[Tabletop Thursday/Interview] with Solo RPG/Wargame Designer IVAN SORENSEN of NORDIC WEASEL GAMES.
Words: Brady + Ivan Sorensen
Executive-’Functioning’ Assistants:
Caffeine (naturally),
The absolute banger that is the latest album by Warbringer (coincidentally a great album for skirmish/RPG wargaming - LINK HERE, get thrashed scrubs!),
The Pomodoro technique, and of course:
Butters (aka our unofficial but I guess now-official meowscot)!
AN INTERVIEW WITH IVAN SORENSEN OF NORDIC WEASEL GAMES.
Ivan himself may not have thought too much of answering a bunch of reporter-questions, somewhere betweeen the 8 billionth RPG product he’s created recently. Especially with how incessantly consistent he is with his game design/delivery, as well as impressive levels of engagement with his Discord community. One of the most approachable-to-freaking-busy ratios I’ve seen in this space!
Seriously, man’s incredibly prolific, as you’ll see soon. On top of this, it’s not only a high rate of output but a quality calibre as well! As someone who decided to really pull the trigger on next-level nerdy and delve into the world of solo/co-op TTRPGs, boardgames and other fun stuff during lockdown, I’ve had a keen interest in titles that meld emergent-sandbox/open-world styled themes with a solid base mechanically.
My first encounter (not going to point out the multiple puns emerging in this preamble, ‘cept right now) with his products as a consumer was the fantastic, absolute ripper of a unit in Five Parsecs From Home.
Perhaps in future I’ll do a full-fledged review of the system, or at least an explainer. However, NWG is an outlet attuned to making comprehensive titles and I don't want to inject even more thought-disorder into our introduction.
Later, I got really into Five Leagues From The Borderlands, NWG’s fantasy iteration on this format. Stay tuned as I’ll be putting out an introduction to my campaign in this system, one I’m also going to be creative additional narrative audiodrama-style content for, alongside the written stuff. Too many thoughts, not enough mediums!
Flag both of those for later - right now, we have a very special opportunity and I’d prefer to focus on that before I…. wait, what?!
Peace, Love and…. What Was That Genre I Always Say In My Intro’s Again?! xoxo - Brady.
Brady: Nordic Weasel Games is a successful enterprise, being managed by yourself for some time now. How are you feeling about where your publishing efforts are currently at, and for the year head?
“In some ways it feels a little surreal. I am in kind of a difficult spot where the list of projects and tasks is becoming more than one person can do, while it is not quite big enough to have “staff”. Though I am finding ways to working around some of that and get some more people involved. That sounds kind of negative but it’s really that there are so many things I’d love to do and simply not enough time for all of them.
With the shift to working with Modiphius, it has also given me some time to think about what the future of NWG itself will be and there’s some exciting projects I am working on with my wife to have a really solid set of game lines under our own names strictly.
”
Five Leagues From The Borderlands art, from the core rulebook. Credit to: Christan Quinot (links at bottom of article, same with Ivan’s links!).
Brady: Speaking of where things are at right now - can you walk us through a typical day in the life of running NWG?
“The work tasks for a day usually go something like:
Check on discord, a few online forums, email, private messages.
I don’t always succeed, but I try to answer questions as they happen - or at least as quickly as I can - and at some point, I realised I had to just make that a spot on my calendar.
I don’t time-block tightly, I prefer having a checklist to work from.
After that, I look at the list of projects and try to figure out what is the Do or Die project and what else I can probably get done. I find I always overschedule but it works better that way. I usually work throughout the day with breaks to do a bit of exercise, play with the cats or go read a book. I do sometimes skip the afternoon and work in the evening as well.
I usually plan things on paper with a pen, then work out the details on the computer. So I will sit on the couch (or the floor, Im a weirdo) and write out, say, a list of spell names and basic ideas. Then later on the computer, I can flesh them out from that and that goes pretty quickly.
If a project is getting towards the end, I write a “kill list” which is every item that needs doing and every feature that is still missing. Then I only work on things on the kill list. ”
(Side Note - Same here! Go Team Pen-and-Paper for Planning. Except when the list itself is too long to be done by hand - *shudders in email inbox).
Partial pic of cover artwork for Five Parsecs From Home - artwork also courtesy of Christian Quinot.
Brady: In terms of community, you're very active on Discord whilst also consistently prolific with your output of quality titles on Modiphius, Wargaming Vault, DriveThruRPG.net, etc.
Seriously, dude - where do you find the time? What strategies do you put in place to balance the workload?
“Well, the number one cheat is that its my actual job. NWG has never been a part time or casual gig. So when your car payments depend on it, you find the motivation to get back to the keyboard.
As far as “writers’ tricks”, the main one is the idea of “no zero-days”. Basically, do something on the project every day. If you are completely shot or get sick, maybe thats just proof-reading a page, maybe its fixing one rule a playtester said was bunk, whatever. But you try to never have a day where you didn’t touch the document.
In my experience and from friends, once a project has been sitting untouched for more than a couple of days, the chance of it being dead increases dramatically.
Some of the writer tricks can work. Clash on the Fringe was written entirely in a Starbucks, hipster style.
Sometimes a change of scenery helps a lot to get you going. I finished one project by putting on Silverchairs “Anthem for the Year 2000” on repeat until the last 8000 words were done. Whatever you have to do to get done.”
How rad is this guy?!
Writing on paper, sipping coffee and planning nerdy stuff to our own alternative rock heroes Silverchair? If that ain’t an endorsement, I don’t know what is. Nice pic Ivan (and, as mentioned, see below for some suggestions from me to you and your community for boss-ass solo/co-op gaming tracks!).
Brady: I've noticed you have a very iterative and participatory style of game design, often taking feedback directly from the blog/Discord from followers in current and future games. Does your community have a large overall influence on game design, and if so how do you balance this with your own considerations/goals?
“I like to think so, yeah, but you do have to kind of balance it. It is easy to become completely reactive and take every opinion to heart, but I think you can lose yourself in that. In the end, if you create an “identity”, then people are following your work because they want to hear what you have to say. In my experience it always shines through when a project is something I wholeheartedly believed in and had a clear vision for.
However, people also like the idea of being able to be a part of it, and I think for indie writers its the one thing the big glossy-book guys can’t do.
When someone interacts with the NWG community, they are much closer to the process than you can get normally.
I suppose thats a lot of waffling to say that you ‘*have* to balance things out and pick battles a little. Some things can be left up to the community and you can take their input, but the important stuff that you burn for? One-man show on those parts.
In my experience, even when someone thinks you should have done it differently, explaining why you did it a certain way will satisfy. ”
Check out a review of one of Ivan’s many, many, many titles, Ballad of The Longbow, by Youtube RPG-connoisseur Live from Pellam’s Wasteland at:
Brady: Five Leagues and Five Parsecs are available through a partnership with Modiphius. How have you found working with this organisation for promotion/distribution?
“Rather well. Having both access to professional artwork and not having to worry about layout and editing on my part, is very refreshing. And they have been incredibly open to my suggestions, I think recognising that there is a lot of personality in those games. It is of course different when you are writing something specifically for hire, but in those cases its just a job and you write to specification. ‘
For the 5X stuff they basically give a nearly unlimited free hand with what I want to do.
The main challenge of course is that you are only one part of a bigger machine, and there is a different time frame involved. When I do something myself, I can get it in front of fans in no time and iterate on my own. You can’t just go back and change your mind once a book is in layout stages. ”
Segue - Wargamin’ Bands I:
First lot of bands I’ll recommend to put on whilst getting your poor warband/crew’s collective arses handed back to them when the encounter throws you an RNGesus-curveball - instrumental post-metal!
You’ll get all the oomph-factor and atmosphere, without the brain (or conversation, if you’re playing co-op - which you should give a try!) being deprived of unconscious attentional resources.
Not that Ivan’s systems are ever super-heavy mechanically, but they can be intense.
Recommendations: Omega Massif, Pelican, Cloudkicker, Year of No Light, If These Trees Could Talk (more post-rock, but also featuring some bangin’ metallic riffage too). And so, so, so many others. Want more? Ask me, and also follow us here ‘cause I’m destined (not just likely, destined) to post more… post… metal. Here. Ayup.
Sample - one of my favourite instrumental post-metal albums, ever, via postrock.instrumental on Youtube:
Brady: What was your initial inspiration to get into tabletop/game design? i.e. any specific experiences, IPs, or a combination/more?
“My path into miniatures games was, as a lot of other folks, through the Hero Quest and Space Crusade board games and then Warhammer 40.000, 2nd edition. I suppose everything else followed from there. I have always been fascinated by game mechanics. Even playing kids’ games, I was always trying to think of ways to change the game or understand why they worked a certain way.
I remember before getting a copy of 40K, I got a copy of White Dwarf 182 and pawed through the battle report - and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my 15 years of existence. I immediately took out my Space Crusade figures and tried to create my own game based on how I thought 40K might work. I even played it a number of times - though it was probably a terrific mess.
But from there, it was something I always just tinkered with in the background. I tried writing my own Fighting Fantasy adventure, my own version of Necromunda and so forth, eventually leading to creating original games.”
[Side Note, Yet Again - Can’t get the word ‘necro’ past me, ever. One of my background .exe thematic hyperfixations, and best served up in a sci-fi format. Sure, stealing a phylactery from a lich’s dusty tomb in the desert is rad, but what about retrieving an undead cybermancers’ artificial brain from a derelict?!
Here’s an excellent melodic black metal album that’d suit such an experience, from a band with an incredibly-fun logo and some amazing cover art. I’ve literally put this on the TV just to have the (excellent) album playing, but with that cover-art to enhance a particularly nasty Five Parsecs encounter.
That encounter went tits-up, your mileage may vary. Don’t blame good bands for RNGesus’ misgivings! The dice giveth and the dice taketh, son:]
Brady: Your titles (such as Five Parsecs/Five Leagues/Five Clicks) often revolve around solo/co-op play, with an emphasis on RPG style progression. I for one am a massive fan of this!
What draws you to this genre of skirmish gaming versus say, traditional PvP/skirmish titles as the main focus?
“At the time, it was kind of a rarity. Solo play had been around of course since the start of miniatures gaming but that sort of campaign driven game was a bit less common. Two Hour Wargames were the first I recall that really focused on that style and it was introducing those games to my RPG friends that really made me appreciate that approach a lot.
Its funny because one of the things we did not anticipate with the Parsecs glossy book was how many RPG and board game folks would come into the game. To my mind they have always been miniatures games first and foremost.
But a lot of the folks who bought the books when they became available in print came in with the assumptions of a role playing game, because to them that was obviously what it mostly was. So we realised things like how to set up a wargames table should have been explained a lot more.
As far as skirmish gaming itself, I have always just been more interested in the man to man aspect. My favourite in historical gaming is the platoon level. I don’t dislike games where figures represent larger units (like Command Decision where a stand is a platoon) but to my mind, a “real” minis game is 1 to 1 figure to representation.
That skirmish gaming is affordable in space and money helps a lot too of course. You can build an army for pretty cheap which makes it more accessible to people who would be interested if they could paint 10 guys but not if they have to paint 200.”
Wargaming? Warbringer. Enough said. THRASH:
Brady: In terms of mechanics, you often use simple resolution systems to help streamline play, rules etc. How do you land on specific mechanics/systems for different titles/series?
“For solo gaming, I believe pretty strongly that the rules should be about 10% simpler than if it was a PVP game, since one player has to carry all the mental load. I get pretty frustrated if I realise I am playing something and I screwed it up, so its important to me that its manageable. To the extent that it’s a principle otherwise, a lot of it is just that there are certain mechanics I like better. The RPGs I grew up with had roll-under systems, so I tend to prefer rolling under a value than over one, for example. I use D6s a lot since most of the time - I am not interested in modifiers below that 15ish % mark.
I usually nail down the dice mechanic upfront before working on anything. Sometimes that’s just on a whim, like it has been a while since I have done a D10; sometimes it is for a specific effect, like 2D6 giving you a bell-curve.
From there, a lot of things start deciding themselves. If you are using a D6 then you cant have very many dice modifiers, for example.
Some things are just universal principles that I rarely differ from, like not (usually) allowing firing before moving or trying to avoid figures being left in hand-to-hand combat. ”
Need to inject both brutality, tension and a sense of exotic martial close-combat to an encounter?
Dap your homefolks up with this absolute belter of an album - in my opinion, one of the best death-grind albums ever made. Lykathea Aflame, what lightning in a bottle eh?
Strong Nile influence for that underworld/tomb-raiding/esoteric alien species feel, too.
If you’re unsure what I mean by that, if anything’s left of your eardrums after the following album - go pop on Black Seeds of Vengeance. Just be sure to staple your face first, cause it’s at risk of being ripped from your skull. Enjoy.
Brady: How does your playtesting work out? Do you ever solo-playtest your titles alongside sourcing community playtesting?
“I test a couple times myself, just to make sure it basically makes sense, then push it to friends and the playtest group as quickly as possible.
If it is really early in the process, sometimes the playtesters just get it first and I see what they have to say.
I dont think testing on your own is really all that valuable, because you are too close to the game. You know how it’s supposed to work, so you will gloss over that the rules don’t actually say the right thing. ”
[Another Side-Note: Did someone say solo? Stranded in space, say at a distance of about five parsecs from home?!
Well, speaking of post-metal - this album is a beauty for getting that feel of being adrift in the black voids of space, interdimensional portals, or wherever your game/writing/prep takes you. Courtesy of Earache Records Catalogue on Youtube:]
Brady: Quite a lot of folks have commented about the adjacency to full-fledged TTRPG-style gaming your titles offer. Have you thought about creating/partnering with other creators to make a more 'traditional' TTRPG a-la DnD?
If so/not, why/why not?
“I have dabbled in RPGs before (Ballad of the Longbow and Usurper) but Ill admit my passion is more on the minis side. I do have a plan for an upcoming RPG but it is not near enough to talk about.
To an extent, I just end up enjoying creating miniatures games more. There are more money in RPGs though so thats a consideration. ”
Not my OC/don’t sue OP… redacted. ;)
Brady: Outside of your very busy time trying to manage NWG, what sorts of things do you like to do for relaxation/recreation?
“A bunch of things, but mostly nerd-things I suppose.
I am a retro-computer enthuiast (Commodore Amiga).
I read a lot (with a fondness) of old Scottish literature.
I am an amateur historian devouring everything i can about the First World War, with an eye towards one day publishing some material for that.
I watch a lot of football (the one with the foot). Mainz 05!
I spend approximately 25 hours a day listening to music, mostly metal but also some electronic stuff. Thats a dangerous topic because I could talk for ten thousand years about bands I like. ”
(Oh. Oh Ivan. Buddy. Bro. Dude. That last point. Yeah…. [looks around at ISC]
Methinks HevyDevy and Mr. Sorensen would get along real well! Someone please make putting these two in the same room together a thing?
Brady: And in terms of hobby stuff - what are some of your current and all-time favourites in the tabletop space?
“Miniatures gaming, I am mostly a historical gamer actually and a little behind the curve with Arc of Fire and Disposable Heroes being my go-to choices.
I try to get in a big game of “Oldhammer” 40K once a year or so.
My interest in the current tabletop space is really more in the miniatures themselves with the 15mm and lately 10mm scenes really being impressive in terms of choice, variety and quality. The new Victrix 12mm plastic WW2 sets are so good, they are unbelievable. ”
Peter Griffin, slightly out of shot: ‘He said it! He said the thing!’
Brady: If you could field an epic-scale skirmish over let's say, an entire planet's two hemispheres - who would you be your picks for the battle?
More importantly, who'd you pick as your faction, and why?
“I assume this is a “across any game” thing, so I would take a Warzone / Mutant Chronicles Bauhaus army versus an army of the original metal Catachan Imperial Guard.
I would probably pick the Bauhausers, because I loved them dearly playing Warzone back in the day but it would look super rad as a table top battle. ”
Prepare to get absolutely ‘Haused, scrubs.
Brady: What sorts of goodies can we expect from NWG in the near future?
“We are super hard at work on Mystic Space, a big PVP (for now) game of space fantasy and cool heroes. Swing by the blog at https://nordicweasel.posthaven.com/ and you can read more about the mad ideas we have for that, including a real timeline and fan licenses to publish your own miniatures.”
Ivan, I’ve already sung your praises both on this blog post and via this blog. Both previously and today. But I want to give a very special thank-you once again!
Solo/co-op gaming is something that took right off amongst the midst of the pandemic, particularly with folks like myself whose perpetually jittery hands and chronic online-ness both necessitated just something I could grasp physically and play.
I’ve got a pretty extensive series lined up around Five Leagues From The Borderlands - an overview of the system and both written/audiodrama versions of the campaign I’m currently playing. Which has been a lot, and if you know anything about my attentional deficits, you’ll know that’s no easy feat for this corner of the hobby!
Ivan is one of myriad folks out there trying to work their unique and creative magick under the broader spectre of things like WotC hegemony, the cost of living crisis, and more.
If you’re intrigued by anything we’ve discussed today, check out Ivan’s other links as follows:
Modiphius - Main link for accessing official hardbound/physical versions of Five Parsecs/Five Leagues)