Greetings again Variants, and welcome to another Meet Your Makers! We have another interview with the wonderful CobblePath Games of Locus fame to share with you. Check out the previous Meet Your Maker interview by clicking here! This time, the game setting is much less scary and significantly funnier with Stacks of Goblins. I asked our friends at Cobblepath Games some questions about the upcoming release and here’s what they had to say!
Rory: We really enjoyed Locus here at Variant Ventures. What was the creative process that led from that game to this one?
Jack: Well while we’re still making stories and supplements for Locus there’s not much need for us to be producing more things along that conceptual angle. Sometimes we need a bit of a change to pace and to get away from the gloom and fear of the Locus projects. Stacks of Goblins really came about mostly over a hazy weekend I barely remember though, a few sparks connected in my head and then I had the bones of the game.
Jack: Well while we’re still making stories and supplements for Locus there’s not much need for us to be producing more things along that conceptual angle. Sometimes we need a bit of a change to pace and to get away from the gloom and fear of the Locus projects. Stacks of Goblins really came about mostly over a hazy weekend I barely remember though, a few sparks connected in my head and then I had the bones of the game.
Rory: What was your favorite part of creating Stacks of Goblins?
Jack: Oh that’s an interesting one, I really enjoyed making pretty much all of the game actually, but I’d probably have to say injecting the little details into it. There’s a lot of very small background elements, in the artwork and writing that make me chuckle at the very least. Things like the Goblin Ruler’s pet having an over-the-top aristocratic name but with a ‘No17’ at the end rather than ‘XVII’. Or small details like the fake human face in one of the drawings being a bad drawing on a stick, held by one of the middle goblins. I don’t know how funny readers will think they are, or whether they will be noticed, but they bring me joy at least!
Rory: For Locus, you used Kickstarter for your crowdfunding campaign. What led you to use Itchfunding for Stacks of Goblins?
Jack: Well, there’s a mix of reasons. Primary among them is our desire to move away from Kickstarter. We’ve been looking at this for a while, but their statements suggesting they were interested in integrating crypto and blockchain into their platform really gave us the final push. As many other creators in the space have noted, Kickstarter has skewed how small creators in ttrpgs do business and has an overwhelming presence. Monopolies are never good. This, coupled with, the fact that it isn’t even a platform available to huge amounts of talented creators in countries that are barred from running campaigns means we want to move away from Kickstarter and do what little we can to support and promote alternative platforms and hopefully pull some folks to them.
Rory: Why Goblins? Of the fantasy creatures available for game creation, what drew you to Goblins?
Jack: Well simply, I like Goblins, they are fun to draw and full of character. More in-depth though, it’s because my primary interaction with the ‘things stacked in a trenchcoat’ joke is from Larp, where an ongoing joke about a character I knew was that they were secretly three Goblins in a trenchcoat.
I for one am very excited about this upcoming project, and we hope you are too. Make sure to check out Stacks of Goblins soon!
