Steven Lumpkin, Game Master and Designer – Episode 105

The Paid to Play Podcast

Veteran video game designer and roleplaying game master Steven Lumpkin has worked for some of the biggest names in the online gaming industry, including Red Storm Entertanment, the makers of the Rainbow Six franchise, and Funcom, the makers of Age of Conan, Anarchy Online and The Secret World, as a level designer. His job was creating the tense action scenes that have challenged players across the globe as they venture through these games' vast virtual worlds. Steven is now working on the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise, but has gone from creating levels to working on the basic infrastructure of the game itself as a game designer. Steven is also a lover of tabletop roleplaying games. He's been a game master for the RollPlay team on the Twitch channel ItMeJP, where he ran the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign, The West Marches, which featured a huge rotating roster of streaming and YouTube celebrity players. While Steven was on hiatus at the time of recording, he's since returned to gaming with a new campaign on his own Twitch and YouTube channels and is looking forward to GMing for the Misscliks and other channels! Steven and I talk about having a day job in gaming while pursuing a musical hobby in his off hours, the reality of working quality assurance in the video game industry, taking out the trash in online game encounter design, how to manage the "crunch" cycle at the end of pre-release game development and staying chill when gaming with some of the biggest names in live streaming. Thanks to my guest for episode 81, Adam Koebel, for getting Steven and I in touch! Steven Lumpkin, Silent0siris On Twitter On Twitch On YouTube King Arthur Pendragon (streamed roleplaying game) RollPlay R&D and Dark Heresy RollPlay: The West Marches Professional Website The North Carolina Master Chorale Chamber Choir Streamers and YouTubers Day9 InControl ItMeJP TotalBiscuit Game Design Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber (Amazon) "The Door Problem", from the blog of Liz England Roleplaying Games Dark Heresy (Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay) (Wikipedia) Dungeons & Dragons Computer & Video Games Funcom (developer) Age of Conan The Secret World Myst Rollercoaster Tycoon Shadowgate (Wikipedia) StarCraft Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Wikipedia) Red Storm Entertainment Unreal 4 Engine Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade World of Warcraft Deadmines Quest (World of Warcraft Fan Wiki) Trash Mob (World of Warcraft Fan Wiki) Audio Hardware Blue Microphones Snowball Yeti Featured image provided by Steven Lumpkin