Interview - John Harper - TTRPG Creator - Blades in the Dark

Today I talk with creator of TTRPGs Agon and Blades in the Dark who is also the One Seven Founder - John Harper.

We discuss TTRPG Design, Blades in the Dark, System Reference Documents and much more.

You can find John Harper, One Seven and all of their content via the links below.

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/john_harper
https://twitter.com/SeanNittner
https://twitter.com/EvilHatOfficial
https://twitter.com/lumpleygames

Website:
https://t.co/kL6Eph4RbQ?amp=1
https://t.co/Usb4NLOPmY?amp=1
https://t.co/DPb8hHB3Hb?amp=1
https://t.co/Es1PVKHqeN?amp=1
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=john+harper&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=&affiliate_id=1643000
https://lumpley.games/our-games/

Please leave reviews on ITunes to help us to learn and grow as a Podcast

Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: John Harper

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Edited by: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: Tim Cunningham - www.Wix.com

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Transcript

Snyders Return: 0:26

Hello, and welcome to snows return a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today has forged something legendary or perhaps even mythical from the mists and ghosts of ttrpg is of past, present, and future. From island hopping to almost stealing a wage. The clock never runs out no matter what store furys on supernatural occurrences taking place. Be it with feelings under amplified light, or in the muted tones like a ghost, or echo. My guest is always favouring the arts, not here to leech or lurk, but draw from their resolve and spirit emerging from the shadow with blade firmly in the dark is ttrpg. creator. And one seven design founder the incredible john Harper. JOHN, welcome to the show.

John Harper: 1:17

Wow, thank you very much. That was an incredible intro. I appreciate it.

Snyders Return: 1:22

Obviously, it's just your work reworded. So it really thank you for producing such a wide array of works for me to draw on. Speaking of which, some of the things I've alluded to that, how did how did you get TT RPGs? Originally, please.

John Harper: 1:41

It started out when I was about 10 ish, I think that's how I remembered anyway. So that was like 8384 or so. And I had a friend who had a copy of gamma world, which must have been I think, Second Edition, I had just come out the box box up and it was sitting in his room, we went over to play basketball or something. And I saw it there. And I was really into comics and drawing and science fiction and fantasy and I saw this thing and I thought I didn't really know what it was but the cover was exciting. And so we got to talk to you about it. And he said Oh, it's it's a role playing game. You know, my friend showed me what these are and he's like, do you want to play and so we've just instantly sat down on the floor and played sort of sort of played games. We didn't have like a really good understanding of what we were doing. But I created a character and we you know, had some laser gun fights and stuff and it just took over my imagination. So I took the booklet from him that day, went to my dad's office and photocopied a bunch of the pages so I had I had something to hold on to and we played a handful of times and then he and his family moved pretty shortly thereafter. And then I moved to a new town part of with being academics, families, you know, they're always moving around different places and so that was my only contact really with gaming was with was with my friend and when I moved into this new neighbourhood there were all new kids to play with and hang out with and I just kind of naively said like, Oh, we can play role playing games and they all said what's that and I had my photocopied pages from gamma world and we just started sort of hacking together a game to play in the basement and that lasted for the till today like it never I never really stopped hacking things together and just sort of enthusiastically forming game groups and it it I think I I benefited from such a kind of uninformed start in some ways because I didn't really know what I didn't know and wasn't intimidated by it. And then later on, I got to go backwards and kind of be educated in the original stuff and like play the old old school d&d in the old form and kind of see what I had missed in the 70s that came before that and that was really cool too, but I was definitely the 80s 80s kid gamer and and started out by hacking to that was an important part of what's led me to all this is sort of starting out without a finished game and having to kind of cobble stuff together. I think that's another thing that's lasted for all these years. Yeah.

Snyders Return: 4:32

Amazing. So from from Xerox to you know, producing and having your own stuff printed is is quite a almost full circle.

John Harper: 4:42

Almost. Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure there's a kid somewhere photocopying blades in the dark somewhere.

Snyders Return: 4:49

printed out the the sort of the sheets that you can make sheets that are on a wall, we'll come to where we can find over that wall. pause for a second. Where can people find yourself and everything you're associated with games and various things on social media or the wider interwebs?

John Harper: 5:11

Yeah, I'm on Twitter, john underscore Harper. I have an itch itch page, which is sort of the digital repository for my stuff, which is john harper.h.io. And one seven design comm is my is my website, which mostly links back to it and stuff, but some other games and things are there to check out. But Twitter is where I'm most active. There's a place in the dark, Reddit, which has a bunch of users, which is very active. So I poke in there sometimes, and there's a community page, community dot blades in the dark calm is our forums, which is for all, all types of RPGs, as well as my games is, in addition to that, so I think that covers everything.

Snyders Return: 5:53

Now, if it doesn't, and we discuss it, it will be in the description below this podcast again, links in the description places, scroll down and follow john, and all the sort of work and projects that that he is involved with. So you mentioned that blaze in the dark was a being a heist based game is what what was it like to sort of come up with that concept? And how did it evolve between the the original thought, and what can be purchased through site, evil hat or drive thru or whatever? How did the game change from conception to production,

John Harper: 6:43

when we first started, it was very much a Thieves Guild fantasy city sandbox game that was very much focused on being a group of thieves. And it was it was a very heist focused kind of game, where each session supposedly in my mind, anyway, it was going to be, you know, like a level from the thief video game or something where you, you have your location and your target and you go in and you sneak around and you steal things, then you take them back to your layer and you upgrade your your your guild and you get new cohorts. And the game is similar to that now, but in the process of play, inevitably, anytime, when at least for me, when I play around sandbox type games. They they wander, you know, the group will find other interesting things, they'll meet characters that have different agendas, and they want to pursue that instead. And they they dissolve a previous relationship and forge some new thing. And so as we played through that first campaign playtesting, where I almost had a different rule setting character sheet every week, we kept the same characters. And I watched how the players really enjoyed that fluidity of sort of evolving what they were doing. And I realised that that creating a good sort of adventury intrigue laden sandbox was kind of my main becoming my main job and then letting the players kind of discover what sort of crew they wanted to be through that process. But that ultimately kind of fizzled to because it became this endless sort of questionnaire session at the beginning of each night where they would go Okay, what are we are we smugglers are we assassins? Like, what are we trying to do. And there was some fun there of like, constantly shifting around, but also there was, we had lost the focus of your year, just sort of heist based thieves. And it had gotten into this diffuse sort of fun of exploration, but then we didn't have a thing to look into anymore. So that's where the different crew playbooks and having a character sheet for the for the for the crew really came in and helped put everyone back on the same page, literally, they could look at this page and go, Okay, this is what we're trying to do. This is what we're good at, this is what we get rewarded for. It's not the only thing we're going to do during play, but it's a way of all of us kind of focusing in and focusing that our efforts as real people with lives and limited time to play games. So yeah, I really went on that that whole process of Yes, is this is going to be my stab at a at a Ocean's 11. He kind of heist game in a fantasy world to know it's not that it's anything you want back to No, it's actually focused. But there's now a bunch of different ways to focus the game. And I think in practice, today, when people play the finished version of the game, they will naturally have that same kind of expansion and contraction thing. They'll they might start as shadows, play around for a while. Grab a few crew moves from a different playbook and think, Oh yeah, maybe we should get that boat. Maybe we should start smuggling that ghost essence that we have and then they'll kind of shift over there. Maybe And start to blur the lines between between those hard definitions of things. And that that is by design. It's It's everything is there as a sort of toolbox play I would say blade is very toolbox oriented game, it gives you a bunch of stuff and then you get to decide how to how to use it.

Snyders Return: 10:17

Yeah, definitely I love the design of the playbooks what I love the design of the whole book and the game to be fair, but the way the playbooks are presented the way the information is easily accessible and understandable, help someone like, like me, who, who tends to GM games go. It's there on the sheet. We don't have to get through an entire rulebook to find x. It's their start, and I've watched some some actual plays, and I've listened to some podcast episodes and, and just how accessible the information is, seems to really help. But you mentioned there, the setting, so Daskal, what was the inspiration drawn from and what's been your favourite part of sort of bringing the city of dodgeball to life? It

John Harper: 11:10

came from a bit of an accident in a way. Originally, I was running a d&d game at my office when I used to work at a creative agency and some of the people there wanted to play d&d and they knew I was into that stuff so they said you know, let's do d&d. They only wanted to play d&d they weren't interested in being told about other stuff in the beginning. And so I cheated a little we played You know, I think motivate at one d&d first and then that kind of quietly shifted without them really knowing into what became world of dungeons, which is my little one pager, pack of an apocalypse world sort of foundation for for dungeon crawls. And they really liked that and we were already kind of playing this very like ruling is based on old school method anyway, so shifting of mechanics a little bit didn't really faze them. But we played a pretty lengthy campaign there at the office, including finally like, after many dungeon crawls, getting to the city and getting into that city sandbox thing, which again, has that similar shape as blades. But that entire world got destroyed by a couple of the players. characters they made some dark deals with with fel powers and when delved in deep into the old, locked Dwarven world below the mountains and found the gates of death where all the ghosts of everyone who died were have been collected and our friend Keith, who played one of the wizards managed to break break the CLN and release all the vengeful ghosts onto the earth. And this was a rotating game at the office where some people played one week's and you know you weren't there we would play without you and stuff. And so at the next day at work, people said what happened in the game last night? And everyone said, Well, we we destroyed the whole world and sorry, so everyone was like, what are we gonna do next week? I can't believe it. We can't play and I said, Well, yeah, we can play we'll, we'll play like during this Cataclysm of ghosts, if you want to do that we can have that could be fun. Or let's just jump ahead 1000 years and see what the world is, like, you know, after all of that stuff has been dealt with and they said, oh, let's do that. Let's have like, trains and you know, steam engines and stuff. That'll be cool. And I was like, Okay, yeah, we'll do that. So I made some notes. And we started playing a game that I made called ghost lines, which is where I first sort of created the setting for blades where you played the rail jacks, you ride the trains, and like, keep the ghosts away from the trains when you're outside the cities. And that that setting is is very directly inspired from things like video game thief, like I said that, that fantasy world that has this industrial component it has it has machinery and Steamworks and clock works and it's not really steampunk, it's come to sort of this industrialised fantasy world. And of course, the company that made some of the designers he made, he also made a game called dishonoured later, which is a sort of spiritual successor to thief. And dishonoured has that same vibe of a fantasy world with whaling ships and that sort of Victorian vibe to it. So, and I was I was really into it, we were watching Deadwood, all kinds of stuff that was set in the sort of 1890s. And all those touchstones were adding up to very quickly to this sort of, sort of world. So again, we were supposed to be playing rail Jacks protecting the trains and they had downtime in the cities, which was a little checklist activity that we did and we'd go back on another train run, and the players started to spend more and more and more time in the city fight getting into trouble. Start. Criminal organisations and all this stuff. And I was like, Okay, all right, well, here we are, again, we tried to focus on this one thing and then you're now we want, we want to get stuck into this other sandbox essentially. So that's, that's when I, we took a long break and the population of players changed and people came in and other people left. And it was it was several months, at least before the first blades in the dark sheets got put together, and we started playing that, but it definitely came pretty directly from that, that d&d game, and then sort of industrialising it into the future and imagining what that would be like, that was that was the state of

Snyders Return: 15:37

work. playtesters Yeah. And so, I mean, the hospital was a, as a setting in its own right, yeah, it has, you know, several districts, each with their own characteristics and, and stigmas and factions and, and the way there are landmarks and, and sort of various places and people interact. It's, it's such an amazing sort of setting and all sort of hemmed in with this electrified fence, to protect the city, it's such, it's, I'd love to have the creativity to come up with something like that, I'm glad somebody has because it's, it's, it's brilliant.

John Harper: 16:25

It really is the lazy jeering me, you know, I, if you're naturally improvisational as a GM, which I am, I didn't often want like a setting book with a lot of information and characters and stuff like that, I can knock together stuff on the fly, that's fine. But in blades, you because of the nature of the city, it's, it's designed to keep you there. So you can't sort of just pull jobs and run away, or you're stuck where you where you are. And that meant you were going to kind of build over time, this cast of characters and stuff. And you could do that improvisationally just fine. But there are those cases where the players just take a hard left, turn what's over here, you know, and you're, you're, you might, you might be stuck in that moment, and you knowing that, okay, whatever it is, it's going to stay around, it's not going to be just the monster of the week or something, it's going to be like a permanent addition to our setting. And I really want to add that is that gonna work later on. And, you know, so as we play through our first play test, I kind of just captured all that stuff as much as I could. And we sort of built the city out as we played. And then of course, later through editorial process, a bunch of stuff got cut and changed and refitted. But it really was just me really not wanting to ever do GM prep, I want to show up for the game night with basically have not thought of it much at all. It just hit the ground running and then I can improve anything. I don't have to follow the canon of the book or whatever. But in that moment of who, what is that I can I can actually flip to that two page spread of the district look at it and go oh, okay, how about this, it's this. Just to, again, keep keep me from having to prep and having to keep all that in my head. You know, I can kind of just flip it and use it. So yeah, it came together, I think in this cohesive way in the end, thanks to Sean didn't hear and Karen twelves, who helped me like, put the book together and edit the whole thing down. Think now it kind of looks like this in very intentionally made thing. But it really wasn't it was a process of collaging stuff together through play and figuring it out on the fly. And then the editorial phase smoothed off all those posts most of the rough edges off. Yeah.

Snyders Return: 18:57

Yeah, you mentioned that having sort of the desire for minimal prep, or in some people's cases, no prep. And the mechanics of the game really sort of help up through the playbooks and things. Clocks I mentioned in the introduction, which has been your, your favourite mechanic to have engineered for the game. As there's a there's a few there's the dice resolution system and sort of the way factions interact and things and that's what has been your favourite or your it can be the most challenging. I'll open the question out of it. To have the mechanical side of things to work on with respect to two blades.

John Harper: 19:45

It's a tough question. Everything is kind of a piece in a way now the parts fit together now. In during development, the things that the couple things that really stood out. Where was the position in effect says conversation that part of the mechanics where you um, if you're not familiar people listening at home, in blades in the dark when you make a roll like a skill check in another game or something like that. Before you make your role, you the GM determines your character's position, which is sort of like is it very risky? Is it a desperate gamble? Is it a very controlled whenever you're doing from from a selection of three positions? And that sort of determines your risk? How How bad can it go if you if you're doing poorly? And then effect, which is how much do you get done with this action? Do you do the whole thing? Do you win the fight? Do you knock them down? You know, do you do a flesh wound do you do? How much are we sort of resolving with one roll of the die here. And in practice, that that went through many, many iterations of procedure realisation and all kinds of like diagrams, we had these ladder things on the sheet, pick your ladder positions and stuff like this. But finally getting it down to just sort of choice of three positions and kind of one or two effects. What you usually use, like, what you'd expect or not much is typically what you're talking about that conversation, the reason I was like really trying to make it work. And finally, like, fit it into blades in the dark was because I realised like I do that in all role playing games that I run or play something sometimes completely unspoken, explicitly, but it's always there, it's always an implicit part of every game, every RPG I've ever played, when you make some sort of role or test or or spend your points or whatever it is, we intuitively or explicitly know kind of what's at threat here, what's the risk? And how much are you getting done. But without, without putting words on it. It's It was hard to implement it in the game system and have mechanics that referred to that piece. So as soon as we put names on it, increasing your position or lowering your position, increasing your effect or lowering your effect. Now we had this, again, this sort of toolbox, fodder for characters, special abilities, you know, you're because you're like this, when you're in this situation, desperate roles are better for you, right? And that, that kind of thing. So yeah, that took a lot, a lot, a lot of hammering out. And the first part of it was just realising what it was, because it had been this unspoken thing. And kind of figuring out what the language of that should be, and how it should be referred to minson. Baker and Meg Baker have a game called other kind, which was hugely influential in this idea. And I didn't realise it fully at the time. But in hindsight, it's pretty obvious, and so full credit to them for planting that seed, that that same game system is used in a game called siren, psi run by mag. And it doesn't really, it doesn't have position and effect, but it has a kind of risk and reward choice that you have to make, do I want to sort of spend my good role on doing well and face all this danger? Or do I want to spend my good role on avoiding the danger but not do very well. So that I had played a lot of that, and I'm sure it was, you know, on my mind during that development process, but I would say that's what I'm most proud of. It's something that I've noticed reviewers and play and players of the game talk about a lot that they can't really unsee position in effect, once you get it into your system, and you've done it a bunch. You kind of just you see it everywhere. Whenever you play another game, you just kind of feel that, that thing so I'm very proud of that. I think that worked really well. But the thing I didn't come up with my friend Dylan, I mean, I guess I sort of did but but Dylan was one of the playtesters who noticed what was happening is the devil's bargain, which I think is also really great. It's it's a free die for your to add to your roll his dice pool system, so you get a bonus die. If you take the devil's bargain, which is hey, this complication or bad thing will happen because of this thing you're doing. And I didn't realise it. But Dylan realised that as a GM, I was constantly doing that, when someone would roll. They're like, Oh, let's get you know, we don't have the thing we need. But I have a friend who knows someone I'll talk to them. And before they roll, I would say okay, well you know, I'll give you a bonus die if you're willing to like burn your bridge with this guy here. And just like really push him around and make him do what you want. You won't be your friend anymore, but you'll get a die to convince them and they'll be like, Oh sure, I'll take it. Yeah. So Dylan pulled me aside after a game one time and said hey, you're doing this you should put this in the rules and give it a name. So yeah, I don't really take credit for that one fully, but it's another one that I love. It's it's a really simple and easy way and you can use this in any game again, like you can get people advantage and d&d or whatever in exchange for some kind of bargain or or consequence and it's just it's an easy way to kind of have that like out of the frying pan into the fire Indiana Jones style forward momentum stuff you know it's it's a simple way to keep that keep that going so I'm really happy with that one a lot

Snyders Return: 25:16

yeah absolutely so many sort of great things about the game that is you know available through your store through evil heart through drive thru RPG various other places recommend people go and pick up a copy get a physical copy of the book is amazing. So that's that's the established world established mechanics Where is blazing the dark going next, effectively what's what's in Have you got things in the pipeline that people that fans of the game can look forward to,

John Harper: 25:51

we do we do, we have a very exciting thing that we're adding, I can't even quite say what it is, unfortunately, there is something I can't talk about, but we're gonna be announcing it pretty soon. And you know, blazes is a game that is a single book, it has everything you need to play in it. It's not the type of thing that really demands supplemental books the way that other RPGs do. But a team of people I'm not the main author of this one, I'm kind of like the creative director on it, which is really cool. We've got a team of really talented people working on it and it is a is a not a forged in the dark hack or anything, it's something that will be in the setting of blades in the dark. And that'll be coming along when when it's done. I don't have a good timeline for it. But people always ask like, Are there going to be supplements are there going to be supplements and in essence Yes, and we'll we'll tell you all about it I hate to tease it like that but it is a question we get all the time and of course it's I'm getting the emails you know, every other day the team is is working away on it and it's it's really cool. So as soon as we can give all the details I will sorry to be vague. But I can say that my partner Elsa and I are working on a playset which is a sort of reskin or different setting using the the fork from the dark rules which will be coming out pretty soon. called sparrows folly, which is a wild west like an old Western town place and it has some some little bells and whistles for people who are into fortunately dark stuff. It's it's made to be a one shot for a short series. It has a priests generated set of calf a cast of characters and a situation they're in. If you've familiar with my game lady Blackbird, it's in the same kind of vein where you step into this situation that these characters are in is sort of try to resolve their their struggles. So there's some tweaks to how the game works because it's meant to be a short, short, very high burning hot hot burning game. And yeah, it's I was working on that all day today doing graphic design for it. We're trying to do something very cool looking as well maybe maybe ezine printed format or something we'll see buttons up. Yeah, Alison's writing is is fantastic. She is an expert on on Western fiction. And so their language is just wonderful and so I'm really enjoying just taking some passages and building these really nice looking pages with almost like poetry you know, it's it's this this celebration of this rich vernacular of that of that Western language so yeah, I'm super excited about it we're we're stuck in and and working every day on it so it'll be it'll be done pretty soon I think and can't wait to share it with everybody.

Snyders Return: 29:00

So a couple of things in the works for us to look forward to and you mentioned there the forged in the dark hack or the force in the dark system. What's it been like seeing the the foundation that you created with the game be utilised by others to to open the system out into new settings, new places,

John Harper: 29:22

it's been really cool. I you know, my background as a designer was as a hobbyist for a long time when I had a day job you know, I was just making games for fun and sometimes selling them sometimes not and I was part of a community of fellow designers that were very supportive and often you know, would be free with their mechanical stuff and say hello, hey, if you want to use my this, this system for your that thing you're, you've created like you can port it over there. And so, I always felt like that was sort of my duty to to, to take the sort of skeleton, the foundation pieces of the dice rolls and positioned in effect and all that stuff in blades that sort of drives that action adventure entry game and sort of strip away the the setting that the IP, you know, for lack of a better word. And just let people use it, you know, so we, when we launched blades, we launched it with the SRT let system reference document on the on the website that has all the all the text of all the rules, mechanics and stuff that you can just freely copy and paste if you want to use that I don't really recommend it. I think rewriting is a better choice. But it's all there for people to use in their own games. And there's over 100 now I just checked the other day. I don't know what the number is, but it's well over 100 at this point, have forged in the dark games if you go to hitch I have a sort of curated page where I try to keep all of them in a collection so people can find them easily. But there's Copperhead County, which is sort of Southern crime family, like justified or Breaking Bad kind of game, there's crash cart, which is cyberpunk yard, er, medical texts that fly in and rescue people and songs for the dusk and mouth light and they're just a bunch of really cool ones and all with different things, different settings, different concepts, and a lot of them have really tweaked the rules too. So it's cool to see people take the foundation of blades and either really build it out into something much grander like band of blades, which is a dark fantasy military campaign game with just all kinds of cool extra bits for you to play with with your Legion. Or there's a game called slug blaster, which is about kids with hoverboards that go into other dimensions and fight monsters and it's a slim little rulebook that stripped all the everything down to this really simple form of mechanics. So again, it just adds back into that conversation where other people can pick that up they can pick up slick blaster and you know talk to that designer and say oh, I want to use this part of it, can I use this mechanic and so as I was everyone's making these things, they're all sort of in conversation with each other and creating this sort of network of like minded designers and there's a discord for blades that is extremely active on the design side especially, and all the various forms in the dark designers like mentor each other and, and do stuff together there which is I'm I don't touch it, you know, they just off and running. And it's really cool to see all that, that that growth, and that it happened before with Vincent and Meg Baker's apocalypse world. And I had been involved in that early sort of play testing and stuff for that game. So I had seen kind of how that can happen and how can it explode out into all these different games and I was hoping that that leads would have that affects you so it's been just wonderful to see a

Snyders Return: 33:03

community that self sustaining, but in a positive positive light in a positive way which which can never be a bad thing. And you know, you mentioned a couple of names who have helped and supported you shown it into being one and you know, the pervy worked on Aegon. I always wonder if I'm pronouncing it correctly, or if I should put some weird accent on it for no particular reason everyone

John Harper: 33:31

says it differently. It's fine. It's fine.

Snyders Return: 33:34

So that Vikings, very much different blades in the dark. So would you be able to give just a brief precis of of a Yana and how that sort of differs to blades please?

John Harper: 33:50

Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a second edition of the game. First came out in 2012. No. When did it first come out? Was it 2006? It was 2006. Yeah. 2006. What is time, and that game is very different. It was Greek heroes going on adventures is what the sort of premise of games that old game from 2006 was a little more tactical, almost like a miniatures game and in some ways, and it had its fans and it had its time and kind of faded away, and that was fine. But Shawn and I, Shawn has ran it and way more than I even did and was a fan back then. And we ended up talking about doing a new version, something that was lighter and faster and kind of like, benefited from all these years of experience that we both have in making games and things so we we started working on it And long story short, I've cut to the chase. So we went through all kinds of different iterations and things and But we finally landed in a place where it is that story. The the Greek heroes lost among strange islands like Odysseus, and you play our island of the week, you show up in Star Trek style, there's some kind of weird problem here. Because of gods or monsters, or people are all those and the heroes have to sort it all out, or kill, or do whatever they need to do. And it wraps up one way or the other, and you sail back into the mists and never to return, you get one shot at it, and then go on to the next thing. In some ways, it was a reaction to both of us playing many, many long involved deep, like investment campaigns of blades just getting really stuck into these webs of stories and characters and relationships. And we thought, well, let's let's Can we just do a thing where you just play for two hours, and you're done, and you never do never see it again. And he's just very breezy and light. And so we spent a couple years getting pairing and pairing and pairing, pairing it down to something that we felt was easy to pick up and play. To have a short experience as that's a series of connected one shots. And also as a kind of guide for first time gmms. So that you could start out running something that didn't demand much of you and you kind of could just present what was there. So we provide 12 pre made Island adventures. And the novice first time GM can kind of just flip it open and read from the page if they want to get the ball rolling and kind of hopefully get over that hump of the first time GM jitters of what do I do? How do I make stuff up? So yeah, it was both both of those were big goals for the game Quick, quick playing really short sessions, and a very new GM friendly, so yeah, that's Agon, it's it's Greek heroes, adventuring and very, very high action. It's not it's not historical in any way. It's like more like Xena very over the top, Thor Ragnarok you know, that kind of grand, huge action. So that's if you like that kind of thing. It's, it does it? Well, it's very, very pulp Pulp Fiction.

Snyders Return: 37:26

I mean, just from my own experience, having sort of run the game, it is everything you've said it, it should be there it's laid out in such a way where if you want minimal prep, and you want to just take it from the book and bring it to life that way, you can if you want to add labour a little bit and play with the setting you can, the system supports it, the character sheets, I think are perfection, it's it's laid out, you can almost read it left to right, present your hero to the to the strife player, and just just live in that 30 seconds of roleplay as sell a story and it's it's brilliant, I got to keep finding opportunities to run it. But that itself has forgive the turn of phrase become a paragon with the, with the system sort of devolving out of Aegon itself, how is that expanded,

John Harper: 38:28

it's another case where the bones of that game it became obvious during playtesting that it was going to be adaptable to other types of heroic adventure stories, especially high action, sort of location based adventures and something that I do sometimes in development of a game I did this with with blades and and also with Agon, is when things are getting a little weird or Rocky and I don't quite know how to solve a problem or how section or bits should be presented I'll take what I've got and just move it into a new paradigm and run that so it's the it's the mechanics are there and the procedures are there but it's it's a complete different time and place and characters and you can sort of see the contrast better sometimes like Okay, I see how that mechanics work I couldn't see it as much before so with blades late in blades playtesting I did a sort of play these like near future mercenaries South China Sea mercenaries and that's this same kind of scavenger lifestyle but just a very different sitting different technology and it helped kind of see like okay, we don't really need complicated rules about equipment and stuff that that can go and so with Agon it was right or die I made a I made a little set of character sheets to play the Fast and the Furious heroes that were street racers roaming around the world, getting into international you know heists and trouble and stuff and having their their glory you know in the Greek form that your name is heaped with glory as you achieve your goals and the Fast and Furious you know you have your rap and your family and you you're doing all these extravagant jobs and heist and things to to sort of up your your street cred and all that. So we played a few of those sessions in that mode just to kind of see okay, yeah, this is working. We can trim that we can cut this and now you don't need rules for how your car works actually. And you don't need rules for equipment again, like you know, an ag on you. It's a it's narrating your cool stuff is what matters. And so, yeah, it was a way it was a way for me to kind of solve problems with Agon. But then, you know, I had this little packet of character sheets and a few missions and I'd done some graphic design work on it. And I was like, Huh, this is, this is a little This is like a place that there's like a fortune in the dark thing. We should plan ahead and think about, you know, letting people do this again, like, like we did with fortune in the dark. So a little while after I got out. We we kind of it's similar, it's not quite the same thing. Agon is a tiny, tiny little rulebook. And when we realised it would be silly to be like, here's the system reference document, it's just the book you already kind of know. It felt silly to make that. So we've we've sort of granted people permission to use we call it the Paragon system and got a little logo for it. And you can make something that's compatible with the Paragon system. And people are doing it. So there's again, there's a little community of designers and they're making all kinds of things. Pirates, of course, was one of the first everyone wanted to do pirates. But there's there's a bunch now. There's kind of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou like Dustbowl wanderers. There's, I have one sort of Battlestar Galactica hotshot space pilots, called storm theories. And yeah, it's been really cool to see all the, all the different approaches to that and, and to see how the, the, over the top action element, which I feel is like, it seemed to me to be so integral to what the game was. There have been a few hacks that don't do that at all and are very grounded. And it's pretty interesting to see how that how that can function and the tweaks that are required to do it. But But yeah, it's it's another case of sort of hoping that the work will be picked up and remixed and reused, and it's, it's happening again, so that's, that's wonderful.

Snyders Return: 42:41

Yeah, absolutely. One question it's been, I've written it down because it was playing on my mind where did the one seven combine for your design company.

John Harper: 42:52

Um, it's an old, old thing for me I since I was little, my name has 17 letters and i and i was number 17. And I played soccer and that kind of stuff. And it's just, it's something that I've always used. But when it came time for branding a company 17 is a pretty well known teen magazine in the US and it wasn't quite the right sound for what I wanted so so what's happened is what Okay,

Snyders Return: 43:24

there you go. Everything has a story to it. I have been and I realise those listening to the podcast can't see what I can see. But I've been scanning the shelves in your your desk, and you've got a fantastic array of games behind you, how often do you get to run other systems and and how, how is that sort of excited your own imagination to push your own game design forward,

John Harper: 43:49

up until before the lockdown. And for my whole life, I always had at least one game group and weekly if possible, sometimes multiple and that's that was a key very, very important part of my process as as a game designer. I basically I'm I think I'm best at designing when I'm designing for play. Almost in it I said hey, GM prep but which I do but prepping for that next week's game for me often is I kind of design process and when I'm playing games, I you know, it makes me excited. It's like being a writer, or a poet or whatever, you know, if you're reading and you're getting that language into your bones, it's gonna make you excited to do it. And I think games are not just role playing games, board games, video games, every every type of gaming for me really fuels my my interest in design, and it gets me excited about making stuff. So up until this last period, I was trying to game just almost constantly and I did kind of take by foot off the gas a little bit, you know, you can get burned out, you go through phases where you kind of need to not not be so, so crammed in your schedule. But yeah, it was a huge, huge factor. And a big influence for me was when the first sort of indie game indie RPG stuff was was kicking off, I had an amazing game group for years, where we would play three sessions of a game and then switch and we would just do that we had a weekly group, and we would, we played dozens and dozens of different games. And so I started keeping a database or a spreadsheet of, of games up over 320 something now different. And I think that again, that that, that just get put so much stuff in your brain, you know, from experiences at the table to interesting mechanical idea, or a way a book is presented information. And all that stuff is is just, you know, grist for that mill. And to some extent, I think that, for me, as a game designer, my job is sort of to play, play games, think about games and fill my notebook with ideas. And then making making game products is almost a separate activity from game design, if you know what I mean. It's a secondary phase, and it's really important, and I love making products and designing books and all that, but the game design side, I feel like is, is primarily play and and thinking about what happened and why and what you know,

Snyders Return: 46:40

all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And sort of touching on a few of the things that we've mentioned and sort of stepping forward with respect to say a new GM strike player dm if if people are looking to play d&d, you mentioned that about liking to have light prep. But do you have any advice for for people looking to get into run games? In general, we can be specific to say blades or a gun if you wish, or want to other IPS. But I general advice for someone looking to pick up one of these rule books, and just have a good time with it?

John Harper: 47:17

Yeah, I think, as I said, we designed a gun for that purpose. So I would definitely recommend it. I tried to condense most of the all of the practically useful GMAT things you do into three pages roughly through four pages in the book. So it's not an overwhelming amount of information to absorb and the stakes are low. I think in that game, if you mess up or forget something, there's not a lot of rules to manage, the players are going to be yelling, their epithets and cutting monsters, and it'll be fine. So I would recommend Agon, but it depends on the person is that is the real answer. The thing that gets you excited is probably the best thing because you're going to be more motivated if you're really into Star Wars, fantasy flights, current iteration of Star Wars is kind of complicated. In some ways, it might be intimidating, but also it might be perfect for you, it might be exactly what you want, because you're so passionate about Star Wars. So follow that passion. But the other way to go, oh, and the other part of that is he was really curating who you play with is really important. Like it like it's like forming a band or something. You can't just do it with whoever shows up. But like, you're not necessarily going to be supported, it might not be the best environment. So playing with a group of people you trust, have good communication with and setting expectations and saying, hey, I want to try jamming. Are you all cool with me just trying this out? And will you help me through this process and if people say yes, then you can, you know, move forward and be supported there, regardless of the game that you're playing in a Jena GM game. But another way to go is to get something like fiasco or any of the GM lists, there's many endless games out there that are played by the group as together as a whole without a GM. And very often, as a fiasco, you the things you're doing, as a player have these gmv sort of bits to them, where you're framing a scene and you're bouncing this NPC character over here to do a thing and you're sort of building some of your GM training without being the sole Game Master person sitting there that everyone's staring at and saying, what what happens? Yeah, so yeah, exploring those kind of jam lists, games or and party games that are in that space, too, can be a way to sort of dip your toe in and see what you think about that, that experience of pseudo jamming before you before you try it out. yourself by yourself. Now and there's Vincent and Meg Baker again, I'm always mentioning them. They have a series of games. I think they just came out in PDF. I think they're coming out And print pretty soon. The barbarians bloody curse i think is what the first one's called. Geez, I'm going to get the names wrong. Sorry. Let me actually tell you what they're really called since we, since I'm plugging them the barbarians bloody quest I think I think I misspoke there. We scroll down here. Where is it? There it is. Yes. So there's the wizards Grimoire the barbarians bloody quest, and the thief and the necromancer by Vincent Baker and Meg Baker. They are, they are really clever little gaming trick. They are a game by default their game for three people. The person who wants to play the game is isn't the GM, the person with the rule pamphlet isn't the GM, they're the player. And you open it and it says hey, you're the player. In order to play through the barbarians bloody quest, you need to find two volunteers and give them the volunteers play handbook. And they'll open it and it'll tell them what to do. And now then introduce your barbarian to them and ask them to read the first part of their pamphlet. And you basically facilitate the session the way a GM would, but you're the solo hero character and on the adventure. And these two volunteers they don't have to even know how to run a role playing I have ever played a role playing game. They have this little like fun madly be like q&a thing that they do to like tell you what the new danger is and stuff. But through that process, it sort of teaches the player even though you're playing your PC kind of teaches you that facilitation GM part. And then for the volunteers, it sneakily teaches them like okay, here's the secret behind the curtain, like what you're doing as a GM thing. without pressure. So yeah, I think they're brilliant. And if you if you're someone who has some friends that you think would like role playing, and you know that they're not going to commit to a long series of games or whatever, or sitting and making characters for an hour, and that kind of thing, I highly recommend the wizards Grimoire and the others as a way to just sort of have an evening have dinner together, play for an hour and sidle up to RPGs, you know, in a way Yeah, they're really, really cool.

Snyders Return: 52:21

I'm gonna look into those myself, and they'll, I will, if there's a link available, I will put that in the description below the jump, before we sort of move and sort of close out the interviews we've spoken about, you know, so many, so many great things blade, Aegon systems creation, fantastic work by others, like the ones you've just mentioned, there isn't a thing that that we haven't mentioned as yet you would like to bring to the fore before the end of the interview.

John Harper: 52:53

Yeah, there's an exciting thing that was just announced that we've, we've closed the deal on now that with a development company in the UK, we're going to be starting to develop plates in the dark for for television. And that's extremely exciting to me. Of course, I'm a huge TV nerd and really into all the aspects of television making. So it's a real dream come true to have the opportunity to shepherd one of my creations through that process. And it's with a veteran company in the UK called warp films, which has done a bunch of stuff from this is England, in the 80s you know, all the way up to today, they have stuff on Amazon streaming right now. So it's it's just magical to be connected with this cool creative team and what I can't say much about it, because it's just started and the development, you know, TV development is we're sit we're thinking of stuff right now. There's not much to even talk about yet. There will be announcements coming when we have information to share. One thing I can say now is that people have asked what what kind of involvement I might have in this and you know, is it their licencing the, you know, the blades in the dark IP to make the show and like what's your role in that kind of thing, and I can't say now that I I am a consultant on the, on the development team. So I will be involved in that process. And it's really cool that that they didn't want to just sort of licence the property and go off and make something they really invited me to join in that process and give my input into development and sort of obviously be the sort of custodian of the of the property as we move forward. So I'm super thrilled about that. And you know, it's going to be a balancing act now between game design work and working on this and but I'm super, super thrilled to move forward and Hopefully everyone, you know, cross your fingers someday down the road, we're gonna have to sell that, get the pilot made and sold it to a streaming service and stuff. So hopefully that'll all happen. But well, who knows? We'll see it's it's gonna be a really exciting process and I can't wait to share bits and pieces as we go. But everybody,

Snyders Return: 55:19

yeah, definitely I'm excited to excite myself to see how it develops and how the world and everything you've created, gets translated, whether that's wholesale, or I'm just excited to see what comes of it. So I can say myself and not ask questions you can't answer. You can't answer the more you're that isn't known yet. So it'll be

John Harper: 55:43

nice to join in with the very few other pieces from the tabletop world that have made that transition. Not very many have, and I think we'll probably see more and more as time goes on, you know. But yeah, the expanse is one of my favourite shows. And Kate's began as a as a tabletop game group, you know, doing their thing, and, of course, became novels and stuff before before the show. But yeah, I think it's, it's cool to see the the media world recognise the value in these things. As a, you know, investment. And I think we are, we're seeing that a lot, because of the general just rise in popularity of all tabletop games. In the last four or five years, especially, it's skyrocketed. But it's also like generational, too, I think, where the people in charge of these companies and studios are people that are from, you know, their generation of people who played tabletop games. And like, you know, they, they these people at work like play, they played blades in the dark before, before they contacted me, you know, so it wasn't this foreign thing that was out there. What is this? What is this weird book, you know, they, they, they were in a campaign and they understood what it was. So that's, it's really, really cool to see. And, of course, I'm super excited about plates and the dark beacon going down that road. But I think it'll be also it'll be great to see others start to pop up to.

Snyders Return: 57:13

Yeah, it's exciting to see what with what happens in the community in the design space and the entertainment spaces as it is from now moving, moving forward. So before we say goodbyes effectively, I would you like to remind everybody where they can find yourself, your incredible works, the stuff you and Shawn and others have put together and where we can support you, please. Yeah, you

John Harper: 57:45

can find me on Twitter, john underscore Harper, john harper.h.io is my storefront for my digital stuff. And evil hat is my publisher for blaze in the dark and Agon and get hardcover books from them. And they do the bits and mortar things that when you get a book from them, you also get the PDF for free. So that's that's a really nice bonus. And one seven design is my website, not often used as sort of a collection of links to other places. But that's that's not the place you can find

Snyders Return: 58:20

Perfect, perfect, I will make sure links are in the description below this podcast. JOHN has been such a pleasure to have you wanted to learn more about please more about Aegon. And, you know, the the force in the dark system, the Paragon system, highly recommend people go in and check out where people have used those respective systems. And all I can say to again, is thank you so much for your time today.

John Harper: 58:45

Oh, it's been my pleasure. This has been great. Thank you.

Snyders Return: 58:48

You know, I'd love to have you back on the show in the future, be it for another interview with development of one of the many projects or a one shot depending on the times and availability. Yeah, that's fine. I'm definitely sure we can sort out at some point in the future. But until then, john, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snyder's return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter. At Return Snyder, you have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon and we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again.

John Harper: 59:43

Thank you