I love the Amazing Tales artwork, and I hear that other people do too. Getting the artwork right was a big part of the process of creating the book. This post describes the process we went through to do that, and shows how it evolved over time.

Step zero: Find an illustrator

Iris and I had worked together before she was an illustrator. And I knew that since going her own way to pursue a freelance career with Irisistible Design she’d done the illustrations for the wonderful book ‘The Mooncandy Rebellion‘. So before going to the trouble of checking portfolios, assembling shortlists and the like I asked Iris if she’d be interested. And she was. Which I think was probably one of the most important moments in the history of Amazing Tales.

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Creating new characters in seconds is one of the most challenging aspects of running a roleplaying game. If you can do it well and quickly your children will love the characters you provide for their heroes to interact with. Here’s a simple trick to make creating memorable characters easier, I call it Two Word Characters.

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1. What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now?

Well Amazing Tales isn’t out yet, so I can’t choose that. For me gaming has always been more about the people than the system. I like systems that fade into the background and don’t get in the way of the story. I like worlds that are good to discover, but for me that’s always been more about the quality of the GM than the depth of the source material.

The game I’ve felt most intrigued by lately is Night’s Black Agents. I use it as the system for my own Delta Green game. But I’d love to play in a game where the GM had fleshed out some of the ideas in the book, and really got to grips with the system. I don’t use mechanics much when I GM, but I’d love to experience Night’s Black Agents being run by someone who really knew what they were doing.

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6. You can game every day for a week, describe what you’d do

Every now and then I get to do this. In the summer holidays we go away, typically for a week or two, and fitted around our holiday activities we make up a story. That means the kids and I play Amazing Tales and Mum takes a break. Usually characters in Amazing Tales don’t last very long before the kids get bored with them, two or three sessions at most, but on our summer holidays we can stick with characters and a plot for a week or more at a stretch.

These are the only Amazing Tales games I do any real preparation for, and it’s not much. I’ve found it’s helpful to draw a map for the game. Once I’ve sketched out some landmarks I invite the kids to name them, and to suggest more. Over the course of the week we’ll make sure their characters visit them all.

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11. Which ‘dead’ RPG would you like to see reborn?

To my mind RPGs don’t die. If you can find a copy of a game you can play it. That’s one of the joys of the hobby. But I think what this is really about is community. Games do best when there are players around the world having new ideas and sharing them.

Stormbringer. That might be a good one to have more people thinking about. I’d quite like to see the revival of Top Secret work out well too. I don’t think I’ve ever played a straight forward espionage game.

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16. What RPG do you enjoy using as is?

I think small simple games get the most use ‘as is’, simply because there’s so little to change. I don’t think I’ve ever changed a thing when playing Fiasco for example. And in that spirit of small games, I’m going to name The Quiet Year. It takes a couple of hours, it gives a great story every time, and it’s very simple.

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