What makes Blister Critters such a blast?
An interview with the creators of a very clever and colorful small animal adventure RPG.
I got to interview the creators of the upcoming RPG Blister Critters, a game about being a small animal with mutant powers living in an Earth after humans. The game has a lot of unique mechanics and is full of spunk and personality.
Key Blister Critter Links
Back Blister Critters on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wythe/blister-critters
Reserve the exclusive Squirrel Queen Mini-Zine for only $1: play.blistercritters.com
Download the Blister Critters Quickstart (free) on DTRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/463235/Blister-Critters-Quickstart
Download the Blister Critters Quickstart (free) on Itch.io: stillfleet.itch.io/blister-critters-quickstart
The Interview
Hello all, can you introduce yourselves and tell us about your relationship with TTRPGs?
Tony: Hey there! I’m Anthony Grasso, founder of Odd Gob Games and creator of Blister Critters. I’m a Florida-based illustrator with a focus on making “whimdark” games. I’d dabbled in short-lived, homebrew campaigns for a few years following highschool— always the GM and never following an established system… other than the rule of cool, of course. Enough half-cooked systems, smaller games, and commissioned tabletop illustrations later, I’ve convinced myself, and Wythe, that I can write a game of my own. So far the ruse seems to be working.
Wythe: I’m Wythe Marschall, the founder of the Stillfleet Studio and the creator of the Grit System. I’m an anthropologist, science fiction junkie, socialist, and lifelong GM. I started writing tabletop games for my friends over a decade ago, and eventually they convinced me to try publishing a book, the superfuture political game Stillfleet. In the process, I was fortunate enough to meet Tony, who’s an absolutely brilliant illustrator and game designer. We’re very excited that Tony is taking the Grit System to new, zany places with Blister Critters.
What is Blister Critters and where did the idea for it come from?
Tony: The idea stemmed from a morning warm-up sketch! I had drawn up a mouse with a key cap helmet, a bottle-cap shield, and board-game armor. Didn’t take much more than that to put all my other work aside while I really leaned into fleshing out and finding what Blister Critters is now. I had just wrapped up GMing a 90s, Earthbound-esque campaign with my friends, so that vibe was still fresh on my mind.
Wasn’t enough to play as a mouse in the 90s, no. You also need to mutate! Just mutate? No, of course not. Mutate into a progressively stranger cartoon beast! Was a wild week of kitchen-sink idea conjuring.
Wythe: Blister Critters is a TTRPG about cartoon animals living in our world, without us. The animals have inherited the world… and its mutating environmental weirdness. And its McMansions full of Stuff (game term). We’ve joked that it’s the Ren & Stimpy version of Fallout: it’s both silly and super approachable as well as a razor-sharp engine for exploring the consequences of hyper-accumulation. Maybe it’s because we both grew up in the burbs of the Sun Belt (albeit in different cities), but I feel like I instantly got what Tony wanted to do with it when he pitched me on a Grit System game about exploring the houses of our childhoods, from the perspectives of tiny animals.
Speaking overall about the game, it seems like a really approachable, kid-friendly RPG. Have you had the chance to play the game with a younger audience, and if so, how did they receive it?
Wythe: We’ve played with many people, at this point, including a couple of teens. I’m not sure about young kids, below 14. I’ve run games for kids in the past, for sure. But I haven’t had the occasion to run Blister Critters for anyone below high-school age. I think they’d enjoy it. I know from my experience with Stillfleet that the rules are easy to pick up.
The game has a motif of being a sort of Saturday Morning Cartoon, with sessions being called “Episodes,” campaigns as “Seasons” and the GM the “Producer.” What are some cartoons that you had in mind when writing and shaping the game?
Wythe: Ren & Stimpy and Æon Flux were my favorite shows growing up, but of course I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Masters of the Universe, Captain Planet, all of that genre. Nothing other than Ren & Stimpy seemed fully in on the joke, however. The Stillfleet Studio’s lead artist, Ethan Gould, and I met one of the creators of that show, years ago, and heard him talk about Surreal art direction. He said they were on drugs half the time and would literally buy cuts of meat to photocopy to create the gross-out backgrounds for some of the strange still shots. That sort of method-acting version of design stuck with me. (Note, I’m a pescetarian and did not use any raw steak in the editing of Blister Critters!)
Tony: It’s funny, our difference in age is most apparent when we discuss cartoon inspiration. SpongeBob and Ed, Edd & Eddy are my go-tos when GMing. Other cartoons that have helped me personally in writing and illustrating are Courage the Cowardly Dog, Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Dexter’s Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Cow and Chicken, the list goes on and on. I really enjoy pulling on the “cartoon-logic” of, “Well, if it’s funny and drives the narrative forward, it’s golden.” That goes for both the writing I do, but especially the illustrative work.
Aside from the kid-friendly and cartoony nature of the game, it’s actually filled with innovative game mechanics. For example, the exploding dice have you re-rolling the dice for more damage if you roll the maximum of any given die BUT having to burn two Grit points to reroll. How did you arrive at the decision to have exploding die rerolls come with a cost?
Wythe: That’s a rule from Stillfleet that Tony adapted nicely for Blister Critters. BC is a somewhat lower-power game, in terms of epic “murder-hobo” powers. But we liked the idea of giving characters big swings, big moments, even with a d6 for a score (the “normal,” non-epic score die). Since burning and having to recover grit is the core mechanic of the Grit System, it makes sense to say that this explosive moment of maximum impact comes at a price. The whole idea is to incentivize players to gamble away their grit—not to hoard it.
Tony: Yeah! Like Wythe said, we wanted to emphasize big ol’ bonks! Keep combat hard-hitting and fast-moving. This isn’t a cartoon where combat takes multiple episodes.
Your character can take on four conditions: bleed, burn, poison and stun. In your playtesting did you ever find that you needed more than just those four?
Wythe: Blister Critters is a newer game, but in Stillfleet, in the course of exploring endless worlds and even strange places, we’ve come up with lots of odd diseases, voidmadnesses, and other conditions (and multiple “fishing” mini-games). That said, I’ve mostly mechanicalized the ones that affect combat in ways similar to bleed, burn, and stun. Venoms get more interesting, and I welcome players to let us know what hacks they come up with. I definitely hope people feel the vibe that this is a hackable, extensible, flexible system.
The Surge Die is another fascinating mechanic. It states that if the Producer wants to speed things up, they can, starting in the second round of combat, begin a Surge of +1 that gets added to every single roll. Then in the next round it’s +2, and so on, so that combat very quickly wraps up instead of dragging on. Where did this Surge idea come from?
Wythe: This came from some other game designer—I think? a while ago?—but for the life of me, I can’t remember who! In any event, I’ve tried all kinds of tricks to speed up combat, which should always serve a narrative purpose, anyway. This is just one idea—not my own?—we’re promoting in the Grit System.
Your playable critter must not exceed 12 inches in height, width or length, which really does keep them at “critter” size. You can play as an elephant or tiger, but they have to be a young or dwarf version of a full-sized one in order to stay within the size limit. How has this size limit affected the stories that you’ve ended up telling through the course of play?
Tony: Keeping the players small allows for an already big world to feel massive, and it’s also a fun juxtaposition to play as a foot-long alligator running around with a roach. I’ve found it especially fun to introduce NPCs that are much, much larger than the players, and have them all interact through those size differences, be it in combat or conversation. On the flip side, having a small prey animal, like a bunny, be the baddie of an episode is equally fun.
Wythe: We have indeed seen many kinds of animals, and we’ve encouraged players to make up new Critters. One friend played a teacup “jumart,” which is a French cryptid—a cow-horse hybrid (not real). With 132 animal powers, it’s easy to mix and match them, creating new Critters. I personally play a squirrel or roach, and I like to imagine them both as almost the same size.
There are 22 playable critters described in the quickstart, across the six categories of fuzzy, feathery, warted, scaly, shelled and crawly. Will the additional 44 critters in the full book include more categories? And what are a couple of your favorite critters to play?
Tony: It might be the Florida swamp in me, but I really enjoy playing gators! Typically seen as brute predators, it’s been fun to bring some goofiness to the ancient reptiles. I’ve also played a rabbit with an attitude who was a blast. (Literally, he liked explosives.)
Wythe: There aren’t new categories in the book, but there are many more powers. That said, I know Tony and I both really want to publish rules for playing as motile plants and fungi, and for playing as Bliffs (animated and sapient tools, plastic toys, office supplies, etc.). We’re planning on developing these rules in zines that can be unlocked as stretch goals during the Blister Critters Kickstarter campaign during ZineQuest. (If you want to play a screaming turnip-scout, please back us! And that reminds me of another great animated-Stuff show, Cuphead!)
The name of the game refers to critters (the playable animals) having “blisters,” which are mutant powers and abilities. Your character gets a blister every episode or maybe every other episode depending on how long your table is taking to play out a season. Players choose their next blisters from what is essentially a video game-style skill tree, the kind you see in video game RPGs. I love skill trees but hardly ever see them in TTRPGs. Why do you think that is?
Tony: I think it’s something we’ll be seeing more of! Not just skill trees necessarily, but the blurring of the lines between mechanics in board, video, and tabletop games. The time of shirking tradition and experimentation is here! Also, skill trees are a tricky thing to balance and could seem more daunting than a streamlined, linear, progression system.
Wythe: This was Tony’s idea, as I’m not a big video gamer. That said, I agree that the visual of the tree is both useful and inviting. Tony of course knocked it out of the park with the design. I’m definitely now thinking about (even more) ways to visualize Grit System powers, in general.
“Stuff” is this general term that refers to items found and created in the world, some of which has been left behind by the humans who all died off 20 years ago. What do you think is the best thing about how Stuff works in the game?
Tony: Easily the player-driven nature of Stuff. Unlike other games and settings where GMs are frequently relied upon for knowledge about medieval weaponry, sci-fi doo-dads, or arcane fantasies, Blister Critters take place in your hometown. It’s familiar and easily accessible for players to take the wheel on set design and item creation. It’s been a blast having players coming up with cool, unique, pieces of Stuff to find and use for equally cool and unique purposes.
During an early playtest game, the Pack was exploring a new human home. I asked them to describe this family’s hobby. “Crochet!” “Yeah, they won competitions as a family, world champs.” And so, a long table full of crochet tools and materials, gold medals and competition photos, and crocheted goods was canonized in the home. From this, a praying mantis player asked for, and found, a commemorative, competition, crochet needle, engraved with the family name. They would go on to impale quite a few ants on this needle… All generated from the players, I had very little to do with it. It’s awesome and exciting to be a part of.
Wythe: We found in early playtests that some players were ignoring Stuff-weapons because they had a decent Scrap score (a d8 or d10). Tony, I think, suggested adding the damage dealt by weapons to a character’s Scrap score, on a successful attack roll. We renamed the damage for weapons “Bonk,” and it’s been a big hit. I always love speeding up combat!
On another topic, the sheer inventiveness of how players use Stuff is always fun. In a battle against a tapioca-consistency eldritch horror underneath a burger joint, one player decided to search for sachets of desiccant—you know, those little packets that say “do not eat” that come in everything. He rolled very well, and we decided he found a pristine cardboard box full of those things in the storage area of the burger place. It was a great narrative moment: a smart crow (played by a smart player) turned a box of common, boring elements of food service into a weapon of war to kill an evil god!
Stuff can be anything, including things laying around the house. How many items will you ultimately have listed in the Stuff section of the core rulebook?
Wythe: This one is all Tony!
Tony: We have about 200… for now. We’ve separated them by category (bathroom, office, kid’s room, kitchen, etc.), and I try to add any new Stuff generated in a game to the master catalog, but Stuff is infinite! I’m a sucker for the absurd, so the more we add, the more invested I am in hitting the next hundred-milestone. The only real limit will be the book’s page count!
Each critter character has a role that gives them a mechanical perk and a drawback. Leader, Knowitall, Wallflower, Rage guy, as well as six more in the full game. Have you ever seen any synergy emerge with different combinations of roles in a party?
Tony: Even with only four roles currently public, people tend to want to have a unique role to themselves in character creation, which isn’t a rule, but makes for a more diverse Pack.
Wythe: The full list is: Boss, Class Clown, Fang Solo (moody loner), Fashionista, Hugger, Knowitall, Party Animal, Rage Guy, Sticky Fingers, and Wallflower. Tony didn’t want to have classes, which I liked the sound of, so we tried to come up with a schema building on tropes from cartoons that felt familiar and not like classes-by-other-names. I think this works well: Rafael is a Moody Loner (or Rage Guy?), and so is Bat-Man (or is he a Knowitall?). Players seem to like having a simple narrative push toward how they could choose to roleplay their Critter.
In terms of combinations, with animals, roles, and Blister Paths (mutations), there are a lot of permutations to consider. We’ve generally seen new players pick different animals and roles first, building their cartoon-show persona before fleshing out mutation-type, scores, and Stuff. This makes sense, and it reflects the visual hierarchy of the character sheet that Tony designed. I know that when I run games, I often know an animal’s look and vibe before I know how they’re going to react to the player-characters.
There is mention at the beginning of the quickstart of two different modes of play, or rather two sides of a spectrum: zany vs. gnarly. Zany is less violent and more slapstick, while gnarly is more dark and serious. Where do you see players choosing to play the game along this spectrum usually?
Tony: I personally Produce (GM) pretty squarely in the Zany range of things. Of course, it’s not a binary. The beauty of offering both is allowing tables to really explore the tension between Zany and Gnarly. In my experience, players really enjoy the Zany aspects of play, getting to truly inhabit a cartoon character for a couple hours. But, equally as important, they relish in having a dark twist at the end of an episode, or being blindsided by the harsh realities of the world around them. It’s a balancing act! One both Critters and Producers work on together.
Wythe: This is the biggest question for me: is the game about cartoon animals having a right zany mess-around? Or is it about, uh, the death of all humans on earth due to climate disruption and endocrine-disrupting small molecules (e.g.), and the cartoon-animal action is all one Surreal elegy? For me, it’s the latter, but I recognized right away that a major selling point for the game is that it can be played entirely in the former mode, as primarily escapist.
This isn’t dissonance, but artful braiding. I really pushed Tony to make this a game wherein you can constantly tack back and forth from “Oops, we ate too much creamed corn—can we use our vomit as a projectile to push back the spider-army like a firehose!?” to “The Wall-Smart is filled with powerless but otherwise pristine domestic robots—and a trio of long-dead humans who shot each other while looting the store during the Climate Wars that led to the Poof.” Both scenes can exist in the same universe, depending on the needs of the narrative. And the same group can choose to play through the game in different ways at different times.
In developing both Zany and Gnarly ways to use the same rules, I was inspired by Paradigm Concepts’ Rotted Capes, a mash-up game about B-lister superheroes living in the wake of a zombie apocalypse that has turned most of the A-listers into flying, laser-blasting undead. That game has a concise, consistent take on how to use a given rule, NPC, or facet of the setting in a more pulpy comic-book mode or in an ultra-dark survivalist one.
Said another way, personally, I want people to find Blister Critters approachable because they’ve always wanted to play Spongebob but then eventually have some a-ha moment of what philosopher Tim Morton calls the ecological thought: all of those consumer goods we list in the book, all of the animals all around us, all of the human activity that’s rapidly changing the world… it’s all enmeshed, connected. Taking away the humans, for me, helps me think about that fact. (While, you know, helping my fellow Critters jack a pallet of 2-liter Cuca-Coola bottles from the local Krueger.)
Another really great idea for a session mentioned in the quickstart is the “End Credits” portion, where at the end of a session an outro song is played. This is one of many places where I thought “Why didn’t I think of that?” Where did you come up with having an outro song for your sessions, and have you used such a song with other RPGs as well?
Tony: When Blister Critters was first being developed, I had just wrapped up running a 90s, Earthbound-esque, homebrewed/systemless campaign called Goodvale (also set in suburbia!). The vibes were HEAVY and we, me and my players, would frequently dress up and decorate. This included finding fun music to play during games! It was a clear sign for me, games are more than the rules being followed, it’s also the vibe at the table. As Blister Critters is a cartoon you can play, all good cartoons have a killer intro and memorable outro. Courage the Cowardly Dog is the first one that comes to mind for me. It’s just another step towards giving players the coolest experience possible, and one that doesn’t really require any prep or effort.
Wythe: This is all Tony! I love music and use it in games occasionally, but I’ve never mechanicalized it. One reason I love Blister Critters so much is that it adds a lot of smart, simple, optional rules to the Grit System, ones that we can easily try out in our flagship sci-fi game or the in-development fantasy games.
One main category of foes in the game are “Beasts,” who by nature are larger than the 12”-max Critters. How many beasts will you have statted for the full game, and what are some of your favorites?
Tony: Can’t speak to specifically how many will be in the book, but a 48 card pack of Beasts and other foes that are all statted out, is included in the deluxe boxed set we’re offering through Kickstarter. Extensive tables for generating all sorts of wacky and dangerous Beasts will definitely be in the book though!
Blisterbeak, a parrot with tentacle wings, is featured in the Pilot episode in the Quickstart and has a special place in my heart. I’ve run him a number of times now, and he’s always a blast to play. He once choked on a quarter because the players told him it would grant him “the powers of the moon.” It killed him. It was great.
Wythe: My favorite Beast so far is the horror beneath the burger joint called the Collector (Scrap d12, Scurry d10, Instinct d10, Noggin 0, Vibe 0, HEA 100, GRT 0, DR 0). The Critters discovered it when they traveled to a “haunted” no-man’s land in search of the missing (and invariably blackout drunk) cousin of the Squirrel Queen. The squirrels wouldn’t go near the place but offered the group a reward for bringing back the missing royal.
It turned out that the squirrels had good reason to avoid the area: the psychic trauma of whatever horrible events took place at the tail end of humanity’s reign on earth—compounded by the many misadventures of the squirrels’ scouts (I narrated a squirrel discovering an intact fragmentation grenade and proudly showing it off to his buddies with tragic results)—led to the evolution of this aberrant fossil-fuel horror, a sort of substrate of the earth that looks like black tapioca pudding and slowly sucks in all of the skeletons of the things that die in the burger joint above…
The Collector is a hunger made manifest: when it successfully hits you, you become ensnared in corrosive pudding and must beat it in a contested Scurry check to get out (you win ties), even before rolling Scurry again to outrun it and flee its tunnels.
The Critters inevitably fell in a hole and faced off with the vile thing in combat. I described it as a sort of resinous, octopodal version of the Devil of Darkness in Chainsaw Man, but comprising mostly squirrel and other Critter skeletons instead of human ones. It speaks in the echoes of its component skeletons—i.e., in a chorus of annoying, stuttering, high-pitched taunts from long-dead squirrel-soldiers. The sheer cognitive dissonance of the thing’s appearance and (meaningless, jabbering) speech was good for constant laughs.
Plus, the players really, really wanted to kill it! I think they got it down to about a third of its initial HEA, but one of the Critters (a platypus Brawler) ended up with only 1 HEA. His mates convinced him to live to fight another day.
Of course, I must also mention in passing the Diesel Bros, a trio of raccoon-mercenaries who’ve figured out how to safely operate a single Harley (well, sort of safely) and have thus become the Squirrel Queen’s go-to cavalry… In order of ascending size, their names are A.M. Diesel, F.M. Diesel, and Sirius Diesel. They’re sort of rivals to the technologically curious but presumably non-sociopathic Critters—an anti-party—as opposed to dumb Beasts.
I have to admit one of the strangest aspects of the game, at least from the quickstart, is “Bliffs” which is short for “BLIstered stuFF.” These are objects that have been affected by Blister mutations and which have come alive to some degree or another. Can you tell me where that idea came from and maybe one of the most interesting or intriguing examples of a Bliff in play?
Wythe: Tony, you’re the Bliffmeister! This was all your idea.
Tony: While there’s no shortage of Beast ideas to be had, why stop there? With a heavy focus on the everyday objects around the Critters? It felt like a natural step forward for me. Fight a blender, help this lamp, escort a fork. Just another step into the cartoon Surrealism I love about Blister Critters.
Beyond the novelty, it’s also kinda dark in concept. These objects are cursed with sentience, but are really only aware of their use/purpose that humans once gave them 20 years ago. That sucks. This makes for strange and quirky NPCs to drop on your players.
I introduced players to a lightbulb Bliff. It begged to be plugged in! It had never been used and it longed for the warmth of electricity. The Critters spent a while figuring out how to reach a lamp and hold it steady. The lightbulb was desperately pleading for release, to be turned on. At the climax of our episode, I slowed down time, really leaned into explaining every detail. They FINALLY got him in the socket, twisted him tight, and… there’s no electricity! Of course there’s not. Undeterred, the Critters have now made it their mission to plug him in and get him turned on! And so the next episode has already prepped itself.
The rules and the concept for this game are so clear and straightforward. Do you have any plans to open any of it up through an SRD or a third party license that allows for fan expansion?
Wythe: There is a Grit System license, which we’re currently just editing for clarity, now that there are more games. We plan to publish a Grit System SRD very soon based on Stillfleet. Blister Critters uses many of the same powers, but the core SRD will be setting-neutral. We definitely want other people to use it, because in practice it takes many months to go from cool idea + system to a fully developed game. For example, I love horror but have zero plans for a Grit System horror game. (Unless the slashmeister Logan Dean wants to work with us on one…) Follow Blister Critters for updates on the SRD progress!
The Pilot Episode in the quickstart is a great starter scenario that takes Critters through the rooms of a house. How many “episodes” of this caliber do you think you could write if given the chance?
Tony: Oh man… I don’t think I could stop. It’s just writing a cartoon episode for others to explore! I think about fun episode plots all the time. Given infinite time and better typing skills, a thousand—no, two thousand.
Wythe: I’ll let Tony speak to his vision for housecrawls. What I want to write are more like “fronts” in Apocalypse World, or factions in Blades in the Dark: I am working on a mini-zine right now about the hegemony of the cruel Squirrel Queen of Chastain and Piedmont Parks, the iron-incisored ruler of post-Poof (post-apocalypse) Atlanta. I feel like I could (and might? should?) write an entire novel about how the animals in my hometown resist neo-feudal oppression after the rise of the squirrels and their rediscovery of writing, taxation, goof juice (booze), and air travel (via pigeon)…
On that note, if there was a ton of demand for it and you were asked to expand Blister Critters, what would be the first few things you would do to expand the game?
Tony: I don’t know that I can succinctly list everything I wanna do more of…
Expanding on Stuff! One of our stretch goals is a zine that would introduce food Bliffs, add a Stuff-centric Blister Path, and expand our official Stuff catalog.
Then of course we have to add mushrooms! Play as mushrooms, fight ‘em off… eat them? Wythe is taking the helm on an introduction to that material in a second zine in our stretchgoals.
More Blister Paths! This is something players are already coming up with cool homebrew ideas for.
The list goes on and on. A second book. I just wanna do a whole second 100-page book of Blister Critters nonsense.
Wythe: I really want to be able to play as mushrooms and plants, and Tony was already on the same wavelength when we spoke about it. I can definitely see supplements exploring the altered posthuman ecosystems of other regions. We have a friend in Australia, for example, who is running a playtest focused on that continent’s unique Critters. And I’d like to work with my uncle (a retired fish, reptile, and amphibian biologist in Louisiana) to work on a zine about Critters in the bayou. All that said, if the Kickstarter goes well, we’d be honored to continue collaborating on whatever Tony wants to do next with this extremely fun game!
Key links:
Back Blister Critters on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wythe/blister-critters
Reserve the exclusive Squirrel Queen Mini-Zine for only $1: play.blistercritters.com
Download the Blister Critters Quickstart (free) on DTRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/463235/Blister-Critters-Quickstart
Download the Blister Critters Quickstart (free) on Itch.io: stillfleet.itch.io/blister-critters-quickstart
More about the creators:
The Stillfleet Studio: stillfleet.com
Stillfleet Studio games on Itch.io: stillfleet.itch.io
Stillfleet Studio games on DTRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/18876/Stillfleet
Odd Gob Games (Anthony Grasso): oddgobgames.itch.io
Pretty sure that combat mechanic’s unknown origin is 13th Age’s [Escalation Die](https://www.13thagesrd.com/combat-rules/#Escalation_Die):
> The escalation die represents a bonus to attacks as the fight goes on.
>
> At the start of the second round, the GM sets the escalation die at 1. Each PC gains a bonus to attack rolls equal to the current value on the escalation die. Each round, the escalation die advances by +1, to a maximum of +6.
Edit: It sounds like Blister Critters has generalized it so all attacks benefit, even those of non-PCs. And so it applies to more than just hit testing. Sounds simpler and more effective at ending combat conclusively ASAP.