079: Designing Vagrantsong & two expansions with Kyle Rowan of Wyrd Games

Kyle: 20:45

Sure. So we’ve got two that are headed to Kickstarter mid September. The big one is on core and we’re doing another one called off the rails. So in the main game of vagrant song, there’s a total of 23 scenarios and we’re almost doubling up on that with another 18. There’s going to be a new chapter for the full campaign. So not to spoil too much if you haven’t played vagrant song, but at certain points in the campaign you’re going to run to three different doors and that’s how you choose your own campaign structure. You’re going to go down door C Maybe you’ll do a next and then be last and this one’s going to add a fourth door that you can go down, called the bridge of leaves, which is going to include another five brand new scenarios within that. I’m real excited about some of these characters we’re putting in there. But if you’ve already played the campaign, you’ve already gone through the core game of it. You can still enjoy bridge of leaves, because what we’re doing is we’re also coming out with short trip mode, which is a new game mode that you can play. Each chapter in this micro campaign, essentially these chapter chunks and with short trip mode, each chapter is going to have a new beginning scenario and a new ending scenario. That’s going to give you a little bit more of a reason why you’ve hopped aboard a second time and touch a little bit more on the new antagonist that’s being presented. In addition to that, we briefly touched on the deep dives of the vagrant stories. So what we’re doing is we call them save your soul scenarios. So if you go westbound one too many times which that’s our term for player death, basically you’re going to get stuck on the train. You’re going to have that one foot in the grave, so to speak, and your friends are going to have to pull you out of that. They’re going to have to lift you up and for each vagrant you’re going to experience kind of what puts them in the down and out. Everyone kind of has that moment in their past or that thing that’s lingering, and you’re going to have to pull them out of that, essentially lift them back up. So you get to experience a little bit of each character’s past and that’s really fun. And then we’ve got some other scenarios too that are sprinkled throughout. We’ve shown off Slagpile Annie a little bit. She’s going to be a part of the full campaign if you choose to check her out and she’s inspired by another real ghost in Pittsburgh at a steel mill. She was one of those friendly ghosts. People didn’t realize that she was a ghost when they would speak to her. They just thought that she was just another one of the workers. So you get to kind of experience our version of Slagpile Annie’s story in this. In addition to that we’ve got all sorts of knickknacks, doodads and things to kind of make your lives easier or more difficult. So we’ve got Smokey Bones. Smokey Bones are just a new type of dye that you can roll and you will be earning those throughout the campaign and basically, let’s say, the normal bones just aren’t on your side. You can roll those Smokey Bones and add up those numbers and you can get some more successes along those ways. But they are a temporary resource, so it’s a when do I use this sort of situation? We’ve got some baggage cards. So we talked about good things with Smokey Bones, baggage cards are the bad things. These are going to get added to your vagrant card. If you’ve got a baggage card, your passive goes away. You’ve got some sort of paint-like effect that you have to get rid of, you kind of challenge how you look at playing a certain scenario. It’s going to give you another obstacle that you’re going to have to overcome and a bunch of other little twists and turns in Encore, and then we’ve also got Off the Rails. Unless you wanted to dive into Encore any deeper, A little bit yeah. Okay.

Courtney: 24:54

So, with the Smokey Bones and the baggage, what causes you to earn those?

Kyle: 25:02

With Short Trip Mode, you’re familiar with the in-between cards that happen in between each scenario. We’re actually, for each short trip, we’re doing a new deck of cards, a do in-between, so you might get it from those. You might get it from junk cards, some new junk cards. Certain scenarios might offer those, so you’re going to be earning them from various things in the game. Baggage cards. Don’t go westbound is all I’ll say. Yeah, okay.

Courtney: 25:35

We’ll just end with that. Good luck. Yeah, I think that’s really interesting. I’ve got the web page pulled up too and just looking at the image and I’m like, okay, so on the Smokey Bones, I see a goal, makes sense. So I see a music note and I’m curious about the music note.

Kyle: 25:56

Yeah, so there’s plus 1’s, there’s plus 2. There’s a skull icon and the music note. The skull icon is the one you want to avoid at all costs, because if you roll a bunch of Smokey Bones and any number of skulls, all your Smokey Bones turn into zeros. So that’s a little bit of the risk. But the music note gives you two automatic successes in addition to whatever you were doing. So that could really help in a tight spot.

Courtney: 26:25

That was kind of a reward.

Kyle: 26:27

Exactly exactly.

Courtney: 26:29

Yeah, that’s super cool. Okay, yeah, let’s talk about Off the Rails.

Kyle: 26:34

Sure. So Off the Rails is both a way to make the game more replayable and more challenging. So what we’re doing is we’re adding a new card to each scenario in both the core game and an encore that’s going to provide adjustments to the rules. New Haint Actions because we’re also adding a new Remmage Token called the Poison Berry and each scenario is going to have two new events that are either going to dive deeper into their story a little bit or add some new obstacle or make you think about the scenario in a new way. So it’s going to kind of refresh how you think about a certain scenario. And alongside the Off the Rails cards, we’re also doing an objective-based system called Devious Deeds. Each Fagrin is going to have their own deck of Devious Deeds cards and at the beginning of a campaign you’re going to be able to choose which one you want to start off with and then you kind of just go running with it. Each one of these objectives you have to complete a certain number of times throughout the campaign and once you hit that threshold you’re going to flip it over and it’s going to have some sort of permanent adjustment to your character. It might change your passive effect, it might give you more humanity overall. It might give you some special little triggers when certain things happen in the campaign. So it allows you to kind of customize your character even further.

Courtney: 28:08

Interesting. So with Off the Rails, is it something that you can play without getting Encore, or should you have both Encore and Original if you’re going to play this?

Kyle: 28:21

I would recommend both, but you wouldn’t have to Like. If you’re satisfied with the Vagrant Song experience and you just want to revisit those scenarios again with friends, I would suggest getting Off the Rails to add a little bit more of a mix to the scenarios you’re already familiar with, because it’s a good way of starting off with a clean slate while still being very familiar with the mechanics, and that extra spike in difficulty might end up being more fun because you are so familiar with certain things. But it is a great way to experience Encore as well, because if you already that experienced player and you just want to dive deep into Bridge of Leaves with Off the Rails, that combination works well right off the bat. All the stuff that’s in both expansions isn’t so overwhelming that you have to feel like you’re juggling. You know it’s okay, I could customize my character a little bit more. Okay, I get a little bit more resources here, and then the rest is just kind of the normal flow of the campaign.

Courtney: 29:27

I’d like to just hear a little bit about the concepting of behinds, like doing the off the rails and you know so, like on court. I feel like it’s more traditional. Okay, let’s expand the game, make it so they can keep playing for the campaign. This is like a really interesting twist, I think.

Kyle: 29:47

Sure.

Courtney: 29:48

Back.

Kyle: 29:49

So, as far as how we came to it, it was already kind of on our minds right from the start of the game, but we knew that when we were developing the core game, we were developing scenarios that are best the first time. Sometimes you just make a decision when you’re making a game which way do we want to go? And we wanted to make sure that we were telling a story. We had escalating moments at certain intervals, specific moments, in order to push the dynamic aspects of each scenario. We had to kind of narrow in on certain areas. So the idea of making these scenarios more replayable was always something that I wanted to do, but I also didn’t want to overdo it either. So it’s like a delicate balance of where we can push buttons. So we found the sweet spot was the one new token that is going to help you and hurt you. The poison berry gets rid of hate effects at a cost of a little bit of humanity, but providing that gave us more options for hate actions, which allowed us to open up all sorts of things. And then there were some characters that we just weren’t done telling the story with, or like there was a gap in their story that we wanted to fill, or we needed more rats with candle hats, so we added some of those to the Tommy Knocker fight Spoilers. But yeah, it essentially came from early thoughts right off the bat of like okay, we wanted to make sure that once you’re done with the campaign, you don’t have to be done, you can revisit it, and this is an easy way of going about that, while being more difficult. It totally works.

Courtney: 31:42

Yeah. So talk to me about the timing where you know like you released Vagrant Song a while ago and then how long between when that got released and you know day one of starting on working on these expansions like how much time passed.

Kyle: 32:02

A little bit of time. So in between Vagrant Song, I also worked on an expansion for our chaotic racing game, bayou Bash, so that got released Hogwild. And then I also worked on a supplemental scenario for Vagrant Song called the Seyant Scenario or the Fox Sisters, and that is probably our most complex scenario to date, definitely took the most development time, where one scenario with play testing on average took about a month. That one was about almost four. And then pretty much right after that it was time to start digging into the expansion because, as we found out soon upon releasing Vagrant Song, we couldn’t hold on to it. It kept selling out, so we figured players must be hungry for more. So let’s take some of the ideas that we had from the core game that either got cut or we didn’t have time to visit. That’s where Savior Soul Scenarios actually came from. We wanted them in the core game and just couldn’t make it work. And, yeah, just started getting cracking on. That. It’s been about, I want to say, about a year and a half now that I’ve been working on these expansions.

Courtney: 33:21

All right and it’s almost Kickstarter time. I know Hopefully it’ll be exciting, but I’m sure also nerve-wracking.

Kyle: 33:30

Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. I’m still developing these expansions. Luckily I’m in the fine tuning stages of them, so it’s not like I have to make anything from scratch at this point. But yeah, it’s a lot to juggle, yeah.

Courtney: 33:46

Yeah, it’s funny, you’re talking about how I couldn’t keep it on the shelves, and it reminded me of like, oh yeah, when I tried to buy Vagrant Song because I was like getting it as a birthday present for Britain. We were living in Oregon at the time and I had to buy it from some random game store in New Jersey because that was the only place I could find it.

Kyle: 34:02

Yeah, the game of gaming itself is kind of a joke we had in the office, but we’re already on our fourth print. I think we’re working on a fifth one now with the Kickstarter. So, yeah, the reception. I can’t believe it. I still have to pinch myself, you know, but this has happened.

Courtney: 34:21

Yeah, definitely a good problem to have.

Kyle: 34:23

Yes, yes.

Courtney: 34:26

So what can you tell us about the Kickstarter itself and, just like, what the plans are for that campaign?

Kyle: 34:34

So, yeah, what can I talk about? Mid-september is what we’re aiming for. There are so many neat things that we’re doing that I can’t talk about that. I want to. There are two things that I think I can comfortably spoil, though. So one of the stretch goals that we’re doing is a brand new spindle, because we understand that that spindle might have not been the right size for everyone’s hands, so we’re making a bigger spindle and it’s gorgeous. I can’t wait for people to see this thing, and inside it we’re going to actually have acrylic tokens for a good chunk of the game, so pretty much anything that can go in the spindle will get an acrylic token of itself, and you know, the acrylic standees look so good on that table, and these tokens just help push that even a little bit more. It is a deluxe vacation, but I mean I want it, so I mean those acrylic standees are amazing yeah. And we do have one other thing I could spoil. I think, if not, my boss might listen to this and we’ll cross that bridge. But we’re planning on doing a little ghost plushie of one of our kind of our standard blue ghosts, but it’s not just the ghost, it’s going to have a zipper at the bottom of it and we’re going to have glow in the dark bones six bones that you can have with it, and, yeah, we’re really excited about that. So we’re doing all sorts of like fun little things like that that we wouldn’t normally be able to do without running a crowdfunding campaign. So that was one of the two reasons why we decided to go to Kickster to this ways. We wanted to make these fun little things, and if players want them now, there’s going to be the option for them. So, oh my God.

Courtney: 36:32

Now I’m a plushie, amazing. Yeah, obviously it’s not the same, but when you saw that, it reminded me of this one time that we got a toy for our dog that was like, oh, it’s Halloween themed, it’s like a coffin. And then he tore it apart as you do, and it had another toy inside that was a bone.

Kyle: 36:53

That’s smart of whoever developed that yeah.

Courtney: 36:57

Obviously not the same, but also like kind of same if there’s six bones inside of this plushie.

Kyle: 37:03

Yeah, yeah.

Courtney: 37:04

Okay, that sounds really cool and I’m a sucker for cute ghost plushies, so I am excited for that. Honestly, you brought up the just like tokens and even just so that the stand is dareless and nice. Like the art in this game is so good, it’s so pretty. Like every time we pull out a new the hate to fight or even just like a new character, we spend probably a solid five minutes just looking, examining like every detail, like how many artists do you have working on this?

Kyle: 37:39

One.

Courtney: 37:41

Well, oh, my gosh.

Kyle: 37:42

We is really really incredible. Strangely, I mean now it looks like a no brainer sort of thing with the art, but we didn’t get there right off the bat with the art. We actually started off with three or four different aesthetics that we were playing around with. One in particular that really sticks out to me as the one we kind of venture down the most outside of the rubber hose style was a wood carved Mike McNulla esque style, like from Hellboy, so very strong shadow work but like a wood carved variant of that, and it worked. I think the game would have been mostly good with that, but it didn’t present the scary but funny, you know, it didn’t cross that line or walk that tightrope that the rubber hose style allowed us to do, and the game takes place roughly in the 30s, you know. So it made sense to have the art reflect that. So once my other designer that was working on vagrant song at the time proposed the idea, it just was like a giant light bulb above all of weird and snippy, just ran with it and every time she came out with a new piece it was just gold. There were so many characters that didn’t need any adjustments or tweaks, it was just yep, you got it. That’s it. That’s terrifying. So yeah, it was. It was kind of looking back at it and it’s a no duh thing, but it took us a long time to get there.

Courtney: 39:24

I can see that. You know, I do feel like it can be hard to nail down a specific style for really most games, but especially one that is like trying to balance, like so many expressions, right yeah, gosh, I am just so excited for the expansions.

Kyle: 39:46

It’s going to be a really fun time.

Courtney: 39:50

So yeah, I am also kind of curious about just launching both of these expansions at the same time and if there was like any kind of specific reasoning that went into that.

Kyle: 40:03

Sure, yeah. So when we started developing Encore and Off the Rails, it was one expansion and everything was included in one package. Play testing taught us some valuable lessons, though, in that every player is different and every player wants something different out of their game. Some players want more scenarios, and other players want to keep their existing content fresh, and a lot of that overlapped, but not everywhere, so that’s where we ultimately decided to split the expansions to accommodate as many players as we could, so that you could get what you want how you want, essentially.

Courtney: 40:51

So yeah, but we’re going to be offering both at the same time during this Kickstarter, so yeah, I totally can see that that makes a lot of sense, especially since one of them is kind of intended to help make it harder.

Kyle: 41:03

Right, exactly. Not everyone is ready for that step.

Courtney: 41:07

Yeah, yeah I could totally imagine, like especially early on, before you have a whole lot of skills, where you’re like I’m dying already.

Kyle: 41:17

When we were announcing it at GenCon recently and showing people and explaining what Off the Rails was and saying, yeah, hard mode, that’s when their eyes lit up and they said, hard mode, the game’s not already hard enough. So, yeah, that happened a lot. But I mean, it’s an exciting challenge and you’ll have enough tools to get through it, I’m sure. Yeah.

Courtney: 41:44

So once the Kickstarter funds, which I Crossing fingers, I have no doubt you know back on one, what will be the next steps between that and being able to fulfill it.

Kyle: 41:57

So, like I said, we’re already almost done with these projects. So that’s something that we’re doing a little bit differently. It’s really just going to be the production that we’re going to wait for, so it’s not going to have to be a two-year wait of development time or anything like that. You know I’m making tweaks every day. I got an update I’m putting out to the playtesters right after this interview, so we’re moving right ahead and getting content out. So hopefully what our plan is is, once the Kickstarter is over, we’re more or less hitting the print button and getting the content to production and making sure that that turnaround is as fast as possible. So hopefully that’s fast. At that point it is out of our hands ultimately, but we’ve worked to mitigate as many of those problems as possible, so I’m pretty optimistic about it.

Courtney: 42:55

Sounds awesome. So one thing I would like to do before we wrap up is I have a couple of questions that I like to ask. In every interview which you’re working in the game industry, I would hope that you’re doing that because you love it, but I can also recognize that there are just a lot of challenges to working on games and these fandoms, and so when you just look back over this process of developing Fagrin’s song, developing the expansions, what would you say have been some of the more challenging aspects?

Kyle: 43:33

Challenging aspects of working on Fagrin’s song specifically, or just as like a game designer as a whole.

Courtney: 43:40

I mean I can do game designer as a whole. You’ve worked on a lot of things.

Kyle: 43:45

So early on. One thing I would really make a point of if you’re interested in game design as a career, it does change the way you think about games. Prior to going to school for this and trying it out myself, I was just playing games to get immersed in the world, you know, to escape. I can’t always do that anymore. It’s more of a. I look at games from a more analytical lens these days. I still get to enjoy them and there are the occasional games that I just fully escape in. But for the most part, the way you think about games does change, and it should change, because you’re now developing them. You’re seeing behind the curtain, so to speak, so you do get to understand how the sausage is made. So just be aware of that Just because you love games doesn’t mean you need to make them. You can still find love in games through other ways. You know, and I’ve seen that pressure point be kind of a breaking point for some people. So I don’t know if that’s a warning or just a. It’s just something that you should be aware of if you dive into that. Luckily, I’ve always wanted to. I need to make things in order to be happy. So games are where I landed and I’m so thankful that I’m in this space. I can’t see myself doing anything else.

Courtney: 45:26

I think that that’s definitely a valid point is that there is kind of a precarious balance between like oh, I love this, I want to be doing this all the time, and then just keeping that motivation and not just being exhausted by the fact of like okay, now I’m always making this game and always in this world and it would just be nice to have a break. Yeah, I think it’s maybe not a warning, but just be cautious if you’re going into this.

Kyle: 45:56

Yeah, the biggest thing that I would recommend is find another hobby outside of gaming, if you do decide to make it a career, because you need to find that other version of escapism. I’ve got aquariums behind me. That’s how I do it, so building little aquatic worlds is how I stay creative without having to make games. So just find that whatever works for you. And, yeah, touch grass every once in a while.

Courtney: 46:29

Yes, Okay, well, to flip this around, what would you say have been some of the most rewarding parts of working in gaming?

Kyle: 46:40

Without a doubt. Conventions and hearing people come up to you and tell you that they loved your game or that one moment in that thing that you helped make or a character you developed that energizes me every single time I hear it. I will never get sick of it and I’m eternally grateful to everyone who enjoys these games. So, yeah, that without a doubt is it.

Courtney: 47:09

How many conventions do you normally get to go to?

Kyle: 47:12

now that we’re back into conventions, I do probably half a dozen a year on average Adepticon, origins, pax, unplugged, gencon, and then also some trade shows as well, like more retailer focused stuff and that sort of thing, but despite that, probably not enough. I want to go to Auschuk’s, I want to go to Essen. There’s still plenty of places I’d like to show up in.

Courtney: 47:42

Oh, for sure. Okay well, we’ve got this Kickstarter. It’s coming out mid September. Yep, okay, the episode will be airing on September 5th, I think. So, yeah, it should be just in a couple more days. So if people want to find you, find this Kickstarter, find out more about all of the things that Wyrd does, where should they go?

Kyle: 48:08

Wyrd’s website is Wyrdgames. net, and you can find more about Vagrant Song at this point just by Googling Vagrant Song, but there’s a Notify Me page on Kickstarter right now. Or you can learn more about everything that’s in these expansions Well, maybe not everything. You’ll learn about a good chunk of it in these expansions on the Wyrd Games website, but you can also join our Discord on the Wyrd website. I’m there all the time, so if you want to chat about any of our games, I’m happy to chat along.

Courtney: 48:44

Awesome. I will have links to all of that in the show notes. Kyle, this has been such a treat to talk to you today. Thank you so much for coming.

Kyle: 48:54

Yeah, thank you for having me. This has been great.

Courtney: 48:58

So at this point, listeners, we are going to wrap up the interview portion of this episode and after I hit stop recording, I’m going to turn it right back on and we are going to do a fun little quick question blitz for patrons, where I’m going to ask Kyle a bunch of other silly questions that may or may not be related to gaming, and we’ll probably involve some about these aquariums because I want to know more. So if you are interested in hearing that or any of the other quick question blitz from my guests, you can find that Patreon at Patreon Roll Play Grow. Thank you again for coming on, kyle.

Kyle: 49:34

Thanks for having me.

Courtney: 49:39

You just finished another episode of Roll Play Grow. To check out the show notes and transcript from today’s episode, You can go to lightheartadventures. com rpg To keep up with every episode. Please subscribe on your podcast player of choice and, if you’re enjoying the show, I would absolutely love if you would leave me a review and share this episode with your friends. Your review might even get featured on an upcoming episode. To follow me on Twitter, you can either find me at lightheartadv for our business account or at Ketra RPG for tweets on gaming, my dog Bowser and other random shenanigans. You can also find me on Patreon at Roll Play Grow. Thank you so much for listening and I’ll see you next time on Roll Play Grow.