Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
I was probably making a cup of tea, as I usually am.
I just stared into the middle distance and thought “all role-playing games are either High Art or Fanfic” with a force that made me know that it was fundamentally true – which meant, on some level, it must be fundamentally false.
All dichotomies are false. You can never take this too seriously, as it’s a classic The Map Is Not The Territory trap.
However, given a certain definition of Fanfic and High Art, I think it’s can be a useful map. When I say “a certain definition” I mean “Mine.”
Or, at least, the ones I’ve stolen.
Big caveat first: both are used in a purely descriptive way, with no implication of quality. High art is not high quality. Fanfic is not low quality. Both Fanfic and High art are things I love and applaud. I am using them solely to describe what the game is trying to do.
The definition of fanfic I find most useful is one I picked up from Elizabeth Minkel – and I hope Elizabeth will excuse my flattening of a more complicated position.
In short: fanfic is literature plus community.
Specifically, community plus transformative literature – fiction that takes existing things and then does some more, in their own way, in the way they like it. There’s another caveat there, but it’s only going to come back right at the end of the essay.
The “community” aspect is important for various reasons, not least it drills down to what makes modern fanfic what it is. You can say (and I have said) that Inferno is just Dante’s Christian self-insert fic, and while that has a use and illuminates several truths, it also conceals other truths. It’s the sort of error people make when they say “superhero comics are the modern equivalent to mythology!” Yeah, it’s true, as long as you ignore all the things which make them clearly different things, using overlapping techniques, for different reasons, to different effects, in a completely different social system.
Modern fanfic is born of the proliferation of connected fan communities, the ability to share the work and corporate ownership of stories. If you just boil it down to “transformative works” it loses so much.
The point being: the vast majority of RPGs are fanfic. They start with the love of another work, that they want to make their own version thereof, and share it with a community. If fanfic is community (around a table) plus (improvised) literature, one can easily see the vast majority of what we think of as roleplaying games as fanfic.
The success of a fanfic RPG is born of the ability for players to scratch an itch. It is about a shared love and interest. It doesn’t matter if the world you’re in is originally designed. It doesn’t matter if the world is originally created by the players around the table. These games are about satisfying that fannish urge, and the design of those games about how they can best mimic and recreate the things which one loves in another piece of work.
Even if it’s actually itself. Those most successful fanfic works then become new things which create further fanfic. D&D started as a fanfic game about many other things. It became the thing which everyone’s D&D games are fanfic of.
To stress the point, fanfic is a descriptive term – in fact, a celebratory term. This is great. We all love this. In fact, the fanfic games often lead to some of the best design where they work out how best to create games that bring to games what one love in another form. The inspiration and the challenge is the point.
PBTA games and their families are especially good at this. Let’s take Brindlewood Bay by way of illustration. It’s a Murder She Wrote vs Lovecraft mash-up – immediately illustrating that a concept doesn’t need to exist in another genre to fall under fanfic. The game finds mechanics which both add creeping horror to the improvised-no-set-solution mystery system, which leads to a game which follows the structure of a genius detective inevitably solving a mystery. This is all really smart design.
I think that most roleplaying games are living fanfic. Literature we love in a community around the table who also loves it is absolutely the point and the joy. Most games are fanfic. Shout it.
“High Art” is actually simpler, and needs less detail.
The fanfic games are about a community gathering together with a game which lets them have a shared experience of akin to something they love.
High Art games are ones where the game exists to embody the perspective of a designer about something they want to communicate and share with a community who’ve gathered to have this experience. Their appeal is not derivative or transformative works. Their appeal is whatever their appeal is.
A High Art game is one where the designer has something to say, and works out how to structure a game to do whatever they want to do. You may be able to say “if you like this sort of thing, you’ll like this” but you won’t be able to say, “If you like this thing, this is what you need to play to scratch this exact itch”.
To boil it all down?
Fanfic games are primarily inspired by works of art.
High Art games are primarily inspired by the designer’s life.
Let’s do some examples from my own games.
DIE RPG is a fanfic game. Perhaps ironically, it’s a fanfic game of Stephanie and my comic, designed to try and create the experiences and dilemmas of the comic via the rituals and mechanics of the game. But fanfic of your own creation is still fanfic.
How Do Aliens Do It? is a high art game. It exists to put you in the place of teenagers who don’t know how sex works, using the fiction of aliens and the Carved By Brindlewood mechanics to do so. It’s about me trying to explain what it was like being a teenager in the 1990s.
Come Dice With Me is my ultimate fanfic game. It was written after toxic lockdown overexposure to the British Competitive Dinner party show. At one point I saw the matrix, and saw how one could get the appeal of the show into a one-off shortform game. I fear Come Dice With Me is the best design I’ve ever written.
Amble is a high art game, born of talking on the phone to friends while walking during Covid, and thinking about the strangeness of distance and seeing things the other wasn’t, and finding a way to transform that structure into a game. It’s a sleight, throwaway design, designed to do what it does and no more.
My current noodling thing, Working Title Primacy, is about historical and space-fantasy epics, rotating around using the Paragon system for scale and something new-ish to get the sense of historical biographies scale and velocity. It’s got a lot of ideas, but it is all about me trying to create a certain sensation which I know I love, and I know other people do, and wanting them to be part of it.
A thing I’ve abandoned for now, Time To Go, is an interesting one, and shows the strain of my dichotomy. It is based around me watching 2 years of TV kids show In The Night Garden. It is clearly designed to ape the structure of this specific TV show. Its rhythms are that show’s rhythms. Players narrative in simple sentences, and only speak by saying their name repeatedly. The GM – a narrator – speaks evenly, no matter what. You play archetypes inspired by the core cast. It’s surely fanfic, right?
I think it’s firmly in High Art corner.
There’s a Situationist concept called Détournement. It’s complicated, as the Situationists usually are, but the core (for me) is summed up by a quote in the above link: “turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself”. Which I’d bend a little into “turning the expressions of a capitalist system to your entire ends, with no thought to their original purpose or any appeal herein”
Basically, if you transform a media so much that its appeal is entirely separate to whatever it was, it’s probably High Art.
I originally wrote “or antagonistic to” but I think the anger implicit there actually keeps those works in the fanfic corner, the critique of the thing (not the system) being the point. To flip over to music, a cover version is fanfic. Sampling a record and wanting people to recognise the sample is probably fanfic. Sampling a record and using it in a way people will likely never spot is probably high art.
Time To Go is a game about the fact your child will never remember these early years of their life, when their imagination was feral. Its intended vibe is Toy Story meets Millencholia. You may see why I’ve left it alone for now. It’s not exactly a fun game to write.
When I told Quinns about Time To Go, he urged me to lose all that extra stuff, as folks would love the core game. Doing a toddler TV show game would be lots of fun. I agree. That sounds great. I said no, because this isn’t a game about a shared love. It’s about sharing the specific vision of the world. That’s why I’m doing it, and if you lose “why you’re doing it?” from a creative endeavour, it becomes pointless.
If there’s a point to this essay, it’s that. As I said, these tools – these maps – aren’t real, but they are lenses one can observe something and see what they reveal, both about it and you. Some of this will be post hoc – when I rejected Quinns’ fair observation, it was me knowing instinctively that it was moving a game towards the fanfic corner, and that was contrary to my goals. I don’t think I had the words to cleanly then, and I think now I do. They’re these ones.
This dichotomy is a way to question your own work, and your goals, because making a clear decision there guides everything else. Knowing if this is doing one thing or another thing lets you make choices to enhance the desired result. To know what your game’s about requires you to know what the game is about.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2604.19 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3944 days ago & DAD = 598 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
I was probably making a cup of tea, as I usually am.
I just stared into the middle distance and thought “all role-playing games are either High Art or Fanfic” with a force that made me know that it was fundamentally true – which meant, on some level, it must be fundamentally false.
All dichotomies are false. You can never take this too seriously, as it’s a classic The Map Is Not The Territory trap.
However, given a certain definition of Fanfic and High Art, I think it’s can be a useful map. When I say “a certain definition” I mean “Mine.”
Or, at least, the ones I’ve stolen.
And continue on gleefully. This was fun, actually. There’s a couple of bits I’d have teased a bit more – namely stressing community interacts with “high art” games as much as “fanfic” games – but it went down well, and was fun to do, the latter is the main point of the endeavour.
Charlie Jane writes about writing believable characters in unbelievable situations. I think of this a lot. The “An unwillingness to follow the plot” got me hmming. I sometimes think that a big part of what we consider “genre” is the stuff which passes without comment, because you have to accept it to get to the stuff people are there for. I also admire Charlie Jane putting all this stuff out here. I’m interested that whenever I do talk craft, I talk the equivalent of sentence structure, and that’s fairly common for comic creators. I have theories on that, of course, as I have theories on everything.
It’s a good one, I think, and the last one for now – the Quick Start will be coming later in the year, and we have something a little larger than this planned for the end of the year. Which I need to start designing properly, actually. Phew.
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The Open Hearth podcast, where people in the community talk about what they’ve been playing, covered DIE RPG in a recent podcast, which was a really nice surprise. Lowell and company really dig into the game, and highlight some of the things I’m always relieved to see in play. The Rorschach test nature of DIE is very much part of the beast, and this is some high level play (whatever that means)
* Laurie Penny writes about her autism diagnosis, and the impact on their life: “Critics bemoan an “epidemic” of “overdiagnosis”, but over time, the number of people with autistic traits has stayed pretty consistent. What has changed is how many of us know. So many that there’s now a standard way to tell the rest of this story. I’m supposed to reassure you with an upbeat tale of self-acceptance. Instead I’m going to make things awkward and tell the truth.”
Talking about that, there was a thing going around the socials of a berserk emotion wheel, with an AI making up emotions that sounded like something Lovecraft squeezed out. I had a bunch of people tag me, joking that it should make it into a DIE expansion.
I mentioned I was playing Jay Dragon’s in-progress game The Seven Part Pact a few weeks back? I wrote up a few thoughts about the experience. By which I mean, I wrote 2500 words and barely scratched the surface.
I was asked if I wanted to be a wizard for a week. I said yes.
It was a playtest of Jay Dragon’s the Seven Part Pact, where up-to-seven (we did six) players are all academic wizards in a fantasy realm (Think Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) Each has a title, and an area of magic that’s their domain (think the Wizard of Earthsea). Each’s domain is also an area of responsibility, to ensure it doesn’t fall apart (think, Sandman). They form a found-family of arseholes, each a being of almost unimaginable power, pursuing their own desires and schemes and often butting heads (think Amber). Each also takes a dual role, taking the tasks often reserved to the GM in a specific area – so, for example, the Faustian as a character is about demonic magic and preventing satan from escaping… but is also plays as the The Keeper of the Chains, who is called upon to make the complications in the world.
The Seven Part Pact is a GM-full game. I think it’s the only GM-full game.
Jim and I took time to write up another of the campaigns recently – in which case, it was the 2D20 version of Conan. I say things like…
Conversely, I made Conan, but Mesopotamian, and started my slow march to becoming a combine harvester with legs, as is my wont. There’s probably room for some self-analysis when presented to a game with more crunch than most the things I play, I’ll inevitably min-max some combat monster, because I care enough about system mastery to do the job, but I will never learn your crunchy magic system, not for you, not for anyone,
Jim Shooter passed this week. Here’s the Beat’s collection of people’s remembrances all of which seem to use the word “complicated”. I only crossed paths at him once, when we were at MCM. I was rushing to try and get somewhere, and saw a guest-helper I knew and asked her to help. She was standing with an amazingly tall man. I got directions and legged it, and was 10m away when I realised “wait – that was Jim Shooter.” I haven’t got much to say about Shooter but he really was very tall.
Okay, I’ll slip this in here. I ran an early playtest for a game I’m noodling with on The Open Hearth, and have just lobbed a recording of the session there. First part of four. This is character and world gen (which is mostly integrated in the game proper) and sliding into the prologue and the start of the actual main Campaign loop. It’s kind of a game about playing the Primarchs leading up to the Horus Heresy, powered by the Pargaon system. Very early yet, but I’m definitely in an active tweaking variables and approaches to see how they work. You’ll see me realising that I need to go ahead with the deck-stacking (and building) for the GM idea.
To head back to what the Conan-esque school’s philosophy: it sees humans as individuals who have a fundamental capacity by themselves. Sure, other people can help them… but they are them, and their victories are their own. Through this filter, it’s one of the tells of the culture where Dungeons & Dragons emerged – American, the country where the all-men-are-an-island libertarian philosophy took root.
Conversely, the Seven Part Pact is interested in modelling a different model of individuals – that, no, we’re really not individuals in that way, and that labour (often unseen, uncredited, under-appreciated) enables whatever these “hero” figures do.
Fantasy is infinite. There's no end of things to say.
Yes, that's me throwing my usual gnomic hyperbole around, but that was really what Stephanie and I were trying for. We wanted to make a device to do stories about fantasy (primarily through the medium of games) for as long as we wanted to do it. I sort of pair DIE with Phonogram (Jamie McKelvie and my book on Music) which had a similar remit. As in, let's make a device robust enough to return to as often as we need to.
That's really true in DIE — the main reason I wrote DIE RPG was I wanted to invite as many people inside this concept as we could. That we're doing the DIE quickstart in comic format speaks to that as well. We wanted to have something relatively inexpensive out there when the first issue of DIE: Loaded drops which they can see on the shelves next to the comic, grab, and try out.
There's no end of stories in DIE. And, to lead back to the question, that includes for us. We're not finished with DIE, and DIE isn't finished with us.
And as the quote explains, you’ll also note that it’s not the only DIE entering your comic shop on November 11th. There’s also this beauty…
It’s a DIE RPG Quickstart. This is the same as the larger one, but reformatted to be comic size. It’s basically the most accessible way you can get a taste of the DIE RPG, and take it out for a spin, and should be on the shelves the same week as the first issue.
After the first issue, I’m also planning to include more beta rules in the back of the comic too. I suspect most will be custom rules to bring the actual DIE gods into the game, as the gods have a key role in the story this time, but as the article says, I also have some other ideas.
Oh, and making this a REALLY big week for DIE RPG rules, the community licence has gone live. This means people can release, write and even sell their own DIE RPG contents. It’s based on the normal Rook Rowan & Decard one, with a few DIE-specific tweaks. You can read it here. Basically, want to do your own DIE supplement? Follow the rules, and you’re sorted.
In short: DIE’s coming back, but being an amoral god that exists outside time and space, it’s also never been away.
It’s the week leading up to retailers ordering DIE: Loaded. This means it’s time for you (beloved reader) to talk to your retailer about getting a copy and for me (broken writer) to walk you through it all.
DIE: Loaded is Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowles and my own sequel to our three-time Hugo Award winning DIE. Our joke one liner is “Goth Jumanji” which works. It’s a story about fantasy, reality, our faded dreams and what games teach us. Folks seemed to like it a lot.
(Do spread the teaser around and the binding site. If you’re on instagram, reposting into your story or reposting is hugely appreciated. If you want to link the binding elsewhere, this bit.ly/dieloaded is a bit easier to remember than the full link.)
Anyway - that’s the why. Let’s talk hard details of what we’re putting out.
At the top is Stephanie’s cover, which is our main cover A – I’ll include all the order codes at the bottom, rather than spreading them out.
Our guest artist for the first issue is Peach Momoko. We’re trying something different with Peach – she’s such a popular artist, with both the general audience and the hardcore collectors. So we decided to do something to serve both groups. She’s the freely orderable variant as our B cover, and a rare 1:50 virgin variant for collectables.
It’s not just the A cover for Stephanie. She’s also providing a unique 1:25 variant with our lovely Fox motif, and our Youngblood tie-in cover to celebrate the Image icon’s return. It’s available in the colour, as shown, and a black and white edition.
We’re also doing a Very DIE-styled Blank Sketch Variant. Compatible with DIE RPG and any game which uses Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma. There’s probably another one of them.
Oh – plus the 56 page DIE RPG Quickstart is available for pre-order too. If you’ve been tempted by all things DIE, it’s an ideal chance to get this single-comic-format edition to try it out.
DIE LOADED #1 CVR A STEPHANIE HANS -
0925IM0266DIE DIE LOADED #1 CVR B PEACH MOMOKO VAR - 0925IM0267
DIE LOADED #1 CVR C YOUNGBLOOD TEAM UP VAR - 0925IM8026
DIE LOADED #1 CVR D BLANK SKETCH VAR - 0825IM8405
DIE LOADED #1 CVR E 1:25 STEPHANIE HANS VAR - 0825IM8406
DIE LOADED #1 CVR F 1:50 PEACH MOMOKO VIRGIN VAR - 0825IM8407
DIE LOADED #1 CVR G YOUNGBLOOD TEAM UP BW VIRGIN VA- 0925IM8030
DIE RPG QUICKSTART GAME GUIDE #1 - 0925IM0268
Okay – that’s it. Strange to do a shopping list like this. In truth, it’s not a quest. Go to a shop, tell your retailer you want DIE, and they’ll be happy to provide.
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January Image Solicits are out! I’m not even sure if I did the December ones? Oh well.
DIE LOADED #3 Creators: (W) Kieron Gillen (A/CA) Stephanie Hans Alt cover: Maurgerite Sauvage
Did you ever wonder: “Was Sauron’s mum sad? She had such hopes for him.” Here, we venture into a world where a broken mother guards the ruins of her son’s downfall. Can anyone survive?
DIE is jokingly referred to as Goth Jumanji, which is both 100% true, and ridiculously undersells what the book is. It takes the place that Phonogram previously did in my work – where things are way too close to home, at the intersection of art and life. It’s a fantasy world as imagined by Stephanie Hans – and that pure idea is something I think the world needs more than ever.
The first DIE was short-listed for a Hugo three times. It’s won awards, and sold lots. I think you’ll like it.
We’ve tried to make it accessible to new readers (though also encourage folk to go and read the old one). I saw a review which expressly called that out, which is pleasing. That DIE was always dropping you into a story in progress helps there, I suspect.
I think it’s a more driven, character-led book than the first one. In an interview dropping later, I talk about how the first DIE was doing basically three things – this character drama, this meditation on the nature of Fantasy and also this big cosmic horror origin-of-DIE plot. The latter is done now, meaning we can give more space to the first two.
Alongside this we also have the comic-format Quickstart for DIE RPG. It’s 56 pages which lets you sit down and a bespoke scenario to play DIE with your friends. The RPG has done really well, but I always wanted to have something expressly on the shelves next to the comic. If you’re at all tempted by RPGs, this is an inexpensive way to try. Also, I suspect it’s the only starter adventure that has two sections named after 1990s indie-rock songs, which is one for the Phonogram heads.
The full DIE RPG is available too from your shop (or other online retailers) or directly from RRD.
WRITER: Kieron Gillen ARTIST / COVER A: Stephanie Hans COVER B: Fabrizio De Tomasso FEBRUARY 11 / 32 pages / FC/ M / $3.99
Some people take their roleplaying parties seriously. Conversely, some people just want to parrrrttttaaaaaeeee! Let’s see what happens when our serious business is disrupted by someone who really doesn't care at all.
And our Alt is by Fabrizio De Tomasso who is just doing lush and wonderful work here. I adore this too.
Speak to your retailer, or communicate in some other way. In a real way, they don’t know you want one unless you tell them, and when there’s so many books out now (Someone told me there’s 5 times as many monthly comics than there were in the 1980s, which is incredible) they really need guidance. Frankly, shops can sell out and not notice that they didn’t meet demand. It’s nightmarishly difficult for them.
From a fellow Englishman: All of your books take a lot of care to get London and other British areas to be so real. While many of your book ls are with British artists, this one is with a French artist. Did that have an effect on how much we saw the real world in this series?
I'm tilting my head and trying to think whether it did - probably not, really, except in the fine details of Stephanie-hans-o-vision. If I'm doing real world stuff, I'll be including reference showing the real world places, or at least the sort of places. Reading these sort of stories I write can give some real jump scares for folks who actually know where it’s set.
This was also true with Dan Mora on Once & Future, who is significantly further away from Britain than Stephanie. I had a LOT of stuff in there, after the first issue (the old person's home is atypical for the UK) so I realised I should give a lot more.
Really, google maps and street view exists. It's pretty easy to do this, at least compared to how it was in the 1990s.
In issue 6, you have the wonderful IGN quote about crediting too much to a single person. You have spent time giving out credit to others on the team, especially on Decompressed. We as fans, however, tend to give you lots of credit (for example, “Gillen’s Sinister” is a phrase I see often). Is there something or someone you’d want us to fans to recognize with this book?
Well, Stephanie, to state the obvious.
(EDIT: this is some of me at the most off the cuff - you can see by the amount of “Right now”. This stuff is all choices which are modified in context, and the desire of the team.)
My current rules (which change) is if someone on socials says something about the books, and tags me, and I get the sole credit (unless it's phrased on something that is SPECIFICALLY my domain, or a general statement on the book without really being about credit or compliment) I won't repost it, etc. I currently like to repost as it's just a way to push visibility, in a marketing way. I never used to, but visibility is much harder here. I don’t now.
It takes a hit on marketing the book, but I’d like to priortise the nature of collaboration in this media. Ignoring that (at the mo, at least) seems more than I can be willing to take.
(EDIT: I can think of exceptions here, but I’d speak to my collaborator first. If Beyonce posted they loved the book and only tagged me, I’d drop Stephanie a mail. Normally the gentle way to do this is a repost with adding Stephanie’s credit. A “Thank you - it means a lot. Stephanie and I really are proud of this.”)
There's some people who think that I should correct every person who does that, but I disagree on that point. Harassing your readership doesn't strike me as a good idea either. Also, very tiring.
There's limits (would it be great to tag Clayton and Rian too? Sure!) but there's limits of what to expect from readers - like, when talking about a book feels like homework, I think that's a bad thing.
And that certain covers things like - say - Gillen's Sinister. That's something that's far truer than Warren Spector's Deus Ex. Deus Ex is a singular creative object worked on by dozens of people, of whom Warren was one. The post Uncanny-run Sinister's connective tissue consists of many separate works until it coalesced, and I'm the connective tissue. The design didn't stick from the earliest appearances, so you can't even really say that.
Especially as I think that that’s “gillen’s sinister” really not about ownership, but more saying the vibe of the character, after a certain point. I didn't create Sinister, but just started an approach to him.
(Conversely, I always correct people when they say Aphra was me. It was me and Salva.)
Which character are you picking for a casual Die RPG run? Who are Stephanie, Clayton, Rian, and Chrissy playing?
Now for me rules-lawyering the question.
For a start, there's no such thing as a casual DIE RPG run. It is VERY SERIOUS ALWAYS.
(It's not)
In DIE RPG, you don't pick the character you play. The GM distributes classes, through various filters, depending on the scenario. You generate your pesona, which then is cast the most appropriate paragon class. Now, players also before the game do pitch for what they'd like, but it is still firmly inside the GM's domain how they distribute.
(It's for various reasons. In practise, you really do get the class you want if you have expressed strong feelings. You just aren't SURE.)
So, given that is true, I will inevitably be running the casual game, so I will be playing the Master, as that's the classic DIE game GM class.
I would give each of the other players a class based upon their persona's needs, rather than the players' nature - though that bleeds through in their choices. May I think Stephanie will be an excellent Fool? She absolutely would, but if she makes her persona go a different way, I'd follow that.
Stephanie has played 2 short games of DIE - in one, she was the Neo. In the other, she was a Godbinder.
Chrissy has played one, very long DIE game. She played an Emotion Knight - specifically, a Disgust Knight.
Not mentioned, but Katie is editor of the new volume of DIE. She played a Godbinder.
Clayton could play. I suspect Rian has clearly better things to do, like staring at Fonts.
None of the above really answers the intent of teh question, I suspect. Bad Kieron.
What surprised you about developing the RPG rules with the comic? Did your skills as a writers translate easily or was there a big learning curve that came with this difference?
This is the sort of answer which could be VERY long, so I'll try and keep it short and link to the DIE RPG Designer Notes where I talk about the process and my goals.
The short is that it was incredibly hard, which is the entire point. I wrote what felt like 100k to get down to the 1000 words of GM advice I actually wanted to give.
I hope anyone who reads DIE RPG sees the work, both in terms of the actual text and the reading and play behind the text. I try and credit influences throughout and in the Gameography, for a bit.
There is also some stuff which I'm just bad at, and am always bad at. RPG writing is many things, but certainly includes technical writing. That I hold specific nouns lightly means it's always going to be a battle.
How is “goth jumanji” not an easy sell the movie studios looking for their next big hit?
Oh, you sweet summer child. Come here, let me ruffle your hair.
DIE's sold twice, developed to screenplay and not taken further. Stuff gets picked up all the time - mostly stuff isn't announced, even when it goes much further into development.
What I try to tell people is that being optioned is really like getting a lottery ticket. It's a lottery ticket you get paid for (which is clearly the best kind of lottery ticket) but it's still a lottery ticket. Something can be perfect for the screen, and never make it there, just because - oh, I don't know - it rained in LA one day and an exec came into work in a bad mood. Look at the classics of the form from the 1990s, and see when some of them finally reached the screen.
In short, it's really not something that one should spend any thought about. It's all so beyond your control.
Next week is the last of the double-releases – The Power Fantasy 15 moves a week later, as the schedules divulge. But in seven days time, we have DIE: Loaded #2 and The Power Fantasy #14.
Let’s show the preview pages.
First, DIE: Loaded #2…
Here’s some big news. There’s a new DIE RPG thing for you to lust after, with a new big expansion.
DIE RPG: The Metadungeon is a megadungeon where each of its six levels is explicitly about in the style of a period of RPGs. As such, the whole thing should be both as satire, celebration and history lesson of what gaming is. The architect of this is Gareth Hanrahan, who is just the best in the biz at this kind of thing, but I’m heavily involved and couldn’t be more excited. You know the bit where DIE RPG starts playing with RPG history? This is that, and seems that it could actually some cross between RPG Understanding Comics and playing Playing At the World and probably Paranoia.
It’s clearly a berserk idea.
When I announced DIE RPG, Gareth messaged me with the idea for this and I was obviously delighted, and we’ve been looking for an opportunity to do this ever since. With the epic Megadungeon month approaching in April 2026 we thought it’d be the perfect chance to do finally this. There’s really nothing like this that exists, and we think it should. That’s dependent on folks being as charmed by this as we are.
Stephanie’s main cover above, and here’s the alternate by the always-great Marguerite Sauvage.
By this point, we’re well into DIE, and after the heavy concept-selling of the second one, we can fall into its natural rhythm. The theme of No-one Is An NPC is very much in play. What I like about DIE: Loaded is how this first arc builds, and explores different bits of DIE. We do a lot of modes – some grimmer, some more emotional, some more playful, some all at once, to different degrees. This one leans grimmer.
There’s also quite a lot of fun stuff in the back – I realised that if I keep on writing, I’ll just recapitulate the essay in the back. There’s also two of DIE’s gods in here, both of which are quite fun. Stephanie didn’t actually read the rules for the Barnacle Witch until after it had gone to print, and I’m relieved that she laughed until she cried when she finally did, as otherwise it could have been really awkward and possibly have led to DIE ending.
Forthcoming on Many Sided Media’s patreon feed is a one-shot of DIE RPG I ran for them. They do a bunch of great public facing stuff, so doing something for the Patreon was a great way to spend an evening. I’m running Total Party Kill from the manual, and I think it ended up bleak, weird and funny. Plus some really disturbing stuff, as is DIE’s wont.
Marsh Teeth (which sounds like the sort of character name that would turn up in one of their games) writes about reading Lord of the Rings as an adult, and what they take from it now, for better or worse. This got me thinking about if you moved the comic relief role around the fellowship instead of dumping it on Gimli. Dude Where’s My Kingdom? Aragorn, etc.
The first part of a big interview with Leigh Alexander over at romchip, the game histories journal, prompted my her Gamers Are Over essay turning 10 years old in 2024, but really about everything, and how we got there, and why it’s all on fire. It’s long, and really worth carving out your time, when you’re in a space to go there. If you were around there, it’ll depress and bring a lot back. If you weren’t, it’s an education that she really shouldn’t have to teach.
Actually, they’ve just launched some functionality, which means you can have actual customised urls. So “https://bindings.app/l/dieloaded” now will link directly to the site. So it’s easier to share and remember.
Arriving: April 8, 2026 Lunar Code: 0226IM0380 Age Rating: M Page Count: 32 Cover price: $3.99
Wherein things get significantly more complicated.
DIE: Loaded is very much in the gnomic short sentences stage of the hype cycle.
Our alt cover is by Toru Terada, whose work I didn’t know before Stephanie introduced me.
Suffice to say, I love it.
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I found time to get back to my list of 101 favourite TTRPGS, and covered 97 to 90. We’re over 10% done. That was meant to sound encouraging, and not doomed.
Anyway, I cover a whole load of games, such as Delta Green, Deadlands, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and other strangeness) and my least favourite version of D&D. I talk a whole lot of nonsense. Here’s a bit about Hobbit Tales…
My biggest memory was playing with my wife and my brother. We found that while my brother happily spurted out a stream of perfect “Daisy Merrywater”-esque hobbit names, my wife and I – professional writers – found that neither of us could actually improvise a Hobbit name better than “Bumbo”.
That said, you have to remember that Tolkien wasn’t great there one too – one of the best bits in the drafts of Lord of the Rings is where he reaches Bree and suddenly realised “Bingo Baggins” is a terrible name for a lead, so let’s call him Frodo instead.
This is kind of the issue where we start to explicitly talk about Isekai, a word which I seem to have to learn to spell. We dropped the preview last week, and you can read it here. It’s a fun time one, at least for DIE, which may not be your level of usual fun.
Here’s our alternate cover, by Fabrizio De Tomasso who is doing really glorious, atmospheric stuff.
A quieter week for links, so I’m going through some things I’ve had saved and been looking for a place to run. Here’s Julie Philips’ on the quiet power of Ursula Le Guin’s activism. Lots in here, but I’ll quote this as it’s a The Power Fantasy Week. “In 1982, an interviewer for a science fiction magazine asked Le Guin what she would do to save the world. She answered impatiently: “The syntax implies a further clause beginning with if…What would I do to save the world if I were omnipotent? But I am not, so the question is trivial. What would I do to save the world if I were a middle-aged middle-class woman? Write novels and worry.” If “worry” can be translated as “care,” then she combined her vision for the future with tending to what is worthy of care in the here and now.
Sam Sorenson’s Three Question Taxonomy of Games, where he tries to (and quite successful) break down TTRPGs across Problem-Solving vs Telling A Good Story, Authorial vs non-authorial and rules-favouring vs world-favouring. I’d quibble some examples, but it’s strong stuff. Though when we reach the conclusions, the “it’s easier to turn a minimalist OSR game into a complicated and prescriptive storygame” than vice-versa” does make me think, yes, that’s true in exactly the way that it’s easier to turn flour into cake than vice versa. You have to do something with the flour to be of any use - which is why the adventure and the culture-of-play are so key in OSR.
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In April Image are celebrating 50 (count ‘em!) issues of I Hate Fairyland, with I hate tie-in covers across the line. We decided to do one for DIE Loaded, with David Lafuente stepping in to have Gert bludgeon DIE. I said you can’t defeat DIE, but no-one tried an enormous spiky mace.
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This is really fun. With only a few weeks to go before The DIE: Metadungeon kickstarter launches, Juan Moore (aka Odd Artworks) drew a Meta-dungeon inspired dungeon. His whole channel is him drawing really fun and charming dungeons from prompts, and is just delightful to see. You can watch it here...
And here’s the finished map…
...and here’s the prompts RRD gave to inspire it.
Now watch the DIE discord race to try and run a game with this instead of the standard Total Party Kill random tables.
That’s a thing I love about Mythy B. It’s an OSR game with a strong narrative flavour and rejects the “it’s all about the adventures” in favour of “Here’s a book with much more content than you will ever need” while also having rules which are perfectly crafted for the specific material presented. I often read OSR rules and think “This is flour”. I read Mythy B and think “This is fucking cake.”
I think this is my favourite of the first six. There’s less of the big cultural-essay approach in DIE: Loaded than the first book, but this is the one which goes (relatively) hardest there – but then goes hard in a whole bunch of other places. It’s also got one of Stephanie’s best spreads in the whole book. Go grab – I think you’ll find it interesting.
I forgot to do the preview pages last week, so we can have ‘em here.
Coo.
If you want to know more about DIE: Loaded, it’s over here.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.29 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3923 days ago & DAD = 577 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
