Latest / Story Games / Episode 22: Interview with Paul Czege, Creator of The Balsam Lake Unmurders

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Episode 22: Interview with Paul Czege, Creator of The Balsam Lake Unmurders · Story Games

• Maggie Studio: 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'm coming at you with another interview, this time with game designer Paul Sega. Paul Sega has made some amazing solo journaling games, including the Balsam Lake Unmurders. We have a really cool conversation about solo RPGs, about bleed, about your subconscious mind. It's an awesome conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, here is Paul Sega. The Dear Nicorn friends. I am sitting here with Paul Sega, and today we are going to talk about his games. We're going to talk about journaling games. And I'm very, very excited. So, Paul, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Yeah, hi. ⁓ I'm Paul Sega. I make role-playing games and storytelling games and journaling games. If you know me, it's probably from my life with Master, ⁓ which is a role-playing game I published. ⁓ over 20 years ago, it won the Diana Jones Award. ⁓ more recently I've been way down the rabbit hole with journaling games. ⁓ I wrote a how-to called The Ink That Bleeds. ⁓ I designed a several games. ⁓ one you might have heard of is the Balsam Lake Unmurders, which is about going to ⁓ forested Minnesota town to solve ⁓ to catch a serial net. Awesome. I love it. I was able to play the Balsam Lake Unmurders actually for my solo RPG book club, which I would love to talk to you about in a bit. ⁓ and it's such an interesting game in the way it's presented and the way that it's played. And I would love to pick your brain about some of your design choices. Sure. Yay! So ⁓ first of all, could you ⁓ You kind of already did, but just so we're covering all of our bases, could you describe the balsam like unmurders in your own words? Yeah, so it's ⁓ you're an agent sent to a forested town in Minnesota to catch a serial necromancer. The game uses playing cards that represent ⁓ possible interactions you can have with suspects and victims and ⁓ What you're trying to do is prove method, motive, and opportunity on one suspect through conversation, and solve the crime. You can fail, you can, you know, you can end up with a cold case, ⁓ you can be killed by the necromancer, ⁓ the ⁓ you know, it's ⁓ it's crime solved, it's not like TV you know, forensic crime solving where you're doing blood spatter analysis. It's like real crimes get solved by ⁓ you know, conversations and determining whether somebody might have a motive or not. Absolutely. And it's so fun to play. I love how it's kind of it it really just kind of throws you right into the game and you just kind of start playing immediately, which I love. ⁓ it was a really good game to start my book club with because it really does a good job of introducing you to solo journaling games. And yeah, I had a great time playing it. I'm I'm really glad you did. I really liked seeing the photos from the from the club and everybody, you know, having a good time with it. And y I think you're exactly right. The ⁓ it's just like a choose your own adventure book in a way where you open to the first page and it starts walking you through it and it, you know, I I wanted people to be able to just get their journal, get their cards, sit down and start playing. And that's exactly what happened. I kind of gave people an introduction and like this is kind of what we're gonna do. And people just sat and then ran with it, which was really cool to see. it was really cool to play a solar journaling game as a group as well. That was like a really interesting, unique experience. And there was like a surprising amount of collaboration happening, which is unusual because when I play a solo journaling game, it's usually just like me in my bedroom and I'm kind of just doing my little thing. So to introduce other people to one of my favorite hobbies, which is solo journaling games and to see them take it, have fun with it, and have fun with each other and connect with other people, I think was really special. I yeah, I I think it's super fun ⁓ that you that you did it and The the group aspect, I've never done that. But one thing that's really fun with the Balsam Lake Unmurders is because it has canonical NPCs that are in the margins of the book that you that are associated with the playing cards that you turn over. ⁓ you can be playing the game right next to me. And when we get done with the game, the first question you want to s you know, you wanna ask someone is. Well, who turned out to be the necromancer in your game? You're both in the same world, but you're gonna have different outcomes. Yeah. But it's fun. You know, ⁓ no, that was, you know, that person was a, you know, ⁓ I they were a suspect of mine, but they didn't ⁓ turn out to be the necromancer, you know. It's fun. Totally. Yeah. ⁓ there are two people sitting next to each other who pulled the same character. I think they were both the victim. and they pulled the same card for the victim. And they were joking and laughing with each other about how differently they took that character and kind of like latched onto different aspects of that character and ran in different directions with it, which I thought was just so fun. And they were having like they were like giggling, they were laughing. It was so fun to watch. I ⁓ I tried really hard with the character thumbnails to give you the starting points for the characters and then your own journaling would flesh them out. And that's, you know, that's what the ⁓ that's what the flow of play within the game, you know, tells you to do. Turn over the card, read the thumbnail, and then flesh this character out. You know, if they're a victim, how did they originally die? You know, what is their life like now that they're back from the dead and how are they being disruptive to ⁓ to their family members or to, you know, we're you know, the people they're lit their roommates or, you know, whoever they're they're living with. So ⁓ so yeah, that's exactly ⁓ that's exactly part of the part of the fun, I think, is y you're gonna take the characters in different directions. Absolutely. It's it's really cool. You do a really good job of creating these kind of like vignettes of characters that people, like you said, can kind of just take and run with. And I think that's very fun. And it's it it's a really you introduce this concept of right to find out very early on in the game. And I'd love to pick your brain more about that in a minute. But like I think it's a good kind of exercise in trying that. Cause it's like you have a little bit of information. Now what else can you discover about it? Yeah. Totally. ⁓ but speaking to right to find out, ⁓ it's a big part of how you approach Balsam Lake on murders ⁓ and a lot of your games and you talk a lot about it in the Ink That Bleeds as well. ⁓ would you like to kind of give a little introduction to what write to find out means? Yeah. ⁓ so ⁓ so I don't know. Do you know the do you know The Artist's Way by Julian? I'm familiar. Yes. ⁓ I read it 20 years ago and it had a huge impact on me. ⁓ and the the core of it is ⁓ you're supposed to write. Three pages stream of consciousness every day. And it's a way for your unconscious mind to tell you who you are and what you should be doing with your life. And it's, you know, that sort of stream of consciousness writing is setting your conscious mind aside and all of your anxieties and all the tasks that you have to get done and letting your unconscious mind, which has been with you through all of your life experiences and knows, you know, all of your awkward breakups and all of your, you know, ⁓ missed opportunities and all the promotions you didn't get that you wanted. And ⁓ and it will tell you who you truly are and and what you should be doing with your talents and it believes in you. And ⁓ when I you know, journaling games started to surge really during early COVID and ⁓ ⁓ people were playing them and posting on posting about them online. And I I would see people would they'd play a little bit and then they'd quit. You know, they weren't they weren't having fun. They were ⁓ and what I saw was that it was people were playing like they were writing a story someone else might read. ⁓ like they were sort of creating something as if it was an entertainment for someone else. They weren't necessarily playing for themselves. And I wasn't having that problem at all. I was f because I was writing stream of consciousness like the artist's way, like I had done in my journal for twenty years. And I realized ⁓ I I needed to write down how to do this because ⁓ people were quitting playing and they were just not figuring out how to have fun. So write to find out, which I Right to find out, which I wrote about mostly in the Ink That Bleeds, is write stream of consciousness. Let your unconscious mind ⁓ come up with possibilities. Use your sentences, write sentence fragments. Use your sentences to ⁓ accept or reject the ideas of your unconscious mind until you feel which ones are true. And so you don't end up with something that feels like a story. you end up with events that feel right to you and you move from event to event to event. So when I ⁓ so I wrote about it in the Ink That Bleeds, but if people aren't familiar with it, then there's always like in the beginning, there's probably a paragraph in one of my games that says, Write stream of consciousness, write fragments, you know, let your unconscious mind consider possibilities until it gets And what feels true. Totally. Yeah. And I think that is a unique and cool way to approach it. Because I know when I started journaling games, I did start as more of like a creative writing practice. And like I'm gonna write a story, you know, I'm gonna write like I want it to like, you know, have flowery prose and like, you know, all this stuff, which is fun for me. Like, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy playing that that style, but to be given an alternative way to play has been really cool and it's a different experience. It's more of a cerebral kind of introspective experience. ⁓ especially because with your games as well, like in Balsam Lake Unmurders, you're not playing a character. You're playing this approximate version of yourself and you're kind of putting yourself into the game. Yeah. ⁓ I ⁓ I don't know. I think I I ⁓ I s the very first journaling game I played was called The Beast. And I played it when it was in playtesting in 2015. And ⁓ and I had a good time and I was playing it as a virtual version of myself. And ⁓ and then, you know, time went on and years went on, and you know, I didn't really get hooked on journaling games until like the early COVID time period and people were posting a lot of them on itch dot io and ⁓ and I started playing them and ⁓ having a good time and I realized that I had fallen into this way of playing as an approximate version of myself. So basically me, but if the game requires that you are on a reality dating show, like be with me. then I'm single b you know on the show, but otherwise I'm me, you know? Yeah. and ⁓ and I think ⁓ I don't know, it it it it's been this really immersive metaphysical experience of self understanding, very closely related, I think, to lots of ⁓ journaling practices. There's a ⁓ There's a guy named Ira Progoff who has a journaling method that's very much about self-reflection and ⁓ understanding who you are. And I that's w what I fell into. I consciously look for games that aren't going to tell me this is the character you are. They're going to ⁓ they're gonna let me tell the game. who I am through totally the writing activity. Totally. Yeah. And I think you're right. It does create for more of an immersive experience that way. Which does lead me to another topic that I wanted to bring up is you talk a lot about bleed as well in the Ink That Bleeds. Would you like to kind of give an overview of bleed for people who may not be familiar with what that means? Yeah. ⁓ So bleed as a ⁓ as a concern in role playing has been around for a long time, ⁓ particularly in the LARP scene, where maybe you go away for a weekend and you embody a character in a pretty fully consuming way. And then getting yourself outside of the headspace of the character can be tough. You know, you've got to go back to your day job the next week and you have still all these emotions and all of this ⁓ all these thoughts and experiences are they're in your mind and when i started playing journaling games that that definitely happened for me you know i'd be at the grocery store and all of the concerns of the game would be on my mind the emotions would be on my mind and ⁓ and it was hard to jump back and forth in in life between ⁓ you know between those two realities really and ⁓ I realized ⁓ well okay so in the Ink That Bleeds I talk about two different kinds of bleed. ⁓ one is what I've been describing, where the emotions and the concerns of the game and the experience of the game bleed out into your you know your going to work and going to school and and ⁓ and the other I it so I call that bleed out and ⁓ and then I talk about bleed in which is where ⁓ like other writings that you've done, books that you've read, ⁓ other journaling games that you've played, the ⁓ the characters, the the experience of those bleed into your current game. So you end up having this sort of like ongoing cinematic universe that you you know, from game to game to game, ⁓ when you allow that stuff to to bleed in. And in and in the Boston Lake on murders, I even play around with that with some of the ⁓ with some of the characters that you might encounter. You turn over a card and you find them in the margin of the book and it might not be a canonical character within ⁓ ⁓ within the town of Balsam Lake, it might say this is someone from your prior writings or from a book that you read who's in Balsam Lake for some reason and now they're a suspect, you know, in in the game. The ⁓ I guess the thing that I'll say about bleed is ⁓ like in the LARP scene, they have all sorts of mechanisms for trying to like manage it at at you know at the end. They have interactive ⁓ I don't know, not rituals really, but like interactive ⁓ things that they do ⁓ at the end of the game. To help people package the experience and get back to their life so that it doesn't mess them up. And they call them derolling or debriefing or, you know, ⁓ procedures. But if you're playing a solo game, you're you you don't really have access to that. So ⁓ one of the things I did write about in the Ink That Bleeds is creating some of these things for myself where I can Package the experience so that it's not ⁓ gonna be a problem for me when I'm driving on the expressway or something and it comes up totally. ⁓ yeah. But I I will say that bleed becomes much less of a problem. And I didn't realize this for a while. Bleed becomes much less of a problem when you're playing as your approximate self from game to game to game to game. Because and what I realized was that ⁓ the reason bleed becomes a problem if you're in a LARP game or if you play a solo game and ⁓ and you're not playing as your approximate self. Is because your unconscious mind is frustrated and it's saying, I'm not done with this. I'm not done with this experience. There's more that you need to hear. There's, you know, there's, you know, we've ended the game, but I'm not done. And I'm going to continue to bother you about it, you know, in your life. And what I realized when you play as your approximate self from game to game to game, your unconscious trusts that I'm going to be able to bring this back. you know, we're gonna be able to finish up this this ⁓ portion of your life, you know, in another game in in the future. And the the problem of bleed becomes much less of a much less of a problem. Interesting. That is really cool to think about, yeah, and the different ways that bleed kind of affects us when we're kind of just doing this on our own. That's super interesting. And I love the idea that your subconscious mind is just kind of there with you through it all and is kind of just like guiding you along. I love that. That's like comforting in a way. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. I think it is. I think your unconscious mind is is your ally in life. It knows you like nobody else and it wants the best things for you. And it's gonna let it when Like some journaling games will tell you, you know, you know, you gotta roll your character stats, or this is the character that you're gonna play in the game. And the ones that are immersive for me, the ones that are the most effective, you know, affecting ⁓ for me, are the ones that the game tells you how the world is, the situations you're in and how the world works to a degree. From the perspective of the designer and the designer's lived experiences and how they think about relationships and adversities in in the world. And then you tell the game who you are and how you deal with it. And your unconscious mind says, This is what happens then. This is the So there are tons of games that you can play like that. I wrote about a bunch of them in the Ink That Bleeds, but those are the ones that I look at. Not the ones that are gonna tell me who I am, but the ones where I'm gonna tell the game. Perfect. I love that. ⁓ yeah, that is such a cool way to kind of approach journaling games, and I love it. And I'm excited to dig more into these kind of games and kind of explore them from this. Now that I've played the Balsam Lake on murders, I'm like, okay, no, I want I want more. I want to do this again. I want to try this this this method out in different ways. So that's really exciting. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ question for ya. What do you hope people get out of playing the Balsam Lake on murders? That is a good question. ⁓ I really ⁓ I really wanted it to be an intro game. I think ⁓ like Be With Me, the one that I wrote about ⁓ being on a reality dating show like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, and it uses paint swatches to represent the prospective life partners that you're dating on the show. not everybody is gonna click with that you know, theme. But ⁓ but the Boston Lake Unmurders is kind of like Twin Peaks in a way. Totally. And and it's a crime solving game. And ⁓ and I think we're so in, you know, in society we're so it it crime solving is so pervasive. You know, we we're Constantly seeing true crime on Dateline on TV and we're seeing ⁓ you know crime ⁓ movies and you know silence of the lands and you know ⁓ it's it's a genre that's so pervasive that it almost feels like it's already a part of our approximate self. We feel like we're crime solvers constantly. We're s we see something on social media and you know, our thoughts are like, you know, what motivated this action by somebody? You know, who is the suspect, you know? Yeah. That ⁓ somebody disappears and we're consumed by, you know, following it. Where was the boyfriend when this happened? You know, and totally. We feel like we're you know, we have to solve the crime because we can't sleep at night. Yeah. And ⁓ and so the Balsam Lake Unmurders I I think feels more we don't necessarily feel like someone who might be not all of us anyway feel like someone who might be on a reality dating show, but there's so much about crime solving that feels like a part of who we are. So I really designed it to be ⁓ a ⁓ a game that would click for people. And it's got weird elements and metaphysical, you know, ⁓ you know, surreal elements like Twin Peaks, like the log lady or whatever. The NPCs are not ⁓ you know, ⁓ n you know, ordinary townspeople in a way. It's got a northern exposure vibe or you know, Twin Peaks vibe. So I think we've covered a lot of ground here today. So thank you for ⁓ letting me pick your brain about so many things. ⁓ but I wanted to give the floor to you. Do you have any upcoming projects that you'd like to talk about? ⁓ so ⁓ one thing I'm working on is ⁓ is a sequel to Inkscapes. So the Ink That Bleeds is my how-to about ⁓ how to play in a way that I think is immersive and affecting, and about bleed and about playing as your approximate self. And ⁓ and then the sequel that I wrote to that called Inkscapes is sort of ⁓ like this is what happens to you when you play like that. This is the metaphysical effects of how you start to embody yourself as the person who had the experiences in the game. Because ⁓ I don't think journaling games are fantasizing. ⁓ I don't think they're escapists. I I think they're acts of purging ourselves of narratives that aren't in our interests and filling ourselves with narratives. That are a reflection of like real understanding of who we are. And ⁓ and so I think they're super meaningful. And I also think that the narratives that are running in us at all times are perceivable. And when you look at when you meet me on the street, ⁓ you can I'm embodying a self who understands myself in certain ways, and you can see that. ⁓ I think we have metaphysical perceptions of each other. And the sea so the sequel that I'm writing to Inkscapes, it's gonna end up being sort of like a trilogy, I guess, ⁓ that I didn't really plan. is is gonna be called a self in journal gaming. And it's going to be about writing small games for yourself to play. ⁓ there are there are lots of journaling games that are ⁓ you know combine two ingredients. You know, you've got a ⁓ a table of elements and you've got another table of elements and you roll on one and you roll on another and you combine them and it it makes a writing prompt. And ⁓ what I realized was ⁓ that my unconscious mind ⁓ would sometimes want me to engage with Something that didn't exist as a game anywhere else. And that my unconscious mind, you know, phrases are important to it. That they would come up, you know, and they would be resonant for me. Whether, you know, a song lyric or a line from a poem or a stanza from a poem or a quote. And ⁓ at one point, the the phrase, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. ⁓ I it I realized that it had come up for me and had some emotional resonance for me. ⁓ and I didn't understand it. I didn't understand, I didn't know where it was from. If you had asked me, I would have guessed that it was from Shakespeare. It sounds like something Falstaff might say in one of his plays, but then it comes up for me and I finally I'm like, I need to know where this is from. So I research it. And it's from the Bible. And it appears in different ways throughout the Bible, with different elements in the in the sentence, in different books written hundreds and hundreds of years apart. ⁓ like ⁓ and and so I I pulled the elements out and I made us a little list of six and another list of a few, and ⁓ and you can roll on them and combine them, and in the process of playing it. I understood why the why the ⁓ why the phrase was important to me. And I and so the the third one in the the unplanned trilogy is gonna have rules for a couple of games that I made like that. And and it's gonna explain, you know, how and why I think that you should be making small games for yourself as an expression of something that your unconscious mind wants you to be. thinking about and exploring and that you that it's not hard to make you know to if there's a stanza in a poem, you you know this. You know you know it when you hear a certain song and you f feel the hair stand up on your arms or on your neck or on your that ⁓ that there's something about this that's important to you and you can make it into a a little journaling game that's going to be just as meaningful or maybe more meaningful, you know, for for you to play than ⁓ than you know almost ⁓ any other game that you might, you know, choose. So I ⁓ I'm excited about it. I I want, you know, it's gonna have some rules. It's gonna ha I'm I always include examples of, you know, excerpts from my own play. Yeah. Because I think they are ⁓ you know, excerpts from my own play do a way of ⁓ really demonstrating ⁓ and ⁓ you know how to have the experience of the game. So it's it's gonna be like the other ones in the unplanned trilogy in in that regard. ⁓ and I'm excited about getting back to writing it. Yeah, that sounds amazing. I have never thought about making my own little little game before, but the idea of Digging into that sounds really exciting to me as a lover of these kinds of games. ⁓ I will definitely be on the lookout for that because that sounds amazing. I'm I'm I'm super excited. ⁓ yeah, I think you're exactly the target audience for it. Yay! I can't wait. That sounds so fun. ⁓ yeah, we'll be keeping an eye out for that for sure. And it's exciting to think about like what things will come up for me when thinking about creating something like this. Like 'Cause it's impossible to think of something off the top of your head, right? Like, ⁓ I have no idea. I've never heard a song in my life. But I'll be kind of like thinking about this throughout the day now and being like, okay, what stuff pops in there? Like what what pops out at me? And you are gonna notice it too. I mean, you'll be at ⁓ you know, you'll be listening to the radio or you'll be, you know, at the bookstore or something, and something will come up in your head and you'll realize, man, I think about that particular poem a lot. Totally. Or I think about that. particular line in that song a lot. And ⁓ and that's the one to focus on for ⁓ that's so exciting. ⁓ can't wait. ⁓ well, awesome. Thank you so much. ⁓ the floor is yours. Is there anything that we didn't cover today that you would like to give a little shout out, shine a spotlight on? Anything at all? ⁓ when we talked last time, somehow we got on the topic of tarot. Yeah. And I don't remember exactly how I got onto that, but I think the interesting thing that we talked about was that ⁓ I think tarot is really adjacent to journaling games. Totally. I think it works in the same way. Like we talked earlier, the game that tells you how the world is. And ⁓ the situation that you're in and what the factors of that situation are. And you know, the the the way the world is a contentious thing for who you want to be. And then you tell so so reading ⁓ you know, reading tarot, ⁓ here's someone who ⁓ he has a bumper crop. You can tell from his body language that he's not sure, you know, did did he was it worth it? You know, was the effort that he put into it worth it? And ⁓ Pamela Coleman Smith, who I think is amazing, you know, throughout the minor Arcana is telling us the way the world is a a problem for us, and then we tell Tarot what our actions are gonna be. And ⁓ and and who we are in the world. And ⁓ so I feel like ⁓ I don't know. I mean I feel like if you think tarot is is a metaphysical experience, then journaling games are an equally metaphysical ⁓ experience because they work the same. One million percent. Both are tools in my brain of digging deep into who you are and what you're about and finding those answers within yourself. Cause I f w how I approach tarot is like I'm asking questions to the universe and I'm the one answering those questions like deep, deep deep inside me. And I feel like it's a very similar process when you're playing like a really immersive journaling game. It's like the the answers are there. It's just a matter of finding them within all of the muck and the gunk and the everything that's inside of you. ⁓ and I think that's a really, really cool parallel and probably a reason why I love these games so much because I love tarot. I love that metaphysical aspect of it and it scratches a very similar spot in my brain. I yeah, I totally agree. ⁓ I love it. ⁓ so cool. Well, I will definitely be on the lookout for more stuff from you for sure. Very excited about your upcoming your upcoming book. And I just I I I'm psyched. I I'm I'm really glad. I think ⁓ I think you've been a really great evangelist for ⁓ for journaling games. That's amazing. And ⁓ and I I think, you know, ⁓ I think you have exactly the right approach. So ⁓ I I think ⁓ yeah I mean y you show people how it's fun and ⁓ and I can get really cerebral, you know, and I think, you know, maybe you know, maybe that's fun for a certain kind of person, but ⁓ you're a great translator from, you know, my headspace to the fun aspects of it. Thank you very much. That means a lot. I do I do find a lot of fun and enjoyment in these games, and I think it's good to have have both, right? It's good to have this is a cool interesting experience for you and your subconscious and tells you a lot about you and also it can be fun and you can explore your imagination too. And if you want to write about, ⁓ I just played the librarian's apprentice. Like if you want to write about a library that has drag queen story hour, like what does that look like? Like there's like so much you can do within the realm of journaling games that it really is there really is something for everyone. And I just think that's one of the most beautiful parts about it. And I just I love it. I I totally agree. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really enjoy speaking with you. You're such a cool person to talk to, and you really just have such a unique perspective on these kinds of games that I think is really valuable and awesome to listen to. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Yeah. All right. We'll see you next time.