Interviewing Josh Fox
By Alex White
- 6 minutes read - 1137 wordsPlease tell me a bit about yourself
I'm Josh Fox, I'm a British TTRPG designer and podcaster, designer of Last Fleet, Flotsam: Adrift Amongst The Stars and (with Becky Annison) Lovecraftesque, as well as my forthcoming game Ex Tenebris. I've been playing TTRPGs about 35 years, and I've written about as many games in that time. Outside of work I enjoy mixed martial arts and bouldering, and I've got two cheeky children who I haven't yet turned into roleplayers. Emphasis on yet.
What do you like best about designing games?
I'm a system monkey, so really the best part for me is working out the best set of mechanics to deliver the experience I'm going for and then twiddling with them endlessly until I've got them just how I want them. I get a particular kick out of crafting a system where I can step back and see the different parts doing their thing, feeding into each other, like a well-oiled machine.
But also: hiring artists and seeing the amazing stuff they produce is a major perk of the job.
What are you working on at the moment, and what excites you about it?
The current big design project is Ex Tenebris, which is a gothic space mystery/investigation game. You're working for Moira, a small and overlooked government agency who travel the galaxy through an extradimensional labyrinth, and who are charged with hunting down demons, dark technology, that sort of thing.
Basically I love investigation games, and I love space, so its a bit of a travesty that I've never yet written a space investigation game. To me space (and SF settings generally) are the most mysterious and exciting places of all for an investigative storyline, because on paper it's cold and sciency and dry, and then you find the monsters. I love to mix up that SF aesthetic with the occult, the demons, the gigeresque horrors.
Plus: I've got a bee in my bonnet about emergent mystery, this will be the first one I do that has a GM, and I'm excited to get into it.
Can you tell me more about how mysteries will work in Ex Tenebris?
Ex Tenebris is an emergent mystery game, which in a nutshell means the GM doesn't know what the truth is any more than the players do. The game's mechanics support the GM to create clues that feel like they belong in a coherent mystery, without actually needing to plan anything out in advance. There's a few cool things about this model: the GM gets to be surprised as much as the players by what happens; there's never any problems with failing to find clues, looking in the wrong place, or wildly misinterpreting what it all means (because there's no such thing as "the wrong place" or "the wrong interpretation"); and of course, every mystery is completely replayable, and will probably turn out differently every time it's played.
This will be familiar to folks who have played Lovecraftesque (and hacks thereof) or Brindlewood Bay (and hacks thereof).
But Ex Tenebris advances the emergent mystery genre by adding in all sorts of tweaks and improvements to make the mystery and the investigation feel more real. It's pretty hard to summarize how it does this - in fact I'm in the middle of writing an article series which pulls it apart in detail. But the real high-level view is, it makes the players' choices matter more, so that they're rewarded for thinking like investigators, looking in logical places and following the emerging trail of clues, while giving the mystery itself a life of its own and a greater logical coherence, so that it feels like the GM had planned it out in advance (even though they totally didn't).
I'm also really excited about how it's bringing Forged In The Dark DNA into the emergent mystery genre. I'm using the fictional positioning tools, downtime and team development options you get in FITD and applying them to an investigative campaign. I think people will really enjoy that feeling of operating, growing and improving as a team, that comes from the FITD elements.
What experiences are you trying to give to players?
Every game I write is unique and focused on a different experience, and a different kind of fun. Even within mystery games like Lovecraftesque and Ex Tenebris, there's big differences. Lovecraftesque is about creating a mysterious, spooky atmosphere and a (justified!) sense of inevitable doom, with the fun being from immersing yourself in that atmosphere and enjoying the surprises that the other players throw at you as you build your mystery together. Ex Tenebris is much more about engaging with the experience of being an investigator and treating the mystery you're investigating as if it was real - there's that same joy of being surprised and discovering stuff you didn't know about, but with a slightly more traditional TTRPG fun of being a player in a team, digging up evidence, making deductions, and ultimately confronting the baddy.
A thing I like to do in a lot of my games is create a personal experience, focusing in on who your character is, their personal points of drama, such as tense relationships with other characters and/or grappling with their own flaws. Ex Tenebris does that through the Shadow system: you spend Shadow to boost your rolls or do supernatural stuff, but if you let it accumulate then it will drag you down a path of personal corruption - not necessarily becoming a baddie, but becoming broken in some way that means you're no longer a viable investigator. A nice thing about Ex Tenebris is it gives you a choice where to put yourself on that path: you can play a heroic character who resists the Shadow and use the game mechanics to keep them largely in the light, or you can lean into the darkness and see where it takes you. Both paths are equally interesting and powerful.
Is there anything you would like to promote right now?
Two things I want to mention: first, I've got the playtest for Ex Tenebris going on. If you like the sound of it then you can sign up using this form
The other thing I want to mention is that the second edition of Lovecraftesque just released. It's a really excellent eldritch horror mystery game, gives you a complete satisfying story in one session with zero prep, and quite frankly a gorgeous product, so if that sounds up your street then check it out at:
Where should people go to follow you, and to find your products?
You can find out about me, and my fellow Black Armada designer Becky Annison, at https://blackarmada.com/ - there's loads on there: our blog, our store, links to our AP podcast, mailing list, discord and so forth.