The prompt for day 27 of #AprilTTRPGMaker is “Feature a TTRPG Designer.” I'll feature Steve Hickey. Steve seems to be doing interesting things with his games Left Coast and Soth. I haven't seen the finalized version of Left Coast, but what I saw of it while it was in development seemed pretty cool. Similarly, I haven't actually read the rules of Soth but from the Actual Play of it I heard on the Jank Cast it seemed to be doing some novel stuff with the game design. A few years ago I imposed an (imperfectly enforced) rule on myself that I shouldn't buy a game unless I had a realistic plan of getting the game to a table – this rule was beneficial for my wallet but bad for keeping on top of games I was interested in, these games are among those where obeying that rule was the most painful for me. I don't see Steve or his games talked about much online, so I thought I'd feature him here.
(images from RPGGeek)
My initial impulse with this question was to agonize and dither over it. Should I try to feature someone else doing the #AprilTTRPGMaker thing? Should I talk about someone whose games I know well? Should I attempt to counteract the steep inequality in the RPG attention economy by featuring someone less “well known” then myself? Would I be slighting someone by not picking them? Might I end up regretting my “endorsement” of someone that I don't know perfectly? The whole thing seemed like it was going to be an over-determined anxiety trap for me so I punted by picking the first person I could think of where I was strongly tempted to buy their game because I was curious to learn more about the game design (rather than based on familiarity with the IP, reputation, hype in the community, etc.).
The #AprilTTRPGMaker questions
(From Kira Magrann's twitter)