Interview with Craig Campbell of Nerdburger games, designer of Capers, Good Strong Hands, and others on small press distribution and the state of the industry

Nerdburger Games has been lauded many times for its achievements in design, covering adventure and parody, group, GM-less, and solo, along with more to come in the future. Craig Campbell, creator and lead designer, gave his insight on the nature of the market for a small press publisher, and our mistaken perception of those publishers as “independent”. They are, but in a market dominated by a single corporation and where only a select few have been able to make it their primary business, the vast majority of games come from other sources. Those sources understand the value of finding their own definition of success; one that defies the American framing of popularity and finances, though those have their benefits. That personal definition extends to the players as well. Though many books spend their lives on shelves rather than at game tables, the breadth of ways you can appreciate RPGs doesn’t require a shibboleth of playtime before an arbiter can declare that purchase as valid. Gaming is a spectrum of enjoyment, as communal as it is personal, and the way we experience these games is changing all the time. Listen below to his thoughts, informed by decades of experience in design.

 

You can follow Craig on Twitter, Bluesky, and the Nerdburger website. Listen also to RPG R&D, a podcast focused on gaming from the perspective of the designers and GMs who bring their games to life.

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