oseph McGuire is a game designer, Jand creator of cyberpunk skirmish wargame Reality’s Edge and post- apocalyptic skirmish wargame This Is Not a Test. Interview they know more than me Thanks: Joseph McGuire Design: Angus McNicholl Artwork: Thomas Elliott, taken from Reality’s Edge: CyberpunkSample file Skirmish Rules by PARALLEL WORLDS PARALLEL Joseph McGuire © Osprey Publishing, 2019 4 Hi, Joseph, thanks for taking the time to talk to I love writing up the warband or character Parallel Worlds. Could you tell us a little about and exploring all the options they can take. yourself? Who are you and where are you from? Before hitting the table, I have deep-dived into the game, making it my own. So Reality’s Greetings! Happy to talk about myself, as any Edge focuses on that as one of its main design good self-promoter would. Well, I’ve been a vectors, and players who like that kind of thing miniatures wargamer since 1997. The same are in for a treat. year I discovered a life-changing copy of the Games Workshop product catalogue. I started Another hallmark of my games is that I design as a hardcore GW fanboy, and still am; but around tropes first. Reality’s Edge has every I also discovered historical gaming about a cyberpunk trope you can think of. Drugs, decade ago, and now I am really passionate augmented reality, virtual reality, cyberware, about indie miniatures gaming, which is small a dystopian sprawl setting, katana-wielding companies producing really cool and creative ronins, corporate overreach, and more. My goal games. was not to leave anything off the table. How to mix all of these elements is why the game In real life I am a humble civil servant and took two years to write. married father of one. I do not do this full-time — much as I would love to — but the day job I used my mechanics from This Is Not a Test, affords me the ability to not die of starvation or but I wanted to add hacking and a bit more exposure to the elements. I deeply respect and crunch since I wanted smaller crews of six or envy the game designers who have the drive less models. Of course, I went through like six and creative energy to go full-time. versions of hacking rules and I’m still not 100% happy with implementation. But as it is often Most of the time I’m hanging out with family, said, perfect is the enemy of the good. playing video games, building Lego, or writing various gaming supplements. Sadly, with the How did you go about getting Osprey to publish onset of Covid19, my ability to play games your game? with friends has greatly diminished. Normally publishing works that way, but You wrote Reality’s Edge in 2019, published by I was kind of recruited. Joe McCullough of Osprey. What inspired you to develop the game? Frostgrave fame recommended me to Osprey. Joe and I have circled in the same orbits for a Oh, boy. Reality’s Edge is a beast and getting it while, first as fellow employees of a gaming “Ideas are generally from my head to print was an epic journey. Like store, and then we would meet at various any nerd growing up in the 80s and 90s, I was conventions when he came to the US. Based worthless by themselves. obsessed with cyberpunk. Mondo 2000, the on the success of This Is Not a Test I think they Hacker’s Manifesto, The Sprawl Trilogy, and so saw that I was capable of delivering a game Everyone has them, but on and so on. The game took about two years and they reached out to me to write a science most never act on them. to write, which is standard for me for a book fiction game. I pitched a cyberpunk game to of that size. My inspiration was a mix of the them and the deal was made. A game designer needs original aforementioned source material and cyberpunk roleplaying games like Shadowrun I will say that Osprey was very good to work to produce.” and Cyberpunk. I have a few genres that I with. They asked for 40,000 words and I love, and after I got my first love of the post- delivered 80,000, and they did not balk at too apocalypse out with my first game This Is Not a much. The final book is beautiful, with great art Test, I was mentally ready to tackle cyberpunk. by Thomas Elliott. They were great to partner with. The benefit to working with Osprey is When I write rules I prefer to give players that they handle all the costs, distribution, Sampleoptions. They don’t have to use all those editing assistance,file and start-up promotion. options, and in some ways it can be But despite that I felt them to be pretty hands- counterproductive as you have to mull said off in the sense that I made the book I wanted. WORLDS PARALLEL options before playing — which can be daunting. For me, when playing any game, Reality’s Edge is miniatures line-agnostic; players 5 What are your plans for the future of Reality’s Edge? As of now Osprey has not officially commissioned any new Reality’s Edge supplements, but Reality’s Edge has a future. Lacking any formal Osprey material, I plan to release Reality’s Edge material in the new indie game magazine Blaster, which is a collaboration anthology magazine I am working on with awesome game designers Ash Barker, Joe McCullough, Mike Hutchison, and Sean Sutter, and genius layout maestro Grey Horton. I don’t have a timetable yet, but expect to see more scenarios, more operative types, and probably an urban fantasy expansion with fantasy races and magic — because people like and want that kind of thing! The urban sprawl setting of Reality’s Edge produces some interesting mechanics. I am thinking of the Shadow Backers, Avatars and Crowds, to name but a few. Could you explain some of the differences between Reality’s Edge and a ‘typical’ wargame? Most wargames take place in fairly static environments. By that I mean that, other than the forces of all the players involved, there are no other participants. Reality’s Edge takes place in the Sprawl, a huge cityscape filled with millions of souls. The Sprawl is a can basically use whatever miniatures they like to living, breathing thing. First, you have crowds play the game. How does that affect the way in to contend with. They can slow your models which you approach the design of the game? down, make a great place to blend into, and “I design around tropes they panic. They may even attack if pushed too As I said before I tend to write around tropes. far. I saw this idea first in Gangs of Rome and I I knew that I wanted street samurai, deckers, first.” liked it enough to incorporate a variant into my and so forth. I would say that I had a strong rules. Second, the game has an entire section 90s cyberpunk aesthetic for the game, but dedicated to random non-player characters not an overarching story. I wanted players to or sword would work. I wanted players that could show up. From chromed-up thrill develop their own Sprawls and place them to design their own aesthetic, and by not killers and drunk salarymen to street gangers wherever they wanted. I gave enough world having a particular miniatures set, players and corporate security — the reviled CORSEC. depth to explain why the world is the way it can dive right in with miniatures they is and the basics technology-wise, but I left already have or choose just the right ones Another unique characteristic is how the game everything else up to the players. that match their cyberpunk visions. As handles hacking. You have your standard for official miniatures, I do have a small deckers that can hack local networks or I’ve long been a fan of agnostic miniatures range I am working on — but even they anything physical they can see they can see. games, asSample what a sprawl ronin should are fairly generic in a sense. There are not But the gamefile also has a virtual component. look like to me may not be the same to a lot of corporate-style models out there, You have a remote hacker called the Shadow PARALLEL WORLDS PARALLEL someone else. My version mirrors the so I wanted to have some nicely-dressed Backer who is following the crew around Oni-masked sword-wielder in the book’s hackers, street ronin, and so on. in cyberspace. The game assumes that art, but honestly any model with a gun cyberspace closely models the real world, as 6 “When I write rules I prefer to give players options.” cyber architects are a lazy bunch and are not likes of Joe McCullough or Mark Latham, but What are you reading at the moment? going to model the local virtual space into to be successful you have to write. There is no anything fancy. They are going to replicate real right answer on how simple or complex your I just finished Peace Talks in the Dresden life and call it a day. This allows us to introduce first set of rules has to be, or even what genre; series by Jim Butcher. I also have a rotating virtual models onto the board, as the virtual but you have to have an idea, put it to paper, shortlist of gaming books that I read for fun and the real will mirror each other.