Hullo

Feb
Single for Christmas
RPGBooksCLub
Links
Bye

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The Image Solicits for February are out. You can read them all in the link, but here’s what I’ve written...

The Power Fantasy #16

WRITER: Kieron Gillen
ARTIST / COVER A: Caspar Wijngaard
COVER B: Morgan Beem
FEBRUARY 25 / 32 pages / FC/ / $3.99
END OF STORY ARC

Okay, then. You win. Let’s do a fight.

I do love the stage where the solicits start getting gnomic again. Our alt is Morgan Beem, whose Author Immortal with Frank Barbiere is really worth your attention.

If you like my meta-literary stuff, I suspect you’d be all over it, and Morgan’s art style is just beautiful.

Talking meta-literary stuff…

DIE: Loaded #4

WRITER: Kieron Gillen
ARTIST / COVER A: Stephanie Hans
COVER B: Fabrizio De Tomasso
FEBRUARY 11 / 32 pages / FC/ M / $3.99

Some people take their roleplaying parties seriously. Conversely, some people just want to parrrrttttaaaaaeeee! Let’s see what happens when our serious business is disrupted by someone who really doesn't care at all.

And our Alt is by Fabrizio De Tomasso who is just doing lush and wonderful work here. I adore this too.

Speak to your retailer, or communicate in some other way. In a real way, they don’t know you want one unless you tell them, and when there’s so many books out now (Someone told me there’s 5 times as many monthly comics than there were in the 1980s, which is incredible) they really need guidance. Frankly, shops can sell out and not notice that they didn’t meet demand. It’s nightmarishly difficult for them.

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We approach Script Club time. At the end of the month, I’ll be sending out another one. Script Club is explained here in full – it’s a no-more-than-monthly mail including one of my scripts (or similar sized piece of writing). It costs $5 to mail, and it’s primarily to cover the running costs of the newsletter, including an encouragement to write more. Folks have been genuinely great on this.

I always say what the next script is, so you can unsub if it’s of no interest.

November 31^st will be Phonogram: The Singles Club #1.

For a long time, I think the Singles Club was the best thing I’d ever done in the medium. There’s some days I still think that. I’ll write a little more when I send the mail out, but I think this should be fun – I’m going to look forward to reading it for the first time in a long time, and seeing what leaps out.

Anyway – sign up if you want to join the fun.

Thanks for your support.

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I said I’d curate some of my League Of Comic Geek answers at some point, and I probably will, but the DIE book club kicked off at Alex Segura’s Discord with some questions posed and answered. I thought they were fun, so here they are.

From a fellow Englishman: All of your books take a lot of care to get London and other British areas to be so real. While many of your book ls are with British artists, this one is with a French artist. Did that have an effect on how much we saw the real world in this series?

I'm tilting my head and trying to think whether it did - probably not, really, except in the fine details of Stephanie-hans-o-vision. If I'm doing real world stuff, I'll be including reference showing the real world places, or at least the sort of places. Reading these sort of stories I write can give some real jump scares for folks who actually know where it’s set.

This was also true with Dan Mora on Once & Future, who is significantly further away from Britain than Stephanie. I had a LOT of stuff in there, after the first issue (the old person's home is atypical for the UK) so I realised I should give a lot more.

Really, google maps and street view exists. It's pretty easy to do this, at least compared to how it was in the 1990s.

In issue 6, you have the wonderful IGN quote about crediting too much to a single person. You have spent time giving out credit to others on the team, especially on Decompressed. We as fans, however, tend to give you lots of credit (for example, “Gillen’s Sinister” is a phrase I see often). Is there something or someone you’d want us to fans to recognize with this book?

Well, Stephanie, to state the obvious.

(EDIT: this is some of me at the most off the cuff - you can see by the amount of “Right now”. This stuff is all choices which are modified in context, and the desire of the team.)

My current rules (which change) is if someone on socials says something about the books, and tags me, and I get the sole credit (unless it's phrased on something that is SPECIFICALLY my domain, or a general statement on the book without really being about credit or compliment) I won't repost it, etc. I currently like to repost as it's just a way to push visibility, in a marketing way. I never used to, but visibility is much harder here. I don’t now.

It takes a hit on marketing the book, but I’d like to priortise the nature of collaboration in this media. Ignoring that (at the mo, at least) seems more than I can be willing to take.

(EDIT: I can think of exceptions here, but I’d speak to my collaborator first. If Beyonce posted they loved the book and only tagged me, I’d drop Stephanie a mail. Normally the gentle way to do this is a repost with adding Stephanie’s credit. A “Thank you - it means a lot. Stephanie and I really are proud of this.”)

There's some people who think that I should correct every person who does that, but I disagree on that point. Harassing your readership doesn't strike me as a good idea either. Also, very tiring.

There's limits (would it be great to tag Clayton and Rian too? Sure!) but there's limits of what to expect from readers - like, when talking about a book feels like homework, I think that's a bad thing.

And that certain covers things like - say - Gillen's Sinister. That's something that's far truer than Warren Spector's Deus Ex. Deus Ex is a singular creative object worked on by dozens of people, of whom Warren was one. The post Uncanny-run Sinister's connective tissue consists of many separate works until it coalesced, and I'm the connective tissue. The design didn't stick from the earliest appearances, so you can't even really say that.

Especially as I think that that’s “gillen’s sinister” really not about ownership, but more saying the vibe of the character, after a certain point. I didn't create Sinister, but just started an approach to him.

(Conversely, I always correct people when they say Aphra was me. It was me and Salva.)

Which character are you picking for a casual Die RPG run? Who are Stephanie, Clayton, Rian, and Chrissy playing?

Now for me rules-lawyering the question.

For a start, there's no such thing as a casual DIE RPG run. It is VERY SERIOUS ALWAYS.

(It's not)

In DIE RPG, you don't pick the character you play. The GM distributes classes, through various filters, depending on the scenario. You generate your pesona, which then is cast the most appropriate paragon class. Now, players also before the game do pitch for what they'd like, but it is still firmly inside the GM's domain how they distribute.

(It's for various reasons. In practise, you really do get the class you want if you have expressed strong feelings. You just aren't SURE.)

So, given that is true, I will inevitably be running the casual game, so I will be playing the Master, as that's the classic DIE game GM class.

I would give each of the other players a class based upon their persona's needs, rather than the players' nature - though that bleeds through in their choices. May I think Stephanie will be an excellent Fool? She absolutely would, but if she makes her persona go a different way, I'd follow that.

Stephanie has played 2 short games of DIE - in one, she was the Neo. In the other, she was a Godbinder.

Chrissy has played one, very long DIE game. She played an Emotion Knight - specifically, a Disgust Knight.

Not mentioned, but Katie is editor of the new volume of DIE. She played a Godbinder.

Clayton could play. I suspect Rian has clearly better things to do, like staring at Fonts.

None of the above really answers the intent of teh question, I suspect. Bad Kieron.

What surprised you about developing the RPG rules with the comic? Did your skills as a writers translate easily or was there a big learning curve that came with this difference?

This is the sort of answer which could be VERY long, so I'll try and keep it short and link to the DIE RPG Designer Notes where I talk about the process and my goals.

The short is that it was incredibly hard, which is the entire point. I wrote what felt like 100k to get down to the 1000 words of GM advice I actually wanted to give.

I hope anyone who reads DIE RPG sees the work, both in terms of the actual text and the reading and play behind the text. I try and credit influences throughout and in the Gameography, for a bit.

There is also some stuff which I'm just bad at, and am always bad at. RPG writing is many things, but certainly includes technical writing. That I hold specific nouns lightly means it's always going to be a battle.

How is “goth jumanji” not an easy sell the movie studios looking for their next big hit?

Oh, you sweet summer child. Come here, let me ruffle your hair.

DIE's sold twice, developed to screenplay and not taken further. Stuff gets picked up all the time - mostly stuff isn't announced, even when it goes much further into development.

What I try to tell people is that being optioned is really like getting a lottery ticket. It's a lottery ticket you get paid for (which is clearly the best kind of lottery ticket) but it's still a lottery ticket. Something can be perfect for the screen, and never make it there, just because - oh, I don't know - it rained in LA one day and an exec came into work in a bad mood. Look at the classics of the form from the 1990s, and see when some of them finally reached the screen.

In short, it's really not something that one should spend any thought about. It's all so beyond your control.

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• Comic Philosophy breaks down The Power Fantasy. This is enormous, detailed and pretty overwhelming, in the best possible way. If you like thinking about TPF, this one is essential.

• Off Panel is always good, but the latest episode has Morrison on, abstractly talking about Batman vs Deadpool, but in practise talking about falling back in love with comics. It’s nice to hear Grant in this mode. They seem happy, which is good to hear.

• I loved Musa Okwonga’s One Of Them, his memoir about Eton. Him writing about he’s entirely unsurprised by the Farage allegations is both knowledgable and on point, on where Farage came from and where he’s taken us. Strong.

• This large piece on Free Birth and Wild Pregnancy is just harrowing.

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The space after Thought Bubble continues. I’ve just got back from lunch with Comrade Rossignol, and conversation covered (er) everything, but specifically the problem of wants and needs. I have a lot of things I want to be writing, but I’m having to prioritise the needs to use the space well. The list of 101 TTRPGs? That’s a want. Even working on the Scions is a want, even if it’s something I’m starting to consider a real project. It just doesn’t need to be done right now.

(I worked out that it may actually work even as a 20-player game on Discord, given how it’s structured. Clearly something that would need playtesting, but a fun thing to design towards.)

But needs? I need to write all the gods for DIE for the backmatter for DIE, so I really should get on top of them. I will need them all in the new year, so getting it out of the way will be good for me. So I’m trying to be good for me. Besides – doing the gods is just fun. Little potted bios, a few playful mechanics. It’s a giggle.

Caspar is at work on 15, and should be finishing 16 before Christmas, and then a break. Stephanie went straight from Thought Bubble on a travel break. She’s been sending photos, which are lovely.

She’ll be wrapping 7 when she’s travelling. My main comics work is actually working on DIE: Loaded 78 and 9 simultaneously. I’m doing a thing where I’ve got a lot of material in this space, and want to structure it – so the best way is to just hit the multiplot hard, and see what I’ve got. I’m smiling at some of it. I’ve even got the Tiger in, at least at the mo.

Also, I got Green Light for another project on Monday, which means I have to start a bunch of research. It’s the lighter side of research (more Eternals than Uber), but it’s still space to carve out.

In all honesty, reading a bunch of fun stuff sounds like a great “need” to have in the winter months.

Speak soon.

Kieron Gillen
Bath
26.11.2025