Interviewing Tanya Floaker
By Alex White
- 5 minutes read - 859 wordsWhat is your big project at the moment?
My big project is The Thunder Perfect Mind. It's an an occult action thriller where you play powerful undead revenants known as the Tethered Aeons. These characters powers were awakened by gaining Gnosis - ascendant mystical knowledge. However, upon death they've been bound to the world some combination of the toxic nostalgia for their past lives, the esoteric mysteries they find themselves in, and the deadly undead politics. A perfect game for anyone who loves a heady mix of breakneck action, interpersonal drama, and occult investigation.
That's an amazing title, what is the inspiration for it?
"The Thunder, Perfect Mind" is the title of an almost 2000 year old poem which was recovered in the Nag Hammadi library. My partner studied the ancient texts of the library as part of their work and suggested I read it. It talks in dualities, and through false dichotomy and self-contradiction I found it open up avenues of thought which felt relevant to current events. At the same time, my ttRPG-addled brain took the transcendent bubble I was in with this poem and debased it, immediately knowing not only that I was going to make this game, but exactly how it would work.
Going from the transcendent to the mundane, what mechanics does the game use?
The basic mechanics involve you stating your character's intentions before gathering a fistful of d10s, drawn from different sources on your character sheet. Decide how many from this pool you want to to put aside before rolling the rest. 7+ hits, 10s explode! Whoever has the most hits says who gets/fails their intent. The dice kept back are then used to add details to the outcomes, one detail/die, halved if you have no hits.
The diceheads reading this will realise that if they are gathering up a whole bunch of d10, getting at least one 7 isn't going to be hard. Heck, roll three and put the rest aside for more narrative input, right? Well, there's a few twists to consider.
First up, your highest stat is also the one which will lead you to doomed, tragic, or melancholic outcomes. You get more dice to play with, but at what price?
Next, the aspects you draw dice from come in pairs. Life & Death. War & Peace. Vision & Oblivion. You can only pick from one half of each balance, and doing so can have consequences. Gain monstrous supernatural tells. Be controlled by your darker impulses. Become further tethered by a false reality.
The final piece of the core mechanic is to pull dice from your aspects, or the banes of others, you need to spend points of Gnosis. This knowledge, this truth, is the lifeblood of the Tethered Aeons. It is what brought them back from death, and it can fuel them towards ascension. However, Gnosis is a limited resource, and it has uses beyond gathering dice. The most reliable way to gain more is to investigate the mysteries you come up against.
Dig deeper. Feel more. Be true to yourself.
This sounds really interesting - I always love it when mechanics are explictly supporting game outcomes like this!
Are there any playtest moments that stand out to you? Where there was a real sense that "yes, this game is hitting the mark"?
The very first playtest was done as part of the annual NaGaDeMon game jam. One of the folks playing was really vocal about loving the themes, however thought I should scale back the number of dice you can get in your pool. So I got him to talk about why. He talked about gathering dice. I asked how he felt when gathering up the dice. What followed was a lyrical description of how the dice made it feel like the events were escalating and escalating and almost slipping out of control. His voice was so full of passion! He was talking about how it invoked the way feelings take over when in your teens. Now, this was exactly what I wanted in an occult action thriller! It was a golden moment where I knew I was on the right path.
Is there anything else you would like to tell me about the game?
I have bigger plans than just the base game. Back in the nineties, the term splatbook was coined as an affectionate description for supplemental books which expanded or added to the core game. Given I'm riffing on a lot on that peak White Wolf vibe, I've got larp rules and faction books and the outline of a whole game line in the pipeline. Art and music were central to that scene, so along with the splatbooks, I'll commission new art from Strega Wolf van den Berg along with a soundtrack by Dublin-based musician and producer Molly Noise. Creating a game alongside such amazing artists is the absolute best!
Where should people go to find out more about The Thunder Perfect Mind?
You can follow the Kickstarter campaign right now for more details: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/floaker/the-thunder-perfect-mind
For all kinds of other links look on carrd here: https://floaker.carrd.co
See an earlier interview with Tanya here: https://planesailinggames.com/interviews/2025-01-14-tanyafloaker/