Sunday, April 24, 2016

Jack Shear: Game Designer, Writer, Blogger, Reader of the Skull Stickered Books

Jack W Shear first came to my attention through his Planet Motherf**ker source book. At the time I was just getting back into RPGs after a decades long hiatus and this book was a whack on the side of the head for me. I was already familiar with Lamentations of the Flame Princess' amped up Metal approach to game aesthetics and marketing, but this was a little sideways, down the corner, and up the alley from LotFP. Planet Moth**ker was Monster Magnet, White Zombie, Big Daddy Roth and Heavy Metal Comics all rolled into one slim volume of random tables. While I have always been disappointed that PM isn't beefier, I gotta admit that it has indelibly tainted my approach to game world creation, and for that Mr. Shear, I tip my hat to you, Sir.
Of course, Jack has done much more writing and publishing work than just PM. His Gothic Ulverland campaign setting for instance, has three volumes available, but I'll be honest, I'm not very familiar with the rest of his published work. Actually, I feel like I'm the only person I know who isn't well read of Jack's work. I do read posts on his blog, Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque, and his posts and comments on G+, but his published work is still on my 'stupid long' list of books I can only buy once I figure out how to sell the house without my wife knowing, or I inherit the world. 
My reason for wanting to include Mr. Shear in Appendix N Happy Meal is the spark of kinship I felt ripping into that Lulu shipment and finally cracking open Planet Motherf**ker a long time ago. I had suspected there would be a lot Jack and I had in common while growing up, and it turns out that we do.

Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys during child hood? Like, the TOP 3 TOYS of all time and pick your favorite of these toys. What is it about any of these toys you most identified with? What made this so special? How did you play/enjoy this toy? (shared or solo play).

Young Jack Shear enjoying a good read.
Jack: The toys I spent the most time with—the toys that really lasted and I never got bored of—were Lego, rubber dinosaurs from discount drug store bins, and D&D action figures. I still have those last two, but who knows where my Legos got to. Legos are especially great because they function as both a toy (you can do stuff with them and be entertained) and also as a toolkit with which you can build all the toys you can imagine that aren't sold in stores. Playing with all of those was mostly a solitary thing for me. I grew up in a pretty rural area, and there wasn't really a “neighborhood” around me per se.



Favorite Films and TV

What were your favorite films or TV during childhood and what age were you for each favorite? What did you identify with about these shows? Do you think these shows had an influence on the adult you? 

Jack: Three shows or films I remember fondly from my childhood were Scooby Doo, Dark Shadows, and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. All three are “horror” media of varying degrees. I've always been drawn to horror movies and things like that. When you're a kid, monsters are both terrifying and fascinating; horror stories also carry that promise of an illicit thrill—you feel like you're about to see something you aren't supposed to see, something that maybe you're not ready to see, and maybe it will help you understand how the world works. Those early tastes of the dark stuff must have left a lasting impression because most of the stuff I watch now is in a similar vein. The last three things I watched were Penny Dreadful, The Innkeepers, and...well, I just re-watched Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Still holds up.

Imaginary Worlds

Think about playtime, did you create games or imaginary worlds as a child? If so, please describe an important original game or play world you enjoyed.

Jack: Oh, there was definitely a lot of small-scale world-building going on when I was a kid. Living out in the woods gave me a lot of opportunities to make forts (that were castles, or starships, etc.) and basically retreat into a private inner world. At some point I felt the urge to start writing down some of those made-up worlds. I remember drafting out a sort of “setting bible” for this comic book I was writing and drawing about a team of superheroes who got their powers from Voodoo loa spirits, for example. The whole idea for that stemmed from a book on the Voodoo rites practiced in Haiti that my local library filed in the children's section for reasons I still don't quite understand. I checked that book out so many times! It was certainly a case of being fascinated by something presented as macabre and taking that inspiration and running with it to somewhere new.

Play Community

As a child how did you feel about how you fit in with the rest of the world or community or friends? Like, were you very social or did you prefer spending time alone? Your environment, was it rural or urban? Were siblings a big part of your playtime? Did adults interact with you in game play, and if so was it structured play (sports, scouting, clubs, etc.) or free form? 

"I vant your SKULL....stickered books, please." 
Jack: As a child I definitely spent a lot of time alone, and much of that time was spent reading. When I got a little older and was allowed to check out books from the adult sections of the library, I noticed that some books were categorized as “mystery” or “horror” because they had a skull sticker on the spines of their dust jackets. That was like a beacon that said “take me home and read me.” Growing up an only child in upstate New York didn't really provide a lot of opportunities for socialization with kids my own age, so I read on my own instead. Maybe things like clubs or scouts would have provided something I didn't have, but I never felt like I missed out and honestly I've never been much of a joiner.



Playtime Impact on Adult Games

Do you have any thoughts about any aspects of your childhood playtime that might have influenced your passion for RPGs? Have you ever intentionally incorporated memories of childhood playtime into game work you have created as an adult?

Jack: If anything, I would say that childhood play time taught me how enjoyable it is just to use your imagination and make stuff up to make your own fun. I really believe those principles are the foundational underpinning of RPGs. Yeah, we've learned a lot about game design and how to present rules and all that stuff, but underneath it all is that naive-but-enjoyable impulse to invent your own fun. As far as influences go, I'm definitely still inspired by all the horror stuff I loved back then; it unequivocally informs the kinds of games I run and the kind of game material I write.


Desert Island Media

What are the top 10 things you would want to have on a deserted island - music recordings - films - books - TV shows - comics - games - or toys? 

Penny Dreadful (tv show)
Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (book)
From Hell (graphic novel)
Therion, Vovin (music)
The Vampire Lovers (movie)
The Sandman (graphic novels)
Sweeney Todd (movie)
Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (book)
Taschen's book on the Symbolists (art book)
5e D&D (game, obviously!)


Notes:
Jack's Bloghttp://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/
Jack's Books on Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=jack+shear&type=


Sunday, April 17, 2016

Nathan Panke: Game Writer, Spiciest DM


I noticed Nathan Panke on G+ as a friend of a few friends so I circled him. It was a low key introduction, but his posts can grow on you pretty quickly.I enjoy following his posts. I like his sense of humor, I like the food pictures he posts, he seems like a warm, funny and friendly, loving family guy, who just happens to have notoriety as "The Spiciest DM". Have you seen his selfies? His kooky, crazy selfies from...everywhere, like his most recent post gallbladder operation selfies. Even though he's laid up in a hospital right after going under a knife, he still looks like he's having a ball! Seriously, who couldn't love "The Spiciest DM"? He seems like the kind of guy you wish was your neighbor because life would be just barbecues, fun times, and games, lots and lots of games.

What I didn't originally know about Nathan, was how involved he is in game design and writing. At least not until Rogue Comet Games launched their Kickstarter for Dungeonesque: World of Redmark, 5th Ed. Adventures and Maps. Nathan, along with Stan Shinn, Paul Oaklesh, and Damien Goldwarg, created a series of volumes containing a number of tight 2 page adventures each designed to typically play out in about a 4 hour session with very low prep work. Old school in feel but written for adult gamers juggling limited table time with family and careers. Rogue Comet has just recently shipped it's products to backers. Since the Rogue Comet Games Kickstarter I've discovered Nathan regularly contributes work to zines and websites. I look forward to someday sitting at a table with him consuming wings and beer and rolling dice.

Without further ado, I present to you, The Spiciest DM (I love saying that), NATHAN PANKE!

Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys during child hood? Like, the TOP 3 TOYS of all time and pick your favorite of these toys. What is it about any of these toys you most identified with? What made this so special? How did you play/enjoy this toy? (shared or solo play).

Nathan: Easy peasy. Lego and G.i. Joe. Lego is to this day the “perfect toy” in my opinion. I love that sets come with instructions and give some general guidance on what to build but beyond that your are only limited by the individual pieces and your own imagination. I remember my parents went to Germany in really early 80’s and brought back a few sets and my young brain was blown. I had a town building, a spaceship, and a castle. It wasn't long until I tore them apart and made my own wild and weird creations and amalgams of flying castles and post apocalyptic mutant Knights or pirates. 
My brother (who is 2 years younger than me) and I used to “play” for hours at a time. At one time we lived a few blocks from our 3 cousins, who also loved Lego and we decided to consolidate our Lego collections. We had a ping pong table with an entire town and several other tables holding different worlds. Like space, medieval, etc… We probably had over 100 gallons of Lego.

Favorite Films and TV

What were your favorite films or TV during childhood and what age were you for each favorite? What did you identify with about these shows? Do you think these shows had an influence on the adult you? 


Nathan: I had a few shows but I think films influenced me much more.
Labyrinth, Big Trouble in Little China, Beastmaster (8 or 9 yrs old).
All of these to this day are in my top 10 films. They are all fantastic in theme and each unique. I loved the dark fairytale-ness of Labyrinth. Jennifer Connelly was my first crush, like many geeks my age. 
The cowboy cavalier and wise-cracking Jack Burton was my hero! He was who I wanted to be when I grew up, mullet and all! “It's all in the reflexes...”
Beastmaster, man oh man. I had no idea what I had. Critics may moan and groan that it's no Citizen Kane or even Conan the Barbarian, but it's my 'Citizen Conan'. I love every part of this film. My dad would put a blanket or sheet around his body and pretended to be those bat-like body devourers. I do that to my kids now. 

Imaginary Worlds

Think about playtime, did you create games or imaginary worlds as a child? If so, please describe an important original game or play world you enjoyed.

Nathan: I remember creating a post apocalyptic world for Lego that was ruled by an evil wizard who commanded an army of sand zombies and it was our quest to find magic and super science relics that would bring him down. We had a caravan of Mad Max-style vehicles lead by a giant pirate ship on wheels with mini guns, cannons, and missiles. We would scavenge dungeons and spaceships to find the relics. We used everything from wooden blocks to Star Wars play sets for props.



Play Community

As a child how did you feel about how you fit in with the rest of the world or community or friends? Like, were you very social or did you prefer spending time alone? Your environment, was it rural or urban? Were siblings a big part of your playtime? Did adults interact with you in game play, and if so was it structured play (sports, scouting, clubs, etc.) or free form? 

Nathan: I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis, MO. I would describe myself as an outgoing weirdo, this was doubly so as a child. I remember the first day at school drawing dragons and spaceship on a Thriller cover of a trapper keeper (a kind of notebook - ed.) and thinking, “this is the best Thriller cover ever!” And some other kids making fun of my wild Imagination. I would always draw a crowd, those usually without one. I like Journey and Michael Jackson so the punk thrasher skaters thought I'm a poser even though I also love Bad Brains and Black Flag. The hard core ‘name the group’ thought I was a sell out to one thing or another. Like I said earlier, my brother and cousin were really close and we played most days. We all joined Boy Scouts and that's where I was introduced to RPGs and I've been hooked since.

Playtime Impact on Adult Games

Do you have any thoughts about any aspects of your childhood playtime that might have influenced your passion for RPGs? Have you ever intentionally incorporated memories of childhood playtime into game work you have created as an adult?

Nathan: My wife jokingly, but in all seriousness, says I'm the oldest kid she knows. I think freedom to make mistakes and fail with little lasting impact is one of the best parts about play or pretend. I can make decisions that have little to no consequence. I love to have my players make choices, hard choices that will not affect them or any other part of their life. It may have lasting memories that could help them solve a problem in “real life” though. 
I've said it before, but Lego has definitely shaped how I think of games and how I love to hack systems, adding to and subtracting from them.
I have incorporated a metric ton of ideas that I've had as a prepubescent adolescent into almost all of my games. I've used the sand zombies I talked about earlier in several lots of games.

Desert Island Media

What are the top 10 things you would want to have on a deserted island - music recordings - films - books - tv shows - comics - games - or toys?

Nathan: This Is gonna be hard....

Big trouble in Little China
Labyrinth
Beastmaster
Star Wars trilogy 
R.E Howard - Conan Anthology 
Jack Vance - Dying Earth Anthology
Stephen King - Dark Tower series
Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage or Blue Note Anthology
Firefly
Thundar the Barbarian


Notes:
Rogue Comet Games: http://roguecomet.com/
Wanton Witness by Nathan: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/158269/Planetary-Transmission-Issue-2
100 Occupations for Black Powder, Black Magic:
http://stormlordpublishing.com/product/black-powder-black-magic-vol-1/

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Adam Muszkiewicz: RPG Podcaster, Blogger, and Zine Guy.



I've long wondered what draws me to certain entertainment and hobbies, why do I like what I like, and how come I'm different from most of the people I know. Being part of an online game community is my only real connection to people who share my interests. So, inevitably my question, 'Why this stuff?", has grown from a self-centric perspective, to wondering about the childhood play of other gamers, and if maybe there's some similar quality to our early development. That's the place where this blog comes from. Plus, hey, I still like toys.

I first became aware of Adam on G+ for his Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine collaboration with Wayne Snyder and Edgar Johnson. Reading his online game posts and his game blog, Dispatches From Kickassistan, made me think there's something familiar about Adam that reminded me a little of myself. Later, when he and Donn Stroud started their Podcast, Drink Spin Run, Adam's exuberant enthusiasm exuding from my speakers, and the ease at which he could launch himself into a passionate rant about music, games, or books--all the things I can't stop myself from ranting about--made it seem like I was listening to an audible mirror. My wife overheard me listening to DSR one night and asked, "OMG, who is that guy? He sounds just like you."

Adam and his wife Katie, just had their first child, a son named Stanley. Seeing Facebook photos of the family at play made me yearn for those years when my 2 children, Ian and Emily, were first born. Those are amazing years when you get to see the world fresh and full of wonder through playtime with your children. It was while watching a short video of Stanley playing with blocks and letting loose with incredible joy and laughter that I started to develop the idea for this blog. The premise is simple; what was childhood playtime like for the people the the game designers, writers, artists and players who I find interesting. I'm really happy Adam agreed to do the interview. It was important to me that his would be Appendix N Happy Meal's inaugural interview.


Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys during child hood? Like, the TOP 3 TOYS of all time and pick your favorite of these toys. What is it about any of these toys you most identified with? What made this so special? How did you play/enjoy this toy? (shared or solo play).

Adam: I was a child of the 80's, so the big toy brands were the go-to toys. Transformers, He-Man, that stuff. Star Wars was probably king, though, because that was a world-definer for me. One of the interesting facets of my childhood, though, was the fact that in the big faction franchises (Transformers, etc.), I would always get the bad guys and my younger brother would always get the good guys. I think that this inherently adversarial (completely arbitrary) decision might have set me up for DMing in future years, but I'm not too sure.

I think solo play as a child is unavoidable. There are always going to be times when kids are alone. Most of my play, however, wasn't. I always had other kids of the same (or similar) age around, and if that failed, I had my little brother and a bunch of cousins to get to play with me the way I wanted. Which might also have been a thing. Somehow, it always seemed like I was the kid defining how we played. Not that everyone else was a pushover, I was just louder/more convincing. 

Favorite Films and TV

What were your favorite films or TV during childhood and what age were you for each favorite? What did you identify with about these shows? Do you think these shows had an influence on the adult you? 

Adam: The absolute biggest influences on me in my childhood were Star Wars (naturally) and Doctor Who. I discovered Doctor Who via a commercial for the show on my PBS station when I was really little and got hooked at an early age. The idea that the magical, demonic or fantastical was really just a different brand of science is all over that show, and it left its indelible mark on my tastes in what we'd later "learn" were "supposed" to be separate genres: fantasy and sci fi. For me, growing up , there couldn't be one without the other. Although I might have strayed from that path at various points in my life, rediscovering the thing I knew at age -- how old? Seven? Yeah, that was a pretty big bombshell that I came back to in my advancing years, surprised that I had known what was up even way back then. 

Imaginary Worlds

Think about playtime, did you create games or imaginary worlds as a child? If so, please describe an important original game or play world you enjoyed.

Adam: I wish my memory was better; answering this question has taken some serious digging and I'm still not much better off.

I know that none of the games that I found myself surrounded by in youth were ever really satisfying. Everything lacked something. I knew that, so I was always house ruling games, changing them to work in a more satisfactory way. New victory conditions, alternate obstacles or objectives, stuff like that. And of course few cardboard boxes survived in our house for long before I took scissors to them to make my own game boards and hand-made cards and stuff. I'd love to tell you more about games I made, but too few of them survived more than a few weeks, then they'd either get thrown away (as often by me as by my parents) or ruined or I'd forget the rules or I'd get accused of designing games that only I could "win."

Aside from formal games, in terms of general play, I feel like I was less interested in inventing new games and more interested in remixing the ones we were already playing so they'd do something else. Riding bikes + long cardboard tubes = bike jousting. Stuff like that.

In many ways, I've never gotten over the urge to tinker with other people's work. I'm less interested in making my own systems/games/whatever, and more interested in making other people's work do what I want it to. 

Play Community

As a child how did you feel about how you fit in with the rest of the world or community or friends? Like, were you very social or did you prefer spending time alone? Your environment, was it rural or urban? Were siblings a big part of your playtime? Did adults interact with you in game play, and if so was it structured play (sports, scouting, clubs, etc.) or free form? 

Adam: Until I was 12, I didn't have to do a lot of stuff alone. We lived the suburban dream in Grand Rapids, MI, and my folks deliberately moved to a neighborhood where most of my friends lived. In that group, I was always a sort of leader, if only because I had specific things I wanted to do or play and the other kids just seemed to go along with whatever seemed most interesting. I suppose you could call me social rather than asocial, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't awkward or strange by normal-kid standards; instead, I was more of a "chief of the dorks" when I was growing up.

A lot of that changed when we moved out of state (to Indiana, of all places) when I was 12. Sure, I developed friendships there, but I spent a lot more time alone over the years I lived there. I was more of a social outcast in Indiana, and in ways that I really wasn't prepared for since I hit the state in the middle of the Satanic Panic and met with serious religious bias for the first time in my life as well as ethnocentrism (Polish Catholics aren't quite the norm in Mennonite/Amish country). We moved again when I was 16, so I had to start over again and by that time was starting to get good at it.

My brother was always involved with my gaming development; always. We discovered HeroQuest together, WarMaster, Cosmic Encounter. He was one of my first D&D players when I got my Mentzer Red Box at a garage sale, stuff like that. He's four years younger than I, but he got to hang out with the big kids almost by default; Phil was already there, so why not include him, too? Phil's always been my most constant friend, too, so I've always tried to involve him in gaming. We still play in a weekly rotating game every Wednesday.

I think adults were only part of play at the very earliest of ages. At later ages, if they were involved, it seemed like it was only ever in a very structured way. We were playing a board game or card game that the old folks could understand (which typically meant "less fun than the ones they couldn't understand"). Over the years, Phil and I have gotten our folks to consider some games that would have been pretty well outside their scope when we were kids, which I think bodes well for when my own son, Stanley, is old enough to need folks to play with, himself. 

Playtime Impact on Adult Games

Do you have any thoughts about any aspects of your childhood playtime that might have influenced your passion for RPGs? Have you ever intentionally incorporated memories of childhood playtime into game work you have created as an adult?

Adam: One of the interesting things about being a kid is that the concept of playing a "character" during any sort of play is much more intuitive than when folks get older. All the cartoons, all these comics, the people in them aren't people, they're characters, but they're also characters in a particular aesthetic. He-Man isn't the same as Thundarr because the aesthetic was different. I talk about aesthetic being a guiding principle a lot, that Game X should feel like this and Game Y should feel like that and I think I developed a sense early on for the boundaries of aesthetics, but I unfortunately framed things in poor terms back then ("you're doing it wrong!"). But it did set me on a path to figuring out how to communicate aesthetics, which is pretty much the ongoing hunt in my DMing career. 

I feel like I always wanted to do things my way. I wanted the fictions I was exposed to to work the way I wanted the to work. So, like any kid, I started making my own things. My own superheroes, my own ancient deities, my own mythoi and ethoi, so I was sort of primed for the concept of RPGs when they entered my attention. 

I think in a lot of ways, by the time I was exposed to RPGs, I was already turning pretty much every game into an RPG. We told stories about our and around our games of Monopoly or LIFE or whatever. Making that be the focus of the game was more of a slight veer than a total change of game. If anything, it meant we were integrating the things we actually enjoyed and cared about into the existing play a little more closely. 

And of course, when I say "we," I really mean "I and anyone who I roped into playing whatever with me." 

Notes:
Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad Zine available here: http://www.kickassistan.net/p/metal-gods-of-ur-hadad-zine.html
Drink Spin Run, A Tabletop RPG Talkshow Podcast: http://www.drinkspinrun.com/
Dispatches From Kickassistan Blog: http://www.kickassistan.net/