RPG Publisher Spotlight: Steve Hatherley

Last month, Geek Native’s amazing patreons voted Steve Hatherley the RPG Publisher Spotlight winner.

Steve is a tabletop game designer and a LARPer, and his LinkedIn profile says he’s a recovered engineer. He’s also been very generous with his time.

Tabletop RPGs

Our patreons voted for Steve based on his TTRPG, as he was among a shortlist of publishers drawn that month from DriveThruRPG names. So it’s with roleplaying games that we start.

Could you tell readers about Other London?

Other London is a modern-day urban horror setting that uses Fate Accelerated for its system.

Players are members of Desk 17, a secret corner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service. Desk 17 deals with unusual threats and operates partly in the strange world of Other London.

As for Other London, there are two Londons. The one we know is full of people and places and buses and rain. And the one we know less of, full of myth, legends, magic, mystery, and nightmares. This ‘other’ London lives between the cracks of the first, and all manner of things have fallen through these cracks.

So that’s the basic premise. Other London is an urban horror mishmash inspired by things like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Sandman, the 1998 Ultraviolet television series, Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May novels and other assorted influences.

Other London has been brewing for ages. I’ve been kicking the idea around with my close friend Jon Freeman since the 90s (it was his initial idea), but other things took priority. When Paul Mitchener brought out Liminal, which covers much of the same ground, I decided I needed to get my act together, and so I created the first book.

Currently, the game consists of a core book (Other London: Desk 17, which contains the overall background, character generation, a whole heap of factions and characters, and an investigation), three investigations (The Fallen, Murder of a Templar, and The Dead Undead) and a book of scenario ideas (Other London: Tales of Terror).

What about Fate Accelerated drew you to the system for the setting?

I don’t have any interest in designing RPG mechanics, and I don’t really enjoy crunch, so for Other London, I wanted a simple system I could just use. Several things brought me to Evil Hat’s Fate Accelerated:

1. I like it. It’s a light system that I enjoy running and playing. It’s not perfect – approaches aren’t always easy to get my head around.
2. Evil Hat sells the book for pay-what-you-want. That felt important to me – I didn’t want anyone to pay for an expensive ruleset just to play Other London.
3. Evil Hat released Fate Accelerated under a Creative Commons license. So anyone can use it.
4. As for writing scenarios, Fate Accelerated is really easy to use. NPC stats are much simpler than PC stats, which I find helpful as I always have a lot of NPCs in my Other London adventures. 
5. And because everything in Fate Accelerated is in plain English, converting to another system should be fairly straightforward. (I say that, but I haven’t actually done it.)

LARPS

The acronym, if you’re not familiar with it, stands for ‘live action roleplaying’, and while it might be even geekier than TTRPGs, the hobby is more social and, in my experience, relies even more on clever game design.

Can you tell us about Freeform Games and why and how it started?

Freeform Games publishes interactive murder mystery games that are actually larps in disguise. Each player receives a booklet containing their background, goals, information about other people, a secret and a clue, and some abilities. Players then roleplay their characters and try to achieve their goals. Most of our games have a murder in them, but other things are always going on – it’s not just about the murder.

I formed Freeform Games with Mo Holkar in 2001, but its origin started nearly a decade before that. In 1992, at Convulsion, I played in my first freeform larp: Home of the Bold. I quickly realised that this was the kind of roleplaying that anyone could play – even my mother. Yes, you’d have to strip out the geeky genre nonsense and streamline the rules, but if you could do that, you could get anyone playing them. Describing them as a murder mystery game seemed a sensible way of marketing them to ordinary people.

So I wrote a game (which eventually became Death on the Gambia, our first game) and couldn’t find anyone to publish it, so I decided to sell it myself. Not knowing anything about starting a business, I got in touch with Mo Holkar (who I knew through playing in his freeforms at conventions), and so Freeform Games was born.

Was Freeform Games the best title? Maybe not. While we’ve called this style of larp “freeforms” in the UK, elsewhere they are also known as parlour larps, chamber larps, or interactive theatre larps.

Are there any lessons from running murder mysteries and LARPs that help craft better tabletop RPGs or vice versa?

There are three things I think I’ve taken from freeform larps to my tabletop RPG gaming.

Key contacts. A key part of freeform larps is connecting the characters – everyone knows at least seven or eight (often more) other people. And that’s how real life works as well.

Yet few TTRPGs have space on their character sheet for people they already know. So whenever I create characters for a game (including Other London), I include NPC contacts that the character knows.

Character goals. Freeform larps are one-shot larps, and each character has objectives to achieve during the larp. Player goals are often at odds with each other, which drives the conflict and drama.

I don’t think we make enough use of character goals in TTRPGs. One exception is Mouse Guard, where players create their own goal for the GM turn. I haven’t specifically done this in Other London: Desk 17, although as an investigative game, each PC effectively has “solve the mystery” as a goal.

PC history. And by this, I mean the PCs know each other: In a freeform larp, characters have a history with other characters. However, in many TTRPGs, you’re often expected to be an “adventure party” without explanation.

My heart sinks when I sit down to play a game at a convention and the GM hasn’t put any thought into the PCs. There’s no sense of why they are adventuring together, their past, or why they are interested in whatever scenario is ahead.

So, inspired by some PbtA games, my pregens for Other London (and other games) include questions like “Why do you trust _____ ?” and “____ helped you when you were in trouble. What did they do?” Then, before the start of the investigation, we have a short session zero to answer those questions and create some shared history. 

Freeform Games also offers murder mysteries for children? What are the most critical adaptions you have to make?

We really hadn’t thought about making games for kids when we started Freeform Games, so we were surprised when customers began using our games for their kids.

Our games are no more risque than the average TV soap opera (even the ones we rate as 18+), but parents can be sensitive around sex themes and adultery when casting kids. So we removed affairs and any references (even oblique) to sex in our kids’ games.

For example, in Way out West, we changed the saloon girls (and their implied prostitution) into waitresses. And in Hollywood Lies, we had a plot involving nude pictures taken of a young starlet earlier in her career (like in the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts movie Notting Hill). For the kids’ versions, we took that out.

However, we don’t like having special versions of our games just for kids, as it makes them harder to update and maintain. So when we revised Way out West and Hollywood Lies, we removed the risque elements, so now those games are suitable for anyone aged 12+. (We now have just one game with a separate kid-friendly version, A Heroic Death.)

We still have some games rated 18+, but we have enough 12+ games that we don’t make kid-friendly versions any more.

We also have some simpler games that don’t involve murder and are suitable for younger kids (aged eight and up – they’re also fun for adults.) But they’re party games where players play in teams rather than murder mysteries.

How is the LARP scene in the UK after COVID-19?

From what I can see from the freeform corner of the larp scene, it’s in rude health. Conventions are back. Physical and mental health is higher on the agenda than before, but things feel like they’re back to normal.

Lockdown was, ah, interesting. I was doing my day job at the time, which continued seamlessly online. (In fact, I think I was more efficient.) So I was pretty lucky – the worst thing about lockdown was the merge between my day job and my hobby (messing around on my computer), as they now both occupied the same physical space.

But for Freeform Games, lockdown was terrifying. In the second half of March, after the lockdown announcement, our sales dropped off a cliff: we sold three games in those two weeks.

But then, sales started to pick back. Our customers began to play these games online, over Zoom, Google Hangouts or Discord. We responded by releasing Reunion with Death and Death in Venice, which we designed for online play, and for the next twelve months, they were popular.

As we came out of lockdown and people started meeting in person again, we changed those two games to be regular murder mysteries (and because they are more straightforward, they are ones the host can play).

However, recovery wasn’t instant, and it took a good two years before sales got back where they were before.

Life as a designer

We loop back to TTRPGs in this final section, leaving LARPs as the meat in the middle in this interview sandwich. Steve has mixed news for people hoping to follow his path.

“Abaddon’s Puppet” has a catalogue date on DriveThruRPG of 2022, and that feels sufficiently after the lockdown not to have been a lockdown project. How and why did you start publishing?

Abaddon’s Puppet sprung directly from a short campaign I ran of Paul Baldowskis‘ splendid The Dee Sanction. It wasn’t specifically a lockdown project.

I quit my day job in 2021, and it became more important to turn my hobby into an income (to supplement my Freeform Games income). I’d previously put scenarios online for free, but I decided with Abaddon’s Puppet to put it onto Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

And from there, it was a short step to putting other scenarios online. And once I’d done that, I felt it was time to dust off Other London and release it into the wild.

How much of your day do you spend on professional game design or running games?

I’m embarrassed to say, not very much. I spend maybe three or four hours a day on games-related business. I feel very lucky!

Do you have any advice for people hoping to walk a similar path?

Don’t give up the day job! It’s a lovely hobby, but don’t expect it to financially support you unless you are lucky.

It’s never been easier to create and publish – so do that. But it’s hard to be noticed. So be prepared to market yourself.

Don’t expect success to come immediately. As I said, we started Freeform Games in 2001! So we’re over 20 years old, and I only stopped the day job a few years ago.

Are there any trends in either tabletop RPGs or live-action that have your attention right now?

I’m interested in Chinese Jubensha games as they seem to be in an adjacent space to our murder mystery games. While I’d heard of them before, Quinns’ video for  People Make Games video made me realise how similar they are to what we do.

From what I can tell, Jubensha games are much more structured than our games.

And although they’ve been around for years, I want to try a megagame (board games with lots of players, each with a role). It didn’t work out for me this year, but maybe I will get to try one next year.

What can we expect to see from you next? 

I’m currently working on several projects.

For Freeform Games, I’m developing Death at the Derby, a murder mystery set at a racecourse. I expect we’ll publish this next year.

I’ve also started the next Other London investigation: The Orphan Room. This time a mysterious room has been discovered containing severed heads sealed in glass jars. Sounds like a case for Desk 17! This is in the early stages of writing, so I’m still finalising ideas.

I’m also preparing an unofficial book for Liminal – the Department of Irregular Services. The DfIS work for Historic England and manages supernatural issues concerning England’s castles, stately homes, and ancient monuments. They first appear in Count Magnus’ Descendent (inspired by M R James’ Count Magnus), but I felt that was too downbeat for Liminal, so I used Cthulhu Dark. This new book will have crew details, pregens, and at least three investigations.

And finally, as for other (non-Freeform Games) larps, I am working on a linked, multi-part first-contact campaign inspired by classic SF. I’m running episode 5 at Consequences in November. I published episode one (The Roswell Incident) through Freeform Games, but put episode two (All Flesh is Grass) on Itch. I’m about to get episode three ready for publication – hopefully by early 2025.

Phew! So that’s keeping me busy.

Huge thanks to Steve for this time and to Patreons for continuing to support the site.