Reckless A-Talk: Spencer Campbell (Game Designer - Gila RPGs)

Hello listeners! Welcome to another episode of Reckless A-Talk, our TTRPG interview show where we sit down with some of our favorite writers, players, GMs, and streamers to get to know a little bit more about what makes them who they are.

I am as always your host GM Nathan, I use he/him pronouns, and this week I got to expand my mind and laugh a lot with renowned game designer Spencer Campbell of Gila RPGs!

That name is possibly familiar to longtime Reckless A-Talk listeners, as he and his games have been listed as a huge inspirations for several of our guests.

Spencer is a design whirlwind, and has put out several really diverse, unique, and award-winning games over the last few years. That includes the punchy LUMEN system and Creator Kit, HUNT a game about a doomed knightly order going on a final quest, the monster hunting game SLAYERS, and the solo souls-like game REAP.

Seriously, that’s just a portion of what he’s written, and SO MANY of them take really novel approaches with what is fun about games. Sometimes there’s no dice, no health, loot pools, approaches instead of skills, all kinds of really good stuff that we get to talk about in this episode.

Plus we talk a lot about the importance of connection in the TTRPG space, trying to protect your sanity online, his background in cognitive psychology and, as usual, tons more.

AS OF THIS EPISODE his latest game LOOT all about fantastical item gathering, combat, exploration and base building is crowdfunding. I am SUPER excited to see that full release, which we get into during this chat. Links to that and everything we talked about are in the show notes, as always.

If you enjoy this episode please go check out some of our other Reckless A-Talk interviews and maybe even our actual play episodes.

With that - I’ll see you next time! Enjoy.

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Edited by Nathan Lurz and Jonathan Zhang

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LINKS

• Itch page: https://gilarpgs.itch.io/ 
• LOOT Kickstarter (through Oct. 8): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thegilaboy/loot-1 
• Psychology of RPGs Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DWByROXqDI&list=PL-NjmcMHsu4kMOLGgsQKGw6Tr0GZqIxjX 
• Twitter: https://x.com/GilaRPGs 
• Mailing List: https://itch.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=66b8c28ad8db88f2d0022036b&id=317df5d8a1 

• Game Designer Will Jobst: https://x.com/will_jobst
• Game Designer John Harper (Blades in the Dark, Lasers & Feelings) https://johnharper.itch.io/