It’s OK to be a Hero
After successfully funding WITCH: Fated Souls, I took a break producing things for my own company and did a lot of freelancing. I’d learned so much from the Kickstarter and needed to know more before I could create another game–the design bug bit me and I wanted to learn from the best.
One of the largest projects I worked on was 7th Sea for John Wick Presents (JWP) becoming the lead developer of their Heroes & Villains and Crescent Empire books, and co-leader developer of the upcoming Colonies book. Working on 7th Sea ultimately influenced my creation of Familiars of Terra and since it’s Kickstarting now I wanted to talk a little about that.
In Familiars of Terra you play a Seeker, a hero who travels Terra with their animal familiar in order to help others and heal the devastation of war. Seekers are rare and only started resurfacing after the war. Once Terra’s industrial revolution happened there wasn’t much need for Seekers and the tradition fell away, but now they’re back with a vengeance and you’re one of them!
Normally when I create a game the players navigate a very grey morality in a dark world. The lines between right and wrong are blurry at best and there is never a ‘right’ decision – only a decision you feel is right. And a lot of ‘serious’ games take this stance it’s all about drama, politics, and alignments.
7th Sea takes a different approach, you play a Hero (with a capital H) – your goal is to always do the right thing no matter what and you are always epic. Yes, the world has dark places and plenty of Villains (with capital V’s), but it is your job to vanquish them, save the day, and then romantically kiss the Prince as the sun sets behind you.
When I first started working for JWP I was 100% sold on being a big damn Hero. I liked the setting, but I still felt the Heroes didn’t need to be doing the right thing all the time – it struck me as kind of boring and even silly. Then I started actually playing the new edition of 7th Sea and that all changed.
Being given express permission to do the right thing was one of the most freeing things I’d experienced in gaming for a while. The idea that there was no dastardly plot by the GM (or myself in fact) lurking behind my actions to twist my decisions was liberating. Tension in the game came from foiling plots and fighting oppression – themes which in and of themselves provided more than enough drama for my character. I was the Hero I always loved in comics. I was Superman.
Going back to developing Familiars of Terra, I wanted to invoke the game feeling I had in 7th Sea albeit slightly more grounded. What I realized is that a lot of the world, our real non-fantasy world, was dark enough and people have a startling ability to do the right thing when given the chance. Life is hard enough, it’s poignant, it’s beautiful, and the GM doesn’t need to twist player’s good intentions for there to be drama. Likewise, as a player you can make ‘good’ choices and still be a serious person.
In Familiars of Terra, Seekers (our heroes) are faced with morally grey issues, we don’t have the plethora 7th Sea mustache-twirling villains, but the choices are still difficult. How do you deal with an animal poacher just trying to feed her family? How do you navigate a relationship with someone from an opposing nation? How do you save the people of a city and stop a villain at the same time?
And coupled with these issues we have Seekers – choosing to be Heroes, choosing to help, when normal people would simply give up and walk away.
For a long time I worried that this influence would make Familiars of Terra too light-hearted and that the game wouldn’t be taken seriously. That people would see it as a silly game about silly animals (which admittedly sometimes it is). But what I realized is that it is OK to take being a good person seriously.
I will of course return to the murky darkness of soul-wrenching decisions soon with upcoming games, but for now, for Familiars of Terra…
It’s OK to be a hero :).
PS – If you haven’t done it yet, please go check out our Kickstarter!
