Insider Interview with RPG Designer David Hill

David Hill runs Machine Age Productions and sports quite a bit of work under his belt with other companies including White Wolf and Eve Online, just to name a few.

He loves to chat and brings a lot of inventiveness to our great hobby of role playing games. Plus, he was gratious enough to allow me this interview with him, which is awesome. :-)

And away we go!

What was it that made you want to get into “the industry?”

Cop-out answer, but it’s what I do. I’ve always designed games, just before I did it professionally, I did it under the guise of ‘fixing’ the games I was playing. I can’t remember ever playing an RPG ‘by the book’, there’s always been something or another that I felt could better suit my desires if it were different. I never really saw it as a viable profession until I started freelance writing for a handful of RPG publishers. But once I did that, I was hooked. I love tinkering with things. I love delivering experiences through text that informs play.

What do you wish your customers to take away from one of your productions?

Which one? In all seriousness, every game I release has different intent behind it. Mostly, I want them to take away a good time. I mean, a game is a failure if nobody is having fun with it. I guess if I had to pick one specific thing to our products I like a customer to take away, it’s that we’re all derivative. Everyone and everything is derivative. But when you change the mix, and pull out the things you don’t necessarily like, you can build a new experience.

What is the most important aspect when creating a new publication?

The message it’s trying to convey. I don’t mean in the allegorical or metaphorical way. I mean in the game design. Every game informs play, and coaxes its players to behave in certain ways. Those behaviors are the aspects we focus on before we even get started. If we want you to be afraid, we need to consider the behaviors that reflect that emotion. We think of how we can make those behaviors happen.

What is your favorite game that you have published if you had to pick one?

That, of course, is a really tough one. But if I had to be stuck on an island with one game, it’d be Amaranthine. It fits my ideal play style perfectly. All our other games fill experiences I love playing, but Amaranthine is core to everything I like as a gamer.

Can you give any insider news on Flatpack?

Um, yes! We just launched the Kickstarter for it ( http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/machineage/flatpack-fix-the-future-optimistic-apocalyptic-rpg). Within one day, we hit our necessary funding goal. We’re actually just about to double it, only a day and a half in. Once we double our goal, we’ll be offering an exclusive Guestbook character with every print order. But right now, we’re actually talking about adding a whole, separate book if we hit the next milestone. We’re really excited to have the opportunity to do this. So, we’re shooting to include a setting book with a bunch of scenarios and conflicts to everyone that’s contributed so far. It’ll be like a little value-added content.

I know the next project Filamena’s working on is a hack of Flatpack, inspired by How To Train Your Dragon. It’ll share a lot of rules similarities, but focused more on the relationship between a child and their pet dragon.

Do you have any secret future publications/ what do they entail?

We don’t do secret at Machine Age. We believe in full transparency whenever possible. Right now, I’m developing a fantasy title that’s tentatively called Professor Anderssen’s Omnibus Works, Titled Farewell to Fear, Proposing the Advancement of Culture and the Abandonment of Barbarism . That can be shortened to “Farewell to Fear”. It’s a socially and scientifically progressive fantasy game, where the mechanics were written to cater to the setting instead of the other way around. Most importantly, the game engine will be based on the scientific method, instead of a simple pass-fail mechanic.

Are there any artists that have influenced you? How about authors? Movies?

Oh yes. Gaming owes everything to art and media. Right now, for my development, I’ve been inspired heavily by the author Andrzej Sapkowski. The game also owes a lot to progressive politics, there’s a lot of FDR and JFK in there. My past games draw a lot from movies like Alien, Event Horizon, Pandorum, Highlander, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Police Story, Singham… Television shows such as Psych, Burn Notice, and Leverage play into my products. And just about anything else I consume has its place in my work.

How did you come up with the concept for Guestbook?

Well, games are about creating fiction. I figure, there are plenty of games for one-shots, plenty for epic campaigns, and everything in between. But what about flash fiction? I wanted a game you could play in five to ten minutes while in the line at a convention, or while shooting the shit at a wedding reception. So Guestbook was designed to cater to that desire. Everything required to play is on the character brochures. You just need that, and a free hand to create a story with a friend. I also liked the idea of doing a collectible game.

Do you ere on the side of being innovative or traditional?

Innovative. I would venture to say we do very little that could be called traditional. We encourage file sharing. We use nonstandard funding and preorders. We sell our games on CDRs and flash drives, out of the trunk of a car. We try to maintain a sort of punk ethos in all our dealings.

Do you have a particular process you go through in order to create a new publication?

I’ll omit the parts that involve headbutting my keyboard. Really, what we do is come up with an idea. We have tons of them, every day my wife or I say, “this idea would make a great game!” or something similar. Every now and again, we like one more than the rest, or we discuss what we feel the market has a need for. And we do it. We start writing. We tinker. We play. We take the good, trash the bad. We write more. We tinker more. We play more. Once we have a solid foundation, we get it out to the fans, and test the waters. We take the good, we take the bad, and there you have the facts of game design.

What is your favorite game mechanic that you have created?

Amaranthine’s relationship wheel. In most games with relationship mechanics, a relationship is a continuum. I don’t really like that. Ours is a cycle, with ebbs and flows. Things are good and bad, hot and cold, and as time progresses, people get closer, whether that’s in a good or bad way.

What is your favorite genre?

I don’t really like ‘genre’, truth be told. For me, it’s all in the implementation. I don’t like Tolkien. I don’t like Lucas. I’m really very picky. I like a good deal of cyberpunk. I guess that’d be a good way to lean. William Gibson was greatly influential in my decision to become a writer.

What kind of stories do you generally go towards?

I lean toward action/romance. I like seeing the way relationships react to existential threat.

Do you do a lot of table top gaming?

Truth be told, I don’t do enough. I don’t have time. I tend to be too busy designing games to play them as much as I want. I get in good game time when I can, and I playtest a lot.

Where do you see Table Top RPG market going?

I don’t know. I really don’t even care. I hear a lot of my peers chatting up a storm about 5e, blah, blah, et cetera, so forth. I’m not that industry. I don’t care about that industry. I make hobby games for a relatively small market. I believe that market will continue to exist. My games stretch out a bit, and invite new gamers into the fold. That’s all I really care. I don’t need there to really be a games industry to do what I love. And focusing too much attention on the design studios that have silly things like ‘staffs’ is just an exercise in manic depression. It’s always the end of the world. Every five minutes there’s evidence that the sky’s falling. Someone’s laying X people off. Someone’s getting rid of their physical books. Someone’s getting rid of their digital books. Someone’s the Great Satan, and isn’t working in the industry for a love of the games. Fuck all that. It’s not my problem.

In the land of rock, paper and scissors, which one are you? :-)

Rock. Nothing beats rock.

A Note from The RPG Guy: Did you like this? Here are more interviews…

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