Death May Die

- Alright hi guys and welcome back to Be Bold Games. I'm here with Eric Lang to talk to him about his new game.

- Death May Die.

- And I've heard that this game is hard.

- We figured, I think, we figured players were sick of winning games, so let's make a game where you just die. A lot

- 'Cause that's not a thing we've seen in the past ever.

- Never!

- So why do you hate us?

- So, we, I love you guys. I just want you guys to earn it.

- Okay, fair, we have to work hard for anything that we wanna get ahead in in life, even board games.

- Yep!

- So what were some of the challenges that you faced in the production of this game.

- Well, so, both Rob and myself are, one of the reasons we get along so well is we're on the same wavelength, but we're also two of the fussiest people on this earth. So, you thought one of us was bad, criticizing their own game, two of us is like, we basically hated everything. So, we just, we iterated and iterated and iterated and even when we got the game playing it was like, 'Oh yeah, this is fun! Is it really fun? Ehhh'. We threw it away, so I think we have thrown away three or four full versions of this game.

- Oh wow. - Until we finally got to something, we're like, nope, this is good

. - [Bebo] The game is fully cooperative and I was told that you can't ever trust yourself. Can you give me a couple examples of ways in which you cannot trust yourself in this game?

- Yeah, yeah, sure. So, I gotta do this visually 'cause it's fun. So, I mean, you play investigators that are going to shoot Cthulhu in the face.

- That's an axe, not a gun.

- Yes, but, well, this is Borden, who is a serial killer. She's an investigator though, she investigates- - Investigative serial killer. - In her own way. So, every investigator that you play, even though the game is about like, attack the mythos, it is technically at the end of any chapter of an H.P. Lovecrafter story, where you guys have gone through, read through all the dark magics, cast all your spells and stuff. And then, you've gone insane. You start the game insane. So, for example, if Lizzie starts off with like, catatonia, or with PTSD, or OCD, that insanity's gonna trigger at certain points during the game, depending on how you medicate your dice rolls. When that triggers, your insanity's actually gonna make you lose control of your character, and do something terrible or advantageous. Or, most likely, both

- Okay, and so, did you have any, did you face any struggles when representing mental illness and, how much research was done into making sure that you represented mental illness in a way that felt like the actual illness? - Well, so we wanted to be careful here. So we, one of the things we did with this game is we wanted to go over the top. Right? - Right. - And go, the idea here, so I, as a player who has played Call of Cthulu, the RPG.

- Mmhmm

- And researched doing it for both the CCG and the RPG, have done a lot of reading on this. So, the thing I wanted to make sure of was that we wanted to make sure that it's, when you, cause insanity's such a trope in Cthulu that, when you play the game, that the game mechanics give you an idea of what that character's going through. But, the fact that the, in my opinion, the fact that they, the fact that is empowering, if you use it cleverly, to me is the way that we're doing it in a gamer friendly way.

- [Bebo] Cool. The show also, you said, or the game. it's based on a, it's supposed to feel like a T.V. show.

- That's right.

- Did you have any specific shows that inspired the feel of this game? - We did, but we kinda ditched most of our inspirations. Honestly, as our emphasis we started. So like, both Rob and I grew up in the 80's. So we watched a lot of the episodic, like Steven Bochco, like A-Team, NYPD Blue, stuff like that, episodic T.V. shows. But, it was, it wasn't so much, it was the form, not the functions. So like, we like the idea of like, that they were really formulating shows. It was always the same plot. And in this game, it's always, you're always stopping a ritual, summon the old one, kill it. But what made the episodes interesting the milieu, the setting, and how you guys dealt with the problem at hand. And so when you play the game, we basically used a lot of the tropes, and the terms. So like, oh this is the heist episode or, oh this is the episode where we, this is the party episode. This is the dungeon episode. So we want to make sure that they all have their own identity and their own feel. Which is why that translated.

- [Bebo] And this game will be available on Kickstarter later this year?

- Later this year. I'm allowed to say soon-ish.

- Soon-ish

. - Yes.

- Got it. Okay.

- I'm looking at my marketing guy over there, who's going, you are correct. You may say that.

- So this game is set in the 1920's. Can you tell me a little bit about how you're working in representing different types of characters in this game?

- Sure. I mean, representation is historically completely agnostic right? Like, there were a whole buncha different types of people in every time period.

- Mmhmm

- So, we just said, there's somebody in here for everybody, right? 50 percent of the investigators are women, more than 50 percent are not white, there's like, every shape, size, culture that is represented there. Mostly because, I come from Toronto where, Canada. Shout out. Where we just have a super diverse group of friends and I'm like, it was really easy for me to go like, Hey do you feel represented? Yes. Done

- That's awesome. And you were able to kind of take something that's H.P. Lovecraft, which is not inherently inclusive and make it more inclusive for everyone.

- Even serial killers.

- Even serial killers. Serial killers represent. Alright. Thanks for joining us and thank you for watching, as always if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Be Bold. Play Games. Be you. Happy Gaming.

- Unless you can be me.

- I'm outta here.

- Oh, damn it. Oh, if I had my wits about me able to be you I'd be like, unless you can be batman. Then always be batman.

- [Bebo] It's fine it's going in the bloopers.