Laura Lang brings user-experience design to craft an adventure for new players

Forgotten Roots of the Sewer Sanctuary is, on the surface, a very traditional fantasy adventure: there’s a town with a mysterious problem, and these newly-arrived wanderers might be the only ones who can delve into the depths to discover the truth. But the most interesting part of this Zelda-inspired temple-crawl is its information design.

The creator, Laura Lang, is a product designer in her day job, and she puts her user-experience skills to use in imagining what a newbie-friendly adventure might look like. It started out as an adventure for Brazilian designer Fellipe Silva’s Forgotten Ballad, but it quickly became its own project. Lang wanted her own system so she could design a visual language from scratch with icons, colors, and patterns that would repeat across the book. The ultimate goal was a no-prep experience for first-time GMs, a tall order.

She first released it as a digital product, but as a part of Gamefound’s RPG Party she is now crowdfunding a physical version that is her contribution to a thriving conversation around information design led by people like Sean McCoy at Mothership.

Rascal sat down with Lang to talk about how this project started, the value of redundancy in information design, and role of playtesting.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Thomas Manuel: Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get into designing games and adventures?

Laura Lang: I am a designer living in Belgium. I work in a design and innovation studio. In my day job, I create products, but not for the entertainment industry. I studied transportation and product design, but we're designing everything from boats to new machines that can brew beer to home appliances to basically anything. My specialty is helping brands with really starting things up. Creating their first brand, creating the whole experience, the touch points. I'm really designing for user friendliness. And I think that's also kind of the thing that brought me into, hey, I really want to design my own game. 

I've been into tabletop RPG for maybe five, six years. And I really love it, but I was only ever in the player role. And well, at some point I wanted to try how it is to be a DM. From work and from my job, I know I love facilitating workshops, getting ideas going and all of that. But by trying it out, I actually realized, wow, the material that is there, well, it's quite rough for a first time DM. And so I think that was one of the main triggers for me to be like, hey, I could probably make a game that is a bit more entry friendly.

Manuel: That's something immediately clear looking at Forgotten Roots of the Sewer Sanctuary’s preview. You try to label explicitly the actions that players might take, here's what could happen if they succeed, here's what could happen if they fail. You kind of spell it out. What are the other ways that you have tried to make this like really friendly for new GMs?