Abrah aka Wicked Oni Publishing, is working on a space station setting called The Iron Hive as part of the collaborative fundraising event Mothership Month. I interviewed him over DM in Discord to talk about his creative work in role playing games, and to learn more about his other work for the Mothership RPG.
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Columbary TTRPG: You mentioned you enjoy creative writing- that’s definitely an outlet I enjoy as well. Does TTRPG writing completely fulfill that interest, or do you still feel a desire to do writing apart from creating ttrpg adventures- like novels or short stories?
Abrah: [It] does! I used to just write for a personal blog little sci-fi stories that I would think of on the way home from university out of boredom, those then transitioned into worldbuilding settings, and got to know the joys of GMing, and not only sharing those worlds and stories with others but being able to see them interact changed something in the way I saw everything. Years went by and now I'm living by myself and working a regular job, I've always been inclined towards having tons of hobbies and very little time, so I only wrote when necessary as to maximize my free time, and that's when the perfect mix happened, new hobby (creating PDFs) mixed with a favorite hobby (writing for players) along with an old hobby (writing sci-fi), and if you add the fact that it could become a job, then you have a creative outlet that my grown up brain can't find an excuse to change for something more "productive", although I would love to have something like a comic written about a place I wrote if things go super well winkwink
Columbary TTRPG: When we were setting up this interview you alluded to a lot of creative overlap between different arts groups and TTRPG hobbyists in the city of Bogotá Colombia where you live. I’m from Chicago Illinois and have met photographers, painters, mental health therapists, and social workers through games here. What kinds of occupations and creative interests are common with the people you’ve met as a GM?
Abrah: Well, I must admit that this question is really difficult, I pride myself to have gotten so many people into TTRPGs that I've honestly lost count of players, but if I had to point two big groups among them, it'd had to be people in STEM, especially computer science, and on the other group are the digital artists, 2D or 3D, corporate oriented or more creative, they always find a way into my tables, and it's always fun to see how they both interact with fiction in so many different ways; my favorite kind of players are the new players because they have little to no influence from outside sources, and you can often see when it has finally clicked for them and start confidently interacting with the fiction. Among my memorable players definitely are a STEM major that was playing a changeling paladin and his backstory was like a short poem, in about 5 lines he managed to say so much I always use him as an example of not needing a whole tome for a backstory to tell where you come from, he was new to TTRPGs and did such an incredible job working his inexperience into the character itself; and a primary school teacher that always had the most brutal and insane characters, the first ones to jump into combat at first slight chance.
Columbary TTRPG: You use Affinity Publisher 2 to layout your games writing. I use the same program and chose it just to save money over the adobe product alternatives. What made you choose Affinity, and do you do creative work with any other computer programs?
Abrah: I currently don't remember who it was, I do know it was on an itch page, someone asked what they used and they pointed them towards Affinity Publisher 2, I'd always been curious about how PDFs where made and how would anyone link text to pages, since I had wanted to do that with some PDFs for myself to have an easier time using them during sessions, I gave the trial a go and it was a lot all at once, didn't do much back then, I came back to it later on to do my first module and since then things start to be clearer with each passing week, I still have a bit of a mess with styles though. And as for other programs, well I do have the basic adobe suite from which I use Photoshop, haven't been able to get into any alternative since I've been using that for over a decade now, I use it to edit things around, clean up images, roughing them up, the typical stuff you'd expect[…]
[…]I also use Blender, I enjoy 3D modeling even though I haven't found a lot of time or space to develop myself as much as I'd like, but it comes as a handy tool for prototyping or even making finished backgrounds, especially when the area I enjoy the most is environment design!
And last but not least, something that's not as much as a traditional "app", but without LegendKeeper I'm not sure where I'd be, that's where I plan and track my TTRPG sessions but also my 3pp content, I like that I can be as organized or loose as I want, and it's easy to link things around, add notes, quotes, it's amazing and it just keeps getting better and better.
Columbary TTRPG: You mentioned “mutualistic” natural relationships as influencing your adventure The Vachellia Mutualizer. Most of us are familiar with mutualistic relationships from bees pollinating flowers while collecting nectar and pollen, but a very different kind of mutualistic relationship inspired this adventure setting. Can you describe how you first learned about this mutualistic relationship and how it influenced your module?
Oh yeah! My sources of inspiration are very varied, as I mentioned my sci-fi stories started on the way home from uni as I spaced out, so naturally, this has been going for a while now, the inspiration for The Vachellia Mutualizer came from a reel, it was talking about an acacia that was host of an ant colony that would defend it against anyone disturbing it, in exchange, the tree would reward these ants[…]
Vachellia drepanolobium, a kind of Acacia. Via Wikipedia.
[…]until this I wasn't too impressed or into it, however, the food that the acacia gives as a reward modifies the ant's digestive system, making them unable to digest any other food other than the acacia's, this was it, it gave a somewhat malicious look to the tree, like a scheming villain controlling minions, and well, naturally, I obsessed over it enough to go and read more about it, and the more I read the more I had to do "something" about it, so I started thinking, what if instead of a tree it was a space station? That'd make an interesting place, with humans as ants of course, but to spice things up and give everyone a more versatile tool, what if instead of a space station, it was a virus that would infect a space station, this also makes it less predictable, any space station could turn into this, I of course also added a way to make these space stations tempting to visit, otherwise players wouldn't want to go near them, and that's how it all began, from doom scrolling through reels
Columbary TTRPG: You’re seeking backers for “The Iron Hive,” a project you’re making for Mothership Month! Tell me a little about this adventure set and what inspired it.
The Iron Hive by Abraham Nassiff, an upcoming space station setting for the Mothership RPG.
The Iron Hive is like a love letter to places that I've been interested in for a long time, for example the concept of coffin houses (while recognizing how bad they are) has always seemed so appealing to me, the optimization of space, how everyone expresses their own self through how they use their limited room, how humanity seeps through these precarious conditions, and camaraderie is ever present among its residents.
Along that concept stands (or used to) the Kowloon Walled City, what an amazing place it was, started as a military base and slowly became a safe haven for refugees and then turned into a densely packed city that couldn't grow horizontally so it had to grow vertically, and while most people might look at it and point out the dangers of the place[…]
[…]I like to look into the individuals in there, living their life's as humans, how they kept the original military base untouched and used it as a place for the community to gather, how gangs organized themselves to do clean up, how neighbors would form groups to escort women to their homes at night, and so many stories that give reason to the many people that stood against it's demolition for years.
And so, with these things waiting for an excuse to be written into the far future of Mothership, The Iron Hive was born.
It is a space station to be superficially ran as a lawless place for the lawless people, and as hunting grounds for bounty hunters, but it can be so much more, it has layers of history, it used to be a mining operation, then a research station[..]
A Personnel Assistant from the first corporation to ever touch the asteroid. People in the station love her.
[…] corporations fled and abandoned it because of something they uncovered, to then people using the structures and materials left behind to start their own space station, each of these events offering different levels to the station.
The Lockers. Repurposed housing in Wicked Oni Publishing’s The Iron Hive.
Storage units are now tenements for the locals, the old reactor serves as a community center, a flea market of stolen goods brings people from all over the galaxy to sell, trade or buy pretty much anything, and much much more; all of this written in a way were wardens can get a general idea as soon as they turn a page, and the option to dive deeper into what the place hsa to offer, while reassuring and incentivizing them that it's okay to modify this place and make it their own, the idea of every Iron Hive being different from each other is something I welcome and cherish, so I hope to see many many Iron Hives out there, every single one of them telling a different story!
