Sci-fi survival horror meets B-movie comedy with the Space Leper Nuns from Starship Infernum, a charming, fast-paced, pick-up-and-play RPG by Robert Turk of Wicked Clever Games.

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Meet my guest Robert Turk:

http://www.wicked-clever.com/

https://www.facebook.com/wickedclever/

Music in this episode is from Audionautix: https://audionautix.com/

Symptoms of the disease include itching, sneezing, biting,

spontaneous narcolepsy, willful disregard for one's own safety, a

craving for fish, an overwhelming desire to shout one liners, vertigo,

and frequent public urination.

Incubation time seems to be about 14 seconds and the contagion is spread

through bodily fluids, dirty toilet seats, crisp high fives, awkward

hugs and prolonged eye contact.

To minimize the risk of infection, before I put the toaster in charge, I temporarily

outlawed eye contact and toilet use.

I tried to forbid high fives and hugs, but HR would not let me.

In a possibly unrelated event that nice colony of leper nuns we picked

up hitchhiking on the side of the hyper route after their shuttle

bus broke down has gone missing.

my name is Robert Turk.

I am an independent game designer.

I've been playing games, since I was in middle school, which is.

30 plus years now, and have had an absolute blast playing games

and played all sorts of games.

but in writing games, I want games that are easy to bring to the table that,

are not intimidating in their scope.

And, Are fun and different to play.

some people say my games, the games I write are sort of gateway

games, to get people that don't normally play role playing games

that are intimidated by multiple books and having to have a college

degree to do the math and all that.

, I don't, I don't do that.

My very first role playing game.

it's called, are you mental?

It is a card driven role playing game about lunatic superheroes who escape

the asylum to go off and save the world.

From there I made some slightly more serious games, Purgatory House,

was a haunted house horror game.

and then Starship Infernum was spun off of a convention.

Somebody said, "I don't like haunted houses, but I like space stuff."

And I said, "Well I could do that too.

Why not?"

Um, so, and those are blackjack based games, so they play very

differently than what most people are used to as a role playing game.

Weird Scouts I wrote that's a game about, magical kids and an

enchanted forest, earning badges and exploring the wood and helping

monsters instead of fighting monsters.

So obviously a huge scope of work we could draw from.

I've left it to you.

This is your choice, of the monsters you've made.

what's your favorite and why

I have to think my favorite monster comes from a scenario I wrote for

Starship Infernum the, space madness.

scenario it is the, space leper nuns, and right.

So the idea behind the whole scenario was, - 'cause this is a pretty

serious, heavy, can be a scary survival game - was write a campy scenario.

If people really want to play it fun and silly old school

Star Trek, they can do that.

in my head.

When I see the leper space nuns, they've got like the nun habits and a combination

between that and like a mummy, because they're all wrapped up in bandages.

So when the players encounter them at first, it's like, Oh, well, these

are just the nuns, they're these peaceful ladies going about their Holy

business, , and then the nuns turn around and try to rip their faces off.

I know Starship Infernum is a rules-light system, but what are

the relevant game statistics here?

Starship Infernum is a, it's essentially a

one-shot infinitely replayable pick-up-and-play role playing game.

you play a full story in three to four hours depending, and

how many people are playing.

the core of the game is a black jack mechanic.

Anytime you encounter something that can kill you, which is almost every

round, because this is a sci-fi survival horror game, you play off a

hand of blackjack against the dealer.

and it's not straight black Jack characters have traits that they

can use plus minus one, plus minus two, plus minus three, to adjust

their final blackjack score.

So if your trade is applicable to what you're doing, you can pull

that in, add it or subtract it from your score to move your number

around, If you bust, you take damage.

If you take three points of damage, you're dead.

The NPCs don't have stats.

Like they don't have strength and dexterity and all this.

They're not going to compare that and roll that.

And you're playing hands of blackjack.

And the adversaries have health and that's pretty much all they

have health and a description.

There are some optional rules that the more powerful adversaries, have

special abilities they can draw on.

And so when you encounter the leper nuns in this scenario, the basic

ones, they're, they're basic.

They're kind of pushovers.

If you were to encounter the, the, um, uh, the boss leper nun and

she has a name, the boss of a nun.

Um,

The mother

superior.

Mother superior.

thank you.

Thank you.

If you encountered the Mother Superior leper, nun , if you tied

against the Mother Superior - she'd be a level three adversary,

which means she has three health.

You've gotta beat her three times essentially to kill her.

, and in blackjack, if you tie, , in this game, it's considered a push.

You throw all the cards out, you go again because you keep going until

someone wins or somebody loses.

, however, she counts, ties in her favor.

So if you tie against her, you've actually lost.

what do you want players to feel when they encounter this leper space nuns?

Oh, I want the leper space nuns.

I want it to be a bait and switch.

because in Starship Infernum the entire time, you're on the edge of your seat.

the game is built to drive that tension constantly.

It's a fun sort of tension.

Stress can be fun.

This, this gamifies the stress of the situation.

Everything's trying to kill you.

Everything's going wrong.

Things are blowing up and, Oh, here's these sweet space nuns.

We've found them.

Yay.

Part of our mission is accomplished.

Everything's going to be okay.

And then no, they turn and try to kill you.

So it's definitely, I want that bait and switch there when

you encounter the leper nuns.

I want that moment of, Hey, we're going to be okay.

Oh crap.

No, we're not.

They're going to kill us.

part of what makes it effective is even if you're not a religious

person, I think most people have respect for that established

hierarchy of people that dedicate their life to service or religion.

So I don't know anybody that talks bad about nuns, even people

that went to Catholic school.

It's just not something you do.

Nuns, you think of Mother Teresa, you think of women that are out there

doing good works and helping the poor.

so I have found in running this game, people are very

hesitant to attack the nuns.

They don't want to hurt the nuns, even though they have learned that

these nuns are these mummy leper - they're going to eat your face.

and eventually they get over that eventually.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's survival of fittest and then it breaks that taboo then it's okay.

And it's kind of fun and cool to explore.

We're attacking nuns, something you could never do, , on the street.

, you'd be vilified for that, but.

In the game.

Sometimes you can do those things that are not socially acceptable, but do

them in a way that is healthy and fun.

what issues or questions do the leper space nuns, ask

your players to grapple with.

In the granddaddy of roleplaying games, Dungeons

and Dragons, you see a monster, you kill the monster, you get

experience and you get its treasure.

That's not my favorite way to approach monsters at all.

So , the space nuns in particular, it's - your goal in this game is to survive,

and the deck is stacked against you.

Everything is going wrong.

Chances are, you are not going to survive.

So the question that it asks you deep down in your core of humanity

is when does it become acceptable to do horrible things to survive?

Because the nuns are not, they're not evil monsters.

They are basically cursed ladies who were doing good things and now will

have to eat your face to survive.

So they're just trying to do what's in their nature.

They're a holy order.

And is it acceptable as players?

How do you come over that that emotional, mental hurdle that taboo of

saying, dang it's either me or them.

and.

It's going to have to be me.

this is really interesting to me because on the one hand you've got

this really intense moral dilemma here.

You've almost set up the trolley problem.

but you've done, you've played it for laughs.

, how do you manage that balance?

well, I'll probably burn in hell for it.

Um, no.

It is not an easy balance to strike.

part of that, that balance comes from the fact that when I run a game, it is

very much about the players experience.

It's about the story and the journey that they are exploring.

Not so much about the rules, even in the games that I wrote the rules for I am

the kind of GM that is totally willing to break the rules if it keeps things

flowing and keep people having fun.

So I think that , dichotomy of the serious nature that these

nuns are going to eat your face.

They're going to try and kill you.

They're also kind of fun and funny.

spins out of that naturally.

It's we wanted to tell a good story.

We want to have a good time.

And in a game like Starship Infernum, where it does get very tense at moments,

and you do have characters dying.

That is part of the game.

it helps to let those moments of levity have a second or two to breathe.

and it helps kind of punctuate.

The horror as well.

, instead of it being one straight rollercoaster climb up to the

top, you've got some, downs and some ups and some sideways.

you're getting, more of an emotional range and a journey out of it.

You can get Starship Infernum from drive through RPG.

that's probably the easiest way right now in the lockdowns and everything.

You can order it on Amazon.

And if your local gaming store is open, they can order it for you.

My favorite way is for you to support your local game store.

, I'll be a hundred percent honest there.

That is my favorite way.

you can go to our website.

Www.wicked-clever.com.

Occasionally we post stuff there.

, but the real value of the website is you can sign up for our

mailing list and I don't even send out something once a month.

I send out.

a newsletter when we're going to a show like gen con or origins, which

aren't happening this year, , to let you know what we're running

and how to sign up for our games.

I send out a newsletter.

If we've got a new product, or if somebody puts our products

on a really awesome stupid sale.

we have a Twitter, we have an Instagram, but really our website

and sign up for the email list.

That's does that work?

Is that, is that a good answer?

Yeah.

the game I'm working on right now is called Goblonia.

it comes out of short stories and writings that I started doing about nine years ago.

and the character that I used to play Gander, stitch, the goblin

onstage and storytelling festivals.

So it's basically a game set in his world.

Um, that one who knows when it's going to come out, I've

been working on that one for

four

years.