In the past weeks we talked about One Page Lore and LEXICON, so we decided to interview the author of these works: Jesse Galena. Let’s find out something more about his life and his way of working!
On your site there are many ideas to make unique, original and alternative encounters, monsters and classes. Where does all this creative vein come from?
Truthfully, it all spawns from my need to impress people so I feel like a real writer and game dev rather than a fraud.
Most of those ideas come from my fever dream scribblings trying to make something to engage and surprise my players. Then after refining it a bit or throwing it at players and seeing what happens, I edit it to make it actually readable, then post it. Sometimes I expand on it and usually offer additional info and related ideas based on what players did or what I feared they might try.
Which readings, both in RPG and narrative, have influenced you the most? What readings would you recommend to RPG enthusiasts looking for a book perhaps far from the most famous titles?
That’s a multi-answer question.
One is a quantity over quality sort of thing for me. The best influences have been playing and learning many different systems and seeing how each one works. Where it excels and where it flounders. How it’s original or derivative. I’d be far less inventive if I’d only played the most popular system and tried to make something different than that. Also playing those games with many different DMs and players. No two groups are the same. Heck, sometimes even the same group with a different game isn’t the same.
While it’s got some major differences since it’s group storytelling, learning how to be a good storyteller and writer is extremely helpful. Learning pacing, stakes, and character design is all critical.
Learning social skills is important. Reading a room, improve, and learning people’s individual ticks and quirks so you can better include them are all important. Also being socially conscious of what people are comfortable and uncomfortable with, how players are interacting with each other and how you can or shouldn’t intervene, and how to herd cats.
Reading/watching interviews with developers of tabletop RPGs, board games, and video games is incredibly helpful. GDC talks about narrative design and game design are helpful as well. Extra Credits has a boatload of great videos on applicable game design topics.
Running games has influenced me as much as every other factor combined. I’ve learned about the overlapping layers of all of those things along with the social skills like reading the room and trying to work with people. The small details like breaking narrative bait into free-floating chunks to improve the story for the players and myself without abandoning the main story are skills that develop through use. Studying is important, but isn’t enough. You have to do it to get better at it.
Oh, and confidence, real or faked. It’s important.
With this extreme propensity to create in-depth situations and backgrounds, what is your approach to the game table? How do you feel when you have to interact with flatter characters on the other side?
If I feel a player character (PC) is flat, I try to have their actions put them in a situation where their normal tactics won’t save them. The character who just wants to punch has to negotiate. The shy person in the party is the only one a key NPC is willing to talk to. I try to introduce situations that give them the chance to expand on their character.
In my experience, a lack of depth usually results from one of three things:
- A lack of communication. The person isn’t sure what they can do, so they play it safe.
- A lack of confidence. They don’t believe in themselves or understand the dynamics of the other people at the table, so they play it safe.
- The person is selfish and doesn’t care about the story, the DM, or the other players at the table. They’re just an asshat.
Most of the time, it’s one of the first two, so I try to figure out which and help them. If it’s the last one, I try to work with them to get them to be a team player, since RPGs are cooperative stories.
With One Page Lore: Fantasy Folk you try to offer points of view to better characterize but also understand certain races, also trying to remove problematic stereotypes and social restrictions. Is your intent to make the game smoother and more inclusive? Do you think that your work also has a social and didactic purpose?
All of the above.
In addition, I want Fantasy Folk to showcase how different folk can actually play differently without social restrictions. Why does a naga feel different from a halfling, even if they were neighbors in the same city and grew up together?
Your extreme creativity has also led you to create two very nice and interesting random generators, WTF and Cuisine. How long did it take you? How much fun and how much satisfaction has it given you to create them?
Haha. I love those generators.
The WTF Is My Ridiculous Magical Item Generator took around two months of work. We had to create a unifying syntax for each section that could work with the variety of ideas we had. That was probably the hardest part.
After that, we all (all being everyone credited) shared a Google doc and threw out ideas as a group during group sessions and individually when we had time. Then the final edit to make sure they’d work, trial and error with coding, and boom.
The What’s the Local Cuisine Generator only took around a month, since we’d already worked out the details with the Ridiculous Item Generator.
They were an absolute blast to work on. The items and recipes they generate still crack me up, and I use them in my games. My satisfaction level is very high with those.
Which RPG do you prefer? In which system do you find your work best applicable?
If I didn’t say LEXICON, I’d be a bad game designer. But the roleplay-driven characters and endless creativity along with the ability to make an entire game with encounters and characters in less than 30 minutes makes it perfect for DMs who don’t have a lot of time to prep but don’t want that to limit their games. And for those who just want to reward creativity that won’t break the game.
There are other great systems I’d play more of if I wasn’t constantly working on LEXICON. Savage Worlds is a personal favorite. FATE is great. World of Darkness games like VtM and Mage are an absolute hoot to play. And I’m trying to find a group playing the Genesys system so I can try that out.
You also write narration as well as material for RPG. What do you prefer to write about? What are your works that in your opinion have succeeded best?
I don’t have a preference. I need to write both.
Success is a weird metric since it happens in stages. Getting hired for a job writing something is one level of success. Completing something on my own is another. Releasing it is another. Making $1 off something I wrote is another. Making $2 off it is another. The goalposts are constantly moving.
I just want to keep writing, entertain people, and make enough money to sustain myself and give back to my community.
Let’s talk about your next work, Lexicon. What can you tell us about it? How was it born and what are its pillars?
It started because I had two huge problems:
- I wanted to create every NPC, encounter, monster, spaceship, spell, superpower, and every other idea for my RPG games.
- I had a very limited amount of time to prep a game.
Those conflict with each other pretty hard.
So I designed a system that could do both, which led to the creation of qualities.
Qualities are the motivations, traits, and skills a character has. Each quality is a word or short phrase that describes something about them.
So if I think of a combat encounter with an NPC who’s an orc bodyguard who carries a dozen daggers, uses magic to manipulate the daggers, and has an axe to grind against the mayor, I’ve done most of the work of character creation already.
- “Bodyguard” means they excel at combat, especially if it requires protection
- “Carries a dozen daggers” shows their weapon of choice
- “Uses magic to manipulate the daggers” shows how they fight: constantly throwing and retrieving daggers via magic.
- “An axe to grind against the mayor” shows their motivation and a means the players might be able to use to get them on their side.
Whenever a character does any action, they get a +1 for every quality they’re using. So if they’re fighting someone by magically throwing their daggers (Bodyguard, Caries a dozen daggers, uses magic to manipulate daggers), they get a +3. If this action plays into their motivation- axe to grind against the mayor- that makes it +4.
Same thing for a social encounter. An uptight know-it-all noble with deep connections, a perfect memory, and a superiority complex gives me a lot to work with in a short amount of time. When talking, using those social traits in their actions gives them more bonuses and a better chance of success. This makes playing into a character’s strengths and personality important, which encourages roleplaying by tying mechanical bonuses to it.
The more powerful a person is, the more qualities they have. A starting player character has ten qualities, and they add a new quality when they level. This allows them to become better at something they’re already good at, gain a quality that lets them do something new, or add some synergistic quality that works with multiple tasks.
Tl;dr: LEXICON is an RPG designed so DMs can create an entire adventure from scratch in 30 minutes or less, they can have new players playing in ten minutes, and reward roleplaying so people will play campaigns for years.