Die Another Day

Way back in our first issue we spoke with comic writer, and then nascent RPG designer, Kieron Gillen about his recent comic, DIE, the forthcoming accompanying game and, well, just about everything. It was, as the kids probably said ten years ago, a lot.

The comic told the story of a group of teenagers pulled into a strange new roleplaying game and who emerged years later both bound together a vow of silence and torn apart by what they’d experienced. Decades later, now with all the added joys of midlife, they find themselves back together and back in the world of Die, it was ‘Goth Jumanji’ to use Gillen’s own words. 

3 years later and DIE - The Roleplaying Game is now in our hands too and, we are pleased to say, a triumph. Picking up where the comic left off, the RPG is -besides being a great game- part treatise on the transformative power of play, part deconstruction of fantasy and gaming tropes, part therapy session and everything we wanted from Gillen.

Interested to see if we could keep an interview with Kieron under 10,000 words we tracked him down to find out just how life as a games designer was treating him...

Wyrd Science: DIE was always conceived as both a comic series and RPG, how did exploring one idea through two different mediums work out?  

Kieron Gillen: For a long time, I wasn't sure which was the dog and which was the tail. Eventually, the dog ate its own tail, and became a dog ouroboros. They became different lenses at looking at the same thing, and each illuminates the other. DIE exists outside of both, for everyone, including me. 

That both were being worked on at once had some real interesting effects too - mainly I was thinking about DIE twice as much as I would otherwise. Certain key aspects emerge in one and then jumped to the other. For example, the truth about the Fallen was born from me wanting to avoid player elimination in the game.

WS: And how recognisable is the finished game to what you first envisaged, did working with Rowan Rook & Decard change much?

KG: In terms of the journey? The weird thing is that the core of DIE was just there from the first playtest - make up a group of sad people, do a miniature Nordic LARP, drag them into a fantasy world, externalise their inner demons into outer demons and a final meeting with the Master to decide whether to go home or not. 

After that, it's all been about how best to execute and explain the idea. That's what RRD brought - the polish and focus on how to make this as good as possible. They also introduced me to the delete key. Marvelous innovation.  I have no idea how I got by without it.

WS: You first had the idea for DIE back in 2016, 5E was only a year or two old at that point, did you imagine that just a few years later people would be filling arenas with people watching them play D&D and how much the RPG scene would change?

KG: I think that was on the horizon then. Actual Play culture was demystifying RPGs to millions. By definition, if one of them gets popular enough, they'll be filling ever bigger spaces. For me, once you've made the leap to "Hey - people actually want to watch people play a game" the jump to them filling an arena is significantly smaller. For me, since the start of DIE, it's changed, but only in the "this band is now bigger" way.

But I'm also aware the timing of DIE feels very right. If I planned it, it couldn't have been better. There are certainly are times I think of all my characters in the comic being manipulated by a being outside time and space to fulfill an eldritch ludic purpose and it gets a bit too close to home.

WS: DIE’s a very modern Indie RPG and does a great job of talking new player's through it all, at the same time its themes really reward you if you've ever spent a fair amount in front, or behind, a GM's screen. What kind of response have you'd had from the older, let’s say more trad, RPG crowd?

KG: It's been pretty good - I think folks who have a negative response to anything in DIE would have been pushed away from the concept alone, right? 

That said, I'm not even sure about older gamers - younger folk who came in from the D&D explosion of the last decade are working in a trad framework as well. I was definitely aware that for some people it would be the first time they played a game like DIE. My fear was always that folks who didn't know modern indie RPG stuff would think that I made all this up. 

It's one reason why the Gameography was so important, and the side-bars where i try and nod towards where our approaches germinated form. I always liked artists who point at their influences, and loved following those chains of influence through the years. I certainly try to do the same with my own work. You love this? You'll love - say - Monsterhearts or whatever.

That said, skipping back to the idea of trad - DIE is also explicitly about classical D&D. I suspect that alone gives more trad gamers a handle on it.