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Dennis Detwiller Interview
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Greetings, fellow gamer geeks!
Today, for your reading enjoyment I've got my interview with writer and game-designer extraordinaire; Dennis Detwiller!
Creator of Godlike and Wild Talents, co-founder of Pagan Publishing as well as Arc Dream Publishing, Mr. Detwiller has been a major force for good in the RPG industry since the mid-nineties. In addition to his work in the RPG hobby, he's also written and co-designed video games for Radical Entertainment and Hothead Games, among them are such titles as The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Scarface: The World is Yours and the recently released superpower-fantasy masterpiece "Prototype."
Christopher: How did you get into the gaming industry?
Dennis: I wandered in. Bought a copy of “The Unspeakable Oath” #3 in New Brunswick New Jersey in 199...1? 2? Loved it. I had played CofC (Call of Cthulhu) for awhile, but the little booklet was like a revelation. I contacted John Tynes not too long after and bam, suddenly I was neck deep in gaming.
John and I happened to wander into Wizards of the Coast in the same way just a year later.
Christopher: What are some of your favorite games? Why?
Dennis: My favorite is CofC of course... I don’t get much time to play anything but it and ORE stuff. As for games I enjoy reading, I’m afraid it will seem I’m a bit of a shill. I loved Unknown Armies and Trail of Cthulhu. But you’ll also no doubt note we just published a book by the two authors of these titles (Grim War) ...this is not a coincidence :)
Christopher: Tell us about Godlike. What inspired it?
Dennis: A love of superpowers and alternate history. It seemed to me every attempt to integrate super-powers into real history failed miserably (either Superman punched out Hitler and the war ended in ’39, or uber-powerful supers just...didn’t...interfere in the war though they could end it in seconds). I began to imagine a world where supers existed (Talents), but could not change the outcome of huge, world spanning events. GODLIKE was the result of such, fun speculation.
Christopher: The decision to focus more upon the war than upon the super-powers, is an intriguing one. What motivated that decision?
Dennis: Well, there are two primary reasons.
1) If your alternate history is wonderfully baroque and bizarre, that’s all fine and good, but it leaves no frame of reference for the players or GM. I say “June 1944” and people generally think D-Day. If the super-powers of GODLIKE had disrupted everything D-Day could have taken place in October 1941, or not at all...you get the idea. Keeping the war like the war in our world with some minor, fun additions makes the game seem more real, and also gives everyone around the table an immediate frame of reference.
2) I wanted to illustrate what I believe to be a human truth: given time, man gets used to anything, whether it is a man walking on the moon or a man who can fly. As we can see now, the Moon landing is a mundane and boring as anything, yet at the time it was a sensation. I felt Talents and their powers would be the same: amazing, but integrated over time -- and at a rapid speed due to the war.
Christopher: What does the future hold for Godlike?
Dennis: We have two books coming up. The first is Operation: Torch, a wonderful sourcebook which outlines the Allied invasion of North Africa. It has a host of scenarios -- including a neat one I wrote where you play Talents guarding the Churchill and Roosevelt at the Casablanca conference.
The second is the Devils Brigade by Allan Goodall -- the author of the fantastic This Favored Land (think GODLIKE during the American Civil War).
Christopher: Tell us about Delta Green.
Dennis: Delta Green is a great creative font shared by me and a few other people. I never find myself without an idea to further populate the world of DG. It’s an endless smorgasbord of creative freedom.
Christopher: What does the future hold for Delta Green?
Dennis: Lots. Though I can’t really talk about far-ranging plans. In the short term, we’re wrapping up DELTA GREEN: Targets of Opportunity, a huge book filled with dark secrets.
Christopher: How did Arc Dream Publishing get started?
Dennis: Shane Ivey and I decided to start a company. In this industry most talk like that is just that...talk. But I’ll be damned if Shane didn’t make it happen. Shane’s steered us through the rocky waters of the RPG world admirably, while I’ve just scribbled down some stuff and handed it in. Thank God for Shane!
Christopher: The story of how Wild Talents came to be published is, in my opinion one of the most inspiring tales in the history of RPGs. Canyou relate where the idea for Wild Talents came from? What inspired it? How it formed itself into the product we have today?
Dennis: Thanks. Yeah, it makes me smile every time I think about it. Well, it began with “We love GODLIKE, but we want more....” and it ended with a 300+ page hardcover full color book. Long story short, Shane, Greg Stolze and myself put the live evolution of the WT rule set out there on the internet for everyone to watch -- and more importantly -- to help develop. We had some great suggestions, some amazing problems resolved and some truly dedicated fans who grew into more (like Ben Baugh...who’s now one of our best authors).
All in all, a huge resounding success, despite the delays. It’s the model we founded this company on.
Christopher: Now, you were the writer in charge of the story for the recent video game “Prototype," is that correct?
Dennis: Among other things, yeah.
Christopher: How did that project come to you?
Dennis: Well, I created it along with a very talented fellow named Eric Holmes. We dreamed it up, wrote it up, developed it with a team of about 100 very talented people over four years and now, have sold almost 2 million copies of it. It’s something that doesn’t happen very often in video games -- creating a property from the ground up -- but we were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
Christopher: Were there any particular challenges in writing story for such a villainous hero?
Dennis: PROTOTYPE is a power-fantasy. There’s nothing particularly difficult in writing for a power fantasy. Alex is the worst and the best in everyone, in a world where everything is jacked up to 11. It was fun.
Making him relatable was easy -- the sheer power evident in moving in the game was a unique, and huge draw, you couldn’t help but want to be him. Revenge stories -- any revenge story -- is instantly relatable.
Put the power of a god in the hands of the main character in a revenge story and you have video game gold.
Christopher: How would you, personally stat-up Alex Mercer for a One-Roll Engine campaign, like Wild Talents?
Dennis: I’m going to have to think about that! Look for him on the Arcdream site sometime in the future.
Christopher: What’s coming up on the horizon for you?
Dennis: More video games. I’m writing some television stuff. Working on some movie scripts. Oh, and more RPGs. And working on raising a 1 year old, (send help!)
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Just as an aside here, in closing let me tell you a little bit about Arc Dream Publishing.
I asked Mr. Detwiller in the interview about the publishing of Wild Talents and how that all came to pass. His response, as you've already read, spoke of the love for the Godlike setting continuity shared by both the designers and the fans alike and the demand to see that world advanced into the modern era.
What he didn't mention was the fact that Arc Dream being as new and small as they were at the time, would be taking a big risk going to press with the gorgeous full-color hardback of Wild Talents once it was completed, a risk that could easily have killed the company. Moreover, they did not have the funds to go to press at any rate. Their solution was to set up a "pledge" drive. Fans were given the opportunity to contact the company by email and state their intention to pre-order if Arc Dream received enough pledges to proceed with the printing. Their goal was to get a few hundred such pledges, then invite those pledges to actually place pre-orders and with the proceeds print a limited edition of 1,000 copies.
Being such a small operation and given the specificity of the sub-genre niche the game in question was to fill, their conservative estimate was that it would take a least several weeks to a few months to generate enough pledges to go forward.
The fans came through within the first 36 hours of the drive's launch!
Arc Dream Publishing is one of the best and brightest things that the RPG industry has going for it right now. Here is a company that actually listens to its fans and responds directly to what it hears. Consequently, their fans (yours truly included) LOVE them for it!
It is flatly staggering how many elements of Wild Talents are the way they are, directly because of fan-feedback during the design process. The sam can be said for every product Arc Dream produces. Their message boards, (you know, those forums you go to, where you can listen to what the fans have to say about the game) read a lot more like a giant, ongoing brainstorming-session or writers' pool than a simple discussion forum for fans.
If I might editorialize a bit, (as I am wont to do)... In a time when we've got the big, major players in the RPG industry seemingly doing everything in their power to soak their fans for cash while simultaneously ignoring those same fans' concerns about their products and (I'll just say it) punish them for playing every step of the way, by limiting availability and keeping a stranglehold on third-party-developed content, I find it to be a breath of pure, fresh, life-giving air to see a company getting it so completely right.
This hobby started as a very inclusive subculture that bore a great deal of camaraderie as a matter of course, and that's what attracted and held the fascination of a lot of us. That spirit of transparent development, fully open to suggestion and feedback is alive and well at Arc Dream.
On behalf of Examiner.com, I'd like to thank Mr. Detwiller for his participation in this interview, and thanks to the readers for your patronage!
For More Info: Check out www.ArcDream.com and/or contact Christopher at Cosmic.ZenStorm@neo.rr.com.
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