I only recently began running One Ring games for my players, but it’s the kind of RPG whose quality invites you to check out more of the publisher’s works. I’ve got my eye on the Tales from the Loop and Aliens games, perhaps in a couple of months...Free League are doing interesting work in the space!
Engaging interview, as far as it went. I will say, it’s a great shame that it fizzled out like that, but it might be the tendency that many Swedes have of keeping personal life and work separate (I’ve been living in Sweden for several years now and it’s a common enough thing). I’m sure it’s not meant as a slight, but it still sucks to be on the receiving end of that kind of thing.
Hey, Tomas here. So sorry about the misunderstanding. I've never done an interview over Google Docs before, so this was a new format for me. I thought you were writing questions as we went along just like I was writing the answers, I never realized you had a batch of questions prepared. I must have missed some notification at some point, these are busy times, and when you reached out I felt bad so I thought that it'd be better to publish what we had so you didn't need to wait.
Never meant to terminate the interview, so I went ahead now and replied to the questions you had left, that you posted above. I've pasted them below here in the comments field. Feel free to get back to me again if you have any further questions and I'll reply as quickly as I can.
Hey Tomas! That comes as quite a relief that it was just a technological/format misfire. People were speculating all kinds of stuff. Thanks for these follow-up answers as well!
Which Free League game have you personally played the most?
Overall, it's probably Mutant: Year Zero, as it’s the earliest game, but lately it’s probably ALIEN and Blade Runner as those are recent games that I have been the lead designer for. Right now though we’re playing The One Ring, playesting Tales From the Lone-lands, and having a blast!
What aspect or step in a game’s design process do you find yourself enjoying the most?
Hm, it’s always a lot of fun in the early stages, when everything is possible and the idea of the game is still a shiny vague beautiful thing on the horizon. But actually, an even better stage for me is when you’re further along and starting to make design decisions and these feed into new ideas, making the game even better than you imagined in the first place. That’s when you really feel you’ve struck gold!
Are there ever instances where something is lost in translation in a game going from Swedish to English or other languages?
Hopefully not that much, we work with really good translators and I think that both versions should give the same experience. But sure, in some cases things are hard to translate fully, especially in a game like Vaesen that is set in Scandinavia and is based on old Scandinavian folklore.
Do you have any good data on how many people are playing Free League games? If so, what are some of the most-played games right now?
Hm, I’m afraid we don’t really have any data of that, we cannot track player activity like video games can. So we just have a general feel of what seems to be played the most. It’s very hard to say for sure and it varies over time, so I’d hesitate to name one game.
At the time of this interview, The Walking Dead Universe is crowdfunding on Kickstarter. The launch day numbers and trajectory seem to be about average for a Free League core product. That is, about 5,000 backers and roughly $500k at the halfway point of the Kickstarter. How do you feel about that number of backers?
We’re happy about the Kickstarter and it went along with our expectations. We didn’t expect it to go quite as high as The One Ring or Blade Runner, as the market for licensed RPGs is much more crowded now, but the TWDURPG campaign was definitely a success and it will allow us to create the game we set out to do.
Zeroing in on the actual game The Walking Dead Universe for a minute, when I first saw the announcement for the project, my thoughts went to how Free League has already sort of made a couple of games that could be used for a zombie apocalypse: Mutant: Year Zero and Twilight: 2000. In MYZ, you could reskin some of the setting, drop the mutations, and homebrew some zombie virus mechanics. Same approach with T2K: tweak the time and place a bit, swap out radiation sickness for viral load. Nothing too difficult if you know your way around the Year Zero Engine. So my question is, could you enumerate the actual mechanics that make The Walking Dead Universe different and truly distinct from your two previous apocalypse games?
The Walking Dead Universe RPG is more focused on personal relationships than Mutant: Year Zero and Twilight: 2000. It’s more of an “indie” game I guess, and it's written by Nils Hintze (Tales From the Loop RPG, Vaesen), not me. It also handles combat, especially against walkers, in a different way, where they are more of a constant threat that ebbs and flows rather than individual enemies.
Can you provide a pronunciation guide to how to properly pronounce your name? And how much do you care on a scale of 1 to 10 that people pronounce it correctly?
Ha, that’s tricky. My first name is pronounced something like “Toomas” in Swedish, with the o as in “ooze”, but just pronouncing it like the normal “Thomas” in English is fine, it’s the same name after all! Härenstam is harder I guess - the letter “ä” is in between a and e, so like the a in “at”, not like in “are”.
I like the Swedish language. It’s cool. I’ve occasionally tried to say a word or two online, but I’m often met with vociferous pushback from Swedes. On the whole, they seem very protective of their language. Do you know what I’m talking about? If so, do you know where this almost jealous guardian-like mentality stems from?
Oh wow, I really don’t know! Since Sweden is a small country I think maybe Swedes are not used to others understanding the language, or trying to understand it or speak it. We are very used to speaking English in all communications with people from other countries. But it’s great that you had a go at it!
Has Fria Ligan been able to expand tabletop roleplaying as a hobby in Sweden much in the past eight or so years?
I’d like to think that we have made an impact on the hobby in Sweden since we started out in 2011. We were one of the first Swedish RPG publishers to use crowdfunding (in 2013) and I think we were the first since the 1990s to publish a game (Mutant: Year Zero) in English for the international market, so in some sense I’d like to think we spearheaded the growth of the Swedish RPG scene in the world. But we could certainly not have done any of that without the Swedish RPG pioneers that came before us, like Äventyrsspel / Target Games in the 1980s and 90s, and Järnringen in the 00s. Also, there was (and still is!) a very active indie scene in Sweden in the 00s, which is where we who later founded Free League first met.
I wouldn't worry too much about the abrupt end. It could be a cultural difference. My work colleagues from Denmark and Germany usually logged off for the day the same way. No pitter-patter, no hints, just a good clean, "I'm done." And that's it. I'd see them on zoom the next day.
I kinda wish we had the same expectation in the states.
Love the perspective shift about IP. I never thought about their early work. They were always adapted other's IP, the properties just grew in scope and social clout, which makes sense. Once your portfolio is full of IP adaptations, why wouldn't you use that in a pitch for new IP partnerships?
Thanks for the cultural insight there. That really does put me more at ease about the whole thing.
And yeah, it really makes perfect sense that they'd be doing licensed IP games considering the fact that's almost all they've been doing since the start.
Wow... how does someone agree to be interviewed and then just give up on it? Unprofessional behavior that you have Helen much better than I would have.
I wanted to check out Alien and Walking Dead but I believe I’ll skip them now.
Thank you for the information that I have now used to make my decision to not support this company, and know it was not your doing, but his.
I like his perspective on expansion, namely maybe it's not what Tomas or Free League wants. We assume as (mostly, presumably) Americans that relentless growth and expansion is preferred because bigger equals better in our culture. Good on him to take a hard look at that. Perhaps it's a Swedish thing. As to terminating the interview once he's said what he wants to say? Maybe that's a Swedish thing too.
Free League remains a great company that makes outstanding, industry-leading games and Tomas remains a pretty cool cat. Thanks for the interview, Dave! I enjoy your perspective and material too!
I think you’re definitely right about Swedes not feeling the need to expand infinitely. It has a lot to do with their robust social safety net. If Tomas stopped earning tomorrow, he’d still be taken care of by the state for the rest of his life. In the U.S. it’s… a little different.
I mean, I imagine I would feel a little hurt at the rather abrupt ending of the conversation. It's kind of like, "I got mine so..." Especially because I suspect you're a fan of Tomas's work. You seem to think highly of Free League games. That makes the sudden end of this particular conversation feel like a bit of a slap.
Though a personal story may not be completely helpful, here we are... I was a big fan of Dennis Detwiller (Godlike, Delta Green, etc) and followed him on twitter. He did a twitter rant one day and I basically replied, "Be careful of becoming the thing you hate." Maybe I overstepped, but maybe not because I respected the man. Within hours, he sent out another rant of how a fan was accusing him of being the thing he hates. Not what I said. I tried to explain, it begat an argument that left me feeling less of him. Point is, sometimes communication does not happen the way we intend or the way we want, especially internet communication. I suggest giving Tomas the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah one thing is abundantly clear: he’s a busy man. That’s no joke. They reached out about doing this interview in order to execute some damage control, and he said his piece on that front. After that was done, the utility of the interview was greatly reduced in terms of time spent versus anything gained on his part. Just in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, it was time for him to end the interview. I mean, I get it from that perspective.
I only recently began running One Ring games for my players, but it’s the kind of RPG whose quality invites you to check out more of the publisher’s works. I’ve got my eye on the Tales from the Loop and Aliens games, perhaps in a couple of months...Free League are doing interesting work in the space!
Engaging interview, as far as it went. I will say, it’s a great shame that it fizzled out like that, but it might be the tendency that many Swedes have of keeping personal life and work separate (I’ve been living in Sweden for several years now and it’s a common enough thing). I’m sure it’s not meant as a slight, but it still sucks to be on the receiving end of that kind of thing.
Ah, well it’s good to know that it’s might have just been a cultural difference thing.
So much shade... XD Good (half) interview though!
Hey, Tomas here. So sorry about the misunderstanding. I've never done an interview over Google Docs before, so this was a new format for me. I thought you were writing questions as we went along just like I was writing the answers, I never realized you had a batch of questions prepared. I must have missed some notification at some point, these are busy times, and when you reached out I felt bad so I thought that it'd be better to publish what we had so you didn't need to wait.
Never meant to terminate the interview, so I went ahead now and replied to the questions you had left, that you posted above. I've pasted them below here in the comments field. Feel free to get back to me again if you have any further questions and I'll reply as quickly as I can.
Hey Tomas! That comes as quite a relief that it was just a technological/format misfire. People were speculating all kinds of stuff. Thanks for these follow-up answers as well!
Which Free League game have you personally played the most?
Overall, it's probably Mutant: Year Zero, as it’s the earliest game, but lately it’s probably ALIEN and Blade Runner as those are recent games that I have been the lead designer for. Right now though we’re playing The One Ring, playesting Tales From the Lone-lands, and having a blast!
What aspect or step in a game’s design process do you find yourself enjoying the most?
Hm, it’s always a lot of fun in the early stages, when everything is possible and the idea of the game is still a shiny vague beautiful thing on the horizon. But actually, an even better stage for me is when you’re further along and starting to make design decisions and these feed into new ideas, making the game even better than you imagined in the first place. That’s when you really feel you’ve struck gold!
Are there ever instances where something is lost in translation in a game going from Swedish to English or other languages?
Hopefully not that much, we work with really good translators and I think that both versions should give the same experience. But sure, in some cases things are hard to translate fully, especially in a game like Vaesen that is set in Scandinavia and is based on old Scandinavian folklore.
Do you have any good data on how many people are playing Free League games? If so, what are some of the most-played games right now?
Hm, I’m afraid we don’t really have any data of that, we cannot track player activity like video games can. So we just have a general feel of what seems to be played the most. It’s very hard to say for sure and it varies over time, so I’d hesitate to name one game.
At the time of this interview, The Walking Dead Universe is crowdfunding on Kickstarter. The launch day numbers and trajectory seem to be about average for a Free League core product. That is, about 5,000 backers and roughly $500k at the halfway point of the Kickstarter. How do you feel about that number of backers?
We’re happy about the Kickstarter and it went along with our expectations. We didn’t expect it to go quite as high as The One Ring or Blade Runner, as the market for licensed RPGs is much more crowded now, but the TWDURPG campaign was definitely a success and it will allow us to create the game we set out to do.
Zeroing in on the actual game The Walking Dead Universe for a minute, when I first saw the announcement for the project, my thoughts went to how Free League has already sort of made a couple of games that could be used for a zombie apocalypse: Mutant: Year Zero and Twilight: 2000. In MYZ, you could reskin some of the setting, drop the mutations, and homebrew some zombie virus mechanics. Same approach with T2K: tweak the time and place a bit, swap out radiation sickness for viral load. Nothing too difficult if you know your way around the Year Zero Engine. So my question is, could you enumerate the actual mechanics that make The Walking Dead Universe different and truly distinct from your two previous apocalypse games?
The Walking Dead Universe RPG is more focused on personal relationships than Mutant: Year Zero and Twilight: 2000. It’s more of an “indie” game I guess, and it's written by Nils Hintze (Tales From the Loop RPG, Vaesen), not me. It also handles combat, especially against walkers, in a different way, where they are more of a constant threat that ebbs and flows rather than individual enemies.
Can you provide a pronunciation guide to how to properly pronounce your name? And how much do you care on a scale of 1 to 10 that people pronounce it correctly?
Ha, that’s tricky. My first name is pronounced something like “Toomas” in Swedish, with the o as in “ooze”, but just pronouncing it like the normal “Thomas” in English is fine, it’s the same name after all! Härenstam is harder I guess - the letter “ä” is in between a and e, so like the a in “at”, not like in “are”.
I like the Swedish language. It’s cool. I’ve occasionally tried to say a word or two online, but I’m often met with vociferous pushback from Swedes. On the whole, they seem very protective of their language. Do you know what I’m talking about? If so, do you know where this almost jealous guardian-like mentality stems from?
Oh wow, I really don’t know! Since Sweden is a small country I think maybe Swedes are not used to others understanding the language, or trying to understand it or speak it. We are very used to speaking English in all communications with people from other countries. But it’s great that you had a go at it!
Has Fria Ligan been able to expand tabletop roleplaying as a hobby in Sweden much in the past eight or so years?
I’d like to think that we have made an impact on the hobby in Sweden since we started out in 2011. We were one of the first Swedish RPG publishers to use crowdfunding (in 2013) and I think we were the first since the 1990s to publish a game (Mutant: Year Zero) in English for the international market, so in some sense I’d like to think we spearheaded the growth of the Swedish RPG scene in the world. But we could certainly not have done any of that without the Swedish RPG pioneers that came before us, like Äventyrsspel / Target Games in the 1980s and 90s, and Järnringen in the 00s. Also, there was (and still is!) a very active indie scene in Sweden in the 00s, which is where we who later founded Free League first met.
I wouldn't worry too much about the abrupt end. It could be a cultural difference. My work colleagues from Denmark and Germany usually logged off for the day the same way. No pitter-patter, no hints, just a good clean, "I'm done." And that's it. I'd see them on zoom the next day.
I kinda wish we had the same expectation in the states.
Love the perspective shift about IP. I never thought about their early work. They were always adapted other's IP, the properties just grew in scope and social clout, which makes sense. Once your portfolio is full of IP adaptations, why wouldn't you use that in a pitch for new IP partnerships?
Cool stuff.
Thanks for the cultural insight there. That really does put me more at ease about the whole thing.
And yeah, it really makes perfect sense that they'd be doing licensed IP games considering the fact that's almost all they've been doing since the start.
Wow... how does someone agree to be interviewed and then just give up on it? Unprofessional behavior that you have Helen much better than I would have.
I wanted to check out Alien and Walking Dead but I believe I’ll skip them now.
Thank you for the information that I have now used to make my decision to not support this company, and know it was not your doing, but his.
I like his perspective on expansion, namely maybe it's not what Tomas or Free League wants. We assume as (mostly, presumably) Americans that relentless growth and expansion is preferred because bigger equals better in our culture. Good on him to take a hard look at that. Perhaps it's a Swedish thing. As to terminating the interview once he's said what he wants to say? Maybe that's a Swedish thing too.
Free League remains a great company that makes outstanding, industry-leading games and Tomas remains a pretty cool cat. Thanks for the interview, Dave! I enjoy your perspective and material too!
I think you’re definitely right about Swedes not feeling the need to expand infinitely. It has a lot to do with their robust social safety net. If Tomas stopped earning tomorrow, he’d still be taken care of by the state for the rest of his life. In the U.S. it’s… a little different.
I mean, I imagine I would feel a little hurt at the rather abrupt ending of the conversation. It's kind of like, "I got mine so..." Especially because I suspect you're a fan of Tomas's work. You seem to think highly of Free League games. That makes the sudden end of this particular conversation feel like a bit of a slap.
Though a personal story may not be completely helpful, here we are... I was a big fan of Dennis Detwiller (Godlike, Delta Green, etc) and followed him on twitter. He did a twitter rant one day and I basically replied, "Be careful of becoming the thing you hate." Maybe I overstepped, but maybe not because I respected the man. Within hours, he sent out another rant of how a fan was accusing him of being the thing he hates. Not what I said. I tried to explain, it begat an argument that left me feeling less of him. Point is, sometimes communication does not happen the way we intend or the way we want, especially internet communication. I suggest giving Tomas the benefit of the doubt.
Am I overstepping again? Maybe, but maybe not.
Yeah one thing is abundantly clear: he’s a busy man. That’s no joke. They reached out about doing this interview in order to execute some damage control, and he said his piece on that front. After that was done, the utility of the interview was greatly reduced in terms of time spent versus anything gained on his part. Just in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, it was time for him to end the interview. I mean, I get it from that perspective.
*Handled