Think Like A Game Designer - Sean K. Reynolds — Crafting Legendary RPGs, Building Worlds & Teams, Valuing Writer Voices, and the Anatomy of Game Design (#43)

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Sean K. Reynolds is a prolific writer and game designer who’s worked on hundreds of supplements for various RPGs, including Dungeons & Dragons. Sean and I met years ago when we were both working for Upper Deck, where Sean was an IP developer. From there, he left to develop the Pathfinder RPG at Paizo. He currently works for Monte Cook Games, where he just finished the Kickstarter for the Planebreaker RPG alongside legendary RPG designers Bruce R. Cordell and Monte Cook. Sean is an awesome guest with lots to share! 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 Sean Reynolds. Sean is one of the most prolific RPG designers that I have had a chance to speak to. He has written literally hundreds of books, worked on Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and now works at MontiCook games making tons of great projects, including the recently funded at $400,000 of the weird supplement for RPGs, helping you make weird and interesting characters regardless of genre.

Sean and I actually got to work together back in the day when I worked at Upper Deck, and he has a ton of great insights. I got to see a lot of stuff and aspects of his history that I didn't know, and we were able to dig into a ton of great, total universal principles, as well as he helped me with some of my thoughts on how I might design an Ascension RPG. But we go into this podcast, we cover how to keep your game fresh,

how to make games that last and the keys to building good community, how to manage other writers and designers and how to develop an RPG project, and being clear on how you can put some meat on a very sexy skeleton. You don't have to listen to the episode to know what that means, but it really was pretty interesting to me, and it was a key part of how you should go about building your RPGs. So I'll leave you with that teaser. And without any further ado, here is Sean Reynolds.

Hello and welcome. I am here with Sean Reynolds. Sean, it is great to have you here. Thanks for having me here, Justin. It's nice to see you. Yes, yes. We go way back. We were just talking about it. I think we haven't seen each other for a decade, but we worked together for what a good, good four years, five years, something like that back at the upper deck days. So we'll get into some of that. But it was

funny, I was sort of have a lot of guests and people that I'm interested in the podcast and my creative director, George Rockwell, it's like, oh my God, you have to have Sean Reynolds on the podcast. He's like, he's so amazing. I was like, well, yeah, I mean, I thought he was kind of cool, I guess. I, you know, I knew,

of your background and and but for whatever reason, I just hadn't quite understood the extent to which you've had influence in the RPG community and really been in, been a key part of almost every major, you know, kind of development in it, lots of really incredible, you know, processes that I'm not very excited to unpack and I'm a little ashamed.

I didn't unpack while we were sitting, you know, in the same building. So I'm glad to get this opportunity. Thanks. You know, I get that a lot. When I went back to Wizards of the Coast very briefly, before joining MCG, I was working just on a database of lore for them. And then three months in, the person who I was reporting to said,

I didn't realize who you are and we're going to have you write some stuff. So that was kind of a pretty interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, so let's get people familiar with who you are here for all the listening audience. So let's, you know, I typically like to start, you know, start at the beginning with everybody. because you've had huge success working on Dungeons and Pathfinder and all kinds of major brands and have done enormous amounts of writing and really cool design work on projects. But where did this all begin?

Like how did you get interested in this stuff? What was kind of the first inkling that this was potentially something you wanted to do as a career? Well, I've been gaming since I was 9 or 10. And right after college, I ended up online, as many people did. And I applied for what was the webmaster position for TSR and surprisingly got that job and did that for two years and then switched over to the design team and started working on forgotten realms and Greyhawk. So when people ask me, how they get in the industry, it's like, oh, well, first you become TSR's webmaster. Well, okay, simple enough. Let's unpack that a little bit.

So you were webmaster. So presumably you had some experience in making web pages at least or just just winging it. Before that, I was working for a daughter company of Time Warner for one of their little baby video game companies. And I was the webmaster and AOL site master for them. And that is exactly what the TSR people were looking for, someone to run their AOL site and get a website up and running for the company. And so it was just a natural transition. AOL site. We are definitely dating this conversation.

Yeah, 1990s. So I, well, and this does, you know, obviously the specific case is unlikely that people need an AOL site manager these days. But the principle is still true, right? You want to get into design and writing the creative work a lot of times the right way into the door is through something else, right? Some other skill set that you have that's rare in the industry and then, you know, coming in, whether that be for marketing or programming or, you know, sales or any other field that's needed to, it's a. great way to get your foot in the door. And then I'd love to unpack more about how you made that transition from from Webmaster to Loramaster. Well, at TSR, I got to hang out with all the people in what we call the Creative Services Department. And those are the designers and editors and layout people

for all of the D&D books at the time. And they knew that I was a gamer. And every year for GenCon, the designers had a party, an exclusive party. And they paid for. that party by contributing to a group freelance project. And the owners of the company said instead of paying the freelance money directly to these people, we'll set it aside to have a fund for this party. And in 1996, they asked me to do a bit of the group project for that year, which was Children of the Night Ghosts for Ravenloft. And so I wrote a little ghost adventure.

And that kind of got my foot in the door. and I started doing some adventure scenarios for the RPGA. And having done about a dozen of those things that basically established that I sort of knew what I was doing. And when they had a design job open up for TSR under Wizards of the Coast, they told me it was going to happen. And I applied and got the job. Right. So you clearly had some talent here early on to be able to write these things. And so for a lot of people, the prospect of writing an adventure, let alone a campaign book,

the process of submitting that in an environment like this, all that stuff is very intimidating. So what is it that made that feel like an open possibility for you? What advice might you have for someone that wanted to write like this? Or how do you approach a project like this? You can take that in any direction you like. It definitely helps if you have some people who like the sort of stories that you present in a game, whether you're talking from a player perspective or a GM perspective, and have your group of friends or fellow gamers read your stuff,

have another GM run it as a playtest, have a player try out some of your character options. Like the more people in your peer group that you can get to look at what you're doing and get some good feedback, it gets you used to that process of writing, something presenting to somebody else, seeing where there are issues, things that can be improved, take that feedback into account, update it, and you just kind of get used to the cycle of writing and revising and writing and revising. And once you get enough confidence from that, it's, I mean, in the modern day, you just need to make it into a PDF and you can put it up on drive-thru-r-r-rb-G or Spart of Wizards of the Coast DMs Guild or Cyphysster Curatum program for

MCG. There's so many options now that we didn't have back in the 90s. But really, you just kind of practice that writing as like any other skill. Practice it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. You're going to make mistakes. And you need to learn from them. Yeah. That's just such a great concise way to put what is probably the most fundamental principle that I try to teach in this podcast and my book and everything else. It's all about that iterative loop of putting your work out there, getting feedback, taking that feedback in, putting something else out there, and continuing to refine and refine and refine and you and accepting the emotional burden that comes with putting out something that's not good because we all start with not good stuff and

being able to go through the iterative process to design and create. So that's a, it's a great, yeah, just a great thing. I always love to underscore that it's, we all, every creative person uses the same process. I've yet to find a counter example. So it's, it's, it's really powerful. When it comes to RPG building specifically, I think there's a lot of really fascinating things because,

you know, so there's typically two starting points for most people in design. There's in game design of all types, regardless of whether they actually are designing these things. It's either RPGs as the starting point or TCGs as a starting point for a vast, vast majority of people, depending upon typically your age and, you know,

And I think RPGs are uniquely, you know, particularly good at this making you a creator as a player, right? You're creating the experience as you play. And that's sort of what opens up this idea of design. You're creating an experience as a DM especially. You're explicitly creating an experience for your players. And so you are literally designing a game as you, whenever you put that together. And as a player, you're still co-creating that experience for everybody else. So it just seems like one of the more powerful ways to build that skill set, even though I come from the TCG background primarily.

I loved RPGs and played them all the time. So it seems like there's a lot of value there. Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the important skills that you need to learn when you're starting out as a designer is that just because something that you're creating works for your home group doesn't mean it's going to work for a whole bunch of other groups out there, which is why. It's a good idea to try GMing for people that you don't know, whether that's at a game store or at a convention. Test out your stuff to a broader audience because your group, you know very well, but you don't necessarily know how this other gamer from another country or the other side of the country is going to react to a particular plot hook. Like one of the issues I had to deal with when becoming a professional game designer and adventure designer was there's that intro section. that says, here are a bunch of plot hooks for how to get the PCs involved.

And while I might have two or three interesting ideas that are just a snap to get my players involved, there are other groups that don't have the same sort of interest that my PCs do. And so you have to give them a whole bunch more options, like, oh, I need to have something that's a very combat-focused hook, a heroic hook, a social intrigue sort of hook, a revenge hook. You've got to come up with a lot of different things because there are so many different groups out there and so many different styles of play that you just need to have a more scattershot perspective

on what people want out of an adventure or game. That's a great insight too. So I'll give an analogy. Let me see if this resonates with you because when I think about designing and more experience with TCGs, so I'll leverage that, I think about the different psychographic profiles, right?

The different traits that I need to appeal to. And when I think about games broadly, it's always like, okay, so there's the competitive group. There's a competitive instinct. There's the social instinct. There's the creative instinct. There's the experience and wonder instinct. There's artistic instincts.

There's all these different things that people want to experience. And I try to design cards and experience something for everybody so they can gravitate to the things they want. Is that sort of similar to what you're talking about where you sort of need to provide a lot of these plot hooks that will gather each different player type? Yeah. And there's just, it's really easy to assume that every game group is like your group. And by encountering people outside your group and playing with them, it really opens your eyes to other perspectives.

Just to use a Match at the Gathering sort of analogy, like if you're building a deck and your best friend also plays magic and they always play a red-focused deck, well, yeah, you can build a deck that'll beat them, even if they're a really good player. You can get on parity with that. But your deck that you build might be trash against a black deck or a white deck or a green deck. You need to try it against other things that are unfamiliar to you. And that's actually how you come up with more interesting ideas for adventures and plots in general. I read all sorts of different source material, whether that's science or fantasy or, you know, about animal botany. Not animal, but animals and botany and that sort of thing. And those all feed into kind of the big hopper of ideas that I filter through when I'm trying to come up with something.

Animal botany. There's going to be plants that grow inside of animals and then take them over and create. You could actually role play as those mind controlling plants. See, there you go. Ideas come from anywhere. That's right. No, I agree. It's one of the principles I talk about it was, you know, A, B, E, always be exploring, right? Everything that's out there has gristle for the mill of creativity and that you, the more different things you have in the toolbox, the more you're going to be able to create your own experiences from that set that people haven't seen before by combining two different things.

I think that the, the idea of being able to understand players that are not like you and not like your local play group is absolutely critical. I think that there's this other interesting piece. Well, actually, there's tons of ways I want to go with this. But I want to, I don't want to diverge too far from you came into TSR and then, and then Wizards the Coast after they bought TSR to working on Dozens of Dragons. And this is the kind of, you know, the granddaddy of all RPGs. And what additions were you started working on? And when, where was that transition point? That I started writing for second edition D&D.

And then when we switched over to third, I rolled over into doing third. Okay. So that was a big moment in history. I was a big second edition player for many years. Third edition coming out was a big moment transitioning. Oh, yeah. You maybe share some stories of what that. was like and it had to be kind of some contentious times internally and I haven't heard a ton of

those stories. Yeah, that was it was a pretty wild time. I mean, TSR was failing. It was, you know, on on its last legs and we were really lucky that wizards came along and bought us and saved D&D. And we came from a time where a new core book for D&D Corps as opposed to Forgotter Realms of Greyhawk would sell a couple of thousand copies. And that was consistent. considered good, which for a major publisher is very, very scrawny sales numbers. And then we come along and we make third edition D&D and the players handbook sells something like 200,000 copies in a month. It was pretty wild.

But there were a lot of changes to the rules. And the design team would go in their little meeting room and work on stuff all day. And then after a week, they'd come out and talk to the rest of the team and say, this is what we're going to do about, you know, character species. This is what we're going to do about dragons. This is what we're going to do about how spells work. And we gave them a lot of feedback, and there are a lot of people who were really, really upset with some of these changes,

but mostly we're very, very excited. Like there was one editor who literally, after one of those meetings, said that he was feeling physically ill because of the changes that they were making to DNA. Which is a little extreme, but he was very, very much invested in how things worked. But that's, you can't, use old technology to keep addressing the modern progression of gaming. Like when I started working

on Pathfinder and people were talking about rolling up characters versus point by and things like that. And I had to explain to them, you realize that you've been playing these games for 20 years, but there are people who are becoming teenagers now and this is their very first game or they grew up playing video games and their experience is very different than what you and I had. And so we need to look at what these other newer, younger players are doing so that our games don't become a stagnating hobby like they were in the mid-90s when TSR was failing. You always have to have that open-eye perspective of what else is going on in the gaming world. Yeah, that's a great insight. And again, not an easy one to focus on, right? Like you have to speak to the same principle we're talking before. You've got

to break out of your own shell, your own mindset, what my playgroup does. what my background is and tap into the mindset of a new generation and other demographics and other groups. How do you approach that? How do you, or how do you, you know, how would you recommend that other people approach that? I've, I've, I've had definitely different kinds of experiences in this space, but I'd love to hear how you think about how do we do that? Like, how do we know what the kids these days are playing and make this game fit for them, but still be true to what its core is? Well, I have bookmarks on my browsers that tell me they do searches for Kickstarters that are RPGs and TCGs and dice and story games and things like that. And I try and look at those every week and just at least get a visual rundown of what sort of projects people are making out there.

And some will catch my eye and I'll back them and I'll take a look at the PDF when they come out working at MCG. we try and share that sort of information with each other and say, oh, check out this Kickstarter. They're presenting this information really cool. It seems to be a really interesting idea or a novel game mechanic on how things work. Somebody recently told me about their game that is about breaking up. It's about ending a romantic relationship. And there are actual physical objects that you're supposed to break

as part of the process of going through this game that are representing. the outcomes of various interactions, which I thought was just really novel and brilliant. People are taking different ways of handling resolution mechanics instead of dice and that sort of stuff and coming up with these alternative options. It's like the Dred Game where you're using Jenga tiles. You're using a Jenga game to build tension as the game goes on and things get more and more stressful because you know that that tower that you have is getting more and more precarious. And when that tower collapses, something bad happens. So you've just got to look at, you know, look around, see what's out there, and keep an eye on what streaming services are happening and what

live plays people are doing and what is big in comics and in video games. There's just such a wealth of resources out there. It's really easy to dismiss or ignore the stuff that you're not interested in. You should be aware of those other things. And even if you're not wanting to write about a particular subject, knowing about that subject is really, really useful for, kind of of helping focus the stuff that you do like to write about. Just a brief anecdote here. When I was at Paiso and we were working on Pathfinder, people asked us over and over again,

when are you going to do a psionic source for Pathfinder? But there was nobody on staff who was really, really excited about writing psionics. And so we decided not to do it because we felt that to do a subject like that, which is very popular among a segment of the audience, to do that subject well, we needed to have an author who was also excited about that material. Because if the author wasn't excited, it's going to come through. The author is just kind of going through the motions and filling a word count. You want somebody to write something that they are passionate about so that the player can go,

this person gets what I am here for. Like I wrote a book about horror called Stay Alive. I love horror as a genre. And, you know, so many people who have picked up this book are like, this is like the great horror general reference because clearly I have been loving horror movies and stuff since I was a teenager and that passion shows through in what you're right. Yeah. So, okay, well, so there's, I would piece out those two points because they're both really fascinating.

One, you know, finding passion at the very least curiosity and, and ideally passion for any subject you're going to dive into. I think it's critical to do it justice. I totally agree. and then the tools that you gave for how do you keep up on what's modern and what's happening and then be able to leverage that for your designs are great. Actually, I'm totally going to rip off this idea of having bookmarked searches for the stuff. I think that's brilliant.

But I'll be honest, I got a little anxiety when you started talking about it because it seems, to some extent, overwhelming. Okay, watch all the streaming services. Check all the new games that are coming out. make sure you're keeping up to speed and what, you know, the kids are streaming these days. And these things are, you know, what new comic books are coming out, read all the comic books. When do you sleep? How do you know what's enough is enough? Yeah, those are good questions.

And the truth is, you're not going to be able to catch up with all of that. There are so many great shows that the rest of my team is talking about that I haven't had the opportunity to watch yet just because I have a limited number of hours that I can sit down and devote my entire attention to that sort of thing. But, you know, Wikipedia is your friend and talk to people who have different interests. And they'll tell you, you know, the gist of, oh, there's this really cool show about this particular type of scary thing that's happening. Or, oh, I love this mecca presentation in this one other show or this comic book. It's just, we are a community of people.

Gaming is a social event. And so if you listen to the other people that you game with, you're going to, you know, kind of filter in some of that stuff. But yeah, you're not going to be able to absorb all of it. And in the same way that you can't expect to create a perfect manuscript, you're going to mess up things that you write, you're going to miss out on some things that would have been really, really cool. I'm sure that there are some great, you know, horror shows or movies that came out in the several months before I wrote this horror book. And I didn't have the opportunity to watch them or read them. And so they would have been excellent bits to add references to, but I just didn't have time. And that's okay.

You know, you can't write everything. you can't read everything. There's only so much time. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's, I think that makes sense. Sort of sourcing from your friends and, you know,

your social group and, you know, devoting the time that you can and recognizing, you're not going to be able to get it all. I think another key thing, at least for me, right, when I,

there's this shift that happens when you're consuming something just to enjoy it. And when you're consuming something and looking for those creative ideas and sourcing those creative ideas. And so I think for a lot of our audience, you know, the difference of like, hey, I'm just hanging out watching Netflix. I'm doing research is sometimes you're just hanging out watching Netflix. And sometimes, you know, you're saying, okay, no, no, actually, I'm going to write down a

couple of these ideas like this, I like this aspect of this character, or this is an interesting genre, you know, trope that I haven't seen before, or here's something I want to be able to bring into my world. Wouldn't it be cool if, right? And then capturing those ideas, I don't know if you're, you're like this, but I know I have a giant journal of, and, you know, list of infinite of these little fragments that I occasionally review and piece together. Do you have, any kind of system for keeping this stuff together or for or is it just kind of in the background and comes up when it comes up? Well, I have a really, really good memory and I'm kind of a bulldog about remembering stuff. But if I have some weird idea that I think up while I'm half asleep or

I've just woken up or I've had a dream, I will make a note on my phone about it because I always have my phone with me. But yeah, it's, you know, every person is going to have a different sort system for how they keep track of their cool ideas and their notes and that sort of thing. I'm suddenly drawing a blank on where I was going to go with this. But I was going to say your point about analyzing something for looting its content versus watching something for the sake of entertainment, that's also a skill. Like so many people fall into that first category where they're like, oh, I'm going to nitpick this. This person's sword wouldn't be like that historically.

or oh, physically this couldn't happen, blah, blah. You need to be able to turn off that part of your brain and enjoy something for entertainment. But then you can go back to it later and say, all right, how did this person do this? What is cool about the system of magic that they're presenting in this world?

How would I put that into a game? Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, other people doing things badly is I'm always just excited about now because it's just an opportunity for me to do it better. You know? Sure. They've got something that's like,

oh, this is great. This is great. I kind of would tweak this a little bit. Oh, I wonder if I could turn that into something. And, you know, there's always using your dissatisfaction as a driver to, oh, man, I really want to see it this way. And I think that's one of actually the best inspirations for a lot of really great games and stories and concepts.

Yeah. And as a person who has a background in game development, like, that's what I did at Paizo for six years was, although I was also a designer, much of my responsibility was wrangling freelancers, giving them assignments and then taking their stuff and then making it 100% house style and putting it into a book. But a lot of times they would write something. I would go, that's not how I would do that. But it wasn't my job to rewrite everything they did to be my way. That was the case, I would just write it myself.

And it's good to see someone else's perspective because, again, they're going to have a different historical background and gaming background and cultural background. And seeing how they come up with a solution to a game design problem is really, really fascinating. Well, yeah, this is now you're diving into a really deep skill set when it comes to managing others to create things, not just being a creator yourself. That's a really, there's a really powerful insight there. There's the challenge of setting your ego aside when you're doing the initial core design loop and putting your stuff out there and getting feedback and you have to be able to take that feedback in. Now you have to be able to be able to take other people's projects and be able to give those feedback, you know, give proper feedback and be okay with things that are. you know, wrong in your perspective, right? Not the way you would do it. But that doesn't mean that they're wrong in reality. They're just different. And you, you know, being able to help Shepard

and make that the best version of what it is without it making it your thing is a, is not an easy transition to make. How did you, how did you see your way through that? Or what kind of, you know, were there some difficult stories early on when you were trying to make that jump? You know, honestly, that is still something I am working. on. For example, here at MCG, Monty has a particular way of writing things, and so does Sean and so does Bruce, and so does Dominique. They and I altogether make the design team. And Monty believes it is a strength that we have different ways of writing and expressing things. And so that when somebody sees a new adventure by Bruce Cordell, if they're a fan of Bruce,

they're going to go, cool, this is a new Bruce Cordell adventure, which is different than a new Sean Reynolds' adventure. And so we read each other's manuscripts, like everything gets a development pass, and it's really easy for me to say, oh, Bruce, you should say this like this. When really, the way that Bruce says it is fine, it's just I have a different, more kind of compact style than he does. And he also has written a lot of novels, so he also tends to have a very flowery and an interesting way of explaining things. And it's difficult sometimes to restrain myself. from saying, Bruce, you need to do it like I do it.

When the truth is, Bruce is awesome, and it's okay for Bruce to do it his way. And if you are working in a developer or freelance Wrangler or managing editor sort of capacity, you have to recognize that these people are working for you because they have skills, and you value those skills, and you want the way that they talk about things

to shine through on the paper, because there are people who love their stuff, and buy their books because of their name on it, not because of my name on it. So, again, it's just, it's finding that balance of knowing that it has to be a certain way from like a company's style issue versus a personal preference versus coming at it from a different perspective because people are different. I mean, we're not machines. You can't really write an algorithm to do this sort of thing yet.

And so it's just finding that, that correct path of the human element between all three those pillars. Yeah, yet, yet is a key operative term there. So hopefully we all still have jobs. The, so there's a lot of stuff. So, you know, this process, we talked about the process of going to third edition, D&D, and, you know, that was this sort of overwhelming success and really

transitioned the brand and grew the entire RPG community, including with this concept of the open gaming license, which I think may be worth a little bit of explanation to our audience for those that aren't familiar with it, like what that was, what the process, why that came into a being. We could maybe talk about some of the fallout from it after.

Sure. So the idea of the open gaming license stems directly from open gaming and copy left, where you can make a bit of code or make a little game and you release it to the public and they can fiddle with it or hack it or whatever they like. The reason why this is brought into tabletop gaming is because we realized that gaming is a weird corner case where you're giving somebody access to a company's intellectual property, whether that's D&D itself or Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, and you're telling them, you're going to create your own stories in our world.

And there's kind of a gray area of who owns that? Like, if somebody writes some Lord of the Rings fan fiction, well, the Tolkien estate still owns Lord of the Rings. And that person can write that, but they couldn't sell it or distribute it legally. It would be a copyright and or a trademark infringement. And the brand managers at D&D didn't want there ever to be an issue where somebody would write something like a D&D. compatible adventure, put it up on the internet, and then get sued for it and have whether or not somebody could write fan d&D stuff come down to who had the better lawyer, whether that was the fan who had a better lawyer or the company that owned the game having the better lawyer.

And so the idea was, let's create an open game license that lets anybody make D&D compatible stuff for free. They just have to acknowledge this one-page license. And that would make it fully legal for people to write their own homebrew stuff and publish their own homebrew stuff. And it meant that people couldn't be sued over using those trademarks. And the side benefit was it meant that a lot of people who were afraid of writing for D&D because they didn't want to get sued suddenly had no reason to not make D&D stuff. And so that led to a huge influx of new D&D compatible books from everybody. You know, major publishers, minor publishers, independent people just started publishing D20.

What was the trademark for that? That was D20 system. D20 compatible stuff. And some of that content was great and some of it was very poor. But the net effect is that we suddenly had a million more people playing D&D than who were playing a year before. And that was a big net plus on the company. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's really, it's really remarkable. It's, it's, it seemed like a very bold leap to do. I mean, a lot of brand managers would not be okay with, you know, functionally giving away their license for free.

Yeah, even internally at Wizards, there were some people who had some serious issues with this. It took a lot of convincing for them to, to calm down about it. Yeah. So, so, so it's a bold choice and it ended up paying off. And then, and this is just sort of my outsider perspective, because I've played these games throughout all this window. It was really, you know, back, high school college, I played D&D all the time.

Then work sort of got in the way, ironically, making games. But, but then, you know, there was sort of this, this created the seed, right? The D&D then wanted to make this transition into fourth edition. And this sort of created the seed for Pathfinder to kind of grow in dominance. And I'd love to hear your take as the kind of ultimate insider here on how this all

went down and how you view that that whole era and transition. That was an interesting time because Wizards had decided that they were going to release a fourth edition and they had announced that. And the question was, are you going to have an open game license for fourth edition D&D? And eventually they said yes, but they didn't release the details or what it was going to be. And so a lot of publishers who are used to publishing 3E stuff were forced to just spin their wheels because they didn't have the access to the new rules and they didn't know what the new licensing agreement was going to be. And eventually that licensing agreement came out and it said, hey, by agreeing to use this license, you can't make any more third edition stuff. And a lot of

publishers are like, well, that means I can't sell my back catalog of 3E products that I've been doing for the past six years. That's a big problem. And, And Paiso, which had been doing its adventure paths, which were D&D compatible under the D20 license. They had done those for several years, finally decided and said, you know what, under the open game license, we can take all of the existing 3E and 3.5 rules, publish our own game based on those, and just start making our own stuff that is our own game and our game, which is 3.5 compatible. And so their marketing strategy was, if you want to keep playing third edition D&D, you should be playing Pathfinder. And it was pretty wild at the time.

Like, people were thinking, why is Paiso giving up on fourth edition even before it comes out? And just the truth is that Paiso didn't, they had no other choice. They didn't have a game. They couldn't stop publishing for a year waiting for fourth edition to come out and waiting for the final version of the license. So they just kind of pulled up their big boy pants. and got to work on making Pathfinder, and that led to Paiso's success where they are now, and now they have their own edition,

second edition Pathfinder. That's a lot of people, I mean, I don't really know what the demographics are, but I know a lot of people love Phi VD&E, and a lot of people love second edition Pathfinder. So I think it's great that there are two different systems that are doing really well that people can play fantasy games in. So good for them.

But yeah, it was a weird, weird time in the industry to see those two names kind of grind against each other a little bit until they found a good mutual space to live in. And, yeah, so there was a period even where Pathfinder became more popular than D&D, as I recall, which was, you know, kind of crazy to think about as D&D was always the biggest and baddest in the space. And so it was kind of an interesting twist back and forth and D&D came back again. But it turns out a lot of people didn't like Fourth Edition because it was a radical

change from third edition. And that's fine. Again, people are going to like different sort of games. A lot of people didn't like third edition compared to second edition. I think part of the problem was that there wasn't a good path for introducing these ideas to three e-gamer so they could get used to fourth edition. So you're saying that they couldn't, D&D couldn't find a path. I don't know if that. All I know is, see, I wasn't at the time when they were working on fourth edition. But I know that when we were working on third edition, and we made a point in the year leading up to third edition's release, there is a big article in Dragon Magazine every month for a year saying,

here's this cool thing the third edition is doing, and here's how you can already start incorporating that into your second edition game. So that after a year of doing that, you are ready to play third edition. And when we made the announcement that we were going to publish third edition at GenCon 99, we had a table at the TSR booth at GenCon where people could just come up to one of the members of the creative services team and say, I have an issue with this thing I've heard about third edition. Can you talk to me about it?

And we would answer questions about it. And one of my favorite little stories is some guy who came up to me because the T-shirts that we gave out for the 3E big announcement meeting that said we're going to make third edition D&D had a list of things on the back that were a yes or no checkmark. And one of them was like, yes, half-works are back. The assassin class is back. Thacko, gone.

And someone said, why are you getting rid of Thaco? I love Thacko. And I had to explain that Thacko, which was a game mechanic that gave you a number that helped you figure out what you need to roll in your D-20. But it was based on subtractive maths. Literally, to figure out the number you needed to roll on your D-20, it was like you needed to take your targets armor class and subtract that from their Thacko stat, from your that go stat and that would be the number that you needed to roll into D20. And I said, well, it's

subtractive math and additive math is easier. And so I've been doing subtractive math for 10 years. Trust me, this story gets better. And so I said, all right, let me give you an example. You are a first level fighter in third edition D&D and you have an attack bonus of plus five. So that means when you roll a D20, you add a five and that's the AC that you hit. So, You are fighting an ogre and you roll your D20 and you rolled a 14. What AC do you hit? And the guy's like, well, 14 plus 5, that's 19. I said, exactly.

You hit AC 19. And he's like, oh, that is easier than having to subtract, you know, five from negative 14 to get 19. And so it's just, it's how you explain it to somebody. I think is often the catalyst for making somebody excited about a change in a game mechanic that they're used to. And I don't know if Fourth Edition really had that. Again, I was not, I was working on video games at the time, so I wasn't really in the trenches for the role-playing game wars, but people like the games that they like, and it's hard to get them to budge on that.

Yeah, well, that's a great, it's a great insight, right? It's sort of being open with their community, feeding them the information step by step, letting them get used to change, being very responsive and explaining where the differences and things are and why changes are being made the way they are. I think that sort of stuff is really important. In fact, just that being open with their community is just almost no more important thing, frankly, for building brands that last over time. Oh, I agree. I mean, you know, like even when things go wrong, right, we just, we just had this come up, but this will be a while ago by the time the podcast comes out, but we had our Soul Forge Fusion release had to get delayed and we had to push it back three.

times because of shipping delays, like just stuff getting stuck and, you know, and people were understandably upset, right? And so I just wrote a very direct letter and was engaged in conversations our discourse, like, here's exactly what's happened. Here's where the stuff is. Here's the steps we've taken. Here's what's out of our control. Like, we're going to do our best and, you know, obviously we want to get the thing to you too. And, you know, people understood, right? Even when you're doing things that are, you know, bad or mistakes or things they're not happy about, you know, game rule changes, whatever, uh, people are very understanding when they know that you're, listening and you understand that people feel heard. I think that's one of the more more powerful insights

whenever you want to bring any kind of change into the world. Yeah, I totally agree. It's like one of the worst problems that a person running a new Kickstarter has is going two or three months without an update to what the project is doing. And that might just be because you're, you know, head down writing the game and you haven't had time to do an update because you've been so deep in design. But you know what? Take 15 minutes, put together a thing saying, hey, we've been working really hard on this. This is where we are. We'll get back to you in another four weeks. People like to hear status of the thing that they're passionate about, that they're excited about. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And that sort of thing. The other thing is recognizing, right, gamers are

notorious for being vociferously complaining about things they don't like and, you know, nitpicking in details. But one way is to kind of be annoyed at that sort of thing, which I was early in my career. And then I shifted it because the reason that they are complaining, the reason that they are so loud is because they care so much. And that is a gift to you, right? It's way, way better to have a lot of fans that are complaining than to have no fans at all. Oh, yes. So just that mental shift was really powerful for me when it came to dealing with the haters and recognizing how to, you know, how to bring them in and, you know, really make them, again, just make them feel hurt and, and help. to, you know, connect them to the changes and the things that are going on.

I have a direction I want to go with this, but I didn't know about your time in video games. What video games did you work on? What was your role there? So the company Interplay had the Forgotten Rome's license from Wizards of the Coast, and their lead designer, Josh Sawyer, who is, the lead at Obsidian now, was working on a forgotten realms game,

Baldur's Gate 3. But he was the only person on the team who knew the third edition rules. So every time there was a rule issue coming up that they were going to be programming, he had to explain it to the programmers. And he had to talk to the artists about how, you know,

the visual for something had changed in third edition and how the script people had to know that, you know, these creatures behave this way in third edition. And so he got permission to hire somebody to be the forgotten realms third edition expert and I applied for that and I got that job and so I worked on the game development for Baldersgate 3. Unfortunately, that project got canceled six months later because of some licensing shenanigans going on that

were not interface fault, but definitely they bore the brunt of it. So we switched to start working on what would have been Fallout 3 and got a working tech demo done in six months and presented that to the team, to the managers, the owners. And they said, that's great, but we are struggling monetarily right now and we need to let go an entire team and they let go the entire Fallout team, except for me. And then had me start working on an exalted video game, licensed from White Wolf. and then that got paused, and they had wrangled some licensing issue where they couldn't use Baldur's Gate the name anymore,

but they could still use the name Dark Alliance because they had released a PlayStation game called Ballard's Gate, Dark Alliance. So they were going to be doing a new fantasy game set in a new world called Dark Alliance, and I was a designer for that. And then their monetary problems got even, even worse, and they stopped being able to pay their employees. And then they, strangely enough, people wanted to stop working for them because they weren't getting paid.

And so I ended up, that's how we ended up at Upper Deck, actually, is after Interplay imploded and I left. I started working there. And that's when you and I worked together. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's crazy. Yeah, I must have known some of the story, but it's been long enough. I guess I forgot. So I, what, what, I've been fortunate that I've,

not spent a lot of time working on projects that didn't actually see the light of day, mostly because I started my own company so I could make sure that. But what does that like emotionally going through project after project, putting in great creative work, designing things, and then they just get shut down through largely forces outside of your control? How does that, you know, how does that feel going through it? How do you keep your momentum and spirits up in that? I'd just love to get some insight to that kind of an experience.

And also any other interesting differences in designing for video games versus RPGs. Yeah, it's really frustrating when the project that you're working on gets canceled. I've had that happen a couple of times with tabletop books. For example, in the late stages of the Marvel Superheroes Roe Playing Game from the late 90s. I wrote a supplement called the Green Goblins Guide to Crime, but they ended up canceling the Marvel line. and so it never got published. And because I was working for Wizards of the Coast as an in-house employee at the time, they own all that.

And that is never going to see the light of day because, one, it's a Marvel trademark. And so you'd have to like wrangle a huge Marvel issue. But it belongs to Wizards of the Coast. And so this 32-page source book I wrote, no one's ever going to see it. With these video games, you know, I grew up playing video games. I'm of the generation where, you know, we were the first people to have home. computers and playing Atari and things like that. And getting to work on video games was awesome.

And Josh Sawyer had this great plot idea for the Balders Gate 3 game. And when we lost the forgotten realms license, that game just couldn't be made because it was so intrinsically tied to the lore of the forgotten realms. Like you couldn't really import it into a generic fantasy world because there's so much specifically involving this deity and her plans and this sort of elf and their plans. So you just kind of have to go, wow, that really sucks. That was six months of my life that I don't have anything to show for. And then Fallout, the same way.

That game got canceled. The company went under. Unfortunately, somebody leaked all the development files and the tech demo files. You can actually play the tech demo of what is called Van Buren, which was our code name for Fallout. But, yeah, it's just weird to think that I spent, you know, six months in my life working really hard on this thing and now it's just not there. It's kind of like an old relationship that you put a lot of work into and then it's just like, nope, that's not a thing

anymore. Ooh, interesting analogy. Yeah. Yeah. I, so I, I, um, okay, this is great because I, now I can, I can definitely relate to this. I got plenty of those relationships that didn't work out. Uh, so I have the saying, uh, that I, you know, the only, it's not the definition of a successful relationship that one of you dies at the end. that's not what it means right you can have a great relationship that doesn't end you know that ends at a certain point you transition and it's not you know it's not right you don't you don't you don't go off into the sunset together but you can still get value out of it you grow you learn you have great experiences so so maybe that that same insight really applies here right clearly you learn

a lot from these some of the storytelling ideas that you work through there you can apply to other things so even in the world of yeah this didn't go to market and become the huge success i want there's still value in that creative development and process and and getting to work with great people. Yes. Yeah. Like I'll give the analogy since we now have gotten to the upper deck phase of our careers because that was my first job, like period. And it was in many ways a, well, it's my podcast.

I'll say it was a shit show. There was a lot of problems at that place. place. But the people that we worked with there, there was so much incredible talent in that there. And we got to learn so much. I know for me, especially being a rookie designer, you know, I had to like learn everything from the ground up and being surrounded by so many incredible creative people. And then being surrounded by those people when the shit starts hitting the fan, when things start going badly, is actually a really powerful thing because I learned which people I could rely on and which people would be, you know, it's easy to be a good

coworker and friend when everything's going great and everybody's making money, right? It's very easy. But when things are going badly and it's very tough and there's a lot of, you know, blame getting thrown around and layoffs and challenges, right? The people who you really learn a lot about people's character. And those best people were the ones who, not only have I stayed friends with and or, but I have many of them I hired to start my company. So there's a lot of power. even in the, you know, the failing parts, if you will, of that, of those kinds of projects and teams. Yeah, like I, my fiance's son went to a small private high school and they have a lot of outside people who come in and teach little one-off classes there.

And they did a class on adulting. And I told my students, I very much encourage you to date a lot of people, like date somebody for a month and then date somebody else. Don't be like, oh, I found my soulmate. and I'm 16 years old. Odds are they're not your soulmate. But by dating different people, you learn about things you like in relationships,

things that you don't like in relationships, about the people that you like to spend time with, and hopefully you learn more about yourself and grow and change. And just because those relationships are over, it doesn't mean that you have failed. Like, you're only in high school for three years. When you get out of high school, you don't say, well, I failed high school, that's over.

Like, no, that was a learning experience. That was a time for me to develop skills that I'm going to need for the rest of my life. Oh, that's so good. I didn't break up. I graduated from my relationship. Yes. I love it. And also, side note, adulting the class, I wish I had that growing up.

Boy, oh boy, did I have to learn a lot. That's amazing. Teaching adulting in school seems like the main thing you should be teaching. Well, you know, instead, we're going to learn that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. That's true. I do remember that. That's really been super useful. Yes. Okay, amazing. I'm glad we've had a lot of these narratives and divergence and I got to learn a little bit more about your past here. I really want to spend a good chunk of time here talking about how to make RPGs and getting very granular on making, you know, specifically a non-D-RPG.

And spoiler alert, like, I want to make an RPG. So I'm going to be very selfish in this regard. And I imagine there'll be many people out in the audience because I love RPGs. I've loved them for years. As I mentioned, before I discovered magic, I was a huge fan of D&D. I still played infinite hours. And then as I started, you know, making my own company. And I was like, oh, cool.

I'll design. I'll do an RPG because I just generally try to do projects I'm passionate about. And for many years, when I looked at the math of that, it was complete madness. Like there was no, like completely illogical from a pure like business standpoint to make an RPG and invest the time. The number of units you would sell as a non-DD RPG, typically speaking, unless you're one of the rare successes was was very little. The amount of effort that it took to make it seemed incredibly daunting. And while it would be fun, you know, play test sessions take hours, you know, the iterative loop is much slower. And so enormous investment, a little upside from my percentage.

perspective, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, all that window. But that seems to have completely upended. And I want to get your reflection on this, but I'm just going to kind of set the table from where I see it. Right. Now there are many, you know, hugely performing, you know, six, seven figure RPGs on Kickstarter. Lots of great independent brands. Of course, you know, well-known names like yourself and Monty Cook and the games you guys make are consistently performing, but even ones that are less less well known. And so there's an incredibly powerful growing market. And so now it's really forced me to rethink, okay, well, I've got a lot of brands

that I love that I have, you know, the Ascension Story arc and tons of new ones I'd love to do. I'd love to spend some time building an RPG. So first, I'd love you to reflect your thoughts on my narrative of the RPG in the RPG world and how it relates with your experience as being actually in it. And then I'd love to sort of dive into how we build these things. Well, most of my gaming experience growing up before I became a professional was D&D. I played a little bit of traveler, a little bit of Marvel, a little bit of Star Frontiers and Tunnels and trolls.

But as a person who's background was 90% are D&D, it's really easy for me to look at the RPG world from the perspective of G&D is the game. But there are so many other games out there. And I think people are finally, I think the majority of the RPG tabletop audience is starting to realize that it's not just D&D. There's influence from JRPs, there's influence from some various, you know, RPG light video games. And people have come to understand that although a typical DED campaign is something that might last, you know, six to 12 months, and that's common that the game will end after six to 12 months. You'll have a rare group that's been playing together for the past 20 years. But usually your campaign is done at 6 to 12 months for various reasons. But there are so many people who don't have even the time to stick with a campaign for six months.

They want to have a little four-session story arc. Or they want to have a one-shot. And there are so many people out there coming up with these really, really cool ideas for, this is a story game. You're only going to play through it once. I don't need to create a ton of additional game mechanics for leveling up characters beyond this point or adding these other influences. That's what I think because you're right.

It's like the difference between making a TV show and making a movie. Like D&D is in many ways you're making a television show. It's going to be episodic and it's just going to keep going and going and going and going until the actors leave or the director leaves or whatever. But with a movie, it's like this is the story I'm going to tell. have this precise amount of time to tell it in, and then when I'm done with that story, then it's done. And so you could have a really cool game that is meant to just be played in one night or played in two nights. And so you really need to think about what you want your game to be and try to make that game do that. It's really so many people say, oh, I'm going to hack D&D into doing

this other thing. And yeah, you can do that. You can hack the D&D system and play something set and on a rackus. You know, you can hack D&D and you can make it into a superhero game. But there are other game mechanics and other games that can do what you're trying to do better than just what D&D is. Even working on D&D third edition,

like one of our little phrases that we had internally was, the D&D game system is really good at replicating the experience of playing D&D. So it's this, you know, recursive topology of, yes, it's good at the thing that it's good at. But that doesn't mean it's the only thing out there. And so just figure out what you want your game to be and how many games you want to play with that and what sort of themes and moods you want and put that into the game. And don't worry about the other stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is similarly, I guess, the way you think about any kind of game, right, you want to figure out what the, you know, what's the core of the experience, right? What's the emotional core of the experience? what's the thing that you're delivering? And then ideally, it's something obviously you're passionate about and that there's enough other people that are passionate about it and you can execute it in a way that reaches them.

So what do you consider when you're developing a new RPG? And like, how do you know when one is just kind of, okay, this is kind of cool and fun and I like it, but how do you know when you feel like you should be moving forward with one or if you would like and want to give me some, some free design work. How would you do it if you were me, taking something like Ascension and deciding to turn it into an RPG?

I mean, it's totally fine to start with the basics of a game engine that you already know. Like Pathfinder is basically just a spinoff of D&3.5. And my little Five Moons game that I wrote a few years ago is a lower powered spin off of Pathfinder that I wanted to be even simpler than Pathfinder because the math is really complicated in there. So, like, if you have a game that you like to play and it kind of fits the narrative, start with that. Go, oh, you know what, I like how the dice mechanic for this works. I like how leveling works in this game. Let's see how this works with the game that I want to write, whether that's, you know, whether you're just going to re-skinned something or just take the bare-bone framework of the game mechanics and build upon that, like, you know, putting meat on a very sexy skeleton.

and it's all about what you want your endgame experience to be. And as the creator of that setting, I think you're the person who is best qualified to decide what elements are or aren't in that. But yeah, just start with a skeleton or something and see what sticks. I just, I got the visual for putting meat on a very sexy skeleton that I can't get out of my head now. So thank you for that. So when it's, this is, you know, not just obviously the Ascension world has a bunch of lore and things that have already been created.

But if when you're thinking about creating an RPG, so I think about it in terms of, you know, when I'm building a game, typical, you know, whether it's a board game or a card game, you know, in most video games, they're not super narrative heavy. You know, you've got to really get the core play down. You want to get the rhythms of play. You want to design the components. figure out how it works. And then there's just, you know, the story and you want that to come through. When it comes to building an RPG campaign, an RPG, you know, core rules, in many ways, you have to build this whole world, right, in pretty extensive detail to make

it accessible for a player. And flushing out, you know, how much of the, like, you know, the lore of the world you want to do and all the writing you could do for each of the character types and all the writing you could do for each of the different, you know, plot hooks and all that, like, it feels to a certain extent like there's an infinite amount that you could do. And so you talked about starting with the core mechanics in the way, which of course makes sense in the case I was citing where we already have a lore and IP. But if you're starting from scratch, if you will, or you're kind of flushing these things out, how do you think about balancing that building of the world, building of the mechanics, building of the

different hooks and and how deep do you have to go in each before you feel like, okay, I've got something that can, you know, stand up and be worth putting out there? I think you need to figure out where the amount of lore and background the player needs to know. And depending on the world and how invested the characters have to be from the very, very start, you know, that might be as little as a paragraph, but probably more like a page just to give them an idea of this is what you as a PC does, whether that's specifically for, let's just use a D&D term, specifically for your class or your race or species or whatever, like this is what an elf knows, this is what a fighter knows.

Or it could just be more abstract and just say, you are a character in this setting, here's the background information you need. Because if a player, like there are players who are going to love to read 32 pages of background information before they even create a character, and they're going to be people who hate having to do that amount of reading. And so my question to you is, when someone is making a character for your world, how much do they need to know about that world? Did they need to know about one city? Do they need about one country? Do they need to know about the whole planet or, you know, the cosmology? And present that information to the players in

a digestible way. And given that, as we said earlier, there's so much media out there that this is ready to be consumed and you don't have time to read it all, you can't just force tons of information on people and expect them to read it. Like, I have developed adventures by other designers where literally the GM is given 10 pages of backstory before the adventure even starts. And it's like, you know what? Someone who's going to pick up this thing and try and run it as a one shot, they're not going to have time to do that. Just give them like a couple of paragraphs of bullet points and then say, if you have more time, read this other thing. But it's all about getting people on board to playing. It's like, what is the tutorial level of your RPG in video

game terms? Like, can you present them with background information and a starting scenario to get them kind of rolling on how the game mechanics work and then they can learn things as they go along from there? Just for example, our Numerary game, our Suffer System game that we published from MCG, I have a video called Numenera in 60 seconds where I explain the gist of how the rules work in 60 seconds. And that's all you need to know to start playing this game. Like I can just hand you a character and say, this is how Dyshal's work. This is how you modify things. And there you go.

And within a minute, they're ready to go. And I can give them a one minute spiel on what is their character's goal in this world. And it just got to hone it down. I mean, you're a writer. And so you know that you have to. You have to cut until it bleach. You have to go and cut and make that stuff as precise as you can so that you have that one perfect sentence and then do it over and over again for every sentence. But like you can't, it's really easy just to, as a person who talks and rambles a lot, as you can tell from listening to me, it's really easy to try and cram all that information in when really they don't need all that information all at once.

Yeah, that's a great insight. And that that that what you cut, you know, I frame the question in the opposite way of like, oh, all the stuff, how do you know when to stop putting stuff in? And you're 100% right. The answer is, no, what's the most you can cut out? Right? How do you get down to the essence of this and get your player into it as quickly as possible as get them as excited as possible as quickly as possible?

And then give them the opportunity to dive deeper. And all that stuff can, you know, they can kind of open the door to the rest of your world. Especially as what that player is going to get excited about as they play through is going to be different. from player to player. Like, this player might be interested in intrigue. This one might be more interested in, like, the role of this particular culture in the setting. And this person might be more about figuring out the mechanics and the math.

And so you give them three different doors to choose from and they can open and go through any of those doors that they want. But you don't have to session one cram their face into each of those doors in turn. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think, so, you know, this is also dovetels really nicely into one of my other questions, which is, you know, how do you effectively market and reach out with a new RPG, right? This is, you know, while there's people are now more discovering them, there's a lot more opportunity.

You know, D&D still dominates the popular culture, at least, of this. And one of the things that I always tell designers, regardless of the game, is that you really need to get a very refined, you know, elevator pitch and way to explain your game in, you know, a couple sentences, right? Or 60 seconds, like you said, to explain a game. I think that being able to refine that and get to, this is the heart of what's interesting. This is kind of the gist of what you need to know. Come on, let's play. Or, you know, come on if you want to learn more.

I feel like it's critical. And so that's one piece of it. And then I'd love to dig in more into what you think. Are you guys actually just finished a Kickstarter campaign recently? for a new book that did really well, 400,000 something, I think, for The Weird. Maybe we could do a case study here, put you on the spot.

How would you give me that pitch for that game? So the idea of the weird is that it's really easy for you to fall into various tropes, no matter what game that you're running or whatever genre it is. Like, oh, space games, it's going to have, you know, the threat of aliens, fantasy games. You're going to have elves, not like any dwarves, et cetera, et cetera. If you want to make your game kind of break out of its rut or break out of its shell, something like the weird is just a whole bunch of tables for any genre, any system,

it's system agnostic, that lets you come up with interesting quirks for NPCs or players or magic items or technology or superpowers or whatever. And it lets you go, oh, this barkeep has a strange tattoo on their hand, or they have a really weird accident that you've never seen before or things like that. It's just, it's about giving you inspiration

for breaking your game out of its dusty old shell. That's the short pitch for the weird. I like it. I like weird things. So the cover got me when I saw it. I was like, oh, this is right at my alley. So good graphic design, good story pitch, both key ways to drop people in.

So broadening the question. then, right? How do you feel the best way for someone to be able to reach this kind of audience or market this kind of game beyond, you know, having a good, clear, tight vision and, you know, presentation for what you're building? Well, first off, I'll say that so many new games fall into the mistake of saying, well, it's like this other game, but cooler. You know, you don't really want to, it's really easy to make that sort of comparison, but that doesn't really benefit you. Like, the people who like that sort of game already think it's cool, and they'll be like, who is this, you know, Yahoo is saying that your new game is cooler than my game.

And the people who don't like that game, they're going to be like, well, I don't like that game, so why would I like your game? That's basically the same. I think in this modern age of internet connectivity, it's really good to have some actual plays set up, like record some people playing your game. And it's okay to have that be scripted a little bit. Like if you inform the players, you know, this is going to be kind of a spooky scenario. I need you to get in the mood for this

and then give them a little more time to develop some background for the characters. But like a lot of people will just like, I don't really watch actual plays, but some people love them. There are so many people who don't even game, but they'll watch things like Critical Role. And so if you can have a cool actual play with a good GM and good players who are very personable and fun to watch,

that is a great way to introduce people to your game. And whether that game session goes out of its way to explain the various game mechanics that are happening, or even if it's just hinting at some of those things, like if people can see that the players are engaged with the story and they're having a good time, they will go, huh, where can I learn more about this game? And I think that also ties into having a good community manager

for the stuff that you're making. You want to have people who's good with Facebook and Twitter and good with Discord and good at wrangling guest appearances for actual plays or doing interviews on other podcasts and such like that. It's all about connectivity and reaching out to people who wouldn't necessarily know that your thing exists, but now that it does, you want to wave it in front of their face. Now, you have obviously a lot of people who were already fans of your games and your world. And so you kind of have a head start on getting that going. But it's really about reaching out to the people who you know and the people who they know. Yeah. Yeah.

No, building that core community is critical being able to, you know, people think about community management as this kind of like fuzzy like, oh, I like, you know, I post on social media and add comments and stuff. And it's, you know, that's just sort of one aspect of it. It really is, you know, the way I look at it is at the core is just like, you're. building your tribe, right? You're building the people who you care about, who you want to add value to their lives, and you just start doing that, right? And that can be just hosting game nights for your friends, right? And you have the people that love your game. And okay, cool. Now I'm going to bring it to a local convention and run some sessions and see what happens. I'll bring some of their friends over. And then, okay, cool, now they love it. Right. And I think I had, I had Alan Gerting on the podcast,

and he did a million dollars with his with his RPG on Kickstarter. No, no IP, you know, other than the one that they created. No, no, you know, they literally just built it all kind of groundswell, you know, and just sort of built the community and put stuff out there. They put some free versions out there. The mothership sci-fi horror RPG was, you know, and they just continue to grow that way. and it's really incredible what you can do. You know, it's the 10-year overnight success in a lot of ways, right?

Because you build those communities over time. But it's powerful and it's accessible to anybody. So I do think that's true, regardless of genre, but it's been particularly true in RPGs. And as you mentioned, especially so in the world where streaming now, you know, gives you such a broader potential audience. what I think about a lot, and I don't know how much this weighs in with your guys' designs, or I think about when I try to design this kind of game, like, how do you make a game that

looks good on stream that feels like it's fun to watch, are almost as important as it is fun to play. Yeah. And having like, sorry, you mentioned kind of obliquely something like about having a preview or, you know, a downloadable PDF of your, the gist of your game, even if that's just a, hey, you know, here's a sample scenario with the game mechanics built in. It gives people the opportunity to try it out in their home environment or try it at a game store. And conventions, like I strongly encourage people who attend conventions to not just play the games that they like, but try different games. That's really the opportunity to be like, oh, I played this game with the person who wrote it. You know,

that's a really cool thing. And you never know. You might just really dig that new game system. and that person who met you at a convention and you ran a game for them is now a fan and they're going to convert other people in their group to try this game or back on Kickstarter or whatever. It's just you cannot de-emphasize the importance of that interaction of showing people that playing the game is fun. Whether you're doing it is an actual play or a pre-recorded thing or an in-person thing, it's part of that network.

and having a community person is vital, whether they're wrangling your remote GMs at game stores or conventions or they're the person who are coordinating the designers talking and the artist talking on podcasts and streams and that sort of thing. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking, oh, a community is just a thing that someone will do is their side job, but you really need a person who knows what they're doing to actively engage and build that tribe, as you said.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I don't want to put down the idea of the side job here too much because I know when you're getting started, it can be scary. You know, you don't necessarily have the ability to hire a community person. So you kind of have to wear multiple hats. But you can engage super fans. I mean, I will tell you. I mean, my own story with when we first launched ascension at GenCon, we did not have enough staff. We did not have enough space. to demo and for the enthusiasm. And so people who we would demo the game to would just put on a shirt and to open the game and start deviling it to people. And it was just like spread. And it was like such a crazy cool thing. And then some people from that same show that ended up helping us and volunteering. And like, you know, Brian Hughes was someone that came with, you know, he helped us with our customer support and community management out of the gates like didn't ask for money. Didn't ask for anything. It was just like a fan. And then we were able to, you know, keep him and help him and reward him.

And it was such a incredible thing that I'm still incredibly grateful for from so many people over the years. And so you can, you know, you could find ways when you're, again, you're adding value to people's lives. They want to add value to yours too. And you give them the opportunity. There's a lot of ways to get to this even if you don't have a ton of money. You know, a lot of people that make games and a lot of industries, we don't, you know, we're not in it for the money. But we, there's people do it because they're passionate about it. So there's a lot of ways to get at this, I guess.

Yeah. And like pointing back at the example with Paiso and a psionics book, like if you had a designer who's really passionate about psionics and would write that, that would be the perfect person for that. Having a person who loves the game that you're making and they will go on and tell other people, that is just as important as having a designer passionate about the project. Like those people, like word of mouth is incredible, whether it's in person or online. But like you can you can feel the excitement of someone who's like, I really like this game. I want it so much that I want to sit you down and play this game because I love it. And that is great. That is a beautiful resource.

Yeah. I mean, I think about this sort of stuff all of the time now. It doesn't matter what the genre is. Right. So, you know, Soulforge Fusion, same sort of thing. Like, how do we empower the enthusiastic members of our community to spread it? Because I know when I'm showing the game to somebody, I'm going to get them excited because I'm excited.

But I can only show it to so many people personally. So I need those people to get excited enough to then show it to other people and, you know, create that positive chain reaction. And so we've, you know, we provided downloaded versions of the decks before they existed and online versions for free through tabletop simulator and little promotion programs. If people get other people to sign up on our Soulforcefusion.com,

they get free, you know, goodies from us and other ways to engage in a Discord community that we are regularly engaging in, like, every way you could think of to like reward and empower your community, uh, and your fans to, to go out there because I don't care how much you speak.

spend on whatever online advertising or any paid promoters, they're never going to do as good a job as someone, like a genuinely passionate person that's sharing something they love. I mean, that's what the game industry is all about for me. Exactly. Yeah, like it ruins me of some game designer told me a story of they were working on a game and they're very excited and they ran demos for it and it was great. And then the person who handles the marketing of the company says,

okay, but we can't include a copy of you in every single game. game to push that level of excitement. So we need to get other people who can run the game, who can be as excited and as engaging as you are to carry that forward. It sounds like you've got that lined up. You've got all these systems set up to reward people who are excited about what you're doing, which is awesome. Yeah, no, it's, it's important.

I mean, enthusiasm is one of my superpowers, and I like to just spread it as far and wide as I can. And so it's, yeah, it's great. I mean, it's, it's a, it ends up, it ends up creating a really powerful two-way street with your fans where they're, you know, you're writing value to them. They're writing value to you. It creates a very, you know, just a powerful relationship. And again, for a lot of the stuff that we do, right, RPGs and TCGs and all these kinds of games, like these are any kind of tabletop gaming, really like these are, these are lifestyles, right? These are things that people build into their identity. I am, you know, I get together every week with my group and we play our D&D session. I go to these shows and I see friends. And I see friends. that, you know, we see every year or every few months when we get together and play, right? Those are the people I know that I've, yeah, I've stayed friends with my entire life and the, the bonds that I've built. And that's, that's, for me, anyway, like at the bottom of it all, great gameplay, great

stories, those are, those are phenomenal, but it's those lifelong communities and connections. That's the, that's the real peter of what we do, in my opinion. Yeah, no, I totally get that. And, like, I'm sure you have people who, who are fans or customers who have come up to you at shows and said, hey, you know what? I've been playing these games for a long time.

I'm teaching my kids your games. And they're just kind of passing on that next generation of love of the game. That's what we do in this hobby. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's right. It's like my favorite part of going to shows and stuff is I get that. I get those stories all the time now. You know, I've been making these, the games have been around long enough

that you start getting it. Yeah, yeah, no, my son is now playing this. And I get to, we use this as a bonding with my daughter. And it's like, I tear up a little bit, even thinking about it now. It's like, it's such a cool thing. Because that's what was for me. Like my dad and I, we bonded over games. And we, you know, starting off with simple stuff like Monopoly and, you know, sorry.

But then we started playing magic. Like, he went with me to my first magic tournaments. We went to, we went to Rome together and Sydney to go to play in when I was going to play in the World Championships. And we got to, you know, have these incredible bonding experiences over games. And now knowing that I'm able. to do that for other people is, is pretty awesome. Yeah, it is.

So I, we've covered, we've covered an awful lot of ground here. I think, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit from you, but like what you've done, you know,

pretty much everything in the space, right? You've written like hundreds of books, I guess at this point. Sounds right. Which is incredible to me. I wrote one and that was, it took a lot out of me.

I'm working on a second one, hopefully soon. And, And, you know, you've made so many of these different games. You've worked in all these different worlds. Like, what, what excites you now? Like, what are you excited about next? What's the, what's the next chapter look like ideally in your mind?

Or have you put much thought into what else, you know, what else you want to do? I mean, I have wandered around in different parts of the game industry. Like, I was in video games for a while. And at Upper Deck, I worked on, you know, the Avatar card game and Marvel versus DC. but I always seem to come back to tabletop RPGs. Like even when I move back to Washington State, I was thinking, you know, I'm not going to be doing design for anybody else.

I'm just going to design my own things. Well, turns out that I'm not good at maintaining a schedule for myself for designing my own things, but if I have somebody else giving me deadlines, then I will hit those deadlines. And so I started at MCG as their community person. And I did that for almost two years, before basically just falling back into design because we needed another designer.

Monty's like, Sean, you're a really good designer. Why don't you just be designing for us? And so here I am. And so when I see a TV show, I read a book or read a comic book, my brain is automatically transiting stuff into, oh, this would be a cool thing to go an RPG, or how would I make this system work with a particular game mechanic, or do I need to, you know, break out of a mold and do something wild and different

and plug it into this system? So, I mean, I've been gaming since I was nine or ten, and I've been a professional game designer for the past 25 years. I think I'm going to be doing this until I die. I was going to say until I retire, but, you know, I'll still keep doing it after that. I'll be in the old folks home, Roland Dyson, and writing up monster sets. So I'm always just trying to find new fun things to watch and to read and to experience and do. I'm very much a jack of all traits. And my fiance, fortunately, indulges that.

So we take cake decorating classes and glass blowing classes. And I recently bought an old classic car that is just in a horrible shape, and I'm restoring it, and I've been doing some carpentry. And so, like, all these different things that I do, I think about, well, how does this relate to games? Because games have just been a part of my life since I was a child, and I'm going to keep on doing it until I can't anymore. That is a wonderful. answer and probably the best way to wrap up this podcast.

It has been phenomenal. Getting to talk with you and catch up, Sean, has definitely been too long. I will definitely hit you up next time. I'm in Seattle. Yes. I'm going to be coming back there at the very least next summer, but hopefully sooner.

For anybody that wants to follow you, find more of your stuff, be able to kind of check out all the cool games that you're going to be making into the old folks, home. What's the best place for them to see what you're up to? I'm at Twitter at Sean K. Reynolds, but you could also follow at Monte Cook Games because that's more focusing on the stuff that I'm producing. And my Twitter stuff is usually also a lot of cat photos and latte photos and things like that. Okay, well, definitely following you on Twitter now. I, I miss this one thing. I've been

traveling the last year and a half and it's great being a nomad, but I had to, you know, no pets. no cats. Yeah. And so definitely miss that. So awesome. All right. Well, I'll come by and visit your cats

when I come up there. All right. Thanks again, Sean. Can't wait until we get to see each other in person next time. 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. Listener 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 soul.