Interview 2 with CTRO of Glumdark - The New and the Book

We’re just happy that anyone gives a shit about what we’re doing, because we’d be doing the exact same thing either way.

Follow up interview with Glumdark after initial interview with CTRO and McGlintlock of Glumdark in 2022.

Q&A with CTRO of Glumdark

Glumdark is a site of generators for grim fantasy, and has expanded into Space and Cyberpunk. Many generators are minimalist, and some have expanded content for paid members.

We start with what's new, then space and cyberpunk, the glumdark book, organising a kickstarter and where to start with Glumdark. Among other things.

Disclaimer: I'm an affiliate for DriveThru RPG.

What's new since the first interview?

(Initial interview with CTRO and McGlintlock of Glumdark in 2022).

I’ve done a lot of traveling and a lot of charcoal drawing. I was lucky enough to explore some old abandoned castles in eastern Europe.

Evenings, I’ve just been working on the Glumdark book. It has required a ton of research and design work but it’s been a joy the whole way. I’ve done some linocut prints (wikipedia link), illustrations, lots of writing and layout, written some InDesign scripts to programmatically modify text placement, and so much more.

This has meant a bit less time sunk into the Glumdark website, though I appreciate the continued support and patience of our Patrons.

We’ve done some quality of life stuff to the website though, including vastly improving the mobile experience and removing a bunch of annoying crud. And of course we’re always writing new tables.

What made you want to expand into Space and Cyber?

Playing those games, and hearing interest from our Patrons and friends. Also, the releases of the fantastic Vast Grimm and Cy Borg games.

I also played through a couple of sessions of the Alien RPG and thought it would be cool to expand those kinds of rule sets outside of the Alien universe.

I’m hoping to start a big Vast Grimm campaign, once we pivot away from the book and start writing more space tables.

How has your own gaming been going in last couple years?

Pretty good! I started a new seafaring campaign which has required tons of crunching to figure out how provisions can be handled. Plus it’s a lot of character downtime, so the players can think a lot about what their characters are training on and improving while they’re sailing.

It’s a lot more overhead than any other campaign I’ve run, but it allows me to introduce wild ocean encounters and seaside towns and ghost pirates and massive world events.

Figuring out rules for things like ship-to-ship combat has been a bit of a struggle. And as a DM, it’s always nice when players arrive in a town or dungeon and things get a little more linear and contained again–both in terms of time and space.

So there are trade-offs, but it’s been fun.

What's this Glumdark Book I've heard about?

It’s a book of content from the Glumdark website that’s been upgraded, expanded and rewritten. And it’s fully illustrated by Vil, who has done a lot of the work for the Glumdark website as well as some really amazing work outside of our camp on stuff like Forbidden Psalm.

The book is over 140 pages, with over 50 random tables and some original fiction writing to build out the world of Glumdark. We’re launching the Kickstarter soon! Details can be found at glumdark.com/book. (date unconfirmed!)

I mentioned a bit about this before, but it’s been a really sprawling effort. I’m currently working with some printers to figure out whether we might be able to do some kind of wild stuff for the deluxe edition. Fingers crossed there.

What's the experience been like of organising a kickstarter?

Definitely that old expression of building the plane mid-flight. I hadn’t had any experience with Kickstarter campaigns and I’ve had to totally learn as I go. Luckily, there have been some really helpful folks in the TTRPG space who have provided feedback. There’s a lot to learn and best practices are kind of spread across many different blog posts and many different peoples’ brains.

Self-promotion is always an uncomfortable thing for us, but this has been a lot of just advertising the Glumdark website and giving people a feel for what we do. While at the same time, we’re promoting the Kickstarter pre-launch page so that folks can get a sense of what the book will contain.

It’s been a great learning experience and I also won’t mind when it’s over.

If someone was new to Glumdark, which tool should they check out?

It’s become pretty clear to us recently that the less-is-more generators that we’ve built really strike a chord with people. If someone wanted to get a sense of who we are, and our sense of humor and play, I would recommend that they check out:

A Life in Three Acts and Normal People

While everything we do is system-agnostic, these tables go beyond that. They could be used in absolutely any way you see fit: for PCs or NPCs or just for general inspiration.

If you wanted to start with something that’s more immediately playable, I’d check out the Location Generators, such as A Sinister Sepulchre.

What's your favourite tool/tables (made by others) from the last 2 years?

We’re still huge fans of everything that Watabou does. Perilous Shores is amazing.

Because I’m interested in what other folks have done similar to the Glumdark Book, I recently picked up Knave 2.0 and Into the Wyrd & Wild and really appreciated what both had to offer.

What's planned after the book?

Rest.

And then the plan is to continue writing tables for space.glumdark.com and maybe see about writing a Glumdark Space book in a year or so. But we’ll see how much satisfaction comes from releasing this one.