Witches Always Punch Up: An Interview with Justin Sirois of Severed Books

In Which I Speak to One of the Writers Who Inspired Me to Explore Gaming with my Writing

I first met Justin Sirois online. A great place to meet!

Back in the day, we would encounter each other—well, firstly each other’s writings—online. At one point, we were publisher-mates.

For a long time, I admired his work, his projects, his literary citizenship.

Then one day, a few years back, a funny thing happened. Around the same time I was rediscovering my love of the fantasy roleplaying games that had been so important to my early creative history, I found Justin out there embracing and making some game-related content of his own. So, I decided to reach out to Justin—who has now been doing this stuff for just under a decade, and has been involved in some amazing, amazing work—and ask him some questions about games and writing.

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HEY, if you have a minute, one of Justin’s recent projects—the Small Party and Boss series of wooden minis—has been nominated for an ENnie, and Severed itself is up for Fan Favorite Publisher.

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Thanks for agreeing to this!

Let's start with something simple. I first met you through small press fiction writing, where your work could be fantastical (I still think often about a story in which a group of characters “unmake” a meal), but wasn't in the same kind of fantasy tradition that your roleplaying work has been in. Was there a creative undercurrent looming beneath the surface? What's your history with the genre, and with the version of it that encourages folks to sit around a table with dice, friends, and little pewter miniatures?

Oh, I love that short story and it’s one I haven’t thought of in a while. That short book might be the only one that I’d call fantastical though. I think the undercurrent that links both my fiction and tabletop game work is an emotional realism—or at least that’s what I’m going for. There are no dragons or fairies in my games. No orcs or whatever. I try to keep it as low fantasy as I can and put the people stories first.

Roleplaying games have the ability to be hyper fantastical, but I prefer peasant uprisings and secretive witches. In Oldest Child, my recent RPG card game, you play as yourself so all the decisions that you and your friends make in the “game” are morally and ethically your own. As you create the story’s tension as a group, it can get pretty emotional.

This is fascinating to me. We tend to think of TTRPG fantasy as tied to epic and high fantasy--the world of the knights and the nobles, not the peasants and the hedge wizards.

So, for me, TTRPGs were a part of my tween and teenage history. In college, I stepped away from that world, but then the opportunity to write something brought me back a little more than a decade ago. And now, after time spent in the small press lit world, I find most of my creative energy and time has been refocused back to games--especially the smaller press TTRPG world, the one that seems so similar to the indie lit world I loved so much in the early and mid 2000s. What about you? What's your history?

My history is somewhat similar. I played a lot of console and computer RPGs growing up, but didn't have a tabletop group to play with. After writing poetry and fiction for over a decade and running an indie press (Narrow House), I came back to games in a creative way. Ken Baumann, who you know, has an influence for sure. He published Maze of the Blue Medusa and came out to Baltimore back in 2017 and ran it for me and a few friends including Zeb Cook. I was hooked after that. It was also a relief seeing indie old school systems that have fewer rules. As a new dad, I was intimidated by the big D&D manuals and knew I wouldn't have time to learn them. Ken used The Black Hack and it was easy enough for me to say, "Yeah, I can create something using this."

I couldn't be happier now. I get to draw, design, write, and publish all at the same time. I get to experiment with new media which is something I've always wanted to do. And the indie RPG scene is so inclusive. It's one of the healthiest creative spaces I've ever had the honor to work in.

Yeah, I've noticed the same. I know there are pockets of the scene that are problematic, but the places where I've interacted with it have been very positive.

Can I ask you, first, to talk about your latest project and then, second, to tell me a little about the process of learning to design either a game product or a game? When I look at the things you've done with Severed, I see game accessories (dice, pins, minis), game supplements (modules, generators), and then games (rulesets, card games). I remember you--and correct my timeline, if I'm off--first sculpting terrain, then producing the module BENEATH, and then branching out to the other supplements and accessories before trying your hand at producing a full, self-contained game.

Sickest Witch, my new RPG, is a low fantasy world where peasants have found a way to harness vile magic without compromising their own bodies. They don't have to speak the spell since they imbue severed pieces of other people with the magic. These witches hunt down their oppressors, carve them up, and use a special substance named Stained Salt to pack their cut up parts with power. For me, the entire system is a metaphor. Bodies, in our real lives, are commodities. Our time and labor is commodified. When we work for someone else, our bodies are not our own. It's the same in Sickest Witch. Every human body is now a commodity that the Sickest Witches can potentially utilize. That said, "Witches Always Punch Up." There are negative consequences for harvesting body parts from a "good" or "innocent" person. I hope this will lead to some tense moments at the table as players negotiate what is "good" and "bad". Much of the story is about reclaiming your body and then others as you take revenge on the barons and lords who have abused your people for generations.

Yes, you're spot on with that timeline. I started making terrain for fun using Hirst Arts molds. I replicated the entire Wrath of Ashardalon (Wizards of the Coast) board game map and was hooked. From there I started sculpting my own tiles, molding them with customs molds, and sold thousands of 3x3 inch terrain map squares made of Hydrostone. I miss it, but it was a ton of work. I slowly got up the courage to write my own module named Beneath the Inverted Church. And from there I experimented with media, making whatever project felt right. There were some duds for sure, but the ones that hit really did hit. The Party Backstory Generator was a good one. Last big thing I did was a spinner rack that converts in half that is sized for zines (A5). That was a challenge, but really satisfying to engineer and have produced.

What about this--how do you approach fiction writing, and how do you approach game design? Where do the two processes overlap and where do they diverge?

That's a great question. I found that a lot of the "tricks" I used in fiction writing just don't translate well to game design. In game design, you have to be very literal. But in fiction, you're holding back almost more than you're revealing. At least that was my style of fiction writing.

I often compare game writing to screenplay or script writing. What both do have in common for me is that I try to write with as much emotion as possible by putting the people/characters first. This is a bit hard since the characters driving the narrative are the players. They can do whatever they want. So I try my best to get those players as emotionally invested as I can while not railroading them to a specific path. It's tough since my game writing style is something of a sandbox. There are definite "main avenues" to take through the adventure, but there are also nearly limitless diversions a group of players can take. So yeah, I just try my hardest to create compelling characters for the players to interact with and hopefully emotions run high and the group is invested. A lot of that is up to the game master though. In the end, they are the director of the script.

And lastly, I know this is a gaming and writing blog, but I am curious if you can tell me a little bit about the business of gaming right now. The seemingly unstoppable wave that was 5e's success has sort of crested, smaller games are finding little boutique audiences, and then there are the tariffs. Some bad stuff, some good stuff, some neutral stuff. What are you seeing?

It's an equally exciting and scary time to be an indie publisher, that's for sure. With Dungeons and Dragons' popularity somewhat wanning while smaller RPGs are having their day, there's a lot of opportunity to create something new and different that fans will love. For me, I have just enough fans to sustain my creative lifestyle and that feels great. But the big beast in the room is tariffs as you mentioned. They are really destroying the tabletop game industry, particularly board games and minis. I'm somewhat lucky with Severed Books. I'm a one person show. No employees or anything. I wrote, draw, lay out, and design everything myself. I do pay a proofer who treats me super well. Props Spencer! My profits are down since I really can't charge any more for my non-book items. Mid size and large companies are struggling the most though and that's tough to watch.

I do think that the RPG industry is having its 90's comics moment right now. Creator-owned games are flourishing. The creators who know how to work social media can get their faces out there and people are recognizing not just the IPs but the people behind the games they love. The OSR (Old School Revival) scene is really exploding with talent -- we might be in a post OSR scene currently -- and that's thrilling. What I'd love to see if someone to coin a phrase that's similar to "cartoonist" in the way Jim Rugg and the late Ed Piskor use it. I have a ton of respect for a person who does everything themselves in the roleplaying game space. Of course, I'm biased because I consider myself one of them, finally, after like 30 years of making crap. Now that this discipline is over 50 years old, it might be time to start defining those terms.

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