Interviewing Chase and Ryan

By Alex White

May 19, 2025 - 8 minutes read - 1542 words

Learn about politics in space with Vesta Mandate!

Please tell me a bit about yourselves

Chase

I'm Chase Kurkowski! A photographer, software developer and game designer in Chicago who has spent the last few years digging into the world of TTRPGs. After initially cutting my teeth on D&D 5e, I quickly expanded my horizons with the OSR. Games like Shadowdark, Mothership and Mausritter pulled me in with their simple rules and exciting approaches to design. Soon after that I got involved with Storygames Chicago and had my first real introduction to narrative games.

This was my first time playing anything even remotely like this. My first game was actually GMed by Ryan - CBR-PNK by Emanoel Melo - and soon after I was exploring PSY*RUN and Spire. It's been a downhill slide into near addiction since then!

Ryan

I’m Ryan Zenith, a queer tabletop designer, teacher, and Chicago local. I’m a writer as well, I especially like writing short stories and poetry. I have been playing tabletop roleplaying games since high school, and I’ve always liked playing different genres. I’m always looking for a novel experience, whether that’s old ladies solving mysteries (Brindlewood Bay), village leaders making difficult choices (Villagesong), or the last people speaking a dying language (Dialect). Storygames Chicago has been a great way to be introduced to (and actually play!) unique games, through tabletop book clubs, campaigns, one-shots, and tabletop design workshops.

What do you like best about designing games?

Chase

There's a couple of different things that stand out as real draws towards game design for me personally.

Creating experiences that people enjoy. This ties into my love for some of my other hobbies as well. Cooking, software development, and photography are all things that I enjoy immensely. I find the most fulfillment in the ways that they impact the people I care about around me. The look on someone's face when they take that first bite of a meal you've made for them, or when they see the photos you took that they absolutely love - these are moments that drive me to make art of all kinds. It's the same feeling I get when I make games and watch others engage with them.

Making the games and mechanics I want to play. This motivation is less external than the previous one - a desire to see certain mechanics or ideas in the games I play that aren't being made. Sometimes this comes from playing a game and LOVING many elements from it but feeling that something is off or seeing ways it could be changed to fit a style of play I think would be fun. Other times it's the opposite - I play something that I really like but I am frustrated by the ways that it fumbles the great elements of its design. This is often a much stronger motivation for me.

Ryan

Theme / Big Concept. Often, an image or concept will call to me. For Vesta Mandate (our current project), it was an image of socialist revolutionaries fighting on a space station. I do think I’m often ideas first, and I have a lot of conceptual thoughts of how something should be. Chase is a more precise thinker, and he usually asks “I get the idea, but how do we mechanize it?” For this reason, I think our creative partnership works really well. It’s really rewarding for me to take concepts and ideas and find the best mechanics that suit them.

Playtesting. The first time I playtested a game, I felt incredibly nervous and uncomfortable. I did not think the game was ready for playtest at all. But even though the game wasn’t perfect, there were these special, rewarding moments when I saw the game I first envisioned. Playtesting early and often really helps you as a designer revise and iterate on something until it’s just what you want. I also think that playtesting is so much more fun and motivating than the solitary act of writing. Sometimes when you’ve been discussing mechanics on a theoretical level and fine tuning a sentence for a few hours, you begin to forget what makes tabletop games fun to begin with. Playtesting provides those moments when you can finally play that cool idea that’s been in your head.

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

We have been working on Vesta Mandate: the sci-fi political thriller TTRPG. It is a semi-competitive intrigue game set on the tense powderkeg of Vesta Station.

We’ve both played a lot of games with political themes. But we haven’t really found a game that has political intrigue, semi-competitive play, and the narrative elements we’re looking for. With media such as Andor, Mass Effect and A Memory Called Empire as touchstones, we both wanted deep character drama as well as an interconnected Station of peoples and Factions striving for power. These are elements that have constructed our pillars for our game and it's been a really exciting experience to work on something that feels fresh - both in designing it but also sitting down and playtesting it.

At the same time, building something with such unique and contrasting goals has created a lot of tensions that we've had to grapple with. Primarily the tension between competitive elements and the goal of creating cohesive narrative experiences. It's been exciting trying something that feels unique in a lot of ways. Something that we have felt really addresses a style of game that doesn't exist within TTRPGs.

Can you tell me more about the challenges of creating a TTRPG with competitive elements?

In the current era of narrative TTRPG design, most everything is cooperative. Rarely do you find games that are strictly competitive, and I think there is a pretty good reason for that. One of the defining principles of modern narrative games tends to be collaboratively building a story through the conversation and - by extension - play that happens at the table. This is something that we love, but in building Vesta Mandate we were looking for ways to create the kinds of tensions innate to political intrigue narratives.

What we ended up with is a hidden role game, similar to games such as Secret Hitler, Blood on the Clocktower and many more. This allows for players to have long term objectives that are at odds while working together as the Councillors - the executives of the station - to overcome short term problems that arise. Players will need to balance and compromise the needs of their secret Hidden Agenda with the needs of the people, their political party and the broader crises on the Station.

By moving the competitive elements into the background with Hidden Agendas we avoided a more directly competitive system. Players are incentivized to hide their goals and compete through subterfuge while also working together on problems that affect the whole station. It leads into the type of play that we are looking to facilitate and helps create an atmosphere of political tension. What happens when your hidden goals are at odds with another player? Can you be sneaky enough with your agendas? How will you manipulate the current crises to your benefit? At the same time, it leaves room for the dramatic narrative stories that can build through play.

What experience(s) are you trying to give to players? Where do they find the fun in your game?

In Vesta Mandate, players feel like competent, conniving politicians. Their characters are from a prestige TV show, with inner lives and drama. The Councillors need to be careful of what they’re about to say, knowing that their secrets are out there and could be weaponized at any moment.

The Station also feels alive. This is a dynamic setting where players’ actions meaningfully affect the Station at large, as well as the other players. Players get to see the way the Station and its many factions react and shift alongside the many decisions and actions they take as they wield their power to execute their Hidden Agendas.

As the Councillor’s explore the game they’ll make backroom deals and scrounge for hidden information as they try to always stay a step ahead of the political apparatus around them. Players will find themselves pulled into drama and debate with powerful leaders on station, all while balancing their personal lives at home. They must plan for the future and play it close to the chest to make sure they come out on top.

Is there anything you would like to promote right now?

red and blue abstract cover for Vesta Mandate

The Vesta Mandate Quickstart has just been released, with enough content to run a one-shot of the game! Check it out here. You can also pre-order the pdf here and we will have hardcovers available later this year!

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

You can find Storygames Chicago's website here: https://storygameschicago.com/ It has links to pre-order Vesta Mandate and buy City of Blood and Plaster - a small system agnostic, gothic horror zine set in the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 that we made last year.

You can also find us on Bluesky at: