Earlier this year, I released a new solo TTRPG: VOID 1680 AM. In it, you use a deck of cards, a six-sided die, your music collection and a voice recorder to create your own late-night radio show.
The cards help you dig deep into your collection to reconnect with music you love; they and the die also help you create anonymous Callers and the concerns, hopes and obsessions that drove them to reach out to you, a fellow lone voice in the darkness.
I also included steps for joining the library of Callers for other players to use, and even to submit your full show for broadcast on the “real” VOID 1680 AM. You can see some of those Affiliate broadcasts here. They’re genuinely very cool.
VOID was the culmination of a lifelong obsession with commercial radio; both the technology (which feels retro despite scarcely being over a century old) and the melancholy romance of lonesome voices baring themselves to an audience they’ll never know the scope of.
This, to me, is an apt metaphor for the act of making something - anything at all. Speak into the Void, the back cover copy says. You never know who is listening. So it is with putting something you love into the world.
So what inspired VOID? I cite both Anamnesisby Sam Leigh and The Wretchedby Chris Bissette in the book itself, two solo RPGs whose tones and methods did much to help me find my own.
But if I’m being truthful, VOID’s inspirations mostly reside outside of games. Here are a few things that haunted me profoundly enough to drive me to respond.
The first is Talk Radio, specifically Oliver Stone’s adaptation of Eric Bogosian’s play. The movie’s tagline is “the last neighborhood in America,” which to me frames radio’s persistent relevance and puts social media - often called a “town square” itself - in proper context as one piece of the many ways people find connection with others, for better or worse.
Contra the VOID DJ, Barry in Talk Radio is very, very aware of how his audience receives him (hint: not well). Barry must be heard, and so must the similarly damaged souls who call in to dump the poison in their brain into his… and everyone who’s listening in, besides. It’s a host of people who want to connect but don’t know how, spiraling in decaying orbit around each other until something awful happens.
VOID 1680 AM was originally much darker before I decided to pull back and let players pick their own tone, and Talk Radio is why.
Oxenfree is a narrative video game about a small group of teens stuck on an island haunted by hungry ghosts who can be tuned in and out of reality with handheld radios. There’s more to it than that, but I’ll leave you to discover what on your own - because I would recommend this game to just about anyone.
Insofar as VOID 1680 AM can have a “soundtrack,” it is this one by scntfc, created using WWII-era radio equipment.
The Vast of Night is a quietly alarming lo-fi/sci-fi set in a small town in New Mexico in the late ‘50s. A radio DJ and a switchboard operator pick up strange signals, and then… things happen.
This specific radio station (stylized in the poster above) is what I picture for “my” VOID 1680 AM.
Then there’s Stevie in The Fog, played by Adrienne Barbeau. She’s the bridge between VOID 1680 AM and my earlier solo game, Lighthouse at the End of the World.
She is, yes: a late night DJ. And her radio station is, yes: in a lighthouse. She’s living my dream, at least until the ghost pirates show up.
Spoilers, I guess?
But the most important influence? VOID 1680 AM cover artist Jordan Witt’s fan art for the podcast King Falls AM years ago. This image took up residence in my head, so much so that I still use it as phone wallpaper despite never having listened to the show it’s for.
When it came time to partner with a cover artist, who that cover artist would be was never in question. Entirely unknowingly, Jordan took all these loose ideas in my head and gave them something to cohere to. A beacon, if you will.
They spoke something into the Void, and I listened.
Fun fact: Jordan even jazzed up the original logo I made for VOID 1680 AM when that title only applied to the AM transmitter in my garage. Here’s my original - you can plainly see the influence of Jordan’s art on that O. It all really came full circle.
Those are the biggest ingredients in the stew that made VOID 1680 AM. It’s fun to talk about stuff I like, but also I hope it might nudge someone - anyone - to get going on something they’re after.
(That’s you. I’m talking about you.)
A project finding its voice is a wonderful thing, but there’s no real miracle to it, no outside influence that will tell you what to do. It’s just things in your head magnetizing to each other until they got a shape that - with coaxing - can stand on its own.
Transcript: “This might sound like a hot take, but I feel like the Internet’s obsession with uniqueness is causing legitimate brain rot in some people.
There’s no reason why something like mental illness, for example, should be turned into this commodity where you like, get internet points or social currency by being different.
It’s like, by trying to break the stigma, we’ve just come full circle, where now nobody knows what the hell any of these words actually mean.
So when you explain what a panic attack is, people are like "Oh, like that’s like actually really scary.” & “Not something I just experienced when I couldn’t get Taylor Swift tickets”.
And I know this is going to piss some people off so just brace yourself, but I see it the most in fellow white people - Especially people that are like upper-middle-class.
Look, I’m just gonna say it: whiteness gives us access to everything but oppression. That’s the one thing we can’t colonize. So what do we do? We turn oppression into social currency - Because we know if there’s one thing we can do, it’s make money off of something that doesn’t belong to us.
And before the people that grew up on a cul-de-sac start to get offended in my comments, actually listen to what I’m saying: Don’t intentionally misconstrue it because you want to be oppressed. Just be happy and lucky you aren’t.“
So excited to be doing the new cover for Smut Peddler’s 10th anniversary reissue over at @ironcircuscomics! I am easily swayed by Gibson Girl hair and the chance to do some hand-lettering 👀
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