Interviewing Daniel Copper

By Alex White

- 6 minutes read - 1086 words
Daniel is an emerging designer in the UK, with two full games out and several more in development. Read to find out more!

Please tell me a bit about yourself

I'm Daniel, though I go by The Copper Compendium for my all my TTRPG work. I've been designing TTRPGs and supplements for existing games for about a year and a half at this point, at least on a "publishing what I make" level. Unpublished general design stuff? Much longer.

So far I've published a bunch of one-page games and supplements, submitted my work to several charity bundles and created 2 full games, one for solo play (Summit, a game about climbing a mountain while discovering the character you're playing as) and one for group play (The Curse Lingers, a post-apocalyptic dungeon crawler heavily inspired by nuclear semiotics).

copper compendium logo showing an open book with a mountain rising from it, a river from the mountain becomes the bookmark in the book. A copper-coloured sun sets behind the mountain

What do you like best about designing games?

My favourite part about designing games is that moment when everything clicks together. I'm a big fan of satisfying mechanics that match the fiction of the game and I love making my games slot together such that the mechanics feed into one another. I've also discovered, since I started publishing my work, that I love formatting games. I have spent probably as many hours working out colour schemes, picking fonts and adjusting page graphics as I have designing my games. I have WAY too many fonts installed on my computer and I keep installing new ones. There is no end in sight.

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

I have several current projects (with a bunch more on the list and a few on hold for now).

Project 1, and the closest to completion of the bunch, is A Call To Compete, a tabletop game (I hesitate to say TTRPG as it has drifted more in the direction of board games) based on video game fighters like Mortal Kombat and Tekken. It's almost at the playtesting stage, with a starting roster of six fighters, a combo system and special moves unique to each fighter and stage.

Project 2 is more recent and is a result of a local charity TTRPG event I've attended for the past two years. Simply, GMs offer a selection of games to be played in slots over the 24 hour event, with ways to gain advantages or cause upsets within the games by donating money to charity. I love the idea, but wasn't aware of any game that intrisically accounted for play of that sort, so have been working on a game with that as a core part of the experience. The result is the very early draft of what I'm currently calling the Space Radio Game, with players taking on the roles of the crew of Space Freighter "Cardinal", recently evacuated after a catastrophic hull breach. Each member is in their own escape pod, with only a radio to communicate with the others, and little way to determine exactly who they're talking to.

Among my other projects that are in the early stages or on pause, we have a game about witches trying to escape town before the witchhunters arrive, a murder mystery tea party with playing card mechanics for gaining clues and a community-building game set in an eldritch space ocean.

Tell me more about that charity event - did it really go all through the night?

It absolutely does go through the night! This year I arrived a bit after midday and stayed until its conclusion at 7am the following morning!

It's run by a collaboration of university societies in aid of a local foodbank, so it's not just TTRPGs, either. If I remember correctly, the Boardgames, Creative Writing, Anime and Film societies were all participants this year (I'm sure there's others I'm missing). Each has their own ways of gathering money for the cause and once you've paid entry you're free to roam and join in!

I ran a game of Dread the previous year, as well as joining in a D&D MOBA game in the early hours. This year I didn't have time to organise a game, so went as a player, playing a game of Vaesen and one of Ten Candles. I also submitted a collection of every TTRPG and supplement I'd made to that point to the raffle.

It's a really great event, even if I (and others) got more and more delirious from lack of sleep as the morning crept in.

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

I don't think I have a set experience I'm trying to give players - it fluctuates between games. Some, like The Boulder, are deliberately unfriendly to play, while others, like Summit, are meant to be relaxing and completative experiences.

I guess the main things I aim to give players are novelty and approachability. Novelty in that each game and experience will have something that sets it apart in some way (or at least attempts to) and approachability in that you shouldn't need much (if any) prior knowledge to play, and need few-to-no additional resources than you have to hand (with a few exceptions).

My favourite games to build are those with lots of buttons to push and levers to pull when playing, not necessarily "crunchy" games but those with interesting mechanical interactions. I also like building risk into design: with Summit, you can stop at the first corner of the grid you reach, or risk going a little further for potential gain. Similarly, in The Curse Lingers, building up Mutation gives you powerful new abilities but brings you closer to death.

I may have slightly lost sight of the question, so... I think the fun in the games I build often comes from risk-reward, from mechanical interactions and from the novelty of setting, mechanics or playstyle.

Is there anything you would like to promote right now?

I just launched my own website! If you like my games and want to hear a little about the designing of them, want to see what I've got in the works, or want to hear my thoughts about TTRPGs, check it out!

I've also (hopefully) got a new game coming out in the next couple of months, the aforementioned Call To Compete, so keep an eye out for that!

Book cover, top half is black with the title 'Call to Compete' and the bottom half is a view of a planet from space with a letter sealed with wax in front of it, and the words 'everyone has a reason to fight' inscribed above the seal

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

Check out my website, https://thecoppercompendium.co.uk for the most in-detail look at what I'm up to/thinking.

I'm on other social media sites, though I use them infrequently to never. All links to those are on my website.