AMA with Shanna Germain (author, editor, co-owner of Monte Cook Games, lead designer of No Thank You, Evil!)

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Hi Shanna. Numenera is a very cool setting, and presumably like many people, I first heard of it because of the upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera game. Has the development of that game impacted the PnP RPG much or at all? Since the game apparently takes place a bit off the map of the campaign setting book (if I recall correctly) and inevitably brings new elements to the setting, do you expect to tie a lot of that new material they develop back in to the PnP game at some point after Torment comes out? (Or are there IP restrictions or other hurdles in place there?)

It seems like a fun situation, like a novelist having their book picked up to be turned into a film before it's even published.

 

[Shanna Germain]

Can you reveal something about MCG scheduling for this year?
When are we going to see the "Worlds Numberless and Strange" supplement? Also is the strange compendium supplement going to be published this year?

We have a couple of secret projects in the works this coming year (that we’ll be announcing soon), as well as some that I can actually talk about!

“The Cypher System Rulebook” and “Worlds Numberless and Strange” are both scheduled to be out in time for Gen Con this year (fingers crossed!), and we’re currently working on some new glimmers and fractals, including one that ties into Strand, the Numenera short film.

 

[Shanna Germain]

Hi Shanna,
I am also wondering about the focus for MCG. Each year you have had a product, starting with Numenera, then The Strange, and this year the Cypher System Rulebook and No Thank You, Evil!
I know there is ongoing product development for the current lines (I was a KS Strange Superfan Backer, so there is still a ton of books in the pipeline just on that project alone).

The Strange gave up about any setting a player can imagine, and the Cypher System Corebook is giving foci and descriptors to all sorts of Genres, again, either complementing The Strange or holding their own as homebrew settings.

Are we likely to see another Corebook+ Setting like Numenera from MCG in 2016? Any hints?
i LOVE that you MCG gives the fans all the tools, and at the same time, I say to myself "Oh crap, they gave us all the tools, what could be left?"

OR another way to tackle the same type of question: What genre has MCG not tried yet?

Thank you so much for the nice words!

I can’t reveal too much yet, unfortunately. All I can say at the moment is that we are a creative team who loves to push the boundaries and come up with new things, and that we’re always planning at least a year out, so right now we’re thinking a lot about 2016 and beyond. I’ll let you jump to conclusions from there!

 

[lindevi]

Hi Shanna,

Lots of questions, but feel free to answer as many as you can/like:

How did you get into RPGs? Writing? Game design? What were the major breakthroughs you had into the industry? How did you come to be a part of MCG?

And what social media marketing advice do you have for indie game developers?

You're one of the more visible woman game developers in the industry right now, so thank you for being a role model for more of us to make our own games and be active in the games community!

 

[TarionzCousin]

We have a couple of secret projects in the works this coming year (that we’ll be announcing soon), as well as some that I can actually talk about!

Go ahead and tell us; we can keep secrets!

Does Monte Cook Games have any plans to get any of their games involved in something like the D&D Adventurers League? Maybe you could do that with your new kids game....

Thank you for being part of a great, creative force in our community. Best wishes for continued success.

 

[Shanna Germain]

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions Shanna.

Do you guys see the Cypher system as a universal system (a la GURPS, Fate, Savage Worlds)? If so was that the initial idea, or is it something that developed naturally?

I've seen you tweet about negativity on the internet. Is that something you struggle with? Either individually or as a team?

Cypher is fairly light on the mechanics to start with. What got trimmed out for kids in NTYE?

Do you guys have roles at MCG? Like I see Bruce Cordell as more science fictiony, Monte as more weird stuff (meant in a good way), you as championing inclusivity. Or is that just a weird filtered perception of my own?

My pleasure! I’m going to tackle these questions in order:

-That’s probably more a question for Monte than myself, since he is the really the mind behind the Cypher System. I think that we do consider it to be setting agnostic, but in an adaptive way. What I mean is that each game we’ve put out uses the Cypher System but the rules are tweaked slightly to integrate more closely with the game’s setting. You can see a lot of this at work in the upcoming Cypher System Rulebook, where there are sections on how to shift the rules to fit better within each genre. They’ve really easy adjustments, but they really make a big difference in the gameplay.

When we first started Numenera, we didn’t expect it to take off, and we weren’t even planning to do more games (there was no such thing as Monte Cook Games at that point), so at first the rules were designed solely with Numenera in mind.

-I think that there are many different kids of negativity, some good and some bad. Constructive criticism, deconstruction of art, and other types of negativity that are actually designed to be useful and conversation-creating can be a great asset. But to me, negativity with the sole purpose of making someone else feel bad (or making yourself feel good) is mean and useless. I have pretty thick skin—I don’t know that you can make a living as a creative person without out—but it still gets to me. And when I watch young or new artists get completely devastated by something that someone says just to be mean, it makes my heart hurt. Being a creative person is really hard, putting yourself out there is so hard… why make it worse for someone else? Why not support each other? (And I do think that support includes the positive negativity that I mentioned).

-For No Thank You, Evil! it was a bit of trimming, but it was also more of breaking the rules apart and then putting them back together in a slightly different way. The rules needed to have levels for different age and developmental levels in a way that the other games didn’t, and we needed to be able to give kids lots of room to be creative without making it so free-form that parents or GMs felt like they were herding dragons!

-We work closely as a team, and I think more than roles, we each try to play to our strengths. Monte is brilliant at game design and development, as well as coming up with wild and imaginative ideas. He really has a good sense for how the game will play at the table, and what players and GMs want. Bruce, too, is so imaginative and creative, particular with scientific topics and ideas. He builds incredible worlds—some of the stuff he came up with for "Worlds Numberless and Strange" just blew me away. I am kind of a jack of all trades, who steps in where I’m needed. I really love world- and character-building, creating those little details that get people really excited. And, definitely, inclusion is important to me—I think it’s really important to all of us, I’m probably just the loudest about it!

 

[Shanna Germain]

Hey Shanna,
I am looking for a little inspiration and a good book always helps. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing your favorite books and authors. Maybe a list by genre (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Science, Fantasy, fiction) and why you like them?

Okay, you’ve opened the floodgate now! I have way too many favorites to list, so I’ll just tell you some of what I’ve loved in the last year or so:

Comics:
-The Wicked + The Divine
-Sweet Tooth
-Locke and Key
-Y the Last Man
-We3
-Sex Criminals
-Ms. Marvel
-Rat Queens
-Saga

Books (A lot of the work I like is very cross-genre so I didn’t divide it into genres. For ideas, I especially like short story collections; often reading a bunch of stories back-to-back from different authors jumpstarts really interesting new ideas for me.)

Blindsight, by Peter Watts
(A short story collection that is sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and more all rolled into one. Full of fantastic ideas).

The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi
(You can’t go wrong with any of his work, but his newest book made me feel a little out of breath when I read it. It’s that good.)

Zoo City, by Lauren Burkes
Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
(Both of these books have original voices and kick-ass characters set in weird, wonderful worlds)

House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski
(This novel is like a cypher in and of itself, with the complex story and the wonderful graphic elements that are incorporated into the story)

Pretty Monsters: Stories, by Kelly Link
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russell
Salsa Nocturna, by Daniel José Older
(All three of these single-author collections are full of weird and wonderful ideas.)

Other authors I love are for ideas are: Elizabeth Bear, Joe Hill, Cat Rambo, Nic Pizzolatto, Tim Pratt, Eugie Foster, China Mieville … Okay, I’m going to stop there so I don’t go on and on!

 

[Shanna Germain]

When you have three designers (plus other members of MCG) like you, Bruce, and Monte, are there ever areas of contention, design-wise? For example, is there ever a tendency for one of you to want to go a certain way and the others have to pull it back a bit? Is that a way a team dynamic can complement each other?

I'm trying to think of examples. OK, bearing in mind I'm just making this up, so it's not an example based on reality. Say Monte had a tendency to want tons of random tables, and you guys are like "random tables are cool, but let's keep the number down"; or Bruce wants to put mathematical equations in his work, and you guys are all "Bruce, it's a game, not a textbook". Those are really silly examples, I know. I just took two things I tend to do and attached Monte and Bruce's names to them. But the short version of the questions is: are there any individual tendencies that teamwork tends to help smooth out?

Well, Bruce and Monte never want to have ice cream sundaes for lunch, which is clearly ridiculous, so we fight about that all the time ☺

Honestly, I can’t think of any real sticking points, but we do talk a lot about projects as a team and figure out where we want them to go. Each of us have our darlings—the things that we really love that we have a hard time letting go of—so sometimes we put up a fight for something we really want to keep. But that’s just part of open conversation and growth. The goals are always to serve the product first, to make it the best that it can be, and to give the designer as much creative freedom as possible. The place where those two goals intersect is the sweet spot.

 

[Shanna Germain]

Who's faster? You or Monte?

Hm, that depends. When it comes to writing, Monte is way faster. When it comes to shooting bad guys in Borderlands, though, I am the speed queen!

I am also better at Words With Friends. Just sayin.

 

[Shanna Germain]

When and how is the Native American world rewrite for the Strange coming out?

Very soon! The authors – Alina Pete and Anthony Pastores finished writing it last month, and they did an absolutely wonderful job. Artist Winona Nelson has been working on an art piece to accompany it; we just saw her early sketch and are very excited about it. If all goes well, we're hoping to release it sometime this month.