Watch Well Games: Issue # 17
Graphic Design with Aphantasia, Hellion City Heists Design Essay, Being Beanjackers, Interview with Monica Valentinelli
IN THIS ISSUE:
Graphic Design with Aphantasia
"Hellion City Heists" Design Essay
Being "Beanjackers"
Interview with a Veteran RPG Writer
With various bits and bobs in between. Enjoy!
Welcome to Issue #17. I'm K.J*.
I compiled a LOT of content for you today - and that's why the newsletter is late getting to you.
First, CJ Weigel (Dusky Creative), creator of "Loco Motives" (a Pocket Quest game) shares what it's like being an artist with aphantasia.
Then, Richard Lackinger (Arcana Prime), creator of "Hellion City Heists" shares his thoughts behind creating his Pocket Quest game.
Next, I give a report on what it was like to play the Pocket Quest entry "Beanjackers" by Zachary Elliott-Hatton.
After that, I share my interview with veteran RPG writer Monica Valentinelli, whose most recent game creation was "Pinching Tarts" for Pocket Quest 2024.
Lastly, I give a few updates up until the very end, so enjoy this jam-packed newsletter!
* I'm K.J. - hobbyist writer, creator, long-time GM, and player who loves supporting and encouraging others in the RPG community. I also playtest and proofread scenarios. I enjoy playing bass guitar and eating dark chocolate but not at the same time.
I started Watch Well Games at the end of 2023 to build a community around the hobby we have in common - RPGs. Join me as I share what I learn along the way.
Graphic Design with Aphantasia: How to role-play being an artist
by CJ Weigel (Dusky Creative), creator of Loco Motives
Writing a game is hard enough, but it’s even more difficult if you don’t feel like you have the necessary skills. Personally, I can’t ‘see’ what something will look like until I’m looking at it, which makes it rather difficult to work on any sort of visual arts. This is all thanks to a phenomenon called ‘aphantasia.’ Depending on where you look, aphantasia is defined as the inability to visualize, image-free thinking, or as the lack of a mind’s eye. It seems pretty simple when you say it out loud, but many people don’t know that it's a real, named condition. I didn’t know about it until I was well into my 20s. I was having a conversation with my wife about the weird things people say, like “visualize this” or “picture that.” I always thought those were just figures of speech!
Awareness of aphantasia has been growing recently, but many people still have experiences like myself; you can go your entire life without realizing that other people think fundamentally differently than you. If you think you might have aphantasia, you can try a simple exercise: picture an apple in your mind. What do you see? How do you see it? Can you see the waxy sheen, the gradient colors, even the texture of the leaves and stem? Maybe you just see a simple representation of an apple, like a cartoon image; or perhaps just an outline. Personally, I see nothing. I get the vague sense of the ‘vibes’ of an apple, and I can describe its appearance and properties, but I can’t actually see the darn thing.
Composition by Belbury, original image components by Mrr cartman, Caduser2003, Bernt Fransson and IconArchive.com An original representation of an informal test of aphantasia, as popularized on Twitter in 2020. CC BY-SA 4.0
If you have aphantasia or a limited mind’s eye (recent terminology includes ‘hypophantasia’), don’t fret! You can still be an artist. In fact, the University of Glasgow has a virtual art exhibit showcasing artists with aphantasia and hyperphantasia (broadly speaking, photo-realistic imagery) side-by-side; check it out and see if you can even tell the difference. Glen Keane, the animator for Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, and Edwin Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, are both said to have aphantasia. Even if you don’t have the kind of training, talent, and experience that they have, there are some easy tricks you can use to make art that looks cool.
Using References and Tracing
As with any artistic endeavor, the first and most important activity is gathering references. Hopefully, you have a vague idea of what you’re looking for; write down descriptions of what you’re going for and try to refine that idea. If your game takes place in the mountains, what’s the climate like? What colors fit your mood? What art style best represents the feel of your story? Spend a few days putting together a list of reference images and assembling a mood board on a service like Pinterest or Notion. Alternatively, you can print them out and scatter them around your office like an artistic tornado, or pin them to a corkboard like a conspiracy theorist!
Once you have your reference images, it’s time to assemble your tools and techniques. JP Coovert has some incredible drawing guides for maps, where he breaks down every detail into individual strokes of the pen, so you can follow along with whatever he’s doing. But drawing things from scratch can be really, really difficult with aphantasia; so it’s time for some (ethical) theft! It’s really more like borrowing and finding inspiration, but I have to at least try to tie this into the Pocket Quest theme.
Most artists develop their style by modeling other artists, and you can do the same. Take a simple piece that fits your theme, and trace it out. I use Affinity Photo, but you can do this in GIMP, Photoshop, on pen and paper, or any other image editing methodology. Since I can’t see what things will look like until I see them, this step is invaluable when I’m trying to create something. Once I have a trace in front of me, I can move lines around, change colors, or even trace other images over the top and move the different pieces around to see what they look like together. I keep making changes until I’ve satisfied two essential requirements: first, it has to fit what I’m trying to create; and second, it must be new. Artists develop their style by modeling other artists, but it’s still their style.
Look at the example below: on the left is a public domain drawing of the space shuttle that I found online, and on the right is the Ship HUD from my game Stranded in Space. Pretty obvious that my picture is based on the former when they’re next to each other, right? But also look at the differences: the nose is more pointed, the windows are borrowed from another reference entirely, I made the internal divisions larger so they work for a character sheet, and so forth. Most of these changes were made by just dragging lines around until they looked cool, or by layering multiple references over each other to see how different elements would look together. If we’re being real, there’s not much of a difference. But there is enough. Plus, I made sure it was public domain (more on that later). If you have more skill than I, you might be able to make something wholly different from the same baseline.
I want to stress this again: change things until the image is truly yours. Trust your instincts. If it feels scummy, like you’re ripping someone off, then either keep changing things or go in an entirely different direction. It’s better to have no art at all than to steal someone else’s. Of course, there are plenty of options to use other’s art at little to no cost…
Public Domain, Stock Art, and Simple Edits
The public domain is a magical place. If you’re not familiar, public domain refers to creative materials that not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. What that means for you is that you can use it in your works without spending a dime or requiring permission. It can take some time to scroll through decades of art, but the size of that resource pool means that there’s probably something you could use. The Creative Commons license is another great resource, and they provide a handy search tool right on their site! In either situation, always be sure to credit your sources; not only is it the decent thing to do, it’s usually required under Creative Commons, and it helps your peers find similar resources in the future.
If you have a bit of money to spend, stock art is another fantastic option. There are tons of resources out there, and they can be dirt-cheap. I’ve purchased incredible works of art from DriveThru RPG’s publisher resources page, often for less than 5 USD a piece. Other paid resources like Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, or Pixabay offer many options as well, usually with options for a subscription or one-time purchase. With a little time and a few dollars, you can probably find just what you need.
Naturally, someone else’s art isn’t likely to fit your vision exactly. That’s where simple, aphantasia-friendly edits come into play (check the license if you’re buying stock art; most allow for edits, but there are rare exceptions). If you were looking at the Ship HUD and thinking, ‘I bet he didn’t come up with those text boxes on his own,’ then you win a cookie! For about 10 USD, I bought a piece of ‘futuristic HUD elements’ stock art with about 30 different HUD elements. I took a couple of boxes I liked the look of, and copied or traced pieces of them together to make an amalgamation that I liked. But you can get even more creative than just tracing out a Frankenstein’s picture. You can also use filters - the eldritch sorcery of image manipulation. Once again, let’s look at an example.
Image created by NASA, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain
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Motion Picture News (July 1919), downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
On the left is a public-domain advertisement for a film called ‘The Outcasts of Poker Flat.’ On the right is what I used in my game "Loco Motives." All it took to get the look I wanted was a two-step process: first, I used a select tool (any image editor will have one) to cut out the character from the rest of the image; then, I applied a Monochrome Dither (a filter available in Affinity Photo). What is a monochrome dither? I have no idea, but it looks cool! I won’t go into details about how to use filters because that will vary considerably between software, but play around with every filter you have access to.
Those are my tricks: I use public domain or stock art, I trace images and squish them together, and I apply filters. I won’t lie to you that it’s quick; it’s difficult to find the right filters, it takes me a long time to trace even simple images, and I really, really struggle to make meaningful changes. The Ship HUD took me two full days to work through; the Outcast of Poker Flat took several hours to cut out and find just the right filter. But these are the cheat codes I have, and I share them with you in the hopes that you can make better use of them.
Lean Into It
None of this would have been possible without my wife. That’s not a platitude or a dedication; she genuinely helps me enormously. If you’re struggling to get things just right, if you can’t figure out what to do next, or if you’re unsure if something actually looks good (or bad)... just ask someone. Whoever is available to help you, lean on them. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t ask my wife ‘does this look stupid?’ or ‘I can’t figure out what’s missing, can you help?’ People are generally pretty cool, and it’s OK to admit that you need a hand.
I have one last piece of advice for you: lean into it. It’s difficult, time-consuming, and stressful to do something that you are fundamentally unequipped to do. Don’t let aphantasia be a crutch, or even a weakness. You might not be able to see, but if you both have aphantasia and are writing for RPGs, I’d bet you have some serious writing chops. Hone in on writing evocative descriptions. We’re not Daredevil, but at least for me, I can imagine touch, taste, and smell in detail that seems unusual to most people I talk to. Without a mind’s eye, I guarantee that your brain is compensating somehow. Find your strength, and use it to your advantage.
"Hellion City Heists" Design Essay
by Richard Lackinger (Arcana Prime), creator of "Hellion City Heists"
Hello, my name is Richard, and I am a wannabe game designer.
I have toyed with the idea of making my own TTRPG game system for awhile now, but never sat down to put pen to paper (so to speak). When I saw the announcement about PocketQuest 2024, I finally decided it was time to give it a try. There is nothing like an impending deadline and the challenge of meeting a page limit to get me motivated and keep me working on something that can reasonably be completed by myself (mostly). It seems to have created a perfect environment for me to finally do something with all those notes and scribbles I have been collecting in my desk drawer. The result is Hellion City Heists!
The theme for PocketQuest 2024 was another motivating factor for me. I am a big fan of all those old, pulp genre fiction stories and serials, which a heist theme seems perfectly lifted from. Perhaps a bit on the nose, but I decided to embrace it, and crafted my game around the source of my inspiration. I looked at things like The Shadow, Dick Tracy, Sin City, and the movie Metropolis for inspiration. Unfortunately, the final product had much of the lore and setting elements stripped out (those pesky page limits), but I guess that is what expansion modules are for.
For the rule set, I wanted to come up with something original (or at least original to me – there is a lot out there and I have played very little of it). I also wanted something streamlined and not too rules heavy. The pulp style I wanted to embrace seemed to lend itself to a skills-based system. I have been playing a lot of D&D 3.5e and had recently started getting into Call of Cthulhu, so those products were also certainly influential in what I developed.
The resulting ruleset revolves completely around skills and relies on different levels of training in each skill to dictate which dice the player gets to roll when attempting to use that skill. For example, if a character is untrained in a skill, they roll a 1d6. If they are competent, they can roll a 1d12. The skill roll is matched against a difficulty roll by the Game Director, who rolls a die that reflects how difficult the thing is that is being attempted.
I do have plans to further expand the system and offer additional modules, if it seems like something people enjoy. Some possible additions include a Hellion City setting module to expand on the locations and themes while providing some of the background and lore that is currently missing. I also would like to put together a heist adventure or two for people to play through (a sample adventure is another thing that wound up on the cutting room floor due to the page limits). Maybe even make a master rules book that opens play up to scenarios other than just heists (did someone say “prison crawl”).
For now, I am happy with what I managed to create and will take a much-needed break. Maybe play some TTRPGs instead of making them.
Special Discount for "Conscience of a Con" ends Monday
“Conscience of a Con: How to Wipe Red From Your Ledger” - a solo pocket adventure released as part of DriveThruRPG’s third annual game jam known as Pocket Quest.
Feel free to share this offer with others you know who enjoy playing solo games! Expires April 15th, so don’t wait.
Got Maps?
Watch Well Games' cartographer partner Schlau (Light in Darkness Gaming) has created several maps to help GMs prep for games. All maps are crafted via Arkenforge (no AI).
Here are just a few to get you started:
Being "Beanjackers"
I ran a game of "Beanjackers" for my in-person players. Here's a report of how things went and our feedback.
Things we liked:
1. The background: The author explains a solid, intriguing premise in a little over 200 words. I was able to get "there" in my mind's eye with picturing the world - one where beanstalks grow so large they block out most of the sun and characters dwell between spear-throwing giants and the restless dead- within no time. Brilliantly done!
2. The artwork: Chef's kiss. Buying this game is worth getting to appreciate the artwork alone. Gorgeous!
3. The layout: Clean and easy to navigate (exception: no hyperlinks for listing of contents and page numbers). So well-organized!
4. Races, classes, abilities, items: My players really liked the uniqueness of each of these. And again, the artwork to represent these is eye candy.
5. Enough starting money: My players really liked having enough money at the start to actually buy various items (in-game shopping IS so fun after all!). This really made for some funny moments, as one player had very creative ideas of how to heist that bean.
Things we'd change:
1. Have character sheets available from the beginning: My players struggled a bit making their characters, and they said this was the biggest issue. The author is going to make these available on DTRPG soon though.
2. Incomplete maps: My players were given the layout of a certain location via their contact. They felt like the map they were given was not complete enough to determine a lot of things. I agree. We had to improv quite a bit with this area.
3. Not enough story content: One player said he felt there was "not enough story to flesh out things (a lot of 'what ifs' came up)." Some players and GMs (like me and my group) are going to prefer more background and lore to craft a fuller narrative and really role-play.
Despite these opinions of things we'd do differently, playing "Beanjackers" was really fun!
If you enjoy combat over story, this pocket heist adventure will be highly enjoyable.
Is it worth buying?
Yes! There's enough content, and the content is a good basis to get an adventurous game going. Even if you're like me and prefer a bit more narrative over combat, there's still a solid, intriguing premise to build upon.
Interview with "Pinching Tarts" author Monica Valentinelli
Monica Valentinelli didn't just write "Pinching Tarts" her most recent game for Pocket Quest 2024.
She is a veteran of the tabletop RPG world. Her bio: "Award-winning narrative designer, game dev, author, and teacher writing about magic, mystery, mayhem. CV on BooksOfM.com." (LOOK at that CV!)
Ever hear of Firefly RPG or Conan RPG? She was part of those creative teams - just to whet your appetite.
Serious respect right there, and I knew I wanted to interview her as soon as I saw her post something in a shared Discord server.
Enjoy this interview with the Monica Valentinelli:
You are a full-time writer who works on games, stories, and comics across numerous genres. Which genre do you prefer working within? Do you ever find it difficult to shift gears between the different genres?
I prefer writing in the dark fantasy genres, because I love adding mystery and atmosphere. I don't find it challenging to shift gears between genres, because I concentrate on the project as opposed to the genre as a whole. So, for example, if I'm writing for Vampire: The Masquerade, that's a very different head space than Cyberpunk RED.
How did you get into the game industry, specifically RPGs?
Around 2004 or so, I answered a small press publisher's open call for writers. The publisher, Abstract Nova Press, had a game called "Noumenon." Powered by dominoes, you play giant bugs in a Kafka-esque inspired world called the Silhouette Rouge. I had a lot of fun drafting different rooms for a sprawling mansion for players to explore.
What's your favorite RPG project you got to be a part of and why?
That's a toss up. It's either Court of Shadows, for the Shadowrun RPG, Tales of the RED for Cyberpunk RED, or Legions of Carcosa for the Yellow King RPG. In all three situations, I was able to embrace my love of worldbuilding to develop story hooks and setting. One of my strengths is worldbuilding, and having a free pass to contribute to these beloved games was a wonderful experience.
You're no doubt a busy professional. How much roleplaying games do you get to take part in on average?
Most of my games are either one-shots or playtests for the games I'm writing for. At conventions, I like to play and run more games than I typically do. That said, for anyone who's new to designing games, I'd absolutely find ways to play a lot of different games. It's important!
You are versatile and experienced in multiple fields. What is that one skill that alludes you--maybe something you really wanted to learn, but nothing you do has helped it stick (for me, it's cartography)?
I'd really love to learn how to use the Adobe suite. Especially Photoshop and Illustrator. I just haven't been able to sit down and invest the time required, so I wind up using tools to do "a" job rather than design digital art from scratch. Maps used to allude me, too, and I'd often scratch out a rough idea to accompany my adventures. Thankfully, as the software continues to improve, there are programs like Inkarnate (https://inkarnate.com) that give me more flexibility to offer a decent map.
Do you ever get tired or bored with writing and creating? What do you do to find the motivation in those moments to keep going?
If I could do nothing but write and create, I would. I don't have trouble finding the motivation to create, but sometimes I get frustrated with administrivia, looking for work, submissions, etc. I have dealt with burn-out, however, and procrastination from time-to-time. Motivation, for me, comes from having balance in my life and reminding myself that I need to offset my creative experiences with (what I call) off-page outlets like going for a walk, visiting an art museum, etc. anything to wake myself up and keep going. I also regularly take social media breaks and limit my usage, too.
What advice or pointers would you give someone who wants to start writing RPGs (or any kind of writing, really)?
If you write, you're a writer. If you get paid to write, you're a professional writer. In your head, you're imagining "what" a writer is, but all writers--regardless of fame, number of copies sold, or identity--write. If you have no idea how to write, take a class, create a customized character for your favorite RPG, or sketch out in-world advertisements. Allow yourself the space to learn and experiment. Then, when you feel you're ready to take that next step, check out Community Content programs like DM's Guild, Storyteller's Vault, Pathfinder Infinite, etc. and consider making your own adventure or set of characters. From what I've heard, Community Content programs, which weren't around when I first started, are a viable way to break into the industry and earn a little money, too.
Any future projects you can give us any hints or teasers about?
Blast the dreaded NDAs! I'm writing for a property that's a little different than my usual fare, and that's all I can say about that. I'm also writing a lot more for myself and having fun with it. What happens next, only time will tell. If you're interested, you can subscribe to my newsletter where you'll learn about my new releases, upcoming appearances, and a lot more!
A Final Note
I collaborated with a few other Pocket Quest incredibly talented creators (Sean Ringrose, Andrew Stauffer, Kublai Kohen). Together, we have a special bundle of all our games. Check it out below:
Tips appreciated.
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