Interview with Emily Whitaker: author of Ladies of Market Street

Today we bring you an interview with independent comic book author Emily Whitaker. She will be unveiling the story behind her latest creation of Ladies of Market Street, a comic about “crime-fighting hookers”.

The comic is out for sale through amazon and you can find it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N37BQ3T

You can also follow Emily on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ee_whit

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So Emily, please tell us… We know you and Trey met at a local art show, and that is how you two managed to pull this off, because of your cool skills were like peanut butter and jam…But how did you come up with something as remarkable as crime fighting hookers?!

This is actually a story that has been with me for years now.  I elude to the fact that the Ladies are also Real-Estate agents.  I get into more of this in the next issue.  But they use the vacant apartments for parties and to entertain their Johns and such things!  And it is that Real-Estate Agency that first gave birth to this strange story.  In 2003 I worked at a Real-Estate agency in New York and all the people were young artists.  We would use the vacant apartments for everything… if we needed a bathroom, a place to change, or some privacy!!!  My roommate was in love with an apartment on the upper east side that wouldn’t sell because they were asking too much.  So every Sunday she would go there to paint because the sun would come through the windows just right!  I wrote our story at first, but it was about that time that I was coming face to face with facts of human trafficking throughout the world and in the city.  The only way I knew to fight it was to write about it.  And to create women who were strong enough and savvy enough to truly fight something so heinous.  So I put pen to paper and got to create these amazing women and  fight the war the only way I knew how.  It is a serious subject, but while I was writing it I felt I wanted to be friends with these women.  And that is the joy I hope my readers have as well.

‘ARTHUR LIVES!’ New FATE RPG Book Interview with Jason Tondro

Manaburnt talks with lead designer Jason Tondro from Fainting Goat Games about their new FATE RPG book (releasing next week) ‘Arthur Lives’! A game about swords, sorcery and… punk rock?

In Arthur Lives! characters take on the role of a reincarnated court of King Arthur brought into the modern urban world. The twist? The olde heroes have been reborn into multiple new lives- at the same time! Will your Arthur prove his heroic destiny? Or will the pretenders take your spotlight?

Arthur lives is built on the FATE tabletop system and is driven by decisions and storytelling putting a fascinating new spin on the everyday world. The project is currently in its last week on Kickstarter and you can find it here:

And if tabletop RPG’s are your jam and you’re into playing FATE, Icons, Mutants & Masterminds, D&D and more… check out Fainting Goat Games catalogue over on the DriveThru for all your tabletop needs!

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/3915/Fainting-Goat-Games

Interview with Burning Games: Creators of FAITH RPG

So today we bring you a lovely chat we had with the guys at Burning Games! You all know them, don’t you? I mean you probably have been eyes-wide open looking out for their new Kickstarter: the Faith RPG core book!! In case you didn’t know, and you are new to this, then let me give you a pointer…

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/burninggames/faith-the-sci-fi-rpg-core-book-miniatures?ref=datkhu

 

In any case, the team at Burning Games took some time out of their super busy schedule to share some stuff with us so we could share it with you. So here it is. We hope you enjoy it, and we hope that you support them in their next amazing enterprise, because it’s gonna rock! 🙂

 

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-This may sound like a bizarre question, but what was first, the egg or the chicken? And with that I mean FAITH or Ether Wars? We are all aware that obviously FAITH came out first. But during the creation process, while you guys were working things out, were there things that perhaps have actually become part of Ether Wars that you originally designed for FAITH or vice versa? We appreciate circumstances sometimes do not allow for projects to work at the speed one would like them to. Was Ether Wars in that case very much a spin-off FAITH, or was there some overlap/parallel creation, or even backwards creative process.

 

Actually the story in this one is a bit different. Ether Wars is published by us, but we are not the game designers. Such honor belongs to Álvaro and Javier, two friends who tried to fund Ether Wars on Kickstarter on 2015, but sadly didn’t make it. We met them at a local convention in Santander, Spain, and fell in love with the game. We thought it would be a great idea to try to bring it to crowdfunding again, and take advantage of everything we had learnt with our past experience. Thus, Ether Wars and Faith have nothing in common lore-wise.

We did entertain the idea of making the game canon, changing its lore to make it fit within the Faith universe, but we abandoned the proposition. There will be board games based on Faith, but they will be custom-made. Corball will likely be the first one.

 

-How does one jump from and RPG to a board game? For many of us perhaps the connection is obvious, and many board game players are also into RPGs, but it is not necessarily a natural connection. So what actually drove you to want to make first and rpg, then a board game? And did the experience of your first project help to create a clearer path for the later? Are there any specific issues you had with FAITH that you tried to avoid at all costs with Ether Wars?

When we first entertained the idea of creating a games company some years ago, it was crystal clear for us that we wanted to do all sorts of games: board games, roleplaying games, and even video games. FAITH happened to be the idea that was most developed and in which we saw the highest potential, and decided it would be our first project. That’s why Ether Wars was a very important Kickstarter campaign for us: if it were successful, it would bring us a step closer to being a real game publisher, and not just “the guys who did FAITH.”

 

The two Faith Kickstarters had a big impact on how we handled the Ether Wars campaign. We’ve learnt how to communicate with our backers, how to contact the press, and how to deal with manufacturers. And yet we did so many things that we’d like to improve! It’s an ongoing learning process, and one that we are immensely enjoying.

 

There’s one thing that we keep struggling with: currency exchange rates. Twice in a row we’ve been hit by drastic shifts in the currency markets, the latest one thanks to the Brexit. With a very delicate political situation everywhere, it seems that we’ll have to include these potential issues in our plans. You can’t be too careful!

Interview with James Masino – Artist for War.Co

Okay guys, so we already presented you the amazing Brandon Rollins and War.Co the game ( https://manaburnt.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/interview-with-brandon-rollins-creator-of-war-co/ ) … Now it is only fair you meet the man behind the pen and all the rad art work. Pleased to meet you; James Masino!

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-Thank you for speding some time talking with us James, we really appreciate it as we know you are super busy drawing away like a mad man. So if you wouldn’t mind, to start with, could you tell our readers about what drove you to drawing: why did you choose this path, and how have you pursued your education: courses, experiences, self teaching etc.

I think what’s interesting about this path, is that I didn’t initially choose it. I went to a technical college before going to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) for an accelerated degree in Animation and Concept Development. What I didn’t anticipate was that the “Concept Development” part meant being trained for digital artwork for the creation of concept art. Up to that point, I barely drew at all! Learning it can be summed up by practice, and tremendous failure at first. I even had a teacher sit me down once and tell me to focus on 3D Animation over the Concept Art just because I wasn’t having much success with it. Doing it over and over and over again is what got me to where I am now, and 90% of it was on my own time through self-teaching and practice outside of class.

-Where do you get your inspiration from? Do you have any artists that you admire and do they impact your work?

Interview with Brandon Rollins: Creator of War. Co

Happy Birthday to us 🙂 First of all we would like to thank all of our followers, readers and fans for their support over the last year. It has been truly wonderful and we owe you big time. So for that purpose, we have got in touch with some cool people we know…And today we bring you our own very interview with game developer Brandon Rollins!! In case you are not acquainted with the man, Brandon is the amazing game developer of the card game War Co. We met over Twitter, and we have built a relation with him over the last year. He is a super funny guy, and very committed to his project, always willing to chat with other people about games.

About War.Co what you need to know is that this is competitive card deck game, where you win by running your opponent out of cards. There are different decks you can get to build your game. You can find Brandon’s game here http://warcothegame.com/pre-order/ or through the KickStarter site: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1357102631/war-co-expandable-card-game-0

And now, what you actually want to read about: Brandon, himself and his project.

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Tell us Brandon, why board games? What made you want to be a game developer and how did this all begin?

The earliest version of War Co. goes back to when I was 11 years old and watching Yu-Gi-Oh! on TV. I created my own game based on how I thought TCGs worked based on the TV show.

I’ve had a fascination with games since I was very young, but serious game development is something I only got into recently. I asked myself “why don’t I finish what I started a long time ago?” As heretical as it sounds, getting into modern board games was actually a result of being a designer first, not the other way around. Believe me, I was stunned at just how incredible the board game community has become in the last decade!