085: Crafting Stories Through Board & Card Games with Emma Larkins

Courtney:

Yeah, so, as I warned you before we started recording, I love to talk about processes, yeah, and so I mean, obviously it’s going to be different, especially the type of game, how many components you’ve got going on, but maybe it just makes sense to like break down what were your processes for the card games, what were the processes for Starry Night Sky, and then we will pause and talk about what’s coming up.

Emma: 20:17

So the start of the process is always the seed of the inspiration, and I think that’s very fun to talk about because I have used every single seed. I use lots of different types of seeds. Abandoned Artichokes was a name, first design, so I always like to talk about the. I made a little list of alliterative game names on the bus and I posted a picture of it. Abandoned Lauderchokes was one of the names on the list and somebody said you got to make that game. So I made that game. I’ve made games that were theme first. Starry Night Sky was theme first, say. Heartcatchers was more mechanics first, because I had an idea of how it was going to work. What is now epilogue was vibe first because the idea came from a dream and I had this vision of pareidolia or seeing things in the cards and yeah. So ideas can come from anywhere.

Emma: 21:24

And that’s always the start of it, you know, having something that’s just compelling enough that you want to move forward with it and then prototyping as quickly as possible, especially new designers, because there’s only so much you can figure out in your head and a lot of people like to kind of dwell on that and think it through, but really as soon as the mechanics hit paper or digital. That’s how you prototype and that’s when you start to see things come together. Put some mechanics on it, put a box around it, frame it, you know, contain it and start to actually play it yourself to see if it’s something you want to move forward with. Then, pretty soon after, that is playtesting. Even if you think you’ve captured something into a shape you could call a game, there’s still so much of it in your brain that you’re interpreting and filling in the gaps. For so it’s not until you put it in front of someone that you see all those gaps and everything falls apart.

Emma: 22:35

I know this is a really tough space, especially for newer designers, and I’ve seen that kind of crestfallen look and I felt that many times myself of when your precious, beautiful diamond of a game turns out to be glass and shatters and crumbles all over the place and you have to pick up the pieces and then, yeah, scraping together those pieces and making some changes, play, testing it again and just kind of iterating on it until either you get it into a shape that really functions and you’re really happy with, or maybe not, you know, and it goes on the shelf or in the trash, usually on the shelf though, yeah, and after that, you know, comes all the pitching and publication and all the other pieces. But yeah, the process it’s all process, all collection of different processes.

Courtney: 23:34

Do you use any digital platforms for any of the initial prototype and play testing before actually sourcing out to factories?

Emma: 23:46

Oh yeah, absolutely, Especially more so these days.

Emma: 23:50

I have always used Adobe Suite tools because I was lucky enough to take a class in college without which I never would have figured it out, but the tool has been incredibly useful and powerful, especially only recently when I figured out the data merge for InDesign, which lets me iterate and prototype on cards very quickly, like rearrange, and print out a whole deck with all my information in a spreadsheet.

Emma: 24:23

And there’s a NANDEC and there’s other tools that are available for that if people don’t have access to Adobe Suite. But it really makes a huge difference Because I think one of the biggest barriers to game design is people not wanting to make changes and especially spending too much time and effort on any individual prototype and then not wanting to make the changes that are necessary to get it to the next level. So the more barriers you can remove to making your prototypes quickly and efficiently, the better it is to to get those prototypes spun up quickly. And then, early on in the pandemic, I actually took my physical in-person playtest group, digital, so we all had to transition to digital tools to be able to playtest our games, which was tough but has had some benefits, especially being able to playtest remotely with people all over the world and also to be able to pitch to publishers a lot more easily.

Courtney: 25:23

Yeah, I can definitely see that being one good side effect.

Emma: 25:27

Yeah, yeah yeah, I mean you don’t get the physicality of it, which is tough and I do think is important for games. So definitely pros and cons.

Courtney: 25:39

Yeah, we did a fair amount of tabletop simulator in that first year or two and it was like, okay, I’m able to play games, but man, is it clunky.

Emma: 25:49

Yeah, yeah.

Courtney: 25:53

Okay, mentioned it a couple times, so tell me about epilogue all right, uh, epilogue.

Emma: 26:01

Epilogue is a cooperative storytelling game where you play as ghosts trying to figure out how you died together so you can pass on to the other side. As I mentioned before, it was a game that I started working on. Uh, 2016, I know 2015, maybe 2015 or 2016 and it was a game idea that came to me in a dream where I kind of woke up with this idea of a spooky, creepy, you know, looking into static and kind of seeing images emerge, and it was after Heartcatcher. So I had made a game, gone through the publication process and I knew it was something I wanted to do more of. So I was excited to start making new things. So I briefly went with this idea of seeing images and cards. I looked into some of the Google Deep Dream weird, creepy stuff and couldn’t figure out how to make that into a game. So my brain pivoted and thought well, you know, people see words in collections of letters. So I took words and chopped them up into chunks, put the chunks onto different cards and started fitting the cards together to reassemble the words and very quickly saw kind of the potential of that, especially having a lot of fragments on a lot of different cards and being able to make a lot of different words, and that just making the words with the cards was super fun. And from there my brain jumped to this idea of hey, what if you made a story from the words? Because it seemed like kind of the most natural leap from there and so the storytelling aspect came in.

Emma: 27:46

My brain wanted to put a lot of wrappers around it and try to put a lot of mechanics onto it. So I was stuck on this idea that you were actually playing as kids in the woods and you would go into this creepy house and there would be little pieces of paper ripped up and kind of sitting on the floor and you try and assemble them and then there was a ghost talking to you through the papers and pretty quickly kind of let go some of those more elaborate pieces and then spent about a year trying to add fear tokens and people would collect cards when they told part of the story and again trying to make it more of a quote unquote game, because I was already playtesting it and people were telling me it wasn’t game enough. Some people were, but other people were saying they absolutely loved it. So eventually I listened to those people, and so Confabula Rasa was born, which was the original name of the game, because I’m nerdy and elaborate and the same person who published Heartcatchers was interested in publishing the game, so we were talking about it.

Emma: 29:02

I spent a lot of time working on the art for the game even though into tea, to kind of give it this look of the old, faded pieces of paper and at the time I was working full time as a video game marketing business person for a small indie video game company, so I was going to different shows and learning about all the conventions that were out there.

Emma: 29:41

I learned about the Indie Megabooth, so later I was able to show Confabula Rasa in the Indie Megabooth, print physical copies, so actually sold copies of Confabula Rasa, and eventually, through all those efforts, found another publisher to publish it. They changed the name to and then we died. We changed the art to the writer, wait tarot deck art, which is in the public domain, and we launched the game at essen in 2018 17 8 2018 pretty sure it was 2018. So that was very exciting going to Essen for the first time and launching the game, sold a bunch of copies. Then that publisher went under. I got the rights back to it and it was always kind of my baby when I was pitching other games to publishers. At the end of the meeting I’d be like and.

Emma: 30:34

I also have this little storytelling it’s like 26 card storytelling game, if you want and everyone thought it was really cool but didn’t really have a home for it Until Anna Maria launched Violet Daisy Games and was looking for story-based, story-type games and it was a match made in heaven and that’s how Epilogue was born. I mean, it was a long drawn-out birth process. Seven eight-year birth process of Epilogue was born. I mean, it was a long drawn out birth process.

Emma: 31:01

Seven, eight year birth process of epilogue no, I mean that is really cool that I forgot like it’s that you have been able to iterate so much, I guess, yeah, and I mean like it’s very sad that your original publisher for it went under, but yeah it means you got to keep working on it, yeah, and shout out to you know, anna Maria, of course, estefania Rodriguez and Arnel Ballut, the graphic designer and the artist, who are also two dear, dear friends of mine, and just the concentration of talent working on this game is more than I ever could have imagined, and the art is incredible and it’s just it’s going to be such a beautiful game and I’m so excited for that to have become a possibility yeah, how did you two get linked up?

Courtney: 31:54

well, I met Annemarie online gosh, was she?

Emma: 31:58

I? I think she was on the East Coast, dc. I think and yeah, I’m trying to remember Sorry, anna Maria when exactly it was that we met in person I meet so many people at shows over the years and she actually moved out here to Seattle and we started chatting more, getting to know each other, you know, becoming friends, and then just working up to this publication opportunity. And then she hired Arnell for the art and then we brought on Estefania and, yeah, it’s just another one of those things where all the the stars aligned for the perfect combination of creators.

Courtney: 32:43

That’s why I love this industry.

Emma: 32:44

So much, yeah. Yeah, it was like, oh, you know, I’m having this person do the art and you’re like, oh my gosh, either you love that, you know that person and love them, you don’t know them and you’re in awe, or, you know, fan crushing on the person. You’re like I can’t believe you’re getting that person to do art for my game. I’m dying. Yeah, it’s lovely.

Courtney: 33:10

So how did bringing in this storytelling aspect like just differ from your normal processes?

Emma: 33:20

I think one of the biggest parts is people’s perception and kind of the audience for the game, and I had mentioned earlier a little bit like people’s perceptions about the definition of the word game, which, spending more time in this industry, you know, being on the Ludology podcast for a few years and having a lot of these discussions my own definition and interpretation have changed over time. I have a very broad definition. I used to say that people working towards goals are making decisions in pursuit of a goal within a predefined space. But even that Candyland, I would absolutely say, is a game and you’re not making interesting decisions in that game. So I think there’s a lot of different definitions for game and I definitely would call a blog a game. There’s people who definitely would not. So it’s interesting navigating that space. I think it’s important. I don’t want to say those people are wrong, because I think when people are sharing these things in conversation, when they’re recommending games to other people, that word has weight and interpretations and a lot of it is comes down to is. This going to be an experience that I enjoy and I think when people share these things, it’s one of the biggest ways that games become known and spread amongst communities. It’s important that they have that language that they can use together to talk to people about it. So that’s been an interesting thing is like my ideas of what a game is. Others people’s idea of what a game is, I would say.

Emma: 35:08

The other piece is just people will quibble about whether or not they call it a game, but even people who don’t think it’s a game are surprised by how much they enjoy the experience. You know just the. I think when people come into a game like man and all artichokes, they have a pretty set idea of what it is. It usually fulfills what they expect from it. They’re like great, that was fun epilogue. They come into it and it’s.

Emma: 35:40

A lot of people haven’t had any sort of cooperative storytelling experience like that before, so they don’t know what to expect and just how much it surprises and delights people, even people who don’t think of themselves as storytellers. I like to say anyone can be a storyteller and it’s been proven over and over again with epilogue and it’s been just so wonderful to see people come together and enjoy it, even if they don’t think they have. Whatever it takes. It’s like humans are story, are storytellers. Every person tells stories every single day. I my car broke down on the way home from work and I had to call a cab. That’s a story. We’re always telling stories, so it’s just fun to give people a tool to do that in a fun and often hilarious way.

Courtney: 36:33

So earlier you mentioned the part of piecing words together from letter fragments, but I would love if you could maybe provide an example of like how that’s tying into telling the story yeah, yeah.

Emma: 36:48

So the each card has six or seven word fragments on it. The word fragments were decided on very intentionally. Speaking about systems, I worked on an algorithm to actually take the thousand most common, like four, five and six letter words, break them into beginning and end fragments and then rank those fragments based on frequency and use the most frequent ones on the cards to make it more likely that you can make more words. And each card can make like 1700 words or something wild like that. So you might have a beginning fragment on one of the cards. That’s like GRE, for example, and you always start with one card on the table and that has a bunch of fragments, so it might have an end fragment of AT on it. So you could lay the your card down on top of the card on the table and then, together the GRE and the AT double check my spelling in my brain Make the word great. But because the cards are double-sided and there’s multiple fragments, you might also have a c on your card. So instead of making great, you could rotate your card and use the c and the at and make the word cat. So any card you have and any card that’s already on the table. You can make many different words, choose one of them, put your card down and the really cool twist that I really like about this game is you don’t have to use your word. You’re going to point to someone else and they have to work your word into the story. And what’s really fun about that is it really takes the burden off of you as the word maker.

Emma: 38:39

And that was a pretty tough choice there, because a lot of people’s instinct is to want to use the word that they make and tell the story, and a lot of people do say that to me. They’re like, oh, but I want to use the word, and it’s sometimes in games. There will be mechanics that are so important that you kind of have to go against people’s instincts. I will. I like going with people’s instincts, but in this case it’s all more collaborative. You know, I make a word and you have to use it, and then when you’re done, you make a word and someone else has to use it. And that shared improv nature. It’s a very improv style game of people making words, pointing to each other, talking, and then adding another card to the tableau to make a new word and pointing to someone else, and just keep doing that until the last card is played and everyone dies.

Courtney: 39:34

Oh right, everyone dies, everyone dies. Yes, yep, in case you forgot, it was about figuring out how you died. Figuring out how you died, yeah, yeah, it sounds so fun, like I love storytelling games so much, like I feel like you’ve probably played gloom, maybe, maybe not um, I have it.

Emma: 40:03

I might have played it once. I’m trying to remember now because I just in chatting with keith baker and just hearing about it over the years, you know, is something I’m like that would be fun. And every time people hearing about it over the years, you know, is something I’m like that would be fun. And every time people talk about it I’m like that would be fun. But I’ve, I’ve just talked about it so much at this point I don’t know if I’ve actually I can, and I see the cards and I see how they stack up the clear and how they stack up yes, maybe, possibly, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually played. I think I’ve just thought about it enough that it’s entered my psyche. That’s fair. But yeah, exactly the kind of gloomy trying to give people happy birthdays and things so that you can be the gloomiest of people yeah, it’s like I’m just trying to think, like I think that that’s the only storytelling card based game that I’ve played.

Courtney: 40:51

Yeah, so now I’m like very excited to try Apple yeah, and I like storytelling games.

Emma: 40:59

Every other storytelling game I’ve played has been much more of a framework, more elaborate, either more mechanized or just more structured in creating characters and creating scenarios and world building. There’s so many things out there that make for interesting stories, or even in these days it’s starting to merge together with journaling RPGs and storytelling RPGs and the line is blurring between all these different mediums, which I think is really cool. But I really like the lightness these days. Just anything where I have to do preparation or learn elaborate rules, I just like, oh, it’s such a hump to get over. So I like providing an option of something. That’s seriously like put a card down, use the word, not octopus, because that would be too long of a word. Use the word diet, you know, and, or whatever it is, and go from there.

Courtney: 42:04

You know, card go yeah, it feels really accessible. Yeah, yeah, like I’m looking at my collection right now and I’m like, all right, I have a fair number of storytelling games, but yeah, they take like an hour to set up yeah, yeah, and I think that’s great.

Emma: 42:20

You know, I’ve definitely played some and had really just eye-opening experiences, I think, just the collaborative. You go to a different world. You know, it’s just intense, lovely experiences and I like that this takes that, wraps it just in a little package, little consumable, 10-15 minutes, and like there’s, there’s your story.

Courtney: 42:43

Play it at a bar, you know, play it, play it on the beach, wherever you are so now that you are, at the time of this recording, gearing up for kickstarter by the time it comes out it might have launched or just be about to launch, but is there anything else that’s going on right now to help prepare for that kickstarter? Like, how are you feeling about things?

Emma: 43:04

uh, good, good time it passes. You know time she passes. I swear I feel like I blink and a month has passed, because I had it in my head. It’s like, oh yeah, three months. We got three months and now it’s less than a month. Oh my gosh. Luckily, I love working with publishers. Anna Maria is absolutely bearing the brunt of this and is doing an absolutely incredible job. We’re going to be working with some other people as well. So right now, yeah, we’re definitely in the crunch period of all the.

Emma: 43:40

The review copies have been sent out and marie has done some really fun stuff with sending copies to people. We have a lot of really lovely folks who are going to get the game and look at the game, so I’m very excited to start to hear what everyone thinks about it. Although it is kind of fun, so many of these people have just built up relationships over the years and it’s like epilogue. It’s like, oh yeah, like we played and then we died, uh, five or six years ago. So they’re gonna have the mechanics of it, but be able to see it with the new art, which I’m so excited about and, yeah, just getting the word out about it because I think even with it having been published in its previous iteration. I think we did a few hundred copies, you know, and I always felt like I just want people to have this game because I think once it’s in people’s hands, uh, just really fun stuff is gonna start happening. So I’m excited for that yes, I’m excited for you.

Courtney: 44:42

You know, I do want to circle back, just kind of speaking about publishers.

Emma: 44:46

You’ve three now uh, I mean five, six seven ish.

Courtney: 44:55

Yeah, never mind, you only mentioned three my bad yeah yeah, okay. So you’ve worked with a lot of publishers. Yeah, having done so, what are some elements that you look for when you are starting up a new publishing partnership?

Emma: 45:14

I can speak yeah, I mean I have to say I’ve been so lucky and grateful to have incredible publishing relationships that even the company that unfortunately went out of business the company that unfortunately went out of business I’m still really close to the person who works as my publisher there. I a lot of people I knew before I started working with them. You know some people say don’t work with your friends, but for me I think that that having some level of closeness and trust with people is really important for those relationships. So all of the smaller publishers especially that I’ve worked with have been people that I’ve known and trusted because I talked to a lot of designers and a lot of people in the industry, you know, and there’s a lot of horror stories sounds like a lot, but some of it’s pretty bad. You know with what a lot of people have been through. I have to say, especially designers from marginalized backgrounds that I know have suffered kind of the worst of it. So more important than ever to kind of just know the people, either by reputation or from personal relationship, which is tough. Again, I’ve been very lucky to have met a lot of people, made a lot of connections over the years, so I do know these people. You know there’s talk through the grapevine so you can kind of get a feel for things once you’re in the know. Kind of get a feel for things once you’re in the know.

Emma: 46:55

So yeah, just having having the trust that they’ll do right with your, your art, with your baby and trust and then then verifying that. And that’s with contracts and conversations. And you have to have really tough conversations. And, like I have very heavy touch on all my games, I know some people, either through preference or accident, will just hand their game off and it goes and it gets published. You know, but the publishers are only human.

Emma: 47:25

I want to see the art for the stuff, because there’s things that I really care about in art, like having diversity of representation, because there’s things that I really care about in art, like having diversity of representation. So I want to make sure that a product I have my name on is something that aligns with my principles, the rule books. You know that’s really hard to get right. So I want to have final touch on that and I work that into my contracts. I have those conversations up front just to make sure that it’s a little more work. You know to be that high touch, but in the end, you know, it’s a product that I can really be proud of.

Courtney: 48:08

I think there’s a lot of really good advice and learnings in there. For sure. Yeah, it has to be nerve wracking, especially when it’s like the first time working with someone and you’re like this is my baby.

Emma: 48:18

Please, yeah, don’t screw it up yeah, I was, um, I knew a game lawyer when I was in New York City who actually hired to look over my first one or two contracts, and that was a huge help. And then I learned a lot. And for newer people in the industry, I know it can be hard to get in touch with people, but now there’s organizations like the Tabletop Game Alliance I forget the exact name of it, but there’s people like me you can reach out to about contract terms, and getting that all nailed down is really important. So, like, don’t be afraid to reach out to other designers. Like, we love talking to people about these things and making sure that people are taken care of.

Courtney: 48:58

One of the questions that I like to ask in all my interviews is that you know we work in this industry because we love it, but it can be hard, and so what would you say has been like the most challenging part, or just like some challenges that you’ve been encountering over the years?

Emma: 49:19

oh yeah, I mean I would say the.

Emma: 49:26

You can’t work in this industry or any industry, I’m sure without the community and the relationships, and 90% of the time that’s good and that’s great, but then there are other times when just the people or companies or organizations will do things that you don’t agree with, and that’s always an interesting struggle to navigate.

Emma: 50:00

You know, for example, the whole AI art thing and I’m very strongly against AI art and now publishers different publishers are having stances on that, you know. And how, how do you move forward in your relationships and in the industries as people are doing this or a lot of, you know, just kind of bad actors, and how do you stand up for your principles while navigating a profession? I think it’s a balance, you know. I think the biggest thing is just moving forward and chipping away and standing in your truth as much as you can, while trying to use whatever power influence. You have to make the changes that you want to see and make sure that this stays a good place for for everyone I think that’s very wise, because yeah like every time, it feels like we’ve gotten through one hurdle.

Courtney: 51:07

There’s another one and you know like where so much marketing has to happen on social media, and then just how much you find out one thing about one person and you’re like, well, shit.

Emma: 51:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah it is. It’s tough and I think each person needs to make the decisions about how they’re going to approach those situations. I think you can’t always be 100%. You know you’re working with a publisher who publishes 50 other games a year, you know, and maybe they’ll publish a game for someone that you don’t agree with. Or they’ll like a publisher or an organizational platform, a social media personality, who you don’t agree with and you can’t. I don’t think the answer is to chuck everything into the trash. I think if you do have the capability to just, you know, continue to stand, share your opinions. You got to keep working. You know you got to make a living, but also kind of use your position and power to try and just keep pushing that needle, you know.

Courtney: 52:25

Yeah, All right To flip it around. Looking back over the last several years of working on these games, what has been the most rewarding part?

Emma: 52:36

I would also say the people in the relationships.

Emma: 52:39

So, as tough as it can be, navigating amongst people and organizations and situations, I’ve met almost all of the best people I know through this industry over the last few years, seeing the people who participate in the industry as players and as fans and getting to share my games with them and seeing the looks on their faces when a game kind of clicks for them.

Emma: 53:14

To give an example, I was at XOXO Fest in Portland a few weeks ago and got to play, or actually got to see, played Epilogue with a group of seven people and they really got into this story of just having such a good time. And later, later or the next day, one of them came up to me and was just raving about the game and that was their favorite and they had such a good experience with it. Like they, their team had just won the Super Bowl or so that’s how excited they were about the game. And you know, just to be able to create something that inspires that kind of joy you know in people is incredible. So there’s a lot of joy that comes out of this and I’m grateful to be a part of that.

Courtney: 54:09

That’s so fun, that’s so special.

Emma: 54:12

Yeah, it makes my heart happy, it makes me feel warm yeah, definitely.

Courtney: 54:18

Well, I cannot believe that we’re already at basically an hour yeah but yeah, emma, if people want to find you and find epilogue when it launches, where should they go?

Emma: 54:36

yeah, so the depending on timing, the kickstarter violet daisy games uh epilogue. Right now we’re doing the the preview page and at a time in the future it will launch and be live and that’s going to be on Kickstarter. There’s also information on the Violet Daisy games website and you can also find Emma Larkins wherever fine goods are sold. So I have websites, instagram, blue sky, the old sites, other sites as well that shall remain nameless. You can connect with me. If you look up Emma Larkins pretty much anywhere and don’t find the travel author from the 90s, then you’ll probably find me there.

Courtney: 55:24

Perfect. I will have links to those in the show notes. Obviously, epilogue is the big one, but is there anything else coming up that you’re excited about? And allowed to talk about? Anything in the works?

Emma: 55:37

yeah, nothing really on the radar. I’m kind of in the pitching slash development process for things. I feel like, again time I have stuff that’s I’m hoping to get ready to the point of being ready to talk about very soon, but really it’s epilogue is the big one that’s happening yeah.

Courtney: 56:04

I think that that’s enough you?

Emma: 56:07

I don’t know. I always want to be do I like? I have stuff, like I have all this thing going, things going on in my head and things I want to get out there. But yeah, I’m excited for a blog.

Courtney: 56:16

I’m also excited for a blog. Emma, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been so fun. Thanks, yeah, thanks, for having me.

Courtney: 56:24

All right, listeners, we are going to wrap up the interview portion of our time today, but for patrons I I am now gonna end this section and then immediately start the next fun quick question blitz. Um, so for those of you who are unaware, on patreon we do a fun little extra segment where I ask emma a bunch of more silly questions and we learn a little bit more about her outside of all of the fun game talk that we just did. And you can find that if you go to patrioncom slash role play grow. Thank you so much, emma. Thank you. You just finished another episode of role play grow. To check out the show notes and transcript from today’s episode, you can go to lightheartadventurescom To keep up with every episode.

Courtney: 57:16

Please subscribe on your podcast player of choice and if you’re enjoying the show, I would absolutely love if you would leave me a review and share this episode with your friends. Your review might even get featured on an upcoming episode. To contact us, you can email roleplaygrow at gmailcom. There are a lot of social media sites out there right now. So look for roleplaygrow for the show account and look for either Ketra or Ketra RPG for my accounts. Lastly, I want to give a special shout out to our editor, sam Atkinson. Your help is always appreciated, sam. Thank y’all so much for listening and I’ll see you next time on Role Play Grow.