With your help, we managed to smash through another stretch goal last night! We've unlocked the People of the Stillness free PDF!
"This will give the GM a ready supply of named and described characters useful for populating their campaign. If your pledge includes any edition of The Fifth Season RPG, People of the Stillness will be included in your rewards for free."
We're well on our way now to the next one, which will be a Digital Map Pack for all backers, another incredibly useful tool, which we suspect folks who play primarily through VTT platforms will be particularly excited about. We're in the final hours of the campaign now, but we still have a few Signed Bookplates Bundles available, and plenty of add-ons to help us get there! (be sure to check out the
Crystal Shard Dice, if you missed that update yesterday!)
This morning we also have another interview with one of the writers who worked on the book!
Getting to Know: Monte Lin (he/him)
Can you tell folks a little about yourself?
I'm kind of split in between two industries. In one, I'm a writer and copy editor for tabletop role-playing games, and I've worked on Fantasy Flight's (now Edge's) Star Wars, Legend of Five Rings, and Twilight Imperium/Genesys lines, a couple of projects for Green Ronin, Magpie Games's Avatar: Legends and Root, and others. I'm Staff Editor for Angry Hamster Press and I've worked on Afterlife: Wandering Souls and some of their supplements.
In the other industry, I write short speculative fiction, and I have some short stories in Cossmass Infinities, Cast of Wonders, Flame Tree Press anthologies, and other markets. I have a Ignyte nomination for a nonfiction essay in Strange Horizons, and I'm also Managing Editor for Uncanny Magazine, an award-winning publication that produces six issues a year.
What did you do for the Fifth Season Roleplaying Game?
I wrote about life in the comms and touched upon the use-castes. I described basically the day-to-day life of people in regular society, how they govern themselves, what sort of work they might do, how they approach the Seasons. I also got to make up a few "weird" places, leftover technologies from previous civilizations, or just weird phenomenon.
Approach to Writing
What got you started writing?
Maybe it was role-playing games, like the old Red Box D&D set! So I was always writing something down ever since I was a kid, but I really didn't start thinking about writing as a regular thing until the early '00s with a screenwriting workshop, and then not as focused or seriously until about a decade ago, when I got my first assignment on a Fantasy Flight Star Wars splatbook and then published my first short story a few years later.
What kinds of things do you like writing? (In general, not necessarily games)
For short stories, I'm still in my experimental phase, trying out different styles and genres. I think I have a couple of sci-fi shorts, a few fantasy shorts, and some horror shorts out there now. I of course have a notebook of half-scribbled game design ideas, but who knows if I'll flesh them out. I have a horror YA novel I'm trying to hammer into shape. Like a Cthulhu-squid-monster it keeps getting out of control, sadlol
What do you think are some of the signature elements in your writing? What makes a Monte Lin piece?
I'd like to think I'm good at figuring out how an average character would live in a given sci-fi, fantasy, or maybe even horror setting, and that informs my worldbuilding. I've also been told I'm pretty good at making complex NPCs, especially villains or anti-heroes. Since I tend to work on established IPs (Star Wars, Cthulhu Mythos, etc.), I'm also pretty good at imitating the style of that IP, if it's high fantasy or dirty cyberpunk and the like.
Is there anything about you/your background/your skills that you think shapes the way you approach writing?
There's that joke: "I don't have any applicable job skills so I became a writer." But seriously, I used to work in mobile game QA so I think I'm good at finding rules loopholes or unclear language. I'm interested in a lot of things (but I'm just not great at them or have a good memory to be become an expert) so I hope that means I have some breadth of knowledge (or at least know who to ask).
Playing TTRPGs
What was your first TTRPG experience like?
This was the Red Box D&D set, and I suppose looking back there was a lot of lack of reading comprehension! Like for a while I thought if your character gained a level you automatically went to the next level of the dungeon. I misunderstood hit points somehow. I remember not realizing that "staves" was the plural of "staff," so I never used the Saving Throw vs Staves. I also remembering playing at school at the concrete windbreak, so our character sheets took on the texture of the concrete we were writing on!
What’s your favorite TTRPG and why?
This seems to be an unfair question, lol! I like reading and learning new rule systems in general, and I'm impressed at the sheer number of and creativity in a lot of the small press, indie rpgs out there. I had a fun time with Good Society, where you are playing in a Jane Austin rom-com. I'm a fan of Thorny Games's play with language, such as Dialect and the up-and-coming Xenolanguage. I'm a sucker for speciality dice, so I like Fantasy Flight's/Edge's Star Wars Narrative Dice system. I've played almost every edition of D&D. I'm running a Blades in the Dark game. In fact, it's gotten to the point that I've both lost track of what's out there and my to-play list is much too long.
What kind of games do you like playing?
It seems to change every few years. I've answered for ttrpgs in the previous question, but for board games I'm a fan of the Gale Force Nine reprint of the classic Dune board game (but it's hard to get several friends with 6-8 hours to spare to play). There were a couple years in which I was obsessed with co-op games. Lately, it's been small, carry in your pocket games like Scout or Cockroach Poker. For video games, lately it's deck-builders like Slay the Spire, but half a decade ago it was narrative, choose-your-own-adventure style games like from Telltale Games or Life is Strange. Again, there just doesn't seem to be enough time (or money) to play everything...
When you're playing TTRPGs, what kind of characters do you enjoy playing and why?
I tend to play characters with some kind of overwhelming family obligation to give the GM NPCs to torture me with. Like a Peter Parker-like superhero but with a dad who hates superheroes. Or a guy who just needs one-last-job to provide for his family. But lately I've been going for more comedy: the classic good-hearted himbo who is best friends with the morally dubious PC or the braggy egoist who gets into trouble for opening his mouth.
Games Industry
What kinds of things do you do within the games industry?
Mostly writing (flavor text, background worldbuilding, NPC descriptions, occasional in-game intro fiction) and some light mechanics but more copy editing lately (not just sentence polishing but checking that the text makes sense in the context of the rules and making sure that the text doesn't seem to contradict what the rules say). I've run games at conventions individually and managing a group of GMs for a company. I've done a little production work basically getting the assembled text to the printer, proofed, and shipped.
How did you get started in the games industry?
Early '00s I wrote an adventure for Paizo's Dungeon Magazine and wrote a couple of articles for Dragon Magazine, but I didn't start getting any regular work until the mid-2010s with Fantasy Flight. I emailed the company and asked if they needed freelancers, and they happened to need one at the time. I gave them a writing sample, they liked it, and then they brought me on to write some Star Wars stuff.
What other games have you worked on?
editing: Avatar: Legends, Cartel, Zombie World, Afterlife: Wandering Souls, Nahual, some 7th Sea 2nd edition nation books
writing:
Cthulhu Awakens and 5th Season for Green Ronin; Star Wars, Legend of Five Rings, Genesys stuff for Edge/Fantasy Flight; a setting for Cortex Prime; and currently a couple of projects for Paizo
Is there anything you'd like to see more of in the games industry?
honestly this is a tough and big question... the ttrpg industry and the speculative fiction industry have a lot of parallels... it's hard for a creator to make money, much less a living. Since the ttpg industry relies on freelancers, more support for those doing freelance work, be it union or guild or networking resources. Also, more support for the smaller indie devs, be it eyes on their games or just plain money. I've heard with the recent kerfuffle with a specific big rpg publisher, that sales went significantly up for both mid-tier rpg companies and small press games, and I hope that's a continual trend rather than a one-off
Closing Details
Is there anything else you'd like people to know?
As Staff Editor for Angry Hamster Publishing, the Kickstarter for Witch: Fated Souls 2nd edition is done, but keep an eye out for product updates. It's a horror rpg where you have sold your soul for power, and what you can do with that power.
https://www.angryhamsterpublishing.com/ As Managing Editor for Uncanny Magazine, if you are looking for science fiction or fantasy short stories, new releases come out the first Tuesday of each month on the website. There are ways to support the magazine there.
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/
How can people get a hold of you? (i.e. website, social media, etc.)
Twitter: @Monte_Lin