Last Arisia, I met up with a fellow author, fiber artist, and all around interesting individual who also is creating a game incubator. They were talking about this project online, and I happened to see a post about the game’s character creation process. It struck me that this would be an excellent way to create a character for a novella I was working on, but it also seemed like a cool game that I might want to try out in the future. Through my contact, I asked the team to come on the blog to talk about their project. They are just two weeks out from launching a Kickstarter, so go drop them a follow (info at the bottom) and see what they’ve got going on!
Q (Infamous Scribbler): Querent seems to be in the beginning stages of the project. Can you tell me a bit about what the project is going to be, and where you are in the process?
A (Querent Team): Querent has actually been in development since about February. It started out as an independent class project for Kayla and Mish, with the intent to get enough of a proof of concept that we could start developing it into something that could be on Kickstarter.
Now we are working on developing a full roleplaying game with tarot cards. We’ve completed our personality creation spread, and we have plans down the line to create a secondary background spread for players who want to go even more in-depth into developing their characters. Right now we are working on story generation spreads. We have one that outlines a story, and another that follows the Hero’s Journey structure for storytelling. We’ve tested all of these but are looking forward to developing them more in-depth!
We hope to make a roleplaying game that gives players and GMs the freedom to tell a story, and keep a story moving, without having to juggle stats or roll dice. Everything is narrative-based and story-driven, while still allowing for freedom from the players. Currently, we are working on creating content and testing our different “spreads” so we can revise and adapt for the final product.
As far as art goes, Amila’s current process is contributing to the design and layout of our book, as well as creating any other assets needed by our designers. A stretch goal for us is to create a custom deck of tarot cards that is unique to Querent, but that’s a very time and labor intensive project for our artist so she’ll either be chipping away at it slowly throughout the school year, or if a grant Amila applied for is approved, then she’ll get to work on it as a part time job and complete it much more quickly!
Q: In the world of tabletop games, what makes Querent unique? What might seem familiar to tabletop gamers?
A: Querent is unique in a number of ways! Our biggest difference is the fact that we use tarot cards instead of dice. Tarot cards are subjective and we use them to create a random, yet personal experience as the players get to interpret for themselves what the cards mean. Using cards helps to make sure that every experience is unique but that the player still has flexibility to interpret their cards as they wish.
We still want to incorporate familiar elements, like character sheets and the whole character creation process, and we also want to incorporate campaigns / campaign generating and a way for players to handle and play through encounters that isn’t reliant on dice rolls. We want it to have enough familiar elements that players of other tabletop roleplaying games can pick it up quickly.
Q: What are/were some of the personal challenges in creating this project?
Kayla: The game itself has been the easier part for me, because we have had a pretty clear vision of what we wanted it to be from the start. What’s been hard has been getting on the path to put this game onto Kickstarter. There’s so many new skills (like social media, marketing, business, finance) that we’re having to learn–we’re basically starting our own small business! There is so much logistical information to learn and to sort out and there’s still work to be done before our Kickstarter campaign in October.
Mish: The biggest personal challenges that came up mostly came from the fact that Querent wasn’t our full time jobs over the summer. We all had other jobs/internships which we had to prioritize, so simply having time to complete the project was a challenge. We had to adjust the amount of work we promised to do so that it would fit our busy lives! Overall, though, this has been one of the smoothest projects that I have ever worked on, and I really have to thank the rest of the team for that.
Amila: We’ve managed really well to work remotely together so far, but going into the school year I could see that being a challenge. We’re all pretty good at communicating though so we’d just have to make sure to continue that.
Q: What are/have been some of the personally satisfying moments in creating the game?
Kayla: For me, some of the early playtests of the game were hugely satisfying. They let Mish and I know that we really had something with this game idea and that we needed to develop it further and past just a class project. This was really inspiring and whenever we test we get at least a few people that really enjoy our game.
Mish: Testing, by far, has been most rewarding. Although we are obviously had a lot of changes to make, people seemed to genuinely enjoy playing our game, and that’s always good to see! Right from the beginning, we knew were onto something based on the response from testers.
Amila: Seeing people’s excitement for our game on social media and during QA testing.
Q: When people are playing this game, what do you hope they will get from it? How is the experience designed to give them that experience?
A: We want the player to get an experience that really seems unique to them, as if they were “meant” to be part of and connected to the world they are playing in. We want them to get invested in the character they created and the story itself in a way that other game[s] don’t allow. We have designed this through the use of tarot cards. The way that the cards work allow for a degree of randomness in interpretation, but also allows the player to project into the characters what they think the card means, giving them some control over the character and with world without having to come up with all this information from scratch. We really want to help players and GMs create rich experiences.
Q: What’s coming up next for Querent?
A: Right now we are working on an outline spread that would help players create the outline of a campaign that they can play through. As soon as we can get the content done we want to start to test it out with new players as well as GMs/DMs (gamemaster/dungeonmaster) of existing RPGs to see how playable our generated campaigns turn out.
We also have our Kickstarter campaign coming up at the beginning of October!
Q: Anything to add?
A: Thank you, Rachel, for this opportunity! We can’t wait to see how our game can work for you!
If anyone wants to follow our process, you can find and follow us at:
Twitter – @QuerentGame
Instagram – @QuerentGame
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/querentgame
Website – https://querentgame.com/
