Interview: TTRPG Visionary Banana Chan Talks Horror, Heart Break, And The Creator Within Us All

Welcome to the table,

In the landscape of role playing games there are tentpoles we are always aware of, but as someone who’s been traveling in this world for all of my life, I find a particular brand of joy when I come across new ideas that boldly venture into places not typically traveled at the table. I feel it is important to showcase the creators and games working within that space because they do more than provide escape, they are often where you can find the voices that are bringing representation to the hobby in bold new ways.

Forgery, and the upcoming Knockoff, have recently caught my eye and after doing some digging I was offered the opportunity to sit down with game designer, writer, and publisher Banana Chan and talk about these fantastically fresh additions to the gaming space.

You can find the interview below:

Anton: Hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to sit and talk with me a bit. Before we dive into more about Knockoff and Forgery, could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself? 

Banana Chan: Hi Anton! My name is Banana Chan and I’m a screenwriter, tabletop games publisher, and award-winning tabletop games designer. I own the tabletop publishing company Read/Write Memory and some of my most notable work has been Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, The Revenant Society, and Chucky (the board game). I’ve also worked on Betrayal at House on the Hill 3E and Dungeons &Dragons ‘s Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, as well as several Pathfinder books in the past.

A: Okay, so Forgery and Knockoff are both a blend of interactive storytelling with very tactile, creative elements like cutting fabric and painting by numbers. What inspired you to design games that require physical engagement from players?

B: There are a couple of reasons! From the player angle, both Forgery and Knockoff are stories about characters who are using their hands to create things. I wanted to create a more immersive element, where players can embody the character as they are going through the story — almost like a narrative-heavy video game.

From a more selfish angle, I love artifacts at the end of a game! For me, I don’t really enjoy replaying games, but I really like having a reminder of the time I had that I can look back on. I also really enjoy making things and the act of creating something, whether that’s a story or a world, with the tools provided is exciting to me (which is one of the reasons why I’m so drawn to tabletop roleplaying games). This has definitely been seen in my prior designs, like the more recent Deimos Academy (with Austin Taylor and Amanda Kahl) and as far back as They’re Onto Me (a LARP available on the Golden Cobra Challenge).

A: Both games seem to explore themes of desperation, creative ambition, and artistic struggle. What drew you to forming these narratives into gaming experiences, and do they reflect your own experiences as a creative?

B: They absolutely do reflect my own experiences as a creative. I would say that most of my work has a bit of me and my experience in it, but the Mephistopheles Trilogy (Forgery, Knockoff, Sample) especially is a reflection of my experiences. I started off with Forgery wanting to write a story about my experience going to college for fine art in New York. One memory triggered another memory and eventually, I realized I wanted to create a trilogy that grows with me and my experiences. Each of the stories definitely represent a different part of my life and career and it’s been cathartic for me to delve into these deeper and darker feelings.

A: I was an art school kid, and know first hand fashion and fine art are both deeply tied to personal identity, be it functional, cultural, or spiritual. How did you approach weaving those themes into these games?

B: Great question! Starting with Tempest in Forgery, she’s very much a snapshot of my relationship with the tabletop industry at a point in time. Tempest is an Asian woman, so I could envision myself in her and this gave me a good starting point to ground the themes I wanted to discuss — how hard it is to freelance, not feeling like you’re getting anywhere, despite your skill set. Her father is mostly absent from her life (like mine) but her painting mentor, Wai Chen, takes on that role in her life (before he escapes to Taiwan to avoid arrest for forging a painting illegally). In Forgery, Tempest’s friend and family relationships feel like a forgery of the real thing that she wants.

In Knockoff, I dive more into the familial and friendly relationships and what it costs to be accepted by your peers. Marcos works in corporate, like me now and Marcos’ parents are emotionally abusive like my own, but Marcos’ medium (and experiences as a Black gay man) are different from what I’m familiar with, so I did a lot of research with the help of Jonaya Kemper to ensure I’m telling a genuine and human story. While I love fashion and there are similarities between the Asian and Black experiences in the corporate workforce, I had a lot more to learn, especially about Black fashion designers, how they were feeling when they started out their careers and what their setbacks were. I also consulted Lexi McQueen to ensure Marcos’ voice felt genuine and three-dimensional.

A: Now Forgery, currently available at this link, is a solo RPG that takes a critical look at the fine art world, highlighting elitism and importantly, exploitation, in a really cool way that is unafraid. Were there any real-world frustrations that influenced the game’s depiction of the art scene?

B: Oh my god, first off, thank you. And to answer the question, absolutely. I also went to art school and I definitely did not get a job in art as a result. There are a few characters who are inspired by the art world and the gallery hopping scene that I used to go on every Thursday night in New York. I had a lot of hopes for my future back then, but looking back, I was also dealing with a lot of personal issues and problems with alcohol (which were exacerbated by NYC’s drinking culture).

Though the fine art world, specifically, can be really weird, the frustrations in the game are also a reflection of the tabletop games industry. Without calling out specifics, I’ll just say that for a small while, it felt like I was fighting for scraps (it’s not like that for me now). There are also folks who say they have the talent to do something, with nothing to prove it, but the attention falls on them, because they’re often louder. And this results in my own thoughts becoming “am I good enough? Maybe everyone else is right — that person who I keep criticizing is actually talented and I’m not.” But I’ve done a lot of work on myself and now I’m much more confident in my own ability.

A: How did you end up landing on a paint-by or color-by-numbers mechanic for this offering?

B: Drawing is hard! I wanted my players to be able to make their own art, but I also wanted them to feel confident in their own ability in making their own art. And that’s how I landed on paint-by-numbers — it’s accessible and it gives players time to reflect on their thoughts.

A: Now, what is rad is this game provides players moral dilemmas about art, integrity, and survival. How did you hope players would engage with those choices?

B: I hope they engage with this game in two ways — one is that I hope they have a cathartic experience making bad decisions. My hope is that this game gives players an outlet to talk about the things that eat away at them, especially if they’re working in a creative field. My second hope is that they come away playing this game feeling a little less lonely in their thoughts and build a bit more confidence in their ability to create.

A: Shifting gears from what is currently out to what is soon to come, you have a new game titled Knockoff that is set to have an irreverent yet dark tone, reminiscent of In Fabric and Neon Demon. How did you balance those elements to create such a unique experience for players?

B: I have a dark sense of humor to begin with and I watch a lot of horror movies with that kind of humor twisted in, so I think it kind of came automatically for me. A lot of the dialogue is what I would hear my friends say or how people in my life would react to certain situations — I’m guilty of this too, where my response to absurd traumatic or frustrating events is to counter it with more absurdity. I think that’s another thing I love about horror — no matter how traumatic something is, the lead will continue push on and sometimes humor is how we deal with those kinds of events.

A: The game draws inspiration from real-world fashion icons like Willi Smith and Dapper Dan. I love seeing icons get called out for the mark they make on creators, can you talk about how these influences shape the game’s themes and mechanics?

B: Absolutely! When I was chatting with Jonaya, she told me there were a few people I needed to study and Willi Smith and Dapper Dan were two of them. These designers helped shape the character of Marcos and also are referenced in the game.

Starting with Willi Smith, he was a Coty Award-winning designer who created and popularized street wear in the fashion world in the 1970s — his focus was to make fashion more accessible, especially to women of color, and was very much influenced by his sister. He was a pioneer in his work, but he was copied multiple times by other bigger fashion houses and I think that he didn’t receive as much attention as he deserved due to his sudden death to AIDS.

Dapper Dan also only just recently rose to fame, in his use of remixing logos, after being in the fashion business since the ’80s. There’s this really fun quote where Dapper Dan says “I didn’t do knock-offs, I did knock-ups. A knock-off is like people go to Canal (Street) and they looking for exact replicas. That’s not what I did — I do what jazz musicians did in our culture. We take things that already exist and fashion them into who we are and that’s what I did with the logos.”

Another designer who I make a reference to in the game is Arthur McGee, who went to FIT (like Marcos) and has talked about having a hard time working at fashion design offices when he was starting out, before he opened his own shop and began designing costumes for Broadway shows. In the game, Marcos is reminded of McGee when he dresses an actor for a play that his friend, Sun, works at.

Something that a lot of these icons had in common was that they worked extremely hard and carved a space out for themselves when the fashion world around them didn’t give them the space. While it’s truly inspiring to see how they shaped their careers through talent and will, it’s also tragic to see the world around them put them down or not see their potential when they first started their careers, and that was what I saw in Marcos. If readers are interested, a great book I want to call out is The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir by André Leon Talley!

A: The idea of a “cursed dress” feels both metaphorical and literal, and I am here for everything about it! Within the confines of the game narrative what does the dress represent and how does its creation affect the player’s journey?

B: Quick spoiler, but in the game, the dress is not only your creation (like the piece of art in Forgery was solely you summoning the demon), but a creation born from both you and the demon (you just happen to be the person frankensteining this thing together). In the game, it hints at the demon being copied so there’s more of them spreading out to the world.