Wythe Marschall, creator of Stillfleet, shares a monster born in the frozen ammonia crystals of Yuggoth at the far reaches of our solar system 100 billion years in the future.

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Wythe Marschall: https://twitter.com/hollowearths

Music by Jason Shaw at Audionautix.com

The portal between, the

module you're in and the next module,

swishes open, and through the circular

portal you see into the hydroponic farm

module, uh, and something is moving there.

It's a little lower than

a human, but larger.

And it's bumping into the plastic

shelves, which in half G are

creating floating blobs of water

that are slowly moving toward the

floor due to the pseudo gravity.

And then as it turns, you can smell

it before you see it, actually it

reeks of ammonia and you instantly

all click your helmets back in and the

clean air is begins to scrub it out.

And the thing that's looking at, you

looks a bit like a Dungeness crab if it

was also sort of a harvestman, spider,

uh, and also at a rave and also had

some computer equipment strapped to it.

It's sort of almost like hard to decipher.

It doesn't have a clear head.

Um, it has multiple branching legs.

It turns to you, and then one of those

little technical bits, it looks like

almost like a little Bluetooth speaker,

but made out of like gray exo crust.

It's like a living it's a grown and

displaced on its sort of shoulder, in

quotation marks, it blares at you in

perfect Spin, it's the language you speak.

And it says in this very neutral

kind of robotic tone, "Hello, we are

looking for help acquiring an item."

Welcome to Making a Monster.

This is a Migo, and it's just

one of the super weird, super

future encounters in Stillfleet,

the sci-fi RPG by Wythe Marshall.

It's the system that helped this show

explain the pyramid of Villa during

the GM edition episode on Float City

with Mike Rugnetta and Taylor Moore.

At the time, Stillfleet was still

in play testing, but now the game is

a full core rule book in the final

hours of its Kickstarter campaign to

become a full color, hard back reality.

I'm pleased and honored to introduce

you to a game that will throw

you head first into the depths of

cosmic thought and to its creator,

Hi, I'm Wythe Marshall,

I'm a writer and game designer.

I'm creating a game called Stillfleet.

It's a sci-fi tabletop role

playing game set in the far future.

It's about the politics of work.

So your characters are void miners.

They work for a company that goes

out in space and takes stuff from

dead civilizations and from aliens

and from current other civilizations.

And you get to choose whether you

wanna do that or you wanna push back.

And then my day job, I'm a social

scientist, I'm an anthropologist of

food and agriculture, but focused

again on tech and the future.

And big political economic questions.

So I think there is there's some through

line between far future game stuff

and the present of the food system.

Wythe, I wanna tell you that

Stillfleet is perhaps responsible

for one of the most fulfilling

listening experiences I have ever had

in the person of the Float City arc

from, Mike and the team at Fun City.

I agree.

I, I think they just really knocked outta

the park and, um, I can only take very

small credit for, you know, that's the

game system I created, but they really

did such an amazing job with that story.

You know, I think endings are really hard

and I think they just nailed the ending

and that really makes such a difference.

The level of thought and like

emotion put into, you know,

kind of year long sci-fi arc.

And you have a

podcast called Fields, right?

The latest episode that I saw was from

April is that project still running?

Yes.

Um, thanks for, for shouting that.

Yeah, my friend, Melissa Metrick,

who is the farmer at NYU.

I work at NYU as a researcher in the

business school about the future of

farming and public private, partnerships.

She, and I have a podcast called

fields, the unfinished story of,

uh, urban agriculture on heritage

radio network, because we both

focus on urban agriculture.

So she as a farmer, herself and

myself as a social scientist, as a,

as a researcher, uh, and we interview

people who are engaged in all kinds

of aspects of, um, urban agriculture.

We finish the second season, at

the start of the summer and we're

taping the third season now.

So sometime in the fall, that will start.

So there, there definitely will be a third

season of fields we're working on it.

I also wanted to bring it up

because it reflects this long history

that you have of working in this space

and thinking about sort of the core

ideas that went into building Stillfleet.

I understand this is a project you've

been working on for about 15 years.

Is that true?

I looked, and found

the oldest record of this kind of

setting as like a home brew game for

like an OSR campaign, uh, was like 2011.

But certainly before that I was

running games and thinking about game

design, um, but a lot less seriously

in terms of kind of one stake in

the ground, you know, setting.

Um, and even then in, in 2011,

it certainly wasn't like, oh,

I'm gonna write a book per se.

It was like, no, I wanna make a big

capacious campaign setting for my friends.

And I have lots of ideas

about the future and climate.

So let me sort of foreground those

and make it more sort of political

and about climate disruption and tech,

you know, the politics of technology

is, is tech good or bad, or sort of

have a lot of wacky, uh, you know,

AI and, and just kind of go, go fun.

And then 2017 is when it got much more

serious as like, okay, I'm writing a book.

I know, you know, I sort of have all

of the, the elements in place by then.

Stillfleet has been described

to me as a super future setting.

Because you are not concerned

with small questions and you've

created this game that is capable

of taking very, very big swings.

Is that an accurate descriptor?

And what does super future mean in

the context of Stillfleet's world?

That is I think

an apt term because, uh, it's

set, not in the near future.

It's set in the very far future on

purpose, just picking kind of an

arbitrary number where, continents

would be different, but you know,

the solar system would still be here.

So if you wanted to sort of visit earth,

not that it's even set on earth for se,

but you know, that you could sort of

find, um, ways back to some ancient past,

but it would be so buried and changed

that that most people would have no

relation to anything in, in 2022, right.

The idea of the super future in some ways

is to provide, um, a fictional, a sort

of safe, fun, fictional place where I

can then model things that are happening

today, but they can be so different.

And, and I can always say, oh, it's a

hundred million years in the future.

And so it's not one to one.

It's not making fun of any specific

thing or forcing people to engage

in any specific kind of political

discussion about 2022, it's providing

a fun, you know, RPG environment for

games, but you can simulate, "Okay,

you work for a company, the company

does things you don't agree with.

What are you gonna do about it?

you're working for money, but it's like

the values of things are very arbitrary."

And actually in the world of

the game, you, um, you don't

have to pay for food or lodging.

So it actually is a weird sort of

like, wait, is this post scarcity?

What is the vibe?

Um, and I think it, it sort of gets

to like, why would you go adventure?

And the politics of that.

So for the company they're saying, go

steal this ancient tech from aliens

or whatever, we're, we're trying to.

Kind of a mass.

There have been many civilizations

that have come and gone.

That's the big trope, right?

Is over a hundred million years, many

advanced civilizations rise and fall.

It's implied that if you get faster and

light travel, generally you flame out

in a civil war and or other advanced

species destroy you for reasons.

And there may also be time travel,

because again, if you could move

fashion and light, you could time trap.

So, you know, that's not a huge part of

the game, but it's sort of, again, implied

maybe events are being sort of sculpted by

actors in the future to achieve a certain

outcome or change a certain outcome.

And you're swept along in

this, this, uh, environment.

And really, again, that is just

a, um, it's like an engine,

you know, it's a way to model.

It's more to me, more interesting specific

interactions where it's like, what do

you do when you go to a world that is,

um, facing kind of environmental crisis?

What do you do when you're asked

to do something you don't agree

with morally, uh, what do you

do when you encounter others?

You know, aliens, but, um, even

though they look different, they

might, they might not be like,

quote unquote evil or like, what

would it mean for them to be evil?

You know, they might just have a

very different way of thinking.

And so the game, um, you know, it

has crunchy, like you can fight

them, but you also have lots of

powers where you can get out fights.

And so I think that ties in with

this idea of exploring all the

stuff that might have happened over

millions of years, um, come and gone.

So there's advanced tech, there's,

uh, all kinds of, of organisms and

even humans being still around.

I mean that, again, it's implied that they

are, uh, have been recreated, you know,

they've been modeled on ancient humans,

but they're not like direct descendants.

Um, and, and I think that, again, it

allows people to both like, do things

that feel familiar and explore sort of

the things I find interesting about, um,

the near future, but by making it so far

future super future, um, I think they

have a little more creative license.

I feel like that anyway, when I'm

playing the game or running the game.

Um, and I, I think other people do too.

It's so far in the future that

you don't have to feel like

you're sort of stuck responding.

Things happening right now in

our lived experience that we, you

know, have anxieties about, um, or

maybe are excited about either way.

And, um, and those games

can be fun too, for sure.

Like near future settings, you

know, more cyber punk settings.

Um, this one is trying to do something

a little different on purpose.

Um, and maybe we'll do a different

game, you know, set a hundred years

from now or whatever, uh, instead

of a hundred million, um, next,

but you know what I mean for now?

It's, we're firmly in the super.

In the same way that we talk about

board games as engine building or deck

building, or push your luck or so on.

There are a couple of like standard

descriptors that apply to TT RPG systems

as in dice pools or a D 20 system.

How do you generally talk about the

mechanics of Stillfleet and then,

um, what would the experience be like

as a player, if we were, uh, putting

this together and getting started?

Yeah.

Um, it's meant to be very simple.

So it's meant to be in a way rules light.

It came out of, um, my interest in the

sort of old school Renaissance, um, and

trying to forge my own system that was

very different from D 20 systems, which I

had run my whole life and was just really

dissatisfied with, by about say 2015.

I was really looking for other

mechanics and I'd played a

lot of D 10 systems, um, d100.

And certainly now 2d six has become,

you know, the Vogue, but I, I

really, none of it was doing what

I wanted in terms of, um, ranges.

And so it was very simple.

You know, in conversations with

my, my friend, Paul Gray, who's

really amazing mathematician and

you know, I had this thought, well,

what if the scores just were dice?

Like we keep talking about these

secondary mechanics, you know, if you

have a, a score from whatever three

to team, you get a plus or minus.

If you have, uh, you know, you are

adding plus one or, you know, plus

three or whatever in a, uh, apocalypse

game, what if you just simplified it

and you had different dice and you're

just trying to beat the other person.

If you initiate the action,

then you win the tie.

And so usually there's a contest and a

being you're rolling against whether

it's another PC, you're more likely, you

know, the GM has some die determined by

how good the thing is that you're, you're

fighting against, um, at, at that task.

And you have your die.

Um, and we have a small number of scores.

We have five scores, so combat

movement, reason will and charm.

They're different die types.

You assign them when you make your

character, doesn't take very long.

Uh, and then you might have

pluses, you know, you might have

a there's sort of species bonuses.

So if you were some robot

that's very fast, you might have

like a plus one to movement.

So you roll your die and add one.

I mean, it's not a huge deal.

And that felt really fun.

And we also set a neutral value.

. A lot of times it became simpler

to not roll against the GM.

The GM's number is just six.

You're trying to get a six

or higher, then you succeed.

So for example, I say, oh, I look

around, okay, will you roll will to

perceive, perceive falls under will.

And if you get a six or higher,

um, you find something interesting.

The GM has to kind of

reveal a clue, a secret.

If you don't, then the GM can give you

general description, but doesn't really

tell you sort of deeper what's going on.

And, uh, and your will

die might be a D six.

If you're a, you know, regular Joe, a

D eight, if you're sort of trained in

like sleuthing, uh, you know, a D 10,

if you're really quite good and a D 12

would be like superhuman and everyone

starts off with, you know, one D 12 stat,

one D 10, one D eight and two D six S so

you assign those, um, different classes.

You'd probably wanna be more fighty

if you were the Stillrider, the sort

of space Marine class, you'd probably

wanna higher combat score, cuz your job

is to hurt things, um, for the company.

Right?

So that's, that would make sense

that you would be trained in that.

You'd be super good at that.

Uh, and then your health is

determined by adding the maximum

value of your combat and movement.

So that's just a number

from 12 to whatever 22.

Um, and that goes up or down, you

know, if you get hurt, goes down, if

it goes to zero, your prone, and if

you get attacked by your prone, you

die prone, meaning like you can't act.

Um, so that's very basic.

The other thing we added over

time, we added this, meta mechanic,

you have a pool of grit and

your powers generally cost grit.

So the class powers all cost grit.

Your grit's determined by class.

It's two scores added

together your max values.

So again, probably like from 14 to 22 to

start and it goes down and use powers.

Well, that's all pretty simple.

Other games have that, you know, you spend

your effort points, whatever to do magic

or whatever you're doing in this game.

You can also burn.

a, a rough, uh, equivalent

from, from the D and D world.

Oh, sure.

But, you know, grit is not that in that

it's not, not everyone's casting spells,

but you have powers that cost, points.

And um, the core thing is that you can

boost so you can burn three grit or

six grit or nine grit, which could be

a lot nine grit is like probably half

your starting grit for many people.

Um, ju just under half, um,

to get a plus three, a plus

six or plus nine on any role.

So anytime you're rolling to do anything

other than recover grit, obviously,

uh, you can burn grit and increase

your chances, but you still fail.

If you roll a one, you always fail.

If you roll a one.

So it adds this.

Kind of crazy gambling mechanic

where you're like, I burn

nine grit, like screw it.

Um, but it's really fun.

It in practice, it just

makes those big moments.

I think what it does for me is it, it

added something that was a little bit

missing, which was like the Nat 20 moment

in D and D where you're like, I got a

natural 20, I, I totally killed a monster.

So this is the same thing.

You're like, "I burn nine grit."

Like that's so much of my effort and

it's supposed to represent like, you

know, your energy, your attention,

your ability to like succeed.

You know, I don't know about you,

but like when I start the day,

I can only write so many really

good emails or pages or whatever.

And then by like the afternoon,

I'm like, hi, I need a break.

You know?

Um, so it's just meant to represent

that very abstractly and it's, it's

fast again, it's simple to learn.

Um, it's not like a huge headache cuz

you're again, adding a small number.

So it's, it's not like you

have to do a lot of math.

Um, so I'll shut up about it,

but that those are the two core

component.

you that, like that yin and

yang, that you've produced that push

and pull of, of, uh, randomness in the

person of the die and then choice in the

form of the grit pool are so central.

Like that is the heart and soul

of what makes a TT RPG, a TT RPG.

And you're right when you burn grit

and move it from a, a random outcome

to one over, which I have decided to

invest my maximum effort and cause

a certain outcome that slaps, to

be honest, like, that feels good.

And it's something that, uh, I

don't see in a lot of systems.

So I, I really appreciated

that about the game.

Let's talk about some of

the, specific antagonists in.

Stillfleet.

In particular, I wanna talk

about what you have called Cates.

I've not heard the name of

Lovecraft mythos used in that

particular way before, as, as an

adjective with that construction.

Uh, and it feels at once familiar

and different, which sounds to me

and looks to me like what you are

doing, um, with the, uh, Kalu mythos.

So Stillfleet being a super future

game and accessing all of the

rich history of science fiction.

How does that compare in

your mind to cosmic horror?

And why did you make the choice to, um,

make them so integral with each other?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's a fair question.

And I think some people push back

just because obviously of the,

the legacy of Lovecraft himself.

Um, but if you look at, to me, the

legacy of science fiction and the

impact Lovecraft had on science

fiction, um, and really more the,

the, the tradition of what I, I call

science, horror people call cosmic core.

Um, I think it's it it's, um, under

studied in science fiction studies.

So it's almost like people think

that, you know, science fiction takes

off from Jules Verne or whatever,

and this hard sci-fi standpoint.

And I think the pulp influence the weird

cosmic influence that taps into the things

Americans really like, you know, go big

or go home spiritual sort of, you know,

cosm this sort of religious, uh, religios.

Um, that, that Lovecraft really nails in

the, the classic stories, um, where at

some point, if you did encounter an alien

who was the size of a planet, I mean,

that would effectively be God, right?

And you could imagine cold

springing up and all these things.

Um, if you, if you, there beings that can

move in and out of our, our dimensions.

I mean, I think some of the horror,

the awe, the terror, the horror, all

being intermixed in those moments of

encounter, um, feel a lot truer than

a lot of the classic classic sci-fi

that is taught in sort of intro, uh,

or, you know, would be collected in

anthology of like the greatest 25 science

fiction stories up to a certain point.

I think now it's changing cuz now again,

I think.

yeah.

There's more people reading and writing.

So now those are getting much better.

You'd see, you know,

you'd see amazing stories.

You can imagine like a Ted Chan story

that's totally mind blowing that would

now be in an anthology that wouldn't

have been when I was a little kid right.

In the eighties, nineties.

So all I'm saying is, um, I think, you

know, putting Lovecraft's, um, personal

life aside in a sense, um, which I don't,

you know, I know you can't do entirely,

but I think he was onto something as

all I'm saying he had some good ideas

about, okay, there's a kind of scale at

which we can imagine from a hard science

fictional standpoint, he, you know, was

an obsessive reader of science news.

If you just extrapolate, okay, there's

some being that's evolved that can

live thousands of years and it's

the size of a mountain or whatever.

That would have a very different, reality

for people kind of encountering it,

uh, interacting with it in some way.

And it, and it does kind of push

science fiction into this, um, realm

of the spiritual, uh, or, you know,

the cosmic for, for sense of scale.

And I think that a game set so far in

the future that's meant to, um, really

play with scale and have the ability for.

Players to go down rabbit

holes with clank technology.

So it's low tech enough where like having

a pistol that works is kind of a big deal.

Um, but also right,

there's advanced aliens.

There's advanced immortal God like aliens.

So it's like, you know, that, that scale

is just this powers of 10 thing where

you can zoom in and you have a whole

scramble on a desert planet where you

need to find bullets for one pistol,

or you need a canteen full of water.

You could also have a game about,

you know, a kit and not to again,

you know, but just to reference fun

city cuz it's, you know, it exists.

Um, I think that's something, uh,

the float city arc of fun city did

really well is they introduced, you

know, one very powerful entity and

then kind of, you didn't realize it

at first necessarily how much of the,

the sort of story was about this.

Entity's just vast power and

knowledge and what it wanted

and how alien its once were.

Um, and, and it leads to a

really epic ending obviously.

Um, which so not to spoil too much,

but that's like, that's kind of,

I think, um, getting it, some of

these ideas that are incipient in.

Um, certainly not, not only Lovecraft,

but I think because some of those

stories nail it so well, it's just easy.

It's a reference point where many

people reading them growing up could

say, aha, there's something here.

That's quite different from this sort of,

um, some of the other themes explored and,

and sort of other, other sub genres of SF.

So, um, that was just a starting

place that has influenced me.

And I think the response to it.

So I'll just add you, then you

have writers like Victor Leval.

Um, you could also look at like Lovecraft

country, um, you know, PI, which is

playing around with, um, Poe, but,

but you know, Matt Johnson's work.

Um, you, you have these writers

where, uh, they're taking the

mythos and they're intentionally

kind of playing with elements of

it, um, because of their, their own

interest in today and in sort of.

You know, modern cultural values

as opposed to like Lovecraft

as a traditionalist, right?

Not like he was like, anti-modern

so what do you do if you are a

modern person, but you're still

interested in those moments of cosmic

awe cosmic scale, terror, and awe.

And what would it really be like to

encounter in a mortal being that exists

in more physical dimensions than three?

So I think that's those kind of

what ifs were interesting to me.

And I think similar to some of these other

writers of the new, weird, uh, China,

you know, I wanted to like pull some of

those elements out and, um, remove them

from, you know, Lovecraft per song and

this idea of like, oh, you're in the

1920s and you're an investigator which

you see in the call of Kalu kind of games.

And instead it's like, no, no, no,

it's a hundred millions of future.

It's a game about space

capitalism, but, you know, yeah.

There might be out there in the depths

of space hundred billion year old,

uh, you know, or not, not say that's

older than the universe, but you know,

billion year old, um, star sized beings.

And like, what would

you do if you met one?

You know what I mean?

And I think that is something,

um, really interesting.

It it's creates a different

kind of encounter from you meet

sort of the humanoid like alien.

Or you meet the evil robot,

you know what I mean?

So these are sort of sub

genres that one can play with.

I wanna drill down more

specifically and talk about the,

uh, Migo astrobiologists, um, cuz

these are a ULA kit monster in the

quick start in the quick start guide.

Can you thumbnail for

me what these guys are?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I should, I should clarify.

And this is not at all to be

pedantic about my own game,

No, no, please be

pedantic about your game.

one

UL

will

we use as a specific

term to mean like so powerful.

So alien that they live in quote

unquote, another dimension or

whatever, they, they kind of don't

interact with time space normally.

So the Migo are just aliens,

but you're absolutely right.

They're coming from the mythos

of, you know, which sort of

comes from the Lovecraft circle.

And many of those terms originated

with earlier writers and we're

explored by later writers.

So they're sort of passing through the

filter of one kind of random racist

asshole who happened to write sort of

the, again, a few stories that were

so good that they've sort of lived on

and, and been useful touchstones, even

as people have debated the value of

sort of his overall ouevre, and, and,

you know, done other things with it.

So Migo is one of those concepts.

Um, and the idea is just that they're

aliens from, uh, you know, according

to the original mythos, as I recall,

they're from the planet Pluto, which

they call Yuggoth and they're crab

shaped fungi, and they can fly.

And that's kind of, I think all

that we know, and they, they sort

of, um, they experiment on humans.

they kind of pretend to

be a human at one point.

And it's very, it's very spooky and weird.

Um, and you just, it's very different.

They're not like out there

stabbing people in the face they're

like scientists or something.

And I like that idea for this game.

So they've been a kind of recurring

villain in my campaigns, in

a, um, my co-designers games.

Um, you know, the Migo

are, they evolved on Pluto?

So what is Pluto?

I mean, Pluto's a rock with domes

made of solid ammonia or something.

I mean, it's just this terrifyingly

cold, um, sort of ice planet.

That's very, very, very small.

And, uh, you know, if life evolved

there, it'd be very different.

So fungi, even in this

sense is like a metaphor.

It's like they evolve from some

sort of, uh, you know, thing that is

very microscopic and can reproduce

very differently than humans.

And, um, now they're vaguely

crab shaped, but a lot of that

might be technology like biotech.

So who knows what part is the original

Migo and what part is sort of engineered?

Um, but we represent them

are artist, Ethan gold.

Who's an amazing artist, um, has

done some drawings and they look

just terrifying, uh, you know, sort

of hard to tell what's in Oregon

again, and what's maybe technical.

Um, but yeah, we liked this idea

of they're sort of scientists and

they're competitors with the company.

So we wanted some aliens, some of them,

yeah, you just they're space bad guys.

Uh, they're evil robots basically.

Um, Some of them are not at all sort

of quote unquote evil they're they're,

you know, really, um, interesting other

civilizations you could encounter.

And the Migo are occupying in

between position because they're

not inherently, um, evil, per se.

They just have a very different, you

know, they, they're interested in

humans and, um, all the other sapien,

you know, non-humans, you can play

in the game, uh, but they have their

own, they've evolved, uh, you know,

sapiens in a totally different way.

And they have their own

sort of code or ethics.

And we actually explored that in

a, in a little side, um, source

book that we did as a Z for a jam

on itch called UGA confidential,

where Ethan and I were really deep

into like, what if you play a Migo?

Okay.

Well to play a Migo, they have

so many systems running at once.

They're so advanced and it's, it's like

a, a slime mold, you know, it's all

these pieces that kind of flow together.

What if every player is just

one part of the same Migo?

So you're always playing one single Migo

scientist who has many routines operating.

And that would be very different

than playing five PCs, right.

Five human or non-human characters

in a space, fantasy setting.

So that's, that's kind of to give

you a sense of how we think of it is

like, yeah, that, I mean, it would be

like having, you know, five people,

um, in this kind of weird crab body.

Um, and yeah, so that's, that,

that was kind of at the core of the

design and it's just one of the,

sort of, to us iconic, , aliens.

But really even those terms,

monster alien, we try to avoid.

So we just call all the, the stat

blocks in the book encounter.

So there there's something you could

encounter and they have their own,

you know, dogmas, they have their own,

codes basically by which they live.

Among the powers and gear and story

notes and attacks, in this stat block,

are there any that you feel specifically

represent what you were going for,

or are a good example of that or ones

that you just thought were really fun?

Uh, yeah, I

mean, we, from the beginning

knew that we needed stat blocks.

And so Eric Lazar, the, the designer

of the book played a big role in,

um, helping us think through and

definitely playing with, uh, with Ethan

and, and many others, all our, you

know, play testers and, and patrons.

We have a pretty active discord server.

So if you wanna play, please hop on there.

We wanna schedule more and more games.

So they, they helped us think like

where, how could we lay out basically,

you know, combat movement reason

will charm for, uh, encounters.

And, uh, I was always writing

them with these little notes,

like gear, story notes.

So sort of like, what would they have on

them that might be of interest and then

story notes, just being a catchall, like

in a way, what do they look like when you

first see them just kinda write out and

pros a couple sentences to give the GM a

little more evocative language to go with,

maybe something they could read out loud.

Right.

Um, and then sometimes variants

so sometimes I'd write, you know,

basically one or two bullets of

like, uh, some of them have this stat

instead of this, or they have this

weapon instead of that, whatever.

Um, so that, that was kinda the basics.

And what we found is that we felt

it was lacking that sense for new

GMs approaching really weird ideas.

Like what is the motivation and to really

make it an encounter and not a monster.

And I, I like, um, what you said,

because yeah, I mean, you, there's

nothing wrong necessarily with playing

a game that is about heroes slaying

monsters, all in quotation marks.

Um, but that's not this game.

This game is about, you know, Picaresque

anti-heroes trying to figure out their

lives within a political economy they

find to be, you know, somewhat unjust.

The Picaresque is a literary tradition

in early modern Europe, essentially

tied with the birth of the novel.

And remember that in the early modernist

transition from the medieval world with

essentially swords to the early modern

world of guns and being shot in the face.

But also the transition from

feudal nobility aristocracy to,

um, the, the bourgeoisie, to

capitalists owning everything.

So D and D is kind of built on the

Picaresque, but it's, it's an inversion

because in D&D, it's trying to make

the Picaro into a hero, whereas in

the actual Picaresque stories, like

Don Quixote, if you're familiar at

all with that trope, this old man who

wants to be a Knight in the heroic

era of like the resadora or whatever,

but he's living in the early modern.

So everyone's like,

dude, there's no knights.

And Spain is already unified

as his colonial power.

Like, what do you want, man?

Like, he's trying to save like

maidens from monsters, but there's

no monsters, no one wants his help.

And his sidekick is this kind of idiot

who, you know, so they they're sort

of just like getting into trouble

while doing quote unquote adventures.

But basically they're getting

kicked out of inns and, um,

fighting non, like getting into

fights for, for like bad reasons.

That to me is very much like actually

when you play D and D like the GM has

some epic plot, but the, the Picaros,

the heroes are just like, "No, man,

we're just gonna murder these goblins.

Like, yeah, they're not even bad

goblins, I just want their gold."

And you're just like, "Ah,

why, why do you do that?"

So, uh, yes, in, in our game, we're very

much acknowledging, like you're probably

gonna play in the Picaresque tradition.

But, you know, in this case you

subverting the, the adventure,

your Syon is a good thing.

It's a feature, not a flaw.

So we it's, again, we, we thought of that.

I, I think it works up to you.

I was actually really motivated

there by, um, looking around

at other games that I like.

So there's a cool OSR game called

Troika, I don't know if you've played.

The book I'm thinking of is athe

death fan acid, death fantasy by

Luke Gehring, which is a great book

that has cool monsters in a sort of

dune like, um, psychedelic setting.

And that was one where specifically

Eric and I were reading it and thinking,

oh, these encounters are really cool.

We're not doing the same exact

thing, but like, we need to up

our game encounter block wise.

Right.

That was when we decided, okay.

We need to like really

think about our encounters.

And one of the things I like is

their stop blocks they have mean.

So they, they just have sort of

a list of like, what are these,

um, beings generally doing?

Um, and so that's, that's

that and the idea of

an

of mean as in, uh, you

know, attitude or, or general,

uh, posture and behavior,

Right, exactly.

Exactly.

So we, we sort of were, were thinking

about that, Eric and I were like,

you know, what if we just basically

had our version of, of that, like,

what is this thing usually doing?

And then the other piece dogma was, was

coming out of thinking about alignment

and just, you know, I definitely don't

want an alignment system, but I thought,

okay, I could say what's the motivation.

If I bullet pointed one major motivation

for this specific encounter and maybe,

you know, I could say in the story notes,

well, there's many, many factions that

have different, you know, ideologies,

but this person cares about this.

So it became a really fun game

of kind of in a way, speculative

kind of like political fiction.

So like each dogma tends to be these like

weird terms where we're mashing up and

we've had a lot of fun thinking through

like, what, what are the motivations

that aliens would have and how to

represent that in English language that

anyone could ever understand at all.

So even if it's weird, yeah.

It has to like give you a hook somehow.

So.

Um, you know, for the Migo, for the, for

this Migo group in the Quickstart, we

went with either obsessive and empiricism.

So they're just kind of aliens

who might wanna dissect you, just

cuz they're really curious, um,

or data driven, real politics.

So they have some sort of you goti

political conundrum and the data says,

you know, they need to interact with

you in some way, steal your tech, uh,

harm you, maybe they need your help.

Right.

And, and, and so we're not saying

GMs, here's exactly how to use it.

We're saying here's different

things that this very different

than human, um, being might care.

And we're trying to give it sort of

language that would, um, be evocative.

Yeah.

Just help a GM run an encounter.

Um, and then the habits part is, you

know, similar to me and it's, it's

saying, okay, what are ways that

you might come across this being?

Um, and again, just giving

the GM stuff to work with.

So is it taking notes, which is

gonna look very, very different

because it's evolved and uses this

biotechnology and lives in hard vacuum.

So, you know, what was I say?

Um, it looks like surgery on a

squealing blinking lion's main mushroom.

So, you know what I mean?

It's like holding a thing

and doing a thing to it.

And what it's doing in its mind is

taking notes on this biocomputer to you.

You're like, oh my God, are you

killing a dog made of mushroom?

Like, what is that?

Um, versus like maybe it's 3d

printing a Scally tool that will grow

into a whole bubble shaped house.

So it's like building something

and, and again, these are just

evocative, like just moments.

The GM could completely discard, but

they might help the GM say, oh, I know

I'm just gonna describe it as doing X.

And, and we've found that pretty, I found

that useful in running games and I feel

like I've seen other GMs kind of pick up.

This idea of like these little

images, like what this thing might

be doing when you meet it and,

and, you know, the run of it.

When a party of players have

finished the encounter with, uh, a

Migo astrobiologist, um, what do you

want them to be thinking about or

remembering a couple of weeks later?

Oh, that's

such a good question.

Um, I'm trying to think back to

times I've used this kind of trope

of monster, this specific alien.

Um, see, I just said monster, uh,

the, this specific encounter and

when, uh, my, my friend, Ethan,

who's also the artist and also helps

design the game has used, um, these,

he had a whole campaign with Migo.

I think one of the things I remember

from playing in Ethan's campaign about

the Migo was, um, actually a lot of

the encounters where we, there was one

on you, goth, where we took the stiff

works, the time space gates in the game

that allow for, you know, instantaneous

travel between worlds to you goth.

And the whole time we

didn't see a single Migo.

We saw these sort of conservatory,

these like humans who'd been, um,

experimented on in the complex.

We were in this scientific complex.

And every time the Migo would be

around the corner, kind of, they

would be coming on their way.

Like we would trip up the AI

somehow and then the Migo would,

would come and we would leave.

And that made this kind of

constant cat and mouse feeling.

That was very much like

a great sci-fi movie.

And it allowed.

Ethan's very funny.

And so there were a lot of moments of

humor, but then that would happen when

we would realize, oh shit, like the Migo

is coming, the scientists are coming.

It was really kind of terrifying cuz

you're like, I don't think we're like

first level or second level at that point.

Like there's no way we're

gonna sort of defeat even one.

We're probably, definitely not gonna

defeat like a small party of them.

So, um, it was almost their absence and

the fact that we knew they had intention,

like they weren't random, right.

They weren't like coming

to kill us for blood sport.

You know, they were coming to experiment

on us and turn us into essentially these

fungal zombies we kept running into.

Um, or, or there were just people sort

of spaced out on like essentially drugs.

And so it had this kind of

vibe of like, almost like we're

gonna become a main candidate.

And that was scarier than just

fighting a random quote monster.

And I really liked how Ethan played it,

where there were very few actual Mego.

And so at the end, when you

finally like encountered them, it

was like, it was such a big deal.

And to know that it wasn't gonna be

a typical combat encounter, right.

That they were actually trying to

subvert the company, they were doing

this whole sort of candidate, um,

You know, CIA kind of, kind of SIOP.

Um, and that was so much more

fulfilling than like a big fight.

So I would want people to take that away

in general from the game that yes, you

can always do combat in these games.

Um, but there's so many other ways

to have fun and to be true to the

Picaresque tradition, which Ethan

Arabic fans of which kind of gave

rise to D and D in a way, the best

parts are running away from fights.

The best parts are losing

fights, losing duals.

I mean, that's what makes

like donkey whatever great.

It's, it's not an action

movie, you know what I mean?

It's, it's about a guy screwing up.

So I think I would, I would say, you

know, running away from Migo, um, is

perfectly valid and, um, you know, uh,

may make you think about like, ah, do we

wanna sort of seek an Alliance with them?

Do we, you know, how do we sort

of prove what they're up to?

Um, and that's what I would want players

to sort of talk about between sessions.

Is there anything that we

haven't talked about that you wanna make

sure is a part of this conversation?

um, I think it's

just stuff you, you probably cover

in your other episodes more, which

I I've listened to some of, and I, I

wanna list go back and listen to the

whole catalog, cuz I like the show.

Um, but I think the idea of

ity and the role that design.

Others plays both at the level of like

playable species or DD speak races.

Um, and how different can they be and

what are the, the sort of bonuses or

drawbacks and how does that essentialism,

um, get mechanicalized in a game

that is something that obviously,

um, many designers think a lot about,

I thought a lot about Stillfleet.

The other piece is designing then, um,

antagonists or possible antagonists.

So again, we call them encounters because

you don't necessarily have to fight them

per se, but we wanna make, you know,

if we, if we bother to stat block, um,

an encounter it's because that being

might resist you in some way, right?

You might not be rolling to hit them

in combat, but you might be trying to

charm them and they're rolling will

to resist your charms or whatever.

Right.

They're lying to you and you

need to suss out the truth.

So your rolling will et cetera.

Um, and I think, uh, in both cases,

obviously all game designers think

about these things, um, to, to

various degrees and, and with various

kind of ideologies of game design.

Um, and with us, I think we've tried to

make species that are interesting and D.

And so there's a lot of interesting

non-humans and you have that

element of science fictional.

Um, but, uh, they all have something in

common and then the aliens, the encounters

we've allowed to push and make these much,

much, much, much, much sort of weirder.

So you have like say these ULA

kits who have D 20 S for stats.

So in Stillfleet, you don't

generally have a D 20.

So to fight something with a D 20

is like a big deal, um, ancient

war machines, you know, what about

like, uh, AI that is essentially,

you know, basically insane, right?

It's logic boards no longer operate

correctly, and it is wandering around,

um, just still fighting some war that

has been over for 5,000 years, you

know, that civilization has gone.

Um, and I think those kinds of

questions about how one would

interact with them, what do they

want, how could they be convinced?

Um, I, I think those are all ways

of getting at essentially like

really at the end of the day human

difference, and they're creating,

um, you know, safe, fun ways to,

with your friends explore questions.

We might all have about AI and about.

How do we resolve all

kinds of differences?

Um, and at the end of the day, yeah,

I think it's just more interesting

to have them stack up to some

kind of political discussion.

Where do we want the company to go?

Where do we want our jobs to be, as

opposed to merely repeating over and over

again, the kind of, uh, murder hobo, you

know, algorithm of kill a thing, take

its gold, kill a thing, take its gold.

You know what I mean?

And just kill bigger and bigger things.

I think in a way all most games tend

to stack in, in some direction, right?

So D and D stacks in that, that

direction, the murder hobo, um, algorithm.

And we're trying to create a stack where

over time the encounters add up, um, and

whatever campaign you, you know, however

you run Stillfleet towards some sort

of deeper idea about your, your role

in a broader society that is inhabited

by not just humans, but all kinds of

beings in at this point in, in, in time.

So, um, yeah, I, I hope we've succeeded.

I hope people give it a chance.

And, um, we'd love to hear, you know,

obviously we like talking to people

on discord and, and elsewhere about.

What they think and how they've used this.

And, and again, I'll credit.

Like so many of our players GMs

have come up with so many great

ideas and really fun campaigns.

Um, so it's no longer, it's

no longer just my baby.

And I think that's a good

thing personally, but

I really want this to see, I

know it already has, um, but I really

want this to succeed in, in every

way that it is possible for it to do,

which, uh, I will abandon the pretense

of journalistic impartiality here

because, uh, this thing is incredible.

Thanks for listening to Making a Monster.

Here's how to get

Stillfleet at your table.

So if you're interested in

Stillfleet, uh, this is the perfect time.

There's two days left.

So you really should act like today.

If you're thinking about it, check

out on Kickstarter, uh, Stillfleet.

You can go it's it's under, you

know, games, projects we love.

Um, you can just look up Stillfleet one.

Uh, and you'll find it on a

Kickstarter and that is the

campaign for the core rule book.

So that's all the rules.

Um, it's the book we've been

working on for forever and

there's tons of other material.

Some of it is out a little bit was out.

Most of it is gonna come out

after the core rule book.

And actually we decided to go ahead and

do two books at once because we're just

huge masochist that way as creators.

So you can buy the coral

book as a PDF for print.

You can also, uh, pledge and, and,

and, you know, basically pre-order,

um, as physical or digital.

A venture.

So a playable scenario,

that's also a source book.

It has lots of information on one world,

uh, and that is, uh, setting, um, called

the rain thieves, um, by our friend and

web developer, Aaron H um, and, uh, co

game designer and, and great person.

Uh, and the rain thieves, uh, not only

is this, this venture, this, this epic

kind of ecological, uh, political story,

uh, is also just a great source book.

If you want a really rich, um, desert

sci-fi planet, if you're interested

in sort of themes from dune, but, uh,

you know, totally different, right.

And in the, in the stilly universe,

um, uh, you know, check it out.

It's got an intelligent, uh, spider,

like Xeno fauna, um, of different kinds

and a lot of weird, uh, architects.

So ancient technology is buried

in the sands, um, and, uh,

just, you know, some mysteries.

Uh, so those are, those are two

books you can pledge for now.

We also have tons of other, um,

items, you know, it's, we have sort

of merch stuff, you know, t-shirts

and pins, which are really great.

Eric Lazar is an amazing designer

and we're showing off the art

of Ethan gold and the shirts.

But, you know, in addition to that,

uh, we have a deck of reference cards.

So 52 cards for GMs that have,

um, basically architect and

encounters, um, summarized.

So for the encounters, it's not gonna

be every single word in a full cuz.

Usually encounter blocks are

about half a page or a full page.

These are just gonna be the summaries

with the stats and some quick thoughts.

Um, and those are gonna be fun things with

images that we would hope jams could show

players, as they're playing the game, they

could hand out architect, they could show

you the, the thing you're encountering.

And if people like that,

we can do more of it.

But this is, you know, for us,

we're kind of new to a lot of this.

We've all printed stuff in the past.

Um, we're all, we've, it's

the model of like swift trust.

We're all good at like the one

thing we do, but this we're

a new company as Stillfleet.

So, um, you know, we hope you like it.

And we we're really

excited about the book.

Um, most of all, just cuz it's been in

development for a long time and we do

hope people give the game a, a, a try.

So again, you hit the PDF and

just, you know, um, check it out.

The PDF will be out way

before the physical book, just

due to, you know, printing.

So that'll be much sooner.

Wythe, thank you so much for

being a part of the show, uh, and

bringing this collection of the weird

and the wonderful to the conversation.

You've added quite a bit.

I'm really excited for this

to be a part of the cannon.

Um, thank you so much.

, I love the show.

I love the idea and I think it's

important to, um, in some ways I

think a little deeper as a community.

but it's cool to think philosophically,

like what makes a game fun or, or

what makes it do certain things?

What makes it have certain effects?

So I love this idea of like, let's just

drill down on one monster at a time.

I think it's brilliant.

Thank you.

We'll be back next week and every

week, this fall with new episodes

from creators I met at GenCon, new

stories from the Book of Extinction,

and a few wild cards like Stillfleet.