Craig Campbell has a new RPG Kickstarter. We’ve attended AndoCon, Conapalooza, Gen Con, and Multiverse Con (and talked about his experiences in the linked articles). We’ve discussed his RPGs (CAPERS, which I reviewed here, and Die Laughing) and his art preferences when creating RPGs. So, when he announced his next tabletop RPG, Good Strong Hands, I wanted to see what the next phase in his creative and publishing journey is.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): As always, I appreciate you taking time to talk with me. You’ve got a new Kickstarter, what can you share about Good Strong Hands?
CRAIG CAMPBELL (CRAIG): In Good Strong Hands, you portray fantasy creatures and humans who have come to their world of Reverie from Earth working to save Reverie from destruction by the faceless, malevolent force known only as the Void.
The game helps you tell stories of teamwork, friendship, self-empowerment, overcoming harmful forces, and dealing with a world in crisis. As you play, you’ll help the GM build the world of Reverie, filing in details as your characters struggle to save it. It uses a relatively simple system designed specifically for the game.
EGG: “A darkly whimsical game about saving your fantastical world.” Breaking that sentence down, what mechanics will speak to the dark and whimsical parts of the setting?
CRAIG: The whimsy is mostly in the overall feel of the game and in the types of characters you play. There are no elves, dwarves, gnomes, or halflings. Instead, you play sylphs, fauns, woodkin (treefolk), imps, wildkin (anthropomorphized animals), and the like. The abilities these folk have are flavorful and fun and the minor magics some can perform are built around improvising on a theme.
The darkness comes in corruption. When you show yourself to be a hero, the Void notices you and plants seeds of shadow in you. Gain enough shadow, and you gain a corruption, a dark power granted by the Void. If you gain too many corruptions, you eventually fall to the Void and become one of its minions. But there are ways to avoid doing that…if you choose to resist.
EGG: What inspired the title and game?
CRAIG: Good Strong Hands was inspired by movies like The Neverending Story, Legend, Willow, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth, but with some dark twists inspired by some of the more sinister parts of Wonderland and Oz. The game’s title is drawn from the character of Rockbiter in The Neverending Story. This massive stone creature laments at one point that he was unable to stop the Nothing from coming, even with his good, strong hands.
EGG: Like CAPERS and your other RPGs, you’re using a single artist for this project. Who? What inspired you about their art?
CRAIG: Serena Malyon was recommended to me as someone who could hit the whimsical, fairy tale-like look that I wanted for Good Strong Hands. Serena works in a variety of styles and media, but she’s primarily working in watercolor and acryla gouache (with some Photoshop tweaks) for the game. The style is softer, inviting, with a storybook quality to it which I think meshes well with what Todd Crapper is doing for the graphic design. The illustrations will be primarily colorful and inspiring, but there will be some bits of darkness in some of them.
EGG: 2020 includes a few milestones for Nerdburger Games including a first, Nerdburger Con. What was Nerdburger Con? What games and events did you feature? Will there be a Nerdburger Con 2021?
CRAIG: NerdBurger Con was an online convention I hosted a few weeks back. I created it as a way to try to feature indie RPG designers, including some who don’t regularly see a great deal of exposure. I invited a dozen or so designers, some streamers, and other GMs to run games that folks may have never heard of or perhaps have heard of and just never gotten a chance to play. It was a small-ish event (about 30 events with a little over 100 participants), but it went well. As to NerdBurger Con 2021, it’ll depend entirely on how my year shakes out with projects, Kickstarters, and other conventions. No promises right now, but I’m keeping it in mind.
EGG: 2020 also saw you bring a series to its conclusion. For those that don’t know, what is CAPERS, and why did you wrap it up?
CRAIG: CAPERS is a super-powered RPG of gangsters in the Roaring Twenties. We made three supplements spanning other time periods as well as outer space as the CAPERS Yesteryear game line. After two years of supplements, it felt like it had run its course, and CAPERS Offworld provided a nice way to tie the eras together with guidelines for time travel in the CAPERS universe. This doesn’t mean I won’t revisit the universe in the future, of course. I have three solid ideas for other CAPERS products, but none of them fall in the early 20th century era of the Yesteryear line.
EGG: In the RPG industry, you wear more than one hat, so lets talk about Indie Game Developer Network (IGDN) where you’re the Secretary. How has the pandemic impacted IGDN’s plans for 2020?
CRAIG: The biggest impact has been in the loss of member sales revenue at conventions. And for those that normally make it to some of the larger conventions, they’re losing out on networking opportunities and the chance to hang out with some folks they normally only see once per year. It’s been a strange year.
EGG: Gen Con and the Indie Groundbreaker Awards (IGAs) just past. As Secretary of the Indie Game Developer Network (IGDN) – the hosts of the IGAs – how did taking the award ceremony from live to virtual work out?
CRAIG: I feel the live event was a rousing success. It was held on a special Discord, created just for the event, with a scheduled YouTube broadcast of the actual award announcements. There were channels full of people talking to the nominees, chatting with each other, sharing stories from the trenches, and building community. And it allowed a host of IGDN members and other gamers to attend an event that they wouldn’t have been able to attend, had it been held at Gen Con like normal.
EGG: What’s on your plate after Good Strong Hands?
CRAIG: I have a few things brewing, but the next thing is likely a rules-light, short-play, improv-heavy game about being an out-of-place monster in the modern day, just trying to get by in suburbia.
EGG: Thanks for talking with me, Craig. Where can fans learn more about your work?
CRAIG: I’m @NerdBurgerCraig on Twitter and my website is NerdBurger Games. You can link to our Discord community from the front page of our website. You can buy the deluxe CAPERS hardcover on the NBG website as well, and buy everything else at DriveThruRPG.
Good Strong Hands RPG from Nerdburger Games
“A darkly whimsical game about saving your fantastical world.”
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