Exclusive Interview With The Creators Of Role Playing Card Game ‘Negocios Infernales’ (Part 2)
Image Source: CultureSlate
Journey with us as we continue into the world of Negocios Infernales with authors and game designers Carlos Hernandez and C.S.E. Cooney (Claire). This is part 2 of an immensely fun interview that CultureSlate got to do. You can find part 1 here. In this section we learn about the hardest parts of designing a game, the basic steps to this game, what their favorite games are, and more! Negocios Infernales is on Kickstarter from October 10 to November 10.
CS: How long has the process been for designing this game?
Carlos: At least 4 and a half years.
Claire: 2019 was Carlos’ sabbatical year, and his sabbatical was to study contemporary role-playing games and to create his own.
Carlos: What I turned in to my college as proof of work done during my sabbatical was the first iteration of Negocios Infernales, which has of course changed and evolved over the years. You know, I don’t have many complaints about a job that lets me make games as part of my scholarship!
RELATED:
Image Source: Carlos Hernandez and C.S.E. Cooney
CS: What is the hardest part for you about designing either this game or a game in general?
Carlos: It’s always the middle. You never know how long the middle is going to last. You never know if you’re going to even get to an end. The beginning is joyous; you’re just starting, you’re getting your ideas down, you’re in that rush of creativity. When you see the end coming, it is also delightful because you think, “Oh my gosh it’s coming! We’re basically here!” But the middle is the most existential. “Have I just wasted four years of my life? Is this something that other people will find worthwhile and fun?” Trying to find the fun of a game and getting it mechanized to the point where it’s clean, pristine, and ready to be seen are the hardest parts by far.
Claire: For me, this one game I’ve co-designed has all been hard—because it’s my first time doing it. That said, all of it has been joyous, too, because it’s been really interesting. Carlos kept saying how rulebook-writing was some of the hardest writing he’s ever done—and this is a man with a PhD! He’s done a lot of academic writing, creative writing, essays, all kinds of writing… but rulebook writing, he says, is a mixture of poetry and technical writing.
Carlos: You have to be as concise and as clear as a technical manual, but you also have to make people want to play a creative game. You want poetic, inspirational uses of language to complement crystal-clear instruction. It’s extremely difficult writing. So kudos to all the rulebook writers out there. I see you, friends!
Claire: Once we had the basic bare bones of the actual rulebook, then we inserted our personalities. So the rulebook itself is maybe a little over the top, but it’s also goofy—so, at least it’s entertaining to read.
Carlos: I’ve always loved rulebooks that included samples. It was definitely something I wanted to feature in this game. So in our sample play section, we divided the page into two columns: on the left, the dialogue of the gameplay, and on the right, the rules and how they apply.
Image Source: Carlos Hernandez and C.S.E. Cooney
Claire: I think this style will be good for different learners—because some learners will just want to read the rules and play the game themselves, and some will not want to read the rules at all but will want to read the interesting narrative dialogue and learn from the examples. Some will want both!
CS: What’s been your favorite part of making Negocios Infernales?
Carlos: For me, it’s the Deck of Destiny. That’s the original 70-card deck that’s used throughout the game for checks and inspiration. It authentically feels like an oracle deck. It is bizarre how accurate the cards are. I don’t believe in any magic or woo or anything, but look—there is a magic there. We pull a card, and out of all the 70 cards, how did the deck know to give me this card that is so weirdly strangely appropriate to this moment? Happens all the time.
Claire: My personal favorite part to help build was the Worldbuilding Deck. It prompts the players to help create the world they play in with questions about the local art scene, economics, science, military, religion, etc. In any given game, players only draw four to six cards out of the 40-card deck. Players don’t necessarily know why they know those four to six things about the world, but when they get to the roleplaying section, this world-building makes its way into the plot. And then, the plot suddenly becomes more intensely rich for knowing that handful of things about the world.
Image Source: CultureSlate
CS: Can you walk through the steps of the game?
Claire: There are seven steps to match the seven suits in our Deck of Destiny. But, there’s also a zero step: which is Trust and Affirmation. That’s when the players establish what their Lines and Veils are, the mood of the game, the level of lightness and levity, or darkness and intimacy. And also when they affirm that there’s no wrong way to play the game.
Carlos: Next is Invocation. It’s a deck of 17 cards that people take turns reading out loud to set the mood of the world, but also give them the background they need to understand that this is the Spanish Inquisition interrupted by aliens. It does two things: one, it tells everybody what the heck they’re doing around the table, and two, it brings everybody into the “magic circle” of this particular game.
Claire: Knowing that, we create our characters. We choose four cards, none of them with matching suits, from the Deck of Destiny. We choose our character’s Motivation and driving reason. Then we draw for our Role in Court. (Our undercover job when we’re not doing wizard things.) The third card we draw is for our Magic. This could be a tool; it could be a weird piece of tech that we don’t understand or a psychic opening of our mind. And fourth, we have our Doom—the self-fulfilling prophecy that awaits every wizard who’s bargained with a “devil.”
Carlos: The next thing we do is establish Relationships between the characters. Everybody takes a card from the Deck of Destiny and chooses another player to determine what previous relationship they’ve had with the other characters. You could have been lovers, you could have grown up together, you could have been estranged, you could secretly envy this person, etc. Once you go around the table, now you have this complex network of different, often fraught relationships that always lead to juicy storytelling.
Claire: The next section is Worldbuilding. You draw one question card from the Worldbuilding Deck and one card from the Deck of Destiny. You use the oracle card to inspire the answer to the world-building question. Every player has to answer at least one question.
Carlos: Now you’re ready to pick which of the seven adventures that comes with the game you’ll play! They’re very different from each other. You might have a comedy of errors sort of thing in the adventure called A Royal Wedding, or you might have a kaiju-like battle with A Monster Attacks, or maybe La Reina has gone missing, and you have to find her. So you choose one, and then you start answering questions specifically about what is going on in your adventures, and what your queen wants you to do about it. She gives each wizard a specific Order that they have to accomplish. Those Orders become your win-conditions.
Image Source: Carlos Hernandez and C.S.E. Cooney
Claire: The next section is the Roleplay section. Every player has three cards: a Magic card, a Protagonist card, and an NPC card. In order to win, everybody has to play an NPC at least once, they have to use their Magic that they established during Character Creation at least once, and as the Protagonist of a scene, they have to successfully accomplish one of the Queen’s Orders.
Carlos: The last thing is the Alien Epilogue. So whether you succeed or fail, the final part of the game is to roleplay as the alien caseworker in charge of your wizard’s case. You review whether your wizard used their powers justly and wisely.
Claire: Spoilers, darling—they probably didn’t.
CS: Do you have a favorite board game or RPG?
Claire: I love Mysterium. I like whatever Carlos is currently working on. I love his Super Hot Chili Pot so much. He’s working on something called Danes are Delicious, which has hilarious dice and cards, and I love it.
Carlos: I play a lot of different types of games. Right now I’m obsessed with Street Fighter 6. We just played Desperation by Jason Morningstar, another game that is light on mechanics and very simple, but that helps you build a world in a moment with no preparation.
Claire: We played the board game So You’ve Been Eaten, which is really cute.
Carlos: I think that the next game we play together on the computer will probably be Baldur’s Gate 3.
Claire: Our next board game we want to play is something called Surrealist Dinner Party.
Carlos: And Will Sobel’s Astro Knights.
Claire: And Queen by Midnight by Darrington Press.
Carlos: Lots of stuff!
CS: Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Carlos: We created Negocios Infernales to be really newbie-friendly. I really want to emphasize that. We love new players, and we want as many people as possible to be invited into the fun of roleplaying. There really is nothing else like it!
Negocios Infernales is running on Kickstarter from October 10 – November 10. In conjunction with the Kickstarter, a playthrough of Negocios Infernales is available on YouTube: featuring Cassandra Khaw, Brandon O’Brien, Will Sobel, and Anna Russell. You can find part one here and part two here. On the Twitch channel twitch.tv/arvaneleron, Carlos and Claire are also hosting an “Infernal Salon”—where writers and artists use the Deck of Destiny to create their own works of art, and then share them with the world!— on Halloween, October 31, from 3:30-6:30 PM EST.
Be sure to check it out and bring home your copy of this unique roleplaying game today!
READ NEXT:
Latest News
Featured
