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| Kobold:
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Mr. Laws, thank you for joining us today. It's a rare treat when someone
as famous in the gaming community as you makes it past the guard monkeys
and comes to chat. Let's start with a professional question:
When designing games, do you like to start with just a few basic ideas
jotted down, then flesh out the game system as it comes to you, or do
you like to have an almost complete mental image of the game/ system
before you sit down to write it up? |
| Robin Laws: |
Assuming that I’m
beginning from scratch, as opposed to adapting an existing rules set, I
start with a conception of the core mechanic, whether it be the success
matrix of Hero Wars/ Heroquest or the reroll mechanic of Dying
Earth. Then I test it out to see that it works, go back to the
drawing board until it does, and then get started writing the
manuscript. During the writing I find ways to apply the central mechanic
to the problem of the day, whether that be drowning rules or wealth or
what have you. |
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| K: |
As
a game designer, do you have an all-time favorite project you've done?
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| RL: |
I hate to resort to
cliché, but that’s kind of like asking a parent who his favorite kid is.
You want to embrace them all, even the ones who came out slightly
lumpy-looking. I’ve been very blessed by the response to a number of my
projects, including
Feng Shui, the
Dying Earth
Roleplaying Game,
Robin’s Laws of Good
Gamemastering… |
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| K: |
Nothing you just look back on and say, "Damn,
I'm good"? |
| RL: |
Some creative people
are driven by an inexhaustible belief in their own brilliance. I fall
into the other big category, of creators driven mostly by self-doubt. My
few moments of erupting ego are usually followed by a swift comeuppance. |
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| K: |
Do
you wear brightly colored Hawaiian shirts all the time, or just when
lurking around game conventions? |
| RL: |
They’re my normal
summertime attire. Colorful long-sleeve shirts are harder to find. |
| K: |
Yeah, I have trouble finding clothes in my
style, too! That's why sometimes I just patter around here naked as a
bay shrimp. |
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(Uncomfortable silence for
many moments.) |
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| K: |
- rm , /.. –jhmnk-p0 \ 3. m;lokp;[lqaaz4\
= bnjmk;p[[[[[[[[[[14
Excuse that; one of our cats wandered across the keyboard. Any pets of
your own? Are you an animal lover? |
| RL: |
In
my view the whole purpose behind our thousands of years of civilization
was to invent buildings to keep the animals out.
Plus I’m allergic. |
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| K: |
What’s your favorite pizza topping? |
| RL: |
Pesto. |
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K: |
We looked that up. That's just a fancy way of
saying "sauce", isn't it? Show off. |
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| K: |
Do you have another favorite munchie food
when at the gaming table? |
| RL: |
I
am a believer in a staunch separation between gaming and snacking. |
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K: |
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| K: |
Are you a Canadian resident by birth or by choice? |
| RL: |
By birth. |
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K: |
Well, that's interesting, eh ? (See? I
speak your lingo.) |
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| K: |
What fact about Canadian life do you think
would most interest the rest of the world? |
| RL: |
One, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan is the world’s biggest
producer of potash. Two, hundreds of Canadians are devoured every year
by roving packs of carnivorous
muskrats. (In deference to the tourism
industry, we keep a tight lid on this second fact.) |
|
K: |
Crap! I visited Niagara Falls when I was a
little koboldling, and I didn't see one person get devoured by an
aquatic rodent! Must have not been in season... |
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| K: |
Name your four favorite things that start with the letter "B". |
| RL: |
Beck, Bach, Big
Lebowski, bunnies. |
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| K: |
We've actually spoken to you briefly on more than one occasion at Gen
Con over the years, and you seem very nice. Be honest; is it hard to be
polite all the time when you're at conventions? We imagine you must get
exhausted, but have to talk to fans anyway. Do you get aggravated when
the 300th person stops you to talk about role playing while
you're trying to just browse the vendor floor? |
| RL: |
Heck no. Talking to
people is the whole reason I’m there. And although it’s great to catch
up with old colleagues and important to touch base with potential
clients, the actual gamers are what it’s all about. I’m always delighted
to stop and chat with the folks whose interest in my work keeps me
creatively charged and allows me to make my living in this crazy
endeavor.
Gaming fame isn’t
real fame, where you’re constantly besieged, or become a magnet for
wackos. After doing this for over a decade, I can count my negative or
awkward fan encounters on the fingers of one hand. |
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K: |
Hey! Me, too! Here's the hand...
(digs through pocket...) and here are some of
the fingers! |
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RL: |
From what my female colleagues tell me, it’s attractive women, not game
designer dudes, who are really in danger of icky or aggravating
interactions at game conventions. |
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| K: |
Do
you get any weird requests when fans recognize you? Like, "Mr. Laws!
Please autograph my buttocks!" Or maybe "Can I have a sample of your
saliva, Mr. Laws?" Or perhaps, "Hey, Mr. Laws! Can a cranky humanoid
monster interview you for a website?" |
| RL: |
That’s definitely gotta be in the top five. An odd but not especially
colorful request I sometimes get is to sign books I didn’t work on. |
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| K: |
We
found an
interview you did previously on a German website. Do you speak
German, or was it translated? |
| RL: |
Translated. I am woefully monolingual. Fortunately most Germans young
enough to be gamers speak English very well. |
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K: |
Those crafty Europeans! I modestly speak some
Goblin, and I can order food in Trollish. Which, oddly, is easier than
German. |
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| K: |
What was the coolest toy you had as a child? |
| RL: |
Each summer, my brother and I used to go for two-week visits to my
grandparents’ (non-working) farm in the Muskokas, in Northern Ontario.
When we’d get back, we’d find a surprise project that our dad made for
us. One year it was a wooden castle, stocked with plastic knights,
complete with portcullis and a trap door for dropping tinfoil boulders
down onto enemies trapped below. Another year it was a canvas big top,
filled with circus animals. Or a gigantic puppet theater, also designed
as a castle, with a main stage for marionettes and barred dungeon doors
for hand puppets to poke out of. One year it was a full-on backyard fort
on stilts, with a ladder for entry (which could be drawn up with a rope
and pulley system, to deter invaders) and a slide for exit. Cannons made
of copper tubing shot Styrofoam balls out of the fort and into the yard,
propelled by firecrackers. |
| K: |
HOLY CRAP! We only had some gnawed turkey bones and badger sinew to
build our own action figures with! You had a kick-ass childhood. |
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| K: |
Frisbees rock! Do you play Frisbee? |
| RL: |
Afraid not. |
| K: |
Huh. Well, I guess
that evens out. I figure a guy who plays with cannons but doesn't whip a
Frisbee is riding the mean, toy-wise. |
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| K: |
You enjoy Hong Kong cinema. Have you studied the martial arts? Do you
know a thing or two about flailing wildly with nunchaku, or cappin' some
ass with a Glock? |
| RL: |
Only vicariously.
Feng Shui’s take on combat is strictly over-the-top cinematic, with
wires and a complete disregard for physics. |
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| K: |
You obviously get a kick from game mastering, but when you get a chance
to be a player, what game to you enjoy most? And what type of character
do you find yourself portraying? |
| RL: |
I
almost never get a chance to play. When I do, I tend toward oddballs who
push the story in unexpected directions. This may or may not be a
positive trait on my part. |
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| K: |
While in the supermarket check-out line recently, a teenage clerk asked
us how we were. We responded, "Adequate, thanks." And the clerk didn't
know what adequate meant. What the hell? It's not like we said we
were "erythrophobic" or something rarely uttered like that. Who lives to
be 17 years old and has never heard the word adequate in their
native tongue? With progeny like this, are you hopeful for the future of
our civilization? |
| RL: |
The building we live in changed hands a few years ago and the new
landlords have slowly filled it with undergraduate-age tenants. As a
consequence I have definitely morphed into a crotchety old dude
wondering just what the hell is wrong with kids these days. “I mean,
come on. Learn to take the garbage out! And how come you never lock the
door? And surely if you’re capable of getting accepted into the
country’s most prestigious university you have the wherewithal to
realize that your 2:30 AM weeknight back balcony bongo playing is going
to wake us up, don’t you?” We’re looking for a new place. |
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| K: |
Why do they put both real bacon bits and fake bacon bits at salad bars?
Aren't they kinda' the same thing, really? |
| RL: |
Little known fact: some brands of fake
bacon bits are kosher. |
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| K: |
What kind of an idiot believes those e-mails that say, "Forward this to
10 people, and something really, really funny will pop up on your
screen! I can't describe it, just try it, it’s so funny!" When someone
sends you one of those e-mails, don't you just feel like punching them
in the head? |
| RL: |
If I had an email
message that could punch people in the head, I would for sure forward it
to 10 people. |
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| K: |
What ring tone does your cell phone play? Do you change it up once in a
while, for variety's sake? |
| RL: |
Because I work at
home, and hardly ever venture out of the house, I don’t really need a
cell phone. I might break down and buy some cheapie pay-as-you go dealie
as a communicator to use at conventions. So at present I guess you could
say that my ring tone is the famous John Cage composition,
4’33”. |
| K: |
(Heh heh! We actually
got that one.) |
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| K: |
Sometimes when our day is really crappy, and things aren't going right,
we think of a favorite song, or some words of wisdom that cheer us right
up. Do you have a song or wise words that you use to pull you from a
funk? |
| RL: |
“I Wanna Be Sedated”
by the Ramones usually does the trick for me. It’s also superb to drive
out any annoying other songs that happen to be playing themselves
incessantly in your head. |
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| K: |
What's the worst, or toughest, part of being a game designer? What about
the game designing world just gets your undies in a bunch and makes you
wish you were a dental hygienist or something instead? |
| RL: |
I get cranky doing
stuff that isn’t writing, like statting up characters in complicated
systems or drawing maps, because it’s much harder to measure your
progress and see that you’ve done a solid day’s work. Words are
fabulously measurable.
Being a Canadian freelancer is kind of dread-inducing these days,
because our dollar is going through the roof compared to the currencies
of the US and UK, where my clients are. If I’d wanted to be rich I
should have been planning to be a lawyer from the age of seven, rather
than following my nutty dream of being a writer. |
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| K: |
Since you have to travel to hit most of the big game conventions, which
convention do you enjoy attending most? Any particular reason? The fun?
The location? The babes? |
| RL: |
The one indispensable convention to the full-time freelancer is GenCon
Indy. For business reasons, a freelancer pretty much has to be there to
fly the flag and snap up serendipitous work opportunities. It’s the big
dog on the block, so you get the best seminar turnout, the hottest new
products, the greatest concentration of old comrades.
But babes? Dude,
this is gaming. |
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| K: |
When we asked you if you'd agree to an interview, you gave us your
business card, with your phone number on it. Can we call you up sometime
just to say hi? |
| RL: |
For whatever reason,
I never got the memo about the telephone being a medium for social
interaction. Even when I’m on the line with friends or family, I have to
struggle to keep up the chat instead of rushing through my talking
points, saying goodbye, and slapping the receiver back in the cradle. |
| K: |
OK, sounds like a
brush-off to us. We get it. We thought you were kidding with the
restraining order, but fine, whatever. |
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| K: |
The next time you design a game product, will you put a little secret
message in it somewhere, just for us? |
| RL: |
I already have, but
it’s a secret and you’ll never find it. |
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