James Introcaso

James Hanna for Ethereal Mirror: So this is my very first interview for this site.

James Introcaso: And of course, we are each other's namesake. So this is, this is very exciting for us, right?

EM: That's right. James interviewing James.

JI: no confusion whatsoever.

EM: Oh, how could there be?

JI: No, but really, Wow, that is a that's a huge honor. So thank you for having me, James. I like so appreciate it, and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

EM: I, you know, I'm excited to talk to you about Arcadia and your work with MCDM, but also some of your other work as well. And I think that that's kind of where I wanted to start is, you know, you are a person who constantly has irons in the fire, many irons in the fire. Maybe even multiple fires, I don't know.

But how do you stay organized? And on track with so many projects, working with so many people? I read your interview recently where you talked about, you know, you're already booking out writing for Arcadia, issue 12. So clearly, you've got lots of people you're working with, and your own creative projects, too.

JI: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So and we're actually at in the last week, we jumped to Arcadia. 22. So we're, uh, we're booking people Fast and Furious. Um, yeah, it's a lot of. So first, I should say that part of it is, you know, you work with a lot of great people. And so it's not like all of the organizing falls to me, right? Actually MCDM, we have a great production team, who is very organized and able to do a lot. Hanna [Rose] and Lars [Bakke] in particular, are really good at keeping track of deadlines and stuff like that. But I make a lot of spreadsheets to track time, I sometimes use Trello, a Trello board, to you know, have different cards that I can move to different states, like each project on a card. And then, you know, in general, when you're working on RPG stuff, you have the same sort of projects, you have your initial phase of planning, and then you have your writing in development phase. And then you have playtesting, and copy editing and layout.

So putting those projects onto cards, and then having different columns that represent each phase of the project that you are working on helps me look at it all and kind of visualize it all, and I can say, Okay, this is what's in layout, this is what's going here, and I can match up due dates and put to do lists and calendars on each card so that I can say like, Okay, this is where my priority should be today. Because this is the thing that is coming up. And if I don't get this done, it's gonna hold up every other part of the process, right? So, really, having good calendars and keeping that stuff ready to go.

And for some things it's easier than others. Anytime it's a new project; that is, something that you haven't done before, that's what I mean by a new project. That can be more ephemeral because you might not know how long it takes to make something. So like Kingdoms and Warfare. It was like, Well, we're going to make a warfare system for D&D and this intrigue system for D&D. How long does that take? I don't know. We haven't done it before. Whereas something like Arcadia, we really have down to a science now because we sort of know, Okay, this is how long it takes to make an issue of Arcadia. We've put out seven so far, we've got more in the hopper, and so we know how to make that content faster than we do some other things. Same thing with like monster books now. When I set out to make an original RPG with Burn Bryte, it was like, well, we don't know how long it's gonna take. So there's more adjusting of the schedule and organizing going on then too.

EM: That makes a lot of sense, just sort of becoming familiar with the rhythms and the pacing of a thing.

I'm curious about how, you know, you've been a designer of whole RPG systems and adventures and monsters and encounters. And now a managing editor for Arcadia. What's it been like to move from a really design-focused role to this more managerial role?

JI: Yeah, that is a good question. And so I think one of the things that was true when I was doing a lot of freelance stuff was that I was doing a lot of what I'm doing over at MCDM. But I was it was for my own projects, and trying to figure it out and trying to juggle that. And sometimes I would be on somebody else's project, and they would lead it and that sort of thing. I would say I'm still doing a ton of design. I just finished up the rough draft of our next class, our next 5e class that we're going to release that I did all of the writing for. So I'm definitely still in there writing, and designing things, because I love to do it.

And I would say, when I was freelance, I was still looking for people to hire and doing a lot of what's called developmental editing. So when we think of editing, as it relates to writing, we often think of copy editing, making sure all of your periods and commas are in the right place. And things are spelled correctly, and that sort of thing. And that is all very important. And I would say it's almost a different skill set, although a lot of people have both, from developmental editing. So developmental editing, or development editing, really, as it's known, is looking at rules and saying, Okay, how can we make this make sense?

Sometimes, like, this afternoon, I got something from an author that was a monster, and this monster works in this really unique way. It goes into your dreams, and can attack you while you're sleeping, but then also fight the other members of the party while they are awake. So there's all of these different mechanics going on, and a development editor looks at that and says, Okay, do these rules make sense? That sort of thing. Where are the problems that I can see? For instance, you might say, Oh, this creature is way too strong, or your intention is for the creature to be difficult to defeat in dreamland. But it actually seems like you haven't thought about these things that are gonna make it pretty easy to defeat in dreamland, or that kind of thing. So it's looking at that. And then it's also knowing the rules and saying, you know, particularly with 5e, which is a lot of what we're making right now at MCDM. Saying things like, Well, you know, this subclass doesn't seem like it is balanced when compared to other subclasses for the same class, it's too powerful. It's not powerful enough. You know, this challenge rating seven monster, really have more hit points than that. All that kind of thing is development editing.

So I'm doing a lot of that, in addition to finding and hiring writers to write for Arcadia and other products that MCLDM puts out. Matt always calls me the lead designer over at MCDM, because I oversee all of these things that are implemented, particularly when it comes to our products. In Arcadia I help guide the author to where they want to go, but ultimately, the author is in charge of the creative decisions. Whereas for books that we put out now, I'm sort of like the final say. And Matt is too. Matt is the design director. So he's really the final say. But I'm the boots on the ground looking at stuff. Matt says, We should do this James. And I say, Okay, here's how I think we do that. So that's sort of my role. I'm doing a lot more, and I was doing before development, editing, but I'm doing more development editing now, and less writing. When I was doing a lot writing and a little development editing before.

EM: Do you feel like like, as you said, this was, so much of what you're doing now is what you were doing only with your own projects, or maybe with much smaller teams? Do you feel like your move into this new position was an inevitable step in your career? And do you imagine taking a step even beyond that into like, another creative director role at some point.

JI: Yeah, so I am very fortunate, because I, it's certainly a step I wanted to take was into a role like this, but I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to. Certainly, when I was a kid and growing up weren't that many RPG companies that had full time employees that weren't Wizards of the Coast. You know, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo. And then a lot of operations that had someone full time or like a one person shop. You know Schwalb Entertainment employees Rob Schwalb full time. And that's it. So I thought, Well, if I'm never moving to Seattle, which didn't seem like it was necessarily in the cards, I may never have the opportunity to do that, which is why I had gone freelance. And now there's a lot more full time opportunities, especially from companies that make third-party content like MCDM. So Kobold Press is employing people full time. Ghostfire Gaming and 2CGaming are doing that. And it's great to see. It's great to see all of these opportunities coming up. And so I do feel really fortunate, it had not really occurred to me that I could do this. Like I wanted to, but it hadn't occurred to me that I would, until Matt and I started to talk. And I'd started by working with MCDM freelance, and then he said, You know, we're thinking of doing this, would you want to do this job? And I said, Yes, I would, that would be a dream come true. And so, you know, again, I feel very fortunate, because I'm working from home as far as the future goes, I do hope MCDM grows. And I think a lot of people at the company hope that, and I would like to be part of that growth. I would like to grow with the company, as it grows. I feel hopeful about our expansion and everything like that.

And I try to not be, I try to be a person who (And not everybody can afford this luxury, right?) but I try to be a person who thinks about where they are now and enjoys where they are now. Because I know a lot of people who become obsessed with the next step. Not where they are, but where they're going to be. And those people can be very good at accomplishing things and getting things done. But they don't take the time to enjoy where they are, and they're not going to be happy until they're retired, probably. Whereas, you know, nothing in life is certain. So I want to enjoy where I am now. And I, you know, I'm one of the luckiest people in the world to be doing a job that I've wanted to do since I was 10 years old.

EM: Well, I mean, I think many, many would agree that you're doing a great job, and we want to see you keep doing it. And I really appreciate that idea, that sort of philosophy of honoring where you're at. And yeah, I think a lot of us could could take a little advice from that, including myself.

JI: Well, I mean, it's, you know, I think the other thing is, for some people, some people get a lot out of that drive and that ambition to go to the next step. And also some people dream of the next step because like, they need the money at the next step to be able to live a better life. And like, I think all of those are also worthy goals. And if that excites you, that's a good thing. But but for me, I would become so fixated on the next thing that I would never enjoy the now, and then I would never enjoy anything. So that's why I I try to think about now and not get too far into the future. Because who knows, if you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have told you that I would still be working in television. So, you know, you never know where it's gonna go.

EM: Yeah, that's funny. I was looking at your website. And there's there's a lot of television content on there that I just, I mean, I've known you only as an RPG person. And I was just like, Wow, look at all this other content. Including this Shark Fest Promo Launch, which I watched, and it was so funny. And it reminded me of My Dad's Monster Manual. And a thing that I loved, and I think a lot of people really loved were your dad's pull quotes, scattered throughout it. And so both of those things showcase yours, or maybe also your father's humor. And I wonder, it just got me thinking about how you see the role of humor in your work, in your design, especially in a hobby that's, had a history of maybe being a little stuffy, of being a bit serious, at times.

JI: Yeah, and this is advice that comes up a lot about like, Don't try to be funny, which I don't know if that's great advice. But I think what that means is, instead of making a lot of jokes and quips in your writing, create situations in role-playing games that are interesting, and funny and unique, and the humor will come from there. So like, in My Dad's Monster Manual, the concept of that is sort of inherently ridiculous, right? The concept of that is, I'm going to show my father images from the fifth edition Monster Manual, and then I am going to, without any of the lore or anything like that, I'm going to ask him, what does he think this creature's story is? What does he think it is capable of doing? And what does he think its name is? And all these follow up questions and stuff for that, right? And so the answers we're going to get there are earnest. Like I wanted my dad to tell me honestly, What did he think about this stuff? And those situations then are funny, right? We've created a humorous book together, because I'm giving you my dad's take on this situation and on these monsters, but they are also monsters that you can use at the table.

And I think a lot of people were surprised. I still remember Will Doyle, who is a designer I really respect, when I showed him some preview pages said, Oh, this is so much better than I thought it was going to be, because I thought it was going to be one joke repeated over and over again. And it's not. It really is this project that was done earnestly. That is also funny.

There's another great adventure (it's available for free) called A Wild Sheep Chase. And it is about a sheep that finds the adventurers while they're out in the woods, relaxing, and it starts talking to them, and things go from there. And it is fun and raucous and hilarious. But it's not because of the prose writing. It's because of the situations that have been created, that then the characters can get themselves into. And that's what I think My Dad's Monster Manual is about, and that's how I think we can bring more humor into games and gaming is thinking about, like, what's a funny situation, right? And we all have these at the table, right? How many of us have played an adventure that's written very seriously, and had something wacky happen at the table that is our most memorable moment, right? Like in Curse of Strahd or, you know, a horror adventure, that all of a sudden we're supposed to be the terrified of Cthulhus or whatever. And, and all of a sudden, we're laughing because of some weird situation that a player character got themself into. So yeah, when I think about humor and writing. I think that's one way to make things more fun without and add humor to the writing that doesn't feel forced, and will also sort of update and refresh the hobby.

EM: I love that. And I think that makes a lot of sense too, and that gets me thinking about something you'd said about encounter building itself, which is, Monsters are the building blocks of encounters. I think I'm paraphrasing you there. So, as you're designing, as you're writing encounters, do you find yourself always starting with monsters or are there other ways that other things that come to mind to ignite an idea?

JI: Yeah, so I do typically I would say start with the monster, right? I look at the monster. One of the things that's great about the fifth edition Monster Manual is it gives you all of these hooks. There's a lot of lore for each monster that sort of says like, There are some, you know, evil deeds or other ways a monster might get involved in the adventure. One thing that that book lacks that I think also My Dad's Monster Manual lacks too, frankly, is like, tactical advice that I think would also be great to have in these books. And I'm going to try to include going forward with a lot of monster books, because tactical advice is also a great thing.

So I look at these hooks for the monster and think, Oh, this could be really fun. And how can I take this situation? And and take it even further, right? One thing I think about, like, you know, the classic Otyugh, a great, great monster, eats trash, has a bunch of tentacles, looks really weird. And it uses telepathy to like call out to prey. Right? So then thinking about that story thing and taking it to the next conclusion. So, you know, two people, pouncing on each other and just trading blows, basically, to see who can reach zero the fastest with subtraction is not exactly the most fun.

So then let's think about some other things that could be going on there. Right? Like, maybe there are some people around who have been called. And when the adventures arrive, the Otyugh doesn't care about them. It's trying to eat the easy prey, right? And now it's about like, Can we pull these people out of the Otyugh's mouth? And so then we go, and we look at the stat block, and we see like, what is the Otyugh good at? Well, it's got these tentacles, right? And it is truly going to be able to use some to hold characters at bay while it shoves unsuspecting people into its mouth with its other one, right? Or, you know, what other creatures might be in there? What does it mean to be in a sea of garbage? How does the terrain affect things?

Looking at a creature that way is one really fun way you can think about and build an encounter, is to take that information, and then sort of logic it out. Or twist it in a way that you think makes it fun. The other thing, the other way that I often think of encounters, I'll think of action, right? Like what do I want to emulate in a scene. An encounter can mean anything from a combat encounter, to social interaction, to some sort of exploratory exploration encounter, right? And so thinking about then and saying, Oh, you know, I'd really like for my characters to be in a situation where they have a tough negotiation. What would make it really difficult for them to bluff, or provide a challenge for them? That would would throw a curveball, and it's like, oh, you know, what? Wouldn't be great if the person that they need to get by is able to read their minds? And so we think, Oh, okay, well, there's a lot of creatures that could be. That could be someone who can cast detect thoughts. That could be a mind flayer. That could be a doppelganger, right. And so it's like, oh, a doppelganger. That's really cool. Because then it could be someone else, which is another layer of challenge for the characters to try to see through. Maybe it's someone they know, that now, they think they're going to go into this negotiation, free and easy. But really, this doppelganger has their friend in a closet is pretending to be the friend like, and so that's another way to do it is I often think about the situation that I want the characters to be in, be it combat or whatever, and then find the appropriate creature that fits that situation.

EM: I feel like I have a sense of how you might respond to this, but you know, I'm definitely curious, you're now almost fully employed, doing 5e stuff. And you've been making 5e things for, I mean, I went on to DriveThru and DMs Guild, and you've got like 80 publications to your to your name on there. And so you've you've been doing this for a while. How do you keep D&D fresh? There's so many other games but you, I think, are clearly invested in 5e and continue to see new opportunities for story. I wonder, is there anything you do to keep that fresh for you?

JI: Yeah, definitely. And I also want to say that like, I love other games, I play a ton of other role-playing games. And I, right now MCDM is putting out a lot of 5e content. Matt has talked about this actually on his Twitch streams that we would eventually like to make our own MCDM RPG. So that is also part of the cards in the future for us. I think one way that I like to try to keep 5e fresh is I like to work with a lot of different people. And so Arcadia is a huge opportunity to do that, because I get so many different perspectives. Like to bring a lot of different authors, I like to bring in people that I know their work, but I haven't worked with them before, so that I get to the end, see what they want.

And Arcadia is also a place where we say to the authors, tell us what you would like to make, right? We occasionally will say, Hey, you know, we would like to put this out as an article, would you like to write it? But I would say 90% of the articles are ideas that were pitched to us by authors, where they say I wanted to make this nobody else wanted to publish it? Are you interested? Right? Or we say to them, We want to work with you, tell us what you want to make, and let's make it. And that is a very freeing experience, that opens my mind as a designer a ton, because I see different ways people approach different aspects of the game. And often, when you are reading an adventure, or monster description, or a spell, or whatever it may be, you've got this, like, Oh, you know, it would be cool. If also this, this and this, or if this is true, then these other things must also be true. So that's one huge way is I read a lot of material, and I work with a lot of different people. And that also includes reading and playing other games. I get a ton of ideas from going and playing other games that are created by other designers.

So that's one way to really keep things fresh. The other is that I run a lot of games, but I also play in a lot of games. And I learn a ton from playing in other people's games. So playing at conventions, playing that kind of thing. So it's really the community and other people helps fuel these new ideas that come and reading the works of other folks that help with that. And then the other thing is, even outside of D&D, watching television, and reading books, and films, and playing board games, and even just like going for a walk in the woods, there's all kinds of ideas that that we get for games in that way. And so all of those things can help keep 5e fresh.

And the other thing I would say is like not being afraid to try something weird, with 5e, right? I think as designers, we get so enmeshed in the rules and thinking about like, well, this is how this must work. Right? This must be this way. Subclasses must be four features spread across these levels, or whatever. And I used to think that way. And often I'll work with people who think that way. And then what you'll see is like, Wizards of the Coast will say, Hey, in our next book, we're doing subclasses differently, right? Or in our next book, we're going to change the way that race works, which is something that we've seen from them, right, right. And all of a sudden, it was like, Oh, this is the best idea ever.

But a lot of people had already done similar things. And so I think, oh, yeah, I don't need to wait for Wizards of coast to tell me it's okay. And Wizards of the Coast has been telling you, by the way, that it's okay to do this for since they put out the game so it's not on them. It's just something we as designers sometimes get in our heads, I think and that really helps keep it fresh too because it's like, well, what can I break today and then put back together and see how that works. That's always fun.

EM: As a teacher, I deeply love that idea of giving my students, and you know also giving GMs, the permission to break things.

JI: It's great. It's great. Having the permission to break stuff is always good.

EM: It is. So I teach writing, and one of the things we talk about is trying to find a space where you can be alone to have those thoughts that, whether it's that walk in the woods, or, you know, just that that quiet place at your desk for some time. So I wonder like, what, what is your creative process like?

JI: Yeah, a lot of times for me, and again, I feel very fortunate. But my creative process usually is, when I sit down to write I, I start writing, and I try to limit my distractions as much as possible. Or when I sit down to edit something, it's the same kind of thing. And then, in the case of writing, I think that it is important to get stuff down. Every writer is different. So what I try to do is I try to write things down so that I have stuff on the page. And then I'll go through after that, like a revision process. I've heard it said that writing can be like dragging up sand from the beach to make a sand castle.

So your rough draft is getting all of that sand to where you need it to be. And then revising is shaping that sand into the actual castle that you need. And I think as you get more proficient in a system, where you gain more experience with a system, like I know the 5e style guide pretty well, at this point. So when I'm writing stuff for 5e, I don't need to do as much revision, necessarily, if it's something that I've worked on before, like a monster, or a spell, or whatever. But it is still important to be able for me to say, I got 1000 words down today, and that was my goal.

So that's usually how I work is I have writing goals or editing goals, where I say, today I'm going to edit these two Arcadia articles. I'm going to get these done today. And then what I will do is, if I'm not happy with the work, right, I will, I'll put it down and I'll stop. And that's when typically the ideas will come. It's like, Okay, I'm done for the day. I'm making dinner, I'm doing the dishes or whatever. And the idea of like, Oh, it was here all along, I should have the way to solve this problem was with this, or the way to do this is this way. I know that that's often how our brains can work is worth doing the monotonous tasks were showering. And luckily, our phones have this notepad app. And so I'll open that up, and I'll jot down, this is what I've got to remember. Blah, blah, blah, fix it this way. And then I'll come in and do it again.

So yeah, it's a lot of that. I often listen to music, typically, video game soundtracks and other things without words or with words that I know really well, like lyrics I already know and understand. Because that sort of becomes background music. I can't do new music with lyrics too well, because I get distracted and want to listen to the lyrics or that kind of thing. So all of that with too much opening up Twitter in between.

EM: Oh, man, yes. You know, I, one of the I try to use when I'm being when I'm being the most serious. I can't I'll use Self Control. Are you familiar with that app?

JI: Oh, no. But it sounds great.

EM: It is really good. Yeah, it's a free app. And they've got Mac and Windows versions. And you can tell it which websites to block and then you set a time for how long you want them to be blocked for. You can't you can like you can't do anything to change it either. Once you you could like shut down your computer and restart it. And it's still going, so it just totally locks you out.

JI: Oh, there you go. I heard there's so there's a program that Erin M. Evans who writes, she wrote a bunch of D&D novels and has other novels that she has written, uses this program called to Write or Die. It is wild. So it has all these different settings. And it has like friendly settings, where if you write a certain number of words, it shows you like a nice picture of like puppies or whatever. And if and then it has mean settings where like, if you don't write a certain number of words, it might show you a, like a spider or something scary. But then the highest and meanest setting is that it actually starts to delete what you have written if you don't write fast enough. And that is the setting she uses when she works with it, which is just wild to me. I don't think I could ever do that.

EM: Oh my gosh, yes. Too much pressure. Well, um, I wanted to talk a little bit about the sort of shape of Arcadia and, you know, kind of its its digital nature. And this could be something you guys haven't even talked about or can't talk about. But if there are any plans to take Arcadia to print at some point?

JI: Oh, that's a great question. So we've talked about this. Nothing is 100%. But Matt has talked about this publicly before. We would love to do every 12 issues or so a best of Arcadia would that would come out and print. So, you know, we're going to talk about sort of what's the best way to approach that and how to best pick the best of articles for Arcadia. But I think that would be the the way. And we can't, I don't know that you would ever see fully printed Arcadia articles. Certainly not right now with a paper shortage and a shipping apocalypse and all that kind of stuff to get into that now would be pretty foolhardy for us.

But I do think that we do want to put out this compilation. And what we would do is those articles that we did choose to put out, we would also revise with any new feedback we've gotten, since they've been out in the wild, and we would probably also add a couple of things to it as well. So yeah, that would be pretty fun for us, I think to do. And that's something that I know, the team would like to see, it's just a question of like, do we have the time? Can we make it happen? I think the answer is yes. So hopefully, you know, I don't know, maybe I'll maybe I'll throw some cool stuff in there. What do people want to see? I'll design it. So it could be fun.

EM: Yeah, so So I mean, you definitely hit on like what my next question was, which is, you know, that Arcadia was essentially designed as a digital product. And now the shipping prices and even now this potential paper shortage. And you have designed a game that was created for Roll20, the virtual tabletop, as opposed to a more traditional interface. And so I wonder with Arcadia, Burn Bryte, and these other constraints, Do you see this virtual evolution as being one that is going to continue unabated? Or, I guess, how do you see the sort of print and digital tension playing out?

JI: Yeah, I mean, I think things will, just like they are in other industries continue to push towards the digital. I think, you know, think about how many indie products there are right, that aren't available in print, because the creator just can't afford to do a print run, I think is telling. But look at all these wonderful products we can still get digitally and electronically. So I think you'll continue to see that I think it's going to be interesting to see where digital tools go. So right now, we have a lot of tools that are meant to, for the most part, play many RPGs. Like Roll 20. Roll 20 is built so you can play D&D, but you can also go play Call of Cthulhu, Zweihander, and Lancer, and whatever else you want to play on it. Same thing with Fantasy Grounds and Astral Tabletop, and all of those platforms.

And then we have a platform like D&D Beyond, where you're only playing D&D on that platform, you're not really playing anything else, right? You might be playing Cortex some time soon. Because D&D Beyond is owned by Fandom who also owns Cortex, and maybe they're gonna put out their own platform for that. And what's interesting is that when you have a platform that is optimized for just your game, it can do more with just that game, right? Whereas like, Roll 20 is great for someone like me, because I play a lot of different games. And so it's, hey, all of my stuff is here, it's in one place, it's easy to use, it's free, my friends can get on there. I love that.

But I do think you're going to see some people (and probably Cortex will be one of the next ones) say, here is the digital platform for our game, the one that we've created. And what that is, is it's a matter of money. D&D has the most money, it's the most popular RPG, so they can afford to do things like that. But I think what's going to happen is creating your own platform is going to become cheaper, as many digital things are. And so we may see more people develop their own applications, basically, for their game, in addition to PDFs and things like that.

Now, that said, I think print will always be some part of the equation. I think people really like getting books, especially older gamers like me. So I think for a while, that's going to be the case. But you know, I think it will become less and less important to gamers. And I do think the pandemic has really pushed that forward in a lot of ways, because so many people are playing in front of their screen all the time anyway, because they weren't going to people's houses and things like that. And I've seen a lot of people say, my group is all vaccinated, but we're still playing online, because we don't like driving 20 minutes one way to get to somebody's house and finding a babysitter and all that other kind of stuff. We're still going to play this way. So there it is.

EM: Yeah, truly, and I had already been playing online, like so many other people before the pandemic. And so it was just sort of like, Oh, yes, welcome.

JI: Yeah, exactly. Right. Like I I was playing on Roll 20 for years and years before everybody was playing on Roll20. So fascinating stuff when you see, like everybody who's like, oh, wow, this is so new for me. And you're like, Alright, but it's not new. Like, it's new for you. And it's great that it's new for you, because it means that there's more investment in those platforms now. And there's more people for, you know, us to play with, right. But, but it's not new, which is fascinating.

EM: Yeah, and it's interesting, too, because what you've described almost sounds like what we've seen happen in, in media, in television, where we kind of went from, you know, whatever cable company provider you have is sort of like your pipeline to get, all the stuff, all the content. And now we're sort of seeing like, Oh, no, you've got to have like the Peacock app and the Paramount app, and then, you know, all the apps. And so it almost sounds like that could become perhaps a possible future for for gaming and those online tools.

JI: Yeah, I mean, it may very well be that way. And then you'll see, I think you'll probably still see some platforms that have other games to support independent games that maybe don't have the budget to create their own platform. So one of the ways Burn Bryte, the game that I created for Roll 20, came about is that I was talking to Roll 20 about how they sold stuff like, you know, Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder on their store. Did they ever think about designing their own game? And I compared it at the time to like, I was like, you know, how Netflix is making content? Now they're making, you know, Orange is the New Black and House of Cards and that kind of thing. And they were like, well, funny, you should ask because we are thinking about that. And here's what we'd like to do. And so that's how that came about. So that comparison you made, I think is is pretty apt, because I think what we may see is we may see more virtual tables develop their own games to bring people to the game as games develop their own platforms too. Because they're gonna say, Well, if everybody's going over there to play cortex, and they're not coming to us, we need something that's going to, you know, help boost our platform. And so we need our own game.

EM: What was like your introduction to a tabletop RPGs? And I guess I wondered, too, in particular, if you if there was like a particular book, or monster that like stuck out to you as one that, you know, just like sucked you into this whole world?yeah.

JI: So my introduction was very prototypical. My older brother played in my parents basement, and I sort of watched them that way. Is that what your you mean? Like, what was my introduction to RPGs?

EM: Yeah, absolutely.

JI: So, yeah, it was sort of that, and then I used to watch them, and I really wanted to play. James, I wanted to play so bad. But they, you know, I was like the kid brother. And then one of the players left, and they needed a cleric. And that's how I ended up joining the table. They were like, Alright, you can play because we need you to heal people.

EM: And what edition was this?

JI: This was second edition. Yeah, so I was 10 at the time. I no idea what I was doing. But I told some friends about it, and some friends and I like got my brother to run a game for us then. And then one of my friends went back and told his dad, and his dad was like, hey, that's really cool. You know, I played these games in college. But here's one that I think would be easier for you all to understand. And it was a game called The Fantasy Trip, which is actually a precursor to GURPS. Steve Jackson Games now owns it. And Steve Jackson originally wrote it, and it was great. So that is really my, like, the particular product that I think of that really cemented me was a book for The Fantasy Trip called the In the Labyrinth. And it was, you know, like the advanced player's guide, basically, for that edition of the game. They just had a Kickstarter a couple years ago to relaunch the old edition of the game, and I got all the books, including In the Labyrinth, again, updated, which was great.

EM: That must have been quite a sort of nostalgic trip there when opening that and looking back through it. What advice would you give to people who want to get started designing or making material for tabletop role playing role playing games?

JI: So one of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give is give yourself deadlines. So when I started, I had a blog. And I said to myself, this blog needs to put out two posts a week. And you get whatever fits within your schedule: once a month, once a week, twice a week, however much it is, give yourself that deadline, because then you will actually put content out. And that's how I learned to do this and built a name for myself. I had this whole library of content that I was putting out on my own on my blog. And I don't think I ever would have put out that first article, if I didn't say, I must put this out by this date. So give yourself deadlines and stick to them. Remember that, you know, perfect is the enemy of done. And I would still be working on that first article trying to make it perfect because nothing is. So putting it out there is important.

And the second piece of advice would be get involved. Get involved in the community. Because you're going to meet a lot of people who you will work with, who certainly will help you out, but also who are great people! Like people that you're going to want to hang out with who know what a saving throw is, who want to talk about your favorite game, which is really cool. And lift up the people that you like and the work that you like. You get out as much of the community as you give to it. So make sure you're giving, make sure you're shouting those people out, you're helping them out when they have requests that you can help them with and that kind of thing. You know, because then when you need help, or when you ask, Hey, can somebody look over this, and you know, just give me your opinion. More people will be willing to do that if you did that for them when they asked. So that is a big part of it is getting involved in the community and giving yourself the deadlines so that you actually put things out would be my my two pieces of advice.

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