Jobie Speaks: An Interview With Joe Parsons
We’re continuing the peek behind the GKG curtain again, this time to celebrate Game Developer Joe Parsons. You can read the article about Tom already and the next couple of goblins will follow soon.
For now, let’s chat to the guy who makes the characters you love and love to hate!
Where did it all start - how did you get into gaming?
I might be slightly easier to spot than Tom was in his childhood photo, since this is only one class!
So my earliest memory of ‘gaming’ is that of video gaming. Namely, my dad’s old original Gameboy, which he gave me with a copy of Tetris and Super Mario Land 2, and a friend at Taekwondo who introduced me to the slightly more modern (at the time!) Pokémon LeafGreen.
Something else I was also introduced to by my dad is one of my favourite films of all time, and a series of books which would be some of the very few books I ever read: The Lord of the Rings. When I was introduced to The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game at primary school, Games Workshop’s Middle-Earth inspired miniature game, I was immediately hooked. My first army was Khazad Dum, though I quickly ended up collecting and playing a lot more Middle-Earth armies! With hindsight, I think the novelty of a slightly more tactile gaming experience and one that offered so much flexibility in collecting and playing is what really gripped me about miniature gaming.
I was regularly at Games Workshop on Saturdays to play and hobby, including one such day where they had a Lord of the Rings quiz. I did fairly well, and as a result, I won a free blister pack of the Blood Angels character Brother Corbulo for Warhammer 40k. I say free, but it ended up costing me quite a lot in the end! I think one of the employees knew that I didn’t collect 40k and that my favourite colour was red, so that’s how I started on 40k. I won’t go too much into detail on that though. I think if I did go into details on all the miniature games I’ve tried up til now, I wouldn’t have any time to answer the rest of these questions!
How about Moonstone, when and how did you stub your toe on this game?
Well, this links nicely to my last answer! So after a while of playing traditional/mass miniature games, I was looking for something new to try with some uni mates and discovered the wonderful world of skirmish miniature games. Malifaux 2E was the first, Ramos and hordes of metal spiders. There were a lot more games, but to save time again, I won’t mention them all here!
Sometime around 2019, one game my friends and I were all playing was looking to be on its last legs, so we were on the lookout for new games to try when we found Moonstone. I got the starter set and tried a few demo games, and the rest was history. I soon after attended the 2019 GT, where I had my second, third, and fourth games of Moonstone, respectively. I also met this guy called Tom, who seemed to be wondering how I kept getting 6 Energy on Boom Boom McBoom and Firespitter every turn.
When did you start working for Goblin King Games and what do you do here?
Concentrating hard during Shades playtesting.
In some ways, I’ve been working for GKG since 2019, doing lots of playtesting with Tom. After the GT we would regularly meet for playtesting at Bristol Independent Gaming, the same location I continue to hold my events at. He’d create some characters or rules to test, and I’d test and do my best to break them. I think my record was getting a game called on the third activation of the first turn. Sometimes he’d casually mention stuff like, “I need to make sure I get the Mortician right since the next faction will be based around the reanimate ability”, which definitely distracted me and caused me to lose those games!
Then three years later, Tom went full-time, and due to what must have been a colossal administration error, I found myself employed at GKG. Now I’d be writing the character rules with Tom, leaving playtesters now trying them out and breaking them. What I think happened is Tom got tired of me breaking his stuff, so he wanted to switch things up and break my stuff instead. Which is exactly what happened early on. The Norse Gnome Liv has been out for a while now, but my first draft of this low-key, support-focused model was used by playtesters as a gatling gun with high damage output. Meanwhile, Bjorn’s wording on his earliest drafts made him invincible!
Needless to say, I’ve learn a lot since those early drafts now, but that’s essentially the gist of what I do. Take the incredibly talented team’s thematic and characterful ideas and try to convert them to something mechanical on a card. Then, along with this team and the dedicated playtesters, test them over and over again until they are balanced, and more importantly, as fun as possible to put on the table.
Talk us through developing a typical character - where does the concept come from, how do you get your ideas for mechanics, where do you get your inspiration from?
British humour is a huge inspiration for me and the GKG team. A few years ago I was thrilled to meet Chris Barrie from Red Dwarf and other comedies.
How long is a piece of string? Honestly, there are so many different ways we aim and stumble upon designing new characters. However, the majority of characters are ideas from Tom and occasionally the rest of the team.
From there, ideas and rules for the card are generally thematic/visual or mechanical. The more thematic ideas are a little easier to put on a card: this character is holding a sword, give them the ‘Longsword’ rule, done. But a rule like ‘Supports soldier characters’ is not quite as obvious.
Usually, I’d seek inspiration from previous ideas (both released and ‘saved for later’) as well as from the personality of the character themselves. Previous soldier support has revolved around proximity-based stat buffs and this character is a bit sadistic? How about a stat boost for targeting wounded characters? Essentially, this is how the skeleton of Negroli’s card was formed (pun intended). Add on the armour you see and a summon, so he can marshal further troupes, and he’s done-ish! From here, all we need to do is put him on the table so we can test if the core concept works and is fun. In Negroli’s case, this was easy; the core idea worked and was fun, so we kept playing him and updating little parts of his card with wording clarifications and power level tweaks.
What do you like most about what you do?
Well that seems to have gone well!
It’s hard to narrow down one specific thing I enjoy the most about what I do, so I’ll have to go with the whole creative process. From taking Tom’s ideas and developing them into something he envisioned, working with playtesters to create the most enjoyable characters, and then releasing them and seeing everyone enjoy their new goodies. I think it’s simply that I enjoy creating stuff for people to enjoy. I enjoy miniature gaming, and any chance to help create something for my favourite hobby and entertain people while I do so is incredible.
What stands out in your memory from the past 10 years?
A couple of things come to mind. The release of The Arising book is the first. For me, it was quite surreal to see my name printed relatively prominently in a miniature gaming rulebook. I’d been miniature gaming for the majority of my life at that point, and so seeing my name printed in the book for my favourite miniature game was incredible.
Better than that though was the first set of releases I helped develop and the following event. It was incredible watching people in person enjoy and use the characters whose rules I’d developed, and I was glad to be working at GKG, eager to do more! Seeing the only two players using the Norse in first and second place, respectively, was a bit worrying to me, a new game designer. However, the two players, being very good at the game and experienced playtesters, ended up helping the Norse in their first tournament outing. Soon after that, their win rate stabilised. Phew!
If you could go back to ten years ago and tell yourself something, what would that be?
Don’t take that fundamental analysis module at uni. You’ll hate it and only get 15% in the final exam.
What do you hope for the next ten years?
I do a spot of baking in my spare time…
I’d basically love to keep doing what I’m doing in one form or another. It’s great fun to work on something creative like this, and an absolute honour to know that it provides so many people with joy and entertainment. Unfortunately, my time machine and future sight abilities are somewhat lacking currently, so it’s hard to say what exactly I’ll be working on, but so long as it scratches that creative itch and brings joy to folks, I never want to stop!
