RPG Publisher Spotlight: Greyplains

Every month, Geek Native’s patrons get to vote for a creator, curator or community moderator to spotlight. 

For the April Spotlight, our community voted for Greyplains, and we’ve been lucky enough to secure some of Jacob Haines’ time for an interview. Jacob is the Creative Director, and as we’ll find out, let’s use that job title carefully and not use the writer by mistake.

As Geek Native’s editor, I get to talk (or, at least, swap emails) with lots of people from the tabletop games community.  It’s a perk. I’ve encountered talented designers, amazingly productive writers, people with staggering amounts of imagination, and incredible diplomats.  At the helm of an indie TTRPG publisher, Jacob is all of these things, but what stands out especially to me is just how smart he is.

Introducing Greyplains

I noticed Greyplains over at DriveThruRPG where I spend a lot of my time and put the publisher on the shortlist for the RPG Spotlight.  I was not surprised, despite the quality of the competition, when they won.  I mean, we should not judge a book by the cover, but how often do you get a DTRPG publisher page that’s both full and grayscale?

Who are Greyplains?

Greyplains, principally, is two people: Taylor Aslinger and myself. My girlfriend, Mirel Crumb is doing the art for the Core Guidebook, and her friend, Athene Ruiz did the InDesign templates. I consult a lot with a friend who produces music as UERDNALA.  There are other people who have helped quite a lot along the way, and they are listed in the credits of my books.

What would you like to be known for, and what do you think you’re currently known for?

I’ve been “Mr. Greyplains” for a while now haha.  For many years, I was perceived essentially as just a hobbyist in the space, but recently I’ve been taken as more of a legitimate member of the creative/business space for TTRPGs.  I don’t think any of my games are perfect, and they are not trying to be, but they are well thought out and make interesting, creative choices throughout.  I suppose that I want to be perceived as a designer.  My worst fear is being perceived as a “writer.” Like, what is a writer? One who writes? If I could telepathically implant the game into your mind, I would rather do that.  Like, the game design itself is my passion, the language is just the necessary evil to transmit it. So long as the writing does not interfere with understanding the concepts, then I’m happy with it. 

Why did you decide to release a pre-artwork version of the core guidebook, and has it gone as you thought it might?

The book was done. By that time, it had already been six years of work, and I was tired. Mirel is almost done with grad school.  When she’s done with that, the rest of the art can get finished for a final-final release in early 2025.  The prospect of losing over a whole year of getting to run and promote the game was not acceptable to me. It was ready, and I was ready.

It’s actually gone better than I expected. For one, spending (some) amount of money to purchase the book wholesale and have it shipped to me was worth it to actually edit the thing.  Greyplains is a massive manuscript, and there are so many tiny details that are just REALLY hard to find either in google docs or in InDesign.  I had been getting proofs of the book every time I adjusted the cover (that was a nightmare, btw), and every time I took the opportunity to do another read-through to find things.  Besides editing, I’ve managed to sell more of my books than I was expecting I would. Mostly Simplains (which I partly did expect because it’s smaller and cheaper), but still. When playing the game, people seem to have more fun playing because they are less interested in trying to “playtest it.” It’s beyond playtesting, just play the game.  They take off their over-analytic hat and just enjoy the process.

To be clear, I have gotten a huge amount of amazing feedback over the years that I was playtesting Greyplains. This is not a critique of playtesting or of my many playtesters which I owe much to.  HOWEVER, I have also found that when people get the idea in their head that they are “playtesting,” even when that is not the case, they tend to aim towards not having fun.  It’s a weird self-fulfilling prophecy of “if you’re trying to have a bad time, you will.” If you are a game designer and interested in Playtesting your game, make sure that you are stress-testing only a few systems at a time.  It is a more efficient use of Player time, and you get much better information out of the experience.

I promise no one will (or can) hold you to this because I was wondering whether you had some guidance on when the next update for the game might be?

I just made a few updates to the 5e mods last week.  The Greyplains: Core art release should be ready by early 2025.  Most of the art is actually done, but it will take some time to edit it and reformat the whole book to accommodate the art.  I’ve been told that there is a way to provide coupons for people on DriveThru who bought a previous version and want the art one as well.  Things are happening for the Simplains art, but I can’t say much more for a while. I would like to have the art version of Simplains done at the same time as Core, but we will see.  

What makes a good game or game supplement in your experience?

I have games that I like, and they overlap, although not completely, with games that are good.  I believe that a game is good when the intended design goals are met.  A game is bad when it fails to meet its own goals. That line of thought is indirectly what led to Greyplains.  I was an early adopter of 5e, and I quickly learned of the system’s many shortcomings.  One of my gripes with 5e is that it is an overly-complicated game. By itself, that is not a bad thing.  I really enjoy 3.5 and Pathfinder, and I have played in and enjoyed other games that I would consider to be pretty “crunchy (like 4e or Lancer).” However, the problem with 5e being complicated is that it is billed as a “simple” game.  I agree that making a character in 5e is pretty easy, but that’s because the game lacks choices during character creation that provide substantive differences between the Characters at the table.  Actually playing 5e is a slog. When running it, the same Players who had learned AD&D (considered to be a more “complicated” game) consistently had trouble navigating basic action economy. You have so many options in 5e at such an early level, and they are exhausting to manage. When I am promised something from a game, but the design and elements fundamentally detract from this premise, I consider that to be “bad.” My favorite example of a “bad” game that I love is FFVIII.  Not a TTRPG, but that game is a disaster of mechanics with the, probably unintended, result that the stupid card game you play inside FFVIII quickly becomes the actual game you play.  Hilarious. It’s garbage. I’ve beaten it five times. I love it.

I guess this defines the difference between “good” and “fun” or “bad” and “boring” in games. I find FFVIII to be fun despite failing in such robust ways.  At the same time, I kind of dislike games like “Edge of the Empire” because I think the rules lead to ambiguous and frustrating non-resolutions.  That is kind of the point of the system, and I think EotE is a quality product, but I’m not thrilled to play it over something like d20 Star Wars or Neon Blues.  Maybe my methodology is flawed, but I’m trying to meet games where they are and not where I am.

Greyplains was born from this observation.  It has some pretty clear design goals, and I feel that I’ve met them.  If a person does not like Greyplains, that’s fine. It’s not for everybody lol. Based on my own standards, I feel that it is a good game. 

Setting-neutral games

This month, I’ve been thinking about the rise of setting-neutral and system-neutral games. Are we seeing more of these sorts of games? 

Greyplains is a setting-neutral game, which means you can apply it to any fantasy or sci-fi campaign or world, and the game engine will work. 

Sometimes, perhaps like an AI, I spend so much time online and hoover up all sorts of writing that I sometimes write nonsense that I know is nonsense and forget to fact check/fail myself.  In AI speak, they call this hallucination. When I first started to talk to Jacob, I quizzed him about Greyplains as a system-neutral supplement. That’s the very opposite of what Greyplains. Just like a daft AI, I didn’t fact-check my own error. Can you imagine the confusion I caused?

What’s the attraction to setting-neutral games?

When I try a new game, I am always interested in how this will help me tell my own stories.  In my experience, there are two audiences for TTRPGs: the general audience and the enthusiast audience.  The general audience is interested in telling their own stories using TTRPGs, while the enthusiasts are interested in other people’s stories. The TTRPG market poses a challenge to Greyplains. It is trying to appeal to the general audience by being accessible to any GM who wants to tell their story without too much bloat in information they do not care about. However, it is of a length and mechanical density that it is hard to convince a general audience consumer that Greyplains is a superior game to what they are already playing.  Alternatively, the enthusiast audience has enough experience with TTRPGs to not be overwhelmed by Greyplains‘ complexity, but they are turned off by a lack of setting to play it in. IN MY EXPERIENCE. 

Despite being a TTRPG enthusiast myself, I sympathize more with the general audience. Why would you want to tell someone else’s story? As a GM, I want to tell MY story, even if I’ve only sketched out about 1/2 of it and the campaign is almost over. As a player, I want to contribute to and play in my GM’s world: blemishes and all. Isn’t that why we play these games?  The vast majority of games are homebrewed, so I think the appeal of a setting-neutral system is that it can do the heavy-lifting of mechanics for the GM so that they can focus on situations, characters, and stories.  It saves them the effort of inventing a game to justify their story (which is what I did– don’t be me).

What challenges might a GM have to consider when working with a setting-neutral system?

As is the case for all homebrewing, GMs are going to have to make adjustments to fit their world and story. Both “GURPS Discworld” and “Fallout” are based on GURPS (to varying degrees), but they both take only the things they need from GURPS and then recontextualize, add, or edit the rules they use to make the game work. These are professional game designers making these decisions, and it is a challenge for them. It will be more of a challenge for a GM to identify what it is they do and do not want to keep from a setting-neutral TTRPG, let alone how to develop new content for it. There are a lot of things to consider when picking a setting-neutral system as well. Does the power level match my tone? Can I adapt this magic system to my own?  What elements of my setting are important that this game does not pay as much attention to?  Things like that. 

I’ve not processed the data but my anecdotal observation is that we’re seeing more setting-neutral systems on Kickstarter.  Do you agree, do you think they’re getting more popular?

I think the (as I named them previously) general audience has finally gained interest in games that are not 5e.  I think there has also been a bloat of franchise-games, and the market is responding to that by also providing the opposite. 

Which do you think solves more problems for gaming groups; system or setting-neutral ttRPG purchases?

The idea of a game solving problems is interesting. In a literal sense, a system-neutral setting would solve the problem of having to do most of the work of creating the world. *You can use whatever system you want* and still have a worthy story to tell. I come from a very different philosophy, however.  I think telling stories is fundamentally less compelling in a TTRPG than good gameplay.  Rather, I feel that good gameplay fundamentally generates good storytelling.  While it might be easier to adopt a setting to tell a story in rather than teach a group a whole new system, there is a reason that I put asterisks around “you can use whatever system you want.” Can you REALLY? I would have to play some of these settings more to get better data, but my impression is that, while everything within the walls of the world might be cool, the fact that the gameplay is arbitrary to it, in a game-focused genre of media, concerns me on a spiritual level. I’m here to play a game. Where is the game? If the game doesn’t matter, then what am I doing here? I could get on Tumblr right now and RP some fanfic or invite people to text-based roleplay in whatever setting I want. That’s not a criticism of fanific or forums. They’re just better at facilitating telling stories. Games are better at being games. I don’t know man lol. 

The Future

We’ve already got a non-binding tipoff that the art edition of the core Greyplains rulebook might be out in 2025. Okay, that’s good… but after that?

What’s next for Greyplains?

Lots of things are in the oven right now for Greyplains.  I am putting the first third of the Greyplains Main Campaign into InDesign. This campaign is set in the Greyplains setting and starts in Simplains and finishes in Greyplains: Core. I am working on “Greyplains OS: An AD&D (85% Resurrection Survival Chance) Revival.” That’s an exciting project because Greyplains is based on AD&D conceptually, and since Wizards opened up essentially all of their TSR material, there is not a whole lot they can do to stop me from making AD&D 3rd Edition.  Suckers. 

Most important are the art-releases of Core and Simplains. Those should be done by early 2025.

I am working on formatting a “Newsletter,” which would actually be monthly expansions to my games.  In this case, every month would provide a new Monster, Spell, and Item for both Greyplains and Simplains, some setting material, and a discussion of some game design thing that I’m thinking about.  This will be available on my Patreon. 

Greyplains

• Greyplains website.
• Greyplains on (coming soon) YouTube.
• Greyplains on Instagram.
• Greyplains on X.
• Greyplains on Threadless.
• Greyplains on Facebook.
• Greyplains on Discord.
• Greyplains on Patreon.