Divers into the Abyss,

We continue the third volume of this roiling experiment in grand style with a rollicking interview with the irrepressible Jared A Sorensen. Mr Sorensen is one of our favorite RPG designers. His works include:

1. Schism

2. OctaNe

3. Inspectres

4. Lacuna part 1 and the Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City

5. Parsely

6. FreeMarket

7. Play

8. Black Lipstick

9. Fish Out of Water

10. and the forthcoming Night Waves

Rather than reviewing his career, we focus on his latest work, Fish Out of Water. It's a flipping great RPG — simple, elegant and self-evident. We try to articulate our amazement regarding this unexpected effort from Mr Sorensen while he describes his design process.

You should treat yourself and buy Jared's games here.

You can preorder Fish Out of Water here.

You can find Kurt Komoda here.

Check us out on Substack here!

Alchemically Minded Followers and Friends,

Our guest for this month's episode is none other and the inimitable, indefatigable Paul Beakley. You may know this tireless gentleman from his insightful blog, Indie Games Reading Club, in which he offers cogent, easily digested thoughts on roleplaying game design and practice. I confess that I am extremely partial to his musings, as he has written excellent analyses of The Burning Wheel Fantasy Roleplaying System. In this interview, we discuss Paul's long and storied history with games, his crowdfunding spreadsheet and his thoughts on the state of the RPG world.

Enjoy!

—Luke, Christopher and Sam

Seekers of Truth,

This year at Gen Con Christopher and I altered our traditional format and instead ran a traditional game design advice panel at Gen Con in the guise of your humble Ludological Alchemists. We had a fair turnout, many of whom had not heard of our stygian recordings of our maundering.

For the topic, we elucidated nine questions that Alchemist Luke had posed to his students regarding their final assignments for his Tabletop RPG Design class in April.

1. What is the game about? What's the concept? What genre or format does the game take? What materials does the game use? The number of players and their roles. Session time, number of sessions. What is the content of a session?

2. What themes does the game address?

3. What is the setting of the game? What is the critical problem of the setting? How does the problem in the setting reflect theme? What's causing this world to fall apart? How is this fatal flaw reflected in the theme?

4. Who are the characters that the players adopt? How are they affected by the world's fatal flaw? What tension prevents the characters from simply curing the world's problems? How is the theme manifested in the characters?

5. How do we create characters? How do the players use their characters to address the world's flaws? Again, how is this interaction tied into the game's theme?

6. How do to the characters' abilities connect to the uncertainty system?

7. How do the abilities and uncertainty systems simulate activities, conflicts and challenges for the characters?

8. How do the players interface with the uncertainty system and simulations? Are there incentives or disincentives for them to earn and spend? Who operates the uncertainty engine and how?

9. How do the rules address the players as individuals, friends, strangers, etc.? What are the roles in the operation of the game? How do the rules address the social layer of the people at the table?

You might have reached this point in reading this post and think, "Could you give an example of how to answer each of these questions?" To which We respond:

• Kagematsu

• Blue Beard's Bride

• Dungeons & Dragons Basic Edition

• Lacuna and the Girl from Blue City

• Polaris

• 3:16: Carnage Amongst the Stars

These texts all answer each of these questions in flavorful and even provocative ways.

As ever we are—
—Your Humble Alchemists

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