which is you have found the niches adjacent to the thing that you love and you've put in the work to build up and get your foot in the door and move in that direction. right you did a you know you're you love theater and so you were willing to be you know doing the hiring

and doing the behind the scene stuff directing plays casting offices and work your way up to that you love being able to create and write and write wanted to write for you know Dungeons and Dragons and dragons but you did writing and you know stuff focus on promos and commercials which again most people wouldn't connect to the thing that you want to do but it does have that that crossover appeal you wanted and then you know starting to do a podcast about Dungeons and Drag. I can't get my writing published for it in Dungeon magazine. So I'm going to do a podcast because I'm good in front of the, you know, with audio and you have a genuine enthusiasm. And then all of those things leading to, you don't, you can't predict exactly what the level of success is going to be.

It exactly, yes, you need some luck. But the work that you put in and the willingness to take your strengths and put yourself in positions where you have more exposure to luck is a very conscious and or maybe I don't know if it was conscious or not, but it's a very effective strategy that I think is is pretty universal. Yeah, it's definitely That's the thing, right? Is that you, to get lucky, you have to be in the right place at the right time. And if you're not showing up, right? If you're not showing up to the places where that happens, then you'll never get luck.

And I think it's one of those things where hard work really does get recognized. And it's true of any industry that as soon as you enter it, it's so much smaller than you thought it was, right? that you get in there and you're like, oh, everybody here knows everybody, right? And that was the thing. I didn't think podcasting, I did podcasting because I wanted to talk about it,

and I thought it would be a good way to drive people to a blog, right? And that kind of thing. What I didn't realize about podcasting was, hey, eventually I'll get to talk to some of the people who make these things, and they're going to remember who I am. And it's actually pretty easy to, like, get in touch with somebody like,

you know, Jeremy Crawford, who's the, you know, managing editor of, Dungeons and Dragons and say like, hey, do you want to do an interview? And if you happen to be at GenCon, when that happens, right?

It happens. And so, yeah, you are absolutely right that like part of luck is having the ability to do the work, right, to get lucky, right? And to be in that position, right? You can't get somebody to look at your portfolio if you don't have a portfolio. All right. I want to talk a little bit about now, we talked about what kind of is kind of universal

and some of the things that you went through coming up that anybody could apply to. And I want to talk about some of the things that are different. You know, one, as you mentioned, there's a lot more content out there, there's a lot more good quality content out there than there ever was before. It's, you know, easier to create and distribute harder to get attention.

Pretty common refrain. And two, you know, I loved RPGs growing up. And I, when I decided to become a game designer, I always wanted to make an RPG, but I actually steered away from it, like consciously because I felt the business of RPGs was terrible. You're not wrong. Like, boy, oh boy is the economics of TCGs a lot better for the designer

and somebody in making it, right? So it's a very different world. And again, I love all different types of games, but I also, you know, try to be a good business person as well as designer and creative and business are tied together. But that has,

in many ways that has changed, right? I mean, you yourself were part of this, the draw steel campaign which did $4.6 million dollars. I had multiple guests on this podcast

that I've had, you know, multi-million dollar RPG campaigns without IP or original IP. That is something I would never have dreamed of a decade ago. What do you think has changed?

What's driving that? And maybe we can start digging into how you got to the kind of success that you have. Yeah. And it's so funny you're talking about trading card games, right? Because the joke about like, how do you have a successful role playing game? The answer used to be like, well, you have Magic the Gathering as and that supports D&D, right? Like the idea. And Magic the Gathering is still a giant business, right? That does. Colossal. Especially compared to Dungeons and Dragons is doing great. It's doing better than it's ever pinned. Right. And still, if you made Wizards of the Coast choose, they'd be like, well, obviously, we're keeping magic the gathering.

Like, thank you, Dungeons and Dragons. You've been a good service to us. And so I think one of the things that has really helped is the RPG market, right? Like, there is a 900-pound gorilla in the RPG space, and it is Dungeons and Dragons, right? It is almost synonymous. A lot of people out there in the world who don't play role-playing games, they know Dungeons and Dragons. They don't know that there are other role-playing games, nor do they even necessarily know that Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game.

They just know it's a game that people play, right? And so it's sort of like Xerox or Kleenex, right? It becomes synonymous with the thing that it is. And I think one thing that happened was, you know, Now over 10 years ago in 2014, 5th edition comes out. And 5th edition had this very slow release strategy that I think helped. And whether that was strategic or because they didn't want to make as many D&D books, like whatever the reason was, it meant that if you showed up to your game store to play D&D,

for a long time, you sat next to somebody who had the player's handbook and you did too. Whereas in third edition and fourth edition, it was like, I sat down, I just bought the player's handbook. And the person next to me who'd been playing for three years had a stack of 10 books that they used to make their character. And that's like, are you kidding me? I just had to buy this $150, 300 page book. I'm not buying another nine just so I can make a character as cool as yours, right? So that helped. That slower strategy, I think, helped.

But the big thing that I don't think anybody could have predicted, right, were these pop culture phenomenons that were using Dungeons and Dragons. Critical role, I think, is a big thing that helped. I think Stranger Things, even bigger, right? Like, Stranger Things was this huge phenomenon where people saw the game, right? They saw it played by these 10-year-olds who loved it. And then the terminology, the demigorgon, right, continues throughout the first season. That really helps. At the time, the Big Bang theory is on, they're doing Dungeons and Dragons episodes, right?

And they're showing these beloved America's favorite nerds, right? whatever, playing D&D. And so I think all of those cultural phenomenons happening really got people into it and checking it out. And the rise of then critical role meant that to learn to play Dungeons and Dragons, if I type into Google how to play D&D, right? Now I get a zillion videos. And it's not just critical role. It's a bunch.

And I can sit there and go, oh, okay, I get it. I remember trying to explain RPGs to people beforehand. and it would be like, there's no good elevator pitch for this, right? And now I can just show you, right? I can just say, hey, you know, do you like Brennan Leigh Mulligan, right? Do you like the McElroy's? Do you like, right, all any number of comedians who have played this game who I can show you, hey, here's a clip of Harman Town.

Here's a clip of, you know, Vin Diesel playing with Matt Mercer to promote a movie. Here's Stephen Colbert playing for Red Noseday. Right. All of that, I think, culturally, has helped turn people on to what the game is and made people realize like, oh, this isn't just for the nerds, right? This is for me, the theater nerd. Or this is for me, the video game nerd, right? Video game's huge business way bigger than movies or anything else. And so I think people were playing, they were like, oh, wait a second, this is like Final Fantasy. I love Final Fantasy. I would play this with my friends at the table. This seems great, right? And that, I think, has helped the internet, has really taken off in a big way. And, you know, Critical Role's No Slouch. They're the biggest show on Twitch by a huge magnitude, as we all learned when Twitch's numbers were leaked a couple of years ago to everybody. Yeah, yeah.

Well, and that's, and that streaming, I think, had a two-tiered effect, not just that, you know, now you see more examples of it. It's easier to learn. It's easier to see people who are, you know, kind of representative and cultural icons doing it. But that it's also, you know, as you mentioned, this is a, it's a theater activity. Like now the performance aspect of it and watching people co-create a story in the same way that you might watch an improv comedy act. In essence, you're watching an, you know, an improv fantasy adventure. And that creates that like, honestly, in every genre of game that I make now, and I do across a

variety of different categories, I'm always thinking about how do I make this good to stream? How do I make this fun to watch? Because that's so much of the way people, people discover things now and D&D and on role playing games in general are sort of pre-baked with this like, oh, okay, I love to watch people tell stories and be animated. And, you know, if they're really kind of into it, it creates a natural filter process. Whereas for me, I would say, I don't know if this was true for you. Like, even though I loved playing RPGs, I spent far more time reading RPG books than I did actually playing RPGs, like just that digging through the tomes and going through it. And nowadays, people spend far more time watching people play RPGs. RPGs and creating community around that even then playing RPGs. Yeah, definitely. And something like 50% of Critical Role's audience doesn't play D&D. They just want to watch Critical Role, which to me is like fascinating, right? That they have achieved a level of entertainment with an RPG that other people want to watch.

I remember, like, I love role playing games. And I remember people would be like, but don't tell people about your game. It's like telling people about your dreams, right? Like it's boring. They don't want to hear about it. Now it's like, well, now people will,

you'll sell out Wembley Stadium, right, to, for people to come watch you, which is incredible. So yeah, it's definitely one of those things that, um,

it's imminently streamable. And what's interesting is like, I don't even, I think D&D of all the role playing games is probably one that is not the most streamable, right? It's kind of complicated. It's got these three core rule books.

Uh, you, you often don't understand what's happening in combat. Somebody's got to stop and explain a spell. And yet, it's, you know, we're watching people do it just because the nature of role-playing games is sort of more storytelling. Yeah. Well, and so then let's let's let's let's tie into a couple, couple of little threads. A lot of times when I talk about making my own RPG engine, which is what interests me as a game designer, I get told, what are you doing? Just make a fifth edition book. You can,

boo, no. Right. So you've succeeded. Yeah, well, so, so, so, so help talk me out of that. Help me get back to what I wanted to do in the first place. I love advice that gets me to do what I already want to do. It's like when they say like dark chocolate's good for you, great, awesome. Totally going to have that. So help me help me with the dark chocolate of designing a new engine for an RPG. So here's the thing. D&D does some things very well, right? But it reports to be the, and this isn't even like what it claims. It is what people who play it claim is that like you can do anything in D&D so you don't need another game system, right?

And because it's hard to learn, people often think then, well, other role-playing games are also going to be hard to learn. And I think that's not true for a lot of reasons, right? So we need to break people of that mindset. And I think games like draw steel

where, hey, a bunch of people are interested and going to check it out, you know, Darrington Press, which is Critical Role's publishing arm, is putting out Daggerheart, right? that is going to help change people's mind. And so there's, you know, there's all these different games that are coming out

that people can check out. And I think if you want to do something that is, that D&D does well, right? D&D has its roots in dungeon crawling, has its roots in a combat-based game, right? Yeah, I think it works pretty well. The D20 can be pretty swinging, right? So it means that sometimes you're going to miss.

And it is a, that you roll to see if you get to do something on your turn and then you wait 15 minutes to roll it again. And so, and some games, that's great for. Some games you want to do that. If you're playing D&D, you probably want to do that. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So I just want to throw that out there for anybody listening.

James hate Fentges and Dragons. I heard you. Everybody knows that. We'll use that clip for sure. But I also think, Like, you know, a lot of people don't just play, you know, Rocket League. A lot of people don't just play Katat. Now, there are some people who do just play those things.

But they play other video games. They play other board games. And the same is true of role-playing games. The hardest thing to learn in a role-playing game is like, what is it? Wrap your mind around it. Once you know that, it's really easy to start learning other ones. But this is me convincing you, not convincing the audience. And so I think for me, the big thing is that I have learned.

that I would give advice to anybody who is a game designer is you should work on the things that you are passionate about, right? Because working on something you're passionate about is going to be the thing that is going to get you to do that extra proofread, right, to do that extra playtest, to do that extra like check on the art to make sure that everything is the way you wanted and that kind of thing. It's going to be the thing that helps you get out there and promote it because if you're a tabletop game designer, you're probably going to do a lot of your own promotion. particularly in role-playing games. And so, finding the system that really works for the story you want to tell is important, even if it means making that system yourself, right? And so, like, for us, the reason we wanted to make draw steel was we felt like a lot of people who play Dungeons and Dragons, including us, want to tell heroic fantasy stories, right?

But D&D actually has its roots in dungeon crawling. and when you change that, people get mad that it's no longer D&D. And so it means these things like the miss your turn die, it's a game of attrition where you start with all of your spell slots and all of your rages and key points and stuff like that and winnow it down.

And then right before you're going to this big dramatic encounter with the boss, everybody stops and takes a nap to make sure they get those things back. Right. Yeah. Like in what heroic fiction does it happen where it's like, hang on. Let's all take a rest here.

right, you know? And so we set out to make a different game, right? Because we were like, D&D isn't going to do what we need it to do. And so I think if you're out there, you shouldn't try to force D&D to be something that it's not. And you should make your own game if that's what you're really passionate about and what you want to do because it's going to help carry you further. And that passion really does come through to the people who are into it. And we're also now, I understand the argument because there's people who will say, well, I already know how to play D&D, so I'm just going to play that. but those people are loud on the internet,

but there's actually not a lot of them, right? Interesting. And I think that's the big thing is that like, most people are going to play a role-playing game that their friend will run for them. So what you need to do is convince the person running the game, the game master, to come and take on your game, right? That's the person you need to convince,

because as soon as you do that, you've got five more players who are going to play your game. And so I think that's the biggest thing is that like, it's often that person who learns the rules. It's often that person who's already doing the most work. So you need to make it easy on them to learn this new game and convince them. And the way you do that is you link your cart to Matt Colville, who has a series of YouTube videos that help people become dungeon masters. And then they trust Matt when he says, hey, we're going to. going to do this thing. So that's, everybody has a clear formula to follow that

anybody that wants to do this, just link your cart to Matt Colville and you'll be good to go. Okay, great. End of episode. Well, so, I'll put this in a broader way that I, you know, a message I try to deliver a fair amount is consistently add value to the communities and people you want to serve. Yes. And so if you're saying my target and it's great,

it's a great insight. Like you're not trying to target all the RPG players. You're trying to target the game masters. If you turn them, you know, then they bring with them the players and that works. And the way, okay,

how do I add value to game masters is, okay, I'm going to teach people how to be better game masters or I'm going to create a, you know, a podcast about it or I'm going to do a whatever, create an app for it or whatever. There's a million ways you can serve those people and then build trust and build credibility.

And then from there use that as a launch pad. And so that's, you know, it is a repeatable formula in a, sense, though, you know, maybe, you know, what exactly the path you'll take would have to align with your skill set. And then I want to dig in on the passion comment because in many ways I've echoed the same sentiment, but I want to stand in for the audience here a little bit too and say, listen,

you know, yeah, it's all well and good for you to say, do your passion. You, you know, you're the one that got lucky and made it. A lot of people that try to do passion in an industry that's not that's small, right, especially not D&D RPGs are, you know, they don't work. And really, if you could put that same energy into something that has a bigger audience and a bigger chance of success, wouldn't you be better off putting that energy in that way? Yeah. Well, I think you have to ask yourself, do you want to do that?

Are you going to be happy doing that, right? Because if you're not, then why, go be a banker, right? If you want to go make money, right? Like, and you want to, and you don't care about what you're doing, don't get into games. go do something else. That's sort of the way that I think about that. And I, the big thing is that when you're starting out, right,

I think it is important to start small. And I think starting small and role-playing games often means playing in somebody else's sandbox, right? Saying, okay, what game do I love? Let me start there. That's what I did with D&D, right? Like, hey, I love D&D. Let me start small.

I'm going to make some backgrounds on my blog, right? I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to make a monster. And then I, hey, maybe I'll write a 5,000 word adventure, right? Ooh, now maybe I'll, I'll try to do something a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger. And I was always, though, doing something that I wanted to do there, right? I was never like, hey, let me chase the trend of, it seems like fairies are real hot right now.

Let me do a bunch of fairy stuff, right? Or, hey, it seems like, you know, undead are popular right now. Let me do a bunch of vampire stuff. I was always trying to think about like, what would I want? What would I need in my game? Maybe somebody else needs it, and I'm passionate about that.

So I do think starting small and like going at it alone to make your own RPG can be a daunting task, unless you're making, you know, like a one-page RPG or a smaller RPG. And even there, there's like an elegance there that I think can be difficult to nail down without a lot of experience. So I do recommend starting off. small and manageable, whatever that may be. That may be a small game that you create on your own.

But guess what? It's real easy to get people into those small games and to get your name out there and to start building your audience that way, as opposed to here is my, as people would say, fantasy heartbreaker, right? Which is a term that we use for, I made a D&D competitor and it's doomed to fail because it's not D&D and people already have D&D, right?

So before you make that, Right. Like start small, do a bunch of other stuff. Get your name out there. But make sure those are things you're passionate about too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's great.

Yeah. Great, super actionable advice. I think the, you know, playing in someone else's sandbox in a RPG context, you've laid out a lot of ways to do that, including, you know, just designing your own campaigns within, within Dungeons and Dragons or other games that you play. I think the same is true for other categories of games. You know, I think collectible games, being able to build the experience that you want to have and craft a certain type of experience,

making house rules, modifying things. I mean, my very first version of Ascension, I've told the story before was just like, I took a dominion set and just shuffled all the cards together

and dealt them out with a randomized center row. And I was like, okay, this doesn't quite work, but there's something here. Now I'll start putting in some more effort to building my own version of this and what would that look like?

And so, you know, as quick and dirty as you can get to start trying stuff and working on exercising that muscle, I think really helps. And then again, it's because I got hooked on it, right? I got hooked on magic. And that made me love TCGs and made me want to make TCGs.

And so I went down that road. I got hooked on, you know, Dominion and made me go that way. And again, I, you know, I started this earlier talking about my, you know, I steered away from RPGs in part because of those economic reasons. And it's stuck with me for now 20 some odd years. And so I definitely want to come back to it. So I may come pick your brain some more. Actually, you know what? Never mind.

I'm going to pick your brain right now. Okay. How familiar are you with the Ascension? universe IP, the deck building game at all. Okay, so I've played the game a couple of times over like the last, I want to say, 10 years. Dawn of Spanians, I think was the first time that I played it at Gen Con. It's a great game. You made a great game, by the way.

Thank you. Yeah, so this is our 15 year anniversary right now. So, yeah. Wow. Congratulations. That's huge. That's huge. Thank you.

Yeah. We have a lot of exciting things playing. So GenCon, 2025 will technically be the, the official kickoff of the 15 year anniversary. So we've got a lot of fun things planned. And one of the things that I have kicked around for a while. And in fact, I do have some fully sketched out kind of design ideas and concepts

for what an Ascension RPG might be. But I want to set those aside before I talk about that. I would love to get your advice. And how would you think about building an Ascension RPG? What questions would you want to ask? I think this is a fun little exercise on air, if you will. Oh yeah, this is great. So first of all, I think this is real cool.

And you know, Gloom Haven like just put out a Gloom Haven role-playing game, you know, and you can see some other tabletop games sort of trend, like dip their toe into the RPG water. And I think, right, Ascension, given the fact that it has these, you know, that it is, I want to say IP-based, because that makes it sound like you're working with Disney or something. But given the fact that it has lore, right, given the fact that it has story around it makes it sort of a perfect candidate for that. So I think what I would say to you is what sorts of stories do you want people to tell, right? That's how I always start is. What is the fiction in a role playing game that we want the rules to support, right?

Yeah. So I think that, you know, the concept of ascension, the kind of heart of the story arc of ascension, always this idea of you as kind of a, you know, a kind of noble warrior on your own, you then recruit a variety of allies to your cause and kind of grow in power and strength to then be able to take on the great threat that's facing and it's threatening the world. And what that threat is changed from set to set. But the basics are still the same, right? We start off with my, I've got my little army of apprentices and militias.

And over time, I'm recruiting fantastical allies and characters. and weapons and everything, and then I will earn the honor and glory of defeating this great big bad. Nice. Yes. Right. You will ascend to be able to do such a thing, right? In fact. So in this game, are you,

are the player characters, right? Well, first, is this, there's all kinds of role-playing games. Are we approaching this from a, hey, there's a game master and then there's a bunch of player characters perspective, right? I think would be probably, my first question.

And do those player characters work together as a team? Yeah. So I do like the idea of player characters working together as a team. I think we're all on the same side here generally is a good thing. I am not attached to a game master. I think if that's the easiest thing to do and that makes it work well, then I'm fine with that, but I'm not attached to a game master per se. Sure.

Whoa. Whoa. GMless games. I've never made one. But I do, I think they're fun. I've certainly played a bunch. Yeah, and I have some sketched concepts of this, but I don't want to break your threat of it because I want to see,

I want people to see how you think about this, and then I'm happy to jump in with how I'm thinking about it. We can get a rift. I really want to know. I really want to know what you're thinking. Yeah. Yeah. So I think one question that I would,

one other question I think that I would have for you is in ascension, you're gathering an army. Are you playing heroes who are gathering an army together? or are you heroes joining that army? Like are you a part of that army instead of the person gathering the people? Yeah. So the arc of ascension is that you are, so the original version of ascension was called Ascension Chronicle of the godslayer.

We ended up dropping the godslayer missed part because mass market didn't love that. But regardless, the story is that you are actually all, you're all collectively kind of creating this army and you're trying to rise up to become the sort of the one that actually defeats the fallen god samuel and so i think it's a we are together like i think it's in my mind it sort of starts as an adventuring party and becomes an army and uh one of you that earns the most honor in that kind of is the you know in essentially a competitive game so that person becomes the god slayer and so you're you're competing but you are

everything you do in ascension is cooperative in a sense you're all trying to kill monsters together you're not actually attacking each other it's just a matter of who gets the most honor in glory as they go through it. So I think this, this world of like, you know, I want to think like the Wheel of Time series kind of thing where it starts off as just like everybody is just kind of, you know, it starts out in the farm, but everybody has their own magical powers and super abilities and gradually we come together to be able to take on the dark one, kind of like that.

Yes. Okay. Well, so I think what I like about that, right, is that I think we could have. And there are role playing games where it's like, hey, we're working together as a team, but we're also a little competitive in that we're trying to get the most honor together, right? There's a role-playing game called Aegon that is like that where you're like sort of ancient Greek heroes, right? And you're trying to get the glory of the gods. And you want more glory than everybody else, but you also have to work together to survive. And I think that, um, looking at that,

right, that's where I would sit down and say, okay, I think that that's probably one of the driving forces of the game. That's what encourages players. So how do we, what's a mechanic? What's a mechanic where we can encourage players to work together, right? But also have this gameplay loop where it's like, okay, but I want to be the one who gets the killing blow, which is already something that happens naturally when you play a game like D&D, where it's like, oh, you stole my kill, right? That kind of thing. You know, how are we going to get that?

And maybe there's other ways you could earn honor as well. It's not just kill stealing, right? Right. From folks. But I think that sort of thing would be really interesting to me. and that's probably where I would start and say, okay, is a game about building armies?

Is a game about using honor to build armies? And we're each building an army, but we're working together to do it. How do we turn this into an experience where it's like, okay, we can do the things outside of the normal rules of ascension because it's a role-playing game. So we can say things like,

well, I want to figure out how to recruit more people. Right. And maybe we can make trade, right? I could say to you, hey, you've got these people in your army. These people that I have would synergize better. Do you want to trade? Because I would like your people, right? And like that kind of thing. I think we could do that sort of thing where we're, hey, we're working together. We're also a little bit competitive about it and get that feeling of like a camaraderie and a brotherhood. Right. You see this all the time in movies where like, you know, like top gun style movies where it's like, hey, we've got each other's backs, right? We don't. I don't want you to die, right? But I do want to be the best pilot there. Right? And I can tell that kind of story within this. I want to be the one who offends and gets to be the gods life, right?

Right. And that typically seems really fun. So I would probably, okay, now I've got this goal, right? And I would sit down and think about how can I accomplish that? And I would, and honestly, what I would do is I would get the simplest version of it that I could up on its feet and start play testing it and then be like, okay, that didn't work. Why? And go from there. Sort of like what you said when you took Dominion and you were like,

well, I'm going to shuffle all these cards together and put them in a center pile and see what happened. I think you've got to be willing to get messy. And that's where I would start. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for that exercise. Now, I'll tip my hand on a few things here as well. Because I think that there's, when I think about games, right, I think about the design of how are the systems that I'm creating, incentivizing the behavior that I want and thus the experiences and emotions in the players that they want,

right? And so this, you know, do I, when it comes to an RPG, right, I want to incentivize people to create these epic moments, right? I want to be able to have these storytelling opportunities where everybody gets to shine and there gets to have these like interesting tensions and like, let's let's create as many of those moments as we can. And then the flavor of that will depend upon the types of stories we want to tell. And so I think what I've done, you know, do I, do I, and I guess I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, And what I wonder is if you're taking a lore and an IP, is it the best strategy to take that and go for that same emotional arc?

Or do we want to, is it better to sort of give people an alternative emotional arc? Maybe something that's a little bit more personal. Maybe don't make it so like co-opetition because this is giving them a different kind of experience. If they want that competitive experience, they have it already in Ascension. I don't know how you think about that.

I don't know what IPs you've worked with outside of, you know, to play with that concept of like how do I represent this thing in a different way like I've taken a lot of other games and turned them into other games like so I took the world of warcraft game and turned it into a world of warcraft miniatures game which is which is weird right because I wanted to feel true to world of warcraft but if I don't want to just make a world of warcraft on the table because that's just worse right you're so how do I make it feel true but give you a different experience so how do you think about that when you're sort of converting from more

medium to another. Yeah, that's a great question. And it's not a thing that I have really done. There are plenty of people who have done it, right? You know, you look at my boss, Matt, used to work at a company where they had Lord of the Rings and Star Trek and all of these different IPs that they were using to create role-playing games for, right? And it would be like, okay, well, Star Trek exists in this medium.

And then it also has, you know, red alert the battle game, right? And stuff like that. It's not a thing that I have done before. And so that is, but I do think that that is a pitfall that you see games get into, right? And I think the thing is you want to think about what makes your game special and can you continue to preserve that? So it feels like ascension, right? And it might be that the lore is the thing that makes it special and like, hey,

we can leave all this stuff behind. And like, you're a group of heroes who are trying to, uh, uh, you know, just eventually fight the godslayer, right?

And work your way up. And, and that'll be great because you're going to interact with all of the creatures and and that you already see in the ascension game and cards, right? That could be fine. Um, but I do think you want to preserve some aspect of what makes playing ascension great and fun, right?

Because you're right. You do have this game. You don't want to just make a worse version of ascension that, that doesn't fit. And so for me, I don't have enough of the wherewithal or know-how to do that. But I would probably start, and I might say like,

oh, this fell apart, we need to go back to first principles and think about like, what is an ascension role-playing game from the ground up? And what is an ascension story? And what is that, right? Yeah,

yeah. Yeah, no, it's interesting. So for me, now I'll go back to the thing that I know you were, you were sort of excited about teasing. You know,

which is like, okay, could we make this GMless, right? Or is there a way to pull that off? And so what I thought about first engines, obviously, you know, it was one of the first deck building games to exist. And it is, you know, can I use a deck building engine to drive the action in a way that wouldn't otherwise be,

you know, I haven't seen other games do, right? So maybe my character is a deck of cards and the trait, instead of just being, you know, apprentices and militias and, you know, Arha Templars I'm bringing in, it's, okay,

This is my, I have, you know, sneaky and greedy and, you know, I have, you know, battle sword expertise and whatever. And so these abilities are then the things that I would draw and be able to play. And being able to tell the story of how my sneaky trait lets me go and do a certain thing that I want to do would be kind of part of the fun of the play experience. And that there would even potentially be a center deck or a villain deck, if you will, that kind of drives a lot of the action of the, of the bosses and the things that you encounter. And those, again, it could be things like battles, but could also be things like, you know, okay, there's been a breakdown amongst the group and the team,

what does that mean? And this is going to require some social abilities to solve it. And then you get to collectively say, okay, what was the breakdown? This person decides. All right, this is what happened. Okay, cool. How are we going to solve it? And then we're trying to use the resources we have to kind of interact with us.

There's a little bit of that play. And it's a little bit more of a guided experience in the sense that, you know, I want to bring Ascension players over. and I'm sure there's a decent number of essential players to play RPGs, but it's not, I don't know how big that overlap necessarily is. And so having something where I have a few more guides and cards and it doesn't put as much burden on one person being the GM

and having to know everything, doesn't put as much burden on the player to have to like think out of all the possible things that could possibly be done. I have a, you know, I have a handful of cards that are going to drive my, my choices and I think constraints can help a lot of people be more creative in the moment. Yeah, absolutely.

I love that. I think that that's really great, right? And we, our general manager over at MCDM recently said to us, you know, you could have picked any other genre of tabletop game and we would make more money, right? And so I think you're right to assume that like there's probably some overlap, but it's not 100%. It's probably not even close to 25, you know, in some cases. And you've got a lot of great players there. So having this GMless system makes a lot of sense to me. I think the other thing, right, when I, when I, when I,

hear about that, I think about like, oh, one great thing about cards, right, is even just normal playing cards, we know that, like, you have multiple avenues for customization. So you might have like, in playing cards, right, you have a suit, you have a number, right? And so having a card that's like, hey, it's got this special battle ability, but also it's got this number. And that number means that I can use it kind of generically when solving tasks outside of combat, for instance, right? Um, is a, it, it's a, it, It gives you a lot of different points to play with. And a deck building game, right? You know, like you can have wound cards. You can have all that kind of stuff that you put in. You're like, I can't use this card at all now that it's in my hand, right? So obviously, you know all that stuff. And I don't need to tell you that.

But I think that that's really cool. And it presents a great opportunity in an RPG to also have a randomizer that doesn't necessarily need to be diced because you've got this hand of cards that you're drawing from the deck. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks for going through that exercise with me. I think it was the kind of thing. hopefully was useful to our audience in addition to being useful to me.

You can kind of see the way that you think about this. The way I think about this is we're kind of at the early ideation stage and how you approach the virtual blank page here. Awesome, man. Well, dude, thank you so much for taking the time. This was a ton of fun. I learned a lot about you that I did not know, even got a shark fest song out of this deal.

So I'm calling this a big win. For people that want to follow up, find your stuff, here and see more cool things that you do. Where should they go? Yeah, so you can go to MCDM Productions.com to check out what we're doing. Drawlsteel.com is the RPG that we're working on. You can go pre-order it or order it, depending on when you're listening to this. Over there, drawlsteel.com.

And I'm on Blue Sky at James Intracos, I-N-T-R-O-C-A-S-O. So you can find me over there if you want to follow me personally. I'm also on Twitch at the same name. I stream every Wednesday, and I just do a Q-R-R-R-C-A-S-O. and A about whatever people want to talk about. Oh, that's awesome. How often do you get people to turn into the Q&A? How many people do you get, is it per week or so when you're doing that?

So, yeah, it's generally about 500 or so unique people show up at any given time. The audience is between 2 and 300 folks. That's amazing. Great. It's really, really, really cool. Yeah, and just with no specific agenda, just opening Q&A, just chatting. Just open Q&A, just chatting. Right now, it's been a lot about drawl steel because that's what people.

know we're working on. But yeah, I'll talk about anything that people want to talk about, people want to talk about movies, people want to talk about pizza. I love that. I love that as a way to connect directly with the audience. I've been thinking about doing something like that myself. So for those that are out there, definitely check out James's stream and go ask him some questions about movies and pizza and whatever. And I let me know what you think about

the Ascension RPG ideas we talked about. You can definitely comment in there. Or if anybody wants to encourage me to try to do a weekly Q&A stream. I think that would be kind of fun. So you give me a lot of things to chew on here, James. This was really fun. Thanks for joining. Yeah, thanks for having me

and call me when you need playtesters for the RPG. I am down. I want to play. Hell yeah, I will definitely take you up on that. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platform,

such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listen to reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever find

books or sold. Thank you.