Tag Archives: gaming

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An Interview with Kate Bullock

This week, I had the opportunity to interview game designer and monster writer Kate Bullock about her work. She gives us insights into the game industry, some of the issues in gaming, and some background on amazing and fascinating monsters.

Kate Bullock is a Canadian community and convention organizer with a passion for striving to create safer and more inclusive spaces within the TTRPG community. She’s one of the main organizers of Breakout Gaming Convention, the TTRPG Creative Co-op, and the previous president of the Indie Game Developer Network. She has previously worked in community organizing for the Gauntlet Podcast and Toronto Area Gamers.

You can find her blog, Bluestocking’s Organic Gaming, filled with in depth analyses of the gaming community and what we can do to make it better. Kate is a consultant for safety and inclusion in the RPG world, as well as a content and developmental editor for RPGs to ensure they meet industry standards around inclusion and safety.

When she’s being a game designer, you can find her game, Crossroads Carnival, at Magpie Games. You can also check out her work in The Veil: Cascade, Atlas Animalia, and Dust, Fog, and the Glowing Embers. Her itch and drivethru page have several games of her own creation, including Savior, recently nominated for Best Rules in the Indie Groundbreaker Awards. If you’re bored and want to get to know her, you can find her on Twitter as @bluestockingetc.

Outside of gaming, Kate is a massage therapist, doula, and trauma focused life coach and spiritual healer. She is a restorative justice facilitator and conflict mediator, with training in nonviolent communication and de-escalation. She lives on a big plot of land in the middle of nowhere with her guinea fowl.

Check out bluestockings.ca for Kate’s website and umg.rocks for the project website at Unicorn Motorcycle games

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD (They/Them)

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Authors in Quarantine – James Alan Gardner

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak

Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID 19 outbreak?

James Alan Gardner: Writing, reading, and playing computer games. Lately, I’ve also been playing a lot of tabletop role-playing games via Zoom. Gaming is good way of interacting with people; I’d feel a little strange just calling people up and talking to them, but playing games together makes things a bit more structured than just chatting.

Spec Can: How are you adapting to social distancing?

James Alan Gardner: I went to buy groceries this afternoon, and I felt as if shoppers were far less scrupulous about distancing than even a week ago. Personally, I still try to maintain the 2-metre distance, but it’s difficult when other people are less cautious. Something I reflect on when I go for a walk around my neighbourhood (which I do every day): a few months ago, it would have been horrendously rude to cross over to the other side of the street when you see someone coming toward you. Now, it’s civic virtue.

Spec Can: How is the outbreak affecting your writing?

James Alan Gardner: I’ve been working on the third draft of a novel throughout the quarantine, and for better or worse, most of the basics of the story are staying pretty much as they were in the previous draft. In other words, the disease isn’t having much effect on the work itself. But what about future work? How much will COVID-19 affect fiction in all the years to come…especially now when most of what I write takes place in a contemporary setting (albeit in a fictionalized world)? What will SF look like in two years? I think about that a lot. There should be huge effects, but I don’t think I’m ready to face that yet.

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD