Think Like A Game Designer - Keith Baker — Crafting Worlds and Weaving Tales: From Ebberon's Origins to Phoenix Dawn Command's Innovations (#15)

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Keith Baker is a renowned game designer and storyteller. He was the creator of the D&D setting Ebberon and Gloom. He has traveled the world creating and running Story based games. If you’re into role-playing games like D&D or any other story-driven games there’s a lot to learn here. 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 Keith Baker. Keith is a renowned storyteller, world builder, and game designer. He's probably most well known for creating the Eberon setting for Dungeons and Dragons, but he's also designed incredible games like Gloom, Cthulhu Flux, and the latest Phoenix Dawn Command, which we talk about quite a bit in this episode. Keith brings a really great storyteller's eye to the process of design and has a lot of amazing

insights. We have some great discussions where he comes at this from a story first perspective, and I tend to come at things from a mechanics first perspective, but our principles are shockingly the same. And so that really comes across as we dig through a lot of the elements in this episode. We talk about the things that Keith learned as he was getting Eberon developed and getting feedback from Wizards of the Coast on how to turn it into a story, from a pure story, into something that really supports a game world. We learn about the process of creating intellectual properties and how you develop them for the audience that you want. What makes a world compelling? What is the heart of a good story world and how would you use it to make games?

We talk about one of the principles that Keith really delves into and kind of drove home for me is how well he's able to use visceral moments from movies as touchstones for the types of emotions he wants to evoke in his games. This is something I've talked about a lot in the past. The heart of a game designer is trying to evoke specific emotions and experiences in your audience. And I found his tool of using specific movie scenes was a great way to instantly reference the kind of emotions you're looking for and knowing whether you hit the mark or not. And he talks also about the process of becoming as successful as he has been. You know, how you can achieve success in the gaming industry,

finding things that you're passionate about, being able to contribute and work and iterate. This is a theme that you'll hear often on this podcast, but it cannot be restated often enough for anyone that's out there that really wants to become a great epic storyteller, a great game designer. Keith has a ton of things to teach you, so I hope you'll enjoy this episode as much as I did.

So here is Keith Baker. Hello and welcome. I am here with Keith Baker. Keith, it's wonderful to get to speak with you. Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, so I'm really interested in deep diving into a lot of things with you because you are one of the best known world builders and RPG creators and running them. And I have my background and love of RPGs goes to really the heart of why I started gaming in the first place.

But I've fallen off of it over the years. And I've recently rediscovered my love of it and trying to build stories deeper into the worlds and the games that I do create. So I'm hoping that I can learn a lot from our chat today. Excellent. So I always start these the same way. I always love to know the origin story. What got you into the industry? How did you get to be where you are today?

What was the radioactive spider bite of your superpowers? So for me, it was probably the white box of Dungeons and Dragons. When I was around nine, I ended up getting that and the hardcovered AD&D books, the first edition. And I always love telling stories. And here was something where, again, you know, what I loved about it is, is it's about making stories with your friends. And for me, right from the start, you know, by the time I was 11 or 12, I basically looked at it and said, someone wrote these books.

You know, that is a job that exists. And that's a job I want to have. And I was pretty just, you know, straight path from there. Now, of course, the challenge, especially at that time is it's not like there were any schools that had game design, you know, majors or things like that. So it was sort of knowing this was a job, knowing I wanted it, but not sure how you get it. So I studied creative writing and history in college, getting out of college. I ended up actually falling into the computer game industry, because at least that's a, you know, easier one, more jobs.

And so I worked for about eight years as a computer game designer, mainly designing MMO RPGs, you know, massively multiplayer games. Can I dig into that a little bit more? Sure. I just fell into a video game designer. A lot of people listening really would dream of that job. Yep. What is falling into a video game design job look like?

Well, you know, I mean, first off, it doesn't start off as a video game design job. So basically, I got out of college. I was working at a bookstore. A friend of mine was a programmer for a company called Magnet Interactive Studios, and I got a job initially as a production assistant. So, you know, basically I was making copies and doing sort of relatively small tasks. That company, interestingly enough, a bunch of the other people working in the design department were Lawrence Schick, Paul Murphy, and Zip Cook, who were all old school TSR, D&D people.

Zeb Cook is responsible for Planescape, Lawrence Schick did White Plume Mountain, all kinds of old stuff. But nonetheless, I worked for about two years as a production assistant and then from there to game designer, from there to lead game designer. And so, you know, initially I was just doing level designs and things like that. And then I worked for six years, two projects of about three years apiece on MMOs where I was the lead designer. And in both cases, neither of those actually came out. They both ended up getting to beta, being in beta, doing well, being both very interesting, good games, but basically internal office politics caused them to get canceled. Wow, that must have been really tough. Oh, it's very tough.

And I mean, first off, it's, it's, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of work that's just being thrown away. But also, again, they were good games. I mean, it was absolutely the kind of thing you see in Dillbert. It was really stupid, just wasteful stuff. But while I was doing that, you know, so I was getting frustrated because it's really frustrating to build a cool world, spend three years working on it and then just have it put on a shelf. No one's ever going to see it. While I've been doing that, I've been continuing to try to figure out how do you get into the role-playing, you know, the tabletop world. I'd started doing open calls and working for companies like Atlas Games and Goodman games.

And I actually quit my job right before one of my projects was canceled. And that was when Wizards at the Coast announced the fantasy setting search in 2003, which led to the creation of events. Eberon. Now, say, 2003 to 2004 is sort of my big magical moment of that was both when Eberon happened with the fantasy setting search. It was also in 2004. It was when I created Gloom. Let me, let me, I want to dig into some, because there's a lot, a lot going on here. So, yeah, yeah. One, I would love to just, if there were, uh, some key lessons, you're, you had a dream of doing tabletop RPGs from the beginning. And you end, ended up working your way through to lead designing MMOPRPGs,

which is a much bigger scope project type. And were there lessons and things that you took from that, that you ended up applying when you went into building Abron and things that maybe contributed to that success as you shifted from one world to the other? I'd say sort of it's a big circle of. I'll also note that while I was in college, I designed a lot of live role-playing games.

And those, you know, we called interactive literature at the time, you know, those were four-hour to, in some cases, three-day events of up to 60 people. And so basically, needless to say, I'd been playing and creating tabletop role-playing games throughout this entire period. So you basically go from the tabletop role-playing game that is an experience of six people or seven people creating a story together, to a live role-playing game where you're trying to create a story

that integrates, say, 60 people to an MMO where you're creating a world that has to potentially support 10,000 people at the same time. And in all of those cases, my thing with MMOs is I was always looking at it and saying, how can we get some of the best experience that you get from a pen and paper game? that the thing about the tabletop game is it is our story that these seven people build a unique story together

and the challenge with an MMO is it's not really your story. It's again this world that has to support tons of people at once and yet trying to find ways to make it feel like this is about you. And it doesn't matter if you only play two hours a week instead of the guy who plays. 100 hours a week, you know, how do we make it feel unique and compelling to you? And there's a whole bunch of different ways we try to. Yeah, that's amazing to me too. Because I've had this exact problem is one of the reasons. So I worked on the, I designed the World of Warcraft Miniatures game and worked on the World of Warcraft Trading Card game and I had to like deeply immerse myself in that world and played a lot of the

MMO. But MMO is never really stuck for me for exactly the reason you're describing. Like when I play a single player role playing game or I play a, a tabletop game with friends, like, I'm the hero of the story, we're telling a story together, it's meaningful impact, things change because of what we do. And in the MMO, anything I do, the next guy's going to do, or it's undone. Yeah, and there's some other guy with more money and time than you who's just much cooler than you. Right. And so there's a lot of ways to tackle that.

You know, I'll say one of the things we tried in a game, we were working on a pulp MMRPG called Lost Continants. And I will say that in many ways, that was the instance. inspiration for Eberon because it was the last thing I'd worked on before the fantasy setting search, and I'd spent three years basically immersing myself in pulp cereals and, and, you know, film noir and such. So I was like, well, what if you put that theme, you know, that flavor into Dungeons and Dragons? Nonetheless, with Lost Contents, basically one of the things we were doing was pioneering at the time. It's now something that's a little more common, but we were some of the first people do.

it was the idea of iterated zones where basically when you go into the dungeon, we are going to spin off a version of the dungeon specifically for you. And what we were doing in Lost Contents was to say that not only are we spinning off your own private version of the dungeon so that you won't bump into other people, but also that it's going to look at you. It's going to look at your flags and things you have done. and populate the dungeon based on your experience. So in other words, if it's Raiders the Lost Ark and we've established that Beluk is your personal

nemesis, well, when you go into the dungeon, he's going to show up at the end because he's your nemesis. Whereas if I go in, if I'm the team later, I don't know Belich. You know, he's not going to be in the dungeon. You know, basically, how can we find ways so that even though when you leave the dungeon, you're back in the shared world with the thousands of other people, when you go in, that guy with more money and more time isn't in there with you.

And again, you feel like the world is responding to you and the things you've done. And there's all sorts of challenges. That's a very high level sort of top on that. But it was still trying to find that way where you feel like the world knows who you are. And again, that the things you do aren't just changed by the next person down the rhyme.

Yeah. Great. But nonetheless, it is exactly that challenge of how do I make this feel like it's your story when really at the end of the day it's not. And conversely, that's what I love most about tabletop role playing is that I have, in fact, run a particular adventure I've written 59 times for 59 groups of people. And it's different every time. And, you know, I still love running it because I want to see what the next group does. And that's what I love is that freedom, the versatility, the ability for players to take things in completely different directions. Yeah, I think like finding ways to build the best parts of that genre into other genres and cross-pollinate there is one of the things I love the most. And one other thing, looking to the other game, I spent a long time developing, was called BR1 Crossroads.

And that was actually a text adventure that had two levels, one of which was a sort of modern day conspiracy, X-Files, Twilight Zone, more sort of social game. And the other level, when your character went to sleep in that game, you entered a sort of surreal fantasy dream world. And that was more of an action adventure. So first, we were letting the players sort of choose their experience. Do you want action? Do you want intrigue? you know, which of these worlds where you spend most of your time in. The other side was basically what we said is there's too many people here.

It's not, you know, it can't be about all of them at once, but we're going to start by putting everyone in a conspiracy. And essentially the conspiracies are the characters of the story. And so by shifting the standing and status of your conspiracy, you are making a difference, a persistent change to the world. And you're doing that with a team. It's not just you, but you still feel like you're seeing the world sort of move up and down between these different teams. Can you say more on that?

What is, I'm having trouble envisioning. What does it mean to move my conspiracy up or down? Oh, basically, as I said, it was an intrigue game. And so the point is people are competing to control different resources. So on the one hand, resources can be people. You might bribe or blackmail someone or somehow get control of an individual. They can be controlled of locations. You know, there's various ways for people to claim a location.

As you do these things, that's going to increase the power and the resources available to your conspiracy. So even if I'm not the one who did it, even if the more powerful, more, you know, experienced players, the one who did it, I get trickle-down effects and get to feel some sense of, yay, my conspiracy is doing well. But then again, all of these things are a sort of constant tug of war. You know, they are going to be going back and forth. We hold this guy for now, but then you go into his dreams and, you know, win him over to your side. So, you know, the idea is it's a constant ongoing struggle. Fascinating.

All right. So we make this transition. You were working for building these MMOs. You spent years building MMOs. They never see the light of day. And at some point, you just decide to quit? Yeah, it was basically, after doing it for eight years, this was I was working on Lost Continent, it reached the point where I realized they were either going to cancel it or they just wouldn't support it,

which would be even worse. So an MMO needs a lot of ongoing support. And, you know, I was worried they were just going to throw it out and not actually give it what it needed to succeed. So I quit. And a month later, they did cancel the project. And the reason I quit was first frustration, but also because by that time, I had been doing a fair amount of freelance RPG design. I'd created a, I've written a bunch of things for Atlas games for their D20 line. And I'd done some work with Goodman games.

I'd done some work with Green Renan. I'd done a little bit of stuff for Steve Jackson. And essentially it was a, let's just take a, you know, what happens if I try to just be a full-time freelancer? And frankly, it was a somewhat crazy idea. I will tell you right now, the computer game world pays a lot more than the world of tabletop role playing, especially as a freelancer. But I took a chance on it. And as I said, between gloom and between the family. setting search, that turned out much better than I expected. I consider myself to be one of the

luckiest nerds alive. Well, I can appreciate that. I know that feeling. And I want to dig into both the fantasy setting search and gloom, because we have a shared unique experience on that. But before I do, I want to highlight a couple of things here, because similarly, my background, I started in law school and had to experience being miserable for a while. Yeah, yeah. And I did an internship over the summer working on the Marvel versus DC trading card game. And then based on that, I quit law school. And I could have made a lot more money as a lawyer, I'm sure,

but ended up taking that job and really enjoying that experience. And sort of had a similar experience to you at while I was working there, where I wasn't super happy with the executive leadership and some of the decisions they were making. So I quit and started off on my own. But I had prior to that point done the work for a while. I had saved up some money so I could have a chance of trying this stuff. So these things that seem really risky, you know, in many ways they're not. You had already done the work.

You could always have gone and back and gotten another job. So I would just like to highlight that for people that are like, oh, I should just quit and run away and do everything. It's like, well, they're better and worse ways to do that. No, no, and basically the two sides of it. One thing I will say is I have gone back and done, worked on, you know, in computer games off and on again over the last 12 years. Mostly doing, you know, sort of freelance world design, you know, for large projects. But I did actually go back and work for, I don't know, almost two years where I actually worked.

I was lead designer on the Lego universe MMO. Oh, awesome. one of the first ones I worked on that did come out and a few other things. But I really agree with your core point, which is by the time I decided to quit and do it, I had at least some concept. You know, we didn't know the fantasy setting search was going to happen. So it worked out much better than I had hoped for. But it was the case that I had a number of different companies I was doing work for. I knew sort of what it involved. You know, so I had a little experience. I worked my way sort of up to knowing what I was doing.

Yeah, and yeah, you don't necessarily know where the path is going to lead you. I certainly didn't either, but having some idea of the next steps to take and what the day-to-day is going to be like is, I think, the key. And I will also say I had a partner who had a steady job and was happy to take this chance. That is key. Your partner at least needs to be on board. otherwise it's going to be a problem. Yep, exactly. All right, so let's talk about the fantasy setting search.

What was that experience like? And then the, of course, incredible success from Eberon. What did that, how did that go about? So the fantasy setting search was essentially a lot of people, there's, you know, a lot of people have heard about it, but don't know all the details. One of the common misconceptions is that it was a contest. And technically it wasn't a contest because contest implies that

they have to have a winner. And technically, Wizards could have just decided they didn't like anything that was submitted. So what it actually was was an open call. Essentially, they said anybody out there, including employees of Wizards, including people like me who had done a certain amount of freelance work, including people who had done no experience at all. But anybody could send them a one-page description of a D&D setting. And essentially, Wizards of the Coast had acquired Dungeons and Dragons

from TSR. They'd inherited all of the existing settings, but they basically wanted something that was entirely unique to Wizards of the Coast. So I don't think initially they were expecting to get that many entries.

You know, again, open calls are a standard practice, you know, in the industry. send in an idea. If we like it, we'll use it. They got over 11,000 entries. And basically, it was a one-page tell us about the world, who are the heroes, what's magic like, what makes it new and interesting. And I personally sent in seven different ideas, and everyone was the last one I wrote.

Wow. almost is an afterthought because I was just like, this seems fun. It seems kind of essentially too wacky for them to be interested, but it's fun. And I think actually that's why they picked it is frankly because I had fun writing it. I think it was clear from the proposal like this is what's fun about this. But I definitely, it was a couple months after submitting it, I was actually on vacation. and this is before smartphones and all of that. So I was on vacation.

I was coming back from a trip. I was in an airport. My partner randomly decided that they were going to check our messages at home, you know, on your home voicemail that we hadn't looked at for days. And there was a phone call from Wizards of the Coast saying, hey, you've made this, you know, the semifinal round, but we need you to, we've emailed you a form. and we need it back at what at that time was today.

So we basically ran around this airport, found an internet cafe where we could print out this thing they'd sent and found a FedEx where we could send it off immediately. But it was a pretty crazy, you know, sort of experience that would be a lot easier today with all their various technology. Yes. So there's so many problems like, you know, half the plots of Seinfeld that no longer,

exist in the modern day technology. Exactly. But that was pretty crazy. And then basically for the second phase, you had to write a 10-page description of the world. And then when they picked, you know, they picked from the 11 they chosen. They picked three of them, including Eberon. And we had to turn them into 100-page setting Bibles.

Now, the interesting thing to me is that for both the 10 and the 200, you know, the whole of it is that Eberon was not, you know, a campaign I'd ever run before. It was something that I've made up for the fantasy setting search because it sounded fun to me. So when they actually picked it, just going to the 10 page description, it was very much like, oh, wait, oh, wow, you actually want to see this. Like now I've got to figure out how it actually works. And so it went through a number of evolutions between the 10 and the 100. And then even once they picked, did. What happened is I went up to Seattle for a week and sat in a room with James Wyatt, Chris Perkins, Bill Slavasek, and essentially hammered out like the things they liked, the things they didn't like. How can we make, you know, this particular element sort of more dynamic and interesting? So, you know, the end result, the world we have now, you know, certainly has come a very long way since that one page. What types of tips or things, lessons did you get from them in that situation?

How did they help refine the world and things that were, you know, what principles were they like, you know, the world needs more of this or how do we get? Well, there's two really big ones that come out. You know, one of them is remember that you were making a game. And part of the point of that was that the original world that I made was bigger. It had a lot more countries, you know, because basically the real world has a lot of countries and cultures.

And so the original version of it was much more complex as a world. The problem is when you've got to describe this to the players and to the game master, you just only have so many words. You know, there's only so many pages in a book. And we, frankly, even now, 15 years later, there's a lot of areas of Ebron that I still haven't had a chance to describe as deeply as I like. And again, I had twice as many, you know, countries and cultures in that first draft. So part of it is you have to keep things somewhat simple, you know, sort of tons of details aren't necessarily good if there's so many

details that no one person could really absorb them. The other thing about it was that in my original draft, essentially the tech level was higher. The whole idea of Abram from the beginning was that this is a world in which magic is used instead of the sciences we use. And the original version was very much sort of a 1930s flavored sort of level of development. So you had basically people using wands instead of bows or crossbows. You know, basically they're using guns. They're just magic guns. You had sort of a lot more to sort of magical conveniences. And part of what they said there is the issue is that they thought it was cool, but they were also concerned that it wouldn't actually feel like D&D when you were playing it.

That it was a little too almost science fiction, if you will. And I think that's a valuable lesson of essentially you have to, whatever you're doing, when you're working with an intellectual property, you have to think about the audience and the experience they expect. How are you sort of delivering, you know, what sort of people, you know, people are looking for. I think a big example to this to me is Star Wars games. If you look to a lot of Star Wars games out there, there are some that, you know, are really good and some that I'm like, well, you've got Star Wars trappings, but I don't feel like this is a Star Wars experience.

Knights of the Old Republic, the old computer game, is me, one of the classics. My favorite RPG of all time, so you got me sold. Exactly. It's fantastic. And part of what is amazing about that from a design perspective

is even though it's said a thousand years in the past, they aren't using any familiar characters, they aren't using the empire, you know, they have Jedi, but you know, even though they don't have any of the actual concrete, uh, touchstones to work with,

they understand what feels like a Star Wars adventure. Like this, this hits all the notes of what I want to be doing, you know, becoming a Jedi, you know, facing a big, uh, super weapon, you know, all of these sort of notes are there. And essentially that's just what they were saying here, is that they liked the idea, but it was going too far afield from what,

was still the core experience of Dungeons and Dragons, and you still needed to have that. Otherwise, it's just confusing to people. And what do you see as the core experience of Dungeons and Dragons? How would you define that? Well, basically, you know, there's a lot of different aspects here. What I feel they were looking for from the core experience of Dungeons and Dragons is that you own the player's handbook and you don't want to throw, you know, tear out half the pages.

So they were saying that basically this should be a world that includes dwarves and elves. It should be a world in which you have wizards, but you also have fighters who fight with swords and crossbows. That, you know, they wanted this to be a world where knights wear armor, you know, as opposed to saying, well, this is a world where because of the development of high-velocity projectile weapons, nobody wears armor anymore. Gotcha. You know, that's a realistic thing. But we've moved away from just that image. If I say a party of adventurers, a D&D, you're going to sort of fill in the blanks of,

oh, there'll be a big warrior with played armor, and there'll be, you know, a half-lane rogue, and there'll be elf wizard. Yep. What Eberon did is it took a lot of those core ideas and tweaked them in interesting ways. We had elves, but we said, how do we make? the elves different. How do we make the gnomes instead of being, you know, little forest comic relief you know, gnomes? They're going to be scary assassin spy gnomes. So, you know, we changed it up, but there was still a place for all those core elements. And like I said, we didn't completely change

the, you know, what a fighter looks like, if that makes any sense. Yeah. No, I think it's great. I mean, I'm a big believer in this, especially when you're talking about making games. that last, right, and brands and stories that stand the test of time, you have to be true to the core of what it is. You need to know what that core is and you can't, and if you, if you deviate from that, you're going to lose your audience. And then you need to be willing to make disruptions around the edges, right? And make people something that shakes it up or they're going to be bored and just getting the same thing over and over again. Exactly. And that by, yeah, and by giving them those little differences that that contrast creates excitement and creates newness and creates that

imagination flow like oh okay well what does this feel like now in this world and i think that finding that balance is something that a lot of people lose track of and and knowing that that that core principle here is the thing that makes dn d and d and d or star wars or these are the these are the home bases that i'm going to stay around then i can you know run around and and and play i mean basically like three things that come to my mind and sort of creating a d and d world you know one is just trying to get in one to two sentences can you describe to me what's cool about your world uh and if you can't if you can't sum it down to you know you've got me in an elevator for 10 seconds tell me about your world uh if it's too subtle if it's too sort of vague or if it's just well it's just a fantasy world

you know basically if it's either too complicated or if it's just just not interesting, then you've got a problem. The next thing is about touchstones for people. So that's the point of elves and dwarves. A lot of people are like, do I have to have elves and dwarves? And of course, you don't have to have elves and dwarves. But part of the reason, too, is if you're dealing with something like D&D, comes back to Star Wars, you know, this is a big brand that a lot of people have broad expectations of. And the ability for someone just to say, it's D&D, I want to play a dwarf fighter. And you'd be able to say, sure, okay. But now you're doing that, let me tell you about the dwarves here. You know, let's add, let's draw you into the world because the dwarves aren't quite the same.

But that's easier than me having to say, well, we don't have dwarves. What we have is a whole bunch of different races that are uplifted animals. And it's not that that's not a cool, interesting story. It's just going to take more investment from the player to get into it. And you've got to be prepared for that. So basically, do you have a core idea that is compelling and interesting and that you can sum up quickly? Does it have some sort of touchstones for people to latch onto? Even the uplifted animals.

You can say, well, I like pugs. I'm going to play a pug fighter. You know, that's at least a concept that's easy for people to grasp. And as you were saying, you know, at the end of the day, is there something? something, you know, that in the long term is going to keep people interested, keep, you know, be compelling. Those are great principles. And it's, you know, whether you're telling a story or designing a game, the exact same

principles apply. This is the heart of ongoing creative work, of working within a world, I believe. I do have to jump in, you know, for just a moment and also say the principles, you know, a lot of what, you know, we've both been talking about, uh, are principles. that I strongly apply if you're making a world for strangers, if you're making a world because you want to sell it or publish it, if you are making a world to play with your six friends, then it's very different because then the critical part to me is get them involved as early as possible and make sure that you are giving everyone who's part of the story a chance to shape the world

themselves because ultimately the coolest thing about tabletop role playing is that it is collaborative, that we are building a story that we are all invested in. And the more that you give your players a chance to add something to the world, the more they will care about the world, because now it's their story too. Whereas them just hearing you describe the world to them, just coming from your vision, it's going to be harder to have them latch on. And so basically, again, when you're creating a world for publication, you have to design it sort of for everyone.

But when you're making it with your friends, you know, when I'm starting to campaign, the first thing I do is get the players together and ask them to add a bunch of details. If we're starting in a small town, I want each player to tell me about someone they know in the town. I want them to describe something about the bar. just because, again, that makes it theirs as well as mine and gives them a concrete reason to care.

Yeah, I love that. And actually it ties into what was my favorite role-playing experience was the Tabletop was the Chronicles of Amber series. Absolutely. Whenever we would make those games, it was always the first session was this sort of communal character creation kind of bidding process. And then we would weave parts of everyone's individual backstory and character flaws into the greater narrative to build the actual worlds because, you know, that universe was basically infinite universes built all layered into each other. So you could just kind of custom tailor the things so that every person had a personal core narrative that strode through the entire world and the entire experience. And it was one of the things I loved the most. Yeah.

And Phoenix Dawn Command is a role playing game I made with my company Together Studios a few years ago. And it's something where it is a concrete traditional role-playing game. It doesn't use dice, but it uses cards as a sort of randomizer resolution system. But one of the things there is we strongly encourage when you're describing a scene to pose questions, you know, leading questions to the players about it. So, you know, I may say you come into this temple and there's an altar with a looming idol over it and the idol is covered with slime and has grasping talons, but there's something that is really disturbing to you about it. And what is that? And the point is by posing that to the player,

and different players are going to say different things. You know, one time I ran something essentially basically that. And the player said, oh, it doesn't have eyes. It's really disturbing. And so for the rest of the adventure, whenever they run into cultists, the cultists had gouged out their eyes. And it was just the kind of detail that I didn't know that that's something they found creepy, but if that's what he finds creepy, I'll play with it. And so, again, it gives you the framework you need, but it also encourages you in the course of play. Here are points where you can get players to add their own unique details. Yeah, I love that.

And being open to that experience as you're going through and telling that story is a key skill of running a good game, regardless of the system that you're in. But I'm actually curious that you brought up Phoenix Dawn Command because there's also a lot of interesting things about that game. There's a deck building element to it, and there's a, you know, the fact that death is only the beginning, I think is one of your taglines where each death makes you stronger up to a point.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that system? and how you came to it? So at the time, when I was developing Phoenix, Eberon was back in the vaults, and so I couldn't create new Eberon material. So I was actually starting to work on just a unique fantasy setting, you know, just that was actually sort of system neutral,

just playing around with things. And I was working with a friend of mine, Dan Garrison, and just, you know, we were brainstorming. And he said, well, what would it be like if you had a role-playing game where death was, how the character actually improves. Death was your character advancement. And basically that just lit a, you know,

a, you know, a bonfire in my brain. And we just started thinking about that. And thinking about usually death is the worst thing that can happen to you in a role-playing game. But what if we combined it with advancement, which is the best thing that can happen? And, you know, part of it is what we're trying to get is that moment in Lord of the Rings

where Gandalf faces the ballrog. And it's this amazing dramatic scene and it's oh, it's gripping and he ends up being pulled down and we're like, but that doesn't happen in D&D. You know, you don't have that. And once we decided that's what we're aiming for, there's all sorts of things.

We then sort of built the game around that concept. The reason it uses cards, instead of dice is because the cards give the players more narrative control. Basically, you have a hand of cards, and to accomplish a task, you have to hit a certain value, you know, within your suits of cards, which means that you know looking at your hand what you have to work with. So basically, what we're trying to avoid is the situation in D&D where you run into the big villain, you give your big, you kill my father, prepare to die speech, you use your biggest attack, and then you roll the one.

And we're just like, yeah, that's not how that scene was supposed to play out in the movie in my head. In Phoenix, you might not have the cards you need to pull off the big attack, but you know that. So don't make the big speech, if you see what I'm saying. Sure. There's less wasted effort. You basically know what you've got to work with. How are you going to use it? The twist is that you also have a pool of energy. that you can burn to push beyond the results of your cards. So I can drive myself beyond my limits, but when I run out of those sparks, I die.

And so it is essentially, I can buy success, but is it worth it? Is this the time? The death mechanic, the element is when you die, you come back stronger, but you don't come back where you use. died. You don't come back when you died. You come back at dawn the following day in a particular location. So within a mission, we wanted this to be very high tension, high action. I like to

compare the tone to the movie aliens. You know, this is you're being dumped into a situation where you're good at what you do, but you don't know what you're dealing with and the odds are going to be against you. And just if any of you survive this, that that should feel like a triumph. And so the point is death is not the end of your story, but you're not necessarily coming back within that mission. And so it is not without consequence. Further, you can only come back seven times. So initially, it's very careful. You know, I just throw myself on the bomb.

Who cares? But by the time you're in your fifth or sixth life, you have a lot more power, but you also have to start using it a lot more wisely and conservatively because you are coming to the end of your story. I love so much about that. And I want to highlight a couple of things. So one, I love the way that you have used very relatable, specific experiences as the touchstones for what you're going for with your designs. This is one of the things I really like to emphasize, right? The end goal is always the experience of the players.

And so it's like, I want to have that experience of that feeling when Gandalf fought the Balrog. I want people to feel like the, you know, you're in the aliens scenario and, you know, that, those are great. Game over, man. Yeah, right, exactly. Those are great touchstones for people. And so thinking about that in those terms, I think is a wonderful way to start your designs and your worlds and you know, and thinking as a filter for does this mechanic make me feel more like I'm in the aliens ship or less. So I think that's wonderful. And then I love, because I was going to ask this question, And, you know, the, okay, I want to make death not the worst thing in the world, then where's the tension, right? Because then if it's not scary, then what am I doing here?

Exactly. And you've solved that through several mechanics. So it is a, there is a cost of me being out of the campaign for the rest of this mission or whatever. And then there is the rising tension over time as I get that increased power of like, no, no, there is final death. And so death still has some teeth to it, if you will. So a couple more things I'll drop in, too, just to ask. basically in Phoenix, you have two different resources. You have sparks, which are your supernatural energy

that you can use to push beyond your limits and also to fuel supernatural powers, and you have health, which is your physical endurance. You die if you run out of either of those, but if you run out of health and still have sparks, you can basically possess one of the other characters and sort of ride along with them and still use your sparks to do something.

So coming back to that, oh, you die, you're out for the rest of the night. Part of that is, well, that's a bummer. But the way it works is physically you can be killed if something terrible happens to you. But then you're at least going to be still present, even if just essentially as a ghost. Sparks, you only go through them when you use them. And so if you die because you run out of sparks, you are out for the rest of the adventure. But that only happens if you choose it. And usually what happens in Phoenix, you know, nine times out of ten, when someone dies in Phoenix,

it's not because they missed a savings row or something like that. It's because they are doing something so awesome that it is worth it to them to die to accomplish it, like bringing the Balrog down at the bridge. You know, it's going to take everything I've got, but it's going to be worth it. The side note to that is not only does that need to be part of the mechanical design, but it means that for story and world, the players need to be in situations where they feel it's worth it to make that sacrifice in this situation. That, you know, we need to feel like there's a zombie outbreak.

We have two hours to contain it. As long as we do, doesn't matter how many of us die. But if we all die and we haven't done the job, by the time we come back, it's going to be too late. We're going to have lost this whole region and thousands of people will die. And that's very different in terms of feel than I'm trying to go into a dungeon because I want a better magic sword. Sure. Which doesn't really feel like something worth dying for. Right.

And so the world and the story needs to drive that sense that this is a fight that is worth that. The last little mechanical twist that I just want to mention is that in Phoenix, when you level up, when you get to your next life, they're called schools, but they fill the same sort of role as classes in D&D. They are sort of what determine the kinds of abilities you get. Your school is based on the lessons you take from your death. So there are six different deaths. And when you die, excuse me, six different schools. And when you die, the game master, and the player are going to stop and say, well, what kind of death was that? What are you taking away? And so part of it is it's not simply that, you know, ultimately you want your character to die, but you want them to die in the way that advances the kind of character you want to be. So, for example, the devoted who are the sort of support characters, they die for others. the Durant dies because they aren't strong enough or tough enough. The bitter dies as a failure.

And again, based on the kinds of abilities, you know, as you said, the deck building aspect, you know, I don't want to die as a failure if what I'm trying to do is die for others, if you see what I'm saying. Sure. A little philosophy mixed in with your leveling up. And so basically, and usually, you know, usually any given random death, you can make a case for at least, couple of different possible paths. But what it means is by the time you're on your fourth or fifth life, the abilities you have really reflect the choices you've made and the lessons you've learned, essentially.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Now I need to play this game. I remember all right. Well, I now want to transition from the RPG world to the bustling clear card game genre. honor. Excellent. Yes. Yes. It's such a flooded market, frankly. Yeah, it's too much of it out there. People are probably sick of hearing about it, but we're going to talk about it today. Talk to me about gloom. So with gloom, this is back in 2004. I was in a gift shop and I saw a deck of transparent playing cards,

you know, transparent poker cards. And the thing about it is that it was meaningless. It was just cosmetic. It wasn't like there was anything about, it wasn't anything useful about the cards being transparent. They just thought it looked cool. But I saw that and said, wait, if you can print on transparent cards, there's got to be something cool you can do with that. And so I went back and it was basically two things to me of first off, what is, what can you do? what is interesting about that. And second, well, what kind of game should this be? At the time, you know, so it's the heyday of magic and such.

I was basically like, well, there's too many, you know, sort of fantasy card games out there. And there's, you know, growing up where sci-fi, let's do something different. I always loved Edward Gorey, Charles Adams, all of that. And also, I liked this twist. my partner I hated take that last one standing games

and I said okay but what if instead of being the last one standing this is a game where you want to be the first to go where instead of playing mean things on your opponents you're actually cheering them up and the funny thing about it

is it's entirely semantic it is a take that game you know I don't want you to cheer me up. You know, so when you cheer me up, you're actually doing something mean to me, even though you're making my character happy. But it's the semantics sort of matter for some people. This, you know, my partner didn't feel bad about making someone happily married the way that she would have felt bad about hitting them with a fireball. For people who aren't familiar with the game, can you just give a quick overview so they can follow? So the basic principle of gloom is,

you want to think of it as this is a group of people sitting around telling the story about how their family had it worst. This is the I had to walk, you know, five miles every day to school. Oh, well, I wish I'd had to walk five miles. I had to walk 10 miles over broken glass, you know, the sort of we're going to one up each other about how miserable our lives were. How that works out is each player has a family of characters, and you play cards on them that are things that happen to them. And generally speaking, I'm going to play miserable cards on my own character. You know, my maid was sickened by salmon and then broke many bones.

You know, so I'm going to be doing these unpleasant things, and ultimately these give me negative. points, which I want, and ultimately I will play an untimely death on the character, which phrases them, means that they can't be changed, and the game ends when someone kills their entire family. And at that point, the person with the lowest score wins. So I'm trying to make my characters as miserable as possible while also playing happy cards on your characters so that they're going to get happily married. They're going to inherit a fortune. They're going to have a picnic in the park. So you're trying to keep your people miserable. How this is done is, again, stacking transparent

cards. So as you layer cards on top of each other, they cover and obscure the scores underneath them. So when you look down from the top, you are seeing basically the top layers of each score category. But a lot of what's fun about the game is just telling the stories that go along with these ridiculous things, How was I delighted by duck lanes? You know, how was I trapped on a train? And so, yeah, like that. Yeah, so a couple of really interesting things there. So, you know, the mechanical of you were inspired by seeing clear poker cards and said,

okay, there's got to be a real mechanically used for this. And the fact that instead of just stacking cards on a character like you do creature enchantments on a creature, they layer on top and thus some things will be covered. Some information won't. And so it can completely change. the character or invert things, which is really fascinating. And then you took the very counterintuitive position of telling a story where I want to do good things for you and bad things for myself, which is just, as you said, mechanically

identical to take that game. But somehow that story flip just changes everything. And I really like to emphasize these kinds of things because there's a lot of people, when I first started as a designer, I was very mechanical minded. and I didn't realize until I started doing the job more how much. No, no, the story you tell is everything. I mean, one of my favorite examples, going back to the MMO world is the World of Warcraft, that they used to have a, after you've been playing for a certain amount of time,

you had an exhaustion penalty, so you only got half experience to encourage people to kind of stop playing after a while and come back the next day. And people hated it. They were so mad. They were so enraged. And so then they changed it so that when you come back, you get a rest penalty, a rest bonus. Right. And double experience. Right.

The experience was the same. Yep. But it's the rest bonus, not a penalty. Absolutely. Right. And people were cheering them as the greatest innovation of all time. Oh my God, you guys are amazing. Right.

So how you describe something really matters. Even though you're right. It's mechanically exactly the same. Yep. Yeah. And I agree with you on both counts. I mean, that's the point is that in gloom, again, it's semantics, yet it does make a difference. But also it is the story that part.

of the point of it is you don't have to tell a story to play gloom. You know, the game works without it. And yet, telling a story is part of what's fun, but it's also, it just sort of comes naturally as you're playing the cards because the cards present these ridiculous situations. And it is easy to say, how was I trapped on the train? Oh, I'm married magnificently. Well, to who? How did it happen? Can the conductor of a train marry people? You know, that it sort of inspires these ludicrous situations inspire people to add their own details and build it out. I will say that a memory I very distinctly have from my childhood going back to Secret Origins is I would play when I was, you know, probably six or seven. I would actually play the card game of war, you know, where you have divide a deck in half, flip over the top cards. High card takes the card. Classic. I would play that by myself.

like I just divide the deck up and just flip the cards over and sort of see which, you know, left hand or right hand, which is going to win. But as I was doing that, in my mind, I was adding story to all of it. You know, this is the court of hearts fighting against the cruel clubs. And oh, no, the Jack of Hearts has been captured by the Queen of Spades, you know. And the point is, there's no story here. this is a simple mathematical comparison of numbers, and it's entirely random. But it was fun for me to imagine this epic conflict that was going on there. And that's sort of the point is we can add story to anything as long as it feels compelling, you know, to the player.

that it's not putting them on the spot, that it's not threatening, and that it's just something that feels natural. Yeah, that going just back to that, you know, the player experience is the ultimate arbiter of everything. And I love that example because not only is there no story there, but by many definitions, there's no game there. Exactly. You don't even have choices anymore.

No, not at all. It is a complete random number generator, essentially. Pretty amazing. So I actually don't know if I've ever talked about this on the podcast, but I also, and many people don't know, but I also worked on a clear card game called Redekye, which was a trading card game. When did it come out? It came out in 2010, actually. Yeah, it's actually 10 years ago. And how, I'm curious, yeah, give us, how did you start with that, you know, what was the inspiration for?

you and yeah so i was given um a very clear inspiration so to speak um i uh spin master uh was a the company approached me uh about doing they had this really cool technology where they had clear cards that had a lenticular motion on them so you can see like the characters come to life and attacks and things like fireball could go across the card and otherwise it looks clear so it was like this really neat thing and they had a the ability to like you could slide you could slide and the card into one of the toys and it would like create a projection through the card based on the images on the cards. So it was like really cool tech. And they wanted a game to go with it. So that was my job. And so gloom was one of my inspirations. It was actually the, you know, again,

not a lot of clear card games to go draw to for inspiration. And so I took that principle of, okay, well, I, right, I can cover up information and add new information to characters. And this is going to be a kids property. So one of the coolest things for kids is being able to transform into monsters and upgrade and level up and, you know, things like that. So we had everybody started with their characters and you could morph into different monsters by playing a monster on top of your character and it would change his image and it would change his stats.

And then the way I would play combat is I could attack you, one of your guys with an attack card and based on my character's stats compared to yours, if I succeeded, I would place the attack card on top of yours, and it would have like a health ratings. So just like a health bar in, you know, in a video game, it would cover it up and start making your health bar red. And if I could make it all red, then your character got knocked out. So it was like a fun way. And you could also like, I could have stats that would, you know, reduce attacks that would, you know,

blind you and thus reduce your one of your stats or you could have a transformation that would heal you. And so it was like this really interesting kind of back and forth that you could keep upgrading and downgrading each other's characters and tell the story. of transforming into monsters and battling using these clear cards. Now, in Redikai, do you use pictures that change as you add things? I'm trying to remember. Yes.

Yes. So there's pictures and numbers both. So we had the, you know, each character would have pictures that would get overwritten when you had a new monster transformation. And you would have, or the attacks would, you know, lay on top and would look like they were hitting the character, basically. Which is cool. And that's something that Gloom doesn't do as much.

It compares, you know, it covers the numbers. There are a few cards where we completely replace a picture, but we don't sort of evolve the picture. And I think that's a really cool, you know, sort of use of transparency. Yeah, it was, we tried for a while to come up with one that was much more evolved. Like for a while I was working with a design where it was sort of a build your own monster. And so there was like a head, a body, and a. of legs and you could like let stack on top to kind of you know create your own but it ended up making it too it just looked stupid most of the time so we we ended up not not going there but uh

that was the kind of stuff to play with is like okay what you know what's cool here how can i build different things that i couldn't do any other way and you know being able to create unique combinations of stats and powers and you know ups and downs that you wouldn't really be able to do and you can just know at a glance because whatever's on top is what's there, as opposed to even theoretically you can do this sort of thing in a game of magic with 10 creature entraments and tokens and whatnot. That's really a not a pleasant experience for the user to have to figure out, okay, wait, what's happening right now?

So, yeah, it's very fascinating. I think there was another game came out within the last couple of years called Mystic Vale, which is the other, another that uses clear, it's like a deck building game where you use clear sleeved cards to upgrade, which is also an interesting take on the technology. But I think that's about it. I think those these are the only games I know. Atlas Games put out a game called Renaissance Fair or Renfair.

I can't remember again a decade ago, but it didn't stick around. And I have to say I don't actually remember much of what the mechanics were. I think it did have images. But like I said, it definitely didn't stick around. Yeah. So, you know, in my, in my experience, there's sort of three typical ways that a, you know, a game inspiration shows up, right? There's this, there's either a story or an IP that you really love and you want to build a game around. There's a mechanic, some kind of cool interaction or thing.

You then want to build the rest of the game or a story around. And then there's, or there's a component or, you know, a gimmick or something that you're like, okay, this is a thing. Yeah, no, I completely agree. That is that those are exactly. the three points I would hit is, you know, material theme or mechanic. And for us, you know, I mean, that's the point is gloom started with the component. And from there, I'm like, okay, well, what's the mechanic that uses that component in an interesting way and what's the theme? Similarly, I've made a card game called Illamat that I made with the Decemberists.

And that's the same thing. They came to us with a very sort of, of unique board and said, can you take this board and make it into a game? And from there, we started adding things like, oh, we want it to feel like it's really old game. We wanted to feel, you know, this or that. But it started with them just giving us this weird, giant board and saying, what kind of game is this? And I love that kind of challenge.

That sounds like a fascinating story. What's it like working with a rock band or whatever, with a band on a game like that? Well, I mean, it's definitely interesting, you know, In that case, the whole thing about it was we knew that we didn't want the game to be about the band. You know, this wasn't, I'm trying to think there's a bunch of very bad band games out there. But it was more inspired by sort of the feeling, you know, the flavor. This is a game people would play in the universe of the Decemberists. And so I had a pretty free hand, you know, in the sense that it wasn't like I have to figure out

what Chris Funk does in this game, if that makes any sense. But on the other hand, it was, you know, I luckily liked their music. I understood sort of the vibe they were going for. And yeah, it was a lot of fun. I mean, you know, it's not that dissimilar.

Right now I'm working on a game based on the Adventure Zone. And so we're working with the Macroy Brothers. And that very much was the same thing of, well, we presented a bunch of different ideas. You know, this is this is what we want, but we need them to say, are we capturing the flavor? You know, are we getting what you think your, you know,

your brand is about? So it's very interesting. How do these projects come about right now? Because, I mean, you know, I have a variety of clients and people I do design work for hire for and I have, you know, both the projects I launch on my own. But typically they're all, you know, it's a toy company. It's a game company. and these are the people I work with.

How do these people get in touch with you? You're like, the December is like, this is my man. We're going to make this happen. It was very random with the December. So it was pretty funny. Actually, I just got a message from a guy on Facebook saying, oh, hey, my daughter and I are big gloom fans. Would you be interested in trading gloom lessons for some Decemberus tickets?

And as a guy who lives in Portland, I just assumed, oh, that's just a sweet thing to offer. This is just some dude who happens to have extra Decemberus tickets and thought, you know, this would be fun. And I'm like, sure. And then it was at some point a little later, I said, wait a second, the Decemberists are from Portland. Who's this guy? And looked him up and it was Chris Funk, the guitarist. And so basically the Decemberists just play a lot of games.

They just play games, you know, sort of during, you know, before the show and happened to like Gloom. So I started hanging out and playing some games, and that was where they were like, you know, we've got this weird board. Could you make it into an actual game? And so essentially, you know, started out just by playing games and just sort of randomly evolved from there. By contrast with the McElroy's, we've encountered the Macaroys on the Joko Cruise, which my wife and I help organize gaming events on that. But we're fans of the property. We, you know, sort of had some space on our. our calendar to make something new.

And so we actually reached out to them and said, hey, would you like to make a game? And that's where we pitched them a bunch of different ideas. We were like, it could be more of a party game. It could be more of a dungeon crawler. And we managed to find one they liked.

Awesome. So the December story reminds me a little bit of how I got Ascension in the movie Good Boys. We had, yeah, I got a random reach out to our customer service portal from like Seth Rogen's assistant. I was like, hey, he's a fan of your game. We'd like to use it in the movie. And I'm like, this is a prank. This isn't real.

And I was like, I dig it. But all right, whatever. I'll call them back. Why not? And I was like, oh, no, yeah, they really, they play attention and they want to use it. Like, yeah, for sure. This is great. Let's do that.

Yeah. Well, and it always seems weird in that sort of thing, because let's face it, people like games, you know, I mean, why wouldn't? You know, it's, it's someone like that where you're like, wait, that person's playing my game and you're like, sure, why not? I mean, you know, but it still feels weird to find out like, especially someone whose work you really enjoy. Oh, and they've been playing, you know, gloom for years or something like that. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, it's a rewarding thing in a certain low here. Like, wow, these people are super talented and awesome and have brought a lot of joy to my life. And the fact that I have brought some joy to theirs is pretty cool.

Yep. And frankly, you know, that still blows my mind just with things like Eberon of, especially with it coming out for fifth edition. I've had a bunch of people coming up to me at conventions and saying, hey, I just want to let you know that Eberon was, I started playing D&D in high school and it was Eberon. And, you know, I've had a lot of, you know, these great adventures in this world. And as someone who started playing D&D, you know, a little before high school, the idea of, wow, for this person, like, they're. their first experience of D&D was my world. Like, wow, that just kind of blows my mind. Yeah, it's, for me, it's like the best part of the job by far. As you see people and families and, like, friendships and this love of gaming that all develop around the table, around something that you created and you get to meet those people. It's like, it fills me up.

Like, every year, you know, I think in the life of a designer, it's easy to romanticize, but a lot of it is like struggle. A lot of it is like you're dealing with the problems of your story and your game and you're, you know, whether it's in the spreadsheets or the docs and trying to figure these things out. And then you, but those highlights,

those moments you know at the end, you're like really connecting people. You're providing joy. You're like building these communities. It's the best thing ever. So it's one of the reasons why I actually do this podcast is like, you know, really share that love and experience and give people the opportunity to do it for themselves.

Even if like you said, you know, designing a game doesn't have to mean you're selling something globally or building a giant emmo. It can be as little as building a campaign for your friends and creating an awesome story and experience for them is just as valuable and awesome and rewarding as the giant epic thing that everybody's playing. I do want to flash back for just a moment because it just struck me as interesting of talking about those three points of where you start on a design. What's funny to me is the last three products that we have produced through Together Studios,

each started on one of those different points. Of Phoenix Don Command started mechanically. It started with that idea that death is how your character advances. And everything else came from that. We just started with this idea that we want this mechanic. And what does that mean? Illamat started with a component because it started with the board. and we had to build from that board and say,

what's the game that goes with this? And our later game action cats totally started out as a ridiculous, just, we want to make a game that is about telling ridiculous stories about cats. Yeah. And everything else sort of emerged from that. So, you know, it was sort of seeing the concept of adventure cats and cats doing amazing things.

I'm like, how do I make that into a game? And so it is just funny to me that. It's actually the full triangle of the different points at which a thing starts. Yeah, there's no right and wrong answer about where to begin. It's about what excites you, you know, like what is it that can serve as that inspiration? And it's so one of the things, you know, for me, while I have plenty of games that also are inspired by all the different elements, it's usually mechanics, right? I'm generally starting with some kind of mechanics, some hook that I'm like, wow, this seems like it'd be really fun. How do I build this out?

and I've actually been actively trying to cultivate the other two starting points more. And, you know, go ahead. Yeah, and I think for me, I start probably more often with theme. Yeah, that comes across very clearly and talking to you for sure. And so I want to get tips from you to help me. You know, if when I, if you want to sort of to build themes, to build stories that then can become the inspiration for your games, that then can be that driving force. What, you know, what are the, is there a process that you go through?

Is there other habits? Is there some kind of thing that you think makes that more or less likely to succeed? I mean, there's the things to me, you know, or first find things you love, you know, so that you understand them and you feel passionate about them, whether that's cats, whether that's, you know, a world in which magic looking to Eberon part of the thing is I'd always felt why, you know, magic behaves scientifically in Eberon, not in Eberon in D&D, why doesn't it evolve the same way that science would? So it's something that you find compelling. But part of it to me is that key point of thinking about what is the experience people who love that thing want to have.

How are you getting that across? This is a little thing, but it still flips around. And I designed Cthulhu Flux, which is the only Flux game that Andy Looney didn't design. And part of it is because he's not a Lovecraft fan. And so they decided they wanted to do it. And they reached out to me. And the whole thing there was saying, okay, Flux is just this very established simple game. How do you make it legitimately feel like there's something?

love crafty into this, that it's not just, oh, it's flux, but with tentacles. And one of the core things I did was I upped what are called ungoals and the chance, which give a chance that everybody can lose. So that even though it's a competitive game, there's this element where if we aren't careful, if we don't work together and manage the doom count, we could all lose. And the main point of that is that to me was just something of, well, that's the Cothulu flavor. There is this chance that the old ones will rise and destroy us all. And it's just that sort of thing of that touches on mechanics, but it's still coming back to what's the thing you love and what is it you love about it? How do you get that across? It's back to saying Knights of the Old Republic. Even though they don't

have Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, they do a great job of saying, but what's the experience that defines Star Wars as an adventure. And so that's just what I'd say is, you know, take the thing you like, but then try and look at it and say, but what is it you like about it? What are the sort of elements that you can then make sure those somehow make it into your game? I love it. I love it. I think that really is just essential again,

from no matter where your starting point is of the triangle, we've discussed that, you know, finding the heart of it, the thing you can be passionate about, drive you forward and the core of the experience, the essence of the experience you want to make sure your players have, knowing that is just like half the battle or more when it comes to making games or worlds or anything. So I want to touch on one more thing because I think you've given really just the essentials of building games and building worlds, like the heart of the creative work we've already talked about in detail. And it doesn't make it easy, but at least it's laid out.

The other piece for people that are trying to become designers and trying to get into the world, into this industry, is getting discovered, getting a job, getting noticed. And it seems like it's just harder than ever today with all of the different noise and so many games and so much being produced, so much content. Absolutely. What advice would you give to people that really want to, maybe they don't have that new world search like you had? or how would you recommend people try to make noise and get noticed and get the level of success that could let them really make a living in this space? Well, it is definitely harder now, as you said, than it has been just because there is so much out there.

And there is a lot of noise. It is something where, again, don't expect that you're going to get a jump in from square one and make a living off of it. It takes time to build up contacts, to build up recognition. And, you know, it's the kind of thing you're likely going to be doing freelance for a while, you know, part-time, before you're going to reach a point where you can hopefully do it full-time. One of the things I would definitely say is in the past, you know, look for open calls. In the role-playing world, there's a lot of communities like enworld.org, RPG.net. where publishers will basically say,

we are looking for submissions for monsters for a monster book or adventures for an adventure anthology. And those are ways, you know, basically very few publishers are going to say, hey, person we've never seen, we'd like to publish your 200-page setting. But if you can get involved with a small, you know, with smaller projects, if you look for things that they are looking for,

submissions on. That's a way to get your name out there, to basically show that you can hit a deadline. And I will certainly say that actually one of the things certainly worked for me at the time is also if there's a company you really like, reach out to them, see if you can meet someone from that company at a convention and, you know, if they can tell you what they're looking for. It is also the case that in this day and age, there are a lot of options for self-publishing, drive-through RPG, drive-through cards, and so it is possible. And of course, Kickstarter. It is possible to get your own stuff out in a way that, like, when I make gloom, wasn't possible.

But the danger of things like Kickstarter is you have to be sure you're prepared, you know, that you don't just want to do. design a game, you actually want to make it and fulfill it and get it out to people. And usually those are things you're going to need partners to help you with. So, but basically, you know, look for people you can collaborate with, look online, you know, to either company websites or also, as I said, forums like enworld.org. And, you know, opportunities to work with. And, you know, opportunities to work with the company, to let them know what you're about. But at the same time, most companies do have submission guidelines and, you know, make a prototype you can play.

Don't worry if it doesn't look perfect. Worry about does it get across the idea, you know, of what's fun about the experience you're trying to create and play it with people, show it to people. And again, you know, it may not be, it may take a little while, but, you know, you'll get there. Yeah. There's no substitute for doing the thing that you want to be doing. Yes. That's, I always, you know, I started with the premise of it's harder, you know, it's harder to, you know, make noise now than it's ever been. But it's easier to do things now that it's ever been. But there is a big point I would definitely say is just highlighting again, when you're showing, something to someone, don't worry about if it's perfect. Now, unless the visual look is the game,

you know, which is the case for a game like Ilimat, not only do I not want prototypes I show people to be perfect. I actually generally want them to clearly not be perfect. So it is clear to someone looking at it that this is a work in progress. This is a prototype. So they aren't judging it based on a sense of its finality. If your art is too good, if your stuff is too polished, people are going to potentially assume that this is the final look.

And if that's not the case, that could be a problem for you. Yeah, 100%. I actually give this exact advice in my book. And it's psychologically powerful, both from the player's perspective, because they can approach it from a different lens, and even from your own perspective.

Absolutely. When you have a prototype that looks super nice and it's finalized art, You don't want to touch it. You don't want to change it. As opposed to like, I'm just going to cross this out with marker and write something else here. Exactly. Which is what you need to be doing at that stage.

Exactly. Yeah. Great. Great advice. Oh, okay. Well, this is awesome. We've actually, we're running to the edge of our time here. I would love to talk more.

But if people want to find your stuff and learn more about you and be, play more of your awesome games, how do they find you? What should they do? So if you're interested in my role playing work, particularly Eberon, my website is Keith hyphen baker.com, Keith dash Baker. And if you are more interested in my board and card games, my company is Together Studios, T-W-O-O-Gether. So Together. And I'm on social media on Twitter as Hell Cow Keith or Together Studios. It's also on Twitter.

Awesome. Well, Keith, I really appreciate you taking the time here. And I'm hoping we get a chance to do a part two because there's a ton more things I wanted to ask you. I didn't get to this time, but this has been wonderful. So thank you. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. 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 platforms, 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 fine books are sold.