Something Tookish! Interview
An interview with Gord Sellar
After trading emails with Gord about his game, Something Tookish!, I got interested in what brought him to gaming and to writing his game. In a short interview, I found we had a lot in common. I hope you enjoy our exchange.
How did you get into tabletop RPGs?
I got into tabletop RPGs around ten years old, when a friend introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons at a sleepover. This friend's older brothers were into RPGs, so he had a lot of games. I was hooked after one game. Within a month, I had my own copy of the Mentzer red box, and soon after, acquired all the other BECMI boxed sets before moving on to AD&D. I stuck with D&D until 2nd edition, when I started to experience burnout. I then explored some World of Darkness games, particularly enjoying Wraith: The Oblivion, before going to grad school.
This marked the beginning of a long break from gaming, during which I focused on music and fiction writing. The hiatus lasted about fourteen years because I moved to South Korea without any of my gaming materials and didn't meet any gamers for a long time. Eventually, I came across mentions of newer "story" RPGs like Epidiah Ravachol's Dread and Jason Morningstar's Fiasco. I ran these games for some friends and found myself drawn back into RPGs. I delved into the "new" (to me) OSR movement while also maintaining an interest in "story games," and ended up with several groups to play with or run for, mostly online.
Can you tell us a little about your background as a teacher and game designer?
It's interesting that you ask about my background as a teacher and game designer together, as they are more connected than I initially realized. Most of my teaching career has been spent teaching English as a Foreign Language in Korea. I've also taught other subjects, like a popular lecture on SF literature and film. However, even in jobs where I taught content-based courses, required language skills courses were always part of the job, and most students don't love them. In Korea, students in these classes often have a wide range of English proficiency, from almost fluent to very limited, and they generally agree they'd rather not take another language skills class. This presents a dilemma for the instructor: students have done every exercise countless times and lack motivation to take it seriously again. Many students are also self-conscious about making language errors and won't speak unless they have a compelling reason. In this context, it's often up to the professor to find ways to give students compelling reasons to speak and to help them set aside their worry about mistakes.
The key is getting them to focus on what they are trying to communicate. Since we were in regular classrooms, I found the best approach was to develop game-like exercises that simulated interesting tasks and activities. I created a few such games, the most successful involving students planning a bank robbery, presenting their plan to the class, then playing a dice-based "betrayal" game and narrating the outcome of their crime. (This was before I knew about Fiasco, otherwise I might have used that .) In the rare instances where I taught one-on-one freelance, I drew on my memories of D&D to create fantasy adventure games for my students. Language tasks were integrated into the game, but playing the game itself was also a language task.
My search for games I could adapt into EFL exercises led me to Dread and eventually Fiasco, and I started organizing occasional sessions myself. At some point, my friend Ahimsa Kerp (who later cofounded Knight Owl Publishing) learned about this and, realizing my general interest in RPGs, alerted me to a publishing opportunity in 2015. I submitted a pitch and sold it. Playtesting that project snowballed into a very active return to the hobby with multiple RPG groups. I haven't published extensively, partly because my design work began around the time my son was born, and I've been busy since. However, I'm proud of the few books I have released. Later, I discovered itch.io and decided it was a good platform for self-publishing, including "Something Tookish!".
How did you discover Carved from Brindlewood games, and what drew you to write one?
I was a frequent Kickstarter backer for a while, so I was aware of Brindlewood Bay, though I missed backing it. Last year, one of my gaming groups was doing a round-robin, where we took turns GMing adventures for the same characters using different systems. The main system was Under Hill, By Water by Josh McCrory, an OSR-ish cozy halfling "un-adventures" game. (I adapted one rule from this game as a general move in Something Tookish! .) We had been playing the same halfling characters for a while, and the "adventures" involved things like missing vegetables, a stolen pig, and suspicious dwarven builders. Other players, when it was their turn to GM, ran systems like Grant Howitt's Honey Heist and Ethan Bardoe's The Exceptional English Bake Off. I wanted to run a mystery, and given the cozy vibe of our setting—hobbits solving mysteries in a cozy village—I immediately thought of Brindlewood Bay, even though I had never played it. (I had picked up a copy on DrivethruRPG, though.)
From there, I quickly put together a character sheet, reference sheets for the general moves and "Peculiar Moves" (unique to each character), and a mystery sheet. I ran it once or twice for them, and we had a good time. I then ran it for another group and decided it had enough potential to justify developing it further. What I found particularly interesting about Brindlewood Bay is its tension: it's cozy and funny, with grannies in a book club solving murders (like Murder She Wrote cranked up to 11), but also has a darker side with a deeper mystery involving a pseudo-Lovecraftian cult. This made me consider what kind of dark side or hidden tension could exist within the coziness of a halfling village.
Of course, there could be a village conspiracy, and I eventually included optional, rudimentary rules for that. However, I realized that it made sense for the real tension to exist within each individual halfling: the urge to go adventuring, while outwardly having to disdain such things as "ridiculousness". What if every halfling had that drive to venture out into the world? What could make it irresistible over time, and what might happen to a halfling who continued to suppress it? My favorite part of The Lord of the Rings is when the hobbits return to the Shire to find it in disarray, realizing their struggles aren't over and they must also fix the Shire. I envisioned this as the ultimate failure state for a halfling village. I then realized that solving cozy mysteries could escalate the natural, "secret" halfling urge to adventure, and suppressing that drive for too long could lead halflings to become unbearably antisocial or even get involved in dark conspiracies in their shire. Once I figured all of that out, I spent the rest of the summer on and off working on a rulebook (heavily based on Brindlewood Bay rules), sheets for the game, and a few more sample mysteries. Then I enlisted Justin Howe (
https://yesterweird.itch.io/
), one of the players from the original group, to create original art for the book, as I really like his work.
I'm really intrigued by the changes you made to the mystery structure. What made you think of adding a question to the side characters? What about adding multiple questions to locations instead of descriptions?
Adding questions to side characters and multiple questions to locations instead of descriptions is, in my mind, similar to prompting for details. It might be easier for groups less accustomed to player-driven "paint the scene" actions. My impression is that this would be helpful for people more familiar with traditional RPGs; I wanted to make it accessible as someone's first Carved from Brindlewood RPG, or even their first non-traditional RPG. Also, I found questions helped me maintain some control over the tone and helped players focus their answers on things that could advance the story. Oh, and also, in the halfling community, I assume everyone knows everyone, so it makes sense for characters to know a bit more about the NPCs they interact with. Having players supply the details kind of emulates that feeling of familiarity. That's mostly it!
What did this experience teach you about GMing and game design?
One thing I learned is that for "new" or unfamiliar mechanics, support can make all the difference. The helping mechanic I borrowed from Josh McCrory's Under Hill, By Water is a bit daunting on its own, not because making up silly rhymes is hard, but because most people lack practice with it. Players have commented that the support on the Player Reference sheet (opening phrases and rhyme pairs) was very helpful, and I saw more players attempt it after I included that. This is a lesson I'll carry forward when designing anything with a system or mechanic that might feel unfamiliar or daunting to most players or GMs.
Another lesson is how a well-designed system, like Brindlewood Bay in general, can generate momentum and even take on a life of its own during a game. I have experience with games where building momentum sometimes requires fighting against the system. The mystery in a Carved from Brindlewood system isn't like that—the character design and mystery designs interact in a way that supports playful engagement and creates an inevitable momentum, in my experience.
The last thing I learned is the power of a designer setting aside an assumption. When I first read Brindlewood Bay, I theoretically understood that the mystery solution wasn't "set" by the GM and "discovered" by players. But when I first ran Something Tookish!—my first time running anything with this system—I still had to actively fight the impulse to have a preset "solution" in my mind. It was like, "No, stop, that's not the GM's job!". Truly understanding how mysteries are resolved in this system requires a leap of faith in the system, and because it's a solid design, the system rewards that leap of faith. I think this is a useful lesson in design, requiring us to sometimes set aside our assumptions about what constitutes play and the goal of a game, to approach things from an angle that better supports the desired experience. Hacking Brindlewood Bay reinforced this understanding, as I've noticed this effect in other games like Trophy and Blades in the Dark, and other games based on those engines. These are all things I've found myself learning and relearning over the years, mostly because they contradict or challenge lessons from my early RPG experiences. Hacking Brindlewood Bay definitely made me consciously engage with these lessons.
What would you like to ask Gord? Drop your questions or thoughts into the comments below.
I’ll be back next week with more about Beneath Ahknoor.