Lovecraft was an Optimist?
by Allon Mureinik

My acquaintance with Vajra Enterprises began by coincidence. About a year a ago I saw a news item on GamingReport.com that they were offering a free version of their cyberpunk game, Fates Worse Than Death. Naturally, I put up a note on The Orc's message board. The following day I received an e-mail from Brain St. Claire King, the game's author, who told me he saw some traffic on Vajra's webpage that came from my post, and wondered what language it was in. A couple of months later, when I received an invitation to playtest his newest game, In Dark Alleys, I jumped at the opportunity.

In Dark Alleys is a game of dark philosophy where the characters slowly discover that the world isn't the safe place they always thought it was, but a much darker place, full of evil forces scheming behind the scenes. However, our worst enemies aren't the things watching us from the shadows, aren't their dark minions pulling the strings of governments and corporations, aren't the indivisible parasites crawling all over our bodies. Our worst enemies, our cruellest captors, are ourselves. Lovecraft was an optimist.

IDA hit the shops only a couple of days ago, and a more complete review will appear in one of the following issues of The Orc Magazine, once I finish reading it's final version. In the meanwhile, I caught up with Brian St. Claire King to hear his opinions about IDA, about Vajra and about roleplaying in general.

A.M.: For all our readers who do not know you, could you please tell us a bit about yourself? What inspired you to become a game designer?

B.K.: I live in Eureka, California. I work from home as well as taking care of my infant son during the day. I have a degree in psychology and I've worked as a computer tech. Besides writing and publishing I also enjoy photography.

My childhood is somewhat unique. My parents were Buddhist ministers, but being a Buddhist minister in the US isn't the route to wealth and prosperity, so I spent most of my childhood living in poor or ghetto neighbourhoods. I grew up used to being different: in a given class in school I might have been the only white kid and the only kid whose parents weren't Christians.

A.M.: When did you start roleplaying? And what got you hooked on it?

B.K.: My older sister played D&D. She would tell me stories about her game sessions and I would read her game books. I read Deities and Demigods and the Monster Manual several times over. I already knew roleplaying was something I wanted to do before I ever even tried it. I saved up my money, bought some game books, taught myself to GM and talked my friends into playing.

A.M.: I know about three games you've written - Fates Worse than Death, Tibet and In Dark Alleys. Out of those three, which did you most enjoy writing? And which do you most enjoy playing?

B.K.: It's hard for me to look back and try to decide which book was more fun to write. Fates was written over the course of several years and I completely rewrote it a number of times. I have a fairly pleasurable memory of sitting on a couch in the basement of the law-school my wife was attending, with my laptop and Radiohead playing in the headphones, coming up with one solution after another to the problems of the previous draft.

It's difficult for me to enjoy playing my games. Before the game is published I'm looking at everything as a potential problem to be fixed and after the game is published I'm always seeing things I regret. My best campaign was probably the Tibet playtesting campaign, just because the players were so good, and the characters worked together so well, that it was a constant struggle to come up with mysteries and dangers that would be a challenge for them.

A.M.: What games other than Vajra's to you enjoy playing?

B.K.: I've always got some new game or supplement in production, so whenever I get together to game I demand that we playtest one of my games. The only time I get to play other games anymore is during conventions, and I try to play games I've never played before so I can see other games in action. If I were to take a break from playtesting my own stuff, I think I'd like to play Underworld, Over the Edge or GURPS Cthulhupunk.

A.M.: What were your sources of inspiration when writing IDA?

B.K.: One of the ideas behind In Dark Alleys was to take all the philosophies that have been dismissed or suppressed because they say unpleasant things about the universe and to try to stitch them together into one cosmology. At the same time I was trying to take all my favourite horror movies and to try to come up with a cosmology that would explain them all. I took a lot of inspiration from Indie comics like The Maxx and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac that take us inside the minds of messed-up characters. I also tried to borrow a little of the style of the Matrix trilogy. Also Kult, which is a fantastic horror RPG with some similarities to IDA, first got me thinking about incorporating dark philosophies into a game cosmology,

A.M.: What part of IDA did you most enjoy writing? Wand what part did you least enjoy?

B.K.: I most enjoyed writing the NPCs. Most of IDA is about what is possible in the game world, but the NPCs provide concrete examples, show the abstract metaphysical theories in practice. I had the least fun writing the mundane skills and equipment, because I left I had to be as true to reality as possible and so I didn't have much chance to be creative.

A.M.: Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that "Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book". To what extent is IDA a reflection of your own opinions and believes, and to what extent is it simply an artistic exercise?

B.K.: I believe that in politics, ethics and religion too many people believe what they want to believe in, not what is right. They refuse to believe in things that would mean they have to change how they do things or that they're not as special as they thought they were. IDA is about people who are brave enough to accept the terrible truths of the IDA universe. While I don't believe in most of IDA's dark truths, I do believe that being willing to accept unpleasant realities is important for the future happiness of the human race.

A.M.: IDA's pages host a considerable amount of information about our actual world - from Victorian history factoids, via demographic stats for LA, descriptions of various religions beliefs, game stats of both legal and illegal drugs, etc. What kind of research did you do prior to writing IDA? How substantial was this phase of writing IDA?

B.K.: I spent at least as much time researching IDA as writing it. I have a program on my computer that converts text to speech, and I recall spending many hours playing with my infant son while a computerized voice in the background blared on about some obscure philosophical topic. About half-way through writing IDA I discovered how useful Wikipedia is. Wikipedia made it so easy to do research that it made me nervous: I kept thinking "how can research be this easy?"

A.M.: On the one hand, IDA seems to concentrate on philosophical issues such as how our psyche can affect reality and what is the relationship between our corporeal bodies and our souls. On the other hand, it seems to be slightly heavy on mechanics (8 different psychodynamics, 8 different attributes, an advantage/disadvantage system, more than half of the character creation chapter is dedicated to mechanical issues, etc.), which is somewhat uncommon is these types of games. In your eyes, how does IDA benefit from this situation?

B.K.: I think that having the characters grounded in real-world limitations makes the supernatural stuff feel more amazing. Even though the characters have supernatural abilities, they're not so powerful that they can ignore real world concerns. An adventure might still come down to whether the players can come up with a clever use of a piece of string and a paperclip. In too many games supernatural powers, skills, even resources are so broadly defined that you can solve any problem with a big enough dice pool and a good roll. That kind of system, in my experience, inhibits creative problem solving. I wanted the supernatural powers in IDA to be like drugs in Fates Worse Than Death: there's only a tiny range of situations where the benefits outweigh the dangers.

A.M.: One of my observations about IDA that it was simply too "crowded" - I could easily think of ideas for adventures containing one or two types of characters, but just couldn't see how it all works together. When you wrote IDA, did you intend to create a bag full of tricks and leave the Gamemaster to choose which to use and how, or was it intended as one, cohesive campaign setting?

B.K.: I felt that my first responsibility was to create a coherent and internally-consistent world for Gamemasters and players to share. Obviously there is a strong emphasis on horror, but I don't think it's my place to say "these are the kinds of stories you have to tell in this universe". I'd love to see a variety of stories played out in the IDA universe, some of which may involve a mix of character types, some of which might include homogenous groups.

Each character type in IDA has its own particular struggles and conflicts, so in a mixed party players might have to spend some time dealing with personal issues of other character types that don't seem to really apply to them. Yet each character type has access to part of the truth about the IDA universe. So if the players really want to find out what's going on in the IDA universe (without cheating and reading the back of the book) they might have to put up with other characters working out their own personal issues.

A.M.: Roughly speaking, all RPGs could be divided into two categories - games intended (not necessarily exclusively) for beginners, that actually go through the trouble of explaining exactly what roleplaying is all about, and games targeting at the seasoned gamer, which try to offer something new to the gamers that have supposedly seen it all. Do you think this division is valid? Why do you focus on creating games of the second category only?

B.K.: It is a valid distinction: some games are more easy-going, easily-accessible and have simpler rules and are thus better for younger or beginning gamers. I enjoy these kinds of games, but I've never been tempted to write one.

In my drafts of Fates Worse Than Death, my first game, I did have sections about "what is roleplaying" and "how to roleplay," but then I took a look at who this game would appeal to. I thought "If someone doesn't know what roleplaying is, is this the book for them?" and the answer was no so I took those parts out. I don't have anything against young or beginning gamers, I'm just interested in creating more intense and complicated games.

A.M.: The recent years have seen a rise in public interest in more heroic, four-colored types of games, with the rediscovered interest in Pulp (Adamant Entertainment's Thrilling Tales, Hero Games' Pulp Hero, LPJ's products, and a host of others) and Superheroes (Hero's Champions 5th Edition product line, Green Ronin's M&M 2nd Edition) alongside with games concentrating on exceedingly unique and colorful heroes, like White Wolf's Exalted or Goodman Games' Etherscope. What made you publish IDA, which is considerably out of the norm of recent years?

B.K.: I'm just not very good at looking at the market to see what's popular. I write and publish what I have a passion for whether or not it's what's currently popular. A lot of people would way that's evidence of poor financial judgment on my part, that it means I'm not a good businessperson, but I believe that if given the chance people would rather have media products that represent a unique creative vision than media products that were created to be a part of a trend.

A.M.: Although Vajra has an impressive website, from what I see Vajra's products (at least those that aren't free) are strictly real paper ones, not PDF books, which is somewhat irregular in this day and age. Why is this?

B.K.: We do have PDF products coming up. There are game supplements and complete RPGs that we will sell in PDF and print-on-demand format. The good thing about printing books is that if you get your products in game stores it they are seen by many more eyes, yet book printing also requires a large investment and so limits the number of things you can print. The good thing about PDFs is that they require little investment so you can publish a lot more things, but your products get much less exposure. I'm hoping for a strategy that combines the best of both publishing models.

A.M.: In you own eyes, what makes Vajra stand out in the crowd? What makes your company and products unique?

B.K.: It's our commitment to creating game settings that are unique. Vajra is never going to create a copy of something that's been done before. On the other hand we're not going to be different just to be different. Every game from Vajra will come from a unique and compelling concept. We won't throw in random stuff just because we can: every part of the game setting will flow logically from that concept. And we're always going to delve into every dark corner of that setting, no matter how terrible, frightening or distasteful.

A.M.: What advice could you lend to the aspiring young game designers and writers reading this interview?

B.K.: My advice is: don't think you'll be able to sell a game just because it has a slightly better setting than other games or a few innovative rules. Gamers won't shell out money for a brand new game unless they believe that almost every single page is going to give them something they don't already have. I see a lot of few designer/writers asking "can I do it better?" when they should be asking "can I give them something new?"

The Orc Magazine would like to thanks Brian St. Claire King for devoting the time for this interview.

For more information about In Dark Alleys, check out it's official website.

This interview originally appeared in the 31st issue of The Orc Magazine.