This is the first part in a series of interviews with the content developers of Nevermet Press. Think of them as a little ‘getting to know you’ session for those of you out there who are curious about the people behind the Nevermet Press. Feel free to ask any additional questions in the comments section of this post.
Interview by Matt Lichtenwalner
Dennis “Wyatt Salazar” Santana is no stranger to blogging about games and developing them. He’s been avidly blogging at Turbulent Thoughts, and developing the Spirits of Eden Campaign Setting for over four years. Dennis’ contribution to Nevermet Press has recently been to The Hidden Kingdom Adventure Setting, due out in early October.
NMP: Do you have any other projects outside NMP that you’re currently working on?
WS: The Spirits of Eden campaign setting, the Not An Acronym D6 system and the Copper Coins! system.
NMP: Tell us more about these. Are they projects you’re doing on your own? How long have you been working on them? Is there somewhere we should go if we want more information?
WS: The Spirits of Eden is my homebrew game world. I’ve been working on it since 2006 or so offline and from 2008-2010 online. It’s based a lot on India and Asia but has some particulars of contemporary thought (one of the nations is a democracy that considers itself more progressive than anyone else a la USA, and it has a sort of 1980s US-Russian relations vibe with another nation). The world is also very highly religious – small deities called Spirits are just as numerous as the people and animals, and interact on a daily basis with the mortal races. It’s based on Shinto mythology, Animism and Hinduism.
It started off as being for D&D 4e but I of late have gone on a project to disassociate the core “fluff” of the setting from D&D 4e to make it a system neutral setting, usable with any generic RPGs you like. So things like halflings, tieflings and dragonborn were retconed out. Humans, elves and dwarves exist, but aside from dwarves (because I think they’re cool) they’re all mostly extinct and the world doesn’t belong to them.
I still keep a page of D&D 4e classes, powers and race stats on the site though.
I’ve worked on the setting on my own, with others sometimes giving me feedback on this or that aspect. My web site spiritsofeden.com has all of my current work. Part of the reason I made the site was to give me motivation to expand my work on the setting. I’ve managed to do from 2008-2010 twenty or thirty times as much work as I did from 2006-2008 offline.
NAA D6 is my attempt to create a generic, flexible system. It uses a lot of mechanisms I like – skill-based point buy characters, powers that are abstract but have a decent depth of mechanics to them, bell curve roll under. I wanted a system that is flexible and has a good set of rules without having too many rules. I feel like a lot of gamers out there are shifting towards the extremes, either rules light or rules heavy. I do play some rules heavy games like GURPS, but I don’t prefer them. At the same time, most rules-light games I’ve played bore me. I’m trying to hit a middle ground here. Ultimately I want to make a game that I can rely on to play.
It’s currently undergoing a big overhaul as I move from what’s on the site, to the “2.0″ I’m working on offline right now. I decided to use everything I’ve learned so far from versions 1.0-1.6 to start a whole new document, without a bunch of added-on incremental changes. The game has its own page on spiritsofeden.com. Everything on the site is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works.
I also recently started to work on an RPG called Copper Coins! which is my fantasy heartbreaker basically. I wanted to make a D20 RPG but I just didn’t like the D20 system. So instead I’m making an RPG that uses D20s (and d6s, and d4s, and d8s) without actually using the D20 system. It’s not D&D, but it is about fantasy, and all its aspects. Particularly I wanted to focus on resource management and the idea of a dungeon crawl as an expedition – something you have to plan, make subsequent trips, and take your time doing. Rather than in and out, seven encounters, pop powers, heal up, beat the bad guy, get out in one sitting. Though it’s going to be pretty flexible, so you can do that if you want. You don’t even really need a lot of fights. It could just be one or two. Or even none. I have some articles on the site where I discuss stuff about it. They’re under their own category.
NMP: Tell us more about these weird, vibrant ideas. Can you give us an example or seven? Why do you think that we don’t find them more in other forms of media?
WS: A lot of eastern stuff I’ve seen is unafraid to be whimsical. I always cite the Touhou Project series of shoot ‘em up games. Those games have such a quirky take on mythology that it makes them, and the various media spin-offs such as the mangas, so vibrant and energetic to read and think about. Particularly in RPGs, a lot of worlds are dark, cynical, particularly because they’re based on the medieval fantasy Europe of D&D. The wilderness is a horrible place full of monsters and savage humanoids. From Japanese games and media, like colorful JRPGs, I draw inspiration for worlds that are more habitable and safe while still having adventurous potential. The wilderness is mysterious, but it has mysterious beauty as well as mysterious danger. It has mysterious wisdom as well as mysterious malice. The Spirits of Eden for example is my attempt to make a world that has problems and potential for adventure, but it’s also more orderly and developed, it isn’t overwhelmingly populated by horrible monsters, savage humanoids and “here be dragons” spots everywhere in the map like say, the D&D 4th Edition implied setting is. In that kind of setting you can step out of the village and wander into a forest and get attacked by owlbears or goblins nigh-immediately, which I guess is a good excuse to have monsters to massacre everywhere. I try not to do the “points of light” thing – the wilderness can be fickle, but it isn’t destructive. That’s something I picked up from more light-hearted fantasy, that I find is a bit more common to Japanese and Korean stuff. That’s not say it’s EXCLUSIVE to these media – it’s just where I, personally, picked up these vibes.
NMP: Who is your greatest role model? What earns them that high regard?
WS: My father is, because he has the stones to just do stuff, do what needs to be done and do it right and not care about your opinion. He never quits. Yet he does it in a very graceful manner so you don’t know you’re being dismissed, but rather educated.
