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Episode 4: Playtesting and Narrative with David Annandale
92 Plays1 year ago
Host Alan Bahr is joined by friend and author David Annandale to discuss David's work in the Games Workshop universes of Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar, Marvel, the use of RPGs in creating narrative fiction, and much more.
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Transcript
Introduction to Radio Free RPG
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm Alan Barr, and this is Radio Free RPG. Hello, I'm Alan Barr, and welcome to Radio Free RPG.
Meet David Annandale: Writer and Teacher
00:00:32
Speaker
Today I'm joined by my guest, David Annandale, writer, author,
00:00:37
Speaker
all-around creative individual. David is a teacher who teaches film and cinema at a college up in Canada, the far north place with the weird money, as I like to remind people. And David has played in role-playing games with me for coming on a decade now intermittently.
00:01:02
Speaker
God, is it that long already? Wow. Well, I've been married eight years and we were playing together before I was married. Oh my gosh, the time goes by. Well, everything changed with the last couple of years. David, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Now, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us about some of the work you've done and what people might find or be interested in.
Writing for Warhammer and Beyond
00:01:29
Speaker
Well, most of my writing has been for Black Library and Akonite, so in the Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar, and Horus Heresy lines, you'll find such books as
00:01:46
Speaker
The Damnation of Pythos, Ruined Storm, we've got some books about Nefarata and also some books recently in the Warhammer Horror Line, such as The House of Night and Chain and The Deacon of Wounds.
00:02:02
Speaker
For Akhenite, I've done some books for Legend of the Five Rings and Arkham Horrors, so like the novel in The Coils of the Labyrinth. And I've been writing a trilogy of Doctor Doom novels for them as well, with the third coming out this spring. Wonderful. That's all very exciting.
00:02:26
Speaker
I like to think so. Those are not small, interesting names to be working alongside. So as a professional writer, you also have written for tabletop role-playing game materials.
00:02:43
Speaker
But most of your writing is, we'll say, adjacent to the tabletop gaming space, inspired by or derived from, but not necessarily a required element, like a rule book or game book would be. Right.
Exploring the Warhammer Universe
00:02:59
Speaker
Yes. I mean, the the most I've done with that has been for you. Yes. So let's start with the the elephant in the room, I suppose, games workshop.
00:03:11
Speaker
All right. That is a that is an immediately recognizable IP to most gamers, especially in the miniature space where I often play war games. They are the 800 pound gorilla of the war gaming tabletop space. So what is it like writing in the grim dark far future of Warhammer 40K?
00:03:35
Speaker
It's a lot of fun. It was something that, that was the world that I came to via the fiction. My gaming skills there are, let's just say if you want someone that you want to beat easily, I'm your man. Sounds like I'll be coming up to Canada to improve my record.
00:03:59
Speaker
But what drew me to the universe was how it was a kind of one-stop shopping nexus for all the things that I love. So it's war, it's horror, it's science fiction, it's fantasy, it's everything in this wonderful dark and screaming stew. And I find that
00:04:29
Speaker
collection of elements absolutely irresistible. Sure. I have been playing various Games Workshop games for closing in on at least 20 plus years, probably close to 25. Now, I have things I like. I started with Warhammer Fantasy, the now sort of defunct old world, and then got into 40K and then Age of Sigmar.
00:04:54
Speaker
Is there a particular one of those three that you prefer to the others just in terms of like what you write or what it like kind of hits your sweet spot more obviously?
Creative Freedom in Age of Sigmar
00:05:05
Speaker
Well, most of the to date, most of my stuff has been for 40K. And that's where that was my way in. I, in fact, didn't start writing anything in the fantasy line until after Warhammer fantasy, after the the old world had been destroyed. Right.
00:05:23
Speaker
My first stories for the Age of Sigmar line were just as it was getting going. And then I didn't do anything else, any novel length work for that until it had been around for a few years. And so Neforato, The Mortarch of Blood was the first novel that I wrote for Age of Sigmar.
00:05:45
Speaker
My my attention is now kind of split sort of almost like 50-50 I kind of jump back and forth between the two and And so they they've both become very much home for me and sure so
00:06:00
Speaker
I mean, certainly if you'd asked me this question a few years ago, I probably would have easily said 40K was where I felt most at home. And that was my first love, right? And that, you know, it's still, you know, I mean, I've lost track of how many books I've written for that. But as the Age of Sigmar has developed and become a much, much richer place to play in,
00:06:27
Speaker
I don't think I could actually say. Oh, yeah, this is where I this is my favorite It then depends more on the individual project or individual character that I'm playing with Right. Interesting. So it's interesting you bring up neferata Because as an old-school old world player I recall her from when she was one of the undead queens of the Tomb Kings army The desert sort of pseudo-egyptian themed fantasy army in the old world
00:06:56
Speaker
When you were writing that book, how much were you allowed to reference sort of that subtle intrinsic character history? For listeners who aren't familiar, when the Old World was ended as a line, it was sort of in-universe, rebooted, retconned, and like mixed up into this similar but very different setting where some of the major characters still existed, albeit in alternate forms.
00:07:23
Speaker
and neferata seems to be one of those yes so there i mean in some ways i had um the i don't know if advantage is quite the right word for it but it might be so because
00:07:40
Speaker
My history with the fantasy line basically begins with Age of Sigmar. I didn't really have a lot of a history with the fantasy line. So I was newish to this universe along with all the characters. So I did have
00:08:05
Speaker
I mean, there've been, Josh Reynolds had written some stuff with Neforata in it before I did my two books with her. But my task with Mortarch of Blood was essentially to introduce her to, it was kind of book zero origin story for her in The Age of Sigmar. So in some, I mean, I wouldn't say it was a blank slate,
00:08:31
Speaker
Exactly. But it was more a sense of the character
00:08:41
Speaker
certainly pre-existed, but the history that I was using was one that began with the Age of Sigmar. I see. There was no mandate to tie in certain historical elements or baggage, for an example. Okay. No, not at all. Yeah. That's interesting. As a child, I found the Warhammer fantasy old world very engaging. I poured over that rule book. I read it inside out. I read all the army books, White Dwarf.
00:09:10
Speaker
And I'm intimately familiar with that universe. And I have found that as the Age of Sigmar has developed, I've fallen more and more in love with it, albeit for different reasons. Now, the interesting part of the setting is that they are linked. There is a tenuous sort of thread.
00:09:31
Speaker
But much of the history has been discarded by the apocalyptic world ending slash reboot. And this new setting is much more Michael Morcockian in a large aspect. It's very surrealist, a weird dark cosmic fantasy vibe to it, whereas the previous one was very much, as my friend would say, potato farmers trying to survive in medieval Europe. Right.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah, what like what is that like to write in like to me that sounds like a fascinating place Yeah, well and it's it's a much more expansive place now, right? They So that we have some each of the mortal realms is huge. So that gives the a lot of freedom as far as writers are concerned to
00:10:23
Speaker
come up with locales that we want. This was, of course, you can see in terms of the ongoing lore, the need to do something like this reboot because that map was getting very crowded. There weren't too many places left to have places, if you will.
00:10:50
Speaker
So, for instance, for my book, A Dynasty of Monsters, I wanted to have a city called the Colonnade in the Beastrealm, and I had all sorts of features that I wanted for the city, and so it was an easy thing for me to just, okay, go plonk, here it is.
00:11:09
Speaker
where
Narrative and Gameplay in Warhammer
00:11:10
Speaker
I have this playground here where I can do whatever I want. And it's for the story, it's not going to interfere with what's happening the next hill over with with, you know, with, you know, some whether it's the larger narrative or or some other story that that's going on, you're not going to run into you're not going to start banging into
00:11:34
Speaker
Corners or or dead ends where the narrow your your narrative can't go because there's another narrative that's crossing his path so so there's the the expansiveness which is which is great and then the
00:11:48
Speaker
The fact that each of the realms has its own flavor. I mean, flavor is a bit of an understatement. But that also... Identity, maybe. Yeah, identity would probably be a better way of putting it. And yeah, I think what you said is surreal. That quality is definitely there. And so there's a fun reminder to try to tell myself, OK, keep remembering this world does this kind of thing. So what's the...
00:12:16
Speaker
You know, what sort of extreme things are going to be happening? Because that, of course, is one of the features of all of the Warhammer universe's extremity. That's interesting. I will freely admit, when Age of Sigmar dropped, I was sad to lose the old world and I was probably a bit on the grumpy side, like much of the internet at the time.
00:12:40
Speaker
But as Age of Sigmar has expanded, I have deeply fallen in love with it. It is an evocative and interesting place to spend gaming time. I have to ask, which faction is your favorite? Oh, you see, it tends to be whoever I'm writing about at any given time.
00:13:00
Speaker
My shelves are groaning with boxes of either figures or armies that I bought for whatever book I happen to be working on. That being said, certainly in the Age of Sigmar, I lean heavily towards death, perhaps inevitably, given who I worked with in 40k.
00:13:28
Speaker
I've certainly grown very attached to the Grey Knights. I can support that. My first 40 army was demon hunters back in the day. So when they had all the Inquisitors and Grey Knights together.
00:13:45
Speaker
Yeah, so if I, if you held a gun to my head, maybe I'd go there, but it also, you know, like I said, it does depend on who happened to be having to write about it that, you know, on that given day. That's fascinating. I love to hear that. I played the Chaos Armies, Beast of Chaos and Slaves of Darkness.
00:14:07
Speaker
Um, primarily because I'm a forever GM. And so when we play the Warhammer RPGs, they're nice to have for monsters when we fight. Um, but my primary army in the old world was Bretonnians, which is not shocking to anybody who knows me. Um, and Sarafon actually in Age of Sigmar. I'm quite pumped. Oh, I love them too. Yeah. Yeah. They're alien space lizard dinosaur guys are super cool. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, so it's related to working in the Warhammer universe.
Doctor Doom Novels and Marvel Continuity
00:14:41
Speaker
You've also written some stuff for Marvel. Now, interestingly, whereas Warhammer is an IP derived from a tabletop game, you are writing these Doctor Doom and Marvel novels for an imprint of a tabletop gaming company, but it has nothing to do with a tabletop game.
00:14:59
Speaker
Right. Yes. Yeah. So Akhenite is the publishing arm of Asmodei. And as opposed to, say, Black Library, which is the publishing arm of Games Workshop, but the IP is all in-house. With Akhenite, the
00:15:18
Speaker
There are licenses acquired on a case-by-case basis. And so they made an arrangement with Marvel for us to be able to use some of the characters. And for the Marvel untold line,
00:15:35
Speaker
the villains was going to be the focus there. And when I saw a list of possible characters to write about, Dr. Doom is from
00:15:50
Speaker
You know, ever since I was a little kid has been my favorite Marvel character bar none. Just like there's just no contest. It's it. He's he's the guy. So I would have moved heaven and earth to to get to write him. And so that that's been, you know, an incredible privilege to be able to keep printing myself. I'm putting words in Dr. Doom's mouth. It's
00:16:17
Speaker
words that are being read by lots of people. And I have all of the novels that have been released so far, and they're fantastic. I love them. Thank you. Dr. Doom is my favorite Marvel villain. Again, like you bar none, there is not a contest. And so to hear you were writing him was very exciting for me because when I like your writing, and two is my favorite Marvel villain. So this was peanut butter and jelly moment.
00:16:42
Speaker
Um, do you find it challenging to write such an established character with such an established continuity? I mean, he's got 80 almost 80 years in some ways of content. Yeah, yes, it is a challenge. And the same with some of the the the the Games Workshop characters that had decades of war behind them. So there is a certain level of, you know,
00:17:12
Speaker
of anxiety. You want to do justice to the character. You want to be true to them. Now, in the case of someone like Doom, those
00:17:29
Speaker
80 years out of continuity are both a challenge and also provide a certain freedom because there's no way that all of those stories perfectly link up, right? You get different doctors doing different stories.
00:17:49
Speaker
I mean, one of the foundational comics for me as a child, one that I read over and over again, was an issue of Marvel's supervillain team up, which was a reprint, I think from originally astonishing tales of a battle between Dr. Doom and the Red Skull. And that had
00:18:16
Speaker
that had a huge impact on me. And so for me, that was Dr. Doom. That was my Dr. Doom story as a kid. I mean, he was in a bunch of other stories, but this was the one I kept coming back to. And so that has been a major influence, something of a cornerstone for the books, where I've referred to events in that comic,
00:18:46
Speaker
in the novels and in the third one that's coming out, the Tyrone Skies.
00:18:58
Speaker
I get to, well, it's Dr. Doom versus the Red Skull again. And so in some ways I'm writing a sequel to that comic. So I have that as some of the lore. There's some other Doom stories that I've drawn upon as well.
00:19:17
Speaker
I don't pretend to be drawing on all of them. That would be impossible. But there are certain strands, certain takes on him that I find particularly interesting. And so those have informed the interpretation of Doom that I provide in the novels. Sure. That's interesting. Have you read the book All the Marvels?
00:19:42
Speaker
No, I haven't. And I forget the author's name. I'll have to look it up. I'll post it in the show notes. It is a book written by a gentleman who read all of the core Marvel continuity that existed up to a point, up to the point where he finished because Marvel has never rebooted their mainline continuity. Right. The fantastic four that they viewed are still the same fantastic four in the Marvel continuity in terms of Reed Richards. Everything that's happened has happened to this Reed Richards.
00:20:10
Speaker
And he discusses the cyclical nature of the stories in the Marvel Universe and how the Fantastic Four and by proxy Dr. Doom sort of form a coherent thesis for the Marvel Universe. It's a very fascinating book about storytelling. And it was my favorite book of 2022. I recommend it to everybody who has a substantial interest in comics. It's a very engaging read. He's an excellent writer.
00:20:37
Speaker
The other thing I should, oh sorry, I was just going to say the other thing I should also add, which freaked up a little bit, is that the Akhenite books are positively taking place in another parallel universe, so they're not
00:20:52
Speaker
part of the mainline continuity of Marvel. Earth whatever. Yeah. Right. So we're 18 or something like that as opposed to 616 or whichever it is. So there's, which also then gives us a certain leeway as well. My dog has seen the mailman and is now upset about it. Apologies listeners, you're gonna hear that for a bit. Don't get a hound dog if you want to be a podcaster. It's a bad choice.
00:21:20
Speaker
So moving to the gaming side of the conversation, all this work with these IPs and these established characters, do you find that freeing when you do game work to be maybe cut loose a little bit? Or does that structure give you sort of a roadmap you get to adhere to that you find helpful as a writer? The pre-existing IPs and the rules and so forth?
00:21:45
Speaker
Yes. The way I think of it is the difference between, let's say, tie-in fiction work versus original work is the difference between an empty sandbox and a sandbox full of toys. So in the empty sandbox, that's your stuff. You can do whatever you want, but you've got to come up with it all.
00:22:09
Speaker
In the tie-in work, you have all these wonderful toys to play with. Now, you can't break them. They're not your toys. You have to give them back in good shape, but the toys are there and they suggest all kinds of stories, which is very much the function, I would say, of the miniatures themselves.
00:22:35
Speaker
the battles that you're playing out on the table, they're constructed to kind of give you a narrative as you're playing. So you're not just moving pieces around. Those pieces have names. They have agendas. This battle starts to take on a context. So it's not just, I shouldn't say just, but it's not go or chess, where the battle is abstracted from any kind of narrative.
00:23:03
Speaker
Sure. That's interesting. So one of the things you've done that I've been party to is you have ran an unreleased game I've written as a playtest for our mutual gaming group. So I want to talk about that experience, the idea of playtesting a sort of unfinished product in order to give feedback, because that's something that I don't think we talk a lot about in the game industry.
Playtesting and Storytelling in RPGs
00:23:29
Speaker
I find it very interesting because obviously as a game creator, I know how to play test and I do it a lot. But as somebody who might not have before, what was it like? What did you because it is similar in the sense that I'm hanging you a sandbox with toys you can't necessarily break. But I'm also asking you to maybe bend them a little bit and see if they do break. Right.
00:23:49
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's a lot of fun. And the nature of this game was certainly right up my alley. Because I haven't done a lot of play testing.
00:24:04
Speaker
Right. And I, you know, I don't I can't I don't fully see what's behind the curtain. Even when you draw back, I am seeing things, but I don't necessarily know what they mean. Right. So when I'm when I'm playing, when I'm running the game, I don't know if I'm butting up against walls or or breaking things. I'm having fun with what's there on the page and the
00:24:34
Speaker
what opens up. Now I may start to notice, okay, there's certain short hands or certain patterns of play that are emerging from this. Maybe there's kinds of roles that tend to sort of become almost default. Others aren't coming up very much. But I don't know if that's just the style of
00:24:58
Speaker
play that I'm falling into as a game runner or whether that's emerging from the rules themselves. I mean, where the structure of the game ends and the players begin is such a fuzzy borderland. It definitely adds an elemental challenge to the art of play testing because the audience is also the author. And that makes editing the product very difficult at times.
00:25:29
Speaker
Now we played this sort of hammer horror inspired role-playing game and one of the reasons I asked you to run it was that is a genre you have a lot of affection and knowledge about being as you teach film and specifically you teach a lot of horror films I've noticed.
00:25:53
Speaker
And so I presented this game that was sort of a generic take on this tropey genre of film. And one of the things I had implicitly asked, maybe not explicitly, was, does the game hit those notes you would have expected as a genre expert? And was that something you kind of thought about as you read it and you prepared the adventure you ran? Well, I mean, I think almost...
00:26:22
Speaker
It was almost background because the sandbox you gave me lent itself very nicely to the hammer tropes. So when I was coming up with a scenario to run, I never ran into a question of, okay, how can I
00:26:47
Speaker
play with the rules in order to make this particular event possible or these characters possible or this scenario work. The rules lent themselves very easily to the scenarios that I had in mind. So I kind of did a magpie thing, picking and choosing from different hammer films to kind of create this hodgepodge tribute to them that would seem to be one film but turn out to be another.
00:27:16
Speaker
And the but I didn't. So yeah, I wasn't finding that the rules were in any way a hampering that it was it was as it was with I find when I'm writing time fiction, the the rules are there as the very helpful structure, the skeleton on which to construct the narrative. But in the same way that
00:27:42
Speaker
you know, if we're looking at Lego or Tinkertoys or Mechano, right? The shape can be just anything you want, pretty much. The pieces are all there, you just have to put them together. Right. And the pieces, I mean, that's not a perfect analogy because there is obviously far more structure to this, not just a bunch of disconnected bits and bobs, but
00:28:09
Speaker
I don't think the analogy is completely wrong because
00:28:14
Speaker
There is that the freedom is much greater than I think people outside might, the industry or the field might necessarily think,
Creating and Testing Fantasy Settings
00:28:26
Speaker
right? That the idea of rules seems to, rules, the word sounds restrictive in some way. When really there are more guidance, framework and opportunity.
00:28:40
Speaker
Perhaps we should be calling them guide books, not rule books. Well, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I'll try that on my next book and see how badly my sales come in. So, as an author and a creative who spends time in these fictional worlds or these imagined settings, when you play a role-playing game, do you prefer to have an established setting provided to you?
00:29:05
Speaker
Like, would you like me to hand you a game like the Warhammer fantasy role playing game and be like, here you go. Or do you like generic rules where you can bolt on your own sort of inspirations? Most of the time when I have I mean, I've certainly enjoyed playing both when I have run a game, I almost invariably you
00:29:35
Speaker
use a game where I create my own setting. Is there a particular reason? It's fun. It's fun to create a world. I guess it appeals to me in the same way that writing does. So it's another creative outlet.
00:30:02
Speaker
I mean, the two do blend for me. So I've been off and on for several years. I've been running a first edition AD&D campaign whose world
00:30:24
Speaker
is one that I created for a fantasy novel of my own that I'm working on. And so it's been a way in some ways to, it's almost like I'm playtesting the novel's world on the characters. And I throw events at the players that are ones that I've been envisaging for the book. So there's
00:30:50
Speaker
sort of a kind of energy in that regard because it but it's I love living in worlds that that I can make up and and I mean the the the books the the books that I'm writing in 40k and ages sigma on the one hand yeah it's a pre-existing world but most of the stories that I write there are planets and cities that I have made up
00:31:14
Speaker
Sure. You have limitations on what you can do, but there's a lot of freedom inside those limitations. Enormous freedom, yeah.
00:31:24
Speaker
I know that in the past I have sometimes, by the past I mean high school, so we're going back to the 80s now, would use some modules, which I enjoyed, but I would almost invariably start to come up with, you know, I wanted my own, my own castle, my own this.
00:31:44
Speaker
So just like I want to write my own stories, so I think that's why most of the games that I run, I want to come up with my own scenario. Okay. That's interesting. I often feel similar, but with rules. Yeah. For me, the setting is often less relevant than how engaging I find the rule set I am either working on or playing with.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, and that I would have... Yeah, sorry, go on. No, please, then. Well, yeah, I mean, that's the... So that was some of the stuff that I really enjoyed with that hammer game we played or when I ran a Tiny Frontiers game where the rules made it very easy for me to come up with the story that I wanted to tell. They were rules that
00:32:43
Speaker
Because I could grasp them easily, it didn't take a lot of effort to then get all the nitty gritty and endless charts and tables of how something was supposed to work. I could throw the world together pretty quickly.
00:33:04
Speaker
and so I think I Would find very much what you just said. It's the are the rules fun, right? When I read the rules do I suddenly start getting ideas for the kind of game? I'd like to run the kind of world I want these rules to take place in and that's sure that is that is What usually draws me to one game system or another? It's the rules Okay, that's interesting um, so
00:33:34
Speaker
I have sort of a unusual question.
Solo RPGs as Inspiration Tools
00:33:40
Speaker
When you are playing these games, are you using them to stress test? Now you said for the case of this fantasy game, obviously, you're sort of stress testing the setting you created.
00:33:53
Speaker
And I imagine using that to be like, oh, I don't have an answer for XYZ. I better write that in or something that a player provokes. But when you play games as a player, are you sort of doing the same thing with a character idea? Like this is a character idea I have for something. Hmm. Um.
00:34:14
Speaker
Less so because it's I guess primarily it's been a long time now since I've had a chance to play a character in a sustained way rather than a couple of individual sessions. Right. So, you know, so the the ability to become attached to a character and see their development where they're going. It's been a long time.
00:34:44
Speaker
since I've been able to be on, I guess that's one of the joys about being on the referee side of the table, that you have the world, you have the scenario, you've previously become attached to it before you even rolled the first dice, right? Because you had to come up with it all before the game session began. Whereas with the character, especially if it's a game that I haven't played before,
00:35:13
Speaker
It's a question of getting used to, okay, how is this supposed to work? What do I do with this character? I'm kind of feeling my way through how this world works, what we're supposed to be doing, what to expect. And I think one of the most fun things I've had with a character though was the, oh, and Chris, now that the name's got on my head, Morkeborg? I'm getting the name. Oh, yes.
00:35:42
Speaker
Yes, Mortborg. Yes, I ran Mortborg. And even though it ended with a total TPK, which seems to be a feature, not a bug with that system, there was this kind of immediate, okay, yeah, I get how this works. This is just nuts. I can have fun with this character. Oh, he's dead. Well, that's just fine, because that was hilarious.
00:36:09
Speaker
And so there was something very, very easy, for whatever reason, about how I found I was able to slip into the world of that game or the character that I had there. I mean, otherwise, you know, like a sustained character, again, I'd probably have to go back to high school the last time I wore one of those.
00:36:32
Speaker
That campaign would have made a heck of a novella or short story. That little one shot was intense. Okay, so have you ever, as a writer, thought about using solo RPGs to kind of craft a story and then, in essence, transcribe it?
00:36:51
Speaker
I haven't really had any experience with solo RPGs yet. I have a few, but I just haven't had the time to explore them. Sure. I don't know yet. I'd be interested if you ever get the chance to hear your thoughts about that. Maybe we'll do a second episode about solo RPGs and their benefit to writers. Because I have found as a setting creator, sometimes those tools that provoke me to have to answer questions get me going faster than anything else.
00:37:21
Speaker
Well, that's certainly and then coming back to your earlier point about the testing the the world in the D&D campaign. I mean, it it wasn't a like a strict copy paste because I was bringing in all the D&D monsters and but it would certainly what it did do and perhaps
00:37:45
Speaker
I mean, it's less in the form of stress testing, but in the sense of inspiration or ideas, like the characters are certainly going down here. Okay, what's going to be over here? Oh, now these characters are coming to mind this location, how they interact with each other. It becomes like an inspiration generator. And I can imagine the solo RPG then functioning in much the same way, given what you just said. Interesting.
00:38:13
Speaker
All right. So I have two questions left because we're coming towards the end of our time together. The first one, and I've warned you about both of these. You have, yes. The first one is, what's a question you've never been asked in an interview that you've always wanted to answer? And then I'm going to ask you to answer it. All right. So I guess the question is, how do different media come together in your imagination when you write? Sure. Yes, I would. That's an excellent
00:38:40
Speaker
question. I wish I thought of that frequently. No, I'm jealous. All right, go ahead. All right. So it's a stew in much the same way that 40K is a conglomeration of elements. I do have a very visual imagination. So movies are definitely, they're always there. And when I write, it's kind of like a slow motion film. I'm seeing it in my head.
00:39:05
Speaker
But though, as we've just been discussing, writing and games can mutually influence one another. I mean, I'm very aware, both because of my day job at the university, that of the incredible intertextual ocean that all art exists in. And I try to
00:39:35
Speaker
be very conscious of that too in my writing. So think about where did this come from? Or looking at how I can pay tribute to this, that, and the other thing. Though I just discovered just the other day that I was watching a poverty row thriller called Mystery Liner from 1933, I think.
00:39:58
Speaker
which had this remote control ocean liner controlling gizmo in it that must have been the inspiration for something that I had in my first novel, Crown Fire, even though I only saw the film for the first time this week.
00:40:14
Speaker
But I had read about it back in the 90s. So that must have been there, even if I didn't remember that one government initially. It's interesting how those snippets stick with you over the years. Yeah. And then sometimes it's things that have been staying there for a long time and you suddenly get a chance to use them. So in the most recent Dr. Doom, the forthcoming Dr. Doom,
00:40:45
Speaker
I'm bringing back a Marvel character who hasn't been around since I think 1962. It was only ever had one appearance, but whose appearance on a cover fascinated me from childhood on. And suddenly I had the chance to bring that character in. At the same time, one of my major characters in the Dr. Dumarck is a Dr. Orloff, and that
00:41:12
Speaker
And she is my tribute to other Dr. Orloff's, the awful Dr. Orloff of just Franco's film and then, you know, innumerable other Franco films and the Dr. Orloff that Bela Lugosi plays in Dark Eyes of London.
00:41:31
Speaker
So by bringing her in, I was able to, and then establishing that yes, she is related to both of those Dr. Orloff's. I've had the joy of establishing continuity between a British Bela Lugosi film from 1939 and just Franco movies starting in the 60s and the Marvel Universe.
00:41:52
Speaker
And so it's one of these synergies of different media. So both movies, novels, and comics. Wonderful. That's been there in my head. I can bring them together in one character. That's fascinating. I think it's very similar to myself in role-playing games. I will see something or read something and I go, I wish I could game that.
00:42:17
Speaker
And I will sit down and go, what do I need to do to game that? And then I will start pulling all these pieces from games I've played or ideas I've had about games and trying to make them in this cohesive element. That sounds like a very familiar process. Yes.
RPGs and Player-Driven Storytelling
00:42:34
Speaker
And the second question is, do you have any questions for me that you'd like to answer? This is your chance.
00:42:40
Speaker
So you've written a lot of games, probably even just today. And so what I wonder is, is there a kind of ideal, like platonic ideal or ergame experience manifestation that you're trying to reach? No.
00:43:04
Speaker
Um, over the years I have decided for myself that no one game will serve all purposes. There is no one game to rule them all as it were. Um, but I am kind of, for me, the perfect game is about the story I'm trying to tell for each sort of genre or theme. There is a perfect game, I think something that hits all the notes I want.
00:43:29
Speaker
And for me, that benchmark is sort of a Pendragon, King Arthur Pendragon. If I'm going to play an Arthurian mythos game, I do not think I could design or find a game better than Pendragon for that. And I want to find those games for all these different various genres I like. Right. What is my perfect superhero game? It won't be the same as my perfect dark fantasy game. So they both need to be written.
00:43:54
Speaker
OK. And sometimes that explorations about the rules. For example, the Kickstarter we just wrapped up, Mont Noir. It's not about the setting or the theme, but it's about the idea of a game forcing you to create a physical legacy artifact at your table that is both in character as well as a meta narrative guide for what is happening. Because if you die, you pass that your kid journals found by the next character who stumbles across it and they continue adding to it.
00:44:21
Speaker
Right. And so in that case, I'm like, I want to explore this game idea of tactile gameplay where you are the author and the audience of your own work. So so might not be necessarily it can be a genre or it can be a mode. Yep. Or a feeling or an experience like it's such a role playing games to me are this unique medium
00:44:46
Speaker
where in a fiction novel, I am reading what the author has written down. And I am adding my own interpretation to it, but the words are static. I am not altering them. In a movie, the same concept. I can't have my own interpretation. I can be influenced by it. But what I see on the screen is going to be the same, theoretically, every time when I watch that one singular film. In a role-playing game,
00:45:12
Speaker
The basis of the rules we take creates such a substantive product that the audience and the author are the same individual. And that is a unique storytelling medium that I don't really think exists anywhere else.
00:45:27
Speaker
No, I agree. What you said there is almost exactly what I tell my classes when I teach the video game courses. Unlike other narrative forms, this one is one where the experience is empirically different for each player. Even the player replaying the same game they've played before,
00:45:52
Speaker
There's going to be differences. It's not the same movie replayed back. Things are going to be actually different. And with the tabletop RPG, even more so, it's that form of on-the-spot collaboration that, yeah, I agree. It is a unique form of narrative. Yeah.
00:46:15
Speaker
That was a great question and one I've never been asked. That was, that was, that was good. I liked that. Thank you for making me think about that. Excellent. Glad I helped. Well, David, if folks want to find out more about your work and what you're up to, where can they find you or follow you? They can find me on my website, davidannandale.com on the social media, mostly on Mastodon now at davidannandale at horrorhub.club.
00:46:46
Speaker
Okay. And do you have anything upcoming that you want to let everybody know about? Well, I guess the upcoming book is The Tyrant Skies, the final book in the Dr. Doom trilogy.
00:47:00
Speaker
And I guess the most recent books would be Mortarian, The Pale King, that are out right now. Mortarian, The Pale King, a Horace Heresy book for Black Library, and In the Coils of the Labyrinth, an Arkham horror novel for Agony.
00:47:21
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, thank you very much, folks. I heartily endorse David's writing, not just because he's a friend, but because he's an excellent author who I very much enjoy reading and would enjoy if I didn't know him. So please check out David's work. Let him know what you think. And until next time, this has been Radio Free RPG.