Continuing from the first part of our interview, TTRPG designer and screenwriter Banana Chan (Van Richten’s Guide To Ravenloft, Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall) and I dig deeper into the strange — and a little gross — way she created a new form of fashionable horror in her solo TTRPG Knockoff.
Dan Arndt: One thing I really like about it is that, you know, so, Forge is set in 2023 New York, Knockoff is I think a similar setting.
Banana Chan: Oh yeah, 2024. New York 2024 Fashion Week.
I appreciate is that it’s very hyper modern, of the moment. But it’s a little bit different for from some of the stuff you’ve done. It’s very historical stuff. You’ve done a lot of stuff in other worlds. What was it like getting to the right place where you could just walk around?
I think a lot of the inspiration was taken from art school, partying in New York, and doing all of that fun stuff that comes with living in New York. I was just telling someone a really interesting story about how I was at an art gallery opening where my friend works and pretty big celebrity that was involved. My friend was basically trying to manage things behind the scenes for the artist who was doing the paintings. There’s also an after party. So me and my friends, we go to the after party and we’re waiting for our friend who works at the gallery to come by.
10 minutes pass, still busy, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, still busy, and we’re wondering what is going on? Why is this taking so long? And they come in, they rush to the door finally, and they say “Oh my God, you won’t believe this. I had to clean up a mountain of coke in the bathroom because that celebrity was in that bathroom doing whatever whatever they were doing.” They were just really apologetic saying, “I’ll buy everyone drinks. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hold everyone up.” Those are those stories that make people either say “Man, I wish I would lived in New York” or “Man, I’m so glad I don’t live in New York.”
So with Forgery, the artifact was paint-by-numbers and centered around the art world. Did the shift to fashion feel like a logical next step? Was that just something you wanted to explore?
I don’t know if anyone else has the same experience but a lot of folks who live in New York who go to these art galleries, who do art gallery hopping, there is like a Venn diagram of people who go to those events who also go to fashion events. The regulars that you see at art galleries every Thursday night when there’s free wine, the next party that they go to is going to be a fashion event and fashion events. They’re a lot more glamorous. If you want things to be slow-paced, you go to an art gallery opening. If you want something to be fast paced, if you want to be seen, you go to a fashion event.
Back in the day, there used to be this thing called Fashion’s Night Out. It was supposed to be a time where people got really excited for these different stores, for these different brands, because they would open their doors and there would be free booze, there would be free wine, and sometimes there would be free product. Say for example, I go to a Levi’s store. You get a glass of champagne and you also get a free pair of jeans. And it’s not just one store. You go down another block, there’s another store that’s having the same event, and just a couple of blocks over, another store is having an event. And all across SoHo, because SoHo has all the stores next to each other people would just be going from one store to the next store to the next store all getting wasted.
It’s like bar hopping.
It’s bar hopping but free and you get free clothes and free makeup and there’s all this free stuff so why would you pay for clothes? I think at the time they were thinking “People are gonna get drunk, they’re gonna spend a lot of money on clothes.” People DID get drunk, but they didn’t spend any money on clothes. Instead, they just kept going back and people got rowdy, there were fights, were people just being a lot to each other. So from art gallery openings to like fashion, I feel like there’s a lot of overlap because the people that go to both and they’ve experienced a lot of these weird events, weird happenings, and it somehow feels like the scenes are very similar.
Tell me a little bit about the artifact mechanic in Knockoff: the croquis.
So similar to Forgery, it’s still sort of paint by numbers but instead of painting, you’re taking paper fabric samples and cutting and pasting those paper fabric samples over a numbered section using scissors to cut and paste these different fabrics. There’s three different kinds of fabrics that you can choose per chapter. In Forgery, you have warm, cool, and neutral colors. In Knockoff, you have woven, knit, and non-woven.
Did that did the patchwork, the sewing, the sort of bringing together, was that something that played into the horror elements of the game as well?
They do. Without spoiling too much, as the game progresses, some of the fabrics might look a little bit like human skin, might see some teeth, that kind of thing. And then I believe it’s the last closer to the end of the book the fourth and fifth fabric samples that you choose from. Those ones are going to be a little bit more gruesome. So the final fabric samples that you get are going to be a combination of meat with gemstones. These are all photographs and scans of different fabrics and different types of meat that I’ve been playing around with.
I love the stuff you’re bringing in, like Amadeus and Phantom Thread. I don’t know much about the fashion influences, though I think it’s cool seeing that. Tabletop games can be very insular and it’s great when I see outward looking games like this that are pulling in the art world or pulling in the fashion world.
Yes, this made me think of something which is I think that all art is not the same, but they inspire one another. I don’t think that fashion can live by itself without recognizing everything, without recognizing other forms of art, right? Same with tabletop games. Tabletop games are an art form and I don’t think that it can exist by itself without looking at other types of art, other things that are happening in the world and pulling in influences from other types of media.
Knockoff is still funding on Backerkit, with funding set to run through May 12.
Images via Read/Write Memory
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