Dorkland Interview: The Melior Via Crew Talk About The Accursed RPG

Melior Via's Accursed is a dark fantasy RPG for Savage Worlds that is currently being Kickstarted. The kickstarter is working its way through stretch goals as of this post, so if you're interested in joining the monster mash -- now is a good time.

For the real bloody meat of this post, though, we sat down in Dorkland's plush offices for an interview with the guys behind Accursed:

DL: First off, congratulations on surpassing your initial goal and breaking through some stretch goals! How has the Kickstarter experience been for you so far? Any problems? Anything awesome?

MV: Thank you very much! We’ve been very pleased with the response to the Kickstarter so far, and we’re extremely grateful for the outpouring of support and enthusiasm from the gaming community. So far, the Kickstarter experience has been a wild ride! We’ve all been watching the progress of the Kickstarter closely, and one of the best things so far has been interacting with the backers through the comments section. We’re gathering quite a bit of playtest information from the 100-page playtest player’s guide that all backers (regardless of level) get immediate access to, and the feedback from the fans is helping us make some improvements for the final product.

DL: When planning for Accursed, did you look into using any other systems? Have any future plans for porting the setting over to a different system? What made you decide on Savage Worlds?

MV: The three of us (Ross Watson, John Dunn, and Jason Marker) discussed what game system would be best for Accursed in the early stages of development. We checked out many of the existing systems in the RPG industry, and we found that Savage Worlds provided the best fit. The Fast, Furious, Fun approach of Savage Worlds is a good match for the heroic actions we wanted to portray for the Accursed’s struggle against the Witches. There are some stretch goals we’ve got lined up for the Kickstarter that involve translating Accursed into some other, very well known and popular RPG systems as well, but we’re going to keep those details under wraps until we get a bit closer to those stretch goals.

DL: How did Accursed come about? What started it all?

MV: I was trying to think of a new twist on the “dark fantasy” genre of RPGs, when I started considering some of my favorite touchstones of that concept were actually films like Hellboy and the Monster Squad, comic books like the Creature Commandos, or literature like Solomon Kane. I thought that having a setting where the heroes are monsters teaming up together to fight evil would be a really cool twist on a fantasy RPG, and combining it with some of the tropes I loved from Castlevania and Ravenloft helped firmly cement the idea in my mind.

DL: What are some of the influences behind the Accursed setting?

MV: Well, as I mentioned above, some of the biggest and most prominent influences are Hellboy and Solomon Kane. Castlevania and Ravenloft also have their part in the genesis of Accursed, and the three creators all found some excellent real-world mythology and faerie tales to draw upon as well. Accursed is a setting where all the faerie tales went horribly wrong, so the Brothers Grimm helped us flesh out several pieces of the setting as well.

DL: What were your design philosophies (personal and/or as a company) when planning and working on Accursed?

MV: One thing that was very important to us during the design of the Accursed setting was to take the main theme of the setting—dealing with the curse afflicting your character—and make sure to weave that theme throughout every part of the book. The mechanics, the character options, the sidebars, the GM advice, everything. Another really important element was to ground Accursed in tropes and ideas that people can relate to. For example, all of the Witchbreeds resemble classic monsters from movies and legends, and all the nations of Morden have a link to nations that are in the real world. I think we really brought out the key things that make Accursed unique, especially with how each player’s personal choices of how to deal with his character’s curse affect the story he can tell in Accursed.

DL: What do you have planned for the future of Accursed?

MV: Honestly, a lot of that depends on how well the Kickstarter ends up! We have tons of ideas for areas of Accursed to further develop, from producing more books about the setting (from the Discordian Sea to the forbidding Darkwall Mountains), more books about the Witches and their Banes, books focusing on the individual Witchbreeds, adventures and campaign books, and more. If the gaming community wants more Accursed, we can absolutely provide it!

DL: Our group had a chance to check out a creature from Accursed (the Leech-man). It seemed to be pretty Hardy for a minion. Is this a theme with Accursed creatures? What other differences might players find from their “average” horror/dark fantasy campaigns and settings?

MV: One thing we wanted to give people in the Accursed setting are some truly horrific monsters, creatures that are just disturbing in their very nature. One of the best examples of that are the bloated, slimy leech-men! That being said, there are a lot of nasty creatures in Accursed – these are the Banes, monsters crafted by the Witches to act as soldiers, servants, and slaves. Some of them are quite potent in battle whilst others (such as the murder-doll Manikins) are more frightening than tough.

DL: What is Melior Via going to do next? More Accursed? Have other projects?

MV: Well, as we’ve mentioned before, that has a lot to do with how well the Kickstarter does in the end! If Accursed does really well, we’ve got a lot of plans for more Accursed products down the line. Of course, Melior Via has other projects as well (such as the Hope Preparatory School series for Icons/Mutants and Masterminds), so it is fair to say that you’ll be seeing more from Melior Via in the future!

DL: What is your favorite part of Accursed and why?

MV: I think that all three of us have our own personal favorite piece of the setting, but for me (Ross Watson), I’d have to say that my favorite bit are the guidelines for how a character can develop and grow down the “fate track.” This section of the book discusses what happens when one of the Accursed begins to either embrace his curse and grow more monstrous (but also gaining more vulnerabilities associated with that monstrous form), or deny his curse and attempt to break it (possibly restoring his lost humanity, but also weakening some of his existing monstrous abilities). There are solid reasons, both role-playing and mechanical, for going down either path.

DL: Finally, the most important question: Have you created any strong min/max’d Accursed characters and, if so, what were they? (Need some tips!)

MV: I’ve made quite a few characters for the setting, both for demos of the game in my local area and also for my at-home game of Accursed that I run on a weekly schedule. So far one combination that I’ve found to be quite effective is a melee-focused Vargr with the Strength of the Motherland Edge. In bestial form, the Vargr can be quite a warrior!

We'd like to thank Melior Via for the time and wish them the best with their ongoing Kickstarter!

Fetish Model and Adult Performer Caroline Pierce: My Life As A Gamer

In the latest My Life As A Gamer, I spoke with Caroline Pierce. For those who don't know, Caroline is a fetish model and award winning adult performer. She's a smart and witty woman who you should be following on The Twitter, if you do those sorts of things. I am also hoping to get the chance to play Call of Cthulhu with her and some of her friends in a few weeks. The picture is courtesy of these nice people.

With what game did you get started down the path of tabletop RPGs? About how old were you when you started?
The D&D red box I got when I was 10? 11? I didn't get to play an actual game of D&D (or maybe by then it was AD&D) until I was in high school.

What are some of your favorite games?
My generalized answer is "the games where the people I'm playing with have a genuine enthusiasm for the game they're playing."  Enthusiasm can be contagious, and people that are a fan of a specific game tend to know the game well and don't mind explaining things like timeline and game play and  rules etc.

Specifically, I really love Deadlands: Hell on Earth. I love the system (original not d20), I dig the setting.

I adore Lovecraft anything, and really enjoy Call of Cthulhu, though I've only played the 1920's setting. Good times. My characters seem to always end up maimed in that game.

I'm still a sucker (no pun intended) for the Old World of Darkness Vampire game. (I mean pen & paper, but yeah, I LARPed 20 years ago, for a few years with a really great group of non drama, laid back people. It was SO fun!)

I enjoyed Exalted. I like the world, I think it's fun and fascinating to play in. Plus you roll TONS of dice.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was darned fun the few times I played it. I like "moving at the speed of plot" in a game setting. No rationalizing that your character shouldn't go do something stupid, because of COURSE they should because that's fun and moves the story along.

What is that one game that you have always wanted to play, but never had the chance?

Paranoia.

I've heard about Paranoia from various gaming friends. Both of my regular Las Vegas game groups have mentioned it. It sounds like fun mayhem. I don't know a whole lot about the game itself or the specific game mechanics (death, lots of death, and clones is all I really know about it) but based on my friends' reactions to it when it comes up and the few stories I've heard I want to play it too!

What is the ongoing appeal of tabletop RPGs for you?
Comradery. Using imagination and story telling. Polyhedral dice. Mentally exploring imagined worlds. Being a dork with my friends, and sometimes strangers.

Are you primarily a GM or a Player? Which do you prefer?

I'm a player.  I have the luck of knowing a LOT of gamers, and play with several groups in real life.

In my hometown of Vegas, my main group has several people that GM the various games they know and love (or own and are interested in exploring and learning). If I pick up a game I want to run I'm welcome to run it, but I travel a lot so would be unreliable to GM a weekly game.

My Shadowrun group has a designated GM who's been running SR games for 20 years and has encyclopedic knowledge of the game.

In Los Angeles I'm not around long enough to GM anything more than a one-shot and I haven't done that yet.

Your day job requires acting, how does that help you with getting into or creating characters to play?

It helps me RP conversations (specifically with Mr Johnson in Shadowrun!) I'm fairly good at ad-libbing.

But honestly, I'm the kind of gamer that I don't particularly care what I play as long as I get to play (and the character isn't utterly useless in the game.)  I like to random roll to generate characters if I can.  Backstory and characteristics usually come out of the character creation and the accompanying group of characters.

If you were asked to put together an adaptation of an RPG setting for a movie, what would it be and why?

Oh JEEZ.  In the make-believe world where I could make an RPG into a movie and have it done right. How can a person choose JUST ONE?!

I want to see Shadowrun done as an ongoing television series. Each a stand alone episode but with ongoing story arcs and reoccurring characters. Start in the 2050s. Have flash back episodes that explains important timeline events like when the UGE first showed up, the development to the megacorporations etc. After a few seasons of that then the whole show can get rebooted with the second cataclysm and go into the "current" SR timeline in the 2070s.

I also want to see  Exalted done as an animates series.

Comic Artist Gene Ha: My Life As A Gamer

You may best know artist Gene Ha from his work on the Alan Moore created comic Top 10. That has long been a favorite of mine, and Moore's combination of the police procedural in a super-hero universe with Ha's realistic approach to art is what made me interested. I first "met" Gene Ha years ago on Steve Jackson Game's now closed private forum version of Pyramid Magazine. I also am the proud owner of an signed copy of Top 10 #1 autographed by Ha at an old Chicago Comic Con. We ended up talking about the (then unreleased) GURPS 4th Edition game, much to the chagrin of the artist who was sharing a table with him.

Recently I approached him to answer some questions in one of my Life As A Gamer posts. What follows are the questions, and his answers.

With what game did you get started down the path of tabletop RPGs? About how old were you when you started?
I think I was in third or fourth grade when me and my brothers were introduced to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We started off with the Blue Box, and quickly began assembling the AD&D books with our allowances. Despite the size of the books, it was wonderful how much it left to the imagination. There were no rules for specific wounds or maneuvers: if someone got a great hit the GM had license to describe the goblin’s head flying across the room. Tabletop roleplaying gaming is a form of improv theater. It’s an exercise to expand the imagination.

What are some of your favorite games?

I have a lot of affection for Twilight 2000. In part because the rules are so loose. Mostly because of how loosely written the adventure modules were. They had almost no stats or maps, but they worked great in play. It taught me how to improvise details once you had a solid plot.

I also love Robin Laws’ Feng Shui. Mathematically it’s a messy rule set, but the gaming advice was brilliant. It took the example I’d learned from Twilight 2000 and turned it into a philosophy. These are lessons I’ve carried into my comics artwork. When you make a script or rough sketches or pencils, always leave room for improvisation at the next stage. Don’t try to define every little detail right away. Future you is at least as creative as present moment you.

I love the idea of Microscope. I’m really eager to try it out some day.

What is the ongoing appeal of tabletop RPGs for you?
It’s exactly the same appeal as going on a road trip with a really geeky pal. It’s talking crazy ideas with my best friends. That’s the heart of it. I’m not a convention gaming guy, I don’t like gaming with a group of strangers. I’m in it more for the company and the resulting ideas than the game itself.

Are you primarily a GM or a Player? Which do you prefer?
I’d love to GM, but to do it really well takes preparation. My friend +Lowell Francis  (http://ageofravens.blogspot.com/) has given me a high standard for table running. He knows the rules backwards and forwards, he’s picked out musical tracks for probable dramatic beats, and he never lets the narrative slow down. It’s glorious to behold.

It’s like grilling a great steak. It looks simple, but I don’t have the time and tools to make a properly dry aged and grilled steak at home, so I leave it to the masters. I’m a player, because my obsessive comics work doesn’t leave room to become great at another hobby.

As an artist, is your approach to gaming different, do you think? Do you create characters/settings from a visual perspective first?

When I was a teenage Dungeon Master my older brother would stop the game if NPC actions or the setting made no sense. This made me appreciate well told minor characters in every media. Every character has their own story and reasons. Buildings are built and adapted to how the people in them live. When I draw I try to think this through. I like to start with a simple visual cue for a character, but how I flesh it out comes from gaming.

If you could work on a comic adaptation of any RPG, what would it be and why?

I’d love to do something like Jared Sorenson's octaNe: premium uNleaded, if not a licensed comic. I suspect he borrowed some ideas from my comic Oktane so I don’t feel guilty with the thought. It’s a game set in a “psychotronic” post-apocalyptic America where Elvis impersonating samurai monkeys cruise the outlaw highways with extraterrestrial luchadores and genetically engineered warrior nuns. If I ever meet Clay Moore I’d love to see if he’d be interested.

If you have one of your comics adapted to an RPG, which would it be and why?

Other than Oktane, my genius GM friend Lowell told me he’d like to run a campaign inspired by Global Frequency using the Hollowpoint rules. That makes me very, very proud.

Writer and Artist Jim Zub: My Life As A Gamer

Being the writer of comics like Skullkickers and the Pathfinder adaptation from Dynamite Comics, it probably shouldn't surprise anyone that Jim Zub is a gamer. Jim Zub is a writer, artist and art instructor based in Toronto, Canada. Over the past ten years he’s worked for a diverse array of publishing, movie and video game clients including Disney, Warner Bros., Capcom, Hasbro, Bandai-Namco and Mattel. He is also a project manager for UDON Entertainment (which a few of you should probably know about).

He took some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for me about his life as a gamer.

With what game did you get started down the path of tabletop RPGs? About how old were you when you started?

My brother and I received the classic D&D Basic ‘Red Box’ when I was around 8 years old and he was 12. Our older cousins got us hooked on D&D and we played voraciously, even though the rules were really confusing to us at times. We didn’t realize there was a difference between D&D and AD&D at first, so we were mixing and matching rule books and modules from both systems. We figured it out eventually.

What are some of your favorite games?

I’ve been playing RPGs for almost 30 years and have gone through all sorts of phases where a particular game really hit the spot. A few high points, old and new: D&D, Call of Cthulhu, TMNT and Other Strangeness, Robotech, Vampire the Masquerade, Feng Shui, Adventure! and Pathfinder.

What is the ongoing appeal of tabletop RPGs for you?

I love the collaborative storytelling nature of it. Everyone at the table is going to contribute to the story and we don’t know exactly where it’ll go but we’re all involved. There’s a wonderful spontaneity to it. With the right group just about any game system or setting can be enjoyable and entertaining.

Are you primarily a GM or a Player? Which do you prefer?
Since high school I’ve primarily been the GM. I like managing the world and NPCs that whirl around the cast, rolling with the players’ choices and expectations.

How is comic writing different from making up stuff for a game? How do the two processes complement each other for you?

Running a good tabletop game is about balancing player needs and everyone’s entertainment, while writing comics is about creating a more cohesive plot and dramatic pacing. They both involve a lot of creativity, but GMing a game isn’t just about one story or a singular narrative voice.

Playing and running games has taught me a lot about how characters interact and made it far easier for me to “get into character”. I imagine characters in a scene, I know their motivations and I’m able to generate dialogue that reflects their personality.

If you could write a comic adaptation of any RPG, what would it be and why?

Dungeons & Dragons obviously springs to mind. The name carries such powerful nostalgia for me and gamers at large. Having a D&D story in my repertoire would be pretty great. If it could be a comic story set in the kooky Planescape campaign setting, even better.

I’d also be thrilled to push outside of people’s expectations of my work and do something darker like Call of Cthulhu or Vampire the Masquerade. They’re both great properties with atmospheric and emotional intensity.

If you have one of your comics adapted to an RPG, which would it be and why?
Skullkickers is the natural choice, of course. It’s my love letter to RPGs and sword & sorcery that marinates itself in the pulp fantasy tropes I learned from tabletop gaming. It would complete some sort of cosmic cycle of game-comic-game that would probably tear a hole in the fabric of our reality.

ConTessa Panel on Hangout/Online Gaming

For the last year or so I have run a regular weekly game by Google+ Hangouts. We rotate things, and have even switching off GMing a couple of times, but we have had mostly that same core group of people for the weekly game that entire time. I told the story of how our G+ Hangout on the Air gaming started in a couple of posts here on the blog already, so I won't go into that. But after doing this, both in live broadcast and private hangouts, I was asked to join the panel and talk about using Hangouts for online gaming.

The panel was run by +ConTessa organizer +Stacy Dellorfano, and the other panelists were +Kristin Carlson (of +Roll20), +Rachel Ventura (of +Frog God Games) and +David Rollins (of Canada). David has done a lot of playtesting via Hangout, and he and Stacy are in my weekly hacked Swords & Wizardry game. There were varying levels of experience with Hangout Gaming, so that added some depth to how we addressed things. Rachel and Kristin also gave their experiences with using Virtual Tabletops (VTTs) in online gaming. It was very informative.

I was resistance to online gaming for a very long time, but I am glad that I have started doing it, because I have spent the last year gaming with a great group of people that I now consider to be (almost) friends. Seriously, though, if you haven't tried Hangout gaming, or any version of online gaming, because it "isn't the same as gaming face to face," I really think that you should at least give it a try. This has been some great gaming that I would have missed out on if I hadn't decided to give it a try last year.

Dorkland! Roundtable with John Wick

I spoke to John Wick about his background in gaming on the Dorkland! Roundtable. As many of these have ended up, he and I talked more than a bit about the impact of Kickstarter on tabletop RPGs and how publishers and designers who wish to remain successful at crowdfunding need to establish an economy of trust with their customers. More and more, I think, those publishers and designers who misspend the money raised through Kickstarter as well as their time with chronically late projects will find it harder and harder to raise money through this method.

Check out our conversation, and see us talk about all of this and more.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Matt Finch

I spoke with +Matt Finch on the Dorkland! Roundtable. A lot of you probably know him as the creator of Swords & Wizardry, but you may not know that as the original developer of OSRIC, he is probably responsible for starting up the whole retroclone trend that has hit gaming.

We spent time talking about why retroclones are a good thing, and various bits and pieces about old school gaming. If you haven't checked out our talk, you should give it a watch.

Comic Writer Cullen Bunn: My Life As A Gamer

Some of the regular comic readers who follow Dorkland! may recognize Cullen Bunn from his comic writing comic books for Oni Press (The Sixth Gun, Helheim, The Damned, and The Tooth) and Marvel Comics (Fearless Defenders, Deadpool Killustrated, Venom, Wolverine, and Spider-Man: Season One), but what you may not know is that he is also a long time tabletop RPG gamer. A recent tweet that he made on his Twitter stream caused me to contact him and ask him a few questions about his gaming. These are the answers that he made.

With what game did you get started down the path of tabletop RPGs? About how old were you when you started?

I’m pretty sure it was Dungeons and Dragons. When I was in second grade, a friend of mine brought his older brother’s copy of Tomb of Horrors to school. At lunch, we poured over the art book that was included in the module. There was so much imagination in those pages… and I was hooked. Tomb of Horrors, Barrier Peaks, Castle Amber… those were some of the first adventures I played… and I loved them. I didn’t live really close to a lot of gamers, so I started playing these single-player RPGS from Heritage Games. They came with miniatures, paints, and a little adventure booklet. Cleric’s Quest was the one I most remember.

Later, I joined a D&D club at the local library, where I played great adventures like The Lost City, Against the Giants, and Descent into the Depths of the Earth.

We played on the school bus in the afternoons and during lunch. Whenever we could find some time.
As I got a little older, we played once a week at my house, and we started breaking into games other than D&D… notably Villains and Vigilantes, Star Frontiers, Twilight 2000, and homegrown games like a Transformers game we came up with called Robots and Renegades. I remember that one quite fondly.

I got out of gaming for a few years, but around the time Dark Sun was popular, I was drawn back into it. I had a steady group of gamers for a while after that, but for the last several years my gaming has been sporadic at best. Recently, I started talking to some folks about getting a new regular game going, but we’ll see how that goes.

What are some of your favorite games?

There are a number of games that I really like from a game system or game world standpoint, but most of my favorite games are tied directly to campaigns or even a single night of gaming that really stood out for me. Dungeons and Dragons (Basic and Expert, Advanced, 2nd edition, and 3.5), Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Villains and Vigilantes, GURPS (in particular the Horror, Space, and Vampire settings), Dark Conspiracy, Vampire: the Masquerade, Deadlands, QAGS, and (my all-time favorite) Call of Cthulhu.

What is the ongoing appeal of tabletop RPGs for you?

At their best, role-playing games can be great exercises in collaborative storytelling. My favorite games are the ones where everyone is really engaged in telling a great story and building interesting characters, regardless of rolling dice and the rules and such. Sure, there’s an appeal to rolling dice and bashing monsters, but that’s not my favorite aspect of gaming. If mechanics and the like were the only appeal, I’d stick with card games or board games. Also, getting together with friends for a few hours every couple of weeks is always fun.

Are you primarily a GM or a Player? Which do you prefer?

I much prefer being a GM. There are only a couple of other players (primarily with Call of Cthulhu, Dark Conspiracy, and D&D) who have GM’d a game that I enjoyed. Maybe I’m too much of a control freak.

How is comic writing different from making up stuff for a game? How do the two processes compliment each other for you?

I don’t know that there’s a lot of crossover for me, especially because I don’t seem to have much time for gaming right now. Sometimes, working on a game can be a nice break from outlining a comic. And if I’m experiencing writer’s block, a little gaming can sometimes help break those barriers. (I think focusing on another type of story can get the wheels turning on other projects.) For most of my RPG games, though, I have an initial rough outline of what’s happening in the world, and then I just let the players derail it.

If you could write a comic adaptation of any RPG, what would it be and why?

There’s such a broad range. I think Dungeons and Dragons could be rip-roaring fun. I believe a Vampire: the Masquerade comic could be a good, moody, intrigue-heavy book. Gamma World or Dark Conspiracy… or maybe even something like Nightbane or Whispering Vault… might also be a blast from a sheer craziness standpoint.

If you have one of your comics adapted to an RPG, which would it be and why?

I think The Sixth Gun is the best fantasy comic that role-players could buy from a sheer “idea vault” point of view… and I’d love to see an RPG based on that book. If it ever happened, I’d love to see the rulebook as a resource and guidebook to the world of The Sixth Gun, something gamers and non-gamers could enjoy.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Anthony Gallela

I spoke with Anthony Gallela on the Dorkland! Roundtable. As a former Executive Director for GAMA (gaming's one and only trade association), I thought that it would make for some interesting background to talk about that for a bit. Most John Q. Gamers aren't really all that familiar with GAMA and what it does for gaming, so I thought it would make for some interesting listening.

We also talked about his time as a designer of RPGs and board games, and we spent a bit of time talking about the Theatrix diceless game that he was a designer of, and how Star Trek influenced the design of the game (hint: it was originally intended to be the system for a licensed Star Trek game).

Dorkland! Roundtable with Jeff Dee

I spoke with +Jeff Dee on the Dorkland! Roundtable. Apparently a couple of the questions about the early days of TSR were a bit too far back for a clear remembrance, but I think that I did get some interesting stories about the early days of TSR out of him.

We did talk about the background of Villains & Vigilantes, how it came about because of one of the deep, philosophical questions that only comic fans worry about (which you can find out about in the video). We also talked a lot about his work as an artist and his recent embracing of Kickstarter.

Chaosium Q&A For The Call of Cthulhu 7e Kickstarter

In light of the Kickstarter campaign for the new edition of Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium Games, I sent the company an email with some questions about the campaign and the changes to the game. These are the answers that I received from Chaosium's Charlie Krank:

Chaosium seems to have jumped into the Kickstarter paradigm pretty wholeheartedly. For an established company like Chaosium, does that come with any risks to the established distribution channels and do the benefits outnumber the risks?
We have not jumped in wholeheartedly at all. Our current Kickstarter is only our second campaign and we have a third planned for the future, but Kickstarter is another way for us to publish our books. Usually we must print a book, convince a distributor to carry it, who then convinces a retail store to buy it, who sells it to our fans. With Kickstarter we reverse the flow of interest; we directly interact with our customers who end up with a book they want. Their energy and excitement then flows to the store owner and up to the distributor.

Do you worry that you might be taking some of the audience from gaming stores with a successful Kickstarter? If enough of your existing audience is buying the game directly from Chaosium, where does that leave the stores?
Of course. There have been similar worries throughout the history of roleplaying and in many other industries. After MAGIC was released, many distributors worried that WOTC would go direct to the retailers. Similar worries accompany the proliferation of downloadable books vs. print books. Wise stores do what successful stores have always done: focus on customer service and product knowledge.

Also, the potential market for a product is not defined by the whole of the Kickstarter audience. In the end, both we and the customers build a better product that will eventually hit the "normal" distribution chain, and should be more attractive to all customers.

What sorts of changes to their approaches to publishing does a company like Chaosium face when dealing with something like Kickstarter? Have there been speedbumps in the process for you guys, and if so what have they been?

Kickstarter result in changes and improvements to a project. Having published roleplaying games and supplements for many years, we understand that these are complex projects. For example, our BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS campaign was the result of ten years of effort.

There always are speed bumps, and I think that is where your skill comes into play--mitigating the delaying effects of such bumps.

Call of Cthulhu is one of the oldest tabletop RPGs that have been in continuous publication. Most of the contemporaries in RPG publishing for Chaosium have either faded away, changed hands or disappeared completely. A lot of people are asking why a game like this has to change. What do you say to those questions?
For a product such as a roleplaying game to survive for more than 30 years in this marketplace it needs to be refreshed occasionally. It has been almost 12 years since the last edition of Call of Cthulhu was published. The new edition streamlines some of the combat rules and opposition rolls.

What are some of the changes that have been made to the game for this new edition? Can you also explain some of the reasons behind why these changes have been made?

As always, our primary consideration is telling a good story and having fun. We try to keep our rules intuitive and out-of-the-way of the Keeper's narrative. We noticed that the system occasionally results in "no-effect" combat rounds; so we tried to smooth combat just a bit. We extended the use of some mechanics already used in the game, making them more consistently-applied.

Besides a successful Kickstarer, what would make a game like Call of Cthulhu of interest to newer gamers? When the game first came out, there wasn't much in the way of horror gaming but now there is a lot more competition in the market. What sets this new edition apart from other games out there?

Call of Cthulhu is, first and foremost, a game in which ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary, and sanity-threatening, situations. The thrill comes from seeing if your character, lacking the powers, magic, and armor of (essentially) super-hero knights and wizards, can prevail against superhuman enemies. Lacking the accoutrements of the high-powered roleplaying systems, your sense of achievement is the greater should your characters prevail. I think this results in a more memorable, and satisfying, roleplaying experience.

You have set a tight window for publishing the new edition. Do you have any worries that you will be late?

Yeah, it is tight. I had hoped to begin it a month or two ago but life events intervened. I always worry that books will be late, but the rules have been written and in revision for more than a year, so we have been working up to this point. What we need to know is the final shape of the books. It is fun to work with the fans, to learn what is important and fun for them, and to try to surprise them in the end.

Besides, what would be a better release day than Halloween?

Dorkland! Roundtable with C.A. Suleiman

I spoke with White Wolf Developer/Designer C.A. Suleiman on the Dorkland! Roundtable. We talked about his time in the gaming business, working for companies like Wizards of the Coast and Green Ronin on projects like Eberron and Hamunaptra. We talked about his recent work for White Wolf on the Mummy RPG as well as his music.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Patrick Kapera

I spoke with +Patrick Kapera of Crafy Games about many things on the Dorkland! Roundtable. We discussed the history of the development of Spycraft, how that lead to Fantasy Craft and how designers who'd made a book as big as Spycraft 2.0 could then do something as small as the Mistborn Adventure Game. It was a good talk, and it gave some interesting insights into Patrick's and Crafty's processes, as well as looking at how they approach the development of a new RPG.

We had a slight technical glitch at one point, so just bear with us at that point.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Sean Fannon

I talked with long time game designer and industry insider Sean Fannon on the Dorkland! Roundtable. He has worn a lot of hats in the gaming business and we tried to talk about as many of those hats as possible in the time that we had.

We also spent some time talking about his upcoming game Shaintar (he even gave us an advanced preview of the cover art sans tradedress):

It was a good talk and we managed to squeeze a lot of Sean's history and current doings into the interview.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Ross Watson

I spoke with designer (and soon to be publisher) Ross Watson about a number of things from his time working with companies like Games Workshop and Fantasy Flight Games on their licensed properties. There is a lot of wisdom in his answers about dealing with licensed properties.

We also spent a lot of time talking about miniatures. It is a pretty well-known fact that I am not a miniatures person, but like the time spent with +Eddy Webb talking about LARPing, I did find it interesting to find out more about an aspect of gaming that I have never engaged with. One of the things that I like about these talks is that I am getting to talk about, and learn about, parts of the overall "stream" of what we all consider to be gaming that I've never dealt with before. Even if it isn't something that I would use in my gaming personally, it is still good to look behind the curtains and see the though processes of others and how they approach their styles of play.

Hopefully this talk will be informative to someone who is an unknowledgeable about miniatures, and I hope that I asked just the right stupid questions.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Mark Truman

Once again I find myself falling behind with posting my Dorkland! Roundtables here to my blog. Things have been busy the last couple of week, with the build up to the Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day, and all that sort of fun stuff, so other things have lagged. Fear not! That doesn't mean that I am ignoring my Dorkland! Roundtables (I do prefer to let them percolate over on G+ and my YouTube channel for a while anyway).

I spoke with +Mark Diaz Truman of Magpie Games, creator of such fine games as The Play's The Thing and Last Best Hope.

We spent a lot of time talking about the impact of Kickstarter on tabletop RPG publishing, and I think that Mark brought up a lot of good points on how to engage a community before, during and after your Kickstarter to help maximize the appeal of attention grabbingness (yes, I just made up that word) of a game. For better or worse, depending on the project, Kickstarter has changed how role-playing games are taken to market, or sold to people in general.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Eddy Webb

I spoke with Eddy Webb of CCP/White Wolf on the Dorkland! Roundtable recently. It was a good talk and we spent some time talking about all things LARP and LARPing. I've never done any LARPing, so it was an interesting discussion for me. It is good to see how other people approach their modes of gaming, and to learn how you can take the approaches from LARPs and tabletop RPGs and see how you can apply them to each other.

Hero Games' Steve Long On The Dorkland! Roundtable

I think that the Hero System gets a bit of a bad rap among gamers. Yeah, it can be a complicated approach to gaming but without variety we would all be playing the exact same dungeon crawls still. I talked with Steve Long about Hero Games, its history and some of the flack that it gets from gamers on the Dorkland! Roundtable. Say what you will about the Hero System, but Steve Long is a man who is passionate about gaming and about the Hero System and this passion came through in the interview. I hope that you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed talking with him.

Green Ronin's Chris Pramas on The Dorkland! Roundtable

I spoke recently with Chris Pramas of Green Ronin Publishing about his history as a gamer, designer and publisher. We talked about trying to expand fantasy gaming in new directions, with settings like Testament and The Trojan War and games like Blue Rose. We also talk a bit about how gamers react to the "different" that they ask for.

Also be sure to check out Green Ronin's Kickstarter for a new Pathfinder edition of Freeport (ending in just 8 days from the time of this post).

Dorkland! Roundtable with Richard Iorio

Last week I spoke with Rouge Games' +Richard Iorio II about his history as a gamer, getting into designing and his work with getting Rogue Games going, and his games Colonial Gothic and Shadow, Sword & Spell. We spent a lot of time talking about older games and what about them motivated his current approaches to designing games.