An Interview with Carsonb of SSTO Press
Keeping the project on the rails.
Carsonb is one of the managers and writing contributors on the space pirate anthology Devil’s Due, funding on BackerKit 11/12-12/10. We spoke last week over Discord to talk about the some of the creative process behind table top gaming with friends, and the work of managing the production of Devil’s Due.
ColumbaryTTRPG: I do some of my most satisfying writing and brainstorming while on lunch break or walking to and from work. What does it look like when you are working on ideas for Devil’s Due or adventures for your own table top groups?
Carsonb: I try to split up writing and brainstorming as two different activities. I keep a big board of “scenes” that could fit into a publishing project or tabletop campaign, and refine them as I go. Scene isn’t the best word, they’re less structured than that. It’s more a set of circumstances that would prompt an action from an NPC, monster, hazard, etc. I can zoom out and look at the scenes about a specific character and see how these might flesh out a personality or goals, and take that into writing.
Writing adventures and other modules is a slow process for me. It takes me a while to get into a workflow, so I usually carve time out of evenings and weekends to work without as much distraction. I build an outline based on the scenes I’ve connected, and plan out what each page needs to say in order for someone to run what I write. I find breaking down the module page-by-page means I can keep related pieces close to one another, and make the end process a bit easier to read without flipping back and forth.
Then I print it out, and try to run it with just that at my table, and that usually helps me narrow down what needs to be clarified or added.
ColumbaryTTRPG: Setting up contracts and managing creative and business relationships over long distances are some of the most intimidating parts of making a collaborative adventure for a tabletop game. Is there anything about your life outside of games that’s informed how you handle the communication and collaboration while helping manage the development Devil’s Due?
Carsonb: My day job is product management at software companies. Without getting too much into it, I’m usually trying to bring clarity to what problems we’re trying to solve, and how we can do that as efficiently as possible. With those kinds of problems, the solution is pretty ambiguous, and sometimes the teams can be pretty big. Planning, tracking progress, and checking in with everyone are necessary, because otherwise things fall off the rails pretty quickly.
Our Devil’s Due project isn’t like my day job: we’re all here because of personal interest; we know we’re making a book; and the roles are pretty straight forward. That said, making plans and figuring out the order of tasks feels pretty similar. The most impactful thing when working on a project with so many people is clear communication.
ColumbaryTTRPG: If you have a moment could you tell me a bit about the process of back and forth with Ross Hays https://www.rosshayesdesign.com/ that helped make this final image for [Devil’s Due]?
Carsonb: The process was actually quite a bit of fun. First off, I wrote an art brief with some notes about the tone of The Pressure Cooker; it's built from scrap and scavenged plumbing, boiler rooms, reactor parts, and that there's all sorts of fermented experiments there. Anything that can be made into hooch probably is. I told him about the bartender android named Kidd, and how they can nimbly manipulate glasses and drinks with a caliper for a hand. Ross shared an initial sketch that had a lot of creative ideas. One direction we ended up not going made Kidd into more of an appliance, rolling along the bar along a gantry, with drink dispensers, hoses, and more of a robotic appearance. We moved into more of an Android like robot to make it more of an NPC that players can converse with, but kept the screen as a face.
ColumbaryTTRPG: There’s no “boss” putting Devil’s Due together or keeping us on track, but in the run-up to the BackerKit launch you’ve definitely been spinning a lot of plates during development! Between art and layout communications, promotional planning, and production work, what do you find most satisfying about working on this project?
CarsonB: There’s a moment when all the contracts, payments, art briefs, rough mockups, and feedback culminate in a final piece of art. Seeing how enthusiastic our team is when we get our first look at these illustrations is the most satisfying part of this development work. Seeing how the artist’s illustration matches up with the writer’s intentions while still showcasing their style isn’t something I’ve experienced before.
ColumbaryTTRPG: I feel like [this] project has a special system for reimbursing contributors’ work. Can you talk a little about commissions versus contributor shares and what that looks like for different folks working on the Devil’s Due anthology?
Carsonb: Like you mentioned above, there’s no boss or sole owner of the project. We worked as a group to decide how many shares each piece of work is worth, and this works out to a percentage of the proceeds for each of us. This covers all tasks big and small, from writing half of a roll table to creating full page illustrations, to each phase of editing. Beyond that work, our contributor team is planning and coordinating our work, making decisions, and fitting our assignments into the project. In some areas, our contributor talent is stretched thin, so we’ve commissioned that work with standard contracts.
ColumbaryTTRPG: You’ve been press ganged into service running blockades of the outer rim colonies. What role are you playing in the pirate uprising to overthrow your corpo captors?
Carsonb: I’ll be the one leaking the information to the rebels. Any information I can overhear or glean off terminals is going straight to the resistance. Hopefully I can throw sand in the corpo gears while I’m at it.
You can find more from Carsonb on itch at Single Stage to Orbit Press ssto.itch.io. Visit him on BlueSky at ssto.press and check out Devil’s Due on Backerkit before funding wraps on December 10.