An Interview With A Hyperlite Player

ArcaneCon 2026

I hosted a PhD student at one of my games. Kyrie (KYE-ree) contacted me through my website and asked if they could ask me a few questions.

But of course! Questions and answers follow.

1. When did you start tinkering with game rules? What is your design process like, and what is/was your motivation for putting your spin out there?

I started tinkering immediately. I think this was a factor of the complexity of the games I was exposed to as a kid and the fact that every game at the time seemed to declare, “This is now yours to change however you want,” which to us kids was the equivalent of declaring ice cream free, and we went kind of power-mad with it, to be honest. We felt obligated to change it. Otherwise, it wasn’t actually ours.

The D&D Basic set by Tom Moldvay and David Cook was the most kid-friendly RPG product produced in that era, and many of its (relatively) simple rules and procedures were even too much for us 9 to 13 year olds at the time, so we made stuff up when we didn’t understand what we should really be doing, or found an actual gap in them. This was entirely expected, and each DM had at least a few rules unique to their game, and if they didn’t then maybe they weren’t a REAL DM…

I think we were (and still are) playing an advanced version of Pretend and I think we all knew and understood that game very well, but now we had all these parameters for it and dice! We knew how to introduce story updates on the fly, and participate in shared fantasy worlds already — RPGs gave us the tools to do that with pencils and paper and dice, instead of running around playing Cops-n-Robbers and arguing about who got who first. Also, the church was a lot more prominent then and it was kind of a given that god was real and angels and demons actually existed. Playing an RPG wasn’t too far a leap, in my opinion.

On Design and My Process.

My design process is iterative. I start with something I want to change, make the change, introduce it and play with it, and then I go back and do it all again. That’s brutally simple, but so is my process. It’s essentially the DevOps CI/CD process: do a thing, see what it did, tell everyone and get review/feedback, do a thing based on that feedback, continue. I find that if I introduce too many new concepts/rules/changes at once that it’s difficult to tell what worked and what didn’t, and that means a lot more re-work for me.

My motivation for putting my spin out there is something I’ve wondered about for a long time. I still don’t know if I have anything to say that’s worth keeping around. I often feel my ideas are derivative and my best efforts at design and gameplay have been built upon the ideas and works of others. Why am I doing this? I want to! I know that much, and I’ve reached a point with Hyperlite — it’s only been in the last couple years that I’ve even named it — where I think I have a sci-fi game that’s very nearly its own thing. I have a ways to go in completing areas of the game outside the core rules, but I think I’m finally on to something that’s different than what’s out there already.

2. I had asked someone a similar set of questions about writing rule systems and settings, and they told me they believed that "a setting is you putting your philosophy of how the game should be played" and I was really struck by this idea. What is your philosophy on these types of games, and how does that show up for you in your writing / DMing?

That’s a thoughtful point of view. My own philosophies are somewhat inchoate (h/t to Jack Vance). I’m anti-setting and pro-vibe. I think Dune (the first book, specifically) demonstrates this well because Herbert never explains a thing. He presents an image and it’s never important how anything works, only what it does. The only item he goes into any detail on is the suits, and even then only what they do — never how. I want to free the imagination of the participants by presenting evocative scenarios. To the extent that I need a coherent setting to enable that, I’ll build one. But I believe less is more.

I think the best settings are evocative rather than declarative. The more of your personal fiction you pour into a ruleset the less room you leave for the people who try to run it on their own. The best tabletop RPG games for me are the ones that don’t exhaustively define a setting, but rather give you tools and bits of lore to develop the setting at the table, and with the table as you play.

A setting is defined first by its equipment list and then probably by your list of “classes” — in my case these are the life paths I’ve chosen for character generation in Hyperlite. I heard that the most influential setting conveyance tools are the equipment list and the class list. This was from a notable designer to whom I once listened being interviewed by either Luke Stratton or Ben Riggs on one of those podcasts, but I don’t recall which. That guy said those are the things that nearly everyone is going to read and those are the most powerful tools for transferring your setting into the minds of the people who play your game when you aren’t there. I think that’s spot-on. Equipment is how the characters are going to interact with the game world and classes are the iconic roles that the players will take on for adventures. These two things seem to be the most powerful world-building/setting tools.

My philosophy on these games is that they are shared imaginary spaces on par with religion and spiritual practice (I heard the idea from a book written about D&D from back in the early 1980s). We all agree on a set of rules that govern an imaginary space and then we go share some time there. It’s advanced Pretend. It’s also a show that you, the ref/table manager/host are running. You have to bring a good time, or they won’t come back. RPGs are amazing because if you do it right, your group will not stop bugging you to play again. If you don’t, they’ll tell you by not showing up.

Lately, I’ve been shying from rules publication per se and focusing on developing and running good games. I think rules are cheap and plentiful. I also think you need a lot fewer rules than you’re usually given to run an enjoyable 2-3 hour game.

Where I want to focus my RPG development is on experiences and their enablement through well-written, playable adventure scenarios. I want to deliver self-contained rules and scenarios for 2-3 hours of play. You should be able to host/referee with little-to-no preparation aside from what you’d do any time you’d have a few friends over. When the session is done, you and the group should want to have another session and you the referee/host should have a very strong idea of what that session will entail. That’s the dream.

My philosophy is that RPG sessions should be 3 hours or less, intense, and when you’re done, the table should clap for you and everyone else.

3. Do you think you're a different kind of player than you are as a DM? What are the differences?

Yes, but they are very different roles at the table. A table manager/ref is a facilitator. When I’m running a game, I’m there to make sure everyone gets a chance to shine, that the action keeps moving, and that I deliver a game so good that everyone wants to play again. My job as a ref is to say, “Yes, and…” and figure out the impact and consequences of that so that the players feel that they are being treated fairly and not being forced to follow some external storyline.

A player is a hero and a catalyst. When I play, I like to make sure everyone is having a good time and stays engaged. I share the spotlight and actively pass it around to drive table engagement. I want the person running the game to have a good time, too, so I engage them by asking questions and keeping the party moving. I’m experimental, I engage with the environment and I’m not afraid to take damage. However, this is due to my having run a lot of games now. I know how I like players to act and I do that.

There’s another side to this after having run so many games for so long. I find that as a player I’m more prone to losing interest in the game than when I ref. It’s the classics that get me: slow pacing, failure to telegraph danger, insufficient clues, all success gated by die rolls, excessive wait time for my turn, too much expository narration, excessive mechanical engagement, and looking up rules at the table.

Also, I’m not a great die roller. It’s one of my more endearing game manager qualities in that I generally roll below average — PCs in my game don’t tend to die as often as other OSR games. As a player, this is a discouraging trait. If I must make a roll, I’m pretty much guaranteed to fail it. I often miss in combat, fail to cast my spell, fail my saving throws, etc. and especially when it’s really important that I succeed. To make matters worse, my characters don’t usually die. They end up wounded, unconscious, useless or all three. If they do die, there’s usually no way to introduce a new character without liberal application of Deus Ex Machina, so I wind up sitting at a lot of tables, drawing by myself and making witty remarks.

4. Do you think the way that people write settings, play and DM has changed as video game styles have changed? Are there certain trends you've noticed come and go, or even return?

I do. Materials are much better written and laid out than ever. I think there’s a tabletop to video game to tabletop loop. Days of Wonder is a great example of that loop (Ticket to Ride and many others). The biggest influence I see on RPGs now is the number of teachers and educators who play and write on them. I think that’s been seismic in terms of its impact on the hobby as there are more academics playing and writing them than ever. My own background is technical writing and editing, and I’m bringing a lot of that into my game in the sense that I want to teach a set of skills and methods through recipes.

I have two words for settings and games these days: Grimdark Horror. There’s so, so much of it. Everyone wants to be creeped out, I guess. I think we need brighter settings in which oppression and strife are overcome, rather than grind you down until your character is dead or too injured or insane to go on. I’m hoping to embrace and convey some of the joy and union present during the late-Disco early-HipHop period from about 1977 to 1984, and there was a bit of it again from 2008 until about 2014. Like, we’re broke and times are tough, but if we stick together we can make it better right now and in the future.

5. What makes Traveller / the life path system so neat to you?

The life path is the adventure before the adventure. Who is this person I’m about to play? Where did they come from and what led them to this moment? Few if any other games attempt to answer that. Traveller is the only game in which you start play with a fully-realized adult character. They may be on some kind of personal journey, but it isn’t a discovery of who they are. Every other RPG that I know of starts you with a brand newbie who can barely cast a spell or hack a mainframe. I’ve seen by-the-book Traveller characters start play from broke and half-dead all the way up to rich, well-connected and owning their own starships.

One final note on life path character generation: it’s a game. It’s a game within the game, and it’s a solo adventure. No other game offers that. The best are a few careful selections you make to determine your role and the worst are like filling out a tax return. Traveller offers a rather exciting, compelling little solo game and at the end you have a character.

You Read It?

I am truly flattered. Reach out to me via my contact form if you have questions!