Spencer Campbell

James Hanna for Ethereal Mirror: Thank you for coming. I wanted to start by congratulating you on your nominations for Best Game, Best Rules, and Product of the Year for Slayers.

Spencer Campbell: Thank you so much. I am extremely excited about that. And honestly, very, very shocked.

EM: Your games have really taken off over the course of 2020 and certainly before that too,  and now you're talking about updating or adding onto Slayers with the Slayers Almanac.

SC: Yeah, so the Almanac is something that I have been cooking in my head for a long time, since the beginning of this year. Actually, even before that, talking to my friend Mike, who's going to be doing the art and layout, we've been dreaming about putting together this cool collection of maps for the city, the setting of Slayers. Because it's this infinite fantasy, urban sprawl of sorts. And we had been tinkering with ideas about how to do it. And then, you know, 2020 happened and it was a nightmare zone to try and coordinate things.

But we've got the project up and going now. It's going to be a collection of, right now, 10 different districts, and we're bringing in authors that are not me to write them, which is a really important crucial part because, you know, I can come up with ideas for setting information for Slayers. But I think it's always more interesting to hear what other folks have to say. So, there's gonna be 10 authors a really cool, fun, wide variety of sort of settings and genres that are getting tapped into. Then for each of those districts, my friend Mike is going to be doing a hex map and some kind of specialized and unique art and layout for it. So, it's gonna be kind of a pretty unique looking book where every four pages or so you're gonna go diving into a totally new district, and hopefully the feel from the map and the art and everything will make you feel like you're truly traveling to different places.

EM: Nice. And so imagined it like as you've been diving back into that world, and I know that part of your process, one of the things you seem to like to do is reflect on and think about your own designs and sort of why they are and how they came to be, and I wonder what it's been like to to go back and think more about Slayers and how it might continue to evolve as a rule set. 

SC: Yeah, so I definitely like just to come back to my stuff and think about it because so many of my games, like Corvid Court, for example, that was something that got written in 48 hours. And it was just like fast, type it, get it out of my head 48 hours and send it out to the world. And then after the fact that I kind of look back and go, Okay, so what did I just release? So sometimes I like to reflect on things just because they're fast. And other times because I've changed a lot. So, we're hitting about the one year mark since Slayers actually got released to the world. And as a designer, I'm pretty still new to this scene. But I've learned a lot through talking to other folks and reading games. And so it's been fun going back through Slayers.

I've been building what I'm calling Slayers 1.5. It's not the second edition of the game, I'm not doing like a big major overhaul of the rules, but it's just some like tweaking of stuff, making other things clear. Making the game even kind of smoother and faster than it is right now. So that is really starting to hit the notes of what I wanted the game to be in the beginning that maybe I I struggled with accomplishing when I was an early designer doing it all on my own. And so it's been really cool to be reflective. And also because Slayers has built up a community around it. I have a lot of folks who liked the game that I can talk to and say, hey, what if I did X, Y, and Z, and I get immediate, awesome feedback from folks. So I'm not designing in a sort of little bubble by myself, like it was when I first did it. And I think the game's gonna be all the better for it.

EM: One of the things that's a hallmark of Slayers, and I suspect, something that that a lot of its players like is the asymmetrical design of the of the character classes. And I wonder why that asymmetry appealed to you as a designer.

SC: Yeah, I am obsessed with asymmetry concept in games, because before I got into RPGs, I was very, and I still am, very into board games. And there's lots of board games out there, where the players around the table have a different experience because of whatever team or group or faction or whatever it is that they are playing, that makes them interact with the game in some way that's different than everybody else. And obviously, that's a big part of just like what, uh, class is in a lot of role-playing games, but I like games where it truly feels different. So the example I always point to in board games is Root, which is it's a very fun, you know, sort of area control game about different forest critter factions trying to control a forest, essentially.

And every faction plays wildly different than the others. You know, there's sort of a core gameplay loop. But every faction truly interacts with that loop in a very special and different way. So that when you sit down and you play as the birds, for example, and then you play as the like the raccoon vagabond the next time, it feels like you're playing two different games. And I think that's really neat. And I've always looked at role-playing games and been dissatisfied with how class systems don't differentiate enough. So, for example, you look at popular games like 5e, and everybody's rolling a D 20, and adding a modifier when they do a thing. And that helps certainly with learning and making things kind of quick and smooth in some aspects. But don't you want to feel and do things very differently if you're like a wizard changing reality, as opposed to like a sneaky rogue who's trying to like pickpocket something as opposed to like a bard who's performing? Those things should feel different. And that's why asymmetry is so important to me.

EM: I love that. So thinking about that asymmetry and the way you talk about it, I wonder if and maybe you look at it this way already. I'm just curious, if you see, that kind of asymmetry is creating just a totally different kind of balance than could be created in say, a 5e type of system.

SC: Yeah, you know, balance is one of those tricky things where, you know, in in something like five E, the balance, the important thing about balance is players versus GM, right? Players versus monsters. That's where you get like challenge rating values and stuff like that. And then you don't really talk too much about like balance of players versus players. Not in fighting each other, but just the experience they feel at the table. And I used to play 5e, and I played as a fighter, and I played as a wizard, I played as everything in between, and honestly as a fighter, it was pretty boring for me. Cuz like I play, and I'm like, Well, I'm gonna swing my sword again. And I'm gonna swing my sword again. And so what I hope by leaning into this asymmetry is that it gets even harder to sort of get a sense of balance of like players versus the monsters, because now you're really starting to talk about totally different unique combinations of classes and how they bounce off of one another.

Players are always going to find new ways to work with one another that I'll never be able to think of, but hopefully, you really feel like you're doing the job that your class is supposed to be, and that sort of perceived sense of like, my role is being encapsulated by this, I feel good. Even if I'm not murdering all these monsters as efficiently as everybody else, I'm doing the thing that I want to do. And exactly like you said, it's sort of a different sense of balance, but it's like balance of, Is my class fun? Is it is it doing what I want it to do?

EM: So you are a professor of psychology by day, and I read or heard that you actually started role-playing in grad school, and then quickly became the forever GM. And I feel like in grad school, you're like really immersed in your craft, and you're surrounded by people who are all, you know, thinking and talking about, like the same kinds of things as you are. And I wonder if there was something in particular about psychology or your study of it that sort of predisposed you to or made you more open, like at that time in your life to the role playing?

SC: It's interesting because I am a psychologist by trade. And so I went and I got a my, my grad school experience was going, and I got a PhD in cognitive psychology. So oftentimes, when I tell people, I'm a psychologist, they, they will, understandably assume that it is some base of therapy or counseling or something like that. And my area of expertise is in studying things like decision making, problem solving, creativity, memory, and language, which is, all of that is games, right? All of those things are games, right? Is is decision making, problem solving, creativity, all of that sort of stuff is what we do when we play games.

So, I think there's always been a part of me that just loves thinking about those things. That's, that's ultimately why I got the degree that I got. And those of us who started role-playing together, we were all cognitive psychologists. So we all just sat down and we wanted to play these games. And, you know, I don't know whether it was our degrees that was the thing that got us interested in it. But there's certainly like a unified experience. 

So in terms of my, like, getting started with RPGs, I don't think there's anything about like psychology that immediately made them appealing to me and my friends, but it was, once I get into design, that's when I started to see a lot of parallels in the stuff that I had been studying, and how I could use that to at least inform a little bit about how I designed games.

EM: You've also said that you've been writing rules, since you were something like four?

SC: Yeah.

EM: And so I wonder, like, I mean it certainly seems like, there's a part of you that just kind of gravitates to that mindset of of rule based thinking, and I wonder if you've thought about what that is, or just why you love it?

SC: I've always loved games. So I've always loved games, I've always loved playing games. My mom loves to play games as well. So like, I grew up in a very playful sort of environment. And immediately—I I don't quite remember this—but what other people tell me is that, at a very young age, after learning how games worked, I wanted to start changing them right away. And so I've always had this interest in kind of tinkering with and like crafting and messing with existing rule systems.

My family always jokes that they don't need to read rule books or, or anything like that, because they've got me, and I'm just like a repository of the rules of all the games that we've played. So it's just something that I've always done. And I don't really know why. I think it's just because I've always played games. And they've fascinated me, and I think it's just like any kid who gets really fascinated with a thing, they want to take it apart. And then they want to understand how it works, and then make it themselves. But instead of me like taking apart random, actual physical things in the real world, I was I was taking apart these games.

EM: That makes so much sense. And so you've got sort of on the one hand, your your love of games, and on the other, you've got your inspiration. You seem to draw a lot from video games and other media and even board games to create your own. And I wonder if there's if there's something when you're looking at things out in the world, is there something in particular that you look for in a video game, or in another game, that just makes you think that's like a thing I want to work with?

SC: So I think it just depends on the medium. There are things that are special about certain mediums that I think .... The RPG scene is constantly growing right now, right? With the indie scene, there's so many cool, amazing creative voices that are bringing new ideas to how like just what a role-playing game is. But there's still like a huge amount of people who have a pretty traditional mindset about what a role-playing game is supposed to look like, and act like and feel like. And I think all of those people also love things like board games and video games and things like that. And kind of my goal is to say, Hey, you know, these things about board games that you really love? Like maybe it's this asymmetry thing? What if that was a thing in your role-playing game? Or, like the whole reason I created the Lumen SRD was to show, Hey, you can have this like over the top, bombastic power fantasy sort of combat simulator, but it doesn't have to be like on a grid in this very specific sort of genre and stuff like that.

There's a lot of flexibility to sort of get the vibe that you actually like in video games. So there's like a part of me that wants to show..., and I don't think this is like a thing that I'm actively doing. I think it's just lurking in the back of my head... is to show people who are fans of other things, that there's a role-playing game for them, that captures the thing that they love about some other hobby or craft or whatever they love, and that exists in role-playing games, or it can exist. And that that's a big part of how I design games.

EM: The other aspect, I think of, that I recognize you for sort of in the community are your contributions to supporting Itch funding and being like really transparent with your design streams, and sort of sharing and talking about all those different aspects in an effort, I think, to make the the hobby more inclusive, to open the doors to new creators. And I wonder, where else do you see? Or where do you see like the greatest need or where you'd like to see the community continue to grow and change?

SC: I think, still, the, the greatest need or barrier that I see—this is something I've talked to a few people about over time—is that there is this assumption that when you make something like, you want to make a role-playing game, it has to look like this, like, ultra clean, polished product at the end. And there are so many amazing games out there that are just black text on a white background. And they read great, they play great. And I truly do think that a lot of people look at this, look at a really like successful role-playing game, and they think about, Oh, look at all the stuff that goes into that, like all the rules that they made all the art that they have, it looks so nice, and how am I supposed to do that by myself?

This is sort of a similar problem that I had, when I was trying to do board game design, before I did role-playing games, is I would look at perfect board games out there, you know, publish board games and think, Well, I guess if I'm gonna make a prototype, I have to have all of these components with all the art and everything. And really, I could get away with this scraps of paper with writing on it. But there's this mentality that we have that you need to shell out a bunch of money to hire artists and everything like that. And I have I have been seeing it recently, which is really cool. A lot of people coming forward and saying, Here's how you can do all of this, at a much more affordable level, here's how you can do it with public domain art, here's how you can make a really cool layout using like Google Sheets, right? You don't have to have Affinity or Adobe or anything like that. You can get away with the stuff that is free out there. I think that's, that's still like the hurdle that a lot of people use to prevent themselves from even getting into this, but I think it's something that the scene is doing a much better job of showing people how to get over it.

EM: What would you tell young designers who are hoping to go make that same sort of journey? Like, what, what do you wish you'd known before you ran your Kickstarters and made your first bigger games?

SC: It's, it's, I'm not saying find a team. What I'm saying is find a community. So for example, when I did my very first Kickstarter, I did, it was for this game called Score. It was a crime game. And it was a system that I made, and I did it with, like art and layout from my friend. So I had somebody that I knew working on the project, but still, we were pretty much like did the designing everything by ourselves. I hadn't really dipped my toes into the role-playing game community at large. I just sort of showed up during a Zine Quest and said, Hey, here's the game. Are you interested? You've never heard of me before. And I think the biggest thing that has been really helpful, and it's something that I've seen with Lumen, is people once they find a community of people who like to design similar things or just have similar interests. You just bounce off of one another.

In my Discord server, just the other day. It went wild over this like impromptu design of a Bionicle Lumen game. And there was like five people who just for like hours, they just riffed off of one another. And, you know, maybe it will actually ultimately become a game. But it's because they found a community of people who liked the same thing. That it just inherently, this process emerged, similar as to like how with Slayers, I didn't co-design it, I didn't design it with a bunch of other people. But I had been reintroduced to the Brain Trust community, and a number of their, like, smaller indie RPG communities. And I started becoming friends with a lot of these people. And that helped me immensely. Just like on a day-to-day basis, being able to just check in with folks share ideas, but even just like, making those friendships with people who have the same hobbies and passions as you. So find your people, is my recommendation. Like, you don't have to go hire a full team to make your first project. You can do it all by yourself. But if you've got this cool community behind you, that is cheering you on, that's immensely helpful. So that's why like, I don't know, big picture, how do you like get started sort of thing. There's tons and tons of practical advice I have for like, how I would have done Kickstarters differently and stuff like that. But all of that comes from like, first getting that community.

EM: Nice, nice. And that feels like I think a doable step for a lot of people.

SC: I think so. You know TTRPG Twitter can be a minefield. You know, there's there's certainly good folks, there's bad folks, and everything in between. And there's plenty of Discord communities that more and more people are kind of creating these smaller communities based off of, you know, a shared interest, like a game or publisher. And so it's out there, it's totally doable. It's just a matter of, you know, throwing yourself into that arena for just a second and being like, Hey, here's who I am. I like RPGs I like that sort of thing. Can I hang out?

EM: And I wonder like, I mean, it feels like a lot of this wouldn't be possible. I mean, certainly like the whole I mean, the existence of Twitter and Discord have sort of radically reshaped our ability to connect with people and form communities. And so I guess I wonder, I'm sort of curious to how much do you play in person at this point? And or are you almost entirely online?

SC: I am entirely online with how I play at this point. Now that is nowadays, because of the pandemic. Sure. But actually, you know, when I first started playing role playing games, I started playing online, even though we were grad school friends, we didn't sit around the table together, we all were in our own separate apartments across the city of Chicago. And we just got together once a week and did it online. And inevitably, we all graduated and then split across the country. And yet we were able to maintain our game for like three years because we did it all online. And so for me, most of my gaming happens online. I do—I did, I should say, not do—I had a in person group that we would meet on Sunday mornings, but we just haven't been able to do that in person in quite some time. Just given the pandemic and everything, but because of Twitter and Discord I'm meeting people and able to play with people that I never would have been able to meet or play with before, which is super cool.

EM: It really is. And a great thing to take advantage of, I think, oh, you mentioned earlier that a nova and are in the sort of the lumen system is sort of designed to make these like power Fantasy games, where we have like, really powerful characters and quick combat. And not necessarily like a lot of like a tactical board game. less of that. And I guess I wonder, what was your your the initial appeal of that design? That kind of system? Was it the inspiration of the video games that it's sort of that were inspiring for it? Or was there something that you weren't seeing in other games that you just really wanted to capture?

SC: It's a it's a couple of different things. So the first lumen game was light before lumen even existed. So lumen kind of evolved out of light and light is my destiny inspired game. And there's a couple of reasons that I made light and one is because I have a close cousin of mine, who we've played video games together for you You know, most of our lives, we play destiny all the time. But he's never played a role playing game. And so I wanted, I wanted a game that he would play because he was, you know, he's obsessed with destiny. So I was like, okay, so I need to make something that will be appealing to him. I'm not gonna put Dungeons and Dragons in front of him, how can I make destiny something that he could sit down and play that's lingering in the back of my head while and while I'm making something like this, I'm looking, you know, Destiny is a combat game. It's about going around and shooting your gun at different kinds of aliens and going on Space Adventures. And, you know, you go look at a combat game like d&d, and I don't like combat in d&d at all. It's just personally, it doesn't hit the flow that I I like to see in combat for a number of reasons. But I also don't like combat in things like power by the apocalypse games, those really free flowing narrative forms are, I honestly think, a lot harder than five easy to learn. I think that kind of the concepts of power by the apocalypse games are easy to learn. But if somebody is coming at it from a perspective of wanting to play something that has a lot of fighting, I think that actually gets really difficult to understand. And so I wanted to add, I wanted to make something that captured fun, exciting, action packed combat, but didn't go all the way to the rules light territory of you're just kind of describing whatever you're doing. And so that's that's sort of where Lumen emerged from, as sort of like a happy medium between those two.

EM: And when you were initially trying to capture after that idea for the for the mechanics of that game, what what was the starting point for you?

SC: The starting point for me was the powers. I wanted you to have cool powers that felt like the sort of amazing things that the Guardians can do in Destiny. I am such a sucker for really cool, evocative powerful abilities in games, which is why I love Spire so much, because Spire has, as you get advances in your character, you get these really, truly ridiculous powers that are like once per session, and then it describes this truly over the top thing that you can do, and you go, Oh, wow, I can do this? I would have never even dreamed that I could do this as a character. So I love that sort of stuff, where just suddenly you get a button that says Do a Very Cool Thing. So I started with that sort of stuff. And then I I said, Okay, I've got the cool the Do a Very Cool Thing part. But Destiny is not about doing that all the time. You have weapons. How do I resolve that? And then I started to come back towards the dice pool system.

EM: As you're talking about the powers, it makes me think too, about the asymmetry we talked about earlier. Was that on your mind as you were developing those powers? Were you trying to push the envelope in terms of, you know, just sort of shocking people with their abilities?

SC: I think that's just always a thing that I'm thinking about. I'm always trying to think about a fun power that you can do, that's just gonna feel cool to do every single time you do it. Like, I want a thing that it's not, I swing my sword, and I swing my sword, sort of thing. I want the, whenever I do this power, even if it's the thing that I do every turn, it feels awesome to do it. You know, same thing with Slayers, like when you're the Blade, yes, you're rolling to hit, but you could possibly get this ridiculous exploding dice situation where you're getting this huge combo. And that's exciting. And so there's that part of me that wants to put that sort of stuff in every game: that power that you go, every time I get to do this, I get to just feel really, really cool in this moment.

EM: I wonder too, as you know, thinking about the games you've been putting out like, Is that is that feeling of a power fantasy game. Maybe I'm just an English major, and I look into things too much, but were you designing these games partly in response to the world that's around us that's chaotic and you know, that we often maybe feel powerless in?

SC: I wish I could say that, because that would be so inspiring and cool. But I think it truly is because I play ridiculous about a video games. I play so many video games. And in most of the games I play, you feel powerful. And if your character dies, you're going to get right back up and get back to it sort of thing. And that's what I like to try and capture with my role-playing games. Now, not every game I make is like this sort of invincible power fantasy, but it's definitely a theme in the stuff that I do. And I think it just comes from the fact that, for me, I love to sit down at the end of the day, and just be a really powerful space wizard in Destiny. And sometimes I want to do that when I'm role-playing with my friends too.

EM: Yeah, that definitely tracks, and I agree it's nice to just be able to relax around a good story where you're not worried about the life and death necessarily.

SC: The video game thing also reflects a thing that I've been doing with a lot of my games, which is trying to push for shorter sessions. Like, if the rules are light, and the gameplay is streamlined, then you can get a session done in 60 minutes to 90 minutes to two hours, which to me, like, that's what I want to hit these days. Back in the day, I used to do these four hour sessions with my friends. And I just, I can't do that anymore. Because I just don't want to. but also I've got schedule. I've got a partner, I've got a dog, I've got responsibilities. And the actual play world that we see with streams and stuff sort of promotes this: you should be playing for like, three, four hours. But I want to show people that you can get away with a really fun, action-packed thing in an hour's time. And that's pretty cool.

EM: That is cool. And I love being able to get a story, something that feels satisfying too, and you know, we can we can get through an entire arc, just like we would maybe in a TV show. For anyone who's looking to get into writing or publishing, you know, designing games or game supplements, what would you tell them?

SC: I would recommend starting with hacks. So what I always recommend people to do, is to start by writing a supplement or a hack for a game that already exists. Because writing your own system...it can be hard. And I genuinely think you get the best sense of what design feels like. And understanding what your own design goals are. If you look at a system that exists, one that you enjoy, but it has a hole in it, and you want to fill the hole with some new thing, be it a new class, maybe a new optional rule set, or something like that.

It's my number one recommendation for folks to get started. Because you have something that you can lean on, you have a framework of an existing system that you can use as that's gonna lift you up, it's gonna do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. But at the same time, like I was saying, you still get to execute your own designer voice. You get to say, Here's the thing that I've always wanted to see in this game. How can I make that thing? Using a clear outline and framework to build upon? As opposed to saying, I've always wanted to make a game about blank, and then I'm starting from scratch. How do I even begin? Because that's a lot. But I think once you get that sense of hacking, you're gonna get a sense of what is exciting to you. Like, that's how I started. I started by writing playbooks for Powered by the Apocalypse games, because that's what we were playing at the time. And it gave me a sense of the sorts of things that I like in characters what I like in games, and I evolved from there.

EM: That's pretty solid advice. Are there any projects coming around the corner you wanted to mention?

SC: So besides the Almanac that we talked about, I've got three projects that are at various stages of being either just a wild idea in my head or something that's actually starting to manifest. So the other thing, the other sort of collaborative book I'm working on is the Corvid Court Aviary, which is going to be a collection of again, writers other than me writing stuff for my very strange game about bird crime called Corvid Court. So that'll be fun doing Almanac and Corvid Court Aviary, because I'm not writing for them, but instead coordinating a team. And that's gonna be a new experience for me, but it's gonna be really fun bringing a wide variety of voices to those games.

I'm working on Light Beacon Edition, which is sort of a, here's everything I've ever released in Light, actually reworded, rewritten, updated and put into one comprehensive book as opposed to like 12 different modules that have been released over a nine month period. So I think that's gonna be really a cool, comprehensive book that I'm challenging myself to try and do the layout on it on my own, which is something that I don't normally do. So that's my big challenge I've given myself.

The last thing I'm cooking on is my third Resistance Light game. I want to make a sort of trio of them. So Corvid Court was the first one. Seasons was my second one, which was about crime with fey characters. And then the third one, I think, is going to be a sort of cursed gunslinger style game. But I'm at the earliest stages of drafting that that one just lives in my brain. It just it grows, and it mutates in my my brain until eventually, I feel confident to put something on the page.

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