Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You can find episodes and more at thinklikeagamedesigner.com. In today's episode, I speak with James Intricasso. James is MCDM Productions' lead game designer, the co-creator of Roll20's Burn Bright RPG.
author of multiple best-selling products for the Dungeon Masters Guild and Drive-Thru RPG, and co-author of seven official Dungeons & Dragons books. He has also worked on the upcoming RPG Draw Steel, which made over $4.6 million on Backerkit. James is so much fun to talk to. He's got a background in podcasting, background in theater. He's got a ton. He even had a production in TV commercials. So you can tell how enthusiastic he is. And we have so much fun in this episode.
We talk about what it takes to get lucky. We talk about Shark Week and Shark Fest. We talk about a lot of how you can bring your passions. pop culture love of theater love of nerdiness and how you can turn those things into a career and the processes along the way we also get into the deep dive into what an ascension rpg might look like and so you can see the design process
how he thinks about it, how I think about it. So it was really a ton of fun, lots of great useful tips, really entertaining episode. I really enjoyed this conversation and I know you will as well. So here is James Intricasso. Hello and welcome. I am here with James Intracasso. James, so excited to have you here, man. Hey, thank you so much. I'm really, really pumped to be here. This is such a fun thing that y'all reached out and want to do. So thank you for inviting me on.
Yeah, you know, I really try to get a lot of different designers from all across the industry and you have done some pretty amazing things. in the RPG space. But before we get into all of the super impressive things, I always like to bring everybody down to Earth. and talk about your origin story. Where does your radioactive spider bite come from that got you into gaming? How did you go from there to being a professional?
Yeah, you know, I have, like, the most prototypical RPG developer story in that, like... watching my older brother play D&D in my parents' basement and being a kid, right? And we had played Nintendo and I remember, right, playing the old Nintendo Entertainment System.
watching the game and being like I wish there were things that I wish I could make Mario do that Mario wouldn't do right because all Mario could do is jump and run and throw fireballs and save princesses and it was like but what if like
what if you could do more with this turtle shell that you had there should be things i should be able to do like i should be able to surf on top of it right and that kind of thing and dnd was like wait i've never seen a board game like this where the rules allow you to surf on top of the turtle shell if that's what you want to do or do whatever you want. And I just remember like sitting on the basement step.
Because he and his friends didn't want to be bothering him, right? That is the little brother. And like listening, watching it go on. And then eventually... somebody leaving and they needed a cleric and so they were like all right fine you can play right and and sitting down and and playing and and that's so that's how i like got into it and i was Oh, like nine years old. when that happened. Oh my God.
I love this so much. I let my little brother play as the cleric too. I'm the exact other side of this story. That is hilarious. You gotta have the cleric. Nobody wanted to be the cleric. Okay, fine. You can join the game. sit here and roll when we tell you to roll dice and don't speak otherwise right but just like you're basically an npc just keep quiet yeah exactly exactly right but everybody has a vested interest in like protect the cleric
too, right? So there's this fun thing that happens where they still need you, which is never a thing that happens when you're a little brother that you're needed in some way. And so, yeah, and then I told some friends that I had about it, and... One of them was like, I think my dad has those books from college, like upstairs in the attic. Right. And so we started to play ourselves. Me and my friends then played a game called the fantasy trip, which is a precursor to GERP.
from Steve Jackson games. And... They just had a Kickstarter to like relaunch it and you could get the old books and stuff. It was awesome. And so from there, I just kept playing, right? I had weekly games and introduced a bunch of new people throughout high school and college to it.
Playing, playing, playing. And eventually, after college, I was working as a television writer, producer. I wrote and produced TV commercials. And I had a lot of free time where I was... really excited about the launch of this new edition of D&D. And I had written for written pitches for Dungeon and Dragon magazine before and gotten rejected.
And it was like, well, these are going away. What's the road in? How do I do stuff like this? And my wife was like, you know, you love talking about this so much. And you're at the time, there weren't a lot of podcasts discussing. d and d now there's tons of them um and she was like you should you should do that with your friends you know you have the wherewithal you know how audio recording equipment works like you could make a podcast where you talk to your friends because you want one so bad
And so I did. And I started to do that. And while I was doing that, I reached out to a guy named Jeff Greiner for help. Jeff Greiner. runs a podcast called The Tome Show, which was the only D&D news podcast at the time that one could get. And when I wrote to him, he said, your idea for a show, like a weekly discussion of the news with a bunch of people, sounds great. Do you want to come do it here on this feed?
which already has listeners and is established. And he didn't know me from Adam, right? Like there was no reason for him to offer that other than he was nice. And I guess I made a decent pitch over email to him. And and so I was like, yes, absolutely. And so I started to do that. And I realized with this built in audience, hey. What I really want to do is write and make these games.
What if I started a blog and then I could direct the audience that I have now that Jeff Greiner has very graciously given to me? over to this blog, right? And so I started to blog twice a week about D&D and looking at 5th edition and breaking it down and making stuff. And what was my homebrew world going to be when it came out? And that blog then started to gain traction. And eventually... two years into blogging, the... 5th edition then launches, and then the DMs Guild launches.
for the DMs Guild, come put it on. And this was the early days of the DMs Guild. Now everything's really nice on there, well laid out, art and everything. But this was like, there was nothing on there. And I had all this stuff on my blog and I was like, this is my chance. So I'd put together Word documents, quick and dirty. They're real bad. You can still find them on there and put them up. And they got some traction because the market was small at that point in the marketplace.
was not flooded with a bunch of really good stuff. So my okay stuff stood out. And then from that started to get freelance job. And then eventually worked with Wizards of the Coast on Waterdeep Dragon Heist, which is an official hardcover adventure. I did six more books after that with them. And then I started, that got my name out there and I started to work with a bunch of different companies.
And I eventually got to work with this company, MCDM, which is Matt Colville. He's a YouTuber who is also a game designer, has his own company. I started to work with them and was freelancing with them. And then they said, hey, we're starting up a magazine. That's going to be 5e content. Would you like a full-time job with us managing this magazine? And I said, yes. And now I've been there for four years and I'm the lead game designer now at MCD.
i had so many times i wanted to interrupt you but uh you were in such a good flow that i did not uh so i'm sorry i'm sorry no no no it's a great story it's awesome and don't worry i take notes so i can uh i can dissect this to my leisure uh
So what I want to talk about is, you know, there's a couple of different factors and I always like to pull apart kind of universal principles and areas where your story can both apply to other people and areas where things have changed and maybe people should be approaching it differently.
So one of the things, there's plenty of people out there, I would suspect a majority of those listening to this podcast, that have had that awakening experience when they played a game like Dungeons & Dragons, whether it be an RPG or... a TCG like magic or something else where they're like, Oh my God, this is so cool. I can tell my own stories. I can build my own experience. And that's pretty, you know, all the guests on this podcast in 75 some odd episodes.
Far and away the most common starting point. But very few people that have that experience go on to then make and create and feel like they can build something. And you went from there to producing TV commercials, which I'm interested in how you got into that. as well as then pitching, starting to pitch to Dragon Magazine, hitting a wall, and then continuing to go forward. And I want to kind of just dig in a little bit to kind of what was it about you?
that kind of got you the feeling like you could do this and how did you keep that maybe maybe there is some tangents between your creativity and in tv and this so yeah i'd love to just dig into that side of things a little bit more Yeah. I mean, I've always been interested in like leading a creative life. Yeah. So as a kid, right, I always did things like theater and writing. And I think, you know, for RPGs in particular.
it appeals to a lot of theater kids, right? And you can see that with the rise of things like Critical Role and Stranger Things, more and more people who thought maybe it was just math nerds got into it. Now, I've also always been a math nerd, right? That's why RPGs are a strong pull for me because it's like, oh, this appeals to the power gamer in me, right? Because you can sit there and you can craft a character and you can...
get it perfect. It appeals to the storyteller in me, and that's a huge draw for me. And I think in terms of... what really appealed to me right like i remember being 10 years old And my mom asking me what I wanted to do and saying like, I want to write RPG.
Right. And so that's always been a thing that I've wanted to do. I learned as I got older, right, that that's hard. Like it's, it's not, there aren't that many people who do this full time. And I think the appeal, but there are a lot of people. who want to do it. And the reason is that when you play these games in particular, when you play a role-playing game, if you're the person running the game, right?
You're a game designer. You're putting together combat scenarios. You're designing levels for players to go through. You're designing. stories and games you're often instituting your own house rules right you're doing what i do right already on the basic level uh professionally and so i think a lot of people do that and they think like Well, I already do this. I could write these books and many of them are right. Right. Like, you know, a lot of my circumstances have to do with things like luck.
and being in the right place at the right time. You know, I don't have, I am married and I don't have kids. which is sort of the ideal scenario for, hey, I have this full-time job and I'm also pursuing this other job, right? Because you have someone in your life who's splitting chores and bills and stuff like that.
but you also don't have extra responsibility. And so like, yeah, it's a perfect storm of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The, the dink double income, no kids situation is a, is a very flexible one. Yes. Yeah. But I think, one, I've never heard the role-playing games as the sweet spot for math nerd, theater nerd overlap, which is great. Love that.
Two, I want to just dive back. You said you always wanted to live a creative life and then you kind of dismissed it as not to get too high for Luton. And I just want to pause because for me, it is like, this is important. I think I don't want to diminish. or shrink the value of a creative life. I think some amount of creativity in our lives is essential to a meaningful, fulfilling life. It's essential to our own personal growth. I don't think RPGs are just about...
you know, just about kind of telling stories that are disconnected from you. I think RPGs are ways you tell stories that help you learn more about yourself and your friends and who you are. They let you take on different roles and personas and attitudes. i think these things matter a ton and us our collective storytelling is as old as you know the human language
And this is just new ways to express that. So when you say, and I think you're right, the third point I want to kind of tie all this together is that people, when they're making these games, when you're a dungeon master, a game master,
Or even when you're playing in the game and you're coming up with creative things like surfing on a turtle shell or whatever there is, you are co-creating, you are designing, you are getting to be creative. And part of what I want to encourage is people to take that exercise seriously and make sure that they put it. as part of their lives. So I'm glad that you kind of had that drive and I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't diminished in any way as part of this narrative.
Yeah, definitely. And I'm glad I'm glad that you're encouraging that because it really was right. Like that's one reason why I I've had. a lot of careers so far in my life. And I started in theater, working in theater in Philadelphia, right? Professional theater. in casting offices and directing plays and stuff like that. And then I got this job at Adult Swim where I was making cartoon content, helping produce stuff. Which cartoons did you work on over there?
So I worked on Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the Squidbillies. Oh, man, I love Aqua Teen Hunger Force so much. So ridiculous. That's amazing.
Oh, yeah, it's great. It's great. And I, you know, very like production assistant stuff that I was doing there. And then from that, I worked on a show that was actually a Cartoon Network show called Run It Back NBA, which was a. sports show that lasted for a season where they would take the NBA game, the hot game of the week, which at the time, it was like LeBron James and Dwayne Wade on the Miami Heat with Krish Bach.
And it was basically whoever the Heat was playing that week, right? You'd cut it down to 45 minutes and we'd add all these like... pop-ups and interstitials to help kids improve their game, and then we would also add special effects. I'm sure you're familiar with NBA Jam. He's on fire, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We basically lit the ball on fire and did stuff like that. So it was a lot of fun to be able to do that. And there was a lot of creative freedom where they'd be like, all right, you have one quarter of the game. And then add special effects and facts and stuff like that. It was great. So it was a lot of fun to work on. Yeah. And then I ended up working on commercials after that. It started at National Geographic. I would do promos, right?
write and produce um promos that you know coming up next wicked tuna blow And I had so much fun doing that. I got to write a heavy metal song about sharks. Uh, and, uh, you know, uh, uh, I got to do, um, do you remember any part of that heavy metal song about sharks that you'd be interested to share with our listeners? Uh, yeah. So it was a show. Uh, it was, it was a, show that was called um Well, all right. So here for the context, right? Discovery Channel has shark week.
National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo Wild, has... shark fest and it relies on brand confusion right that you you are turning on the tv just because you want to see some sharks and you don't really remember which channel it's on and as long as you see a shark documentary you're happy right yeah um And so you might check Natio Wild first. And that is true. When you see the ratings, they go up, they go higher. And so they were like, look, we have this show, Shark Killzone.
It's basically about sharks eating stuff. And so the heavy metal song was all about, hey, you're going to see all these sharks. And then it was like sharks eating stuff. that's what this show's about, right? And there's probably some science, but it's mostly about sharks eating stuff. Oh, my God. This is... I haven't had this much fun doing a recording in a while. So thank you. I'm having a blast.
this is no problem no problem okay and then now for those that aren't as amused as i am by this uh this tangent i actually right i've purposely been going down this road and i'm doing it for a reason because you also one of the other notes i have is you know you talked about well i got kind of lucky you know And I think that what you have done is another trait that I see in a large number of successful people, which is...
You have found the niches adjacent to the thing that you love and you've put in the work to build up and get your foot in the door and move in that direction.
right you did a you know you're you love theater and so you were willing to be you know doing the hiring and doing the behind the scenes stuff directing plays casting offices and work your way up to that you love being able to create and write and write wanted to write for Dungeons and Dragons, but you did writing and stuff focused on promos and commercials, which again, most people wouldn't connect.
to the thing that you want to do, but it does have that crossover appeal. And then starting to do a podcast about... dungeon drag i can't i can't get my writing published for it in dungeon magazine so i'm gonna do a podcast because i'm good in front of the you know with audio and i'm you have a genuine enthusiasm and then all of those things leading to you don't you can't predict
exactly what the level of success is going to be. Yes, you need some luck, but the work that you put in and the willingness to take your strengths and put yourself in positions where you have more exposure to luck. is a very conscious, or I don't know if it was conscious or not, but it's a very effective strategy that I think is pretty universal. Yeah, it's definitely that that's the thing, right, is that. To get lucky, you have to be in the right place at the right time.
And if you're not showing up, right, if you're not showing up to the places where that happens. then you'll never get luck. And I think it's one of those things where hard work really does get recognized. And it's true of any industry that as soon as you enter it, it's so much smaller than you thought it was right that you you get in there and you're like oh everybody here knows everybody right and that was that was the thing i didn't think podcasting
I did podcasting because I wanted to talk about it and I thought it would be a good way to drive people to a blog, right? And that kind of thing. What I didn't realize about podcasting was, hey, eventually I'll get to talk to some of the people who make these things.
And they're going to remember who I am. And it's actually pretty easy to like get in touch with somebody like, you know, Jeremy Crawford, who's the, you know, managing editor of Dungeons and Dragons and say like, hey, do you want to do an interview? And if you happen to be at Gen Con when that happens, right? It happens. And so, yeah, you are absolutely right that like...
Part of luck is having the ability to do the work to get lucky and to be in that position. You can't get somebody to look at your portfolio if you don't have a portfolio. All right. I want to talk a little bit about now, you know, we talked about what kind of is kind of universal and some of the things that you went through coming up that anybody could apply to. And I want to talk about some of the things that are different.
One, as you mentioned, there's a lot more content out there. There's a lot more good quality content out there than there ever was before. It's easier to create and distribute, harder to get attention. Pretty common refrain. And two, I loved RPGs growing up. And when I decided to become a game designer, I always wanted to make an RPG, but I actually steered away from it consciously because I felt the business of RPGs was terrible. You're not wrong.
Like, boy, oh boy, is the economics of TCGs a lot better for the designer and making it right. So it's a very different world. And again, I love all different types of games, but I also, you know, try to be a good business person as well as designer and creative and business are tied together.
But that has, in many ways, that has changed, right? I mean, you yourself were part of this, the Draw Steal campaign, which did $4.6 million. I had multiple guests on this podcast that have had, you know, multi-million dollar. RPG campaigns without IP or original IP, that is something I would never have dreamed of a decade ago. What do you think has changed? What's driving that? And maybe we can start digging into how you got to the kind of success that you have.
yeah and it's it's so funny you're talking about trading card games right because The joke about like, how do you have a successful role playing game? The answer used to be like, well, you have Magic the Gathering. And that supports D&D, right? Like, the idea. And Magic the Gathering is still a giant business, right? That does... Colossal.
especially compared to Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons is doing great. It's doing better than it's ever been. And still, if you made Wizards of the Coast choose, they'd be like, well, obviously we're keeping Magic the Gathering. thank you dungeons and dragons you've been a good service to us and so i think one of the things that has really helped um is the rpg market right like There is a 900 pound gorilla in the RPG space and it is Dungeons.
It is almost synonymous. A lot of people... out there in the world who don't play role-playing games. They know Dungeons & Dragons. They don't know that there are other role-playing games, nor do they even necessarily know that Dungeons & Dragons is a role-playing game. They just know it's a game that people play, right? And so it's sort of like Xerox or Kleenex, right? It becomes synonymous with... the thing that it is. And I think one thing that happened was, you know...
Now, over 10 years ago in 2014, Fifth Edition comes out. And fifth edition had this very slow release strategy that I think helped. And whether that was strategic or because they didn't want to make as many D&D books, like whatever the reason was.
It meant that if you showed up to your game store to play D&D for a long time, you sat next to somebody who had the player's handbook and you did too. Whereas in third edition and fourth edition, it was like, I sat down, I just bought the player's handbook. The person next to me who'd been playing for three years had a stack of 10 books that they used to me.
And that's like, are you kidding me? I just had to buy this $150 300 page book. I'm not buying another nine just so I can make a character as cool as yours. Right. So. That helped that slower strategy, I think helped. But the big thing that I don't think anybody could have predicted. were these pop culture phenomenons.
that were using Dungeons & Dragons. Critical Role, I think, is a big thing that helped. I think Stranger Things, even bigger, right? Like, Stranger Things was this huge phenomenon where people saw the game. They saw it played by these 10-year-olds who loved it. And then the terminology, the Demogorgon, continues throughout the first season. That really helps. At the time the Big Bang Theory is on, they're doing Dungeons & Dragons episodes, right? And they're showing these.
beloved America's favorite nerds, right? Whatever, playing D&D. And so I think all of those cultural phenomenons happening. really got people into it and checking it out. And the rise of then Critical Role meant that to learn to play Dungeons & Dragons, if I type into Google how to play D&D, right? Now I get a zillion videos.
And it's not just Critical Role, it's a bunch. And I can sit there and go, oh, okay, I get it. I remember trying to explain RPGs to people beforehand, and it would be like, there's no good elevator pitch. Right. And now I can just show you. Right. I can just say, hey. Do you like Brennan Lee Mulligan? Do you like the McElroys? Do you like any number of comedians who have played this game who I can show you? Hey, here's a clip of Harmontown. Here's a clip of...
Vin Diesel playing with Matt Mercer to promote a movie. Here's Stephen Colbert playing for Red Nose Day. All of that, I think, culturally has helped turn people on to what the game is and made people realize like, oh. this isn't just for the nerds, right? This is for me, the theater nerd, or this is for me, the video game nerd, right? Video games, huge business, way bigger than movies or anything else. And so I think people were playing, they were like, oh, wait a second.
I love Final Fantasy. I would play this with my friends at the table. This seems great, right? And that, I think, has helped. The internet has really... taken off in a big way and you know critical roles no slouch they're the biggest show on twitch by a huge magnitude as we all learned when Twitch's numbers were leaked a couple years ago to everybody.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's and that that streaming, I think, had a two tiered effect, not just that, you know, now you see more examples of it, it's easier to learn, it's easier to see people who are, you know, kind of representative and cultural icons doing it. but that it's also, as you mentioned, it's a theater.
activity like now the performance aspect of it and watching people co-create a story in the same way that you might watch an improv comedy act in essence you're watching an you know an improv fantasy adventure and that creates that like Honestly, in every genre of game that I make now, and I do across a variety of different categories, I'm always thinking about how do I make this good to stream? How do I make this fun to watch?
because that's so much of the way people discover things now. And D&D and role-playing games in general are sort of pre-baked. with this like oh okay i love to watch people tell stories and be animated and you know if they're really kind of into it it creates a a natural filter process whereas for me i would say i don't know if this was true for you like even though i loved playing
uh rpgs i spent far more time reading rpg books than i did actually playing rpgs like just that digging through the tomes and going through it and nowadays people spend far more time watching people play rpgs and creating community around that even than playing yeah definitely and something something like 50 of critical roles audience doesn't play dnd they just want to watch critical role which to me is like
fascinating, right? That they have achieved a level of entertainment with an rpg that other people want to watch i remember like i love role-playing games And I remember people would be like, but don't don't tell people about your game because that's what it's like telling people about your dreams. Right. Like it's boring. They don't want to hear about it. Now it's like, well, now people will sell out Wembley Stadium.
right to to uh for people to come watch you which is incredible so yeah it's definitely one of those things that um it's imminently streamable and what's interesting is like I don't even, I think D&D. of all the role-playing games is probably one that is not the most streamable, right? It's kind of complicated. It's got these three core rule books. You often don't understand what's happening in combat. Somebody's got to stop and explain a spell. And yet...
It's, you know, we're watching people do it just because the nature of role playing games is sort of more storytelling. Yeah, well, and so then let's tie into a couple little threads. A lot of times when I talk about making my own RPG engine, which is what interests me as a game designer, I get told, what are you doing? Just make a fifth edition book. You can poo. No.
Yeah, well, so help talk me out of that. Help me get back to what I wanted to do in the first place. I love advice that gets me to do what I already want to do. You know, it's like when they say like dark chocolate's good for you. Great. Awesome. Totally going to have that. So help me with the dark chocolate of designing a new engine for an RPG. So here's the thing. D&D does some things very well, right?
but it purports to be the, and this isn't even like what it claims. It is what people who play it claim is that like you can do anything in D&D, so you don't need another game. And because it's hard to learn, people often think then, well, other role-playing games are also going to be hard to learn. And I think that's not true for a lot of reasons. So we need to break people of that mindset.
Uh, and I think games like draw steel where, Hey, a bunch of people are interested in going to check it out. Uh, you know, uh, Darrington press, which is critical roles. Publishing arm is putting out dagger heart, right? Um, uh, that is, is going to help. change people's mind uh and so there's you know there's all these different games that are coming out um that people can check out and i think
If you want to do something that D&D does well, right? D&D has its roots in dungeon crawling, has its roots in a combat-based game, right? Yeah, I think it works pretty well. The D20 can be pretty swingy, right? So it means that sometimes you're going to miss and it is a die that... You roll to see if you get to do something on your turn, and then you wait 15 minutes to roll it. Right. And so.
And some games that's great for. Some games you want to do that. If you're playing D&D, you probably want to do that. that right and i don't think there's anything wrong with that so i just want to throw that out there for anybody listening james hate dungeons and dragons i heard you everybody knows that we'll use that clip for sure um but I also think a lot of people don't just play Rocket. A lot of people don't just play Catan. Now, there are some people who do just play Catan.
things but they play other video games they play other board games and the same is true of role-playing games the hardest thing to learn in a role-playing game is like what is it wrap your mind around it once you know that it's really easy to start learning But this is me convincing you, not convincing the audience. And so I think for me, the big thing is that I have learned. that I would give advice to anybody who is a game designer is you should work on the things that you are...
Right. Because working on something you're passionate about, it's going to be the thing that is going to get you to do that extra proofread. Right. To do that extra play test. to do that extra check on the art to make sure that everything is the way you want it and that kind of thing. It's going to be the thing that helps you get out there and promote it because if you're a tabletop game designer, you're probably going to do a lot of your own promotion, particularly role-playing.
And so finding the system that really works for the story you want to tell is important, even if it means making that system yourself. Right. And so like for us, uh, the reason we, we wanted to make draw steel was. we felt like a lot of people who play Dungeons & Dragons, including us, want to tell heroic fantasy stories, right? But D&D actually has its roots in dungeon crawling, and when you change that, people get mad that it's no longer D&D.
And so it means these things like the miss your turn die. It's a game of attrition where you start with all of your spell slots and all of your rages and key points and stuff like that and winnow it down. And then right before you're going to this big dramatic encounter with the boss. everybody stops and takes a nap to make sure they get those things back, right? Like, in what heroic fiction does it happen where it's like, hang on, let's all take a rest here, right? You know?
And so we set out to make a different game, right? Because we were like, D&D isn't going to do what we need it to do. And so I think if you're out there, you shouldn't try to force D&D to be something that it's not. And you should make your own game if that's what you're really passionate about and what you want to do, because it's going to help carry you further. And that passion really does come through to the people who are into it.
And we're also now, I understand the argument because there's people who will say, well, I already know how to play D&D, so I'm just going to play that. But those people are loud on the internet, but there's actually not a lot. Right. Interesting. And I think that's, that's the big thing is that like.
Most people are going to play a role-playing game that their friend will run for them. So what you need to do is convince... the person running the game the game master uh to come and take on your game right that's the person you need to convince because as soon as you do that you've got five five more players who are going to play And so I think that's the biggest thing is that like.
It's often that person who learns the rules. It's often that person who's already doing the most work. So you need to make it easy on them to learn this new game and convince them. And the way you do that is... You link your cart to Matt Colville, who has a series of YouTube videos that help people become dungeon masters. And then they trust Matt when he says, hey, we're going to do this.
So, uh, that's, uh, everybody has a clear formula to follow that anybody that wants to do this, just link your cart to Matt Colville and you'll be good to go. Okay, great. Uh, end of episode. Um, uh, well, so, so, um, I'll put this in a broader way. A message I try to deliver a fair amount is... consistently add value to the communities and people you want to serve.
Yes. And so if you're saying my target and it's great, it's a great insight. Like you're not trying to target all the RPG players. You're trying to target the game masters. If you turn them, you know, then they bring with them the players and that works.
and the way okay how do i add value to game masters is okay i'm going to teach people how to be better game masters or i'm going to create a you know podcast about it or i'm going to do a whatever create an app for it or what you know there's a million ways you can serve those people
and then build trust and build credibility. And then from there, use that as a launch pad. And so it is a repeatable formula in a sense, though maybe what exactly the path you'll take would have to align with your skill set.
And then I want to dig in on the passion comment because in many ways I've echoed the same sentiment, but I want to stand in for the audience here a little bit too and say, listen, it's all well and good for you to say, do your passion. You're the one that got lucky and made it. A lot of people that try to...
do a passion in an industry that's not that small right especially not dnd rpgs uh are you know they don't work and and really if you could put that same energy into something that has a bigger audience and a bigger chance of success, wouldn't you be better off putting that energy in that way? Yeah, well, I think you have to ask yourself, do you want to do that? Are you going to be happy to?
that right because if you're not then why why go be a banker right if you want to make money right like and you want to and you don't care about what you're doing don't get into games go do something else um that's sort of the the way that i think about that and i When you're starting out, right, I think it is important to start small. And I think starting small and role-playing games often means playing in somebody else's sandbox, right? Saying, okay, what game do I love?
Let me start there. That's what I did with D&D, right? Like, hey, I love D&D. Let me start small. I'm going to make some backgrounds on my... right? I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to make a monster. And then I, Hey, maybe I'll write a 5,000 word adventure, right? Ooh, now maybe I'll, I'll try to do something a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger. And I was always, though, doing something that I wanted.
Right. I was never like, hey, let me chase the trend of seems like fairies are real hot right now. Let me do a bunch of fairy stuff. Right. Or, hey, it seems like, you know, undead are popular right now. Let me do a bunch of. I was always trying to think about like, well, what would I want? What would I need in my game? Maybe somebody else needs it and I'm passionate. So I do think starting small and like going at it alone to make your own RPG.
can be a daunting task, unless you're making a one-page RPG or a smaller RPG. And even there, there's an elegance there that I think can be difficult to nail down without a lot of experience. So I do recommend starting off. small and manageable, whatever that may be. That may be a small game that you create on your own. But guess what? It's real easy to get people into those small games and to get your name out there and to start building your audience that way, as opposed to...
Here is my, as people would say, fantasy heartbreaker, right? Which is a term... that we use for, I made a D&D competitor and it's doomed to fail because it's not D&D and people already have D&D, right? So before you make that, right, like start small, do a bunch of other stuff, get your name out there, but make sure those are things you're passionate about. Yeah. Okay. That's great. Yeah. Great, super actionable advice. I think the...
You know, playing in someone else's sandbox in a RPG context, you've laid out a lot of ways to do that, including, you know, just designing your own campaigns within Dungeons and Dragons or other games that you play. I think the same is true for other categories of games. I think collectible games, being able to build the experience that you want to have and craft a certain type of experience, making house rules.
modifying things i mean my very first version of ascension i've told the story before was just like i took a i took a dominion set and just shuffled all the cards together and dealt them out with a randomized center row and i was like okay, this doesn't quite work, but there's something here. Now I'll start putting in some more effort to building my own version of this. And what would that look like?
And so the, as, as quick and dirty as you can get to start trying stuff and working on exercising that muscle.
I think really helps. And then again, it's because I, I got hooked on it, right? I got hooked on magic and that made me love TCGs and made me want to make TCGs. And so I went down that road, I got hooked on, you know, Dominion and maybe go that way. And again, I, you know, I started this earlier talking about my I steered away from RPGs in part because of those economic reasons, and it's stuck with me for now 20 some odd years.
Uh, and so, uh, I definitely want to come back to it. So I may come, I may come pick your brain tomorrow. Actually, you know what? Nevermind. I'm gonna pick your brain right now. Okay. How familiar are you with the Ascension universe IP, the deck building game at all? Okay, so I've played the game a couple of times over the last, I want to say, 10 years. Dawn of Champions, I think, was the first time that I played it at Gen Con. It's a great game. You made a great game, by the way. Thank you.
Um, yeah, so this is our 15 year anniversary right now. So yeah. Wow. Congratulations. That's huge. That's huge.
Thank you. Yeah, we have a lot of exciting things planned. So Gen Con 2025 will technically be the official kickoff of the 15-year anniversary. So we've got a lot of fun things planned. And one of the things that I have kicked around for a while, and in fact, I do have... uh some fully sketched out kind of design ideas and uh and concepts for what an ascension rpg might be but i want to set those aside before i talk about that i would love to get your advice and how would you think
about building an Ascension RPG or what questions would you want to ask? I think this is a fun little exercise on air, if you will. Oh, yeah, this is great. So first of all, I think this is real cool. And you, you know, Gloomhaven like just put out a Gloomhaven role playing game, you know, and you can see some. other tabletop games sort of trended, like dip their toe into the RPG water. And I think, right, Ascension, given the fact that it has these, you know, that it is...
I want to say IP based because that makes it sound like you're working with Disney or something. But given the fact that it has lore, right, given the fact that it has story around it, makes it sort of a perfect candidate for that. So I think what I would say to you is what sorts of stories. Do you want people to tell, right? That's, that's how I always start is what is the fiction in a role-playing game that we want the rules to support, right?
Yeah. So I think that the concept of Ascension and the kind of heart of the story arc of Ascension was always this idea of you as kind of a... a kind of noble warrior on your own, you then a variety of allies to your cause and kind of grow in power and strength to then be able to take on the great threat that's that's that's facing and it's threatening the world and what that threat is changed from set to set but the basics are still the same right we start off with my
I've got my little army of apprentices and militias. And over time I'm recruiting fantastical allies and characters and weapons and everything. And then I will earn the honor and glory of defeating this great big bad. nice yes right you will ascend to be able to do such a thing right in fact um so in this game are are you the are the player characters right well first
Is this, there's all kinds of role-playing games. Are we approaching this from a, hey, there's a game master and then there's a bunch of player characters perspective, right? I think would be probably my first question. And do those player characters work together as a team? Yeah, so I do like the idea of player characters working together as a team. I think we're all on the same side here generally is a good thing.
I am not attached to a game master. I think if that's the easiest thing to do and that makes it work well, then I'm fine with that, but I'm not attached to a game master per se. Whoa. GM-less games. I've never made one, but I think they're fun. I've certainly played a bunch. Yeah, and I have some sketched concepts of this, but I don't want to break your thread of it because I want people to see how you think about this, and then I'm happy to jump in with how I'm thinking about it. We can riff.
I really want to know. I really want to know what you're thinking. Yeah. Yeah. So I think one question that I would, one other question I think that I would have for you is in Ascension, you're gathering an army. Are you playing heroes who are gathering an army together? Or are you heroes joining that army? Are you a part of that army instead of the person gathering the people?
So the Ark of Ascension is that you are, so the original version of Ascension was called Ascension Chronicle of the Godslayer. We ended up dropping the God Slayer part because Mass Market didn't love that. But regardless, the story is that you're all collectively kind of... creating this army and you're you're trying to rise up to become the sort of the one that actually defeats the fallen god samuel and so i think it's a we are together
Like, I think it's in my mind, it sort of starts as an adventuring party and becomes an army. And the one of you that earns the most honor in that kind of.
is the you know in essentially a competitive game so that person becomes the god slayer and so you're you're competing but you are everything you do in ascension is cooperative in a sense you're all trying to kill monsters together you're not actually attacking each other it's just a matter of who gets the most honor and glory as they go through it so i think this this world of like
you know uh what i think like like the wheel of time series kind of thing where it starts off it's just like everybody's just kind of you know it starts out in the farm but everybody has their own magical powers and super abilities and gradually we come together to be able to take on the dark one kind of like that
Yes. Okay. Well, so... I think what I like about that, right, is that I think we could have and there are role playing games where it's like, hey, we're working together as a team, but we're also a little competitive in that we're trying to get the most.
together right there's a role-playing game called agon that is like that where you're like sort of ancient greek heroes right and you're trying to get the glory of the gods and you want more glory than everybody else but you also have to work together to survive And I think that...
looking at that right that's where I would sit down and say okay I think that that's probably one of the driving forces of the game that's what encourages players so how do we what's a mechanic where we can encourage players to work together right
but also have this gameplay loop where it's like, okay, but I want to be the one who gets the killing blow, which is already something that happens naturally when you play a game like D&D, where it's like, oh, you stole my kill, right? That kind of thing. You know, how are we going to get that? And maybe there's other ways you could earn honor as well. It's not just kill stealing, right? Right.
But I think that sort of thing would be really interesting to me. And that's probably where I would start and say, okay, this is a game about building armies. This is a game about using honor to build armies, and we're each building an army, but we're working together to do it. How do we turn this into an experience where it's like, okay. We can do the things outside of the normal rules of Ascension because it's a role-playing game. So we can say things like, well...
I want to figure out how to recruit more people. And maybe we can make trades. I could say to you, hey... You've got these people in your army. these people that I have would synergize better. Do you want to trade? Because I would like your people, right? And like that kind of thing. I think we could do that sort of thing where we're, hey, we're working together, but we're also a little bit competitive about it and get that feeling of like...
a camaraderie and a brotherhood, right? You see this all the time in movies where like, you know, like Top Gun style movies where it's like, hey, we've got each other's backs, right? I don't want you to die, right? But I do want to be the best pilot. right and i can tell that kind of story within this i want to be the one who offends and gets to be the god's life right right
And that seems really fun. So I would probably, okay, now I've got this goal, right? And I would sit down and think about how can I accomplish that? And honestly, what I would do is I would get the simplest version of it that I could up on its feet and start playtesting it and then be like, okay, that didn't work. Why? And go from there. Sort of like what you said when you took Dominion and you were like, well, I'm going to shuffle all these cards together and put them in a center pie.
and see what happens right i think you've got to be willing to get messy and that's where i would Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for that exercise. Now I'll tip my hand on a few things here as well, because I think that there's, when I think about games, right, I think about the design of... how are the systems that i'm creating incentivizing the behavior that i want and thus the experiences and emotions in the players that they want right and so this you know do i
When it comes to an RPG, I want to incentivize people to create these epic moments. I want to be able to have these storytelling opportunities where everybody gets to shine and they get to have these interesting tensions. Let's create as many of those moments as we can. And then the flavor of that will depend upon the types of stories we want to tell. And so I think...
What I've done, you know, do I, do I, and I guess I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll sidestep that with a question because where, where we jumped in, in your version, as you were kind of going through it was like taking. in essence, the same essential story of Ascension. and porting it to an rpg and what i wonder is if you're taking a lore and an ip is it right is it the best strategy to take that and go for that same emotional arc
Or do we want to, is it better to sort of give people an alternative emotional arc? Maybe something that's a little bit more personal. Maybe don't make it so like coopetition. because this is giving them a different kind of experience. If they want that competitive experience, they have it already in Ascension. I don't know how you think about that. I don't know what IPs you've worked with inside of the Dungeons & Dragons world if you've ever had to play with that.
concept of like how do i represent this thing in a different way like i've taken a lot of uh other games and turn them into other games like so i took the world of warcraft and turn it into a World of Warcraft miniatures game. which is weird, right? Because I want it to feel true to World of Warcraft, but I don't want to just make a World of Warcraft on the table because that's just worse, right? So how do I make it feel true but give you a different experience?
So how do you think about that when you're converting from one medium to another? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's not a thing that I have really done. There are plenty of people who have done it, right? You know, you look at my boss, Matt, used to work at a company where they had lord of the rings and star trek and
all of these different IPs that they were using to create role-playing games for, right? And it would be like, okay, well, Star Trek exists in this medium, and then it also has, you know, Red Alert. the the battle game right and stuff like that um it's not a thing that i uh have done before and so that is but i do think that that is a pitfall that you see games get in And I think the thing is you want to think about what makes your...
game special and can you continue to preserve that so it feels like ascension right and it might be that the lore is the thing that makes it special and like hey we can leave all this stuff behind and like You're a group of heroes who are trying to, you know, just eventually fight the godslayer.
and work your way up. And that'll be great because you're going to interact with all of the creatures that you already see in the Ascension game and cards. That could be fine. But I do think you want to preserve... some aspect of what makes playing Ascension great. right because you're right you do have this game you don't want to just make a worse version of ascension that that doesn't fit uh and so i for me i don't have enough of the the wherewithal or know-how to do that
But I would probably start and I might say like, oh, this fell apart. We need to go back to first principles and think about like, what is an Ascension role playing game from the ground up and what is an Ascension story and what is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's interesting. So for me, now I'll go back to the thing that I know you were sort of excited about teasing, which is like, okay, could we make this GM-less, right? Or is there a way to pull that off?
And so what I thought about First Engine is obviously, you know, it was one of the first deck building games to exist. And it is... Can I use a deck building engine to drive the action in a way that wouldn't otherwise be?
uh you know i haven't seen other games do right so maybe my character is a deck of cards and the trait instead of just being you know apprentices and militias and you know or hot templars i'm bringing in it's okay this is my i have you know sneaky and greedy and you know uh i have you know battle sword expertise and whatever and so these abilities are then the things that i would draw and be able to play and
Being able to tell the story of how my sneaky trait lets me go and do a certain thing that I want to do would be kind of part of the fun of the play experience. and that there would even potentially be a center deck or a villain deck, if you will, that kind of drives a lot of the action.
of the of the bosses and the things that you encounter and those again could be things like battles but could also be things like you know okay there's there's been a breakdown amongst the group and the team you know what does that mean and this is going to require some social abilities
to solve it and then you get to collectively say okay what was the breakdown this person decides all right this is what happened okay cool how are we going to solve it and then we're trying to use the resources we have to kind of interact with us there's a little bit of that that play and it's a little bit more of a of a guided experience in the sense that you know i want to bring ascension players over and i'm sure there's a decent number of ascension players that play rpgs but
I don't know how big that overlap necessarily is. And so having something where I have a few more guides and cards and it doesn't put as much burden on one person being the GM and having to know everything, it doesn't put as much burden on the player to have to like... think out of all the possible things that could possibly be done, I have a handful of cars that are going to drive my choices. And I think constraints can help a lot of people be more creative in the moment.
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I think that that's really great, right? Our general manager over at MCDM recently said to us, You know, you could have picked any other genre of tabletop game and we would make more money, right? And so I think you're right to assume that there's probably some overlap, but it's not 100%.
It's probably not even close to 25, you know, in some cases. And you've got a lot of great players there. So having this GM-less system makes a lot of sense to me. I think the other thing... Right. When I, when I hear about that, I think about like, ah, one great thing about cards, right. Is even just normal playing cards. We know that like you have multiple avenues for customization. So you might have like.
in playing cards, right? You have a suit, you have a number, right? And so having a card that's like, hey, it's got this special battle ability, but also it's got this number. And that number means that I can use it kind of generically when solving tasks outside of combat. It gives you a lot of different points to play with. A deck building game, you can have wound cards, you can have all that kind of stuff that you put in and you're like...
I can't use this card at all now that it's in my hand, right? So obviously, you know all that stuff. And I don't need to tell you that, but I think that that's really cool. And it presents a great opportunity in an RPG. to also have a randomizer that doesn't necessarily need to be diced because you've got this hand of cards.
Okay. Well, thanks for going through that exercise with me. I think it was the kind of thing that hopefully was useful to our audience in addition to being useful to me because you can kind of see the way that you think about this, the way I think about this as we're kind of at the early ideation stage and how you approach. how you approach the virtual blank page here. Yeah.
Awesome, man. Well, dude, thank you so much for taking the time. This was a ton of fun. I learned a lot about you that I did not know. I even got a shark fest song out of this deal. So I'm calling this a big win. For people that want to follow up, find your stuff here and see more cool things that you do, where should they go?
yeah so you can go to mcdmproductions.com to check out what we're doing uh drawsteel.com is drawsteel is the rpg that we're working on you can go pre-order it or order it depending on when you're listening to this uh, over there, drawsteel.com. Uh, and I'm on blue sky, uh, at James Intracaso, I N T R O C A S. So you can find me over there if you want to follow me personally. I'm also on Twitch at the same name. I stream every Wednesday and I just do a Q&A about whatever.
How often do you get people tuning into the Q&A? How many people do you get per week or so when you're doing that? It's generally about 500 or so unique people show up at any given time the audience is between two and 300 folks um so it's amazing right it's really yeah and just with no no specific agenda just open q a just chatting
Just open Q&A, just chatting. Right now, it's been a lot about Drawsteel because that's what people know we're working on. But yeah, I'll talk about anything that people want to talk about. People want to talk about, you know, movies. People want to talk about pizza. I'm down.
I love that. I love that as a way to connect directly with the audience. I've been thinking about doing something like that myself. So for those that are out there, definitely check out James's stream and go ask him some questions about movies and pizza and whatever. And let me know what you think about the Ascension RPG ideas we talked about. You can definitely comment in there. Or if anybody wants to encourage me to try to do a weekly Q&A stream, I think that would be kind of fun.
You give me a lot of things to chew on here, James. This was really fun. Thanks for joining. Yeah, thanks for having me and call me when you need playtesters for the RPG. I am down. I want to play. Hell yeah, I will definitely take you up on that. thank you so much for listening i hope you enjoyed today's podcast Thank you.