Let’s be honest: Finding new tabletop roleplaying games is incredibly hard. Even the best games by small or independent publishers have difficulty finding an audience. To meet that need, Heart of the Deernicorn, the Washington-based tabletop publisher behind artifacts like City of Winter, has spent the last few years working to break through the noise. For example: Just this past week, it posted a series of YouTube videos from Big Bad Con, a local tabletop convention. They include a handful of the most influential tabletop RPG designers of the last decade, shifting the focus from the games themselves to the artists behind them.
Once a game is out in the world, designers often have to shift from creative to full-time marketer, reducing their game from a work of art into just another product to be sold. In these interviews, Deernicorn’s Andi Lich gives designers the opportunity to talk about their artistic intentions with someone who is just as in love with games as they are.
The first interview in the series is with Jason Morningstar, the designer behind Fiasco, the GM-less game that took the industry by storm when it debuted in 2009. Broken down into acts and scenes, Fiasco asks players to play through various relationships in a doomed-to-fail comedy of errors in locales like small town America or the Wild West.
Deernicorn also interviewed Alex Roberts, whose genre-defining narrative RPG For The Queen created a whole lineage of “Descended from the Queen” games. In For The Queen, players act as guards chosen to accompany the reigning monarch on a dangerous diplomatic mission, because “she knows you love her.” Players take turns drawing prompt cards that explore the nuances of their relationship to the queen, before they have to make the ultimate decision to defend her from an oncoming attack, or not. The game is perfect for new tabletop gamers, teaching itself from the first card.
Other interviewees include Takuma Okada, designer of the influential Alone on a Journey, a series of minimalistic solo games about traveling alone through various locales; Jeeyon Shim, co-creator of Field Guide to Memory, an award-winning narrative journaling game about the relationship between the player character and their late-mentor; and Tyler Crumrine of Possible Worlds Games, a studio whose most recent publication, The Details of Our Escape, uses a set of dominos to follow a caravan of pilgrims finding a place they belong.
If you’re unfamiliar with these designers, these 20-minute interviews might introduce you to your next favorite game. If you’re aware of them, you might gain some insight into the minds behind them and remember why these games are so, so good.
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