Interview: Jonathan Tweet

Unknown Stranger: I am a mammalian sentience, an intentional construct manifesting in a primate body.

GG: Well, hopefully you're also Jonathan Tweet--but I ain't so sure now! (laughs)

Give our readers a short (or long) list of your writing credits of the past and present

JT: Mark Rein*Hagen and I founded the company Lion Rampant and wrote the RPG Ars Magica, which debuted in 1987. That game was an attempt to do wizards right; to simulate everything with a single, intuitive mechanic; and to make it easy to create rich characters and tell meaningful stories. It's currently being published and supported by Atlas Games. Lion Rampant's first product, however, was Whimsy Cards, an accessory for any RPG. They're a free-form tool that players use to enrich the plot. Last I heard, they were being published by 3GG.

One product that I conceived for Lion Rampant was the "Jump Start Kit," an adventure designed to make it really simple to run and play your first session of Ars Magica. It represents the first in the long line of my attempts to make games easier to learn.

I left Lion Rampant and wound up writing Over the Edge with the help of Robin D. Laws. That game is low on rules and high on weirdness. John Nephew and I also designed a TCG based on OtE, called On the Edge. Both games are published by Atlas Games.

I also free lanced various projects for TSR, Atlas Games, Wizards, and Avalon Hill. I even revised the Talislanta RPG for Wizards, a project that foreshadowed my later work on the D&D game.

After I hired on at Wizards, I did EVERWAY, a game that essentially uses images and symbols in place of math. Boy, did that bomb. If there is one mistake I've made in the last ten years, it was encouraging Wizards to force EVERWAY down the throats of the distributors. They bought more than they could sell and turned around and dumped them, which gave everyone the impression that the game wasn't selling.

The EVERWAY bit was a tremendous fiasco, but I made it up to Wizards with Portal, a new approach to teaching people Magic.

And when Wizards bought TSR, I started working on D&D projects and wound up the lead designer on the 3rd Ed. D&D game. It's a strange world.

GG: How did you come up with OVER THE EDGE?

JT: My goal with Over the Edge was to destroy the karmic link between cause and effect, thereby liberating consciousness from linear time and logic. The "self," as a 4-dimensional virtual entity, can only exist in linear time, or causality, so undoing cause and effect frees consciousness from the shackles of the "self" concept, which was invented by the priest-kings of Atlantis as a means to control the human mind.

When I designed OtE, I had for years spent my gaming time playtesting Ars Magica and various other for-publication projects. Having found my "true calling" as a seller of mutual funds, I thought I was through with my pro gaming days, and I just wanted an RPG to play with my friends. In fact, I wanted the game to be unpublishable. I designed the game as too weird and too vulgar for print. Also, I was pretty tired of teaching Ars Magica rules to people and (worse) telling them that their character concepts didn't fit the setting; so OtE has dirt-simple rules and a setting that you don't have to know before you start playing, a setting where very few character concepts don't fit.

A lot of the tone and imagery in OtE was inspired by Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Reading that book (pointed out to me by not-yet-pro Robin D. Laws) is what changed my general desire for a personal RPG into the real deal. There's a good bit of Philip K. Dick in there, too.

On another level, OtE is a secret message to peers. Its surface content--conspiracies, weird science, racial creation myths, etc.--is a cover meant to attract the attention of peers and mislead outsiders. I'm not sure what the message is, but it seems to be transmitting successfully to certain individuals.

GG: Favorite food while gaming?

JT: Beer. Is that a food? Does poison count as food? If you're talking about something you actually have to chew, it would be the Great God-King of Food. (If you don't know the Sacred Name of the Great God-King of Foods, then I'm not going to profane the Name by sharing it with an infidel.)

GG: Hey, I know what the Sacred Name to the Great God-King of Food is--really, I do!

What are some of your future projects, or is D&D 3E taking up all of your time?

JT: The 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons game is taking up more than all of my time. I also kibitz on beginner products, any game designed to be played by people who aren't hobby gamers--yet. Wizards is in a strong position to bring new people into the hobby gaming field, and we're serious about taking advantage of that position. So am I, personally.

And, I swear by God Almighty that I shall have a web site. Really. Any day now. And it will be interactive.

GG: Good luck on the website!

GenCon will be moving in 2003. Any thoughts on the subject?

JT: The day I can't wander away from a GenCon party in the middle of the night, go into George Webb, and have a greasy hamburger and a bowl of 1-star chili will be a sad day. I've been going to GenCon since 1987, ever since Lion Rampant had its first product for sale, so there are a lot of memories tied to Milwaukee for me. But change is fun, too. It will be exciting to check out a new city, to find the good restaurants and bars, and to see some new things.

GG: If you had to be reincarnated as an animal, what animal would you choose?

JT: Your question doesn't make and sense to me because it presupposes an experiencing self separate from the body. I can only take the question to mean "Which animals seem to have the most fun?"

A human. Humans rule.

Do you mean an animal other than a human? I'd go with elephant. They're smart, they're social, and they pretty much don't have to run away from anything.

I wouldn't want to be a bird. We imagine flying to be a joy, but birds don't fly unless they're scared, hungry, or compelled by some other need. A raptor in captivity, for example, won't fly except for food. It must be a lot of work, because they don't do it for fun. And once birds make it to an island where there aren't any mammals, they give up flying altogether--dodos, kiwis, ground parrots, penguins. Flying to a bird is like thinking to a human: you don't do it unless you have to.

Or maybe I'd like to be a gorilla. I'd develop sentience, establish verbal communication with the humans, star in my own prime time show, and become a multi-millionaire.

GG: Cool!

What is your favorite game to play, and why?

JT: Master and slave. "Why?"? Why not?

If you're talking _tabletop_ RPGs, the 3rd Ed D&D game is my favorite game. I'm running an excellent campaign for fun. Before I starting working on the project, I hadn't DMed the D&D game for fun since '81. I never even got the DMG because I had quit DMing D&D before it came out. But the new streamlined game mechanics pretty much give me what I want in a mechanical RPG, and working on the project makes it more exciting rather than less. I've generally played for fun whatever game it is that I've been working on, whether that was Netrunner, Magic, D&D 3rd Ed, or that other project that I can't tell you about.

GG: Secret Project, eh? Sweet!

Rumor has it Hasbro is interested in bringing back BIRTHRIGHT. Do you confirm or deny this rumor?

JT: I honestly don't know. I'm not well-connected to the rumor mill. I didn't even know that GenCon was moving until you asked me. But I can tell you that Hasbro is pretty much letting Wizards chart its own course.

GG: So, you admit to the conspiracy?!

JT: Sure, but the conspiracy you're thinking of is just a cover for the real conspiracy.

GG: Then that means...How does the future of gaming look, and who is to blame or thank?

JT: Right now, all around the world, little kids are learning that you can play a game about imaginary creatures that fight each other, that each creature has a different number of hit points and a unique array of attacks, and that you use math to determine which monsters win. They're playing the Pokémon TCG, but they're learning the basic ideas behind RPGs. With Wizards' commitment to introductory products and a hobby game like the Pokémon TCG hitting the mass market, we're going to see a big increase in tabletop hobby gaming.

I guess I'd thank Richard Garfield for inventing a type of hobby game so insanely profitable that it warrants serious promotion in the mass market.

GG: Speaking of the future, let's take a sneak peek into that mysterious realm.

The Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game for 1999 is here! Who won?

JT: Who's even in the running? Laws's Feng Shui resurfaced in a new edition. Will it be on the ballot, or does it not count as a new game? Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook's Dark-Matter is practically a game, but I guess technically it's a campaign setting. I've never won an Origins Award, so I figure it's all bunk anyway.

My answer to the Origins Award for best RPG is to go to GenCon each year and choose a new RPG (one that wasn't at GenCon the year before) to be my "pick of the con." I don't try to evaluate the new games objectively. Instead, I pick the new RPG that I think I'm most likely to have fun playing. I buy the game and then, over the next year, I play it, and I let people know how it turns out. In '97 I picked Abyss, and it turned out to be so bad that I didn't even run a game. In '98 I picked Unknown Armies, by Greg Stolze and John Tynes (friends of mine, if you must know). It's a game of modern metaphysical strangeness. I played it and liked it. Last year I picked up Obsidian, by Micah Skaritka, and I've had fun with it. It's about spiritual and heavily-armed conflict in an apocalyptic future. The presentation is nearly impenetrable, but there's a lot of cool stuff in the game.

GG: Great advice, Mister Tweet!

Which of the following is NOT a Pokémon?

• A. Jigglypuff
• B. Squirtle
• C. Frodo
• D. Pikachu

JT: What does it say about popular consciousness that on the same list we have Frodo, the product of literary and scholarly genius, and Pikachu, the product of marketing genius, and that the guy who was asked that question couldn't answer it?

GG: Not only that, but Regis got the source material wrong!

Speaking of Pokémon, it's time for CELEBRITY DEATHMATCH!

In the arena is Master of the Word Count--Steve Long! But looking for a victory is the master of Suppressed Transmissions, Ken Hite! Both are masters of their trade, but only ONE can win! Who would win, and how?

JT: Steve Long and Ken Hite face off across the ring, and an elder servitor of authority tells them to "Get it on." The two circle each other tentatively, but suddenly delusion falls like scales from their eyes.

"What unholy god or devil could set us against each other," exclaims Hite, "to fight and die for its amusement?"

"We who should be brothers," states Long, "should not raise hand against one another for the malignant entertainment of some higher, ineffable power."

"Let us join hands and defy our unseen Master," says Hite. Hite and Long clasp hands, and a giant bare foot comes down out of the clouds and smashes them for not doing what their Author intended.

GG: HA HA HA HA HA! Poor Steve and Ken!

If you had to be asked a question, what would it be and how would you answer?

JT: "Q. How do you feel about Magic being an official mind sport for the masses?"

"A. I'm glad. Just about anything we can do to help China manage a peaceful transition to democracy is worthwhile."

Or

"Q. You said you had a fun D&D campaign. Can you tell us about it?"

"A. The PCs are 6th and 7th-level crusaders who are part of a massive holy war to reconquer their ancestral, divinely granted homeland, which fell a hundred years ago to armies and monsters faithful to the world's evil god.

No one who knows my work should be surprised to hear that issues of cultural persepctive, religion, custom, tradition, and social status are built into the background. Still, it's got a lot of die-rolling action along with the cultural, role-playing stuff. My players can attest to how scary it is to face orc barbarians wielding their dreaded double-headed battleaxes"

Or

"Q. What's so special about RPGs anyway?"

"A. In a world where multinational corporations vie to turn your mind into a vector for their logos, RPGs are a bastion of individual creative self-expression."

GG: Any CRUEL advice for those wanting to enter the Gaming Industry?

JT: Sure. "Quit your day job and start your own company!" Now that's cruel.

GG: Thanks for your time, Jonathan! Any final word before we cast you back into the Nine Hells?

JT: Thanks for the attention, and may you roll a natural 20 when it really counts.