Adam Vass Interview (Blood Borg) + Creative Block
Hello from mild Kansas!
I hope everyone’s April has been wonderful so far! I’ve been enjoying outside a bit more, assistant coaching my son’s U8 soccer team, and doing some customary spring cleaning - mainly, and finally, clearing and organizing my workspace. It was the magic potion I needed!
Today’s episode of The Guac we have a big Blood Borg interview with Adam Vass, shout out to a recent favorite read of mine - Resonant by Amanda P. and published by our friends and fulfillment partners at Space Penguin Ink -, some highlights of artists I’m gawking over lately, and finishing off with some behind the scenes from Spicy Tuna including more Greenhorns talk, exciting news about Outsourced, a few sentences about Incorporated Vol.1, and WIP covers from Cryo Drakus.
Now into THE GUAC!
DOCKET
Shoutout to Resonant!
Blood Borg Interview with Adam Vass (currently on Kickstarter here!)
Artists Inspiring Me Now
Spicy Tuna Update: Greenhorns/Outsourced/Inc/Cryo Drakus
Spicy Tuna Links
New/Unshared
I had a ton of fun playing Blood Borg with Adam Vass and The Weekly Scroll!
Closing Soon
Outsourced Preorder Store (includes all of our back catalog + $5 off hardcovers)
https://outsourced.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Shoutout to Resonant!
Resonant is a crustacean and mutation-heavy Mothership module relying heavily on Stress and its interplay with the Resonant! You know I love a good crab-inspiration (as seen in Constant Downpour), but there’s a lot more than that to love here. The adventure is presented so clearly and there is a lot for players to choose and discover especially when considering the two conflicting distress signals they receive from the get. The art by Tony Tran is gorgeous, and Dai did incredible layout and design throughout.
You can find it on Space Penguin Ink’s website here (among a slew of other Mothership modules).
Blood Borg Interview with Adam Vass
Hi, Adam!! Thank you so much for coming onto The Guac! I’m ecstatic to have the chance to hear more things Blood Borg after playing together earlier this year.
Q: Let’s talk setting first! Can you tell us about Scab? How does it interplay with the Mork Borg setting, and what do the players have to deal with there?
A: Scab is more than just the shitty city where we live ignored and hated in the gutters. It has the trappings you’d expect from an urban 80s environment: street gangs, reeking sewers, dilapidated public transit, but it’s been designed by vampires who have disguised themselves in the higher ranks of society for centuries, so skyscrapers have massive awnings and decks that cast shadows on the streets below, letting vamps run around during the day protected from the sun except for high noon.
On top of all that (no pun intended), the city is built on top of ruins of the past, specifically with the coastal town of Grift from the original Mork Borg setting in mind. Our story takes place ~2000 years after that fated apocalypse, but deep underground there are still histories and relics of this past mostly forgotten society. When you’re immortal, you can only go to so many punk shows in the sewer, and it’s natural to get curious and start digging deeper into where you came from.
Q: What is Blood Borg’s take on Vampires? How do they fit in greater society, what classic rules apply in Scab and which ones do players not have to worry about, and how does death work?
A: Great question, when making a vamp game you have to think about all the cultural baggage we have as players and decide what is and isn’t important. The main one, of course, is we are undead blood drinkers. The vamps in Blood Borg are specifically social outcasts: goths and punks who are not well revered by the culture around them anyway. Society is told vamps don't exist, but there are fringe groups that believe, and obviously the mystics and freaks of the underworld that know the truth, but we try to keep the secret to maintain power. Vamps can be killed by silver, sunlight, fire, and exorcism, but we’re safe from garlic and religious relics. It’s a Mork Borg hack, so HP is low, but as long as we don’t come in contact with the above weaknesses, we can’t really be killed. It still hurts to get stabbed, but a little human blood will make you forget the pain pretty quickly.
Q: Going a bit further into vampires, can you give us a taste of what the classes are like? Maybe dive into your favorite one?
A: All of the classes are freaks in their own nature and mostly categorized by how removed from humanity they are. There are eight in the book, each with their own history both in vampirism and in the society of Scab. You can be a thousand year old vampire who covertly played parts in pivotal moments of history or you could have been turned yesterday. There’s also a spectrum of how human your mind still is, from feral underground vampires to sort of The Cure-inspired societal outcasts like The Black Heart, which might be my favorite class and sort of a thesis on the game itself. You’re immortal and super powerful, you’re magically inclined and start the game with some known spells, but you’re just bored as hell. It’s very much the roommate who doesn’t want to go out but can be talked into it and usually has some crazy thing happen to them that makes the night memorable. They reflect some of the Mork Borg apocalypse philosophy and ask “if you can do anything and there is no consequence, what do you want to do?”
Q: Out of everything I know so far, the blood and feeding mechanic is my favorite part. Can you tell us how feeding works and how blood is used?
A: Of course! What would a vamp game be without drinking blood? Feeding is easy, there are people everywhere and because you’re already social outcasts, most people aren’t really paying attention to you anyway. You can bite someone and hold Blood in your guts, which becomes a sort of power currency. You can’t carry a ton of it, so you’re encouraged to be spending it all the time. Every class has unique powers that cost blood, like the Bottom Feeder’s ability to warp the bones of their face to resemble someone else until they rest. Blood also can be spent when you read/channel a Spell Zine, the way magic works in this world through xeroxed arcana that’s passed around in underground scenes and usually gets destroyed when cast. Even the older vamps like the Leech class who specialize in magic are still going to have to be draining humans all the time to use their powers, so it keeps the ruthlessness and hunger of vampirism front and center during play.
Thanks for having me! I love the guac, not just saying this, but I always get stoked when I see it in my inbox so I'm happy to be included in this one. Get Blood Borg at bloodborg.com!
And, thank you, Adam! It was awesome to have you on for the interview. Adam Vass’s story games have been a huge inspiration to me and he’s credited in Greenhorns because many World Champ Game Co games helped me build out the narrative mechanics of the game.
You can find Blood Borg Kickstarting here.
PS watch the intro video! It’s killer!!
And, you can find more of their work beyond Blood Borg at worldchamp.io and worldchampgameco.itch.io.
Plus, you can watch me have a blast with The Weekly Scroll Play Blood Borg here
Artists Inspiring Me Know
Hot damn I’m excited to share these artists on The Guac. They are incredible!! I’ve linked to each of their instagrams if you’re interested in giving them a follow.
Phib makes mesmerizing, and often simple, handmade collages. I linked to his reels because the process is really cool to see.
Samira Ingold
Face-first surrealist landscapes! There’s a mysticism about Samira’s work I really admire and keep coming back to.
Tiffany Chin
I love this pseudo-maximilist style where you have to parse through the pieces to discover all of what’s going on. Tiffany’s color and texture choices are incredible as well!
A few of these artists I found on the True Grit Texture Supply blog, https://www.truegrittexturesupply.com/blogs/news, which I’ve been trying to read an article or a few a day. They have a lot of tutorials of their brushes and tools, interviews, and artist of the month highlights!
Spicy Tuna Update
First half of Greenhorns is Edited!
Walton Wood has finished editing the core of Greenhorns!! As of this writing I’m about halfway through making all of the corrections and I’m feeling better than ever about how easy this game will be to pick up and play. I can’t wait to finish the manuscript and layout for the core book so I can return to the Quickstart and put out a fantastic free ~30 page version of the game. It’s gotten so much smoother and exciting from its original release.
More major Greenhorns progress includes the 6 Planet Layers making fantastic progress and the Kruxor and Faction portion developing as well. As mentioned last month, each Planet Layer is now two spreads long and I’m really excited about the variety of !!Bosses!!, Threats, and NPCs that are making their way into the game. It’s filling out from the base concept of chaotic and near-infinite possibilities from planet creation.
Diego finished the Kruxor illustration and is currently working on a 2-page spread that features the 4 Bonus Classes (Force Flyer, Puny Maker, Cosmic Ghost, and Void Magician) facing off with a Hikuri-inspired !!Boss!! and peyote/jellyfish swarm threats. I’m stoked with the idea Diego brought and the execution of the piece so far. We’re wrapping up illustrations soon which means we’ll be set for layout not far from now. Unfortunately, I can’t share any of the new pieces because I feel like we’ve shared a good portion of the illustrations so far and I’m too big of a fan of surprise. Here’s some reminders of Diego’s illustrations in Greenhorns in the meantime.
Outsourced: The Luko Fin Corp Deception
We are at the tail end of international shipping, with Space Penguin Ink receiving the hardcovers on Monday!! Shortly after they will begin getting shipments out of the door!
I’m so ecstatic for Outsourced to finally get to backers so they can get all the goodness of Evangeline’s illustrations, Christian’s Bunker Escape, Alfred’s solo rules, and some of my favorite toolkits I’ve made. Luko Fin Corp is a big bad I’m excited to see fit into warden’s games during Outsourced and beyond.
Incorporated Vol.1: The Hands That Feed Update
Gontijo has made a lot of progress on Incorporated layout and is awaiting more artwork from me. I’m excited to continue knocking out the artwork and bringing all of these evil corporations to life. I love how he’s integrating the art with layout design. Again no sneak peaks this month, but I’ll be sharing a good amount more about Incorporated on the next issue of The Guac!
Creative Block + Current Leisure Projects
Being heads down in Greenhorns and Incorporated generally works really well because I’m writing Greenhorns and making art for Incorporated. But I still fall to overwhelm and hit creative block at times and continually try to experiment with what works best for me to swim out of the current.
Lately, I’ve had two leisure projects. I might spend 30-90 minutes on each one every 5-10 days depending on when I need to step away from the core Spicy Tuna projects.
For the past 4-6 weeks, my leisure projects have been a latchkey kids/kids on bikes/murder mystery themed roll n’ write game and chipping away at a small (8-12 page) rules-lite game called Cryo Drakus using Carly A-F’s Spaceships Vol.1 Art Pack.
Cryo Drakus
Seeing all of the WIPs and some of Carly’s process in discord and twitter had me excited for this art pack even before it dropped. As I was thinking of ideas that would fit the art, I looked back at my nostalgic love for arcade games such as Raiden-X and Galaxian and Cryo Drakus made it’s way onto the page. I fiddled with a lot of little rules and I ended up finding a current and lovely home with some spliced in Tunnel Goons mechanics. It’s not quite ready to share, but I think after sending it out to some friends for feedback, we’ll have a beta test of the game ready to share in the next episode of The Guac!
Last part here, I took some time to mess around with remixing some of Carly’s Spaceships and after getting the okay from Carly to remix her work in a publication here are some of the current cover iterations inspired by Nintendo and Super Nintendo game covers!!
If you made it this far and fancy a vote in helping me choose the best color combo(s) for the Cryo Drakus cover, I would love some help narrowing them down. (I’ll end up rocking two of them. One for the Beta Test and the second for the final release similar to how we did Greenhorns Quickstart and Core book.)
Thank you for being here! Writing The Guac - highlighting the things exciting me, interviewing people I admire, and writing a bit of what’s going on with Spicy Tuna - is something I love to do and I appreciate everyone reading this little publication.
Have a beautiful day!
Marco