Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates, Video Games | Tagged: Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein, entertainment, gaming, Iain Lowson, larp, rpg, Star Wars Fact File

'A Land of My Own' – Building A Frankenstein Roleplaying World

By Phil Harris

Iain Lowson has spent a lot of time writing for various games and publications, and is currently writing for the Star Wars Fact File but it was only after a push from his friend, Gregor Hutton, that he decided it was time to exercise the ideas he had for a tabletop roleplaying world and produce the game Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein.

A regular on panels at both conventions and meetings we recently caught up with him at Conpulsion, and Edinburgh based roleplaying, board and wargaming convention where he was discussing world building and what was next for the Dark Harvest series.

Phil Harris: How did the concept of Dark Harvest : Legacy of Frankenstein come about?

Iain Lowson: It start really because I couldn't settle on a particular story. I had an idea which cam about while watching Time Bandits. Basically Frankenstein and The Monster sitting on the decks of a passenger ship, with blankets over their knees, chatting about old times, laughing about how they tried to kill each other so many times.

I started writing, I started thinking, what kind of world would Frankenstein have created and what sort of compromises and people would be attracted to that? Out of that, out of the desire to write a single story and being constantly distracted by possibilities thrown up be research it eventually ended up with no story but an awful lot of notes. Then notes became a setting of Dark Harvest.

PH: Do you want to tell me a little about that world?

IL: Sure. The premise that came about was what if Frankenstein hadn't rejected what he learned, what he discovered. What if instead he decided that he was right and there was a great deal of potential to what he had; and, after he had been rejected by everybody and being hunted by The Creature, his idea of what his revenge would have been was basically to disappear into history for 100 years, reappear during the Balkan conflicts of the mid 1800's and onwards and effectively hijack the destiny of an entire country.

I picked Romania. Essentially because I was doing Gothic horror and Transylvania always fits but in the end Romania's history turned out to be extremely fitting to what I wanted to do with Dark Harvest. So I had Frankenstein kind of take over the unification of Romania and turn it into his country, which was devoted to learning, to science, to advancing mankind. But at the same time, while he has that wonderful shining naive ideal the whole thing has been corrupted by greedy selfish people, who he has had to deal with to get to where he was.

PH: For any aspiring writer how would you tell them to get into the industry, or would you warn them to keep away from it?

IL: Don't get into it if you want to make money [laughs].

If you've got the passion for it then nothing is going to make you stop you doing it. The trick is to turn it into something that makes you enough coin to get by. Which is why I don't know a single writer in videogames or in tabletop games who does just that. Everybody, even the very best, always has something else going on. Much as anything else to stop them getting bored.

So, yeah, just… I always say go for it. I'm a great believer in that if there is something that you are really, really passionate about, get on with it, do it, see if its going to work and if you die of starvation then it probably wasn't good.

PH: Some times the games industry can seem quite impenetrable. Do you have any tips to get there or is it simply about making yourself known?

IL: I got into videogames from the Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) I used to do horror stuff, simply because I didn't make any money; it was purely a hobby thing, but it made for a great conversation in interview. Because people in the games industry want people who have done something a bit different. They don't just want people who have written videogames, they want people with a slightly different perspective on things.

They kind of want an outsider who is also an insider, which does complicate matters but I would say if you want to write for videogames, roleplaying games or whatever then just get on with it, do it.

For videogames get yourself along to game jams, push your way into a team as a writer. You want to do roleplaying games then just get on with it. I always end up saying this in any chat about writing, just do it. What's stopping you?

PH: Do you have any words of wisdom about Intellectual Property (IP)? It's a buzz word in a lot of ways.

IL: Yeah it is. The worst thing you can do is… Whenever we do talks about writing for anything there are always these guys who pop up and say I have this great idea but I can't tell you about it because I'm afraid that someone is going to steal it. In which case the idea is never going to do it, its never going to go anywhere.

The best thing to do is to write it, get it out there and do something with it. Dark Harvest as an IP is something I'm pursuing along a lot of different avenues, roleplaying games, apps, card games, lots of different products.

Its proving to be popular, lots of people like it, interest has been expressed but those people would have never known about it if I had just sat on it terrified about sharing it. So the best way to develop my IP is to share it. Once you've written it down and once its somewhere you have ownership of it.

You just, kind of, shepherd it.

Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein is a free download at RPG.Net, and the Resistance supplement is still available for purchase. You can also follow Dark Harvest on Facebook and Twitter.

Next year Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein will have a brand new publisher in Chronicle City and the new version will expand on the original core book, using a new character generation system and more.

Art Credits are as follows:

Anthology Cover: Jan Pospíšil

Promethea Flag: Kim Sato

B/W Art: Scott Purdy

Phil Harris (@PhilipGHarris) is a games developer who is currently working with One Thumb Mobile on their MMORPG Celtic Heroes. He also writes for Pixels for Breakfast.

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