Heavy Pepper Periodic #1 

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Heavy Pepper Periodic! Here's what we've got for you this time: 

About Me

I'm Chris Ramdeen: a Trinidadian-American who grew up in the inner city in the Midwest/East Coast. I'm a stereotypical millennial who thinks the 90s were the golden age of artists getting to make weird games with real budgets, a film lover, an insufferable Akira Kurosawa fan, a home cook who loves Sichuan cuisine, and a lifelong disciple of hip hop. 

I started Heavy Pepper games as the result of an obsession with TTRPGs as a hobby and art form that only really started in the 2010s, though I've been playing them since I was a child. Texts like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Lady Blackbird, Unknown Armies, Into the Odd and Microscope got me interested in the DIY nature of the indie scene, and the OSR was especially fun for me in how much people invited collaboration and and participation community projects. You can read more about how that led me to doing commercial projects here. 

For those wondering, the name Heavy Pepper originates in a Trinidadian street food called doubles. When you order doubles, you let the vendor know whether you want no pepper, slight pepper or heavy pepper. Heavy Pepper and its logo thus comes from my preferred doubles order and from the habanero that is the basis of most Trinidadian pepper sauces. My hope is that my work can inject a little more Trini spice into the indie scene. 

New Blog Posts

Three new posts have gone up since the mailing list started:

First, a general introduction to Pathika. If you subscribed to this list, you probably already know about this project. There's also a Twitter thread which contains some additional information on the contents of the book. 

Second is an explanation of what problems I originally wrote Pathika to solve in my home OSR sandbox campaign. That, too, has a Twitter thread with some additional info. 

Finally we have something a little different: an exploration of the significance of the campfire scene from Chrono Trigger. I approach it from a very different angle from most of the discourse surrounding that scene, and use it to make an argument about a major recurring theme in the game. It does spoil a lot of the game, though, so give it a play first if you're interested. It's a classic for a reason!

Pathika Preview: Running Trials 

This is an excerpt from a portion of the manuscript for Pathika, pre-layout, which gives an example procedure for what a trial could look like in the setting. The legal system in Pathika is cobbled together from obscure and arbitrary rules no one knows the origins of, constant influence from the whims of guild leadership, and, perhaps most of all, the boredom of the volunteer judges as they rotate in and out of civil service. It's overwhelming, chaotic and stacked against criminal defendants, just like in real life!

While I've used some of my real-life experience as a trial attorney as inspiration in writing this procedure, it is not at all meant to be true to real court systems (e.g. in Pathika there is no separation between the plaintiff's and defense's cases in chief; everyone takes turns with their evidence to keep the trial exciting). Rather, it's meant to model the feeling of someone participating in an arcane system that makes no sense to you but will still decide your future. It's probably one of the silliest things in the book:

Production Updates 

Nielsenauts: Make TV And Die!: This is an improv game where players improvise 15 minute episodes of television shows they create, and then must score themselves based on arbitrary and unfair criteria given to them by their corporation. If they don't attain a passing grade, their characters (virtual consciousnesses made for this exact purpose) are deleted! This book is complete, has been picked up by ACD distribution and will be available online and at retail this Fall! It's a low commitment one shot game with simple rules, so I would recommend giving it a shot even if you're new to improv and prefer more traditional tabletop games.

Pathika: I have reached a tentative agreement with a layout artist, who I am very excited to work with but whom I will avoid naming until the ink is dry. This is particularly good news because it means production can finally continue toward making this a real book I can share previews from instead of a Word document. It also means that we will be able to release a Quick Start ahead of the crowdfunding campaign. We're still ironing out the details, but this is going to be a featured-packed preview that will be pretty cheap but give enough content to kick off a Pathika campaign, and your purchases will help the publisher, Space Penguin Ink, settle on the final budget for a KS or BackerKit campaign goal. If you want to support this book and ensure it gets a high-production release, buying this Quick Start will be the best way to do it! In related news, I am confirming the primary artist on the book as well, so hopefully I'll have some sketches to share with you in the near future. 

Media Recommendation: Drunken Master

If you're on this mailing list, you've probably heard about this movie before. It's a classic in the Hong Kong martial arts movie canon, it's Jackie Chan's breakout hit, yadda yadda. You probably have also heard that it's dated, is very traditional, and doesn't have the level of fight choreography seen in its sequel or the stuntwork seen in Jackie Chan's 80s movies. You might've also been told this is a movie to watch for the fight scenes and training sequences and little else.

Well, I'm here to recommend Drunken Master for a very specific and more unusual reason: I think it's a near-perfect screenplay. From first minute to finale, Drunken Master explores the relationship not just between master and student, but between generations. It's a film about a kid who can't be reached by conventional pedagogy, and needs to be met on his own level by an unconventional and eccentric master who actually understands what it's like to have an uneasy relationship with the norms and expectations of polite society. It's about a kid who has to begrudgingly learn appreciation for the wisdom available to him from his predecessors while also understanding that he has to leave his own mark on the art he studies. It's also partially a film about a kid who has to slightly overcome his own misogyny and lack of regard for the contributions of women to his subject matter of interest in order to save his father. I know that sounds like a crazy reading of Drunken Master, but I promise you it's all there. 

When you watch this movie, I ask that you think about its plot not just in terms of  the rest of Jackie Chan's oeuvre, but also in how it examines similar concepts to what you might see in movies like Good Will Hunting. While it's no slouch in the fight scene or training montage department (character and theme is communicated particularly well through Drunken Master's use of them), and while fans of HK cinema will obviously love it, I think this movie is good for reasons beyond just delivering on genre expectations. It has something to say about inheriting and modifying our parent's cultures, and it uses the format of a martial arts "shapes" film to explore that in a pretty subversive way that we still see (perhaps unconsciously) imitated today. 

In terms of TTRPG inspiration, you can probably see shades of Drunken Master in Old School Stylish. The idea of an irresponsible martial arts master who drags you into their grifts, squabbles, etc. is both a classic trope of HK action and wuxia media and a fruitful game object to introduce into your TTRPG campaigns. 

Until Next Time 

Questions? Comments? Things you want to see covered in the mailing list? Send them to me at [email protected], on Discord @nickoten or on Twitter @nickoten. Your feedback will help me tailor the content of future newsletters, and is highly appreciated! See you next time.