As we all know geek cred is vital to one’s relevance in the industry so let’s start with that, what is it that makes you a geek?
Well I could talk about all the games I play or all the books I read or how I geek out at cool movies and toys…but instead perhaps some examples of my geekdom:
When I was 9 I’d get up at 6AM to watch G-Force/Star Frontiers before grade school.
My Junior Year of High School I played BattleTech 300+ days.
I’ve read God Emperor of Dune in less than 24 hours.
I’ve attended a gaming convention in costume.
I’ve stood in an hour’s long line for a 15 minute hit of a yet-to-be-release computer game (that was just last month).
During my teen years of convention going I’d catch an hour or two of sleep in the anime room before getting back to gaming.
I can quote far too many movies and TV shows, from Batman to Firefly, Dr. Horrible to the Simpsons, and of course MST3K “Best. Movie. Ever.”
From where I’m typing this right now I can see half a dozen board games, and just as many RPGs, I’ve picked up in the last year I’ve not found the time to play/read yet…and I really need some more.
If you could have any superhero name/identity/superpowers, what would they be?
When I was younger I always thought it would be x-ray vision or flying. But I love games where you get to screw with other players (such as the wonderfully fun Cutthroat Caverns), so I’m thinking being able to mess with time would be the absolute coolest.
Superman goes to punch you. You stop time. Move a big slab of kryptonite in front of him and unstop time…yeah…way too much fun.
Awesome, so what exactly do you do over at Catalyst Game Labs?
I’m the Managing Developer, which basically means I try and make the trains run on time. Almost everything that comes out of Catalyst I touch in some fashion. Whether it’s reviewing a developer’s book pitch at the beginning of the process; helping a developer by writing or developing parts of one of their books in a pinch; production work as I correspond with the printer/manufacturer to see a book move from layout onto a store shelf; developing and writing full books/games; interviews and social media: really a jack-of-all-trades as I work on what needs to get done.
How did you get involved with Catalyst?
Most of the people involved with Catalyst can trace their work on BattleTech and Shadowrun right back to FASA. For example I worked at FASA Corporation from 1996 until it closed in early 2001. A huge chunk of all the freelancers (artists and writers) that worked on it during that time period transitioned to continue to work on BattleTech (and Shadowrun) as it passed through various hands (FanPro and WizKids).
Following the end of the publication of novels set in the “classic” BattleTech timeline, Loren Coleman, myself and other like-minded BattleTech authors got together to form InMediaRes Productions, LLC, which launched www.battlecorps.com, the official source for canon BattleTech fiction (the site has since published over a million and half words of fiction).
When the BattleTech and Shadowrun licenses were up for renewal in 2007, WizKids asked IMR if we were up to the task of handling these lines and we said yes (ah, the growing pains we’ve enduring leaping into that deep end of the pool). We formed Catalyst Game Labs as an imprint of IMR and immediately began publication in 2007. Again, almost all those who’d been working on the BattleTech and Shadowrun lines through the intervening years continued on working as part of Catalyst, with many of them still apart of these perennial universes.
What are some of the projects you’ve been working on most recently?
Well there’s always something to work on for BattleTech (Interstellar Operations will publish next year!), but the two most exciting things I’m directly working on in any given week are Leviathans and Cosmic Patrol.
We’ve then also got some casual game prototypes that people are pitching us…one in particular that I can’t talk about yet is just brilliant…hoping to bring it to a store shelf near you next year.
So let’s talk about your company and it’s products.
What games do you guys make?
Well we have different ‘tiers’ of games, as I like to think of it. There’s the epic, large-scale universe that’s fully developed and meshed with a game system, and then there’s casual games.
“Casual” meaning there may or may not be a universe attached, it’s usually only one product, you play it in an hour or two and set it back on the shelf, that type of thing. As opposed to the epic games where it’s more a whole hobby can be devoted just to that universe/game.
For epic style games we currently publish BattleTech and Shadowrun and are in the final stages of getting Leviathans onto store shelves.
For those that perhaps have only heard the names before, BattleTech is a miniatures game of armored combat in the 31st century, where you play pilots—MechWarriors—who strap themselves into thirty-foot tall metal titans of doom and march across alien worlds fighting for stellar empires waging galactic wars.
Shadowrun is a roleplaying game. A dystopian near future where magic has returned to the world unleashing trolls, orks, elves, dragons and more, while science has allowed man to reach unheard of levels of cybeware body modifications…and all the while corrupt megacorprotions rule the world with an iron fist.
Leviathans is an alternate history/steampunk-style miniatures game set in 1910 where wet navies of the world have risen to become air navies and the most powerful nations are on edge, testing each other’s resolve with thousand-ton war-forged flying machines.
For our casual games we’ve just launched what I’d consider a “causal RPG”, Cosmic Patrol. A GM-less style of roleplaying that’s all instant improv action, wrapped up in an homage to the 1930s-1950s Golden Age of science fiction where players strap on their atomatic pistols and leap into a universe of adventure on their rocketships.
We’ve also published several card games in High School Drama and Merchants, while we’ve several board games coming, such as Hex-A-Gon out by the end of the year, while Linear and Henchman will release next year.
Well there you have the conclusion of part one of our interview with Randall, tune in next time for the rest of the goodies about the return of Battletech, retro-scifi and just what is most important in dungeon crawling…and until then if you want to keep tabs on what’s up over at Catalyst you can find them on twitter @catalystgamelab, online at www.catalystgamelabs.com, or at the newly launched Cosmic Patrol forums where they have a cool contest going on.
Let all men weep at his great and superior masculinity...
