10 QUESTIONS TO: Andrea Sfiligoi

Andrea Sfiligoi is a man of many talents: designer of miniature games, RPGs and solo games; fiction writer, illustrator, translator, and also publisher, with his Ganesha Games brand, of his games as well as other authors’.

One feature I love of his miniatures games is that they are generally simple and accessible, and can be played with any minis you have around.

His games include the acclaimed Songs of Blades and Heroes skirmish/war game, the astoundingly successful Four Against Darkness game line, and also my favorite skirmish game Battlesworn.

He’s also recently tried his hand at children's books with the recently published What To Do When Mr. Blue comes to Town, which he created together with his wife Anna.

But who is Andrea? I’ve known Andrea personally for about 10 years now, as we’ve met in several gaming cons in Italy, and I’ve known him as a designer since the ‘90s, when I was a teenager reading gaming magazines, and he was just starting his career as a game designer writing gaming articles and adventures on those magazines.

He is a gentle man, and a vegetarian and cat lover; a gaming enthusiast in the broadest sense of the word, always happy to share ideas, collaborate, or just discuss gaming.

He moved to Kharkiv, Ukraine a couple years ago, and he got married last summer!

Ok, so let's start with the questions!

1 Hello Andrea. Let’s talk about your work as a designer and publisher. How did you start? What was the first game you released? Have you ever tried working for other publishers, or has self-publishing always been your only preference?

My first self-pub game was Song of Blades and Heroes in 2007, which actually was designed as a short filler between games of DBA. But many years before that, I wrote and illustrated a supplement about demons called Inferno for the French rpg Simulacres, which was published in Italy by Nexus, and I wrote several articles for GURPS on Steve Jackson Games’ Roleplayer and Pyramid Magazine.

After my first few games were successful, I was contacted by Osprey and wrote three titles for them: “Of Gods and Mortals”, “A Fistful of Kung Fu” (which got nominated at Origins) and “Rogue Stars”.

2 We can say Song of Blades and Heroes is your biggest hit among your miniatures games, with dozens of supplements derived rulesets. Why do you think it has been so successful? 

I guess it was the first miniature-agnostic system that became very popular because it was published at the right moment, and because it tried to solve the many little obstacles that people have when playing miniature games.

What have you learnt about design since its release?

I think I didn’t really learn anything major – I fly by the seat of my pants and just use my intuition. I just try to design games that I would like to play. I am lucky that there are many gamers with exactly the same taste.

 And what about publishing?

Oh I learnt about formats, distribution, and how to save money. The most likely mistake that a new publisher can make is to spend too much money. This business is small and you need to watch your dollars.

 (Bonus question: How many miniatures have you got?)

Painted? I think about 5000. Unpainted: better not ask.

3 You told me Four Against Darkness is, by far, your best selling game, with several thousand copies sold, lots of expansions and spin-offs, and a bunch of localizations. What has been the key to such a glaring success, in your opinion?

It’s a solo game that puts together some of my favorite games: the simplicity of Tunnels & Trolls, the collectability of Fighting Fantasy, and a simplified version of the Red Box.

4 What’s your advice for aspiring or beginning designers and self-publishers?

Read and play what has been done before!

5 Kickstarter, and crowdfunding in general, has become more and more important for tabletop games. What has your experience been with the crowdfunding campaigns you ran in the past?

We used crowdfunding when we needed to produce expensive stuff like miniatures, but probably I am not going to use the platform anymore. It’s too crowded, too easy to make financial mistakes, and, for books, I really don’t need it. I just write, illustrate and publish.

6 Do you see the whole crowdfunding scene changing anytime soon? How would YOU like things to change? 

I don’t have any special ideas about crowdfunding. I continue to support original, grassroots ideas as a backer, and I hope this will continue. I would like a new platform that worked together with paypal and filtered out big companies, but I understand this is not going to happen because money talks…

7 I know you are always working on more and more games. What can you tell us about your future gaming releases?

4AD will be released in many different languages, thanks to the excellent work of MS Edizioni in Italy that acts as my agent for international rights. This takes a bit of my time. 2022 will see both new releases and new editions of old titles. For sure there will be a new revised “all in one book” edition of Song of Blades and Heroes, and we have no less than 25 books for 4AD in the pipeline.

8 As your online shop shows, you are very open to collaborations. Should anyone reading this interview be interested in working with you on any of your games, what should they do? Are you currently interested in content writers, illustrators, designers, playtesters?

Playtesters always. Illustrators no (I do art myself to keep the costs down). We have so many games in different stages of production that any proposal will have to wait for a long time, but we do accept new writers now and then. The best thing is to study what we do and send me a short synopsis (DO NOT WRITE THE WHOLE THING!) and email it at andreasfiligoi@gmail.com .

9 “What To Do When Mr. Blue comes to Town” is a completely new type of thing for you. How have you come to this? Are you planning more children books?

I studied children’s illustration and book production and I have been somewhat active in this area, occasionally painting illustrations for other writers. My wife has plenty of fresh ideas and is learning illustration so we just decided to try something together. She writes a story, I edit it, she paints some illustrations in gouache that later I refine digitally, then I do layout and we send the whole thing to an external editor. We want to produce a catalog of about 10 picture books and a game-book for children and see how they sell. We want to diversify and try different niches.

10 How do you see the future of miniature games and rpgs, let’s say in 10, or 20 years?

If I knew I would write games for the future :-) I think the current trends will continue, and 3d printing will be a powerful factor that should be considered even in rules design. For example, I think of games allowing players to print their own equipment upgrades to their figures.

11 I know, they were supposed to be 10, but I have one more question before we say goodbye. Please point us to a song you think we should listen to.

I like songs that tell a story. For people who love cats, “In Dreams of Mine” by Faith and the Muse is just perfect. 

Thank you Andrea! Hope to see you again soon at some gaming con!

10 QUESTIONS TO, ENNIES SPECIAL: Mauro Longo & Two Little Mice

This is a special interview! Today we chat with Mauro Longo, the mind behind Brancalonia the Spaghetti Fantasy RPG, and the Two Little Mice team, who gave us Broken Compass. Why am I interviewing them together? Because they have a lot in common, such as being Italian and having won a bunch of Ennie Awards two weeks ago!

Brancalonia got the Gold Award for the Best Electronic Book category, and three more Silver Awards for Best Setting, Best Writing and Product of the Year, while Broken Compass received a Silver Ennie for Best Production Values. 

Mauro Longo is an old time friend of mine: we played RPGs together for years, and we wrote together the Savage Worlds settings Ultima Forsan and Tropicana, and the Old-School zine series Lands of Legends. He’s also worked on internationally acclaimed RPG projects such as Lex Arcana and Inferno, and is also a novelist and a Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks author.

Two Little Mice actually is three -regular sized- people: Rico Sirignano, Simone Formicola and Daniela Giubellini. Before Broken Compass, they created the fairy-themed Household RPG, which won the Italian RPG of the Year 2019 award, the Parsifal graphic novel, and the Anime e Sangue urban fantasy series (available on Amazon Prime Video). And today’s news is the TLM team has just been acquired by the board game colossus CMON!

1 Hello Mauro, Rico, Simone and Daniela! So, how does it feel to be nominated for the Ennie Awards? And then to actually win? Did you see it coming? What was your reaction? Italian RPGs had received a few nominations in the past, but this year Italy totalled five Ennies, which is a record. Do you see a trend in that? What are your plans to keep winning?

Mauro: Well, as you can imagine, it was OUTSTANDING and we don’t have plans for that :D . Of course, we submitted our game to the judges, “with our hat in our hands” like we say, hoping for 1-2 nominations. We didn’t see the four nominations coming, nor the four awards we got. We actually spent the night (3 a.m in Italy) watching the streaming together with the TLM team and our shared joy was a real thing. In one moment, we all passed from our national RPG scene to the world top level… What a night! 

There is a trend: an internal Italian trend. Starting with Ultima Forsan, then with Lex Arcana, Broken Compass, Valraven, Inferno, Lands of Legends, Not the End and similar Italian games, Italian game designers are transcending the national border and bringing our games to the rest of the world. We didn’t have the strength to arrive on the English speaking marketplace before, we have it now. And the whole thing will escalate quickly.

TLM: Being nominated for the Ennie Awards was thrilling, and winning a silver medal was way beyond our wildest expectations. This is one of the greatest awards for games, and we only stepped into the gaming sector three years ago.

In the last years Italian role-playing games are proving well received even beyond our borders, thanks to some very successful KickStarter campaigns. We hope that the recognition awarded to Broken Compass and Brancalonia will contribute to bring even more attention to our niche and help the Italian gaming industry to grow.

2 Ok, just in case someone reading this doesn’t know your games, could you please pitch them for us here in, like, 10 lines?

Mauro: Brancalonia is a “spaghetti fantasy” setting for the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s set in an unheroic, picaresque and roguish version of Medieval Italy, a world that quotes, collects, and mixes references from contemporary Italian fiction and over a hundred works of Italian fantasy tradition, pop culture, and collective imagery – like Collodi’s Pinocchio, Orlando Furioso, Calvino’s fiction, fairy tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the “Spaghetti Western” films. In Brancalonia, all the player characters are knaves, members of a Free Company of mercenaries, rogues and rascals, engaged in questionable jobs across the various domains of what is left of an ancient kingdom now in ruins.

TLM: Broken Compass is a pulp adventure game inspired by the classics of the genre like Uncharted, Indiana Jones, and Tomb Raider. When playing Broken Compass you step into the role of an Adventurer, someone who braves the dangers of the world in search of a Treasure and will have to face a terrible and dangerous Rival to get it. The best things about Broken Compass are that it’s very easy to pick up, simple to learn and play, even online, and the great attention to details that gained it the Silver ENnie for Best Production Values.

3 Tell us about your specific jobs. What are your roles and your areas of expertise? How does your creative and productive process work? Your creative productions include RPGs and also novels, CYOA books, comics and live action shows. Is there an overlap, influence, contamination that seeps into how you conceive, play and create RPGs?

Mauro: I’m now the creative director of all the RPG and gamebook lines in Acheron Games. I lead a composite staff of writers, artists, developers and other contributors. I usually try to work on POP CULTURE as a whole subject, from which to extract tropes, ideas, features and quotes. This is the way I approach RPGs, even in their mood, their atmosphere. Ruleset comes later.

TLM: Two Little Mice is made up of Riccardo “Rico” Sirignano, Simone Formicola, and Daniela Giubellini. Rico and Simone are both writers and they focus on the development and writing of the games, while Daniela is the artist behind the beautiful illustrations in our books.

Before diving into the RPG scene, we produced a tv series released on Amazon Prime Video and several plays for theatre. These days we are also working on a graphic novel that should be delivered to our backers shortly. We take inspiration from many sources; Broken Compass, for example, was clearly the product of our shared passion for both movies and travel.

4 Both Brancalonia and Broken Compass were launched on Kickstarter, with very successful campaigns. The perfect example of how crowdfunding was supposed to work: small publishers gathering funds for large projects.

Through the years, though, it has become more and more important even for the “big players” in the RPG industry.

Do you consider that unfair? Or is the presence of big publishers beneficial to the small ones? Do you see that changing anytime soon? How would YOU like things to change?

What’s your overall experience with Kickstarter campaigns?

Mauro: Kickstarter is a tool publishers can use for their projects, and in this way it’s neutral. For us in Acheron, an international crowdfunding portal is the way we can directly reach an audience worldwide: players living in the USA, UK, Australia and so on. The point is not the money, the fundraising, but the visibility our games can have, and the direct connection between creators and players. 

It can’t be unfair, if everything is used in transparency. I like this system, I adapted very well, and I will use it again, when needed.

TLM: Many of our projects over the years have been founded with the help of Kickstarter and we are very grateful to have such a platform. When big players also use this platform, they help introduce it to a greater public, which then has a chance to discover the smaller companies there. In our opinion, and as proved by our experience, this coexistence doesn’t work against indie companies. It’s not unfair for larger companies to use this platform, so long as they do it responsibly. But this goes for everyone, big or small.

In future, we’d love for both creators and backers to come closer to the philosophy behind crowdfunding campaigns, both explaining clearly and accepting the risks they involve, and striving for a better communication on all sides.

5 Italian style. Is there any such thing in RPGs? How “Italian” are your Brancalonia and Broken Compass? Rules, setting, concept, approach, anything you think may apply. Has it been a key element for success?

Mauro: Acheron IS a producer of Italian-style concepts, IPs, games and fiction. It’s our mission: “Made in Italy, shared worldwide”. We are expressly devoted to Italian-ish settings, novels, lore, pop culture and so on. Of course we also like stories and settings with completely different flavor, BUT we use “Italian stuff” as a distinctive trait, to introduce ourselves and to be distinguished from other publishers.

In our case, it definitely has been a key element for success.

TLM: Italian style is famous all over the world in many sectors, from design, to fashion, and for many other artistic products. We like to trace our love and attention to details back to our traditions, our history, and the many beautiful things our Country has to offer, and we hope to keep sharing our love for peculiar things with others. It would be hard to say if there is such a thing as an “Italian Style RPG”, but the cultural wealth that surrounds us is a great inspiration for our imagination, and there’s no doubt it played a role in the creation of our products. In many ways, Broken Compass is NOT an Italian game, but we believe that our novel approach to a genre so dominated by the American perspective played a role in our success.

6 Inclusion and representation of minorities in RPGs are a hot topic. How do you address that? 

Mauro: We try the best we can. Our saying, for Brancalonia, is that we are “social justice knaves”, and everything in the setting is planned to be "cosmopolitical", inclusive and respectful, even if in an ironical way. Our most frequent trick is: take a stereotype and then subvert it. This way you get to use the tropes that you want to, but you can create more than that, representing a lot of differences. 

TLM: When designing Broken Compass, we came to realize that the genre that inspired us (let’s call it “archaeological adventure”) historically hasn’t been the most inclusive or respectful in the representation of other genders and cultures. Our objective was to bring the genre into the present, adapting it to a modern society and leaving its problematic traits in the past. Representation and diversity have always been a cardinal element of our creative ideals, and we often had to go against the reference material and find different ways to stay true to them.

We are proud of having created Broken Compass as a game with people of many genders and nationalities, and proud of our fans and backers who appreciated and supported our choices.

7 Let’s see how good you really are as role players. Now you are Hollywood screenwriters and must write a short email to convince Mr. Warner Bros to produce a movie or tv show based on your games. Go!

Mauro: Brancalonia is “fantasy with no money for CGI”. Think Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach with blades instead of guns and that’s it. What could possibly go wrong? 

TLM: With the fifth Indiana Jones in the works, Jungle Cruise in theaters, and a movie based on Uncharted that’s already going through post-production, we think Hollywood knows already that the archaeological adventure genre is ready for a revival. It would be hard to come up with anything that could rival such colossal productions!

8 Licensed games. If you could buy any franchise/IP for an RPG, which would it be? Tell us about the franchise and the game you’d make.

Mauro: I’d go with some Italian crime story, but with an ironic mood in it. Inspector Coliandro would be a great game.

TLM: Without leaving Italy, it would be great to work with the great people at Bonelli. We think coming up with an investigative rpg that lets players become “Nightmare Investigators” like Dylan Dog would be a fun and interesting project.

9 I’m sure the four of you already have at least ten other ideas for new RPG products that you might be publishing in the future! Am I right? Can you share what’s on the design table? 

Mauro: Brancalonia and Inferno will go on for a while with extended lines. A new idea for the future could be “Fascists from Yuggoth”, a pulp-weird adventure game in a fascist empire that never fell, thanks to some crazy alien lovecraftian tech. In the game, you will be part of the international antifascist brigades and fighting against this evil Italian tyranny, their legionaries and their mad scientists, up and down the Mediterranean Sea.

TLM: We think we’ll stay at the House for a while and, as already announced, work on the second edition of our very first role-playing game: Household. There are more surprises ahead, but nothing we can tell you yet.

10 My regular final question: please point us to a song you think we should listen to, game related or otherwise.

Mauro: We spoke about Italian stuff, so my suggestion is a piece by Ennio Morricone from “My name is nobody” OST: “Il Mucchio Selvaggio”. It’s a not-so-known spaghetti western music I really love very much.  Again: so Italian!

TLM: Ok, we’ll give you three, one each.

Rico: The beast of pirate bay (Aurelio Voltaire) 

Simone: Aerials (SOAD)

Daniela: Weapon of Choice (Fatboy Slim)

Thank you Mauro, Rico, Simone and Daniela! Bye!!

Mauro: Ciao Giuseppe!

TLM: Thank you Giuseppe, ciao!

Ciao!

This ends the interview with Mauro and the Two Little Mice.

If the interview made you curious, go check out Brancalonia and Broken Compass!

And stay tuned for more interviews!

Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one! Hit the comments if you want me to interview your favorite author, artist, publisher or other RPG-related person!

If you want to support this blog, check my OSR and Savage Worlds stuff, or simply shop on DriveTrhuRPG (affiliate link).

10 QUESTIONS TO: Tony Vasinda

Tony Vasinda is a very active voice in the indie RPG community, and the founder of Plus One Experience, which “multiclasses in Beard & Skincare Alchemy, Game Design, & the Bardic Knowledge of Content Creation”.

He's one of the main voices in the RPG zines scene, networking and encouraging creators to make great stuff. You might have heard of him with regards to the Repugnant project during ZineQuest3, for example. And his enthusiasm certainly encouraged me with my Lands of Legends project!

He is currently crowdfunding Down We Go Infinite Edition, by Markus Linderum, on Gamefound.

He’s got an amazing beard, as you can imagine (and he's also written a game about that!), and he’s also a catholic missionary. Plenty to talk about here!

1 Hello Tony. First of all, tell us everything about Plus One Experience, from games to beards, as if you were trying to explain it to my aunt!
Hello auntie, I make beard balm (like a leave-in conditioner for beards) for a living and love sharing it with specific groups. So I made some that were RPG inspired because it’s something I love. As part of that I made a beard RPG called Beards & Beyond and started helping review and promote other folks' games on youtube. Folks love the balms, and the games, but most folks know us for reviewing other peoples games and promoting community conversations in the Indie RPG space. 

2 Let’s talk about Down We Go. How did it become a fully fledged KS multiple-contributors crowdfunding project from when it was a one page game? Are you the one to blame?

Yeah, it’s my fault. I saw a beautiful 1 page game that Markus Linderum made and asked him to run it on stream. He did and created some simple 1 page dungeons to go with it. I loved them and asked if he could make a city so we could print the game as a small zine. We kept playing the game on streams anytime we had an OSR module to feature and I and other folks fell in love with it.
So I worked with Markus to build a team, flesh out the content, and fill in the blanks on the project. 

3 Can you tell us more about the game as it is now?

So the core rules are still just 1 A5 page. We fleshed out the Ref (what we call game masters) page a bit, and built some simple procedures for helping folks make their own Dungeons. Currently we are playtesting our Faction, Event, Location, and Hexcrawl procedures that are getting added to the game. So the core rules fit on that 1 page, but you have a 10 more pages of option procedures to help the Ref have everything they need to run a session or a campaign with very low prep. The rest of the book is made up of and other support material for each of those procedures. The Dungeon section has 1 page of procedures and then 4 Dungeons. The Faction section has 1 page procedures and 10 Factions. Think of it as a toolkit that has everything you need in it to run an amazing game, but that you can ignore if it’s not a part of how you want to play.

4 Obvious question: why not Kickstarter? Why Gamefound?

Great question. In short it’s because we need to end the stranglehold Kickstarter has on the way we think about crowdfunding.

Kickstarter isn’t bad. I plan to use it for another project coming up. However, just having 1 good option for any process is never ideal.
Competition breeds innovation and the funding process needs lots of innovation to be healthier.
Kickstarter has a better reach and footprint, but I think Gamefound has a better toolkit for marketing and building the page you want to build. We are probably leaving money on the table by choosing Gamefound right now, but we can always sell more games. What we don’t always have the choice to do is to make a choice that improves the RPG scene for others. We chose Gamefound because I wanted to open the space up more for others who want to fund their games theer and prove small projects could thrive on the platform. 

I have been thoroughly impressed by Gamefound and the team. I can’t wait to finish the campaign and smoothly integrate their pledge manager into our process. 

5 Down We Go is the perfect example of what crowdfunding was originally designed for. Through the years, though, it has become more and more important even for the “big players” in the RPG industry.

Do you consider that unfair? Or is the presence of big publishers beneficial to the small ones? Do you see that changing anytime soon? How would YOU like things to change?

Look this may not be popular, but I love seeing bigger companies funding on the platform. There are two reasons:
1. It 100% brings people to the platform.
2. Producing games and printing books is a huge risk. WotC does not have to worry about a book not selling. Almost every single other publisher does.
A bad run at scale would ruin most publishers, or at least mean layoffs. I want us all to succeed, and believe it or not, I think we all can.
Competition breeds innovation, but it has to be healthy competition. We created Down We Go as a unitive game with a global team because I think the best thing we can do is be united as a community of players & designers. It’s the only type of success I am interested in. There will be bad actors who out themselves over time, and we need to be on the lookout for that, but not at the cost of our own dignity or mental health.
I work with publishers of all sizes who are interested in building up our community and speak out against those who act in self interest. That’s what I care about.

6 Inclusion and representation of minorities in RPGs are a hot topic. Considering the theme and size of it, I don’t expect Down We Go to address much of that within the game, am I wrong?

Great question. I don’t know because it’s a complex issue.
Down we go is about a dungeon crawling in and around a twisting dark hungry city that depends on the sacrifice of delvers to keep its economy operating.  We don’t have Races in the game, but we have had plenty of folks play different races, in our upcoming space hack Through the Void, I use Backgrounds that play a similar role.
Markus & I have never sat down and had a conversation about this, but from my perspective there are huge conversations about class, race, upward mobility, politics, religion that I expect every session to be able to touch on. For me games are about exploring the human experience in community with others. I think every designer needs to ask themselves, “Does this game encourage the players to have real conversations about moral, social, and political issues that humanize others?”
I think the answer should always be, “Yes”.
We built a diverse team so that these ideals would be baked into the game's DNA. I have never asked a single person on the team to make “inclusive content” because we picked a team who I never imagined would do anything else.
I really hope folks explore these issues when playing Down We Go. I hope they overthrow fascist bosses, and explore the injustice of unlimited wealth. However if they just go get weird mud for the Dirt Licker faction and fight a bunch of oozing slimes on the way, I want to hear about that also.

7 Let’s talk about other games now. What is the best game you’ve played in, say, the last two years?

Aaron King’s Patchwork World, Bloodfeud, or Gods of Metal Ragnarock are tied. Patchwork World is the best game. Bloodfeud had the best introspection, Gods of Metal… man Markeia McCarty is an amazing GM. 

8 Let’s talk about you as a catholic missionary. What does it mean, and do you put RPGs into that? Also a bit of a complex thing. In short, everything.

Let me start by stating I know tons of folks reading this might have some kind of religious trauma and that the Catholic Church might be the cause of that. Be kind to yourself if you need to stop reading here or skip this question. To make this easy I have asked to have the next section of my text spoilered so that you need to highlight it to read.

All the choices I make are guided by 38 years of being nurtured, fed, questioned, and challenged by my Catholic lens and imagination. I believe there is a God that exists outside of time who is love, goodness, and truth and from whom those things flow. I believe that He (and let’s acknowledge that pronouns fail to encapsulate a transcendent being) desires to be in a relationship with us. I also believe that I eat the flesh and drink the blood of this undying God every Sunday as a way to be in communion with him. Objectively, that’s pretty weird.
That impacts everything I do because, if someone says they believe these things and does not let it impact them totally... why believe it?
Here is a major thing though. What I believe is not what you believe. I don’t hold anyone besides other Catholics to believe what I believe, and the main group of folks I tend to disagree with are... other Catholics. 

For folks who are not Catholic all I want to do is to amplify what is most good and true and beautiful in your life. For most folks in the games community that means sitting down and playing amazing games, listening to others, but lots of times it means having real conversations and advocating for those in need. Lots of the time it means pushing back against toxic and harmful elements in the community.
Plus One is a diversity first channel and company. This means that we prioritize LGBTQ, PoC, and minority voices on stream and when choosing who to hire or support financially. A huge part of this comes from my faith, but I don’t promote this on channel because I understand the trauma that many folks have experienced around religion and I always put the needs of the person in front of me first. 

Like Jesus, I am here to comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the comforted. 

9 You’re not new to it, nevertheless I think I can say “KS Crowdfunding days are crazy days”. How are you coping?

Pretty fine. Gamefound actually makes running a campaign much easier in the middle. I am able to set up a number of items in advance that I normally have to manually schedule in which means I don’t have to look at the page if I don’t want to and everything runs really smoothly. I am playing more and doing a lot of press, but that’s the fun part. 

10 Please point us to a song you think we should listen to to get the feeling for Down We Go!

There is no better song to listen to than the Infected Tomb on the Down We Go Dungeon Synth album that you can get as part of the project. Loot the Body did an amazing job with it, and you can find it on the campaign page or right here.

Thank you Tony for your time, and best luck with Down We Go!

So folks, check out with Down We Go on Gamefound!

And stay tuned for more interviews!

Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one! Hit the comments if you want me to interview your favorite author, artist, or publisher!

If you want to support this blog, check my OSR and Savage Worlds stuff, or simply shop on DriveTrhuRPG (affiliate link).

10 QUESTIONS TO: Gavriel Quiroga

Gavriel Quiroga is a game designer and self-publisher from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He has written and published Neurocity (which I’ve reviewed here) and Warpland (which I can’t wait to receive!), and he’s currently crowdfunding Ascet on Kickstarter, not a RPG but a “minimalist playing card game with roleplaying overtones”.

His games, in my eyes, share a sombre (if not straight on dark) view of the world, or at least offer a bleak view of their worlds. Let’s find out if Gavriel is a gloomy person too!

1 Hello Gavriel. Let’s talk about Ascet straight away. It’s a card game ok, so tell us how it works!

Hello Giuseppe. Well, Ascet is a card game with RPG characteristics. In it players take turns to interpret ascetic monks seeking enlightenment while the rest of the players play the part of demons which will lure them with temptations. It has a minimal character creation and it uses a d8 and a d10, each temptation comes with a small beautiful short description to set the mood of the game. During each turn, the player playing the ¨Ascet¨ needs to choose one of the offered Temptation and roll a result equal or below the Virtue being affected (there are four) if he is successful he will ascend one step in the Stairway towards Enlightenment. Whoever ascends the five steps first wins the game. 

2 Now I want to know how role-play gets into the game!

The game requires that you make a very minimal character creation distributing 20 points between your four Virtues (Temperance, Humility, Faith and Compassion) and each Temptation comes with a small descriptive story about how the conflict occurs, so you really get the feeling of being a protagonist. There are also unique special effects cards which cause unpredictable consequences in the game like ¨Lost in the Desert¨ which makes you lose a round or ¨Darkness¨ which allows Demons to play their cards upside down. Furthermore, interpreting Demons is also mechanically appropriate and suitable for scheming and plotting, there is a lot of diplomacy involved in the game. Each player is essentially handling two opposite characters that act as two sides of the same coin.

3 Let’s talk about your published RPGs. Both Neurocity and Warpland share the same basic rules system. Would you explain the core of it for our readers? Can we expect more games with the same system?

Sure! It basically is a 2d6 roll under the stat which creates a complication if you roll 1/1 or 6/6 and is considered a critical success for any successful roll of 8 and above. It also has a damage within the attack roll included (highest rolled number + weapon damage) and I stole Black Hack´s initiative system. That is it. No classes, just skills, you get a negative modifier if you try to do something you are not skilled at and 4 attributes: Might, Agility, Wits and Lore. You also have Willpower that acts as something that enables a single dice reroll and is similar to heroic feats.

I think the beauty of the system is both its simplicity and flexibility. I am perfectly aware that learning a new system is something that few players want to do. Many are just looking for a setting to use with their systems. So I consciously made an effort to design something that was super easy to understand and present it as optional, use it if you like it! I was surprised to find out that our playtesters are effectively including it for their own setting.

4 One thing that struck me in particular with Neurocity is that the book offers more than one possible reason for the game world being what it is. I think that’s the first game that offers such a possibility for the GM to actually choose the true, secret nature and the founding event of the game world. This intrigues me to no end. How did you come to think of that? Did you first think of one “official” version, but weren’t satisfied with it, or what?

Neurociy offers 6 possibilities as to what is its origins and Warpland presents 3 possible different ways in which that setting is tied with Neurocity. 

Truth is nobody knows what Warpland is, is it earth? is it another planet? Who are the Eloi? The book is filled with queues and hints that stir curiosity. I think I am very influenced by Gene Wolfe and Raymond Carver, both authors from different genres, but who were masters of the craft of leaving space for mystery to brood. This causes the reader to be involved with the world, and it creates a creative communion, he is now naturally and effortlessly obliged to make his own theories and presumptions about it and that makes the setting so much richer and personal. We all know that always happens with RPGs, we know that my Dragonlance or Mork Borg won´t be the same as yours. So instead of struggling to be painfully specific with details I decided I wanted to embrace that collaborative aspect of RPGs and just concentrate on feeling and aesthetics circulating around powerful themes. Show, not tell. I think that is more or less the ideology behind it. 

5 You have two games published and one being funded these days, all of them financed on Kickstarter. Crowdfunding has become more and more important for RPGs. Do you see that changing anytime soon? How would YOU like things to change?

Crowdfunding allows me to live doing what I love. It is a great tool. My only criticism is I wish the community was more conscious that it is a platform for independent creators, artists and small companies. Personally, I feel embarrassed when I see huge corporations launching campaigns for their products and people jumping to finance something that does not need financing. I think we need to draw a line there. Still I feel the schism between mainstream RPGs and, let's call it indie RPGs or the new OSR movement, is bigger and greater than ever, and I think the approach to gaming is so different that both scenes might eventually become considered different things entirely. 

6 I know you are currently working on several games. I heard you are working on a game with motorbikes, demons and stoner rock. What can you tell us about it?

It will be called Hell Night and we are having a blast playing it with my playgroup! The project will be presented immediately after Ascet is done. I wanted to make an original premise in an original setting. Hell Night will be inspired by Mandy from Panos Cosmatos and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from Hunter Thompson, and yes, it will be about demonic bikers hunting other fugitive demons on a brutal night in 1992. The aesthetics relies heavily on doom metal cover albums from the 90s and we are already working on the art.

7 What are the inspirations for your worlds? And for your rules? What games would you consider to be influential to your design? 

I think we creators need to be a sponge for whatever catches our interest and we need to try to be in contact with whatever it is the Zeitgeist of our time. RPGs give me a chance to express myself and I need to be absolutely critical of everything I do if I want to mingle with sensible, contemporary issues. It is not escapism for me. Roleplaying is an artform, and like many artforms it is linked with entertainment (like theater, music, comics or cinema) but that should not be forcefully associated with banality. On the contrary, games have always been instruments of learning about the world and about ourselves. 

I remember Fischer creating Fischer Random chess in order to turn it into a game about logical thinking and creativity instead of memory. Any game you play ends up being influential if you love game mechanics. From Catan to Magic The Gathering, Rising Sun or Risk, I love them all and I enjoy tearing them apart. 

If you are open and pay attention you can find inspiration behind anything from a lame talk in a grocery store to an awfully bad B-movie. Stephen King said you can learn more from bad writers than from good ones, and that is the case for almost anything. I think new RPGs like Mork Borg, Troika, Blacksun Deathcrawl and Mothership have also inspired many of us to do our own thing and that is how art should work. Just like the way the Sex Pistols inspired Joy Division, right?

8 If you could buy any franchise/IP for an RPG, which would it be? Tell us about the franchise and the game you’d make.

I would have a hard time owning an established franchise and not ripping it apart and changing it entirely. I had some offers to become part of the writing team for some cool franchises which I have played and admired since childhood, but the truth is that they are not my worlds. I cannot make concessions in my creative process, I cannot respect canon. I would just use what I like about it and shred what I dislike, maybe even change names or events. It would never work and the fans would rightfully hate me!

9 You have published your games with your own independent label. You never considered submitting your stuff to an established publisher?

That might happen in the future. I had some talks with Exalted Funeral and we are pending on a definition on that. Always looking to go beyond drivethrurpg which at the moment is still convenient. Between creation and promotion I do not have the time or energy to deal with the logistics of living in the farthest country in the world (Argentina) and having a warehouse and taking care of the shipping. But I am working on it, it will definitely happen because I want my books to improve and look better. 

10 When I interviewed Diogo Niogueira, I wrote that he was the only game designer that I knew from South America. Well, here’s you now. Do you think your origin has affected your games? Have you ever felt as an outsider in the rpg community at large (in a good or bad way)?

Of course any life experience we have affects our creativity. I used to work for a leather distributing company and thus had the chance to travel around the world for 15 years, mainly shoe factories in Asia and the Middle-east. Now I live in a quiet neighborhood in the Buenos Aires suburbs and I do not miss planes one bit.

I have always felt as an outsider in the Argentine RPG community. It is too mainstream focused. I presented some local organizers with an idea to make a monthly fanzine and they just could not understand the appeal behind it. When I published the first version of Neurocity, they were like "Huh, we play lotr". It was honestly discouraging for me. My own playgroup were originally hardcore Pathfinders players until I managed to make them sit down and help me develop my games just as a favor. Now they cannot believe they used to take 30 min to resolve a combat situation, they are never looking back. I wish there was a scene like in Brazil, I see the stuff Diogo posts about Brazilian creators and it is rad. But we do not get that here, hopefully someday! 

I have only words of gratitude for the help and interest I have received from the english speaking RPG community. Even with Neurocity, a game I released without a professional proofreader or editor, all I got was words of encouragement. This is the best community ever, period!

11 As usual, they were supposed to be 10, but I have one more question before we say goodbye. Please point us to a song you think we should listen to.

That's easy! The Untouchables, Ennio Morricone's soundtrack. It is a song that speaks about defiance despite overwhelming odds, quite appropriate for these times. 

Thank you Gavriel!

Thank you, Giuseppe, for the interview!

So folks, check out Ascet on Kickstarter, and Graviel’s web page.

Stay tuned for more interviews! Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one! Hit the comments if you want me to interview your favorite author, artist, or publisher!

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