At EN World, I reviewed Jerry D. Grayson’s MYTHIC D6 QUICK START and here at d20 Radio I reviewed his setting for it, Bastion. I’m a fan of MYTHIC D6; it’s simple, clean, and fun. When I read that Jerry was kickstarting a new setting for the system, Terra Oblivion, I knew I wanted to talk to him about it. What I learned is that Terra Oblivion is Jerry’s sci-fi, dieselpunk RPG in which the world needs saving from resource exhaustion. I was interested and when he reached out, that made my day.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Thanks for taking time to talk to me. Terra Oblivion: Adventures on a Symbiotic World, “A pre-apocalyptic game of eco-espionage, set on a world slowly being killed by humanity’s need to consume.” Let’s discuss what “eco-espionage” will play like in this game? How symbiotic is the world?
JERRY: Terra is a living planet, not that it’s active and there are lifeforms on it, the planet is alive, and by extension all life is part of the planet. Kill or take from the plant and your using some of the life force of the world.
EGG: The world is humanity versus the planet, correct? What kind of creatures will the heroes face? Or is this going to be human-to-human conflicts? Or both?
JERRY: Its an action adventure game foremost. Imagine a sci-fi version of a pre-World War Two Europe. Lots of posturing and governments making moves and rattling sabers. When the world was settled, they discovered an energy source they dubbed Prana. Prana fuels everything on the planet, including the life force of everything living there. Once the colonist became acclimated to the planet, we became infused with Prana. The colonist use Prana to power their devices, they have dominated the local fauna, a thing called Flukes, worm like creatures that range in size from microscopic to as big as a city. They are used for various functions, such as travel, computing, and construction.
The basic premise is: You know that your actions are killing the world, and it’s the only world you have, what do you do? You’re taking but not giving back, you’re consuming without planting a seed.
Do you sit around and watch the world slowly wither, or do you act and change the behavior of the people on the planet?
EGG: Do you see this world as an uplifting world, or one that’s descended to go from pre-apocalypse to post?
JERRY: That depends on the play group. My personal philosophy at the gaming table is not nihilistic. I’m playing to change the world for the better. In fact, most of my games skew that way. You are the hero, you have the ability to change the world.
EGG: This setting is for your MYTHIC D6 system. For those that don’t know the system, how does MYTHIC D6 work?
JERRY: Its a D6 dice pool system. Pretty simple. Attribute dice + Skill Dice. Count successes rather than summing up dice. A success is a 4, 5, or 6. The Wild Die explodes. You try and beat a Degree of Difficulty (DoD) when you roll.
A quick start of the rules can be found at the following link.
EGG: Who is working on this project with you?
JERRY: Kieran Turley and Michael Fiegel (co-wrote HELLAS, creator of Ninja Burger, and prose writer of the novel Blackbird). The single biggest influence and draw to the game is Steven S. Sanders. Steven is the artist that allowed us to build a game around his work. We had access to all of these amazing illustrations, so I decided to build a game around it. I flew up to Seattle, and Mike and I brainstormed for a few days and came up with the premise, we then brought Kieran in and went from there.
EGG: Artistically, this is sci-fi, almost anime in the designs. Is that a fair assessment? What inspired this setting and world?
JERRY: Steven S. Sanders is an amazing artist. I can’t speak for him or what inspires his style, but you can see his work at this link. His work informed some of themes of the game and his art, in my opinion, has a lot of European influences. It’s quiet, strong, and very evocative. My biggest fear is that we wont be able to do the artwork justice.
EGG: I can see what you’re saying. Will Steven S. Sanders provide 100% of the art? Or will any other artists, or stock art, be used?
JERRY: His art for 99.9% of the work. I did some design work, like the map and icons.
You’ve done fourteen RPG Kickstarters including this one. This is your third Mythic D6 Kickstarter in a row. What made a new Mythic D6 setting the right project to focus on now as opposed to, say, ATLANTIS: The Second Age or some of your other properties?
JERRY: I have a lot of things I want to put out there. 2017-2019 I was very busy with other outside projects (7th Sea, Orun, Eldritch Century, etc). and had to put a lot of my stuff on hold. But during that time, I would work on and off on my personal projects: GODSEND Agenda, ATLANTIS, IRIN, HELLAS.
Once my outside obligations were done, I dived full speed into my own projects again. When I went back and looked, I realized, I have several projects that were almost done; Terra Oblivion was one of them. Some on the net say a game is dead when there is nothing for a year produce for it. I like to think of them as dormant. I love playing HELLAS, and ATLANTIS, and still actively write stuff for both. You should see my Google Docs files. I have notes for the fifth book for HELLAS called Kings of Pain (all about the Atlantean threat). Outlines for the Theographica, a book of gods for ATLANTIS. You’ve already seen the beta test of GODSEND Agenda. And wayyyy down the line I have IRIN, my Gnostic Space opera mash up of Ultraman and Battlestar Galactica, by way of the books of Apocrypha.
I keep busy 🙂
EGG: At d20 Radio, I reviewed Bastion, your afrocentric fantasy setting for MYTHIC D6. It’s an interesting world with a lot of original content. Do you have plans for more Bastion?
JERRY: If the bug strikes me, yeah. But it’s a complete game. It does what I want it to do. Who knows, maybe I can return to it once I’ve done what I want to do with the current projects.
EGG: What other projects are you working on?
JERRY: GODSEND Agenda is my first love and one I now have the language and tools to make. You can find the beta playtest version on DriveThruRPG as a Pay What You Want. My Magnum Opus.
Then there is ATLANTIS: The First Age, an alternate timeline for ATLANTIS: The Second Age. It’s a supers game set in a sword and sorcery world.
HELLAS: Kings of Pain. The fifth book for the HELLAS: Worlds of Sun and Stone game line. This is the monster book for HELLAS, and details the bio-organic nightmare world of Atlantis. (Atlantis runs through all my games…I enjoy that myth.)
And if Im not burnt out by then, there is IRIN and Cowboy Dracula.
EGG: You’re right, you do keep busy. We’ve talked a lot about your projects but I want to take a moment to turn the focus over to what’s going on in America right now. There’s well-deserved and desperately needed attention on the racial bias African-Americans deal with everyday as a result of the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many more. In your opinion, what can we, white gamers, do to be more inclusive of, and inviting to, black creators and black gamers?
JERRY: Open the door, put out the welcome mat, and pull out a chair. That’s the FIRST thing. The second thing is a paradigm shift from the “that’s not for me attitude” a lot of gamers take when it comes to People of Color (PoC) and other marginalized communities. If the game is written by a Trans person, or a Black person, or a woman, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it or take something away from it. I know people that are uncomfortable playing a PoC but are perfectly fine playing an Elf or tentacled alien. More games are produced by PoC than people realize. Lots of games we love and enjoy are written by gay people, and we aren’t aware. What I’m doing and what others are doing are standing up and saying “Look! I did this. I made something that speaks to me.” But that doesn’t mean it can’t speak to a white person. If you stand back and look, most games are in some way about the human condition, but flavored from our diverse perspective. Black people want to slay dragon, we want to crash Renraku’s mainframe. We just want to be represented in a major way. I think a lot of the new designers want to be seen and heard. They want their accomplishments to matter in a system that has devalued or undervalued their contributions.
I want ALL my people to feel safe and welcome at a gaming table and never have to do a work around to get a woman knight into a Pendragon game, or shoehorn in a black face into a bog standard D&D game. I don’t want us to be the “exotics” at the table. I want us to be the norm.
Now here’s the caveat- I’m not a genius or an eloquent civil rights activist. I’m just the common person that wants to make games that allow me to play in my own skin. Skin in this context can be gay, black, brown, trans, non-binary, or whatever. I want to play, be accepted, and loved at the table; not the exception that’s ALLOWED to sit with the table. We are here and we aren’t going anywhere, and the media we consume should reflect that.
EGG: Thanks for sharing that, those words are helpful. I appreciate you talking with me about your game and your thoughts on how we can forge a better gaming table together. Where can fans find out more about this campaign and your work?
JERRY:Thanks for allowing me to be seen, it’s appreciated. You can find my works at the Khepera Publishing website. You can find me at @Khepera_RPG on Twitter. You can see some actual plays on our YouTube channel, Cowboy Dracula.
Terra Oblivion: Adventure on a Symbiotic World from Jerry D. Grayson (Khepera Publishing)
“A pre-apocalyptic game of eco-espionage, set on a world slowly being killed by humanity’s need to consume.”
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