12 Chris McDowall

12th Episodes! And today we have a very special guest, a game designer that has been influential to my work and to so many other game designers I admire as well, Chris McDowell!

Chris is a TTRPG designer in Manchester UK, known for Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland, and the upcoming Mythic Bastionland. He makes rules-light flavour-heavy games and writes at ⁠bastionland.com⁠.

I had the pleasure and honor to meet Chris at Gen Con 2023. We talked a little bit, I gave him some of my games, and it was certainly one of the highlights of the convention for me. 

It's hard to know what to say about Chris McDowall's work. He creates ver well thought out and crafted games that are very simple to use, but that have so much depth both in terms of setting and mechanics to explore. His work, as he says himself, has influence from miniature games and boardgames and reminds me some of my favorite of those games. Those that have very simple and minimal mechanics but that offer so much possibility and space for exploration for them. This lets everyone play the game, but offer those interested in it a lot of room for mastery.

He is also very generous with the knowledge he accumulated making games and studying them. Not only his games have an unique way to teach of how to play them better and to make the best use of its possibilities, he also maintains a gaming blog where he talks about theory, design, playtesting, and anything gaming related that is really a treasure trove of knowledge.

And if that was not enough, Chris is constantly helping out and uplifting other creators, talking about their work in his channels, making the gaming engines he creates available for other to work with for FREE mind you, and a lot more.

Anyway, in this chat we got to talk about what is weird, how we find it in the absence of things, how we can explore this "void" in the game design we make. We talked about art, artists, game design and game designers, how non-combat encounters are so interesting, his different creative approaches, what we value and what has a real impact in our lives, our problems with anxiety, and all sorts of weird thing in between.

Oh, and we obviously talked quite a bit about his upcoming Mythic Bastionland RPG, which will bring mythology to Bastionland in a total unique way!

So listen up, and let's get weird with Chris McDowell!

Check out Chris McDowall's Work!

⁠www.bastionland.com⁠

⁠https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bastionland/mythic-bastionland-rpg-before-into-the-odd⁠

Thank you for listening!

Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes! 

If you would like to support the show, leave a review and/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going! It would really help!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can also support me buy buying one of my games! Kosmosaurs just got released in print, and it is my new RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons about Space Dinosaur Rangers defending the galaxy from evildoers! 

Get your copy right here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/kosmosaurs⁠