Busytown, Where's Waldo, and Killscapes

In my younger days I was obsessed with Richard Scarry’s Busytown. I was also really into Where’s Waldo - not so much in finding Waldo but in the mass of the people and things happening in the art. Same with Busytown - I loved all the animals driving cars and baking and playing sports. It was bizarre to me. I was also really into Goldbug and Lowly Worm. I loved the art and the warmth of the drawings. It felt like a magical and fully realized world. Both Busytown and Waldo very much inspired me to draw but my scenes weren’t of soft creatures having fun and baking pies but of total and random violence. Folks falling into meat grinders and carnivorous plants. Folks impaled, shot, dismembered. You get it. It was art I didn’t need to think about. I could just draw and that was it. And that type of approach to drawing very much moved me forward in my creative life. It was all something I could just do and not worry about. When I look back at these murderscapes of cartoony character killings and dying, I see the first glimpses of so many FAL characters. I also see the feel I wanted for FAL (one element of that feel), a scary world full of violence and ridiculous ways to die. Cartoonish death by robot hacksaw blades. Being impaled by another person. The image here is an ancient version of a murderscape I did in early high school.

Synphonial - Soap Opera Clones of FAL

The Synphonial are a race of clones from a planet called Gage World. The memories and personalities of the Synphonial are governed by a powerful computer called AIRM which sits near the core of Gage World. When a Synphonial dies, their backup memories and personality are loaded into a clone body and reanimated by AIRM. This has allowed the Synphonial to gain immortality, but at a price as AIRM creates personalities and memories in the clones based on ancient forms of entertainment called soap operas. Thus, Synphonial society is plagued with backstabbing and overly dramatic interactions that infuse their daily existence. Because of their continuous deaths and wearing out of clone bodies, Synphonial must continuously re-upload their consciousness into new bodies about once every 30 years. This re-cloning has taken a toll on the psyche of the Synphonial as a species and driven them to madness over the last centuries. Synphonial madness manifests as deep paranoia and hallucinations. Coupled with the manufactured drama of soap operas, the Synphonial are absolutely insane. The original form of the Synphonial has been lost to time as has knowledge of the architects who created AIRM. Today, the Synphonial are complacent and focused only on luxury and fulfilling their own selfish desires. They often enslave other creatures to fulfill their every command.

Minimalism in Games

When I was younger, I wanted to play games that tried to emulate or had rules for everything. I wanted dense crunch, systems that used forty equations to determine the trajectory of a missed ranged attack. I wanted bookkeeping. Looking back, I don’t know who that person was. I think I had time in those days to learn complex systems, to spend time reading rulebooks. I also had friends willing to play new games. Not so much anymore. But also, these days, I am drawn to simplicity and elegance in game mechanics. I am drawn to minimalist games like Risus, Tunnel Goons, Troika, business card rpgs, and even some OSR stuff. I like games that I can pick up and read in a single sitting and know how to play. Maybe my attention span has been reduced or maybe I allocate time differently now, I don’t know. I just love mechanics that give a foundation and let the GM and players run wild. I like play that allows the players to get into the story and rarely or never reference rules. Are there minimalist games that you have played that you love?

Inpsiration and Creativity in Design

In with the old, in with the new. That’s not the saying, but it should be because nothing truly stands on its own without inspiration. Creativity isn’t manifest in a vacuum and all who make things draw inspiration from what has already been created, whether they admit it or not (or know it or not). By taking the old and sending it through a unique lens, the lens of the creator, to make something new, this is where novelty comes from, this is how to surprise the reader/viewer/player, to give both the familiar and the unexpected. One thing that I try to do in Far Away Land is this very thing, whether it be space travel or vampires or magic, the core of these things are rooted in the familiar but the lens changes it just enough to hopefully feel unique and surprising for those who consume it. That’s the goal anyway.

Starwalkers

In the ancient days of the Materiosphere, there were those whose minds and bodies were as one. These were monks and mystics and practitioners of arts long since lost to the worlds from which they came. These were seers from long dead worlds like Anuthis, Sacred Blah, and Osharox. These were individuals who were able to peer beyond the physical world and gaze at the very web weave that was Second Space. Eventually, using their mental abilities, these explorers were able to open gateways into the forgotten realm of Second Space and travel by projecting their thoughts across vast distances. The ability known as star projection allowed these early explorers to leave their worlds and search the distant stars. As their abilities grew, the star projectors evolved in skill and eventually came to be able to move their bodies through Second Space via psychic bubbles they created. This ability was known as starwalking.

Power Gaming and Upper Level PCs

I was watching a video the other day about how in the world’s most popular rpg it becomes incredibly difficult to run a game at high level, for a plethora of reasons. Admittedly, I have never run a high-level game in D&D but years ago I had high level characters in campaigns and I agree with most of what the presenter was saying. Mainly, play just became unfun (balance, time for fights, etc.). Also, the struggle was no longer there for the PCs. We didn’t have to scrap and scrape to survive. I'm sure we were abusing the rules as our PCs were essentially in god mode as we murder hoboed entire villages and laid waste to everything in our paths. And this at first was fun but that campaign quickly ended and looking back I think it was because we all felt that there was nothing on the line, no risk. It’s like putting in all the cheat codes, beating the game, unlocking all the secrets, and then what? 

When I made FAL I never wanted PCs to be able to arrive at that level of play through normal play. I never wanted an orka to be able to one-on-one a dragon in face-to-face combat. I wanted the players to continue to feel that struggle and that need to survive regardless of how powerful their characters became. So, a lot of the rules, the increase in HP and the maxing out of stats and all that is really meant to keep PCs (usually) in a space that always poses a degree of risk for their survival.

Winged Hairies and Inspiration

So, I firmly believe that inspiration can come from anywhere and the more open we are to novelty and allowing inspiration to come to us, the more we will be inspired. This being said, years ago, when I was in the very early stages of FAL and coming up with the creatures who would eventually find their way into the Tome of Awesome, my wife sat down and had a brief drawing session alongside me. In the span of that session, she drew the very first iteration of the winged hairies which eventually made it into the books and lore of FAL. I loved the name she gave them and it felt like those creatures were so meant to be part of the weirdness of FAL. So they went into the book and we devised the lore around the image. She is also responsible for the nubyeb, ootoom, and cat tenderers.