Designer interviews #7: Chris McDowall
Added 2025-07-02 09:53:59 +0000 UTCAnother Quinns Quest review, another instance of me dropping an interview just beforehand that reveals what the game is. 🤫
Quinns Quest Season 2, Episode 2, is a SPRAWLING review of Chris McDowell's svelte TTRPG Mythic Bastionland. Having now spent a month writing, filming and editing my video, I have a dozen other questions I wished I'd asked Chris in this phone call. He's the design equivalent of a Greek philosopher king, and I want to get blasted on wine with him at the agora and just see what he can teach me.
Ah well! In this interview Chris teases that one of his next projects will be Intergalactic Bastionland, riffing on venerable RPG Traveller, and that'll be a great reason to have him back on the show.
Happy publish day, folks!
-- Quinns
Comments
I'd ordered a couple of ttrpgs after discovering Quinn's Quest (Heart and Slugblasters) while looking for Triangle Agency content, but hearing the stripped back and lean rules of mythic bastionland was the first to make me go "Ok I _need_ this". Having nearly finished reading the book I did find the rules confusingly laid out at times as a ttrpg novice (my experience is a handful of d&d and Cthulhu that were fun but didn't really inspire me and felt clunky), but the example play at the back of the book is really when they started gelling for me. Highly recommend people read that section when learning, it really drew the genius simplicity of the rules into sharp focus
FishInBlack
2026-03-19 02:17:53 +0000 UTCWhat an awesome interview. I so appreciate that you are doing it and then embed bits and peaces of them into the final review. This adds so mach heart and character!
Oleksandr
2025-09-06 11:24:18 +0000 UTCGreat to see a GLOG callout. It's my favourite nebulous, distributed RPG system/scene/style/quasi-community.
Bismuth Bronze Hume Device
2025-08-31 16:56:28 +0000 UTCChecks notes... Graham Walmsley Luke Gearing Gavin Norman (in some important ways, less so in others) Grant Howitt Christopher Taylor Emmy Allen Just off the top of my head. We've got a pretty cool homegrown scene!
Ads
2025-07-08 06:43:44 +0000 UTCI'm glad I got to listen to this interview of the last good British RPG designer!
Nick Wakim-Takaki
2025-07-08 03:28:46 +0000 UTCThanks for spotlighting these! And these interesting interviews!
TJ Kotzé
2025-07-07 07:34:17 +0000 UTC
