AprilTTRPGMaker Day 4: Describe Your Work.

Well, professionally, I make video games. For many years that meant console games. Early works included an X-Files and an E.R. game. The middle part of my career consisted of making a series of fighting games: Supremacy MMA, Girlfight, Belator and Spartacus. And then my company transitioned to making mobile games, the latest of which, is Pacific Rim: Breach Wars.

But my table top work is mostly about Gothic and psychological horror. A lot of my games are designed to make you reflect on tough topics and gamify unpleasant experiences. My hope is that by lacquering over tough subjects with monsters and surrealism they will be more attractive to engage.

Here's a project breakdown:

The Gothics:

Necropolis - A Cybergothic setting for The Sprawl and an attempt to re-introduce some of the awkward romanticism found in Gibson's Sprawl trilogy into the game.

The Extraordinarily Horrible Children of Raven's Hollow - A game about creepy children murdering each other and a commentary on vicious and unkind PvP games like Munchkin.

The Anxiety and Depression Series:

Haunted - A game about a murderer being stalked by the ghost of his victim and a metaphor about stress and having too many responsibilities to juggle.

A Dark an Quiet Place - A hybrid board game and story game about fighting monsters in abandoned buildings. The board game is unwinnable and gets increasingly more difficult. The game ends when the focus character figures out what all this "cycling" is really about for them emotionally.

Elevator of Regretful Memories - A game about the monsters from our nightmares bleeding into reality. Uh... maybe the metaphor on this one is a little thin.

Silent Sound - A variation on encountering monsters in abandoned buildings and seeking reflections of ourselves in the things in our environment.

Weaving Yarns - A game about characters who are leaning on fantasy as a coping mechanism. The game pulls in elements of the players real lives as a focus on how the characters we build in these game are... well... sometimes coping mechanism.

The Weird Stuff

Bread Mold Might Be Medicine - A game about the head doctor at a mental hospital and how sometimes the wisdom in our lies is the truth we need to move forward. it's about the blind leading the blind.

Exceptional Fantasy - A card-game RPG hybrid about being the major faction leaders in an EPIC fantasy world as inspired by the tarot deck you choose to play the game with.

Thornes - Frank Miller's Three Musketeers. A game about fucking your enemies and murdering your lovers.

And that's just what exists in playable alpha documents. The list goes on an on.