[rozhovor] John Harper @ Runehammer (2017/09/07)

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Passingby
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[rozhovor] John Harper @ Runehammer (2017/09/07)

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Odkaz na tenhle rozhovor jsem sem už dával, ale některý kousky můžou být i tak zajímavý (třeba v kontextu inspirací pro BitD a přístupu ke game designu obecně), tak sem hodím ještě kousek přepisu, hlavně ze začátku, tzn. tak 1990-2001. (Cca 8:50-21:00 min, některý části jsou z přepisu vynechaný.) Ještě pak mluvil o The Forge a indiečkách, ale už takhle je to na čtení asi moc dlouhý.
Runehammer píše: As the Taoists would say, even an oaktree rises from an acorn. So I am just curious - what was your acorn? When did you sort of germinated into actually just writing full time and just-do-it-ness?
John Harper píše: Yeah. Good question. Like most of things, I think, in life, it was an iterative process that didn't just start one day. It's hard to pinpoint the start. I typically have an answer to when it kinda really started but... uhm... When I was little, about 10 or 9, my friend run Gamma World for me and I fell in love with roleplaying and photocopied this stuff from his book and took it back to my town and run it for the kids in my cul-de-sac and just fell in love with roleplaying. Kinda just before the curve of the Satanic Panic and that stuff that started to happen...

...

We were playing Marvel Superheroes and D6 Star Wars and that stuff. Marvel Superheroes, in particular, and D6 were super hackable and so we all started - me as sort of the main GM type in the group, but we all - started writing stuff. We were like 'Oh, lets use this Marvel Superheroes table, results table thing, but we'll be like more cosmic style! Like we'll be bounty hunters in space, like when the X-men go to space, we'll do that kind of stuff!' Or 'We'll hack D6 to do kinda Road Warrior kinda thing.'

And so, that was just a part of play to us back then. It wasn't so much 'being a game designer' exactly, it was more like GMing. You'd write some stuff, you'd make some rules, you'd make some maps and then bring them to the table and people would play it. And for a long time, we shifted fully into that mode. Like all thru the end of high school and early in the college we were all pretty much just playing homebrew stuff, really. Hacks of other games but our own creations.

And it wasn't until '94... '93, '94... my, like, college times when I got connected to some publishers. I started... We were playing Talislanta a lot, I got to know the Talislanta creator... Thru Usenet back then...
Runehammer píše: Oh, man, that's a dusty chestnut!
...
John Harper píše: I could email Robin Laws and talk to him about stuff and Johnathan Tweet and those guys and that whole atmosphere was very open and very accepting of new people because the community was really tiny back then. So that, like, homebrew mentality of being a GM and a game hacker, game designer transitioned very easily into, 'Hey, let's write stuff for Talislanta. Wizards are publishing it and I know those guys.' Rob Heinsoo who did 4th edition D&D was working on Talislanta stuff back then with me and Robin Laws came in to do a version of Talislanta. So, this, like, hobby thing that we were doing started to transition into, 'Oh, we're gonna... These're gonna be pulished. These're gonna be, like, actual games!'

And we started - and this is the key - we started play testing their games. So we were playtesting Everway. And we were playtesting Feng-Shui. That... It was a REAL important step to step into that community as not just trying to shill your own stuff. But to come in and say, 'Hey, I am a resource for you. I have game groups, you know. We can play your stuff.' And that formed a connection. And that still happens till this day.

...

Like, Seattle was this weird hotbed back then. Like everyone was like in the area. So, that helped with connections, too. So, I saw Jared's work and a friend and I, we published, eh, "published" on our site back then this game called Force 9 which was like Aliens, essentially. It got a lot of attention, people played it.

It went well so we were like 'Okay, we can do this, so let's have a little game company.' We started a little game company, we did Force 9 and then we got the license to do Talislanta and we did this big blue 4th Edition Talislanta book, like the ultimate version of that game because we were big fans. But we both had day jobs, we both worked in tech back then and the Dot.com boom was happening.

You could get hired with no credentials of any kind. So, I was a college dropout who had graphic design skills, so I became an Art Director at this company cuz... why not. Haha. They were just throwing money around and hiring people, it didn't matter. So, we had our day jobs and then we would spend lot of our time on Talislanta. So we kinda straddled that line of being hobbyists and being publishers. And that... That was very fruitful. It got our names out there. It helped me get some exposure.
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