4/3/2023 0 Comments The shab al hiri roach![]() His first critical hit, called Grey Ranks, told the story of young Polish resistance fighters in World War II and would go on to win him his first Diana Jones Award. With his first taste of success, Morningstar dove headlong into indie games publishing. So, it’s a comedy game but it’s also really a sharp critique of academic politics." So it issues these cryptic commands that you have to obey. "The roach still thinks it’s in the 10 th century BCE Sumeria," Morningstar said, "and doesn’t understand how things work anymore. I was finishing a graduate degree at the time and was immersed in academia, and so the game that came to me was about sort of a Lovecraftian game about an ancient Sumerian god-king in the form of a giant, greasy cockroach that could control people’s brains that ended up on a college campus. ![]() And all kinds of crazy games came out of it using those ingredients. "The Game Chef always has ingredients," Morningstar said, "and the ingredients that year were wine, a companion, an accuser and an entomologist. The result was The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, his own personal send-up of academic politics by way of a sentient Sumerian cockroach. He said he first got his start in game design in the early 2000s thanks to a kind of tabletop game jam organized by Game Chef. I’ve been playing role-playing games pretty much as long as there have been role-playing games, and you can’t play them without being a little bit of a designer." Just put that in our hands, dad.’ And that was the end of that. "My brother and I looked at it and said, ‘Yeah. He brought it home and didn’t know what to do with it. "He was a pretty hardcore wargamer, and for some reason he bought the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. "I got turned on to role-playing games by my dad," Morningstar said. Making games is just a side pursuit for him, but one that he’s been interested in since the 1970s. Morningstar lives close to the University of North Carolina, where he works in IT. We recently spoke with Morningstar about his career, and to find out more about his new project. Now, after years publishing soft-cover books, he’s ready to produce his first boxed game, called Ghost Court. The only two-time winner of the Diana Jones Award, he’s the man responsible for games like Fiasco and Night Witches. In the tiny world of independent tabletop role-playing games, Jason Morningstar is as close to rockstar as you’ll find.
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