In Other Waters transformed their game into a TTRPG
In 2022, you can see the DNA of Dungeons & Dragons peppered throughout this year's most anticipated releases. Tabletop role-playing games and video games are inextricably linked, but video game RPGs can feel repetitive, many still relying on the same tired interpretations of D&D mechanics. At the same time, the independent tabletop scene has been pushing boundaries of creativity and storytelling with modern tabletop games like Blades in the Dark and T.I.M.E. Stories.
In recent years Gareth Damian Martin, game designer and founder of the zine Heterotopias, has fallen headfirst into these types of tabletop games. Both of their current projects are blending ideas from one form of gaming into the other. The pressing focus is turning their 2020 game In Other Waters into a module for the sci-fi horror TTRPG Mothership as In Other Waters: Tidebreak. Both the original and the module are crowd-funded projects.
The Kickstarter for In Other Waters: Tidebreak raised over $69,000, quite nearly twice what the campaign for the video game earned. The biggest difference for Damian Martin this time? They aren’t doing it alone. The project is a collaboration with Lone Archivist, an experienced TTRPG module designer with a particular interest in the sci-fi genre.
“Andrew [Lone Archivist] actually approached me asking if I was interested in collaborating on something, maybe to do with In Other Waters,” Damian Martin said. “It just so happened that I was in the final stages of development and since then I’ve been really into tabletop role playing games. I had noticed In Other Waters had been quite popular with people in the tabletop scene because of its reliance on maps and text and the way it asks you to fill in the gaps.”
The idea that In
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