Listen to this episode here.
This week I've got designer and illustrator Strega Wolf van den Berg on to talk about money and the Mork Borg third party license. What, if anything, is the difference between making RPGs for fun, to pay rent, and to be paid fairly? And what is the cost (aha) of bringing money into making art?
On the flip side, this is also an episode about community, and how the shape of Mork Borg’s license fostered a community around it that allowed Strega Wolf to find a space in this hobby. Community can give us so many things that money can’t.
Further reading:
The Mork Borg third party license
The Origin Of My Depression by Uboa
Socials
Strega Wolf's website and itch page
Sam on Bluesky and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lily Pads by my boi Travis Tessmer.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Dice Exploder: Strega Wolf
===
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic all the way to the bank. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co host this week is Strega Wolf van den Berg.
Strega Wolf was recommended to me as a co host by wendi yu after I had her on in season 2. Wendi was like, yeah, Strega Wolf made Lichoma, a meatpunk RPG. And I took one look at Lichoma and then immediately invited Strega Wolf on the show. It's this beautiful, visually unforgettable card based RPG from Bogfolk, a co op of which Strega Wolf is a founding member.
Strega Wolf came up through the Mork Borg community, and like Nova last week, they're someone I asked on the show to talk about the NSR, post OSR kind of scene. And Strega Wolf came at that prompt from a very different direction than Nova, bringing on the Mork Borg third party content license.
Now I can sit here and do a bit about how a third party content license is totally a mechanic. And after last season's episode on We Are But Worms, I probably even believed that. But this episode isn't really about mechanics, it's about cold, hard cash. Money, and how we relate to it as indie designers. What, if anything, is the difference between doing this as a hobby, trying to pay rent, and trying to be paid fairly? And what is the cost of bringing money into making art at large?
And on the flip side, this is also an episode about community, and how the shape of Mork Borg's license fostered a community around it that allowed Strega Wolf to find a space in this hobby, and how community can give you so many things that money never can.
Speaking of community, Bogfolk is going to be at BreakoutCon in Toronto in March, so if you liked this episode and you're in the area, go say hi and pick up Lichoma.
Okay, here is Strega Wolf with Mork Borg's third party content license.
Sam: Strega Wolf, thanks so much for being here.
Strega Wolf: Thank you for having me.
Sam: Yeah. So you wanted to bring in like a topic today to talk about, like what is that topic broadly speaking before we get into some of the details.
Strega Wolf: Very broadly speaking, I wanted to talk about third party license for Mork Borg it benefited the community a lot through being able to just publish our own stuff and actually be able to charge money for that.
but I also feel like, we can make a lot more better stuff than we are currently doing and I feel it's important to discuss that.
Sam: you talked a little bit in our, like, offline discussions about how the Mork Borg third party license kind of inspired you to get into design in the first place. Can you talk, like, what about the license was inspirational?
Strega Wolf: I think for me mostly, the license is very open about being against, transphobic and racist and sexist and that kind of stuff. Which created this really, like, open sense of community to everyone. You know that there's not going to be any dickheads making any stuff for this, and that makes everything feel very safe. Uh, In a very good way, allows you to just make whatever the fuck you want, basically.
Sam: Yeah! I really got into, uh, RPG design through the Blades in the Dark community in kind of the same way, and there's less of an explicit, kind of thing built into the license there. But like, a lot of those things are built into the game, and like, certainly the community was like trans as fuck, and so it really felt like a really safe and welcoming space, and in exactly the same way you're describing with Mork Borg.
And I think there's something really powerful about these third party licenses that, like, establish a community in the first place. Not just saying, like, fuck capitalists and fuck transphobes, like, get out of here, like, for establishing community, but also saying, like, please come in and, like, mess around in the guts of this thing. It's such an open invitation to community.
Strega Wolf: yeah, and I also think that the way Mork Borg is set up is very allowing for that. Like, the rules are so very rules light that you kind of have to make extra stuff for it,
Sam: Yeah, totally.
Strega Wolf: which also with the addition of , the Ex Liberis, which is a big catalogue of just everything Mork Borg, basically. That really helps with people actually being able to find other people's stuff and actually like, build upon the works of others, basically.
Sam: Yeah, so you really wanted to come in here, I think, and talk some about, like, how can we make games and make communities that less focused around making money. Less focused around money in general. Was that something you were coming in before you started doing the game design, or something about your process engaging with Mork Borg and that community and the third party license, what brought you to that?
Strega Wolf: I think mainly just working through Mork Borg. Like, I mentioned before how it started off as a small friend group, which was very fun and everyone was just hanging around and just making stuff for the sense of making it, basically.
Sam: Yeah.
Strega Wolf: but then the bigger Mork Borg became, the more I noticed that it almost just became a viable business in the sense of, people were getting contract offers from Exalted Funeral, for example, and they also run a lot of Kickstarters for their own zines and stuff. Which is awesome. Like, you get to publish your own stuff and make money out of it. Everyone wants that as a dream job, imagine.
Sam: Yeah.
Strega Wolf: But like, I feel it also takes a bit away from the experience of making a game. As in, I think the joy of making a game comes from the actual making of it, not necessarily from being able to sell it and being able to make money out of it.
Sam: Well, it's such a big job to think about marketing and publishing and money and the minute you start trying to do that job, at least in my experience, you have so much less capacity to do the art and to stay focused on the art, the game design, whatever the thing is that you're doing.
Like, I ran a kickstarter for this podcast. I mean, this is like a, an episode of this show that was kickstarted, and It was fucking miserable. And like, I hated every second of it. I hated the marketing. And as I was doing it, either I was neglecting the marketing part, and like, not kind of living up to my own expectations for what I should be doing, and like, letting The Kickstarter just sit there not go anywhere, or I was abandoning the actual fun of doing the podcast.
like, did all these things when I set up this podcast to try to make sure it stayed like a fun experience for me, and then the second I started thinking about doing a Kickstarter, that all started fading away because I had to focus on the Kickstarter part.
Strega Wolf: Yeah, like, running Kickstarters, but also just working together with a publisher, it's, just tiring, like, a job, basically.
Sam: yeah, so, why do you think so many people get caught up in that instead of just continuing to make shit for their dirty friends or whatever?
Strega Wolf: I think it's mainly that they see a lot of people being successful in it, and then they have the thought like, oh, what if I could do that as well?
Sam: yeah
Strega Wolf: but I think the key part is the difference between I want to do this for a job and I want to make rent. And the idea of I want to do this for a job and make a lot of profit. I think there's a big difference there.
Sam: yeah. What do you mean by the distinction there exactly?
Strega Wolf: As in, you can still make your own weird stuff and sell it basically just to cover the printing costs and to maybe make some money for your labor costs.
But I think the key difference is if you start making for profit, you also start designing your games differently. You really start thinking on, like, okay, what would my user want, what would the player want, instead of what would I want from this game?
Sam: Do you think that's actually effective business? Because I'm in Hollywood I'm trying to do the like screenwriting thing. And I we talk all the time in this stupid fucking industry about how people often will kind of chase the dragon of like what's popular right now, like what's selling right now, like maybe I'll try to write that thing, but that basically never works because what's popular in selling right now is always changing. And it's actually way less effective to have everyone in the world think your script is an eight outta 10, as opposed to like 20 percent of people in the world thinking your script is a 10, and 80 percent fucking hating it. Like, the, like, really polarizing stuff gets you further, because someone is out there willing to really go to bat for you.
Strega Wolf: Yeah, that's an interesting idea. Like, I think, if you think solely on profit, usually people go for the safe option there. As in going for something that's already established, like, for example, Mork Borg, or making a pirate version out of it, or making a cyborg version out of it, stuff like that. But I do think that it's a lot more feasible, and also just a lot more fun, to actually just make your own stuff and have your own voice be heard because like you're the only one with that voice. Everyone can make another Dungeons Dragons game, but not everyone can just make what you want to make.
Sam: Yeah. And it's really,
It's really hard to stand out and, like, get an audience in the first place. And it's gonna be really hard to do that, I think, by being one of the additional people in line to make Dungeons Dragons content.
Strega Wolf: Yeah, for sure the more you stand out and the more you tell your own weird stories the more people will latch on to it
Sam: Yeah. So, another thing you kind of brought up in there is, like, people's time, what is it worth?
Because I think if you are out here just trying to make money, I don't super understand why you are in roleplaying games in the first place, because like, come on, what, are you trying to make money in this industry? Are you kidding me? But, also I've put hundreds and hundreds of hours into some of my games that have then paid me, like, a thousand dollars or something in total sales over the course of five years, right? And I don't have a problem with that because I have very much tried to keep all of this to a hobby, to just something that I'm kinda doing for fun and my own amusement and my friends amusement.
But I also have friends who are like, I don't want to like, put this out there for money because to like, charge a fair price for it, I'm gonna have to charge like, 25 for like, a small game and no one wants to pay that. And I understand their instinct of like, wanting to be compensated fairly, you know, to have their time respected, but also, like, do you think it's even possible to do that in this industry?
Strega Wolf: I honestly don't think it's really possible. I do think the best way to somewhat solve it is to make sure that you actually own your own games, basically. In the sense of either working for a co op or being the sole owner of your games. Because that way, there's no one actually, like, dependent on your money.
Sam: Yeah, and you are part of a co op, right? Like, Bogfolk?
Strega Wolf: Yeah, I am.
Sam: Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about, like, how that got set up and what your role in it is and how you think about running it? You collectively, not just you, but yeah.
Strega Wolf: So we started out as basically that small scale friend group from Mork Borg, we all just kind of got to know each other through Markburg, and just all made our own weird stuff, basically. And then, at some point we read the Sandy Pug's Manifesto on establishing a roleplaying game co op.
And that really inspired us. We were all kind of fed up with the idea of either needing to go through the contract route with a publisher, or either needing to Kickstart our own games. And then we noticed that we had quite a lot of people who felt the same. I think we're up to around 13 people now? Or 12?
Sam: Oh, wow.
Strega Wolf: So we set up our co op with the idea that we basically just want to make rent, make art, and help other people do the same.
We've constantly kept a strong focus on just making weird stuff. In the sense of, we aren't a co op to make a lot of money. We're just here to either help out a bit with the rent, or not even really that. Just make sure we keep owning our own, games, basically.
Sam: yeah. And how do you feel like it's going?
Strega Wolf: I feel it's going well. We've been quite productive in a sense of, we've made Lichoma, which is our first big game. and then we are also making Monolith, which is a quarterly Zine publication.
Sam: yeah, how did Monolith get started? This is the first I've heard of it.
Strega Wolf: Monolith got started when we basically just had a few mark work ideas lying around.
Sam: Hmm.
Strega Wolf: And then we all noticed this underlying theme of basically wanting to expand on the game in a more peaceful way, in the sense of wanting to focus more on farming, settlement, stuff like that.
Sam: That's such a weird, contrary energy to bring to Mork Borg.
Strega Wolf: Yeah, that also, that makes it fun, I feel.
Sam: Yeah, I love that, juxtaposition.
Sam: Tired of hearing about RPGs from anglophone countries? The World of RPGs podcast has you covered.
Each episode covers the RPG scene from another country, from RPGs you've never heard of to how to spell Cthulhu in different writing systems. Available on all major podcasting platforms, and definitely not accent free.
This episode is brought to you by David Block, who you might remember from the We Are But Worms episode. David asked me to just tell a story from the first time I ever played role playing game. My dad was running for me and my fellow third grade friends.
And we woke up in an inn, he asked us what we wanted to do, and we were like, I don't know, what are we allowed to do? And he said, anything you want. So we walked down the hall, and we go into the bathroom. We're like, can we check the toilet for monsters? And he's like, yeah, you can check the toilet for monsters. So we checked the toilet for toilet monsters.
And that was an auspicious beginning to my long career as a roleplaying game player I guess you listen to that now. Um, enjoy.
Okay, so let's, get back to it a little bit. The big flag planting of this community's not gonna be a shitty place to be, was like very big and helpful from the license, but like how else was Mork Borg inspiring you?
Like was the game itself doing inspiration to you too also?
Strega Wolf: Yeah, for sure. Like Mork Borg for me was the first time I really saw a game that. Actually centered graphic design in a way that, the graphic design actually helps tell the story of the game instead of just being a supporting act, basically.
And that's really inspiring to me. I just really like both just stuff that looks cool, but also stuff that actually tells a story.
Sam: and so when were you starting to make stuff like getting into design in the first place?
Strega Wolf: For me it started out with there was this open crawl which was a game jam for making a dungeon or an adventure just based on an album you really like.
For me, that was an album by Uboa which is a noise artist and , it's a very strong album, I guess that's the best way to put it. a very dark album as well which came for me a pretty dark mental time as well.
But through that, I started figuring out like, how do you really process emotions through game design? And I found that that's very rewarding for me.
Sam: Yeah.
Strega Wolf: Like, being able to just make stories. That you want to tell, instead of stories that you think other people want to play, basically.
Sam: Is there something about the medium of game design that you think is especially good at doing the thing you want to do as opposed to, like, why didn't you get into writing novels or something, you Do you think there's something about game design that really hooked into what is
Strega Wolf: I think specifically for roleplaying game design, is that you basically make an unfinished story. As in, you provide the setup for a story, and then other people get to finish it, or actually make it their own. Which, to me, is very inspiring, because You can tell the absolute most grimdark story and people still find a happy ending to it.
Sam: yeah, there's something kind of powerful in presenting, I'm depressed and don't know a way out of it, and then watching other people find a way out of it.
Strega Wolf: Yeah, that's also kind of what Mork Borg feels like, it's not necessarily depressed, but it's more... the way I usually describe it is like, grimdark, but so grimdark it's almost funny.
Sam: yeah,
Yeah, I think of Mork Borg as like a, primal scream of a game, almost, like it does feel like I have all this anger and depression and I'm gonna go outside and do the most brutal Like self flagellation that I can about it, like,
yeah, so, do you want to talk a little bit more about, like the details of the, the Mork Borg license and potentially other licenses and kind of what makes them effective? Obviously, like, the being welcoming and encouraging part feels really important, but are there other pieces that you think are doing anything interesting or particularly effective in one way or another?
Strega Wolf: I think what's especially good about a Mork Borg party license is it's very readable. It's not just endless pages of legal text like you'd have with 5e for example. And I think also a very important part is that you're allowed to charge money for your own stuff.
Sam: Yeah.
Strega Wolf: That's not very common in license nowadays.
And I think with Mork Borg they have the difference between, you're fully allowed to quote rules the only thing you're not allowed to copy is the setting text, which I think makes a lot of sense. The setting text is a lot more, personal from a writer's sense. The rules are also just so short that it's very easy to reference them. Like, they fit on just one A5 page. they're very modular in that sense. You can just add another stat, or add another combat mechanic, or stuff like that.
Sam: Yeah. I just ran, I know this isn't a Mork Borg thing, but Barkeep on the Borderlands, which was very fun, it's this OSR module, and it has in it a bunch of rules for getting drunk and drinking, because you're going through a bunch of parties, and it's just like a little system that you can just like, tack on to any other game, and Mork Borg is clearly designed to be perfect for that.
Like, if you want to tack on your rules for being diseased, like, it's really
Strega Wolf: yeah, that'd be very easy, yeah.
Sam: system and slap it onto your adventure and say like, put it in your Mork Borg game.
Strega Wolf: Yeah, but also to the point where you wouldn't even need to really design it, in the sense of you don't need to sit down on the computer and really write it down. Like, even if you're half drunk, you can just still come up with a rule, basically.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, it is just, what are the stats called? Just roll the one that sounds the most healthy and
Strega Wolf: Yeah, something like that, yeah.
Sam: So, all of this is very punk. I mean I think the RPG design community, the parts of it that I enjoy at least, are like pretty punk at large, of people just kind of making their own stuff for the reasons that they want to. At least until I'm not sure what all the money gets involved, like we were talking about earlier.
But are there, are there like particular games or creators or other people like in the space besides Bogfolk that you think are doing a good job at staying in that spirit of just makin shit for the sake of making shit?
Strega Wolf: The Meatpunk Manifesto by Heather Flowers for me was especially inspiring. She's a video game dev who also made Extreme Meatpunks Forever.
Sam: Oh, yeah.
Strega Wolf: and I think that manifesto for me especially, it's just so very focused on just making weird shit. And just having fun with it, basically. I think that's the most important part, to just keep having fun with making stuff.
Sam: Yeah. Mhm. There's something like, I think the thing so alluring to a lot of people about making game design their job is the fact that most people's jobs suck shit so bad that people really don't want to do their jobs anymore. They just want to, like, make art for fun. And it's really tempting to try to make that a reality, but then, you know, as we've been talking about, then the art making becomes your job, or like other hidden jobs sort of in the support of the art making kind of take over. And that's tragic.
Strega Wolf: yeah, I think it's mostly just hidden jobs, like, you start off just wanting to be an artist, and then you make art, but then you notice that, oh, you also need a social media page, and you maybe want a Kickstarter, and you maybe want a project fulfillment, stuff like that, just keeps adding on.
Sam: Yeah.
Strega Wolf: And it basically just makes one job into 20, and you really enjoy that one job, but all those other 19 just really suck.
Sam: Yeah, I think most people even find that, like, I don't know, they love two or three of those 19 jobs. But, like, maybe that's what forming a co op is all about, is to find other people who will do a different two or three of those jobs.
Strega Wolf: That is really something I noticed with Bogfolk. Like, everyone just has a different focus and different stuff that I like. I'm not a money person at all, or just a fulfillment person at all, but we do have people who do like that, and it's really nice to be in a setting where people can do that and actually enjoy it and not be forced to do it because they have to.
Sam: yeah,
yeah,
how do you feel about the like, community copies thing on itch? I feel like there's this whole conversation that comes up sometimes about putting out community copies and on the one hand, it's great, so these are like, free copies of the game that you can download but they're maybe limited in number.
And the sort of level zero thought was, games are unaffordable in certain parts of the world especially but to people in poverty all over. It would be great to give games away free to those people. And so a lot of people started putting out community copies that like, if you were experiencing financial hardship, you could download the game for free.
And then some people were like, actually just like take all my games for free, like I'm not doing this for money, just like put out all the games all the time. Like please give me money for it if you can, but also I don't care, here are all the games for free. And that's kind of where I'm at.
But then there's this extra wave of people on top of that I sometimes encounter who are like doing that actually devalues the price of these games across the board and makes it harder for people, you know, kind of at the Bogfolk scale of things to be able to do the rent paying part, because there's so many other games out there that are just totally free because people are giving them away for free too much.
you, do you have a thought on like where you fall in all of that?
Strega Wolf: I think for the Bogfolk especially, we're kind of in the middle in between the community copies and just charging for stuff. It depends a lot on how many dev time we put into the games and also, depends on like if it's an expansion or Like, what we tend to do with Lichoma, for example, is we publish all the expansions for free. But the base game is actually then, I think, 10 right now on itch.
So then, it becomes this way to not really lure people into the game, but more to give a bit of a taste of the game without actually needing to fully buy it.
But I do also think there's no real devaluing in other people putting up community copies. I don't think it's a very competitive marketplace in the sense of if I make my game, there's not going to be anyone else who's like, Oh, I already bought a game so I'm not going to buy the other one.
Sam: Do you have like, advice for people about how to approach all of this? Like, I, I really feel like it's so understandable that people get caught up in the trying to make money, and it just wears me down whenever I do that. And I just have so much more fun engaging with the hobby when I'm doing it on my own time, for my own reasons, at my own pace. And for fun, as opposed to for money. And I, I don't know, I just really encourage other people to, to do that too.
Strega Wolf: Yeah. I think the main takeaway I want to give from this is like, charging money for stuff is fine, just don't have it be your end goal. Have your end goal be to just have fun and make cool stuff, instead of having your end goal be to make a lot of money.
Sam: Well, Strega Wolf, thanks for coming on Dice Explorer. Great having
Strega Wolf: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Sam: Thanks again to Strega Wolf for being here! You can find their games on Itch, their illustration work on their website, and more about Bogfolk at bogfolk. com. Links for everything in the show notes.
As always, you can find me on socials at s. dunnewold or on the Dice Exploder Discord.
And this episode was edited by Chris Greenbrier. Thanks again, Chris!
Our logo is designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by PurelyGrey, and our ad music is Lilypads by my boy, Travis Tessmer. And thanks to you for listening, as always. See you next time!