[Interview] Lester W. Smith – The Darklord speaks…

Let me tell you a story of a teenage boy who just happened to wander into a small, out-of-the-way, bookstore deep in rural New Zealand during the winter months of 1992. Imagine – if you can – that same boy, sandy haired, freckled and gangly, running his eyes across the somewhat dire bookshelf of roleplaying games in that very same store. Here he glances past the abundance of 2nd edition D&D supplements, the smattering of West End Games books and FASA product, hoping beyond hope that the game that had intrigued him so much on his last visit still remained somewhere among this aging collection of books, magazines and games. After a moment of panic, his fears are allayed and there, half hidden in a dusty corner, was the book he was looking for; a different type of RPG, one whose cover – complete with armed adventurers and terrifying zombies –  promised a something fascinating and new at the gaming table!

That teen, of course, was me and little did I know, as I scraped the last few dollars from my holiday bank account to buy this amazing game, that it would lead me on a lifetime of creativity and adventure. Adventures that could have never even be contemplated if our guest hadn’t taken up the assignment to write the most interesting RPG to ever hit our gaming shelves – Dark Conspiracy!

It is therefore with the greatest of pleasure that I present an interview with the one and only Lester Smith (https://lestersmith.com/) – the man who was not only the creative mind behind Dark Conspiracy, but also a true legend in the roleplaying industry and a pioneer in gaming circles. If you’re a fan of Dark Conspiracy then you’ll know Lester’s name already, but even if you are only a casual gamer then you should at least know him for his time at TSR and his award winning ‘Dragon Dice’ game…

But what am I doing… we have the gentleman himself here to tell us about his life, gaming experiences and, most importantly, his time creating Dark Conspiracy. Welcome Lester, I’m so happy that you agreed to do this interview… I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to asking you to do this!

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[DCtRPG] – So, with no further flapping about, let’s begin! As you’ll have likely seen in my other interviews, I really like to get to know the people I talk to before we get into the gaming questions. I mean, we are aren’t all dice and statistics are we?

[Lester] – I’ll share a bit of history in case it’s of some encouragement to somebody somewhere.

I was born and raised in Central Illinois to a Blue Collar, Evangelical Christian family. Married young, got a job in the same General Electric factory as my dad, and started a family of my own. Factory work wasn’t fulfilling, and injuries weren’t uncommon, so I grew restless. As a surprise, my wife set me up with guitar lessons, and she encouraged my wish to join the National Guard as a medic, a sideways slide into a different career. GE gave me military leave while the Guard put me through Licensed Practical Nursing School.

Shortly after returning to GE, they had a massive layoff. Even 8 ½ years of seniority left me unemployed. Frankly, that was a godsend. I couldn’t conceive of leaving the job, as the family wage earner. But with it taken from me, I was free! Guard tuition assistance for a Physician’s Assistant degree pointed me toward college; it wasn’t enough to support my family, but enough for me to apply and see what happened.

College was a foreign concept for my lineage. Nobody knew how to apply for or pay for it. Counselors in Junior High and High School had told me “You’re bright. Take college prep courses,” but none talked about how to get there. So this was Marco Polo territory.

The layoff was in August, too late for the Fall semester, but I was accepted for Spring. With four months unemployed, I had lots of free time on my hands, gamed my brains out, sold a small review to Space Gamer magazine, then a two-player board game designed in that downtime. My very first publications! Fate would make this an unexpected full-time career in three years.

[DCtRPG] –Wow, bad luck for you becomes an opportunity for us to have you join the ranks of game creators, huh? That’s fantastic! So, were you always a gamer? How were you introduced to the hobby?

[Lester] – In my late teens, some coworkers at a restaurant introduced me to 3M’s Acquire. The first hobby game I bought for myself was Richtoffen’s War. (I’m fascinated with WWI aerial dogfighting. See the “Last Flight of a Vickers Gun Bus Pilot” sonnet on my website.) A high-school buddy and I played the hell out of that game, adding a six-second rule to keep turns moving.

Shortly after marrying, Jennifer and I met a couple of other married hobbyists at church, and one of them bought the original D&D White Box. It was 1979. We puzzled through and played a couple of short adventures. All I remember is killing a troll in a cave, and one friend bitten by a giant tick when he spent too much time searching the troll’s pockets. And one couple’s spat when the GM let another gal in the group have the unicorn we found, instead of his wife.

We shifted to AD&D. On the wall above my desk is my pencil drawing my first AD&D character, I don’t remember his name.

The first AD&D PC I do remember is a half-elf fighter named Raedel Pinehaven. (Still have the original painted miniature, and on a shelf above my desk is a Hero Forge custom mini a friend sent recently.) He was made for a one-on-one dungeon campaign. Raedel had a crush on Mistress Goldleaf, an elven NPC mage he had hired, and I remember one irascible party member, a fighter, only because he ended up with some cursed armor he couldn’t remove, and Raedel vaguely (and incorrectly) remembered something about the armor falling off if hit in anger, so we beat the heck out of the NPC in a bar one evening.

[DCtRPG] – Ah, the good old days of AD&D, surely you must have a few stories from the early, heady days of gaming?

[Lester] –  My favorite war story from that dungeon was finding a cobwebbed dining room while circling back to the dungeon entrance. It had a big throne with a gong next to, and sealed doors all around the perimeter. Raedel sent the rest of the group into the hall, then threw a dagger at the gong, and ran like hell when skeletons rushed out of all those doors! The next week’s session, I talked the GM into selling us three barrels of lamp oil, and a bunch of rope, at a discount. He was puzzled, but agreed. We made rope harnesses to carry a barrel between each pair of party members, marched right to that dining hall, poured oil all over the floor, and exited. Except for Raedel, who stood ready with a dagger and torch. He threw the dagger at the gong, waited for the skeletons to rush out and fall, then dropped the torch in the oil and fled. When the smoke cleared, we went in to grab whatever loot remained. The GM’s revenge was to insist Raedel pass a Saving Throw or singe his eyebrows.

Shortly thereafter I stole the DM chair in our gaming group, we abandoned AD&D for a multi-year love affair with The Fantasy Trip. I devoured other RPGs and started doing mashups—one campaign on the Barbarian Prince map, using the two-page game rules from Middle Earth Quest books, the magic system from TSR’s Conan, and some players’ drama cards from Arduin.

[DCtRPG] – So, there you were, your group’s DM, and then a published game designer. How did that lead to the gig as a writer… at Games Designer’s Workshop… right? 

[Lester] – During my college application I scored high enough for ISU’s Honors program, and it offered an English option to skip over English 101, take a level 200 English class, meet a Writing Center tutor once a week, and turn in a two-page essay. I’d get retroactive credit for English 101–a 5-credit class! Gaining retroactive credits was a way of getting a degree quicker and cheaper, so I jumped at the chance. (Did something similar for a full year of credit toward a Spanish minor.) For the English course, I landed in British Romantic Period Literature—had always loved poetry—and it changed my life. I dropped pre-med math and chemistry, switched to writing, and haven’t looked back since.

Meanwhile my saint of a wife worked odd jobs to keep us in beans and bacon while I went to school. She delivered newspapers and got a license to care for handicapped children, all while inwardly worrying that I’d get an education and dump her for some bright young coed. She’d heard lots of such stories.

I was working odd jobs myself (like school bus driving). For professional practice in writing, I talked my way into part-time proofreading at GDW. The company was in my hometown. Medic training meant I could add margin notes about things like the way optic nerves work, and GDW learned I’d sold writing to Space Gamer, so Marc Miller offered me the chance to write Beanstalk, a 48-page module for Traveller: 2300.

He said, “Here’s a cover painting you have to work into the events somehow. Oh, and the module is already two months behind schedule.”

Note that 48 pages is a looong document for someone used to 10-page double-spaced English essays. Once finished, I left a 2-page memo on Frank Chadwick’s desk (a tech writing technique), recommending some changes for a Traveller:2300 second edition. Come Monday morning, Frank and Marc offered me a full-time job writing 2300 AD.

[DCtRPG] – Simple as that huh <laughing>… I bet that was a different experience for you.

[Lester] – I made some lifelong friends at GDW, and learned a lot under Frank’s friendly tutelage. He taught me skills a creative has to master in order to survive, like keeping the inner child alive while doing the adult labor of getting words on paper. And his attention to detail of game mechanics, appropriate to the setting—along with my long admiration for Steve Jackson’s work—meshed with my own perfectionist obsession and love for formalist poetry.

[DCtRPG] – Right, so you’re in the door at GDW, and contributing to some of their already established lines, but how did the opportunity to work on something new like Dark Conspiracy come along?

[Lester] – While at GDW, I was also completing my English degree, burning the candle at both ends. Then the rigors of grad school meant I had to resign. During the summer break I worked some freelance (including a MechWarrior 2nd edition for FASA), and Marc approached me about writing a “horror RPG with an environmental conscience.” He and Frank were military history buffs, didn’t want to write a horror game, and knew I was a horror fan.

[DCtRPG] – So, you were pretty much free to do what you want?

[Lester] – Beyond that “environmental conscience” there were no other constraints. So, I set about building a world that any sort of horror story could be ported into, and used the National Enquirer as a source of conspiracy theory adventures. ETs became a central catalyst as I created a rationale for why early 20th century sci-fi movies depicted them as benevolent, but mid-20th century ones as malevolent. So, in Dark Conspiracy ETs were telepathic beings mentally overwhelmed after releasing a Lovecraftian sort of god.

[DCtRPG] – Was it always written for the GDW House System (was that even around then?)

[Lester] – I started off trying to build a d20 system but wasn’t yet prepared for that depth of task. Come fall, GDW offered a full-time position to finish Dark Conspiracy, manage the line, and help out with other projects. Abandoning my fledgling mechanics for the d10 house system took a load off my shoulders. Later that I made the case for expanding that house system to a less granular d20 scale. The one thing about the game that distinctively betrays its GDW historical origins is the detailed section on weaponry, borrowed from Twilight: 2000.

[DCtRPG] – What about Michael Stackpole’s novels? No overarching brief?

[Lester] –  The Stackpole novels were written concurrently. He had little idea of the world I was building, and I had zero knowledge of his novels. Marc oversaw things to make sure we were in at least the same ballpark.

[DCtRPG] – Really? I have to say that you wouldn’t have guessed that – the game and novels really do complement each other! So, now you had a plan, what other inspiration did you turn to complete your vision?

[Lester] –  The Greater Depression and Dark America concepts were a necessity for explaining how haunted house scenarios and metroplexes could exist in the same world. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling had launched a sci-fi renaissance with cyberpunk, so Neuromancer, Schismatrix, and several Sterling short stories had a big effect on those Metroplexes. Tremors, Damnation Alley, and every haunted house story ever told explain the Outland and Demonground. I’ve mentioned the rationale for ETs. The bloodkin were my rationale for vampires. And the Nukids were a reference to the New Kids on the Block boy band, as a friendly ribbing of my oldest daughter.

[DCtRPG] – Ha! I always thought that might be the case… but my players thought I was a bit mad for saying so. With these building blocks and concepts in place I guess the next step was the actual writing. How did that go?

[Lester] – I think it was about 9 months writing from start to finish what with the grad degree stealing time. The bits of fiction are probably best explained by the Beatles “Paperback Writer.” Everybody wants to be a novelist. I was no different. But intro fiction does help convey intended mood in a role-playing game. Frank came up with the term “proles,” the Zil Tovarich, and Zena Marley.

[DCtRPG] – Iconic stuff there… to this day I still use the Zena Marley quote – … “only democracy guarantees the people get what they deserve”! So, with nine months of your life dedicated to Dark Conspiracy, I’m sure you’ve got any number of anecdotes to share.

[Lester] – As for memories, the company had hired a Marketing Director, a position that didn’t last long, and that person came up with the promo video idea and hired an alcoholic stage magician to record it. Some of that footage I’m proud of, like that first-person view over the edge of a roof and down a wall. Some not so much, like the fact that the video guy wouldn’t allow wet footprints on the motel room carpet, so we had those silly clods of grass. Finally, in that door-to-door salesman scene, the enthusiastic GDW warehouse guys, about broke my back yanking the rope that snatched me through the door, and my ear was bleeding because the Marketing Director insisted I remove the earring from a piercing I’d gotten a week before. Oh, and the ogre crunching bones was actually Loren eating celery.

But one of the best memories from those days, and this is a secret few people know, involves Ralph Faraday. While Dark Conspiracy was in editing, I got my first ever invitation as a convention guest, in St. Louis. I ran a preview adventure for some guys and promised to list them in the game credits, and a copy of the published game, if they’d write their names and addresses on the back of their PC sheets. About six months later, one of them called me to ask why his name wasn’t listed and he hadn’t gotten a book. I checked my files and discovered he’d written his character name, “Ralph Faraday,” on the back instead of his own name. So, Ralph Faraday had been listed in the credits.

Since then, “Ralph Faraday” has been listed as play-tester in every game I’ve ever designed, sometimes also as an editor or graphic designer, and he’s written some of the crankier haiku in my Halloween poetry anthologies. As an old friend now, sometimes he buys me cigars and a bottle of pricey tequila.

[DCtRPG] – Classic! I know you can find the old DC video up on youtube these days (here it is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWhvLVYpsw0) but never realised you were in it!

And there you were, with a successfully mostly full colour, state of the art designed RPG out the door. What was next, did you have grand plans for the line?

[Lester] –  As Line Manager, I made up the plan for the Dark Conspiracy line as I went along. That was the GDW way. The only thing I didn’t plan myself was publishing folio adventures, but even in the content and writers for those was left to my discretion.

[DCtRPG] – But there was always plans for a boardgame, right?

[Lester] – As for the Minion Hunter board game, Darlene File, the Purchasing Manager and Marc’s spouse, had discovered a train car full of blank game boards unclaimed, that were being sold for cheap. Frank and Marc asked if anyone wanted to design a board game, and I jumped at the chance. The outer/inner layout concept was because I loved Talisman but thought the mechanics were unbalanced. I wanted a map of America as further illustration of the Dark Conspiracy world, so that went in the middle. Don’t remember how I came up with the adjustable track of encounter cards, but the solo play option means I play the Minion Hunter even now.

The two things I regret about that game are that if you’re not careful you can get stuck in the hospital for a long time, and those crappy sheets of play money you have to cut out with scissors. The money is an embarrassment.

I’ve been considering using the mechanics for a Cthulhu-style board game with the Atlantic in the middle and the travel tracks forming a pentagram. (The end points are listed in the “L’Académie des Arcanes” setting of the D6xD6 RPG.)

[DCtRPG] – And all good thing come to an end, as you went off to TSR. Any regrets?

[Lester] – Yes and no.

I’ve mentioned my respect for Frank Chadwick, and I’ve a lot of affection for him. So I miss that interaction. I miss the product lines, working with the Challenge Magazine staff, especially Tim Brown, though we’ve remained close friends. I miss Loren Wiseman. And pretty much everyone else on staff, though again, most of us are still in touch and remain friends.

I miss the building, that upper-floor office and the rickety wooden landing outside the back door. Miss the drives to Milwaulke for Gen Con with the GDW staff, and to Baltimore and Atlanta for Origins. I’d never been interested in big conventions as a hobbyist, but as a hobbyist turned pro, attending in the dealer’s room, meeting people like Steve Jackson and Zeb Cook as fellow professionals, it was a magical time.

But I couldn’t feed my family on their salary, and when TSR offered me a job, at a higher than average starting salary (which is a story in itself), I had to do something. I went in to Frank’s office, told him of the offer but that I didn’t want to leave, and could we figure something out, stock or something. He wasn’t ready to consider a newcomer being invited into the circle of originals. (Later David Nilsen did get that offer.) And I suspect he was irritated that TSR was hiring me at a time when they were suing GDW and Gary Gygax over Dangerous Dimensions (yet another story in itself). I suspect Lorraine Williams had me hired as a slap in Gary’s face, though I doubt it carried any sting to his jovial self. Gary and I remained friends afterward, and I spent time gaming at his house in Lake Geneva.

My leaving GDW was sort of inevitable, and the company spiraled into collapse shortly thereafter. I’d have been out of a job, instead of employed at TSR.

[DCtRPG] – So on to bigger and brighter things… what was it like working at TSR?

[Lester] – Working at TSR was like a college fraternity/sorority. The design staff was a fascinating group of people, I tended to get high-profile projects, and the company encouraged gaming—even other publishers’ games—so much that they extended our lunch hour by 30 minutes paid, as long as we lunched in the games library, playing things. And nearly every evening was spent role-playing in somebody’s home or another, often things run by the designers themselves, like a two-year Star Wars campaign led by Bill Slavicsek.

Then Zeb left for a computer game job, and I began to grow disillusioned and frustrated. The company claimed that any piece of writing I did, even poetry for my children off hours, belonged to them. I couldn’t write for anyone outside the company, including novels. “But they’re golden handcuffs,” said Jim Ward. But I’m an anarchist at heart. “Blood and souls for my Lord Arioch!”

[DCtRPG]   Another move? Time to strike out on your own?

[Lester] – Maybe it’s arrogance, but I have always had a high opinion of my design skills. With Dragon Dice such a hit ($20 million in sales the first year, I’m told), and having earned my first Origins Award, I took a job with Tim Brown at Comico, to design a Year of the Rat dice game, never published. (I think Comico never actually published anything at all.) So, Tim and I broke out on our own with Chaos Progenitus (now Daemon Dice by SFR, a fan-launched company that bought Dragon Dice from WotC and has been publishing it ever since).

Two things doomed us, possibly a third. First, I’ve come to realize that fans generally follow properties much more than designers. Consider the changing credits of D&D over the years. Second, a shoestring budget in a world of big-budget publishers is difficult, to say the least. And third, rumor is that Lorraine leaned on distributors to avoid us. I can’t swear to that last one, but it fits the various puzzle pieces.

[DCtRPG] – Shame, and that eventually saw you leaving the gaming industry?

[Lester] – I sincerely hated leaving the hobby, and Peter Adkison and I have been friendly, so even as an ex-TSR staffer, I think I could have landed a job with WotC when the rest of the TSR staff moved to Seattle. But my family hadn’t handled the move from Central Illinois (GDW) to Wisconsin (TSR), and I couldn’t put them through an even more distant move.

So, I bounced around as a freelancer, and launched FFE with Tim Brown and Jim Ward, but it was an untenable state for feeding my family. During that time I worked on many, many enjoyable projects, including a Star Wars dice game (another tale in itself), editing the Groo card game and a post-GDW edition of Traveller, designing the core rules of the Cortex system, and such. But ultimately, I’d had to accept the fact that to feed my family, I’d have to find other work.

I managed to talk myself into an assistant writer’s position at Write Source, an educational design house about 30 miles distant. They were skeptical whether I had enough teaching experience (teaching English 101 part-time in grad school). I’m pretty sure they hired me out of pity, because I showed up to the interview with my leg in a cast, broken the day before my final interview.

[DCtRPG] – So, it all come out in the end, and now – what, 20 years on – you’re in (semi) retirement? Obviously, you’re still tinkering with games – D6xD6 for example…

[Lester] – Now that I have no bosses, it’s bucket-list time! To keep me on track, I’ve tended to crowdfund things, including an irreverent novel in sonnets, The Pastime Machine: A Literary Turducken.

The D6xD6 RPG origins are laid out in the game’s preface, and the game itself is the main content of d6xd6.com, a site where I wrote the game chapter by chapter, as a public example of my rpg game design process. One of the most serendipitously satisfying elements of that game was convincing two dozen favorite novelists to let me represent their worlds as examples of the game’s plasticity, with it’s one-stat design.

I’ve recently published the D13 RPG, a horror game, of course. That bucket-list concept was first play-tested 20 years ago, and writing D6xD6 gave me new design sensibilities that are reflected in D13. And whereas in Dark Conspiracy I sought to build a world into which any horror story can be fit, with some modification to suit heroic campaign play, the D13 RPG aims to allow any horror tale as is, and to scar, maim, or kill characters without killing a campaign.

And bunches of card games. Two favorites are Clashing Blades!, a two-player duel based on fencing experience from college years, and Wolfman’s Curse, a title I’ve sometimes considered changing to Yes, You Are a Werewolf. I’ve self-published a half dozen other card games as well.

[DCtRPG] – And of course, your Poetry…

[Lester] – I think game design and poetry are siblings. Especially formalist poetry—sonnets, haiku, villanelles, and such.

If you think about it, Dragon Dice is a formalist poem.

Consider a sonnet. It’s exactly 14 lines long. Shakespeare grouped those into stanzas of 4, 4, 4, and 2. Each line is typically 10 syllables, 5 of them accented, so that each line ends with an accent. There is a pattern of rhymes in those stanzas, usually abab cdcd efef gg. Shakespeare used the quatrains to describe something 3 different ways, then the couplet as a conclusion.

But you’re not thinking about all of that when you read Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” You’re seeing that gigantic stone head lying in the sand, with pieces of its statue scattered about. And you’re thinking about how pointless arrogance is in the face of eternity.

Now consider Dragon Dice. The d6s are soldiers, each size of a different strength; the d8s are terrain they’re battling for; the d12s are dragons. The colors are the world’s 4 elements, which define which spell lists apply. The symbols on the d8s are combat ranges. The d4s are items. The turn sequence is a convenience to prevent chaos.

But you’re not thinking about all of that when you send your goblin wolf riders galloping across the seashore to slay the coral elf archers.

Structure can certainly be a thing of beauty if you analyze it on its own, like the innards of a Swiss clock. But it’s just a function for the pristine white clock face with golden Roman numerals and ornate hands that keep perfect time.

This is why I dislike games with great mystique but shabby rules—as soon as you roll the dice, the brokenness pokes through. And equally dislike games with wonderful mechanics but a mere veneer of mood—I can’t immerse myself in the world.

That philosophy aside, as to my poetic experience, that British Romantic Literature class turned a mere interest into a passion. I began practicing (some really crappy stuff at first), but eventually won some awards, served six years as president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, got some things published in a few respectable magazines, sometimes alongside Wisconsin Poets Laureate, and once even in the same magazine with a Robert Silverberg essay!

For seven years I published Halloween anthologies where fiction authors were able to try their hands at poetry, fans got to see themselves published alongside them, and I got to introduce those fans to the publishing process (polishing your work, communicating with editors, meeting deadlines, and so on).

Those were intentionally high-stress projects, typically launched on October 1st, published as an ebook by midnight Halloween, with print books shortly thereafter. Sort of a month-long Halloween party. Sadly, my head health won’t allow for that sort of deadline stress any longer.

In my opinion, poetry in the 1800s was a common topic among regular people. In the early 1900s, academics stole it and made it empty performance art. It’s time to steal it back.

[DCtRPG] – That’s insightful… I’ve never really looked at it that way at all. I think maybe you missed your true calling – some sort poet philosopher? Actually, now I write that I can relate all the way back to Dark Conspiracy… the same aspects you spoke about then resonate even in that book. Very humbling!

I do have to ask, however, given the various attempts to revive Dark Conspiracy, you’ve never been interested in throwing your hat back in the ring?

[Lester] –  Here’s the thing. I always pour heart and soul into my work, which makes those things my babies. I’ve always been a little sad to see other people own them, but that’s the nature of work for hire.

Which is why I don’t do work for hire any longer. On the one hand, I have to distance myself from those babies if I’m to have any peace. And on the other, I’m not interested in creating more things that other people own. I’ve had offers to be involved in new editions of Dark Conspiracy (and to write material for Space: 1889 and The Fantasy Trip), but there’s plenty of self-publishing left to do, however small my audience, and plenty of other people’s poetry to publish.

So, if you’d like to reward an old game designer for any pleasure my work has given you in the past, please take a look at the things I’m designing now. Or maybe even just send me a note (see the “Say Hi” page at lestersmith.com). Every note is much appreciated.

[DCtRPG] – Absolutely understand…

Well, I’ve taken enough of your time… I better leave you to have the final words!

[Lester] – Thank you very much for allowing me to talk about myself. It’s one of my favorite subjects.

[DCtRPG] – Anytime!

[Lester] – Seriously, though, I hope my passion is evident for game design, poetry, good writing, and seeing other people have fun, even have their work published.

Nothing is more satisfying than knowing I had some part in other people’s joy!

[DCtRPG] – And with that I’ll wrap up this interview, I’m sure that, like me, you are pleased to have an opportunity to hear from Lester in his own words. I’m sure that if you pop any comments or feedback below, I might be able to convince him to reply as appropriate!

Until next time…