Interview with Reilly Qyote & Robbi Burns

Reilly Qyote is the creator of the Afterthought Committee/Plus One Exp collaboration, What a Horrible Knight for Mythic Bastionland, now available in print and PDF. Plus One Exp staff member Will interviewed Reilly and Robbi about their latest release. Read our previous interview with Horrible Knight's artist Robbi Burns.

Thank you both for chatting with us! Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do. 

Reilly: Thanks for having us, Will! My name is Reilly Qyote (They/Any), and I'm the creative director for Afterthought Committee.

Robbi: Thanks Will! I’m a freelance illustrator and art director who mostly works in the TTRPG industry. I’m also the illustrator for Gossamer Coast!

What a Horrible Knight: What is it?

Reilly: What a Horrible Knight is what happens when you’ve read too many maze supplements and heard too many APs running a maze-exploration adventure that just doesn't make any sense in practice. I remember I had read Mythic Bastionland the night before listening to a TTRPG podcast, and the whole time I was listening to them, I was thinking, “They're doing this all wrong. If I were running this game, I would need a choose-your-own-adventure reference with a heavy emphasis on improvisation.” As soon as the thought arrived, I had downloaded the entirety of this adventure from the ether as if I were Neo learning Kung Fu. Every little detail fell into place immediately.

Robbi: Accessibility is really big to me, so a choose-your-own adventure TTRPG is the exact kind of thing I love seeing, so everything about this felt extremely right to me. Plus, when Reilly first described this idea of having foreground elements on top of reusable background assets, I immediately thought of that Dragon’s Lair cabinet game and that got me really excited. 

Why Mythic Bastionland?

Reilly: I had become obsessed with Mythic Bastionland the moment I started reading it. Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland are major influences for me. I even gift Electric Bastionland to all the GMs I've had over the past few years, as I genuinely believe the advice in the back of the book can change campaigns for any game for the better. The myths in Mythic Bastionland were especially interesting to me. One of my special interests growing up was Greek mythology, and I just couldn't stop thinking of Daedalus and the labyrinth he created for King Minos as I was reading the game. So the next day, as I was dreaming up this maze adventure, the details falling into place naturally affixed themselves to the Mythic Bastionland system.

Robbi: I worked for a while boxing up Mythics in the Plus One Warehouse and was immediately enthralled with Alec Sorenson’s work. No way could I pass up the opportunity to put my own twist on the powerful visual identity he created!

The book has a really interesting and unique format. Tell us about that and what the design process was like.

Reilly: I have to give full credit to Tony (of Plus One Exp fame) for inspiring the format of this book. He mentioned the possibility of printing a spiral-bound notebook that stands up on its own at the table, with artwork on one side facing the players and adventure text on the other facing the GM, and I couldn't say no. Having a book act as a literal GM screen is something I have never seen before. It allowed us to showcase Robbi's art in full pages while keeping a clean and minimal aesthetic for the GM to easily run the adventure at a glance. Practical and beautiful.

Robbi: I loved the idea of leaning into the video gamey quality of having an animated feeling foreground on repeated backgrounds. I did this by adding bright outlines to the foreground elements and purposefully making moveable bits a bit off-color to simulate the Scooby-Doo book-that’s-really-a-lever, or as Reilly put it, “That rock that you know Goku is about to blast apart.”

What excites you most about What a Horrible Knight? 

Reilly: When Mythic Bastionland was finally released to the public, I had come across far too many posts on social media asking, “Where do I begin?”. And I get it! Starting a new game is difficult, especially when you might not be familiar with a game so open-ended and improv-heavy. I wanted to answer that question for everyone wanting to get a campaign started that needed just a bit of guidance on how to get this game off the ground. What a Horrible Knight intentionally bridges the gap between D&D and other procedure-based old school games and gently introduces a new but familiar concept to your play group. What excites me most is knowing that more people are going to pick up and play a game I truly love.

Robbi: Mixing an architecturally gothic vibe into an underground dungeon and making it look and feel interactive was awesome. The idea of playing a TTRPG where you can literally see what’s in front of you is really exciting.

Any advice for new Referees or Game Masters running the adventure?

Reilly: I tried to fit all the advice I could into the book itself. But if there's one thing I can hammer home here, it's that you know your game so much better than I do. I want you to tear this book apart. Add things I never thought of. Take away the parts that don't serve you or your group. Make it your own.

What else are you into right now?

Reilly: Right now, I'm deep into heroes and villains fiction. I'm finishing up my latest game, Every Villain Is a Loser, based on my love for Venture Brothers, Hench, and cracking jokes around a table with my best friends. If you're a fan of telling absurd and hilarious stories, I recommend checking it out.