Latest / Story Games / Episode 11: Interview with Ross Cowman Creator of Fall of Magic
Transcript
- Maggie Studio: Friends and welcome back to Story Games, a podcast all about your favorite narrative-driven games. My name is Momo, and I will be your host. Today I have something so exciting to share with you. By now, you have listened to all of our episodes of Fall of Magic, and I really hope you enjoyed them because I had such an amazing time playing through that game with my friends. But today I got to sit down with Ross Cowman, the creator of Fall of Magic, and I asked him so many questions about his design process. About his game, about his experiences, and we had an amazing, wonderful conversation. Big thank you to Ross for letting me bombard you with questions. And without further ado, let's get into this interview. Hello, friends, and welcome back to Heart of the Dirnacorn. Today I have something so fun to bring to you guys. So we have played Fall of Magic in its entirety. It was so much fun. By now, you have seen the finale, which was spectacular, in my opinion. But today I am sitting down with Ross Cowman. The creator of Fall of Magic, and I'm so excited to talk to him and ask him so many questions about his game, and I'm just really psyched to sit down today. So without further ado, how are you today? Hi. Hey Momo. ⁓ yeah, I'm doing good. I ⁓ I've just been doing a lot of bookkeeping recently, which is one of the not fun parts of being a game designer. But it's also kind of fun too because ⁓ you know feels like you're sort of cleaning everything up and you know, there's like this whole aspect of what I'm doing, which is like running a business and I've just been having to put a ton of energy into that. ⁓ which is and it's fine. Just it's just it's like not what you imagine when you're like, ⁓ I'm gonna like make a game and I hope a bunch of people want to get it. And then, you know, you find yourself actually like running a business and having employees and staff and stuff. So I I'm having to do a lot of that right now, but I'm excited because when I'm done with this step I get to kinda go back in the studio and And kind of adjust my time so I'm doing a lot more design work. Perfect. Yeah. Maybe not as quite as glamorous as some might hope, but very necessary. Perfect. Well, I would love to ask you some questions about Fall of Magic. You sound great. Awesome. Okay. So the first thing I would like to establish is could you describe Fall of Magic in your own words? Sure. Fall of Magic is a tabletop role-playing game where we play a group of travelers that are going on a journey. It's inspired very much by the parts of Lord of the Rings that Peter Jacks Jackson skipped. The parts of Lord of the Rings that Peter Jackson and by I have a hard time saying that. Sorry, I've got a I need more coffee. I'm waking up my mouth. ⁓ yeah, so like there's meals and hanging out and relationships, and ⁓ it's really about exploring who our characters are and how they relate and how the journey changes them. Yeah, and it's ⁓ it's a it's very narrative focused. The game uses these very poetry like prompts ⁓ that are designed to help us be creative and tell a story together. yeah, that's that's kind of the the the short pitch. Beautiful. And what a wonderful job of facilitating that you did, because so much of the game is those in-between moments where nothing dramatic is happening but you're still Carrying the story along. Yeah. And I'm gonna get back to those prompts in a minute because the prompts are so evocative and really just I we were able to get so much out of so little, and I wanna pick your brain on that in a minute. Yeah, sounds great. Yay. Okay. going back to kind of your overall design process, what made you want to create Fall of Magic? Yeah. Well, What made me want to create Fall of Magic? I was really inspired by our local design community here in Olympia and I fell in love with GMless games and I really fell in love with just these This really wonderful community of people we have and the stories we were telling. ⁓ I'm thinking about like the story game Seattle community, ⁓ which ⁓ Ben Robbins kind of championed for a long time. ⁓ I'm thinking about Go Play Northwest, ⁓ which is a really wonderful game convention that a lot of these kinds of games are getting played at. And I grew up playing, you know, Dungeons and Dragons and a lot of GM'd games and I was really inspired by the kinds of stories I was seeing people make and how, ⁓ you know, if you get a a group of people together, it's like you're making jazz, you know, and and just that that sort of conversational style of play. And I really wanted to create something that was taking ⁓ that that was just like a a really good tool for for people in that tradition to make stories with. and maybe using evocative game components and kind of taking it out of just being words and having there be s like a physicality to the game. yeah, having there be a physicality to the game and like really using words plus component design plus you know, illustration so that you you really had a lot to draw from as as a player. Totally. At any given moment. That's wonderful. So if I'm kind of picking up what you're putting down, you were inspired by Fall of Magic kind of for the outcome of it, for the stories people would tell with it. Does that seem right? I you so like the question is like why did I make Fall of Magic? What I guess what kind of feeling made you want to create a game like this because it's such a unique game yeah in the way that it's designed and the way that it's played. And I just yeah, I just I wanted to where's that come from where'd it come from? Yeah, sure. ⁓ I I think it's just kind of important to really give a lot of credit to just like the Pacific Northwest story game community and to some of the online communities that exist. For example, ⁓ the Story Games ⁓ forum Which was which existed at at the time and later G. And, you know, this was at a time when Avery Alder was publishing like The Quiet Year. ⁓ you know, ⁓ Apocalypse World had just come out ⁓ a couple years prior. you know, Ben Robbins ⁓ had these GMless games like Microscope, and you know, of course you have the whole like kind of Nordic style. ⁓ you know the Jeep form games which are coming out and and you and like in Olympia too, like a lot of really wonderful designers here. And there's just like it's it's kind of coming out of this context of a lot of people making games and experimenting with different ways of like, okay, how do we help people be creative? How do we help people tell these kinds of stories? And for me, Fall of Magic is just my like kind of contribution to that realm where I have a background in ⁓ poetry. That's what I studied. and as a songwriter, you know, I spent ⁓ about ten years as a as a musician writing music and and so kind of and also like in manufacturing, you know, I have a lot of I've had like printmaking experience and woodcraft experience and doing carpentry and things like that. So like this was just sort of me seeing, you know, with the sort of the things that I know and the experiences that I have, like a kind of story that I wanted to create. ⁓ I think it's also inspired a lot by my experiences being a touring musician. ⁓ like for me, Fall of Magic is very much like we're a band going on tour. And it's this experience of like, you know, you kind of think you know these people that you're in the van with, but you really know them like at the end of the two two months of sleeping on people's floors. and also like ⁓ you know, the so that's part of it and like thinking about journeys and how journeys change us, but through this lens of fantasy. ⁓ in my own experience too, like the idea of that at all these different locations that you go to, the pro there's this prompt of the hospitality of fill in the blank. And that idea sort of came from touring as well, just like you know, going to Paris for the first time or going to Berlin for the first time, and and like that person that is your connection to that place becomes this like lens through which you see this entire city and like their life and their home and and what that's like for them becomes this this it becomes your experience of the place and like your relationshipship to them really like shapes your experience with place for better or for worse. ⁓ so that's like kind of like one little example of like what the inspiration came from. ⁓ but there's it's not like there's like one thing you can really like point at, you know, with with a lot of creative work. you know, it's it just you you just sort of wake up one morning and you're like, ⁓ The I I see I see something. Yeah. What's what's there? And you kind of keep digging and keep digging and keep digging until gradually it reveals its form to you. Beautiful. That's awesome. I love how there's so much of your skill and your backstory and your experiences kind of tied up into this game with like the the touring and the the the tacticality of it. When it just I I think that's really cool. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. ⁓ okay. So who Is Fall of Magic for? And who was your ideal person to play Fall of Magic? Yeah. Like when I first wrote it, it was really for just my friends that I play games with, you know, like Orion Canning and Robert Bruce and Jackson Tagu at the time, and ⁓ you know, the people that come to the our story games meetups. ⁓ the first version of the game was just a one-page it was just on one piece of paper, both sides, and I I made it as part of this ⁓ kind of a game jam for like Octo Games of Spring. and the ⁓ yeah, and then I I n I f I I noticed that people were really having a a really a lot of fun playing it and it was actually like taking on a life that was much bigger than I intended for it originally. I just thought it was you know, I I made the original draft of it in about a month. And I just was having a really great time playing with it and like having these really wonderful stories come out of it and then seeing you know seeing you know just people really get go deep with it and really have a good time. And then I guess like the the the the version which was we kickstarted and published in tw in twenty fifteen one of the goals for that is to try to make the role playing game experience as approachable as a board game experience. Okay. I've had a lot of experiences, and I think many people that love role-playing games or that are playing Dungeons and Dragons have a lot of wonderful experiences where you get these really golden story moments and everyone gets in and there's these these little moments you have where everyone's really locked in and invested in the story. And but for ⁓ for many, just the the rules and the mechanics and How much other stuff is kind of going on, you know, all the times that the game keeps interrupting you and being like, ⁓ nope, can't do that. You gotta do this, you know, can be a barrier sometimes. And I think that Fall of Magic is interested in really being that game that you can play with your kids, or you can play with ⁓ you know, your friends that don't like. Role playing games, you know, you know, for all those reasons that people are are maybe not wanting to like be dungeon mastered at, you know. Totally. though though I love both. I d I like dungeon I like game mastering and I like ⁓ you know playing a game with a game master can be fun. And but this is something where it's just really trying to like, you know, get out of your way a little bit and help you unlock your own innate creativity. Absolutely. Yeah, anyone that's interested in that, anyone that like is like You know, w when I first play started playing D D, I was like, ⁓ cool, I'm gonna write Lord of the Rings with my friends. That's not what the game experience is like at all. You know, you can kind of like if you're a DM, you can sort of write Lord of the Rings at your friends. but you're you're not really like it it's har it's really hard. It doesn't really give you a lot of tools to make up a story together, like to really like make up the details of the world and a story that everyone really cares about and is really invested in. And I think Vincent and McGay Baker really showed us how to do that with Apocalypse World, for example, and like how you can have somebody make a character and just have this whole world be about stuff that the players care about and and the kind of collaboration, the exploration of that. And yeah, Fall Magic really just kind of gives you if you want to tell like a fantasy story, it just kinda gives you like just enough so that it gets you going, but then it really does get out of your way. And d it doesn't say no very much, you know. Correct. Yeah. It does not say no very much. It the idea of ⁓ I can't do that never really came up in my game at all. It was more so th I wanna do this cool thing, let's make it happen together. And I thought that was really special. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking I was listening to your playthrough of BFF Golden Years, and there was this moment. Wait, who's in that game with you again? It was Lowe and Low and Cliapy and Cliope. There's this moment when I remember Cliopee, like in the first session, was just like, ⁓ can I just like say stuff or can I just like make that up? You know, I could tell like maybe they'd played DD with their friends before, and there's a lot of really strict rules about who gets to talk and it's pretty much the dungeon master. It's like, okay, you get to say something now. And also there's this weird thing where like if the GM doesn't hear it. you know, did it even really happen? Yes. And like the fiction only exists in the world if the GM says something and the player and like if we all kind of like agree on it, but the GM's kind of like the main person that's really gotta be like, yep, no. Yeah. And that's in that's actually what's really interesting about GMming to me now after years of doing GMless games. I I'm actually really interested in no and I'm interested in the kind of immersion that can create. ⁓ but there's also just this like like listening to your playthrough of ⁓ Fall of Magic. ⁓ there's just all these really wonderful moments where you all are just like wondering aloud about the world and being like, hey, d is it like this? And be Yeah, yeah, that's it. You know? Like the whole like animal gods pantheon you all create. That was so cool. And even your like action scene, ⁓ you know, there where you have this like kind of epic confrontation ⁓ with the hair god at it in Barley Manor. And It's it's funny because like in a D game, you know, you'd have like maybe like a boss battle or something. Totally. But that really like felt like that, even though there's like moments where you like, ⁓ at one point I remember Bloom was actually like, ⁓ wait, I want to retcon that. Actually, this is what my character was doing in the fight. and and that's fine, you know. And then like so you kind of get through that whole process and you you know what the story is now and you can imagine that battle in your head. But it didn't happen it didn't even happen sequentially. It sort of like happened in this like sort of spiraling pattern where you're like, Okay, I think this thing happens, my character does this, and then someone's like, Okay, cool, cool. Well, while you were doing that, I did this. And then someone else is like, ⁓ wait, how about wait, instead of me doing that, I was doing this, and everyone's like, Yeah, that's it. That's how it happened. It was magical. Like there's literally no word for it except magical. Just yeah, the way we were able to tell that story. And like everyone felt cool too. Yeah. That's like another thing, is that with A lot of GM'd games, sometimes people kind of get pushed to the sidelines a little bit or if they don't speak up, they don't will it into action. Yeah. But with a game like Fall of Magic, because everyone kind of gets that chance to shine, yeah. I find that really, really spectacular. Yeah. Yeah, and you chose people that you would have you would normally hang out with, that you're playing with, that you have good rapport with and you you're you have a good conversation with and you're all really like listening to each other. Yeah. And I think that's like really, you know, we Th we we talk a lot about in role playing games we talk a lot about the conversation of play and there's many different kinds of conversations that you can have, just like there's many kinds of conversations you can have in the real world. And like there's something about the dungeon master conversation which I actually really love. Like I really love like an imposing dungeon master, you know, someone that you know, maybe they're wearing like an elf hat and like a cloak and you're just like, dude, what's what's going on? And they're like, ⁓ you're gonna open that door, are you? You know that is fun. It's a different experience, but it's too it's also fun. Yeah, it's also it's it's kinda fun, you know, it's kinda the the the sort of whole like it feels dangerous. Yeah. You know and stressful. ⁓ that's gonna be it you it's like a job interview, right? You know, you're like, ⁓ pht what's the right answer? I don't know. ⁓ Do I open the door? ⁓ god. Why don't I work there anymore? ⁓ Yeah. And then but then there's this other thing too, which is just, you know, it's it's just like we're just kind of like riding around in a car smoking indoors sipping on chin and juice, you know? It's like, it like and that's kind of like that that can be like a really fun ⁓ kind of play as well. And there's still there can be danger and that's there can still You know, there's there's constraints involved magic. It's not just anything goes, you know. It's it's really specific about certain things, like, no, your character's kind of from this list. Yeah. There's a name here's here's some names. You can ignore those rules if you like, but there is like structure there for you to lean back on. and then it also kind of degrades gracefully too. Like you can also kind of ignore stuff. I mean, people ignore rules in much more complicated games as well. ⁓ and and it's and it's fine because then the path is that you can see where the path is when you're ready to go back on it. Totally. You know, and if you kinda like end up over here and ⁓ actually, ⁓ you know, that that's that's fine too. There's this there's this moment in your play where I like I I just noticed you like misinterpreted a rule. I'm like, ⁓ wait, you're supposed to like do this thing and and I'm just like, ⁓ it's fine, you know. Yeah it's like it's not that big of a deal. ⁓ What rule did I misinterpret? I'm curious. There's several. I don't know. Calling me out. It's not a big deal. ⁓ okay, so here so one thing ⁓ When you traits, ⁓ at the bat at the end of the battle you each gave yourselves a trait. Only one person gets a trait in a trait scene. Which is also like, but it's it's fine and also kind of felt suiting. But then there also was a moment where you were having like a hard time. There there was like some friction around you being like, ⁓ wait, would you get this trait? Like there's you can tell there's like you were trying to interact with the mechanics, but it didn't flow very well. And I think that's just because the game wasn't actually And that's why the game doesn't ask everybody to get a trait on those scenes, because that's like a lot to do in one scene. Whereas like if you were more like fluent in the mechanics, you would go into that scene being like, Okay, well by the end of the scene, I need I, the player whose turn it is, need to describe why one of these other characters is like bold or gallant or wealthy. Maybe that's me, maybe that's one of our the two companions. And so I would As an experienced follow magic player, I would kind of go into it and being like, okay, I'm kinda like aiming for this about this, and maybe I'll discover something else. But you know, I would I would really be trying to play up why I thought this person was gallant now. And it's really supposed to be about what my character thinks about one other person's character, and that's like a whoop like knocking off my glasses. It's supposed to be about what my character thinks about your character and how that creates this relationship between us. Yeah. That's not what that mechanic's trying to do. But I think you all just got like so excited about jamming on this like combat scene, you know, that you know, you you e I I don't even remember whose turn it was. Right. And we we did that actually quite often, where the person whose turn it was did get lost a little bit because we got so deep into the prompt and everyone was so involved in it. We were like, wait, now who who goes next? Right. Who's who's was that? Totally. And so and Fall of Mag and also people this is another thing that people do in Fall Magic too, where they'll sort of like move other people's tokens around to represent who's in the scene. And the token is really their the reason that that's not the rules of the game. The rules are you just move your token on your turn. And the reason for that is to help us remember whose turn it is. Cause then you can look and see like, ⁓ I'm the person sitting on the farmer's market. It's my turn. And that becomes port important. Just like you are like really good at having conversations together and Bloom's also like a very experienced GM and is doing like a lot of those really wonderful like GM techniques that really are bringing the story to life. Like just Bloom's ability to like role play you know multiple characters with distinct voices and personalities and have them have a conversation with each other. That's like the that's the holy grail of like GMing and Bloom's like masterful at that. Incredibly skilled. Yeah it's like super delight especially like you just listening to the podcast. You're like wait That's the same person. Like doing those two different voices. It's like so cool. Yeah. He's slowly teaching me how to do voices as well, which is really exciting. Voices are great. Yeah. Yeah. That's another ⁓ sorry, I get I'm thinking about other games. but ⁓ yeah, so that's that's that's one thing which I think does help out. And the reason that rule is there, like it i you can ignore it. The reason that rule is there is because one of the things that a GM does 'Cause this is a GM less game, so all those things that GMs do that make role playing games happen, ⁓ we have to do that for ourselves, right? And you might come to Fall of Magic and this is you've never played a role playing game before. Like it's it's trying to be the kind of thing where you can just if you you have never heard of a role playing game before, this is your introduction. You can open up the book and have a role playing experience. Yeah. And part of that is is like spotlight management. And so There's this idea that when it's your turn, you're the one leading the scene. And we're gonna kinda look to you for like what is true about this scene. Yeah. So, like, you know, if it's my turn and I'm on the bridge, ⁓ going to Ravenhall and I lay my token down and you know, I I I am like, cool, I go over to the bridge and there's an old man fishing on the bridge. Would you play that old man for me? You know, that that'd be something that I would do. And it wouldn't be really like appropriate for someone else to be like, and then a hobgoblin jumps out from underneath the bridge and stabs you three times. You know, like ⁓ you know and so the game's just kind of giving you like a little safety rails, be like, ⁓ you know what, it's actually, you know, it's it's Momo's turn right now. So we're gonna follow Momo's lead and like we'll treat that as a suggestion. Are you excited about it? You're like, actually I just kinda wanted to fish. Like, no, actually that's great, you know. Yeah. ⁓ I die, you know, and now and my ghost leaves my body. ⁓ and is now haunting the bridge, you know. ⁓ which is which is cool. You can ⁓ you know, I've had characters die in the first scene of Fall of Magic, and you can do that, and you can just you can just be dead the rest of the game and like work that out. yeah, or ⁓ so like there there's these ideas of like really like strong moves, and we're sort of like ⁓ when it's someone's turn, we're sort of like respecting their turn and we're gonna kind of focus. And the reason of like the taking turns is so that making sure that That spotlight management, which normally a GM would be doing, ⁓ is is the game's kind of like doing for us. Totally. Yeah. So yeah, those are just like some some little mechanical things. You're about to do the ⁓ I haven't listened to any episodes where you've used the peril mechanic, but ⁓ sometimes people I think I feel like roll the die too soon for my taste. I'm kinda like, ⁓ you should really like wait. Sure, yeah. Cause like the the first prompt in the peril ⁓ is asking a question. that the d it it gets you to like is asking you to kind of define something that then the die roll is going to like determine is going to reveal. So it's sort of wants it's sort of asking you to sort of like put your chips on the table ⁓ before you flip the card over. Yeah. so I've seen so some people like ⁓ my friend Eric Volgeris, who I love, always likes to pre roll the die. I'm like, ⁓ don't do that. But I also did revise that the parallel mechanics were all revised quite a bit about five years ago. So I think they support what I'm trying to do better than they used to. I Believe we did it the way that you're kind of describing where yeah, we like set up the scene and then we're like, Okay, this the outcome is gonna be determined by the dice. Totally. And we kind of set it up that way. Yeah. ⁓ there's also s a few times where we weren't sure how something was gonna turn out. So we roll the dice when we necessarily didn't have to. Yeah. And we just kind of added that element of, ooh, I don't know how this is gonna turn out. Let's see what the dice says about it. Yeah, totally. Which I think was also pretty fun. ⁓ Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about rolling the dice. ⁓ I so that that is something that ⁓ people I've noticed were just sort of doing anyway from time to time. And it's just because there's this thing called the the Sega principle. It comes from Paul Sega, ⁓ who's a really amazing game designer, wrote Clay That Woke and ⁓ Basalm Lake Unmurders. My Life with Master was one of the like early grandfather role playing games, you know, of the of the nineties, ⁓ in the indie world. And the Sega principle states basically that it's not very satisfying to create and resolve your own conflict as a player. Okay. And this is something that comes up a lot in GMless games. ⁓ if you come from a tradition of playing GM'd games, you have these really satisfying victory moments where the GM is putting some obstacle in front of you. and through your cleverness, through your luck, you through the mechanics, leveraging the mechanics of the game, you overcome this conflict. And ⁓ in a jamless game, we can miss that sometimes. You know, we, you know, you you're a you're a you're a great warrior and you want to be challenged and you want to f feel like there's a chance of failure. You want to feel that danger. You want to feel that immersion. And There's this other experience that you can have in GMless games, which you don't get in GM'd games so much, is which is just the joy of losing, of playing to lose. Sure. Is is is a name for that kind of concept. And the like it can be really fun to just be ⁓ a warrior that is always failing. It can be really fun to be a character that's low status and not very powerful. And we are punished ⁓ when we make those kinds of choices in a GM'd game, typically. So The but ⁓ you know if you're playing a game of Fall of Magic and you're and you're kind of wanting that like, ⁓ I actually don't know the answer. And sometimes you'll get these questions that nobody really wants to answer. You know, no one really feels like they can answer, and you really want that dice, you really want that an outside environmental thing, which is like what dice do do so well. So in in City of Winter I made ⁓ like an optional mechanic for this. It's called Asking Fate, where you basically The the rule for ask fate in City of Winters, if you come to a question that nobody wants to answer, you where we can choose to ask fate. So you pick up the die and you say we all agree what the likely outcome, the unlikely outcome and the fateful outcome are of this die roll. And then a one through three, the likely happens, four, five, unlikely, six, fateful. And and encourage people just go really big with the fateful thing. So it's like kind of cool. And then you roll the die and we all kind see what happens. Yeah. And ⁓ So so yeah, I think having like a real simple kind of mechanic like that to bring out it's not necessary, but for s for some tables, ⁓ they benefit a lot from having that kind of thing. So I'm glad you all did that. Yeah, we we did. And there were there are a few moments where like we're like, ⁓ we're all anticipating it, we're seeing what it is and then like we get like a really good role, we're like, Yeah And like those moments for me in gaming are really special. That just that like euphoria of like, ⁓ my god, we did it. That shared emotional thing, yeah. Absolutely. So that was that was very fun. That was a really cool aspect of it. And ⁓ of course the whole like it's so special because we're all collaborating together. It's not like one person being like, Okay, if you get this, this happens. It's us all like, okay, so what happens if we roll a six? Right. And it's that collaboration that made it really cool. Yeah, setting the stakes beforehand, that's something that I learned from John Harper in Blades in the Dark. He talks a lot about that. And yeah, it's it's really just important for people to understand what the stakes are before you go to the dice. And it can feel like kind of weird if you like roll the dice and you haven't really done that and you're like, ⁓ I guess that right guess that means three is like okay, I guess so something okay happens. Yeah, something okay happens. Whereas yeah, then you're kind of missing that that thing that that's just the one thing that dice do great, ⁓ which is allowing us to kind of have this like shared emotional experience, like when we know, when we know what they mean. That's why I've I've been ⁓ I've been playing a Temple of Elemental Evil campaign. I've been running it for some of my friends. And there there's like certain things where it's just like about the mechanics of like modern DD, where I feel like a lot of the emotional impact of the dice is just being stifled by all the mechanical layers. There's all these times when people now are like are instructed to re-roll the dice a bunch of times, or you roll the dice and then you have to like add these two other numbers to it or you you roll two of the dice and you only use the higher one or the lower one. ⁓ and and also ⁓ there's just a lot of dice where I just feel like the component ⁓ the die the dice are kind of poorly designed. Like they just don't have legible numbers. So people roll the die and they're like, What is that? And you have to pick it up and no one else can see each other's dice, you know? Yeah. And that's fine. I mean, there's this whole other kind of culture of play, which is cool. It's just for me personally, I I feel like dice are at their strongest when we roll them and everyone at the table instantly knows what that means. And that doesn't just go for dice, it goes for any mechanic. Like for example, one of the most effective mechanics that I've s one of one one of the most ⁓ emotionally obvious mechanics that I've ever seen in a role-playing game is the Jenga Tower from ⁓ Dread, which also gets to use in Star Crossed and it's ⁓ in Dread by Epidai Ravashal is like this horror game and there's a Jenga Tower in the middle and when your character does something kind of dangerous, you pull a a thing. The gym will be like, hmm, all right, pull pull three tiles, you know. That is so. And then if the tall pool falls over, your character dies. Right. That's crazy. Yeah, it's cool. So you're feeling that you you know, it's it's it's has that emotional r resonance, ⁓ you know, that loo that ludo narrative resonance. ⁓ and and dice can do that. Like a D twenty can do that. It's like often The coolest thing if like everybody if you if you if no one can see your dice then you never have that moment of rolling a 20 and everybody just instantly getting it without having to say anything. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Beautiful. I'm glad you I'm glad you we wove that in. Yeah. It was definitely like something that I just I do think makes the game better, having that ⁓ available. Totally. Yeah. And it it did. There there are some really cool moments that we had that I there were I don't know if I should admit this either. There might have been a flubbed one too where we roll and then we're like, wait, actually it would be really, really cool. We're actually just gonna ignore and we're gonna do what we want anyway. Wow, I'm I'm really disappointed. I know, I'm horrible. ⁓ but that just adds to the the collaborative aspect of it. If we all like agreed, like, wait, actually maybe we have to wanna just make this happen. Well, and that's the thing too. It's like that's the thing about dice also. It's just like They I there's like straight up instructions in a lot of role playing games to like for the GM to ignore the dice when it doesn't work. I'm like, why is that mechanic even there? You know, 'cause I I do think like it can be a crutch and also if we just kind of talk about it, we can find the right answer. Yeah. ⁓ and there's a lot of situations where you shouldn't know, you should just decide, you know, what what do you want to happen? You know, what do you want this to be like? And it can be really satisfying in a story to Just have your character fail and have your character succeed and have that be, you know, treat this more like we're a bunch of writers in the writing room. Yeah. You know, they're not rolling dice in the background. You know, George R. Martin's not rolling dice when he's writing Game of Thrones, you He's he's just like, no, this is like what happens in the story. Yeah. And there's this like, you know, this play to find out what happens, ⁓ you know, concept, ⁓ which is like you there's like a knowing that happens. And this is similar to the creative process. It's like completely 'cause like fall of magic, playing Fall of Magic is like a creative process for the people that are playing it. And y there it asks it slowly brings you in by asking you to make these really simple decisions. It gives you this very simple magic is dying, the magus is dying with it. We travel to Umber where Magic was born. Cool. Now pick a name. There's there's ten of them. You know, I don't care how not creative you're feeling, you can pick a name from a list. Okay, now choose a title. This is slightly harder. Yeah. You know, you have to combine a thing with a thing. and then ⁓ Yeah, and then and then as as we play, the game is just sort of gradually kind of ⁓ asking you to make decisions that are ⁓ you know, maybe larger stretches, you know, the the creative leaps that you have to make get bigger as the game progresses, but you're also you're also ready to do it because you of through the process of playing the game, you've become ready. And that's just the creative process. You know, it it will lead you where it needs to happen in like I I I bet you didn't roll dice in the last scene of Fall of Magic. ⁓ I I I bet you didn't need to. I bet you just knew what needed to happen. We did know what needed to happen. There was an element of how are we gonna get there? Yeah. but there are moments when that becomes clear where it's like I know what I want. Like I know how this is gonna end now. Or at least for my character. Like I had a moment like that. I don't want to spoil it for you. Yeah, I can't wait. ⁓ but there was a moment where I just like literally gassed up at the table. I was quiet for a few seconds and I was like, guys, I wanna do something so cool. Yeah. Will you allow me the space to do something really cool? And there's also a fun element of almost surprising each other sometimes where We were each trying to give each other a really cool storytelling experience too. Yeah. ⁓ and Cruz did this really cool thing too, where he would often he was really good at stopping progress in a way that was like ⁓ offering opposition. Like, ⁓ maybe that's not so easy. Yeah. Exactly. I love that. He'd be like, wait, instead of that, this happens instead. That's great. And there was that element of like, we're kind of surprising each other and like bloom with the creating the most fantastical, sometimes spooky elements in the background that are kind of like happening as we're exploring. Like I'm just so grateful for I'm gonna cry. ⁓ my god. I'm so grateful that I got to play this with my friends and that we had this experience that we had. Yeah, totally. And that they all each brought their own strengths into this and I'm just really grateful for that experience. Why am I emotional? That's crazy. Stop crying, little baby. ⁓ my god, okay. I'm gonna take a second it's fine. I'm gonna go into my next question. Yeah, it's all good. It's all good. I wanna talk about that. I think people are sometimes surprised when I tell them that all of my most potent media experiences have been playing tabletop role-playing games. And the reason for that is the deep connections that you get to form with people around the table are ⁓ you you are are just so potent. You know, you really get to know people. And it's it's funny because like I just can't think of another hobby where you get to explore each other's subconscious and explore your own subconscious and find out how they play to play with each other. And just like play is so powerful too, you know, we play a lot as children and a lot of people discard play as they get older. And that there's just nothing more powerful than ⁓ you know, the human imagination. And That kind of knowing that you sort of experience that those kinds of revelatory moments are just as the most natural human thing. you know, we do it all the time. It's our brains are just designed to make connections where connections didn't exist before. And it can feel like discovering too. It can feel like revelation. And to find that in yourself and to find that in your friend's imagination, and then to like be doing that together, it's just It's just the coolest, you know. It's so special. It's truly so special. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm grateful that you created a game where that is so it was so easy to facilitate that. Yeah. It wasn't like pulling teeth to get us to get to this place. It was so seamless and natural that like, ⁓ y it's only makes sense that we ended up in this place. And it only makes sense that I had this intense, incredible experience because of the way that it was designed. So good. Yeah. Well thanks. You're welcome. I'll take a little compliment here and there. As you should. yeah, and there's like a lot of people that are doing really good role playing games. ⁓ it and in particular, I think just like the story games movement for me is really just has this it's just this it just there's just so many really wonderful gifts to offer to the world, ⁓ in that movement. and I think that like role playing can be a lot of things and I Just peop I just want more people to be able to play role-playing games and I want more people to have those kinds of experiences. There's a lot of lonely fun in GMing. ⁓ it's really fun to do prep. It's fun to like read through modules and ⁓ you know, it's it's really fun to kind of engage in that whole mechanical creative exercise of writing modules and facilitating those games. and I can always I also can't always help. I also can't help but feel that when I'm jamming I'm having more fun than everybody else. You know, ⁓ because I'm getting to do that. Yeah, I'm definitely spending more time on the game than everybody else. ⁓ and it it is really fun and and that's fine too. And what's been missing till you know, up until, you know, whatever, 15, 20 years ago was you know, these these ways of really being creative as as groups and that really invite everyone in at the table and have that kind of creative equality. yeah, and I think we just kind of need more of that. It invites more experiences into the play, and it also just takes a lot of that burden off. Like it's a it's a huge burden to be ⁓ the person that's kind of like holding the whole group together. Totally. ⁓ I've had creative projects that were like that, like bands and stuff, where it's kinda like I'm sort of the band leader and everybody else is kind of like a hired gun, and that's kind of feels like GMming to me a little bit. Whereas like you know, like a GMless game or or even like There's some GM'd games where the jamming style is is much more of like a MC or like a facilitator. that it just really invites people in where they all get to be really equally invested. And and I as as someone who would normally GM gets to have as much fun as everybody else. Totally. Yeah. And I get surprised too by the game. Yeah. Yeah. More time playing, less time prepping. Though prep is play too. Of course. Yeah. Calm down, internet. Put down the keyboard. Yeah, put down the keyboard. ⁓ wonderful. ⁓ I'm loving this conversation, by the way. Thank you very much. I'm having a good time. Yeah. wow. ⁓ very cool. Very, very cool to hear just about experiences and and play and how important play is. ⁓ and it really is. And it's just it's so special when you get to experience that with other people. I love it. Yeah. what do you want people to get out of Fall of Magic when they play it. Sure. I mean I I want them to have like a really powerful emotional experience. I want them to make new best friends. I want them to realize that they're creative and they can make up stories that are every bit as good as what you'd see on TV or read in a book. I want them to feel that I want them to realize that stories are abundant. I want them to realize that ⁓ I I don't know, I I I'm remembering ⁓ kind of early days of running story game nights and people would be like, that was amazing. Should we write that down? And we're like, ⁓ we're just gonna make another one next week that's gonna be as amazing, you know? I love that. And I really believe that. Like I if you could sit down and play another game of Fall of Magic right now with like the same people or different people, and you would tell ⁓ if you went through that process you would also you would have as powerful as an experience as you had this time. Totally. Or or many other games, you know. And I think that games like Fall of Magic can be tools for us to just be better at the rest of our lives, you know, have more community, have more access to our own creativity, have more inspiration. And, you know, maybe process some shit, you know, maybe maybe like kinda like Explore like there's something you want to explore, ⁓ you know, themes you want to explore. you know, you could choose to be a character that is really has this whole like self-sacrifice thing, or you know, whatever kind of problems you want to explore, you could create a character that's kind of like, you know, maybe a person that's kind of thinking about a person in your life and their kind of way of being and sort of exploring that. I think when people play role play games for the first time, it's very natural to start as playing like a fictional version of of yourself. But you can also ⁓ and try to be kind of likable, you know. Totally. ⁓ but you can also like choose to be like a fictional version of someone else in your life as as like a starting point and use that to sort of be exploring other other relationships. yeah. And I I also think our world just needs more empathy in general, and role playing games can be a really great tool for building empathy, both like with the people at the table, but just also just Realising like you you can actually play a role playing game with complete strangers. You can play a role playing game with people that you don't like particularly. and ⁓ also really like learn something, you know, through that. That's one thing about like the the kind of public story game practice, which I think is really important. There's a lot of designers that I think would benefit from sitting down and watching other people play your game or just playing games with strangers, playing people playing games with people that are really different from you. Yeah. ⁓ And it's kind of funny because what what I've found is that if if even if I don't like somebody, there's like I I I I'm one of my I sa this is actually a fault that I have. I I I really just generally like most people. and but I found that even if I'm not kinda don't like someone that much, if we play role playing games together, I'll at least like kinda figure out what's going on and I can develop like an appreciation for who they are and their way of being. It's like a really good way of like, you know, seeing seeing each other. I've definitely experienced that going to to story game night and being like, for whatever reason, I'll be like a little anxious about playing a game with someone 'cause I'm like, ⁓ I don't know how this is gonna turn out. We're like very different people, like we have very different playstyles, and then you play a game together and you're like, ⁓ you're actually really good at this thing. This thing, yeah. That I'm not good at. This is what you're looking for. Like yeah. Or like, yeah, this is what you're what we're trying to get out of this game and I can appreciate that. And it really does kind of allow you to connect with someone that you wouldn't otherwise connect with because You don't run in the same circles. Yes. You're not the same kind of person. You wouldn't necessarily choose to spend time with them. Right. But by playing a game with them, you're sitting down and you're having this shared experience and you're like, ⁓ we're not so different after all. Or we are different, but that's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like a structure to it too, right? Where it's like, Okay, well, I know this social interaction is gonna end after two hours. And I I know that in general you're not gonna be talking for more than twenty five percent of the time. Totally. Totally. Yeah. So there's there's some microdosing interactions with people. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Beautiful. I love that. ⁓ I want to ask you, do you have a favorite memory either with designing or playing Fall of Magic? ⁓ yeah, I there so I've I've witnessed, I've watched a lot of people play Fall of Magic. One thing that I used to do ⁓ when I would run Fall of Magic at role-playing game conventions is instead of being a player, I would just basically sit down and teach them how to play and kind of facilitate the character creation, the first few scenes. ⁓ guide them through the first few scenes. And then, like, usually after like everyone had taken one turn, I'd be like, Okay, cool, looks like y'all got it. ⁓ I'm gonna go. And then they and then and I'd come back later, maybe to check on them a little bit and and they'd be fine. ⁓ and this that was how I would run Fall of Magic at like games on demand or like there's there's similar ⁓ kind of convention. programs where you kind of walk up and there'll be a GM there to run a game for you. And then I would just, and then I would just leave and and then I I would could set up another table somewhere else. So I've I've watched a lot of people specifically like do barley to whatever. Like I've watched a lot of setups. and and then myself I've I've played in a few campaigns that have gone all the way. at Go Play Northwest last year I like sat in on a game where I think like what one I think the person that was running the game knew that I was the designer, but most of the other people didn't. And I was I was ki I was kind of bummed like, ⁓ cool, no one knows who I am, you know. ⁓ but this designer, like they were used to like at conventions basically speed running it. Like they would sure one two skip a few, like, okay, now we're gonna skip these like four locations so we can have like an ending. ⁓ And that was kind of fun too. Like so that was like one fun experience for me, which was just sort of as an outside feeling like an outsider, watching other people play the game and letting someone else facilitate. And I that was a lot of fun. During the pandemic I played ⁓ a game with ⁓ a bunch of folks ⁓ from Toronto. ⁓ and we just like kinda played online and that was like really cool. I don't know. Like specific moments. ⁓ There's ⁓ I was there was this time ⁓ I was watching I I'm I'm just thinking about my friend Greypon telling me about his first game of Fall of Magic, and he they did something which is this is like pr early prototype version, and this was the first time where I'm like, ⁓ this they did that with this game. It's I was just like really surprised by what people had done with this thing that I'd made, which is they had their setup was they had two they had an apprentice And two golems. ⁓ Which I hadn't really considered, like multiple people taking the same kind of character, but I'm like, there's no reason you couldn't do that. But then like one person's golem was like the Megus' Gollum, and he had like all he's like super powerful with all these runes all over and just this really like amazing magical construct. And then Gray Pon's ⁓ golem was the apprentices' golem, and he was like super janky and like didn't work very well. And ⁓ that was just that was like really delightful. yeah, I remember playing a game with Taylor Dow. We like used to meet at ⁓ Obsidian every week, and I was playing a fox. And we didn't get all the way through, but it was fun. I was just sort of challenging myself to actually just be an actual fox and like not say anything the entire campaign. Kind of like cruise with Playing a frog for the first few sessions. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And ⁓ but I and I was like, ⁓ cool, like there's so many different kinds of foxes you could be, you know, but maybe I'm just like not g gonna be kind of fox that doesn't talk at all. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I'm having a hard time remembering I think their name is Mutiny. This is one of the folks in the Toronto game, that was we played during the pandemic. But they they were a fox and that was the first game where I was really like, okay, wait a second, can you can what's the deal with you talking? Can like all animals talk? Or they were just like, no, the megas. We have a deal we made a deal with the magus. The foxes and the magas a deal where they like gave them speech. That's fun. And then that kind of like came up later, like we went to to Mistwood and ⁓ it became like I can't it's online. I can't remember exactly what happened, but there was something where we encountered the other foxes in the Mistwood and there was something had gone wrong. the deal and the magus and they were they were all like some of them were like losing their ability to talk and yeah they like that whole thing of just kind of seeing seeing that. ⁓ there's one time also like all the different interpretations of the magus is always really interesting to me. Sure. I think it was that same game or I might be remembering another one where the Megus basically appeared different in every location that we went. That's cool. ⁓ and every t every place had its own interpretation of like who the magus was. They their own legends about the magus. That's cool. And the magus just appeared to them, you know, how they were supposed how how they were. And so we like we would go and they would be like this ancient fox, you know, in the Mistwood and some other place. Like they were they were like an old an old brewer from Barley Town or whatever. I remember playing with my mom, ⁓ I don't know, I think I was just watching a game with my mom or I was playing with her, I can't remember. ⁓ it was this game, I think it was I'm thinking this is coming from a game I observed at the Fall Magic release party with my mom and Doug Keith and Doug's wife Beth. Doug is the illustrator for Fall of Magic. And they get to Barley and they get to Barley Town and my and my mom is like, okay, so we arrive at Barley Town and the entire town has disappeared. Just like, what the hell? You know? But they made it work. They like kind of kept doing scenes, like, ⁓ yeah, this is where the marketplace used to be. And like eventually kind of unraveled, you know, what had happened. So I yeah, so like just seeing people take big swings. I remember this other game, this was Scout ⁓ Tran Cafe, who lives in Portland. ⁓ we were the I was ⁓ facilitating a game over at her warehouse space ⁓ in San Francisco. And early in the session. The there was someone that was from Astalia and they were talking about ⁓ they they were kind of narrating that there was like kind of a big ocean by ⁓ they were sort of interpretating what was inter interpreting what was going on on the map as there being a big ocean by Ravenhall. And their character was a merchant of Astalia and they were talking about how they'd never been to the ocean before. ⁓ and I was like, ⁓ that's really interesting because like in the illustr in the tiny illustration, and this is back the earlier versions of the scroll. I think it was harder to see that there was a little there's water next to Astalia on the left side of the scroll. And I'm like, what's gonna happen when they get to the ocean? You know, because there's a big ocean next to this. And so they they keep playing the game and they get to the ocean part and they have their first scene there, and they're like, Where'd this ocean come from? And that was like That they just like wove into the story where it was you know that yeah this ocean didn't used to be there and now it was there. That kind of like on the fly just almost improv of like, ⁓ I have this information now, I'm just gonna roll with it. I'm just gonna use yeah. It's so cool. Yeah, and GMless games can be really resilient like that to ⁓ mistakes or like, you know, think different interpretations of stuff. And I think that's just always what's most interesting to me is ⁓ is that So that that's that's like experiences of people watching the game, designing the game. I just felt like I was so fucking cool when I wrote the prompts for the glow. I was like, Yeah, that's it. Yeah. That's that's it. That's it. And and like just ⁓ and the glow and like ⁓ did you did you go out did you do the deep way or yeah. So The if you go the other way, you go to ⁓ the ruins of Crow Hall, which all those scenes are kind of also kind of mirror images of Ravenhall. ⁓ that's cool. So the kind of like the callback of that, but then especially like the prompts for the glow are just like they make me so happy. Just like the one word prompts, like the one that's almost, you know, touching, you know. Yeah. and it's it's just so cool because you I I am getting a little emotional thinking about it, but you get to that point in the game and that's just like that's all you need. That's all you absolutely and that's the thing where it's just kind of like, why am I getting emotional too? Well, I mean, it's just it's it's it's also about just like, you know, making something like so when I was a musician, ⁓ the music industry I feel like is a lot about ego and it's a lot about standing up on stage and everybody wanting to talk to you, and it's a lot about weird social hierarchies that are like still existent in the role playing game industry and in all industries in general, there's like high status people and lower status people. But in the music industry, it's like at the top of that ladder, you have like Beyonce, you know? And at the bottom and like the most famous game designer, like Richard Garfield. I remember like when Richard Garfield ⁓ I was when Richard Garfield endorsed Bad Baby Lichlords, like my card game, I was like, I'm fucking cloud nine. I was like the Beyonce of game designers, you know, and so we were like walking down the street, I remember and ⁓ My ⁓ neighbor, past my neighbor Shelby, and she was like, she's like, ⁓ you seem like you're in a good mood. I'm Yeah, Richard Garfield just endorsed my game. And she's like, Who's that? She's like, God damn it. You know, it's like, yeah, I mean, you know, but the Beyonce of games is like not known to most of us, whereas like the Beyonce of beyond of the music industry is a god, you know. Totally. ⁓ like socially just in in terms of that, like you, you know, you can't really go. To the grocery store anymore, you know, normally. so that is like kind of one of the cool things of like moving from the music industry to the games industry where ⁓ you're kind of like mate, your goal is to like make something that doesn't need you. And the, you know, and and you know, someone can have a great experience with Fall of Magic and they can use my rules, they can use the scroll I designed, they can use the coins. ⁓ It but they also like it's also just sort of like showing you that you don't really need it. And I feel like the end of the game kind of does that. It's just sort of like I we've been kinda we've been kinda chill this whole time, you know, I haven't been like super intense about what you need to be doing in this game and you're kinda like doing whatever you want with it. And then at the end it's just really like, Yeah, you don't really need me anymore. Like y'all y'all y'all you'll got this. You got this. Go. All right now land it go, you know. Yeah, go hard. And that's that's kinda like what the glow and I and I feel like that ⁓ You know, more than any other role playing game I've designed, I feel like just that that it really gives you that really like ⁓ satisfying ending. Absolutely. In a way that ⁓ I I don't know if I would design another role playing game that was doing that as hard. ⁓ but it works really well in Fall of Magic. City of Winter, I like originally thought I was gonna do something like that, but I I realized it wasn't appropriate for that game. ⁓ so anyhow, yeah, that was my my one that I was I'm very proud of how the end of ⁓ Fall of Magic turned out, how the the glow location. Perfect. You should be. Because yeah, you you're cr absolutely correct. Like we get there and it's like almost like we're glance we're using the prompts, but also it's like, no, we know we know what to do. We know what to do now. We we're we're getting there. Yeah. ⁓ and the prompts are there just to kind of like help us along. But like we're like, no, we got we got this. Yeah. We're so excited to tell the ending of this story that we're just like going for it. Yeah. ⁓ and we took some pretty big swings there at the end too. That I think paid off really, really Really cool. So Yeah, it's it's very reliable. Like I see I've listened to a lot of people play Fall of Magic and when they get if they play a full if they take their time with it and they they get to the glow, ⁓ it's just it's always really cool. It j it always works, you know? Yeah. And it's also cool to like especially like why you serve the magus, like being at the beginning and the end of the game is I think really cool. And it it's just like try and the reason for the callbacks, like your face and the glow, why you serve the magus. Last time you saw a magic. It's just, it's it's it's perfect because it's just like you you have these prompts at the beginning of the game and then you have them at the end of the game. It's same words, but they mean something different now. Absolutely. And that's also showing us how we've changed too, you know, and it just really, and that then the whole game is about how we how journeys change and how our relationships with each other change. and it's it does it by doing it. It it does it by ushering a process where the players do it. And like you as players have changed too, which is the other part of it. And your relationships with with each other will have changed by the end of the game. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Games cool. Games are cool. Turns out. Game Usually. Turns out games are cool. Who would have thought? I was at ⁓ the the Tabletop Game Alliance Summit ⁓ in Olympia a few months ago, and I can't remember this person's name, I don't want to butcher it. The this one they were ⁓ So James Portnow was like ⁓ facilitating a whole thing for a bunch of game publishers and everybody kind of gave like a bunch of cards ⁓ to him and ⁓ with like questions for the seminar discussion. And one of the cards he read was like, Are games good? It was really funny. We like had a very long discussion about that. ⁓ and I think the conclusion we came up to was sometimes Sometimes they can be. They really can be. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, they can be they games can just be the best. they can get destroyed by capitalism like everything else, but th they're they they really wanna be good. Yeah. They want to be they wanna be. Yeah. At their best, they are good. Yeah. Beautiful. ⁓ I wanna circle back on something. Okay. Real quick. ⁓ you've talked about poetry with your prompts. Yeah. And we've talked about how the prompts are so simple and they are capable of creating such visceral role-play experiences. How did you kind of facilitate that with poetry? Sure, yeah. So so I mean, one thing I've been saying for like a long time, for like 10 years, is that players that are designing prompts should with using they're using with words are should really look to poetry for examples of how to do that. ⁓ and like books about teaching poetry. there's a book called ⁓ just that this like concept of like best words, best order. I think there's like a poetry instruction book that's about that. ⁓ Richard Hugo has a really great book called Triggering Town. Mary Oliver's got a really good book about writing poetry. and it's about They they care about the same things. Both poetry and story game prompts really care about economic use of words. Like fewer words are actually important. You can kind of think about it like if you put like a whole bunch of shit on the table, ⁓ it's gonna look a little confusing, like my desk ⁓ at work. It's like it's it sucks, man. There's just like so much stuff on it. ⁓ it's it's chaos. Whereas if you have like a blank table with like a pen just like like sitting in the middle of that table. That your eyes are immediately drawn to it. And we're doing the same thing with words. Like when we're using a ton of words in our writing, we're telling people that each individual word is not that important. Whereas if you have one ⁓ if you give someone a one-word prompt, ⁓ that word seems super important. And but you can't, so why not just give people one-word prompts all the time? Well, the the the problem is that. If you give people one-word prompts and ask them to come up with a creative idea based off of that, there's just like so many places you can go, you're not giving the brain enough points of contact to form a connection. And the the goal is you you wanna give people enough things to work off of that their brain will spark ⁓ an idea, but you don't want to make it so obvious that everybody has the same idea. Totally. That makes sense. So That's one trick. And we do that by having choosing words that are just just by by like through through like word choice and through syntax structure and You know, like I so I I spend a lot of time when I'm writing prompts thinking about which words that I'm using. I use at the source. I'm always kind of going through them. I think a lot about trying to get out any like filler words, like, okay, how few words can I say this? City of Winter, when when you play that game is like has a lot of that in like the tradition prompts, ⁓ you know, why we or ⁓ why we braid our hair is like one of the prompts. Or no, I'm sorry, it's not even why we braid our hair. It's just we braid our hair or something like that. Or maybe it's why we braid our hair. I can't remember. What I what I pick, I don't know. They they but they do different things, right? Yeah. If I give you a prompt and I say why we braid our hair, ⁓ that kind of gives you like a and tell you to make up a tradition for about that. That gives you kind of one sort of thought. If I just say we braid our hair. ⁓ that leads you maybe like that is a little more open. And if I just say like braid, you know, that's like, whoa, you know, and like make up a tradition, braid. and why we braid our hair is really just kind of like instructive. It's really just like telling you like come up with a reason why we braid our hair. Totally. ⁓ And it's this is but it and it's surrounded by other prompts. So the prompts are all cumulative, like each prompt is kind of influenced by the environment that you place it in. So in City of Winter ⁓ the the hare braiding one is couched within this weird this lion tradition. Lions have manes, they're also warriors. ⁓ it's very much a warrior tradition in terms of how all the other traditions are written about. They're talking about fighting and they talk about weapons, you know, there's like ⁓ and it's like Cloud Citadel is where that tradition's from, and it's ⁓ you know it's a citadel. ⁓ it's it's it's it's giving kind of like Dune Atreides vibes. and so and so all those things will kind of like lead you in like a particular direction. So it but prompts can also be very long, you know. like ⁓ for the queen ⁓ has a lot of prompts that are like longer, like almost like more like full sentences. And sometimes there's people write prompts where there's like kind of two or three things in them, and it'll be like, ⁓ you know, why did the queen betray you? Why Did you secretly think that was cool? Right. You know, or did you think you deserved it? You know? Yeah. ⁓ so and and that's kind of like so peop I I'm not a I I I I stri ⁓ it's not my style to like do kind of like multi part prompts, but they're they're also cool too, you know. And for the queen, that's kind of all it's giving you is these cards. And so there's kind of more, you sort of want the it gives you like a little more juice there, a little more to work off of. ⁓ and they create different experiences of play. Like you can kind of give people like ⁓ Like a lot of LARPs ⁓ will give you like a full sheet of like, here's who your character is, here's the other five characters, here's what you think about each of them. Sure. And it's like, okay, I'm just gonna like download this, you know, drink some coffee and like, you know, and and internalize all this information and then keep referring to it as we're playing. So I'm like, ⁓ wait, I fucking hate you. Yeah. You know. so I think like That is well, it's just a toy. It's a toy to play with as a designer. ⁓ and I I I think I lean a lot on what I learned from writing poetry, ⁓ just because that's that's kind of what's interesting to me. And I think like I I like giving people a lot of simple things that kind of have a cumulative effect. I think you get a lot more I think it leaves a lot more space for the players to come up with their own ideas. Whereas if you if your prompts are too complicated, then you're gonna have to kind of constrain the possibility space of the game a lot more in order for the those prompts later in the game to still be useful. Because we can't stray too far. Like if ⁓ if you're the hero of Barley Town or something like that. And you know, there wasn't any point in the game where there there wasn't any point or I'm sorry, I'm thinking it was was Cruz's character a fugitive? Sort of. Cruz's character did he choose at the beginning. Do you remember what prompt he chose at the beginning of the game? ⁓ what did he choose? Was he Stormguard? Stormguard. So he was either fugitive, heir or knight. I think he was a knight. I think he was a knight of Stormguard, yeah. And he chose and he decided to be a frog, right? And he was a frog. Yeah. So like there wasn't like anything in the game that later told him knights aren't frogs. Right. You know, so it was actually it didn't break the game at all that he was a frog. Whereas like if you're playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons, ⁓ and you decide and you told the GM that you're actually a frog, like in the first game, like they're gonna there's like a lot of There's a lot you're gonna run into a lot of problems. Yeah. Like how are you writing the you know, none weapons and armor don't fit you anymore? Like how many hit points do you have? I don't know. Whereas like if the since the or like if we're just talking about narrative prompts, you know, if if there was like a lot of stuff that was just like, ⁓ knights are like this, nights are like this, you know, like later in the game, ⁓ it might not fit so well. Like you might run into this cognitive dissonance of like, ⁓ wait, how do I how do I like fit this in? And it could be like really difficult. So that's anyhow, that's some of the stuff that I can say about like prompt design and prompt writing. The second thing I wanted to say, which is just that like verbal prompts are part of it, but I think that it's also ⁓ prompting is most effective when it's multimodal, ⁓ when there's different modes of com of media that you're using. ⁓ so like ⁓ words are one, images are another. even like different working with different materials. So I think Fall Magic works really well because we have words. We have ⁓ this textile component, we have these metal components, you know, you cut you have these paper components, and there's the all those those different materials all kind of tickle different parts of your mind. And and like the the token that you ch so your character is a name, ⁓ it's a title, and it's a token, and the tokens all have these two different images on them. And so it's like I've kind of given you these three points, you know, I'm I'm Solly midwife of Barley Town. ⁓ and I have this token. ⁓ I made this tree, am I this egg? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like you got an image, you have this like object, you have these these different things. So like when done well, you know, I think that it's more and that it's it's more effective to give people like a lot of simple things that will synergize with each other rather than giving people I mean, I I'll I I'll play one of those LARPs where they give me the full like bibliography that I have to read, you know, so I can play this professor in this. particular way. And those games have to be really particular because they actually have this really particular outcome they're sort of like aiming towards. So like they've like made these really they've pointed all of our characters at each other in these interesting ways. And that's the fun of the game is is sort of discovering that. ⁓ you know it's like everybody that I like likes somebody that I don't like. You know? And which makes for a a good, you know, particle a particular kind of fun. Totally. Yeah. Here we Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. It's so fascinating to hear like the more design process behind the scenes stuff that goes on to a game like this. So I appreciate it. Yeah, cool. Cool. All right. ⁓ I will ask one more thing. Sure. Is there anything that we have not touched on that you would like to touch on about Fall of Magic? It's okay if the answer is now we got it. No, I can say something about Fall of Magic. Yeah, so I mean Fall of Magic is is interesting. I don't know how many games I'm gonna make. ⁓ it's it's hard. It takes a long time and it keeps taking me longer. Like each game that I make, I'm I'm sort of exponentially increasing the complexity of what it is that the swings that I'm taking and what I'm trying to do. But I think that I ⁓ I don't know. It's just f for me, f Fall of Magic is not just a game. It's like become ⁓ something that just really like the design of it, the process of making it actually like changed my life in a really fundamental way. ⁓ and I think that it I I'm just really interested in like continuing to sort of explore, you know, what's what's possible, like what can we make here in America? ⁓ you know, what can we do with ⁓ you know, try trying to just trying to like main like doing all the ⁓ the the the challenge of like making of doing the manufacturing work here ⁓ has taught me a lot and it's been really challenging. and it's it's really cool that people it's it continues to find an audience kind of after all these years. It's been around for over a decade. And ⁓ you know, people are still playing it and people are still buying it and discovering it. th so I th I guess my my hope my hope is that it's something that continues to find an audience and expand people's sense of possibility, both of play but also of like what games can be. Yeah. And also what businesses can be too. You know, it is actually possible to ⁓ you know, make a living in this industry, you know, and it's it's possible to create jobs in this industry and it's possible to you know, do our own manufacturing. And it means maybe letting go a little bit of some of the things that are better done in other countries. You know, like I I don't think we're ever going to be able to compete with ⁓ just the efficiency of of ⁓ you know you know Chinese manufacturing. They're just super good at what they do. You know, it's like ⁓ you know, that those those those companies that that we work with over there. And I'll continue to like, you know, kind of make do have some things manufactured overseas. But it's also really cool to see like, you know, where what we've been able to accomplish with textiles and with screen printing and ⁓ now we're working with ceramics and and there's there is like I think that there's just like a lot of possibility space ⁓ just with American craft and the the the connection between like American craft, American artisans and ⁓ and design work ⁓ that I would like to see people like explore more. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Awesome. Well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. Yeah, thanks for ⁓ this is a really cool conversation. ⁓ I really can't talk up Fall of Magic any more than I possibly can. I d ⁓ one of my favorite role playing experiences I've ever had. Wow. ⁓ so yeah, thank you for your time. Thank you for making such an awesome game and I appreciate you. All right. All right. Take care. Alright, let's see ya.