Interviewing Luke

Luke is half of Murkdice, and is keen on supporting GM-centric design. His Factions Handbook sounds like it is worth looking out for!

Please tell me a bit about yourself

I'm Luke, half of the Murkdice whole. I'm the writer, designer, layout person, and sometimes illustrator!

Back in 2022 I left a career in software engineering to go travelling and ended up starting Murkdice shortly after with my partner in crime Lyndsay.

I make games for Murkdice and write for other publishers, but also run the MurkMail newsletter which is really gathering steam!

What do you like best about designing games?

I've always loved problem-solving, and game design feels the pinnacle of a fun exercise in that.

It applies whether I'm writing something from the ground up or putting together the modular hacks that go out in MurkMail. There's a joy in solving problems that in turn brings people fun at their gaming tables.

It's also a very responsive process. A short while back we had a series of articles in MurkMail on factions that received a lot of attention, so I've taken that and expanded it into a whole zine (which will be coming soon).

MurkMail is helpful in that sense, it allows us to test the basis of ideas and see if there is an appetite for a big dish so to speak!

I'm also big on GM centric design. My experience with a lot of games is that they are player first, GM second in nature. I tend to design the opposite way around, which is why MurkMail is very GM focused in what we put out, as are often my games. I want to give GMs better tools.

What are you working on at the moment, and what excites you about it?

So I already mentioned the Factions Handbook, which may be out by the time this goes live! It's a 40-ish page system agnostic guide for generating and running faction conflicts.

Factions are one of my favourite parts of rpgs, so it was natural that I ended up making something for it.

I think the system is intuitive, yet deep. My goal with the design is to give you as much output information (detail) as possible for as little work as possible. And I think this faction system does pretty well at that.

The second thing I have cooking is my self-identified heartbreaker, the Murk Hack.

I think it was Luka Rejec who said that everyone needs to make a heartbreaker, and with the amount of hacks and modular rules I put out for MurkMail, I felt it was time for mine.

It's a 20 ish page OSR/NSR/FKR thing, with a leaning on dark fantasy. It's rooted in Into the Odd and its cousins, like Cairn, but draws from other inspiration like Symbaroum and some of my own quirks.

I'm going to be releasing it for free, and it may expand over time to come.

I love the idea of factions in games - will your system agnostic guide stretch into sci-fi and horror factions (among others)?

It's theme neutral! I wanted to make something that could be ported into pretty much anything. In that sense, the book is more focused on giving you the skeleton and muscles of faction conflicts (including a guide on how it all moves) but it's open for you to apply to any themes you like.

You bring your own flavour into it, it's like a workbench for you to craft a faction scenario that fits the game you are running.

What experience(s) are you trying to give to players?

This is serving GMs first, but I think the Factions Handbook makes a game more engaging for players too! Factions enable players to think big. There's concise guidance in the handbook on how players engage in the faction dynamics and how they can affect it.

The Factions Handbook gives GMs the tools to craft a richer backdrop and a dynamic situation for players to enjoy.

Is there anything you would like to promote right now?

We put out a lot of stuff (including lots of FREE stuff!), so the best way to see what we do is go visit the blog/newsletter MurkMail. If you sign up you get a free pack of isometric pointcrawl maps and my own set of dark fantasy random tables (both of which people love).

We have some really nice hexcrawl notebooks, hexbooks, that I designed for GMs to prep hexcrawls and dungeons.

We've got a Mork Borg module, M1: Blood & Salt that came out recently (which is the first project I've done the art for).

Our sci-fi game, Void Above, which Kickstarted in the Spring is now available digitally worldwide too.

Where should people go to follow you, and to find your products?

• You can find our other products (including FREE ones) on DriveThruRPG.