Hi, I'm new here

I came over here after Cohost announced that it was shutting down, and it seems like an interesting website here. I'm not sure exactly what kind of stuff I'll usually be posting since I don't post all that

Building the Depths: The Making of Fathom

I recently interviewed Matthew Guzdial, one of the authors of the game Fathom and wrote an essay about it for a computer science class. I like how it turned out so I'm posting it here, and I might post an extended cut of it later, but for now here's the version I turned in to the class:

      Matthew “Guz” Guzdial is the co-designer of the surreal tabletop roleplaying game Fathom, alongside Brendan McLeod, and a member of the Oathsworn and Calazcon actual play podcasts. I got to know him by playing in a playtest one-shot of Fathom, and then starting my own weekly playtest game. Recently, I interviewed him about game design, and he gave some very insightful advice and explanations of how he handled various problems.

 

      When I messaged him on Discord asking about an interview, he replied, “sure!” and we scheduled a call for later that night. We joined a temporary Discord server made to record the call. He was enthusiastic, but considered, and laughed frequently; when I said I was dong ok, he responded, “that’s goooood.” We got right into the questions then, but after I had asked all of them, we chatted about how we were both looking forward to the Fathom one shot he would be running in a few weeks.

 

      To start off with, Guz explained how he got started designing tabletop games; He got recruited as a DM for some friends’ Dungeons and Dragons game, was "immediately unsatisfied with D&D,” and started making his own games from there, with only D&D itself as a reference point. Later on, he started listening to the actual play podcast Friends at the Table, which “really opened [his] mind in terms of what was possible and like, actually sharing the weird games that [he] made.” His first games were hacks of Dungeons and Dragons, then a d20 Tron game, then “this weird, you only roll d4s system,” clearly getting more experimental over time.

 

      Getting started making something is often the hardest part, but Guz had some advice for that, which mainly came down to staying motivated. He has joined several game jams, giving him“[deadlines] which made [him] prioritize actually working on the [games].” Recently, though, most of his motivation comes from working with Brendan, and the social obligation not to disappoint him.

 

      When I decided to interview Guz, I mostly wanted to talk about Fathom. In Fathom, players dive into the “UnReal,” where the deeper they go, the more the line between metaphor and reality starts to blur. You might play as a digital witch, an astral-projecting prisoner, or a monster trying to become human.

 

      Fathom originated from an idea for a campaign Guz and Fathom’s other author, Brendan McLeod, had, for a game with “this like rising sense that the online comedy was getting increasingly surreal.” No available games quite fit, so Brendan suggested making their own. Guz started by writing down all the initial character classes, or playbooks, and “a description of what play would be like.” From that starting point, he and Brendan built out a set of rules that served as a base for the rest of the game.

 

      When designing a new playbook, Guz explained, “I have a tendency to start from the position of ‘here’s a character I think is interesting,’ . . . and is not currently mappable to my ideas of existing playbooks.” For example, Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings fits neatly as a Ranger, but Kirie Fujo from Garden of Sinners didn’t fit as neatly, so Guz made the Prisoner playbook to fit her. Once they had all the core ideas of the playbooks down, Guz and Brendan worked together to decide what skills and domains each one should have access to proficiency in. Then, they would come up with things that a touchstone character had done, or that the core implied they should be able to do, and used those for abilities. In addition, some moves contrast the core ideas, like the Exorcist’s “Deal with the Devil” ability; these ones are intended to follow Rufus Roswell’s thoughts on “introducing good tension and good contrast and good conflict into tabletop design.” Fathom also has zenith moves, moves where using them signals an end to your character’s arc. For these, Guz wrote down a set of three potential endings for each, making sure they all fit but were very different, and would only work on the mechanics when all three were done.

 

      Notably, players are encouraged by the rules to make up their own zenith moves if none of them fit. According to Guz, this reflects one of their design goals for Fathom: “we really wanted the depths of Fathom to be unknowable even to us, and the only way to do that is to like, encourage people to make it themselves.” Fathom also includes a guide to making your own fallouts, conditions that might apply when you take too much stress. The idea is that by making their own fallouts, GMs will become more comfortable making the game their own in other ways, like making up their own moves or monsters. I would say he succeeded in this, considering that in the game of Fathom I ran, I did end up making my own anchor ability for a player whose character got a protégé.

 

      Guz’s insight into how he makes games, and Fathom in particular, was very elucidating. I am an aspiring game designer myself, and knowing how he went about making this game will surely help me. It could also help you, if you decided to try your hand at it, or you could just try out Fathom for yourself; it's a great game.