Weird Games and Weirder People

Jarrett has helped create some of the most popular indie rpg systems, modules, and toolkits of the last decade. Primarily a behind-the-scenes person, he has recently started his own company, Space Penguin Ink, with his partner debbie and his cats. He looks forward to making more weird stuff every day!

12th Episodes! And today we have a very special guest, a game designer that has been influential to my work and to so many other game designers I admire as well, Chris McDowell!

Chris is a TTRPG designer in Manchester UK, known for Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland, and the upcoming Mythic Bastionland. He makes rules-light flavour-heavy games and writes at ⁠bastionland.com⁠.

I had the pleasure and honor to meet Chris at Gen Con 2023. We talked a little bit, I gave him some of my games, and it was certainly one of the highlights of the convention for me. 

It's hard to know what to say about Chris McDowall's work. He creates ver well thought out and crafted games that are very simple to use, but that have so much depth both in terms of setting and mechanics to explore. His work, as he says himself, has influence from miniature games and boardgames and reminds me some of my favorite of those games. Those that have very simple and minimal mechanics but that offer so much possibility and space for exploration for them. This lets everyone play the game, but offer those interested in it a lot of room for mastery.

He is also very generous with the knowledge he accumulated making games and studying them. Not only his games have an unique way to teach of how to play them better and to make the best use of its possibilities, he also maintains a gaming blog where he talks about theory, design, playtesting, and anything gaming related that is really a treasure trove of knowledge.

And if that was not enough, Chris is constantly helping out and uplifting other creators, talking about their work in his channels, making the gaming engines he creates available for other to work with for FREE mind you, and a lot more.

Anyway, in this chat we got to talk about what is weird, how we find it in the absence of things, how we can explore this "void" in the game design we make. We talked about art, artists, game design and game designers, how non-combat encounters are so interesting, his different creative approaches, what we value and what has a real impact in our lives, our problems with anxiety, and all sorts of weird thing in between.

Oh, and we obviously talked quite a bit about his upcoming Mythic Bastionland RPG, which will bring mythology to Bastionland in a total unique way!

So listen up, and let's get weird with Chris McDowell!

Check out Chris McDowall's Work!

⁠www.bastionland.com⁠

⁠https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bastionland/mythic-bastionland-rpg-before-into-the-odd⁠

Thank you for listening!

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going! It would really help!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can also support me buy buying one of my games! Kosmosaurs just got released in print, and it is my new RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons about Space Dinosaur Rangers defending the galaxy from evildoers! 

Get your copy right here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/kosmosaurs⁠

Wow! 11 Episodes! And to celebrate the double digits, we have double guests! From the Epic Levels music, Mad Dungeon podcast, and the many artistic exploration of them, come Andrew Bellury and Steve Albertson!

Website: https://epiclevelsrapgods.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/epiclevels

Andrew's Insta: https://www.instagram.com/epic_levels/

Steve's Insta: https://www.instagram.com/jonnyturbo86/

Dungeon Cats KS: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/epiclevels/dungeon-cats

We reached 10 episodes! And for such a special occasion we have a very special guest! Ava Islam, creator of Errant RPG gets weird with us!

Ava Islam is a very resourceful creator, from a mixed background and a lot of drive. She created the fabulous Errant RPG, a rules lite procedure heavy fantasy RPG that drinks both from the original well of fantasy gaming, and from the myriad of contemporary thought on the same topic! It feels at the same time very familiar and classic, but also very unique, new, and well thought of.

On thing that fascinates me about Ava's work is how she has no qualms about taking what works from something and ignoring what not and then welding it to this whole tapestry of her work.

In the chat we talked about how her experiences in life and with other games, horror movies, how her own issues and concerns helped guide her design choices.

It's a very good episode with many insightful and learnable moments from a great designer that knows how to take what is good out there and make it work!

So get weird with Ava Islam!

Here's links to Ava's work!

Kill Jester Website (Ava's Publisher House): https://www.killjester.com/

Sanctimonious Slimes vs Expired Epicures (Kickstarter coming soon):https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avaislam/sanctimonious-slimes-vs-expired-epicures

Buy Errant: https://www.killjester.com/products

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KillJesterGames

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kill-Jester-107649001862351

Thank you for listening!

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going! It would really help!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can also support me buy buying one of my games! Kosmosaurs just got released in print, and it is my new RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons about Space Dinosaur Rangers defending the galaxy from evildoers! 

Get your copy right here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/kosmosaurs

9th Episode (one more till we get to 10!!!)! This time I had the honor to sit down and talk to Giuliano Roverato, the Game of the Year award-winning game designer from Brazil!

Giuliano Roverato is a Brazilian game designer that lives for good food, exploring the weird dungeons on the forgotten corners of our reality and doom scrolling on twitter. Made Bakto's Terrifying Cuisine and Brave Zenith, and is currently delving into obscure PS2 games in his spare time.

I love how Giuliano Roverato work mixes the weird and the whimsical, with a touch that it is unique to being a Brazilian. We talked about how his fascination for the weird lead to Indie RPGs, how video games are a inspiration to his work, and how he believes they are more adept at exploring the weird than most RPGs are (and we discussed how many of these did that)

That maybe our longest episode to that but it's totally worth it. We talk game design in various instances, we talk about a very fascinating book called the House of Leaves. And as usual, we get weird and talk about the metaphysical and our believes.

You are gonna like this one! So get weird, with Giuliano Roverato!

Here's links to Giuliano's work!

https://roll4tarrasque.itch.io -> games
https://spearwitch.com/products/pre-order-baktos-terrifying-cuisine-> Bakto
https://twitter.com/KnightRamen -> socials

Thank you for listening!

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going! It would really help!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp⁠⁠⁠

You can also support me buy buying one of my games! Kosmosaurs just got released in print, and it is my new RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons about Space Dinosaur Rangers defending the galaxy from evildoers! 

Get your copy right here: ⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/kosmosaurs

8th Episode! Today with the creative and resourceful creator Marco Serrano, from Spicy Tuna. 

Marco Serrano may be best known by his various and excellent contributions to the Mothership Space Horror RPG with his 3rd Party publications, but he also worked on many other things (and is working on even more), including A Butterfly Dies for Primal Quest (a great 3rd Party Module inspired by Latin American culture)! He is currently working on his first full game system called Greenhorns: Creators of Worlds, in which you create and see the development of worlds in the universe.

Marco is also a dad of 4, a graphic, designer, and illustrator and a lot more things (aren't we all?). We talked about his passion for short stories, how they work, some of his favorite ones, and how can they influence our game design. We talked about comics, art, stuff you make but you don't share. We discussed how he operates doing search and learning new things all the time, and how that inspires and informs his work and life. We also talked religion, catholicism, growing up in a church and delved into the weird as usual.

Marco cites a lot of interesting material I don't have all the links to yet but I will try to find it (if any of you can help me with that, that would be great).

Here's links to Marco's work!

Subscribe to his newsletter: https://theguac.substack.com/

Follow Marco on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/spicytunarpg

Spicy Tuna Website: https://spicytunarpg.com/

Thank you for listening!

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going! It would really help!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp⁠⁠

You can also support me buy buying one of my games! Kosmosaurs just got released in print, and it is my new RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons about Space Dinosaur Rangers defending the galaxy from evildoers! 

Get your copy right here: ⁠⁠bit.ly/kosmosaurs

Seventh Episode! This time we welcome the incredible artist and game designer Alan Bahr, of Gallant Knight Games and many other things!

Disclaimer here. Alan and I are good friends, we worked together as partners while I published my games under his company. I learned a lot from Alan, not only in terms of making games, but on how to be a good person this world. I owe a lot to him.

Alan Bahr is probably best known for his work on the amazing line of games using the TinyD6 system. His award-winning and best-selling works include Tiny Dungeon, Tiny Supers (one of my favorite Supers RPG), Tiny Cthulhu, Tomb-Punk, Shadows of a Dying Sun, Crescendo of Violence, and so many more I could keep going for quite a few paragraph. If that was not impressive by itself, all this work that Alan does is singular and explores so many areas, genres, mechanics, and themes that makes you wonder how the heck does he come up with all of this!

Well, I think we might have had a glimpse of the answer in this episode. In our chat, Alan shared how he has his curious mind and how he enjoys learning and discovery. I am always seen Alan exploring many different fields of interest such as philosophy, music, podcast, archeology, and the list could go on as well. And he talks a little bit how this passion made him build his own world in a way.

During the episode we got weird and deep, talking about spirituality, religion, creativity, and the journey Alan has made from where he began and where he is now. And how it all turns out might surprise you, and might teach you something too.

I really don't know what else to say besides, I love Alan. We had a great chat. It was very inspirational. And oh, yeah, we talked about game design and he made me think about stuff I never considered.

Here's links to Alan's work!

Check out RINGBREAKER, his comic series that is in crowdfunding right now (YOU ONLY HAVE A FEW DAYS LEFT): http://kck.st/3rszd69

GKG Site: ⁠https://www.gallantknightgames.com/

GKG Store: ⁠https://gallant-knight-games.myshopify.com/

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp⁠

You can also support me buy buying one of my games! Kosmosaurs just got released in print, and it is my new RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons about Space Dinosaur Rangers defending the galaxy from evildoers!

Get your copy right here: ⁠bit.ly/kosmosaurs

Sixth Episode! Today we welcome the amazing designer Emanoel Melo!

Emanoel Melo is an art director and game designer from Brazil and he publishes his work under the Cabinet of Curiosities label. He recently published the boxed set version of his minimalist CBR+PNK game in partnership with Mythworks (you should ABSOLUTELY check it out), and is the author of of many other RPG books and games such as Escape from Station 52, Dodecahedrax, and many others.

I love Emanoel's work and his attention to detail. His games have just the exact amount of words, graphics and art to give you everything you need to play and imagine these fantastical universes in your table.

During our talk we realized how analytical and detailed his vision is, and how he look over things with the intention of dissecting and making it work on his own terms. We also talked about his fascination with ghost stories, aliens, and many other weird things, including a near death experience he had when he was younger.

It's a very entertaining and insightful chat. I hope you like it as much as we did! Now let's get weird with Emanoel Melo!

Here's links to Emanoel's work!

Substack: https://thecabinetofcuriosities.substack.com 
Website: https://cabinetofcuriosities.games/

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going!

⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp

And you can get Kosmosaurs, my new game about Space Dinosaur Rangers right here: bit.ly/kosmosaurs

Our fifth episode! This time we welcome the insightful and inspiring Evlyn Moreau!

Evlyn is an illustrator from Montreal, she loves to draw strange creatures and to craft zines. Her work mixes illustrations and roleplaying game content in a personal and whimsical way. She is the co-author of the adventure "Where the Wheat Grows Tall." She recently illustrated The Cleaning of Prison Station Echo and Crime Fighting Luchadores.

I am fascinated by how her work mixes cutesy, whimsical, weird and horrifying in perfectly measures to create an enchanting mix. Her work also touches a lot of personal themes that makes her art and games very authentic and personal, which makes me connect with it even more. I just love it.

We talked about many cool things, such as our rituals for creating, our criticism, how we both kinda wanted to be invisible as kids, and throughout the episode Evlyn dispenses really great insights that open our minds to new interpretations of what we take for granted. I learned a lot!

It's a great chat. I hope you like it as much as we did! Now let's get weird with Evelyn Moreau!

Here's links to Evelyn's works, pattern and her blog!

https://evlyn.itch.io 
https://www.patreon.com/evlynmoreau 
http://chaudronchromatique.blogspot.com

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going!

⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp