Interviewing Craig Duffy

By Alex White

- 4 minutes read - 798 words
Craig has a special interest in Cold War and sci-fi genres, and is wonderfully open about his experiences with exhibiting at conventions.

Please tell me a bit about yourself

I’m Craig Duffy and I’m a hobbyist designer currently based on the Wirral. In my day job I’m a bioinformatician working in the field of infection biology. Basically that means I spend most of my day analysing genomes on a computer.

I design and write across a range of genres but the two I’m most interested in are the Cold War and sci-fi. While I enjoy games that use the traditional formula of GM plus players I’m also keen to explore other approaches, especially duet RPGs and games that manipulate the written word.

Science fiction image of a woman in a spacesuit, holding her helmet

As well as designing I'm also very open about the challenges of running a micro business as a hobby. I regular post convention and kickstarter roundups on my blog where I dive into all the costs and issues I've faced. I think it's really important that people understand these details and that you don't have to be making a lot of money to consider yourself a game designer.

What do you like best about designing games?

Two aspects really stand out. First and foremost is trying to find a way to tell a particular story. I'm never going to be a novelist but I am a storyteller. I get ideas for individual scenes or themes and find that the structure of a game helps with working out how the characters got there or where they might go next.

Connected to that are the mechanics. I think good mechanics influence how a game feels so I'm always trying to find approaches that do that. Whether that's Chris Bisette’s fantastic Wretched & Alone Jenga tower mechanics that I adapted for Rock Hoppers or embedding being able to see the future into every layer of Project Cassandra.

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

My current project is The Words We Leave Behind, a duet time travel game about opposing agents unleashing the butterfly effect to manipulate history in their favour. It’s inspired by the fantastic novella This is how you lose the time war that follows two characters as they fight against one another and slowly learn about their opposite number. The first ashcan adapted mechanics from my first duet game, Signal to Noise and stuck very closely to the structure of the novella. I’m currently streamlining it to remove the letter writing aspect and focus more on the butterfly effect.

Like Signal to Noise it’s a writing game, with each player taking it in turns to create an historical event that their character has been sent to change. That lets me use approaches that are not an option in live, face to face games. Signal to Noise used character substitutions to slowly render the text unreadable. In The Words We Leave Behind you manipulate the existing entries, slowly changing sentences as your actions ripple through time and change history. Of course your opponent is doing the same so the history you get is never exactly what you were aiming for.

Do you use cards in The Words We Leave Behind. Why is that?

Yes, Cards provide an interesting alternative to dice on a few fronts. They're a format most people are familiar with and will have a grasp of the basic odds. They also offer persistance in a way that dice don't. Once a card has been played it can't come up again unless you reset the deck, so are great for representing one off events or matching to unique prompts. Finally there's a visual element, you can see individual suits accumulate as you play and get a very clear feel for how the game is progressing.

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

I try to create games that focus on a single story or experience and that use the mechanics to enhance that focus. For The Words We Leave Behind the fun comes from getting to explore a nuance of time travel that is often overlooked or ignored. Even small changes in history have the potential to cascade and radically change the future.

At some point I'll shift towards a bigger, more open ended game but even then I hope that I'll be able to find a niche that it revolves around.

Is there anything you would like to promote right now?

The Worlds We Leave Behind, coming to Kickstarter 2025

The Words We Leave Behind is coming to Kickstarter in February as part of ZineQuest 2025 so please check that out. I’ve already commissioned a small selection of art from the brilliant Carly Draws but I’d love to be able to add more which will only be possible if the campaign is successful.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarshadow-designs/the-words-we-leave-behind?ref=do63xo

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