Violence Is The Loudest Person at the Party (w/ Jay Dragon)

Kenzie Tartaglione:

Hello everyone, welcome to Press Pause where we take a short break in our actual play show and do something different, something new, something spontaneous! This is called Let’s Chat, an interview show where we bring in other creators from the TTRPG space and see about what they do and who they are and why they do it! So today we have a very special guest here for you all, Jay dragon. Jay is the creator of –

 

Jay Dragon:

Hello.

 

Kenzie:

Yes Jay is the creator of Wanderhome which is the game that queeRPG, our podcast, is playing for our second season. And Jay is also the editorial director at Possum Creek Games and so thank you so much for coming on the podcast!

 

Jay:

Thank you so much for having me, Kenzie. I'm super excited to talk about stuff.

 

Kenzie:

­­Yeah, so I guess we could jump right in. First off I would just like to get to know you a little bit more, so how did you happen upon TTRPG's? What was your entrance into this world

 

Jay:

So I started with LARP when I was very young I think my - I was like twelve years old at a summer camp LARPing and then when I was 18 I finally was like, all right, let me see what this knockoff LARP is right? Oh you sit around the table and you like roll dice instead of like actually doing things? And so I played some 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons. I played Monsterhearts and then it was all over for me, right? Like it was like really a fast descent into madness. And yeah and it kind of it - games have always been kind of like my fascination and like they're kind of the language I use to articulate myself and my worldview and so once I kind of figured out that table top is not actually knock off LARP, it was like oh cool. I like this a lot. That was it for me, right? You know you're doomed you, fall into the pit.

 

Kenzie:

Really swiftly you could be consumed by this world. Yeah –

 

Jay:

Oh absolutely, yeah.

 

Kenzie:

I actually have never - I have never LARPed before. How did that start for you?

 

Jay:

LARP is kind of weird because good LARP is gonna be better than anything else but mediocre LARP is like worse than mediocre tabletop. And bad LARP is just abysmally worse and more common. So really there's kind of this feeling of playing with fire when you're like getting into it where it's like if you got good LARP, you're gonna have like a life changing experience. If you've got bad LARP, you're gonna have just wasted a weekend feeling miserable so… But I went to the Wayfinder experience which is a - has is a lot of notable alumni which I guess I am one of.

 

Kenzie:

Yes.

 

Jay:

Apparently now. And it's designed to like run these games for kids. It's very focused on like kind of like immersive and like empowering experiences and like doing things out in the woods and so like, a lot of my like early experiences are about like running around the woods at night, you know, like lit only by candles. These kind of very like very immersive, very like - kind of in your face very like not much of the numbers that like kind of associated with LARP. Not like kind of like the D&D - I've never really, I've always been periphery to Dungeons & Dragons and so a lot of the kind of ways I’ve ended up playing has been very secondary to that. But yeah.

 

Kenzie:

Wonderful. So you started out playing the game, when did that shift into creating and writing your own stuff kind of happened for you?

 

Jay:

Also I think pretty much - so okay, I like to say this about game designers. Game designers are really weird people because most of the time, the natural human instinct when you encounter a thing you don't enjoy is to say that you're gonna not do it again, right? You have an experience and you’re like that wasn't fun, I'm out. The game designer is the sick freak who plays a thing and doesn't like it and goes I can do better and that's the madness. So when I was fourteen I ran my first LARP. I add about 100 people between staff and participants and I had a budget and I was like fourteen year old doing this whole thing. And then I did many more times since then. So I got started really young and then I was immediately a forever GM, right? I don't even really enjoy being a player that much. I just immediately like let me get back there, let me get back in the machine, I need to shift some things around. And I think 2018 is when I wrote my first tabletop game 2020, sorry 2019 is when I published my first, which was Sleep Away. And people really liked Sleep Away and I Kickstarted it and did pretty well and I was like, yeah I can keep doing this. And then 2020 was when I Kickstarted Wanderhome and that was kind of when everything exploded.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah.

 

Jay:

And now I just do it full time.

 

Kenzie:

Which is great! You kind of take the thing that you love and make it financially stable for you –

 

Jay:

Somehow.

 

Kenzie:

- in a sense. Yeah, so that all happened so is – so was kind of the creation of Possum Creek Games related to Wanderhome specifically or did that come out first?

 

Jay:

Possum Creek was like a little thing I had made for tax reasons in 2019. It was like a little convenient to have a DBA. And then 2020, Ruby is my business partner, Grubby. Grubby and I, we kind of,  you know we worked together on Sleep Away. We were working together very hard on Wanderhome and Wanderhome made you know $100,000 in two days we went, “Oh my god, let's take this little business thing that I made and let's actually make it a real business.” And so yeah Possum Creek is - technically proceeds Wanderhome but truthfully it started as what it is in 2020 with Wanderhome.

 

Kenzie:

Okay.  

Jay:

It is kind of, you know, it grew to hold the creature that is that game.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah. If people haven't scoured the Possum Creek Games website, then they have missed what I think is an absolute wonder that is part of your mission statement. So I'm just going to read that here so that everyone listening can know what I'm talking about. But there's a part where it's written, “We are meaningfully invested in anti-fascist action, in indigenous stewardship over colonized land, in queer and disabled joy, and the dismantling of the capitalist carceral state, and in the survival and prosperity of all of those who have been marginalized by an unjust and cruel society.” And I think that's a pretty strong mission statement to have.

 

Jay:

We are we're not an apolitical company We're pretty intensely – we, you know, we're not a fundamentally leftist institution, right? We're still a company. Companies kind of by definition are playing the capitalist game. But I'm extremely left wing, so is Ruby, so it's kind of everyone we work with. And we make games that are about kind of very fundamentally this desire to see what lies beyond kind of the constraints of the society we live in right now, right? Kind of what does it mean to break free from and challenge those preconceived structures.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah.

 

Jay:

And you know it's a big thing that we're - you know, we're not interested in - I think there's a lot of companies that are interested in apoliticism, right? They’re like interested in being like, oh we just make games! You know? But everything's got politics and we know our politics and we're up front about them. We e put them in our mission statement right front and center so that people can hold us to them, right?

 

Kenzie:

Yeah.

 

Jay:

Like I expect that if we do something that violates our mission statement people say so. And that's important to me. That was important from the get go.

 

Kenzie:

I think that’s great. I think we're in a kind of turning point in the TTRPG community world, in which I think having a strong stance and a strong sense of like, this is what we believe in, so this is what we're going to do, is kind of important so I think that's awesome. And I mean, I think it's also - I think it also comes through very clearly in the games that you've made as well.

 

Jay:

Yeah I certainly hope so.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah, so you are the editorial director for Possum Creek Games and for those of our audience who may not know, what is an editorial director? What are you in charge of?

 

Jay:

So Grubby handles - Grubby is art director, I'm editorial director. That’s kind of the big split in Possum Creek in terms of like our zones because we - I think a lot of companies tend to view – a lot of people tend to view tabletop games as like the rules, the rules are the thing. And then everything else is set dressing. But we have a really holistic framework around what we're making that we're not trying to make good rules, we're trying to make a good thing. Like a good book with good rules, good art good, you know, good literature, good layout, good everything. And so that is a really kind of critical part - so I'm the editorial director which means that my role is to like pick out the games we're going to be publishing and like to workshop them and to edit them and to like, you know, curate that. And also oftentimes it's to write the damn things.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah I was gonna ask, has that kind of shifted your role from being the like actual writer, creator of the games to more of the person who reads over other people's pitches and kind of works on that.

 

Jay:

I think I”m always going to be writing stuff but it's really nice to be able to take a backseat and what we've been doing a lot of other people's work lately and it feels fantastic. Wanderhome I think is my last major solo venture for a while like and even then with Wanderhome it's like I want other people involved. It feels weird to do a thing alone. Like even with Wanderhome, there are other people involved. I just did the writing but plenty of other people contributed things. And I think that like, in general, like creativity is framed as a very lonely process but it's not. And so a lot of what like I do is basically like I write stuff on the side. I like to joke that game design is my hobby for when I'm not running a game company. Basically what I do is I tinker away, you know, like on off hours. I mess around with things and then every once in a while I go to Grubby and I'm like, alright I got a new thing. Let's figure out what we can do with this. She likes to compare it to like she's the cobbler and there's elves in the attic and she leaves the shoes out and comes back at night and finds that they've been repaired.

 

Kenzie:

I love that. That's so sweet. Sweet little analogy.

 

Jay:

Mm-hmm.

 

Kenzie:

Okay, well I do want to talk a little bit more about Wanderhome.

 

Jay:

Yeah, let’s talk about Wanderhome.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah I feel like you would be the person to go to talk about Wanderhome.

 

Jay:

(laughs) Probably. At this point there are now some people I think who have played more Wanderhome than I have but it took a few years but I think we've hit that point. But yes, I think I'm still probably the foremost expert on the thing that I made (laughs).

 

Kenzie:

Yeah yeah. So what led to your vision for Wanderhome and for the world of Haeth.

 

Jay:

Yeah so Wanderhome started in late April or sorry in mid-april of 2020. I don't know if you could remember mid-April of 2020. I barely can.

 

Kenzie:

Oh, I mean it’s - I tried to block it from my memory –

 

Jay:

Yes I try not to remember. Well I think unsurprisingly I was not having a great day that fine mid-April and I was sitting outside looking at the river that was next to my house, where I lived at the time. And I was thinking about where - like what it is to see the world, and what it is like be in a place. And I was thinking about how - like the capitalist relationship to place. And what it is then kind of inversely to see the world as if you're standing on a boat. And that's all really heady but it was kind of where my head was at which is kind of this like jumble of thoughts as I was like pulling things out and taking notes and pulling things out and taking notes. And I got really interested in a game that's about place, it’s about giving a place of voice and exploring a place rather than that's about like a story, that’s about like a plot. And kind of like what if instead of being concerned about a narrative arc, we're concerned about the environment and kind of exploring that. And so I started putting Wanderhome together. And I used to be in art history major before I dropped out of college. Grubby went to same college as me and has a graphic design degree. We're both really interested in art and you know, I was telling her about this idea and we're like, “Oh we're going to need a lot of different art. Let's start pulling artists.” So Grubby starts making this list of artists and that's when it kind of all started really coming together very fast.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah the art in the book is beautiful. I have it up on my shelf.

 

Jay:

Oh good, good, good, good.

 

Kenzie:

It's gorgeous. So we, of cours,e now have this book. You had your Kickstarter for it but - so the creative process seems to be about - was it about like a year or two years or was it a lot shorter than that? From conception, I suppose, to publication.

 

Jay:

So most of Wanderhome was written in a very fast period of time. It was written from April to June of 2020.

 

Kenzie:

Okay.

 

Jay:

The editing took about a year and the play testing and the editing took about a year. So the core of the game was done pretty fast and then what it was to organize the game and make sure that we stood by everything took a lot longer. So for example, you know, for the people who don’t know, playbooks in Wanderhome are made-up of these lists and there's all these lists, right? And it looks almost deceptively simple because you look at these lists it's like oh pick three to four describe your look, pick two you are and two you're not, pick one you carry and one you've lost, pick - you know making these choices about these objects and these things about you. And they're actually really hard to write. They look easy to write but they're very dense. And that's because I wrote them and then we edited them and we had a person on staff who was the list editor, who went through every single list and tightened it further. And then we tightened it further - and just really kind of, you know, wrung it until it was as solid as possible for all 200 plus lists in the game. So things like that where it was like the core of the game, mechanically, is really simple, right? Wanderhome is a game that arguably only has like one or two rules by like a formal definition. But the heart of the game is in the environment it builds and the way it does that is through the non-mechanical elements that had to get tightened and tightened and nailed down just perfectly, right? There's lists in the game - so there's a character who has the choice where you choose like one you keep lit and one you're struggling to keep - like one you keep lit and one that's in danger of going out. And there are seven objects there, each one of them is a light source, ranging from like a literal light source like a lantern to like a cigarette to like a passion. And then each one of them connects to an outside force, either an NPC or a faction or something or a lore. And every single one of them needs to be able to make sense with both of those prompt structures, right? That it needs to both make sense for it to be always lit and one that's in danger of going out, right? So tinkering with that, right, really kind of figuring out how to squeeze all of those things into those seven bullet points was really kind of the heart of making Wanderhome was that it was kind of like that anchoring.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah you have a fairly simple, on the surface, game but to make it like that there were like all the tiny little things you had to pick apart and make perfect.

 

Jay:

I like it when things look very simple, that - like it's the same with abstract art, right? I want to be able to make games that make people go like, “Oh my kid could make that,” because that's the trick is that it's both - it's a call to arms, right? Oh anyone can make a game, you can make game. But also there's a lot more skill here than you expect. There's a lot of of work that's been kind of done into the back end. You know actually it's much harder to write a one page game than it is to write a hundred page game, right? ‘Cause a 100 page game is a question of endurance and a one page game is a question of clarity. And so Wanderhome is very much like it's an incredible challenge of clarity to make sure that everything is really nailed.

 

Kenzie:

I think it's also that way in the sense that this game easily could be a couple hours in an afternoon with your friends or like a day by day recounting of somebody's life and journey within Haeth. Like it could be as short and quick and sweet as you want it or a long kind of odyssey and I think –

 

Jay:

Yeah that was really an important part of the design was to make sure that it's a game that you could imagine playing for years, even if you don't play it for years, right? Like even if - I don't think - I think 99% of people who play Wanderhome and maybe that's like a low estimate, 99% will not play the game for years and years and year. But I want every single time you play, you're imagining you could keep playing and that feeling of like, “Oh the journey doesn't end.” One of the art direction note we gave for all the illustrations is there's always something further in the background. If you look to the horizon line, in pretty much every single illustration, you'll see kind of, you know, you'll reach maybe mountains and beyond the mountains there are more mountains and beyond the mountains there are more mountains. Or you can see like if there's a path it continues further into the background, it keeps going. And that was really important to us because we wanted to emphasize the feeling that every single picture is not like an end point but like a step in a journey. It's a step in a path that is continuing on into the background. And so every single picture has that quality.

 

Kenzie:

That's awesome, I don't think I picked that up going through the book.

 

Jay:

You'll notice it now! When you flip through you’ll spot it.

 

Kenzie:

I definitely will. Oh my goodness.

 

Jay:

Keep an eye out for it.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah, I think the most interesting thing to me is creating a game where it's completely communal and there’s no - we don't have a game master or anything like that. It's a completely communal world building game which I think is one of the biggest reasons I was drawn to it because even in other – even in like most of the other like Powered by the Apocalypse game Betty or what’s it? Beyond the –

 

Jay:

Belonging Outside Belonging.

 

Kenzie:

Belonging Outside Belonging, thank you, there's still like an idea that somebody has to like keep everybody in line and keep everybody facing one direction. But I guess maybe that is because this game is so much more about a place, as you said earlier, than it is about like the plot of a story, that maybe that lends to –

 

Jay:

Well I also just think that - so there's a part in Wanderhome where I talk about the concept of guide, where you can, if you would like to, include a guide. Like have a guide to help run the game but for me every single time I look at a game I'm never being like, oh well there has to be a GM. Every single time I work on a game I’m like does there have to be a GM and what responsibilities do they have to have? And a lot of the games I design, or help design, there are no GMs but frequently I will enumerate kind of responsibilities that someone has to do, right? Because a GM is kind of this bizarre role if you think about it. Where in Dungeons & Dragons it's like alright you’ve got the person who knows the rules of the game, is constructing the entire world, who is providing like the supplies and resources, who’s oftentimes providing the location and who is like moderating the social environment, right? Like if there's a problem player at a table, it’s the GM's responsibility, it's not the other players responsibility. Those are all a weird set of things to bundle together. That's a weird set of expectations to all put on one person in one place. But some of those are necessary roles to have. Generally you want to have someone who knows the rules of the game. You want to have someone who is thinking about where you're playing the game and making sure the resources are there. There's just no reason why that all as to be the same person. And so a lot of like game design can just be, what if you took the responsibilities of the GM and you distribute it? Or like you figured out what was necessary, what was valuable to hold on to for this game, and you presented it as a set - you know like how do you want to divvy it up? You put that in the players hands. And I think that means that even in games of Wanderhome where there is a guide, where there is kind of a more traditional GM relationship in terms of the world, there is still I think a much more communal space, right? It still feels much more conversational and communal and kind of like those resources exist, even if you want to move in these different directions.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah we found that as we played for our second - season 2 - because it was a podcast we felt we needed a guide just to have direction within a like structured format, but you know, you can - when it comes out, our audience will be able to hear that there are so many times throughout where the guide it's like, okay, well you guys build this this place, this building and you know, you hear that, and you can see how that developed rather than it all being behind the scenes and then just through exposition given to you.

 

Jay:

Yeah it's a question of like who's actually, you know, kind of responsible and if you want to abdicate responsibility, right? It's like it's the same thing like in a committee where it's like you might appoint someone to take on a specialized role within a committee, like a secretary or a head but that person doesn't fundamentally wield more power than other people. They're just kind of taking on a set of responsibilities. And to me that is much more what it is like to be - like I'm not interested in ecclesiastical relationship when I play. I don't want one person dictating to me this knowledge of this holy book, right? I want to be able to all sit down together and share in the book and engage with it that way. And I find that to be generally, when I play, much more productive.  

Kenzie:

I kind of agree. I as most people have had my start with Dungeons & Dragons but I, in the last year or two years, I have been going into the rest of the world, into games that aren't fantasy based or so rules and mechanics driven and I've also found that I think it's a lot better when it's collaborative rather than just me being behind the DM screen with all of my notes. Like no it's so much more fun for everybody to be actively engaged.

 

Jay:

And like there can be moments when it's when it's nice to invite the GM to be secretive in the same way that like it's fun to invite - like you know, like you can - you know, going back to LARP, back to kind of where I started, you can have a game where everyone has their secrets that they're guarding and they're all like you know being shifty and mysterious and you know it's a political intrigue drama fest. We've got all these people doing these different clandestine things, but you're inviting that to the space. It's not the default assumption, it's an invited thing and that changes the relationship with it. And I think that sense of, oh we're inviting this relationship to the table is much more fulfilling than we are assuming it always has to be here.

Kenzie:

Yeah. Another big difference I think within Wanderhome, and the world of Haeth, and I actually think one of my biggest draws to it, is that it lacks combat, it lacks violence, it's a peaceful world. And I almost at the beginning when I heard it like couldn't wrap my mind around that. And so can you just talk a little bit about why that was something you wanted to avoid?

 

Jay:

Violence takes up so much narrative space in tabletop play. It is overwhelming how much violence takes over our ability to tell other forms of story. And like because the fact that violence is really violence. It’s metaphorical violent, right? When you kill a goblin in Dungeons & Dragons, you're not dwelling with the ethical implications of having just committed a murder, you are playing a game and engaging with a game piece. And narratively you are asserting agency against the world. You are fulfilling a set of narrative obligations but those narrative obligations are still caught up in this monolith that is violence. And when you tell people there's a game without violence they go, oh well, what else could there be? Because for some reason we have constructed our entire understanding and knowledge of how we could tell stories together to this one specific mode of being that is incredibly limited. And we act like that is the only way we can tell stories. It's a bit like if every single book was a romance novel and I told you that I'm writing a book without romance and you were like, oh then what's the plot? If there's no romance, how can there be plot? And it's like well –

 

Kenzie:

Have you ever heard?

 

Jay:

There is a world - have you ever heard of literally anything else. Like the decision to say there's no violence in Wanderhome is because I want to invite all the other stories to the table. It's not so much about saying, oh you can't do this. It's saying hey let's make space - violence is the loudest person the party, right? Violence is shouting over everyone else and drowning them out So, if we take violence out of the room, what do we get to start to hear that we couldn't hear over the sound of violence? There are characters in Wanderhome, like the poet, or the shepherd that simply couldn't exist in a game where violence as normalized, right? A shepherd or like a kid even, having a kid wandering around is, you know, or having like an old person who can't really walk that well or having someone you know like - in many games you have to adjust those and tinker with those to justify how they can still relate to violence. They must be a warrior poet or like a magic bard who cast spells and it's like well, why not have a bard that's just a musician? Why not have a poet who’s just a writer? Why don't we make space for these other modes of being that can be full of stories, right? There are lots of stories about writers. Every writer writes a book about writers. That's what authors do. And there's so much space to tell stories. There's so many possible stories to tell about shepherdsm right? There's many interesting things that can emerge from having a shepherd as the character. So that was really my goal. And like what do we get to play with when we take our one toy off the table? What other things did we discover?

 

Kenzie:

Is that also like outside of Wanderhome thing? Is that a Possum Creek style in general?

 

Jay:

Not fundamentally. We have put out games that have violence in them but frequently it's like violence is a space - we love to have spaces to play in, right? And we're just not interested in what we're supposed to be doing and so sometimes we put out like, you know, we put out a tactical combat game that’s a PDF on a website. And that's like, you know, that was almost made as like, oh you say we can't do that, right? You think we’re just Wanderhome, let's make another thing to keep you on your toes. But generally it's like I'm just interested in making games about whatever, right? Whatever I feel like making a game about, I wanna make it about. And sometimes that means there's some sword fighting but probably there’s not not because most human - like I'm going to make a wild guess and say your life contains very little direct physical combat unless you are like a historical reenactor but like even. Like when you go to the grocery store, you're not taking a break to fight some kobolds. And so there's this whole ocean of human experience that lies outside of conflict and so I like to tell stories about that and sometimes I do want to tell stories about conflict because like violence does ultimately lie within the sea of stories that could exist but I want to do so thoughtfully. And frequently a thing that I think about is the distinction between violence as a narrative tool that we're talking earlier, right? The idea of like oh violence, you know, this isn't really killing a goblin, this is like a metaphorical thing I'm doing versus violence as violence. Which is generally the domain of horror, which is the understanding of violence as truly a monstrous thing. And like the thing I like to say is that Wanderhome contains about as much violence as your actual life does, which is to say that there’s threat of it, the threat looms much more presently than the reality. But even in a lot of my games it's like in Sleep Away which is a horror game, there is - violence is present in that game but it's rare and it's scary and it's intense and it's bad and you don't want to have it happen to you. And In Yuzeba’s which is, you know, Yuzeba’s Bed and Breakfast which is a much goofier game, there's like,  you know, jokes about - there's like, you know, kind of moments where it could maybe come up but they're hidden in the corners and they're tucked away and they're like part of, you know, they're kind of just part of the play.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah I think you touched on something there too of instead of talking about violence talking about conflict because I think we often forget in TTRPGs that you can have a lot of conflict that is not violent. That's just interpersonal relationships.

 

Jay:

One of my favorite moments that came up in a play test of Wanderhome was I was running came for a group of OSR people, Old School Renaissance, who generally play different games and we were in this this castle in the middle of the swamp that had been turned into a casino and was like on the edge of the King of the Floating Mountains empire and we were kind of having to like travel carefully. And it was run by like this one military captain who had seized it after a rebellion. And one of the characters, the veteran, gets manhandled by these two guards and the guards are like kind of looming at her and in normally, a tabletop game, she would attack the guards and they would fight and the guards would be dead and she would move on. But violence is off the table so instead she's like, Well fine take me to your captain.” And she's brought to the to the captain and realizes it's her ex.

 

Kenzie:

Yep, there it is.

 

Jay:

And so suddenly this who thing happens, this whole thing opens up that was only possible because violence was off the table, right? Because we weren't telling a story about hitting each other with swords, it suddenly became a story about two people trying to love each other and failing in the midst of this war that is now over but wasn't over ten years ago. And the looming threat of that. It becomes a story about the potential of violence being something haunting and scary which is much more interesting to me than, you know, if she just killed the guards and ran off.

 

Kenzie:

I think this might be my last Wanderhome question for you, what’s the draw of diceless games?

 

Jay:

The thing about dice is that they are - dice are historically an oracular tool and a gambling tool, right? And there are many such oracular tools and gambling tools they can entrench us historically and we still use them in our games but they all have very different sensations to them. A really classic example I give is if you imagine rolling a d20 to see what happens versus drawing a card from a deck of 20 cards to see what happens. Those are mathematically identical actions but emotionally they're very different. Rolling the dice feels like it's much more up in the air than drawing from the deck of cards. Drawing from the deck of cards feels predetermined, like the events have already been set up and you are finding out what is already true. They’re two different sensations for play. And that is true across the board, right? Even different shaped dice illicit different sensations. Our cultural associations elicit different sensations. The manner in which we roll the dice, right? If you were to throw six dice in a cup and rattle the cup around to throw it out, it would be a different emotion than shaking the dice in your hands. And that emotion that dice elicit isn't always apt for games. And we assume it is because it's the default. Once again it is the thing that we assume must be true. But I come from LARP, I don't come from tabletop. Tabletop to me it has all these conventions that are arbitrary. They are clearly arbitrary from my point of view. So I can do whatever I want, right? And if a game does not - you know there's was a moment when I thought of Wanderhome having dice and I wrote out what would be the worst thing I want to have happen to someone and the best thing I want to have happen to someone, right? Like what's the equivalent of a critical success and a critical fail and I realized that for Wanderhome neither of those were - like the worst thing I wanted to have happen to someone was that you have to give something up to help someone else or that you have to make a big sacrifice. And the best thing I could imagine having happened is that you get to temporarily bring about some kind of emotional catharsis or peace for someone else. Although like you might not be able to help them with their long term problems. And that's a really weird range for dice to have, right? That doesn't elicit a dice feeling, right?

 

Kenzie:

Yeah.

 

Jay:

You’re not kind of, you know, challenging lady luck when that's the range. So it's like there's no point to dice here. And lots of games are that way, right? Where it's like I've got lots of games that have dice, I’ve sketched them out in various forms, they've never made it to publication but I've certainly messed with dice. But, you know, I just don't need them, they're not necessary. You know it’s the same as violence, it's not necessary. There's plenty of other things that get to happen when we don't view that as the default.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah I think it it's a great way to put characters and story first and to like actively engage  in the world instead of having the dice roll tell you how you're supposed to engage in the world. It’s almost a weird mirror to your, we’re expected to do violence but what if we didn't, and it's like - yeah it's kind of weird mirror to that I think it’s cool. I'm excited for it.

 

Jay:

In a game with dice, in a sense you're kind of asking the gods what is going to happen, right? You're consulting the gods and the pantheon - you know the gods decide what will occur. And in a game without dice you are the one in the driver's seat, right? You're the one ultimately making - a game without randomness. There’s this concept in game design called the – god I can never pronounce his name - but it’s this principle by this guy from The Forge that says that in a game the person who decides to do a thing, and who determines how it goes – or it’s the person who decides to do a thing, who does the thing and who decides how it goes should never all three be the same person. Or like there's a sense of like, you know, like a game should contain some element of unknown. The surrealist philosopher [inaudible] I believe is the one who said that chess is a game of luck even though there's no dice- you know like chess is a game of luck even though perhaps we might say, oh chess is predetermined. He says, no, no, chess is a  game of luck because you never know what your opponent will do, right? Your opponent is the mystery thing. So you know maybe you'll do well, but he'll better. Maybe you’ll do well and she'll do worse. Maybe you'll do, you know, and so in a diceless game, the other people are the dice, right? The collective imagination is the dice, right? It's the element of uncertainty that provides and moves things forward.

 

Kenzie:

You had mentioned, very briefly, sorry is it Yazebas? Is that how you pronounce it?

 

Jay:

Yazeba’s, Yazeba’s whatever you're feeling.

 

Kenzie:

(laughs) Well Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast which I don't know a ton about it. I know that you had a pretty successful Indieogo campaign that just finished up, so congratulations on that.

 

Jay:

Thank you. Actually it was last year if you can believe.

 

Kenzie:

Oh it was last – I thought it was just this year. No, it was last year?

 

Jay:

No, no, time flies, time flies. But we just released the digital version, so the PDF and the accompanying virtual table top.

 

Kenzie:

Okay.

 

Jay:

‘Cause we worked with a VTT company to create kind of our own basically roll 20 equivalent just for this game.

 

Kenzie:

Wow, that’s awesome.

 

Jay:

So that is all available right now. And the the book itself should come out at the end of the year, finger crossed.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah, that's awesome! I'm very excited for it. Can you give a little summary about what this game is all about?

 

Jay:

Sure. Yazeba’s Bread and Breakfast is a whimsical, slice of life RPG about a found family in an interdimensional magical bed and breakfast. You play as specific characters such as the trans girl, Gertrude, who ran away from home and is sleeping in the laundry room. Or the demonic hey kid who is just a little kid who got left off - you know who is also the devil. Or Parish, the chef who is a knight cursed to be a frog. Or even the heartless witch herself, Yazeba. You play as them. You tell these little episodic adventures, you do like an hour doing a little story together right? Maybe I'm hey kid and you’re Gertrude and you know we wash dishes together and we make little notes on the character sheet and we kind of adjust what they are and then next time we play maybe you’re hey kid and I'm Parish, and you've got my notes from last time and you've got the stickers from last time and you've got the materials from then. And so it's a game that builds on itself overtime. We've been working on it since November 2019, so Wanderhome was made partially while taking a break from working on Yazeba’s.

 

Kenzie:

Okay.

 

Jay:

It’s an elaborate piece but it's really special and if you're interested in the game that takes an hour to play but you can sit with - you can like leave a mark that will last for the rest of the game it's a really special experience.

 

Kenzie:

It sounds super interesting and just from that little description for some reason, I've never even seen this show, but that cartoon Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends popped into my head.

 

Jay:

For sure. Right there on the inspiration list. Don't even worry! We were talking about what the bed and breakfast should look like and we were throwing around that Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. Oh yeah it's right part of that. We wanted to make a game that was really like about this kind of like uncertain nostalgia. Like nostalgia for a thing you can't quite remember and so there's a lot of like -  like chapters are out of order on purpose and like there's like the feeling of like you’re just kind of piecing things together. Like, you know, maybe it's like a paperback you found in the corner of the library that's like book five and you can't find three or six. Or it's like a TV show. You're catching a random episode of Fosters but you don't have the rest of the context. That’s kind of the Yazeba’s vibe.

 

Kenzie:

The image of it on your guys' website looks like it's a pretty thick tome of a book.

 

Jay:

Yeah, it's a 500 page book. It’s 500 pages.

 

Kenzie:

Oh my goodness.

 

Jay:

Yeah, it's pretty chonky. But you know what's cool is that you don't need all that. Like most of it is locked content because the way it works is whenever we play a chapter together, right? Like we have these little mini adventures. We go on an adventure, we get a sticker - it's like a memento, like a carrot or a stack of paper, like a weird doll and we put it somewhere in the bed and breakfast and that helps us unlock more stuff down the line. So the game is kind of like - most of the book is kind of this further stuff whereas like - so it's like we our goal with it was a shallow entry in a deep well, right? That you can get into it really fast and then go very deep if you want to.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah, wow, that is super intriguing. Yeah I gotta get my y hands on that when it comes out because I am –

 

Jay:

I would absolutely recommend. We are sending the materials to the printer tomorrow so we've been kind of scrambling for the past several weeks and getting all the documents together. And it's going to be a beautiful book. T here's so many elements of it that I'm like, you know, like we're working on the bot set right now and it's gonna look like a stack of books on your shelf right? That we don't want it to look like - we don't want it to look a board game box, we want it to look like books on the shelf. So there's like Yazeba’s itself and then there's like the trinkets and tchotchkes box which has like the deck of cards and coins and materials you need to play. And there's like the ledger that has like the black and white print out so you don't have to like - you can just have it right there. Like all this stuff that's gonna be really beautiful. It's just so - like gold embossed on paper. It’s going to look really nice.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah that sounds beautiful and I mean I can only imagine since the Wanderhome art was so gorgeous that this is –

 

Jay:

Oh yeah, no the art - if you look up the art there's some really phenomenal art. I've been - there's I think 400 illustrations for this game. Wanderhome had 100 illustrations, this is four times as many illustrations as Wanderhome.

 

Kenzie:

That's a massive undertaking.

 

Jay:

It’s been a lot. It's been a lot. It's been enormous. It's kind of - but I'm really proud of it. I'm really excited for people to get their hands on it. I think like Wanderhome and Yazeba’s are really good companions where Wanderhome is very peaceful and Yazeba’s is a bit more - like Wanderhome is almost like a single element of Yazeba 's amplified. Where it's kind of like this -  like Wanderhome is about looking for a place to be and Yazeba’s is about the trials and tribulations of having a place to be. And so they're - I think they're really - they're good in conversation with each other and they're also I think you can see how they build on each other.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah I mean found family is like my favorite trope of all time.

 

Jay:

Oh, of course, of course, yes.

 

Kenzie:

Easily get me on the hook with that.

 

Jay:

Absolutely, no I feel you.

 

Kenzie:

Well you know we're coming up on the end here, so I want to thank you again for giving us some of your time. But before you go -

 

Jay:

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Kenzie:

Oh yeah this has been awesome. This has been so much fun.

 

Jay:

Yeah!

 

Kenzie:

Before you go though, I know that there are a lot of secrets in the creative world that need to be kept for a plethora of reasons and so I know that Yazeba’s, you've got that coming up, is there anything after that you've got in mind for Possum Creek Games?

 

Jay:

There’s a couple things. So I'm - yeah I think we've - I think I can mention it. This is not the formal announcement - we'll be doing a whole little thing at GenCon, hopefully fingers crossed. But we are looking to finally do an expansion for Wanderhome in 2024.

 

Kenzie:

That is exiting.

 

Jay:

We haven't quite yet figured out the theme and the nature but I've done a lot of writing for it already. I have like all these documents of like all these things that I couldn't quite fit into Wanderhome when it was released. I’ve got like rules for magic spells, you know I've got an aeronaut playbook or like the lovers playbook –

 

Kenzie:

That’s so dope!

 

Jay:

And things like that and so we've got all these materials that we're looking to put out and we’re going to do an expansion for it. I think it’s going to be really cool and special once we have it all sorted. And then there's other stuff too, right? You know always more things. We're going to be releasing a solo game based on a Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, that's coming out soon. We’re working on a pair of games about folk horror and the gothic. We’re working with Luke Jordan of Wildwood Games. I’m working with Hunter’s Entertainment on a companion for Alice's Is Missing, which will be really exciting once that’s all done.

 

Kenzie:

I want to play that game so badly. I haven’t played it yet.

 

Jay:

Alice is Missing is a fantastic game. I’m working on basically – it’s called The Hitchhiker and it’s about ghost stories and kind of me taking that setup of Alice is Missing and mixing it with a bit of the Stephen King northeastern gothic quality where it's like, what if, you know, you've got a group of friends, and you got a group chat and one of you dies and then five years later you've all moved on and the group chat lights up again and your friend is like, “Hey, I'm dead. Help.” Things like that. So there's gonna be - there's a lot of cool stuff down the pipeline.

 

Kenzie:

Yeah I was gonna say you're working on about 100 different things at once.

 

Jay:

I’m always juggling things. And I’m writing a novel or trying to. There's like –

 

Kenzie:

Oh my goodness!

 

Jay:

I know. I can't help myself. My entire family has the same problem which is when we get stressed out we invent new things to be stressed about.

 

Kenzie:

I know that well.

 

Jay:

You know whenever it's like we're overworked, we just immediately find a new thing to be overworked about and so I can't help myself. But there's a lot of really cool stuff I'm looking forward to doing and I simply cannot wait to show it all off.

 

Kenzie:

Well I can't wait to see all of it. Thank you so much, Jay, for coming on.

 

Jay:

Thank you for having me.

 

Kenzie:

This was an absolute pleasure. I loved picking your brain about games.

 

Jay:

Yeah!

 

Kenzie:

And for everybody, everyone else, everyone listening and watching, until next time!

Hey everyone! We’re so excited to premiere this new show! In upcoming episodes you’ll be able to hear more about our cast who are creatives in their own right as well as some other creator within the TTRPG space! If you want to see the video versions of these interviews or get early access to them, you can check out our queerio tier on Patreon at patreon.com/queerpg You can follow queeRPG on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @queeRPGpod. queeRPG is made possible by all of you who listen and share the show! If you like what you hear please rate and review. It helps other people find the pod. If you’re interested in seeing transcripts for the episode, all of those from previous episodes and episodes to come can be found on our website queerpg.com! Until next time!