Episode 4: Grant Howitt

Sasha and Jonny are joined by the one and only Grant Howitt to talk one-pagers, gaming firsts and the horrors of having to market yourself!

Pre-order the Sin sourcebook for Spire here
 
Check-out Grant & Sasha's one-page Himbo Treasure Hunt  here

Find Grant at:
Twitter:  @gshowitt
Patreon: www.patreon.com/gshowitt
Rowan, Rook & Decard:  rowanrookanddecard.com

Find MacGuffin & Co. at:
Website: www.macguffinandcompany.com
Twitter: @MacGuffinandCo
Facebook: MacGuffin and Company
Patreon: www.patreon.com/macguffinandcompany

Thanks to our audio editor Lowri Davies

Transcript

 [Intro plays, an upbeat, arcade game-like tune.] 

JONNY Hello! And welcome to “No One Wants to Hear Your RPG Stories,” the podcast that just completely roasts its own central concept in the name! I am Jonny Sims.

SASHA And I’m Sasha Sienna. 

JONNY And we are MacGuffin and Company, and today we are joined by a very special guest... Hello.

GRANT Hi, I’m a very special guest.

[Laughter]

GRANT Hi, I’m Grant Howitt! Is that how it works? Ok, right, cool, yeah.

JONNY We have with us today Grant Howitt, creator of such RPG classics as Spire, Goblin Quest and a raft of madcap one-pagers, including the phenomenal Honey Heist, which I believe has become something of a phenomenon.

GRANT It’s the only indie game.

JONNY It is, it is the only indie game.

GRANT As far as a lot of podcasts are aware. They play that and then they can go back to D&D for the rest of their run, apparently.

SASHA There are only two extremes.

GRANT Pretty much. Bear and criminal. Yes, I write one-page roleplaying games. I also do big serious games like Spire and Heart, but I think perhaps what I’m best known for is writing games about criminal animals or animal criminals. I am gradually running out of animals and cri- Well, quickly running out of- Well, I ran out of animals and crimes about a year in and I’ve been sort of scraping around and remixing the bottom of these- these chips I scraped off the bottom of the barrel.

SASHA Just ever expanding the definition of what counts as an animal and what counts as a crime.

GRANT Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it’s- I’m pretty sure it’ll be toasters doing forgery, I assume.

JONNY Yeah, tardigrade art swindlers.

GRANT I mean, I’ve- Ok, I would love to make a game about tardigrades, but I think they’re just too small to be relatable to, but they’re very cute.

JONNY Oh, they’re adorable.

GRANT They’ve got a bunch of legs and they just don’t die!

SASHA Which I think actually makes them perfect for an RPG.

JONNY Just a really dark one-pager about a group of tardigrades searching for an end.

GRANT Yeah, you could adapt all the old sort-of high-level Vampire: The Masquerade stuff.

JONNY Oh, god yeah.

GRANT Like the, uh, like first three of the Giovanni quadrilogy, but you’re all just tardigrades.

[Laughter]

SASHA No other changes.

GRANT None whatsoever.

JONNY So we’ve got a few sort of opening questions for you.

GRANT Mmhm.

JONNY That will quickly become, I think, our standard opening questions for all our guests, but you’re the first so, uh, congratulations on being a guinea pig!

GRANT Well, thanks. Hit me!

JONNY So, what was the first RPG that you ever played, or that you ever remember playing?

GRANT The first RPG I ever played was SLA Industries, which is a terrible way to start playing roleplaying games. Not that there’s much wrong with SLA Industries, it’s just a cruel and very, uh- Is the word ‘unremitting’, system? I dunno.

JONNY It could be, it’s not one I’m familiar with. Could you give us a run-through?

GRANT I’d run games before this, but this was the first game that I’d played in. I went to university and I’d, uh, I’d managed to run maybe three or four sessions of roleplaying games for my mates in high school. But they were all like cool normal people who had like interests and like they had sports and like social interaction with other people, so it was really a struggle for me to get people to give a shit. Oh, can I swear on this show? 

SASHA Yes.

JONNY Yeah, go ahead.

GRANT Hell yeah, good. Really a struggle for me to get people to give a shit. But then I went to university and I found all the other people like me. All the other freaks and weirdos who are ready to pretend to be an elf for hours, maybe days, at a time. And I ended up as the secretary of the games society, because the guy who was running against me was an absolute tool and I was really drunk at the time, I didn’t quite know what was going on. So I was the secretary, I was writing in the newsletter and I had to go along to all the meetings, and I was thrust into a world of politics that I had no understanding of or really any interest in, and I met a chap called James and James told me that he was running SLA Industries. And I had read about this on the internet and I was like “[Gasps] How exciting!” So, SLA Industries is, the best way I can describe it is Scottish cyberpunk under Thatcher.

JONNY Wow.

SASHA Oooh.

GRANT Yeah. There is a weather table and all the kinds of weather you can roll were rain. 

SASHA Different kinds of rain or just the same kind of rain?

GRANT Different kinds of rain. I mean like, like- 

JONNY Drizzle. Downpour. A spatter.

GRANT Yeah, yeah. Mizzle. I- So, I’ve got a lot of problems with Scotland, the country of my birth, but we do get varied rain, I’ll give us that. Now, SLA Industries is a- It’s a brutal cyberpunk game with some quite, uh- It’s satirical. But you still have to play it. So there’s this- It’s kind of a challenge to be involved with the satire and not merely watching it from a distance. But James is without a doubt the first and cruelest GM I’ve ever had. Just an absolute- Like, a bad person? And I don’t think he’d mind me saying that. Like a cruel individual. And a great GM. So, yes, that was my game, that was the first game I ever played. I played a character called, my name was Smoke and I was a Brain Waster.

JONNY Yeah.

SASHA Wow.

GRANT Who are- Who are like psychics, but goth. Brain Wasters are- Brain Wasters are kind of the aggro psychic ‘race’, as it were, and the way you can tell a Brain Waster from an Ebon is Brain Wasters have their eyes sort of, they have like dark patterns around their eyes. So they have permanent eyeshadow.

[Laughter]

SASHA This sounds like such a university RPG society game. 

GRANT Oh my god yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And like, uh, he was living with four other I think ex-students at the time, so the entire place was a tip.

JONNY Mmm. The games you play in university accommodation have such a distinct aesthetic.

GRANT Yes, very much so. And like everyone was wearing found clothing. Like no-one had spent any money on their clothes, it was things we had discovered nearby, like, y’know, emergently. So that was my first ever roleplaying game and I tried to take a motorcycle down into the sewer and I was told I couldn’t do that.

SASHA And of all the characters that you’ve played, what’s the one that you would say has stuck with you the longest?

GRANT I only ever really play one character and I change his name occasionally. But it is someone who is a little bit posh, quite polite and then all the other points are put into brawl.

[Laughter]

GRANT And, and the trick is to have like sudden, hugely unpleasant violence and then happy again. And that for me is a really fun thing to play with. I like face men, I like the capacity to do unarmed violence, because at that point you’ve solved every problem a roleplaying game can put up against you, aside from, I dunno, like a locked door or something? But I’ll ask someone! Or hit them until they open the door. But I guess the originator of that was- His name was Felix Annison, from a World of Darkness game. A Word of Darkness mortals game. 

JONNY Ooh.

GRANT Which is- It’s not- Really not a system built for mortals, World of Darkness.

SASHA Isn’t that kind of the point, though?

GRANT Yeah, yeah. 

JONNY I missed World of Darkness in its sort of nineties heyday.

GRANT Oh, oh this was the remake.

JONNY Yeah, and like, but the remake I remember that I picked up like the core World of Darkness book, and was like “ah, this is really interesting.” And like never picked up any other books, and so to me it was just like “oh this is a really interesting system to just-”

GRANT “Oh how quirky!”

JONNY “-to just play some normal characters in a weird spooky world.”

GRANT “Oh, maybe there's a ghost nearby!” No, no it got deep. I’ve got a lot of love for that era of World of Darkness, I played a lot of, especially like Changeling I really liked. I ran a Hunter game for a while and did some really cool evocative stuff. I never really got into any of the big three. You know, your Mage, your Vampire, your Werewolf. But I really liked the stuff around the sides, I thought that was fun.

JONNY That’s really cool. Yeah, I just- You describing that character I have an instant image and it’s just, it’s literally just that moment of like “Ha ha ha ha ha ha face into the bar.”

SASHA Yup

GRANT Yes, yes. Breaking arms is fun! That’s always a good one. Or dislocations, that’s always like- ‘Cause no-one expects you to try and break someone’s arm right off the bat. But yes, you’re right it’s the “ha ha ha ha ha [splat noise].” Ah, corners of tables, that’s another one. Love it. Again, I wanna say, only pretend violence is good, I don’t like real violence, that’s not- That’s not cool, kids.

JONNY If any lawyers are listening, we do not- I mean, I do not endorse real violence. Uh, Sasha’s remained silent throughout this, so I can only assume-

SASHA I just- I worry that- I don’t want to play my cards to the table, or show my cards to the table. In the same way that sometimes people ask me like “oh, how would you commit a murder?” Well, I’m not telling you! 

JONNY Oh god, yeah.

SASHA I think it’s better to be subtle sometimes.

JONNY Everyone’s always laying out their cards, like just as one of these like icebreaker conversations like “How do you reckon you’d get away with murder?” And Sasha’s always like “No, I’m not telling you.”

SASHA It’s the first mistake, isn’t it! 

GRANT Jonny, how much fucking ice are you breaking? That’s a lot of broken ice! 

[Laughter]

JONNY Y’know, just- Y’know, of a dinner party. So, ok, next question. When was the first time remember roleplaying really hooking into you and getting under your skin?

GRANT The first time roleplaying got under my skin was the first time I saw roleplaying. It was in- It was upstairs above a Games Workshop. So like I’d got into Warhammer and Gorkamorka specifically, back in like ninety-six, ninety-seven? And I fell for it very hard. I think there was a period of I’m going to say about nine years where I didn’t spend money on anything other than models, pretty much. Like, that was where all of my extra money was going.

SASHA Ah, like when I was eight and I spent all my pocket money on Spice Girls photos.

GRANT Abso- Hang on.

SASHA And my parents were like “what a heterosexual child we have”.

GRANT Quick Q. What’s a, um- Just like a photo of the Spice Girls? What do you mean?

SASHA Oh, ok. So back in the nineties, right, you know, oh what is it? Panama, is it? The little-

GRANT Panini.

JONNY Oh Panini. The stickers.

SASHA Panini! The stickers. Right. So there was obviously Spice Girls Panini stickers.

GRANT Mmm.

SASHA And I used to collect two kinds of Panini stickers. The Spice Girls ones, which were 50p, and the Liverpool FC ones which were also 50p. And again, my parents were like “what a heterosexual child.” And then, um, the like the posh kids in my class started getting really into the photos, which is, ok when you went to get your film photos developed and they gave them to you in that little like Fuji foldover pack?

GRANT Yeah yeah yeah.

SASHA It’s that, but just eight photos of the Spice Girls.

GRANT Oh!

SASHA Eight promo photos.They were a pound a pack.

GRANT Wow. And they were- They were random photos?

SASHA Yeah.

GRANT Oh wow.

SASHA I used to get a pound a week for my pocket money.

GRANT Yeah

SASHA And I would just like, I get the pound, I go, I buy a pack of Spice Girls photos. That is it.  

GRANT Why not? Great.

SASHA And that went on for like a year.

GRANT Yeah yeah yeah. It must have been hard, during the pandemic, getting to the newsagent.

SASHA Yeah, no, it was. Especially when there was all that like supply line disruption.

[Laughter]

GRANT A lot of people put- I mean, you gotta watch it because if you go on Amazon you’ll get a lot of like bootleg Chinese stuff which is just pictures of women who look like the Spice Girls.

SASHA ‘Lookalikes’ in quotation marks, it’s like “you’ve just got red hair, you don’t look like Geri Halliwell!”

GRANT “Posh Spunce? Spunce?”

[Laughter]

SASHA “Uh, excuse me, Saffron?”

JONNY So- So...

GRANT “This is just a bag of spices you’ve sent me!”

JONNY Young Grant- 

SASHA Sorry, to get back to RPGs.

JONNY Young Grant has just crossed the threshold. He is above a Games Workshop, he is viewing-

GRANT Yeah. It was Games Day 2000. The night before Games Day. So Games Day is a big sort of- It’s a convention for Warhammer players. And we- we were getting a bus. I was up in Carlisle, where I used to live, and we were getting a bus down at like fuck o’clock in the morning. So, us- Me and a bunch of other sprogs and a load of other like teenage boys, and some men, were there. Not- Not a woman in sight of the place. Um, were basically sleeping over in the- in the area above the store. And some boys, some older boys, were playing what I now realise to be kind of a really daft badly-run game of Sabbat. It was- It was Vampire: The Masquerade, they were running Sabbat and it was just a fuckabout, basically. But I was absolutely blown away by this. ‘Cause I, as far as I was aware, all I knew was Warhammer. So, you’d- you’d have to like paint the model and then put the thing on the table and move it around and there was no sort of like “oh, I’m going to try and like sneak in round the back” or “I’m going to talk to this guy” or “I’m gonna-” No, you just did the shooting. So the thought of like “Oh, this is like Warhammer, but you can do anything.” That absolutely blew my tiny mind. And then, as I said earlier, it was difficult to get my friends to come along with it.

JONNY Mmm.

SASHA Mmm.

GRANT So I ended up writing a lot of games myself.

JONNY Yup.

GRANT Thankfully I think all of which have been expunged from the internet.

SASHA Oh, you put them on the internet?

GRANT I shared them round a Yahoo group I was in!

[Laughter]

GRANT Uncle Grant’s Comedy Roleplaying Game is out there somewhere. I was fifteen.

JONNY It just puts me in mind of my now long-since purged like thirteen-year-old DeviantArt account.

GRANT Ooh.

JONNY Which was mainly- Which was mainly like stolen Pink Floyd lyrics.

GRANT Mm. As opposed to ones you’ve written yourself. 

JONNY Yeah, yeah yeah. Well, no, no it was basically like Pink Floyd lyrics as I would write them. So worse.

GRANT Ahh. Pink Floyd fanfiction.

JONNY Like sort of. Pink Floyd fan- like, poem stuff, maybe? I dunno. Anyway, long since cast into the abyss, thank god.

GRANT Thank god.

JONNY And so, final question from us.

SASHA What’s the biggest disaster you’ve ever caused in a game? As GM or as a player?

GRANT I did quite an- Quite an elaborate- Quite a, uh, an ambitious game of D20 Modern when I was in, when I was in university. And it was all about, I think I’d just seen, oh what’s it called, the s- the door. The Door? Mm. It’s a- It’s a- a supernatural TV show about magic, like magic items which turn up in the world and people are sort of collecting them and they have weird special powers. And I wanted to make a game about that and sort of have- have a d20 game with loads of weird magic items. And so one of the things I had it was called, uh, the Rings of No Sanctuary.

JONNY Wow.

GRANT And the Rings of No Sanctuary were, um, were five rings, five rings linked with chains. And when you touched your hand to a wall, that wall was destroyed. And so like, but because I was using d20 it wasn’t- It should have been like “oh you do 4d8 damage to the wall across a 30-foot radius.” No, it was “nah, that wall’s destroyed. Fine, fuck it let’s go.” And immediately after giving a player that I gave them a, I think it was like an assassination target at the top of a cylindrical tower. Which they just immediately destroyed, because it was a single wall. Uh, I had to be like “Um... Alright, I’m going to have to stop for tonight lads, because I haven’t planned anything else.” And that actually killed the campaign. I was- I was so disheartened.

SASHA Aww...

JONNY So, we’ve got a few questions now from our wonderful Patrons, uh, and, uh a few from Twitter. And there’s been a commonality to, uh, a lot of them.

GRANT Ok.

JONNY Which is, essentially... For you one-pagers, what is the process of creation? So it’s, some people have asked like “oh do you come up with the mechanic or the setting first?”  Uh, some people are asking how you, sort of, bring out the- the mechanics. But a lot of it boils down to: What’s your process for like sitting down and saying “I’m going to create a page of chaos”?  

GRANT Ok, well, uh it starts- It starts on the first of every month, where I get an email from Patreon saying “you’ve been paid for last month.” Which reminds me that I’ve got to do another game. And then there’s a scant period of two to three weeks where I don’t do anything, and I think. And like maybe “oh here’s maybe an idea for a game!”  And I’ll talk to Chris my- my co-author on Spire and Heart and a lot of things. I’ll talk to Chris and he’ll tell me, he’ll be like “yeah, that’s kind of half an idea, I guess.” And we’ll ignore that and we’ll play some videogames for a bit and I’ll write some main book. And then, uh, it gets to a point where I can’t not release a game, so it’s kind of a mix of desperation and the fact that I have a button on the internet and when I push it about three hundred people give me collectively two and a half thousand dollars. So that’s a pretty good button. Which is a great motivation to- to write a page of content. And I’m really glad that that button exists, in terms of putting food on tables and things. But my process, generally what I will do, I will think of- If it’s mechanical first I’ll think of like there’s something which I want to play with, there’s something which I want to explore. So, uh, it’s like- I want to take the idea of succeeding too far or like, or like having to- having to get a target, a success number within a limit and if you go over the success number then you “succeed backwards”, rather than failing forwards. And playing with that, I guess. So I’ve done that in a couple of games, I’ve tried to get across the idea, or like, I’ll- I’ll look and whatever I’ve read recently, whatever’s inspired me, whatever I’ve thought was cool, I’ll take and I’ll be like “well what can I- what can I draw from this.” So, uh, I read a lot of roleplaying games, ‘cause that’s, y’know ‘cause that’s my business, uh, so I read- Oh, what was it I read? Ultraviolet Grasslands and Into the Weird and Wild on one particularly long car journey recently. And I was like “well, I- I want to write my own OSR game, to hell with this!” So I sat down and did a two-page RPG which was OSR. I think like it’s- Partially me reading things or watching a movie or making a model which inspires me, or reading a book in some capacity. Or one of my friends will basically dare me, and they’ll- they’ll-  Like Mary, my partner, will like- They came up with the idea for Goat Crashers, which is, uh, a gatecrashing goat simulator. And once we had the pun, fine, ok, I can work the rest out, that’s- We- we can go from there. ‘Cause generally, there’s generally a kind of light goading which happens from a lot of my closer friends and I- I think- I think like Sexy Battle Wizards, uh, which I played on Rusty Quill, actually, which you’re- I guess, uh, allied to...

[Laughter]

SASHA Business acquaintances with.

GRANT Yeah yeah yeah, that- I- I think that started off as, uh, “Beastmaster Fuckmaster” and I gradually made it slightly more playable, approachable for your average consumer. I have an excuse to use up, or to elaborate on or experiment with these weird half-ideas that I think everyone gets. Uh, and I’m- I’m financially rewarded for doing so. And also because I’m financially rewarded for doing so I can afford to spend, you know, a few days tooling around with something and trying to make it perfect and- Ah, the one thing I would say if anyone is interested in writing one page roleplaying games: Test your tables. ‘Cause you should write tables for one page roleplaying games ‘cause that’s much easier and quicker than writ-  Well, maybe not easier. It’s much quicker than writing setting in terms of getting- Uh, in terms of getting efficient setting and set-up into a game. But they’ve gotta work together and they’ve gotta be funny or they’ve gotta be interesting, so please test them and roll them and try it and you will end up changing half of what you’ve got down there.

SASHA Cool

JONNY So we’re not going to dive into a bit of a more general Q and A from Patreon and Twitter, so probably get a little bit more of a quickfire, we’re just gonna keep asking questions until we feel Grant’s talked enough.  

GRANT Yeah, if I- If I talk too long, ask me the next question. 

SASHA We’ll just cut straight in there. Ok, I’m gonna go. Uh, do you have any creative liberties you encourage or discourage when others run your games? 

GRANT I encourage people not to ask me questions about my games, because I don’t know the answers. 

[Laughter]

GRANT I write, I write rough, ramshackle games quite often. I do, I uh- A lot of my games aren’t playtested and they’re so short, a lot of them- Or they’re so simple that I’m pretty sure they can- people can work out what the answer is to any sort of query. So, if you’re running my games please change them. Mess with them. Uh, when I run my games I change them, I’m not happy with them. Uh, I run games which run very fast and I- and I try to make them faster while I’m running them. Like, like someone sawing bits off their own car in a race. It’s not a good idea, it makes the games not work.

SASHA It sounds like it would be counterproductive.

GRANT Yeah. Absolutely fuck about with them, change them. As long as you buy ‘em I don’t care.

[Laughter]

JONNY Yeah. Ah, well, to be fair a lot of- A lot of your games, like, are very much, like- They’re what I think of as like, kind of, “pure play” games, like there’s this idea of, like, the- the right move is whatever is just going to make people laugh and smile in the- at that moment. So like, I think there’s a lot to be said for, like, these- these things are just, are like jumping off points and, like, you pull out the bits that you really think are funny and fun and like- Yeah, if- if you’re playing your own game and you’re like “ah, you know what, I wrote this, but [throwing noise]”. I think a lot more creators could afford to be less precious about their games, I think.

GRANT Abso- Like, once- Once I put a game out in the wild, it’s- I’m- It’s not that I’m done with it and, like, I’m really happy to carry on supporting games, and we’ve got a really lovely community of players and um readers in the- on discord, in our Rowan, Rook and Decard discord. But in terms of, yeah, like people getting in touch with me and saying “aw, I mean, I’ve got this question about- about the particular wording of a rule in a game you wrote four years ago” it’s like “mate, I don’t remember what I did yesterday.” Like, I think our official feedback on all questions that come up on our discord is “hey, follow your heart, man, go for it! I believe in you, I’m sure you’ll have fun!” 

JONNY So, next question, coming from “a user on Twitter” because I forgot to copy the names of who was asking the questions, but if you asked this question: thank you. How are you able to keep your work down to one page? 

GRANT Well, as I said, I have that magic button that makes money come out of the internet and if I put it in for more than one page then the money doesn’t come out as effectively or efficiently. But it’s something which I’ve learned to do over quite a while. I think if you see my earlier games there’s an awful lot of me, like, trying to cram as much text as I could onto the page. And ‘cause I was writing them by hand there was- it was much less evenly spread and so I could, sort of, do it live, as it were. But generally what I’ve learn- Like, it’s not that my games are formulaic, although perhaps they are a little bit now, given- given how many of them I’ve done. You can certainly see a formula, where there’s the character creation and- So you- We need to know who the players are, what they can do, how they do it and where they’re doing it. And past that everything else is gravy. So that gives you the set-up and- Chris and I have a- have an understanding of adventures which we- which we share- we share together, which is when you write an adventure what we feel is the correct thing to be doing is sort of getting a soapbox racer on top of a hill, removing the breaks and putting something really heavy in there, and then pushing it. And then what happens to the soapcar on the way down the hill, that- that’s- We can’t predict that. You know? That’s out of our hands, they’ve signed the waiver. We- We want to give you an exciting fast set-up, and I think that’s what, like, one-page games are really good at that. ‘Cause there’s- There’s only so much to- to take in and you can afford to have the set-up, have the- have what the character powers are, have what the- have what options are available to the players, and then go from there. The other thing, which I- which I mentioned earlier is I’ve really tried to get as much as I can into tables, like, random roll tables which combine. So having adjective noun, which combine, or having, uh, roll- “roll twice and combine to make a plot” is really good as well, ‘cause that means you exponentially increase the use of a table-

JONNY Yeah

GRANT -by pairing things together.

JONNY No, I’m a big fan of this in tables that I do. It’s- it’s the idea that if you have, like, twenty prompts, you have twenty prompts. If you have two d10 prompts, you have a hundred prompts.

GRANT Mmhm. And there’s- there’s a lot you- you- you can get a lot of mileage out of- out of- out of some- out of some quickly chosen words. But I think it’s [sighs] I was about to say- I think it’s- it’s something like- it’s like writing a game poem, but it’s not like writing a game poem, it’s like writing a very short technical manual which has to have a couple of jokes in. You sort of- you get- you get the understanding of, like, “well, ok, how much- how much can-” also, just like “how much can I cut out? How much can I trust to the GM? How much can we assume is known?” And so I’ve stopped saying “hey, one of you has to be the GM” nah, we can get that now, we’ve understood- we understand that.      

SASHA Great. And, um, which of your games that you’ve ever written is your favourite to play or to GM? Or both?

GRANT Havoc Brigade!

JONNY Choose your favourite child!

[Laughter]

GRANT My favourite child! Uh, most beautiful of my children is a game I wrote back in 2015, I believe, 14? Uh, time’s a flat circle. Called Havoc Brigade. And very few people have heard of it because this was- this was before I had any sort of following, or any sort of ability to promote my work. And it is- The original title of Havoc Brigade was Orc Hijincks Yes? It’s this lovely little one-shot game. It’s, uh, I think it’s like ten bucks itch.io you can get through our site, and it has uh five pregen orc characters with art, it has one further character which is just six goblins in a stack and every time you lose a wound you cross off a goblin. And you are on an infiltration mission into a human city to capture a prince, to get all the secrets of war out of his brain. And there’s a- there’s a tipping point in every game of Havoc Brigade I’m gonna say about seventeen minutes in, where the players s- like they see the system, they see the map, and they understand what’s going on and they realise, oh they can do anything! They can just get in here however they want, that doesn’t- it doesn’t- we’re not- we’re not going to fail! So they’ll build rocket boats, they’ll disguise- the goblins will disguise themselves as princesses, they’ll break into the zoo and ride the biggest animal, they’ll disguise themselves as “the band” to get in. They- It’s this- it’s this really big, wacky chaotic thing where it also has a nice- a nice little mechanic for, like- for tension- for tension and chaos building up, and then the orcs sort of firing that off as a weapon to bring it back down, so there’s a really nice pace to it. But, yeah, that is- that is my favourite thing. Wonderful to run. I think- I think it’s pretty good to play. And no-one really knows I wrote it, which is a shame.

JONNY Yeah, I’ll be honest it’s- uh, I was like “ah, I don’t- I don’t remember that one at all!” I’m gonna have to look that one up because that sounds like a great time.

SASHA Yeah, it does sound like fun.

GRANT It’s tremendous fun! Can’t recommend it enough.

JONNY So, uh, slightly- slightly different tack on this one.

GRANT What’s your least favourite game?

[Laughter]

JONNY Oh, yeah. What do you- what do you- what do you just hate?

GRANT Which is your bastard stepchild?

JONNY Like, what is the deepest shame of- No, um, it’s: how do you sell yourself and your games? 

GRANT [Pained groan]

JONNY Yeah.

GRANT Um, we have ended up with- So, like- So, my initial thing was I used to run live games, back when- we used to do- we did live action zombie events, we did a thing in Melbourne where we summoned, like, street gods, uh, with like- by breaking- by breaking social contracts, which was really fun. Um, oh we did one game which was a thirty-person simultaneous charades to the tune of ABBA which was called Ludonarrative Discodance. 

[Laughter]

JONNY Wow.

GRANT We did- we did a load of stupid stuff when we were younger. And really fun stuff. But throughout all this, because uh I was running it with Mary, my partner, and Chris, a man who I am all but married to, broadly. We are- we- we have hitched our wagons to the same horse, I think. Uh, he’s hitched my-? Anyway, we’re together. Broadly. Creatively. And as friends. 

JONNY You are bound.

GRANT Yes, we are bound- bound to one another. Uh, and so I’ve always been much more, uh, high energy and more- more hungry for praise, shall we say? So I ended- I ended up as the frontman and uh- And so I would- I would deliver the speeches, I would talk to people, I would get people riled up, and then from that I sort of developed into the face of the brand. Of the Rowan Rook and Decard brand. And so, like, there’s Rowan Rook and Decard games like Spire and Heart and the fancy ones, and then there’s sort of Grant Howitt games which are all hanging out in the corner smoking cigarettes they stole of someone else. But the promotion comes with- [Sigh] It comes with- It- it- it’s difficult, because- because- ‘cause you- you end up, especially over the last year of- the last year now, you know, you- you end up displaying really prominently on social media, you have to take the- you have a responsibility to other people who are involved in your business, to- to yourself, to not court controversy, to be- to be interesting. To be happy. And in fact, I remember, I think it was back in 2016, a- a mutual friend of ours, Lydia Nicholas, we were outside, I was- I was having a fag outside in a- in a club at 3am in some hole in Vauxhall, and she said to me “Grant, you always seem so happy on- on Twitter and Facebook. What- what- What’s your secret?” and I- “Oh, I’ve been lying, Lydia!”

[Laughter]

GRANT “I’ve been- I’ve been making it up, I’m desperately sad all the time!” And so, I- I- I’ve tried to be more honest, I’ve tried to be more- I’ve tried to offer a- Someone who is publicly mad, I think is the way that I can do it. Publicly mad and trying to work on their shit. And trying to be that, actually everybody- a lot of people have problems with this and not a lot of people, especially men, don’t talk about it.

JONNY Yeah.

GRANT So trying to be, I suppose a good role model in that respect, but I don’t really think I’m old enough or famous enough to be a role model, so whatever the one below that is.

JONNY Ooh! Quite a specific one, actually-

GRANT Mmhm.

JONNY -that might also get cut depending on, uh, what the tone of the

GRANT “Where do you live, Grant? What’s- What’s your home address and postcode?” 

SASHA “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

GRANT  “What’s your date of birth, Grant?”

JONNY What has the impact been of Honey Heist being played on Critical Role?

GRANT Huge. Absolutely sodding massive. Marisha Ray, the woman who ran Critical Role’s game of Honey Heist, she got in touch with me, be about four years ago now, three years ago, and said uh- and DM’d me and said “Hi there, I’m interested in running this game, do you know, like do you know- do you have any advice?” And I was like “Oh, yeah, sure, it’s absolutely fine, don’t worry! Just, uh, just- Y’know, make it up, like, it’s- The important thing to do is- is- is- is to listen to the players and keep it free-wheeling.” And then I clicked on her profile to see who she was, and there was this element of “Oh shit. Oh- Oh, it’s that Critical Role.” And so I knew they were a big deal, but I’d never, like, watched it or anything, ‘cause it always seemed really quite lore-heavy and it seemed, like, quite- I- I would have to have watched from the start to get all of the in-jokes or what-have-you, and I don’t really like actual plays that much. So I’d never really gotten into it. But Marisha was absolutely fantastic in terms of saying “this is Honey Heist. You can download it here. You can go to Grant’s patreon and give him some money.” And there has been no-one- No other person who’s run any of my games on- on their shows- I think, aside from- Honestly aside from Rusty Quill, who’ve had me on a couple of times, has been so keen and vocal to pass that appreciation back onto me. Because I think, like, she is acutely aware of the impact that Critical Role and having a big show like that has, and she’s responsible for at least half of my Patreon. Uh, Honey Heist was really popular to start with, and then through her playing that, the concept of running a one-page game or writing a one-page game or playing a one-page game has become much more commonplace. And, if I’m feeling sad, often what I’ll do is I’ll search Twitter for Honey Heist and generally someone’s playing today, which is really-

JONNY That’s really lovely

GRANT -or someone has played or is planning to play, and it’s like “oh, oh yeah, ok, I put those criminal bears into the world. Fantastic!”

JONNY Yeah, I actually have a personal question about-

GRANT Do you?

JONNY -about Honey Heist, which is: When you wrote the, uh, the opening, like, those opening, like, hundred words or so of Honey Heist, the intro, like, did you hit full stop and be like “fucking yes.”

GRANT I wrote-

JONNY Because, like, some- sometimes when you’re writing, very occasionally, you’re like-

GRANT That’s it.

JONNY “This- This is gonna lodge in people’s brains.”

GRANT Yeah, like, and- and sometimes you’ll form an anchor or a lynchpin around something else which the thing will blossom from. But, uh, no, I was at a- it was a crafts and tea thing, which must’ve- so my friend Ruth, uh, ran it in, uh, down somewhere on the DLR many moons ago. And I had a big- what I used to do when I was game designing was have a big A3 sheet of paper which would sit on my lap and I’d get loads of pens and I’d just write down and do drawings and try and think as loudly as I could. I think this was pre-antidepressants. Now I just sort of have the ideas in a straight line and then a game comes out, uh, it’s not- it takes much longer, but it’s much less chaotic. And I wrote, um, what was it? “We’re going to- We’re going on a heist. Problem one: you’re a bear. Problem two: I don’t remember the second problem. Get in the goddamn van (that we have specially modified so it can be driven without thumbs)”  

[Laughter]

GRANT That was the original- that was the original opener for Honey Heist and there was enough in that that I was like “oh yeah, this is great, isn’t it? Oh what if bears stole stuff?” But- but yeah the phrase, um, “you are a goddamn bear”, for some reason that’s really resonated with people and it’s really sort of stuck in people’s heads in terms of, not just you’re a bear, you’re a goddamn bear! And there’s a sort of, it- it- it gets you on the right page- gets everyone on the same page of silliness, I think.

SASHA Ok, we’re coming to the end of our precious time with Grant, uh, but before we wrap up-

[Laughter]

SASHA I’m sorry. 

GRANT ”Our precious time with Grant.”

JONNY “It slips through our fingers like fine sand.”

GRANT “We must roll Grant back into the jeweled ivory sarcophagus in which we found him, and once again bury him beneath basalt for another millenia.”

SASHA We’re coming to the end-

JONNY He’s starting to disapparate.

SASHA We’re coming to the end of our semi-precious time with Grant, like our topaz-level time with Grant.

[Laughter]

SASHA Um, but before we- we end. Grant, what is an upcoming RPG thing either of your own or someone else’s that you’re super-excited about?

GRANT I am going to take this opportunity to plug a recently finished Kickstarter of mine. We- we’ve just done a Kickstarter for Sin, which is our new sourcebook for Spire. And that’s got all sorts of fun things about crime, religion and order, we’re going into great- we go into great depth on those. And we have two new classes, including the Gutter-Cleric, which is-

JONNY Ooh.

GRANT Which is, I think, pretty much on-brand for you lot, having- having thought about the other things which you’ve put out, but so- So if you go to- if- if you go to search Kickstarter for that you’ll find it even though it has ended and you can come to our Backerkit and take a look at it, we’ll have a backerkit still open for a few months so you can still order a copy. Spire is a kind of like a China Mieville crossed with Pratchett and I- I don’t- I’m not going to say it’s as good as either of those things, but, uh that’s what we’ve drawn on.

 JONNY I- I- I am, though.

SASHA People like it! I would say people like!

GRANT Oh, hey, people like it, yeah yeah yeah! Just not-

JONNY I- I dunno, having read, like, a China Mieville book and some- some Pratchett a while ago. I- I think it’s as good.

GRANT Oh wow. A- a- a ringing endorsement.

JONNY Yeah, from- from- from someone to whom neither of those cultural touchstones are actually- no, I’m rambling. I really like it!  

GRANT Thanks dude.

SASHA I also like it! In fact, you can see it- I can’t tell, but it’s one of these. There you go.

GRANT Ok, good! Listener, Sasha’s pointing at a bookshelf-

SASHA Sorry, yes.

GRANT -on webcam which you can’t see, but it would be great if you could. But the other thing that I’m interested in talking about is something which I’m working with Sasha on, actually.

SASHA Hello!

GRANT I have, I’ve put together a super-team of people, who will not be working together, but I’m calling them a super-team because it’s more exciting.

SASHA It is such a good list of people.

GRANT Right? It’s such a good-

SASHA I am so psyched about it, it’s so good.

GRANT Yeah, yeah, it’s really cool.

JONNY A super- a super-series-of-adjacent-individuals.

GRANT Yeah, yeah, uh, a series of one person supergroups. Uh, I’ve done 52 one-page games now and I’m- I’m running out of puff. So what I’m planning on doing, well, what I- what I will have done by the time this episode goes out, is I’m collaborating with twelve different, uh, writers, games designers, artists, people who I like, and we are- we’re gonna make- we’re gonna make one-page games together.  We’re gonna split the patron- Patreon money right down the middle, so I’m hoping a lot of my patrons haven’t left upon hearing this news, again we are recording this in the past, as opposed to recording it in the future, which would be chilling. But yes, if you want to- if you wanna check out that, if you wanna see- if you wanna see the great line-up we have go to patreon.com/gshowitt. All the games will be released for free through there, but if you want to get them earlier or if you want a cool- a physical copy with a back page which is never released online, then you can give us some money.     

JONNY And yeah, Sasha is, uh Sasha is one of those amazing designers.

GRANT Yeah.

SASHA I’m very excited.

JONNY Thank you so much for your time Grant-

SASHA Wait, we have one more question! 

GRANT [Mock groans]

JONNY Yeah, I was- I was about to say we had one more question.

SASHA Sorry!

[Laughter]

JONNY And as- as the one more question- the one more question, the- the- the thing that’s going to ride us of this, just, lovely, orderly, just, almost too rigid, I would say-

GRANT Like a van, rolling down a hill in reverse. 

JONNY Uh, is if you had to give a single-line piece of advice to aspiring games designers, what would you tell them?

GRANT Take the word ‘aspiring’ out of your description of yourself. If you design games, you are a games designer. So design a game, release it on itch.io, then you can remove ‘aspiring’. There you go.

JONNY Fantastic. Alright.

SASHA That’s wonderful advice. And very succinct.

JONNY Well, I said single line.

SASHA No, I- I know. I’m just saying, it fit the brief, well done.

GRANT Yeah, yeah, in a very real way we should thank Jonny!

[Laughter]

GRANT Goodbye everyone!

JONNY Bye!

SASHA Bye!

JONNY And thank you again, Grant, for this wonderful first guest episode.

SASHA Wait, before we say goodbye-

[Laughter]

GRANT “Wait, hang on, come back in!”

SASHA Come back in everyone.

JONNY I’m so sorry, Lowri!

GRANT Yeah, yeah, yeah it’s all going in, it’s gold! Yeah yeah.

SASHA If you’ve enjoyed listening to this conversation you can follow MacGuffin and Company on patreon.com/macguffinandcompany. You can follow Grant on patreon.com/gshowitt. And-

JONNY I think it’s pronounced “g’sh-ow-at”.

GRANT “G Show-it”

 SASHA “G’show-it”

GRANT “Gsho It”

SASHA And you can also follow, like, review, etc, the podcast things that you do on podcasts with this here noise that’s in your ears. 

[Laughter]

SASHA Ok.

GRANT Whatever it is you do with a podcast, do it with this one currently.

JONNY Just do it, just, I mean, come on. 

GRANT Make it good. Four stars? No thank you! Five for us here at MacGuffin and Company, lots of love, kiss kiss goodnight.

ALL Bye!

[Outro theme plays.]