PAX AUS Indie Showcase 2024 – Fight with Spirit
The PAX AUS Indie Showcase is a chance to see some of the best new and upcoming titles from the ANZ digital and tabletop development scene, with past winners including such celebrated games as Unpacking, Copycat, Yum Cha, Kingless and many more. The 2024 Indie Showcase is shaping up to be another highlight of the event and Player2 encourages visitors to PAX AUS to make their way to the PAX Rising area and check out the following title, as well as the many other excellent indies on display.
Following a PAX AUS Indie Showcase win for Saltfish & Almanacs in 2023 as well as nominations at SXSW Sydney, Storybrewers have once again secured a spot in the 2024 PAX AUS Indie Showcase with their sports themed TTRPG Fight with Spirit. Player2 spoke to Storybrewer designers/founders Hayley and Vee to find out more about their process and what makes Fight with Spirit unique.
Player2: Hi Vee and Hayley, great to talk to you again! Back to back wins in the Indie Showcase is incredible, congratulations! Was it a feeling of déjà vu when you found out or was it just as exciting as the win for Saltfish & Almanacs?
Vee and Hayley: If anything, we were even more thrilled to win this time ’round! Getting a double is a real honour and an extremely valuable opportunity for a small, independent studio like ours to showcase our games to one of the biggest, most passionate gaming crowds in the world. It helps us truly connect with the players on the other side of our game design. We love to demo and see people enjoying themselves and discovering TTRPGs. Honestly, seeing a budding roleplayer surprise themself with their own creative flair, seeing people be immersed in a shared narrative, seeing entire game groups experience an unforgettable story moment – arguably, that’s one of the best feelings ever. It really motivates us!
P2: Sports seems like an exciting fit for a TTRPG and one that could attract a new audience to the experience – how long had you been kicking this idea around before it came to fruition?
V & H: Aw, thank you, we do always hope our games bring new audiences into the hobby! As designers, we are passionate about expanding the kinds of stories TTRPGs can help tell.
Now the origin story for Fight With Spirit, well, spoilers, it holds the honour of being our longest ever design project. We first had the idea for a “sports team rpg” back in 2017. I have research files and moodboards dating back to January 2018! Ah, we were so young and naive back then, dreaming so big (not unlike the protagonists of the game itself!) and our pitch included two things that would vex us for many, many years: (1) the game would be a true marriage of sports action and emotional sports drama, and (2) it would be sports-agnostic, meaning, you will be able to use the system to play any sports you’re interested in! Volleyball? Of course. Ultimate frisbee? Sure! Modern pentathlon? Heck yeah!
These were tricky features to nail, no one else had made anything like it before. But we are nothing if not determined and we kept playtesting, iterating and refining over many years: we took playtest version 4 of this game to the US for Big Bad Con 2019! We playtested it in person and online. It took us many years and at least six radically different iterations of this game before we felt we really cracked it. Needless to say, we’re super proud of the design of this game.
P2: What do you feel sets Fight with Spirit apart from other TTRPG’s?
V & H: I like to think that it has a unique intersection of feelings and crunch! The matches revolve around character arcs rather than simply following success or failure – yet to explore these arcs, players push their luck in a series of high stakes card games. Cards determine how the character goes, but they also offer ideas as to what should happen in the sporting moment.
I also think Fight with Spirit has a delightful table presence. Playing in person means you don’t need to do any prep at all – just open the box and you’re ready to dive in. The way the different components work from the cards, to the tokens and the character sheets feel pretty fun to engage in and play around with.
P2: As designers, is there a temptation to revisit and refine earlier work as you develop and grow or do you instead pour that into the next design?
V & H: Not just in game design, but in life, we tend to be the kind of people who are always looking forward to the next adventure. We absolutely love giving our all into our next design, next game. That said, I think there is a natural time to revisit earlier work, and that’s when the print run is exhausted! For example, we are globally going to run out of Good Society in the next year. As we prepare to reprint it, we will be considering whether we can do anything to improve the reader experience.
P2: What have been some of the most exciting and challenging aspects of growing Storybrewers alongside your own design and development work?
V & H: Definitely it’s been exciting and challenging to find out how many hats we have to wear! Day to day design and development are only a small part of what we do. We’re our own logistic experts, UI designers, graphic designers, accountants, social media managers, and more. I never know what I’ll end up doing in the day really.
Working as a couple is also a pretty unique experience. We don’t need to bring work home with us – it’s already there! But we love it that way ultimately, we get to share in the passion together.
P2: You offer a number of free titles on the Storybrewers website – is there one in particular you would recommend for people interested in experiencing TTRPG’s or getting a feel for your work?
V & H: We often recommend The Fictional Memoirs of Harriette Wilson & Her Sisters as a way of getting a feel for our work. It’s historical, a little tongue in cheek, and at once humourous and heart-wrenchingly emotional. The general gist of that game is based on a real person, Hariette Wilson, one of the most celebrated courtesans of the Regency era. After her courtesan career ended, she developed an unusual alternative business plan. She began writing and publishing a scandalous memoir revealing all the details of her intimacies. It was published in 12 volumes. Between each, she wrote to her former lovers and generously offered the opportunity to be excluded from her upcoming work… provided, of course, they paid a substantial sum. Who doesn’t love a bit of lady-like blackmail? In the game, you play one of the four Wilson sisters (Harriette interestingly had three sisters who shared her profession!) as they revisit moments from their past and write their memoirs together.
P2: Storybrewers has a rich range of titles for people to choose from – what can PAX Aus attendees look forward to at your booth?
V & H: We will actually have two booths right next to each other this year! At the Fight With Spirit booth, we will be showcasing short demos of the game, playing the final match of a tournament. So come down for your chance to win the championship! (And take a commemorative photo with the trophy!) Every copy of Fight With Spirit sold at PAX this year will come with a free supplement called The Hadean Games (an alternative setting celebrating the Ancient Olympic Games where you play denizens of Hades’ underworld!). You can also grab our limited edition “Yer a Champ!” pins.
At the Storybrewers booth, you can pick up any of our range of games: Good Society and all its expansions, as well as the four Littlebox games including last year’s showcase winner Saltfish & Almanacs and Game of the Year winner Villagesong. We’d love a chat on anything ttrpg and game design! Come stop by!
P2: The next Storybrewers title is Castles in the Air from Melia Carraway, how did that collaboration come about and what advice would you give to aspiring TTRPG designers?
V & H: Castles in the Air was playtested on our Discord server and what really resonated with us about it is the unique and deep connection players end up having with their characters as they take them from childhood to adulthood. Experiencing a character grow up, charting a surprising path through life, and discovering the life they lead and the forces that led there — we’d not felt that in any other game and it really stood out as a game we’d love to bring to the wider world.
For aspiring TTRPG designers, focus on your own craft and challenge yourself to design a game you really love to play; engage in community, whether that’s online or at local meetups; and put yourself out there! Learning a bit of marketing and having the skill to drum up interest in what you’re doing is very useful. Self-publishing has been an awesome route for us and there’s lots of resources out there to learn how to do that. Start small and build up. Iteration over time is the way to go!
PAX AUS Attendees can find the Fight with Spirit booth in the PAX AUS Indie Showcase section of PAX AUS from October 10-13. It can be purchased right now from the Storybrewers website!
