Here he took a crack at our questions and whilst I did spot the odd little beady eye looking, I think we managed to pull of a successful operation, you can keep up to date and join in one of his monthly oneshots on his discord here...
Alex Rinehart: My most-well known game is Cyberrats, which started as a Shadowrun hack. Shadowrun is such a beautiful, rich, and fun setting paired with some of the clunkiest mechanics possible.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it has spawned more game designers than any other RPG. It's a universal experience to say "I want to love this game, but there's so much... crunch!".
There's a lot of things I love about Shadowrun, and I had a list of elements I wanted to keep (the tiered initiative, the dice pool, damage reduction) and then the LUMEN system reference document came out, and I saw that it was perfect for what I wanted to do: emphasizing tactics and simplicity. I threw out 90% of what I had, and built up a new system, with new lore. The two biggest inspirations now are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and XCOM. There's still some Shadowrun bits in there (you work for a megacorp after all), but I wanted to capture the XCOM feel of building a base, managing resources, and figuring out how to survive just one more mission. The premise is the same: you want to save the world from invading aliens, but in Cyberrats you have a different problem: a different megacorp, one of your competitors, is also saving the world, and they've got it under control.
Naturally, your CEO finds this unacceptable: it's better for the world to end than for it to be saved by someone else. So you're tasked with sabotaging the rival megacorp, stopping the aliens, saving the world, and making sure that your boss gets all the credit.
That's a long way of saying that the inspirations were:
Loving XCOM and wanting to replicate it in an analog way
Loving the Shadowrun lore but not the mechanics
A conveniently-timed SRD release
TMNT and corporate apathy.
TP: What would you say is the best selling point of your TTRPG's?
AR: I like to say that I make games no one else will. People laugh at me when they look at my portfolio because it's just so bizzare. I was playing Cyberrats (a violent game of resource management and combat tactics) while I was Kickstarting Shoppers, which is a Slice-of-life game about hanging out in a Shopping Mall, playing mini games (like dice stacking, Price is Right, or a sort of analog Candy Crush) to gain rapport with various shopkeepers. It's such a different vibe than Cyberrats, and everyone on stream stopped to say "What are you doing over there?".
More specifically, I use mechanics very deliberately. I made a 60-page zine called Gratitude: A Horror Game, which is published by Exalted Funeral. That's a horror game that was inspired by my enormous Labrador Lacy, but it's also my answer to Dread. Dread (played with a Jenga tower) is a brilliant game, but the tension of the game slowly ramps up... and then it falls, suddenly. Once the tower drops, it's unlikely to do it ever again during that game. So there's a sense of evaporation, you only get one climax. With Gratitude, I wanted to have a much smaller, tighter tension curve. Not like a ramp, but more like a sine wave. So there's a Fear Die, the largest available d6 that sits in the middle of the table. Every time you succeed at a task, it increases by 1. Every time you fail, you take damage equal to the number shown on it. And you only have about 10 hit points, so you're going to die. But that's not the end of the story! Gratitude is a game about sacrifice, about finding out what you're willing to lose. When you die in the game you die in real life you choose something to lose and you continue playing without it. How does your character change if they no longer have a sense of time? Of taste? Of hearing? It's a game about recognizing the blessings we have in our day-to-day, and about losing those. It's a very personal kind of horror.
You previously asked about inspirations: a lot of my games come from taking something I really like (or really want to like), and tweaking them. In 2021, I released Close Encounters, a sci fi game about sad astronauts on a planet that wants to eat them. I like to describe this game as Numenera meets Hellapagos: you're stuck on a planet, and each night you need to sacrifice enough technology to feed a robot spirit so it doesn't eat you. The way you get that technology is by exploring the remains of other crashed ships. I wanted to imagine a sci-fi dungeon crawl with simple mechanics (this was before I knew about Through the Void, an incredible sci-fi OSR game).
My biggest complaint about Numenera is that I wanted a list of both what an alien technology might do, but also what it might look like. The best part of Close Encounters is the spread where I just describe familiar things (like a bicycle handle) in unfamiliar ways, it's a very Brechtian approach. So you get these pieces of technology, and all of them are tools that can help you further explore the ships. Here's a gun that shoots a rope, here's a bead that turns into a giant floating bubble when you crush it. So you have to choose between keeping it to use and feeding it to the planet to survive. And if you get enough technology, you can repair your ship and fly home. I'm always thinking about the end conditions of my games. I don't usually make games that are meant to be played indefinitely. I respect your time too much. I like stories with endings. Gratitude and Close Encounters are about escaping a terrible place. Cyberrats is about saving the world. Shoppers is about building rapport and "conquering" the turf of the mall. These aren't multi-year campaigns, they're experiences that build memories. Ultimately that's the purpose of play.
3) Why the TTRPG space?
Tabletop roleplaying games are a uniquely intimate way of creating memories. You aren't just watching a TV show or even playing a board game: you're watching a bespoke narrative play out in front of you and interacting with it. I believe that storytelling is the most powerful way we have of connecting with other people. There's also an incredible opportunity to connect with people, to make new friends. Or just to try something out. None of us knows who we are, and TTRPGs give us a chance to be someone else for an hour or a day. What if I was a noble knight or a charlatan? It's a place to play with trust and without consequences. There's nothing sadder than forgetting how to play, and it can happen at any age.
TP: What is your favourite product that you produce and why?
AR: I made a game called Today's Passing that is inspired by one of my favorite comics (Daytripper). It's a solo journaling game where you revisit pivotal moments from your life. You write a handful of journal entries, and then you die. And at the end of it, you write an obituary. "What would your life mean if it ended today?". It's a deeply personal and intimate game, and I think it's only sold about a dozen copies. But I just love it. I didn't make it for commercial success, I made that one for me. And some people love it. I've had two people message me saying "This is so great, I love this". Those comments always feel good, but for Today's Passing, I think "Yeah, you got this, you saw what I was trying to do".
This was also my first time doing my own layout, the game is laid out like a newspaper to fit the obituary theme, so there's even more of me in this game than usual.
TP: What is your current work in progress and what can you tell us about it?
AR: 'm currently working on two projects. The first is an expansion for Cyberrats called Rise of the Briny Bastards. It's in open playtest right now. This expansion is huge, the joke is that it's a supplement so big, it was almost Cyberrats 2. Fans of XCOM will recognize the allusion, but it really is true! The expansion improves upon the faults of the base game. Stealth in Cyberrats is kind of a suggestion, and here we flesh out actual (fun) rules. We give everyone a Submarine, because the first game didn't have one of those.
Briny Bastards is an homage to War of the Chosen, so we have some Lieutenants that harass the players. Or their Operatives, anyway. And the lieutenants drop extra special loot when defeated. But we also add new elements: your Operatives can have relationships with one another (if you develop a crush on another Operative, you have to write their name on your character sheet surrounded by little cartoon hearts), we've got rules for heists, expanded downtime, and toyetic drones. These are all things that people already wanted the game to do, so there's a lot of fan service here. Except for the Submarine. No one asked for that, that's just for me.
It's funny, the submarine was my original impetus, my starting point for this expansion, and I almost cut it. After one playtest I said "This just isn't working. It's not fun enough." And I'm quick to cut things that don't meet the bar for fun. One of my playtesters approached me afterwards with a suggestion to flip the mechanic around. "Alex, you love push your luck mechanics. Why don't you make it into one of those?" And it all clicked. Now the players have to make a choice about whether to stay submerged and get more loot, or to come up for air (and safety). Suddenly the submarine works, and it's all thanks to my pal Chris. I don't have all the answers myself.
My second project is called SARO (pronounced "sorrow"), which stands for "Sometimes, Always, Rarely, Once". I like to describe it as a tactical SRD-cum-manifesto. Basically, this is me distilling everything I know about making fun tactical combat and putting it into a guide that anyone can follow. There's a lot of 4e [D&D] in there, there's a lot of Into the Breach and Advance Wars. Tactics can get bogged down, and no one wants a 4-hour fight in their RPG. Well, some people do, but most of them play Warhammer instead. This is a guide about making combats fun, memorable and tactical, and if you read this, you'll recognize a lot of my design ethos from Cyberrats as well.
I could talk about SARO forever, but I'll just share one tenant: make numbers small. It's easy, lazy, and uninteresting to have your Paladin dealing 10,000 damage. It's exciting the first time, and then the numbers become meaningless and hard to process. If you're hitting for 2 damage and the baddie has 5 HP, that's... you can fit that in your head. And you can tweak it! The difference between 2 and 3 on that scale is huge! The difference between 10,000 and 11,000 is nothing. It's a rounding error. I'm not making a JRPG here, I'm making something meant to be enjoyed, and I want every minute to be worth it for you. You asked earlier what made my games stand out. I'll change my answer: every one of my games respects your time. I don't put out 300 page rulebooks. I make them as small as possible so you can start playing right now. And my games try to earn their time at the table. I hope you'll agree they succeed.
AR: I like to think I have something for most people. If there's someone who's never played an RPG before, Shoppers is really low-stakes. You're a teenager at the mall! And you're playing Price is RIght, guessing the total of this stack of dice I'm about to roll. That's low stakes, we can all relate to that.
If you're a video gamers and you love XCOM, Cyberrats is perfect for you. If you like Horror or worldbuilding or giant friendly dogs that can't be injured in any way, there's Gratitude. Close Encounters is for fans of dungeon crawling who want a change of pace from generic fantasy, and don't mind some narrative scenes where you profess your love for other characters (the titular "Close Encounters" refer to flashbacks with other characters, the only way to relieve Stress that builds up over play).
TP: Where do you see your TTRPG writing career taking you in 5 years?
AR: Whew. I've thought about walking away.
Every time I run a Kickstarter, I think "This will be my last one". But so far I've had more ideas I want to pursue, and if I think other people would like them too, I publish them.
I'll be honest, the only way I see myself being here [in the RPG writing community] in 5 years is if Briny Bastards does well. We're swinging for the fences here, and we've got big plans, things we'd like to do. (I say "we" here, because Cyberrats is a team project, it's the work of my sister Rachel, our incredible artist Patrick Sinnott, and myself). If we can fund the book we want to make, if there's appetite for that, we'll deliver it. But if there isn't, I'll really have to ask myself what I'm doing here, what I'm getting out of it.
RPGs are a big part of my life, and have been for more than 10 years. I don't think I'll stop playing them soon, but there's a very real chance I stop releasing them, y'know? I've only got so much time to make cool projects, and the amount of polish it takes to switch from "something I made for me" to "something I think others would appreciate", it just... it might not be worth it.
I know that's kind of a bummer response. If the question is "where would I like to be in 5 years", well that's a different question: I'd love to cap off the Cyberrats trilogy with Cyberrats in space, I've got an idea for a steampunk Ghostbusters-like game in an eastern-European canal town. I'm toying around with (a probably unpublishable) Cortex hack of Animorphs. The passion is there, but it's not the only factor.
TP: If you were given the time and opportunity to develop something unique, what would it be and why?
AR: I'd like to think that all of my games are unique, but I'll go back to the previous question: if K.A. Applegate wants to give me the license to Animorphs, and if a publisher wants to front me some money for the Cortex license and some artwork, I could make an incredible game there. There's a really wonderful balance between "we have to save the world" "We can't tell anyone about it" and "We're also teenagers trying to live our lives". It's a rich tapestry, and obviously Masks has proven that it's a recipe for success.
TP: Who do you admire in the Independent TTRPG writing space and why?
AR: There are so many people I admire here, but I'm going to call out two of them: Shawn and Navi Drake. Not only do they put out incredible games (Court of Blades is Victorian Intrigue, HEDGE is a fey-inspired game I wish I'd made, they've got stuff inspired by anime, the Expanse, the Dresden Files, and it's all their own take on it, and it all looks so damn gorgeous). But they're also extremely transparent about their process, their numbers, every part of what they do. They're just good, genuine people making great games, and the space needs more people like them.
I also really admire Marx Shepherd, who is a bastion for knowledge, and one of the most helpful and enthusiastic people I've encountered. They're an extremely competent editor and game designer, and they used to host the Yes Indie'd podcast as well. Every time I see a helpful post in a discord server, I have to check because there's a good chance it's from Marx.
TP: What got you into TTRPGs in the first place?
AR: When I was in high school, there was a new version of D&D coming out. One of my friends said "Hey you're a big nerd, right?" Her dad had purchased the books, but didn't have anyone to play with. So she gathered a bunch of us from school and had us over to her house, and her dad rolled up characters for us all, each of us Dwarves. And he just ran a little campaign for us all right there. I fell in love immediately, and that group stayed together for another 3 or 4 years after that. Once I went to college, I started poking around some more experimental games, and once I graduated I kickstarted my first game, Solipstry.
I actually walked away from writing games after that for a while, but I moved to a new city and started inviting strangers into my house each month to play a different indie game. Then the pandemic hit, and I pivoted to online and started publishing some adventures for other systems, like Slayers. My first adventure, Cretaceous Skatepark, is about a mad scientist who's turning teenagers into dinosaurs. That one really struck a chord with people, so I started making more. And then I started writing bigger projects again, with Gratitude. And I haven't slowed down yet!
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