Some weeks ago we talked about the Kickstarter campaign for The Red Opera RPG and it impressed us so much that we decided to interview its lead writer, Rick Heinz. He revealed us some really interesting aspects of this campaign for D&D5e, giving us even more reasons to increase our hype.

Here you can read his words!

Let’s start with the title: The Red Opera. It is inspired by the DiAmorte album of the same name. Was it just a tribute to something that deeply inspired you or does it reflect your campaign more? Our first thought when reading the word “Opera” was, besides music, something extremely theatrical and glorious.

It deeply reflects the campaign, particularly on the theme of Tragedy. Opera’s always have a tragedy of sorts within their plays while being extremely theatrical, and The Last Days of the Warlock is no different. Grand set pieces, high-drama, and wicked moral choices set the stage for the main campaign. In the original album, the story was two sides that escalated in war using supernatural power, and we were able to maintain that.

Writing a campaign of over 90,000 words for all tiers of play requires a huge amount of work. How long did this project take?

About two years and an entire team of people. 11 written drafts and months of full-time art and development!

The Red Opera was a played campaign that gave birth to the editorial idea or was it a concept born with the idea of being produced and then consequently made a game campaign to do playtests (as well as to have fun as crazy)?

It was a concept born and then written! The original idea was born from a kitchen in Chicago with one nerd and metal band members! I pitched the idea they should turn their album into a campaign and everyone in the room got quiet. Everyone I know who listened to metal also played games and since I was a storyteller who used music in my games, this seemed like a no brainer. Ten minutes later I was writing.

Although you have chosen a low goal for a project of such great scope and preparation, did you expect it to be funded in just 40 minutes? And you have currently raised over 6x the target with a forecast of $ 134,000 to $ 238,000!

It’s fantastic! Yes, we did expend to fund early because we had lined up launch parties and street teams early on before we launched. Our base goal was just to deliver the story and campaign, but we want to make the definitive guide to Warlocks, and for that we need stretch goals taking us to that 200k mark. Fingers crossed!

Creating stories focused on character choices and with multiple endings available sometimes forces you to leave parts of the stories described only briefly to allow dungeon masters to adapt them to the characters they have. Do you consider The Red Opera an adventure for experienced dm’s? Were you able to do playtests with novice storytellers?

It is planned for Dungeon Masters that gravitate to Theater of the Mind style roleplay. It is true, we don’t describe every nook-and-cranny of the encounters, but instead provide the storytellers with the goals and guidance of what the encounter is to be. Doing it this way allows us to cover high-tier play (which is where all our monster stats are at) and then offer guidance for scaling them down-or tossing out possibilities for players actions. It’s impossible to predict them all however, so we dedicate time in critical chapters giving tips for storytellers to craft their own outcomes and remain ‘in theme’. This means it works for any ST who simply jives with the setting and can improv when needed.

You had to find three adjectives to describe The Red Opera which ones would you use?

Eerie, Clever, Bewitching.

Which of the 4 main characters are you most fond of? And why?

Majin the Betrayer. They are a patron made manifest in the Shadelands who is integral to the events of the story, but because Majin existed outside of the material plan–they have a curious adoration for food. Spices, deserts, and various meats on sticks delight their curiosity and it’s helped me fall in love with the character!

We wanna thank Rick and all the team of Apotheosis Studios for this interview and now we just have to wait for the work to be completely finished and we really can’t wait to play it!

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