Barclay Travis channels frustration through his tabletop RPG creations

The Queer Games Bundle is a collection of nearly 600 items by LGBTQ+ creators and teams, over 160 of which are independent tabletop games, all sold for just $60. Along with Caroline Delbert, I’m talking with creators from the bundle about their games and their making habits. Visit the bundle and consider buying it.

Tabletop RPGs, especially among independent artists, have become a rich medium for explicit self-expression and interrogation of weighty themes. Both of Barclay Travis’ games, one derived from his experience as a trans man while the other positions queer love within a pulpy genre framework, fit this bill perfectly. The titles are enjoyable in their own right but also portray a willing vulnerability and intimacy translated through mechanics.

How long have you been making games?

I haven’t been making games for very long. I started exploring visual novels back in December of 2021, and I didn’t write my first TTRPG until March of this year. I had toyed with the idea before, even back when I was a kid, because I’ve always loved games, but I didn’t start really “taking it seriously” until this past year.

What tools do you like to use?

I keep things really simple in the games I make, because I’m a full-time student, working full-time between semesters, and I make everything on my own. I also consider myself a beginner in game development, so the tools I use are pretty accessible to newbies like me. I use Ren’py for my visual novels — which aren’t really released, but I love working on — along with Procreate for the art assets. I also use Canva for my layouts for TTRPGS. It’s simple but it gets the job done. Like with my visual art, I like to use accessible tools because it shows that you don’t have to be well-off or “professional” to make good art. It’s also because, like I said, I’m a college student — I don’t have money for Photoshop or professional layout software.

What themes or genres do you like to explore?

I love love. The long and short of it is that love has a power that we, as a society, need to acknowledge more. There is something so incredibly intimate about loving and being vulnerable with yourself and with someone else, and I like to explore that in my work. A large part of that comes from the fact that I did not really feel this until recently — I’m finally transitioning not only socially but medically, and I’m in a relationship with my favorite person in the world. Love has been such a prominent part of my life for this past year, and I’m learning how to express how strong that feeling in. Exploring family, love, and intimacy is a big part of my work.

I also like to write about my experiences as a trans man, a gay man, and an autistic person. I’ve spent so much of my life hiding these parts of myself, trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me. Part of the reason I make such raw, vulnerable art is because I want other people like me to know they aren’t alone, they aren’t freaks, they’re okay. I want to be visible so that queer, neurodivergent kids know that they can be happy.

In terms of genre, I tend to write very intense work. I describe much of my work as cathartic and intimate — this extends from my visual art to my tabletop games to my poetry. I’ve always connected most with queer work that doesn’t censor itself, doesn’t make itself palatable, so I’ve started to lean into making work like that.

What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?

This may be silly, but my favorite part of making games is hearing what people think. It’s important to make art — and I do consider games to be art — for yourself, sure, but there’s something so amazing about knowing people are playing it, connecting with it. The community of it all is my favorite part.

Is there a game that has affected you recently?

Stillwater is another game in the Queer Games Bundle that I love. It’s a mystery VN where you play as a detective and you’re investigating a supernatural experience that a young woman had. It’s short, but hit me right in the gut. I also played Chicory a few months ago and adored it — I love everything Finji puts out. Additionally, I recommend everyone checks out the works created for TRANS FUCKING RAGE JAM back in March/April. It’s the jam that got me into really making games and the works that came out of it are visceral and incredible.

One of your games in the bundle — DO NOT LIE DOWN. DO NOT ROLL OVER. — comes from a deeply personal place. Can you talk about how it felt to turn that experience into something other people could interact with? How did you feel afterwards?

“DO NOT LIE DOWN. DO NOT ROLL OVER.” came from a place of frustration. I was only “allowed” — by my family, which I won’t get into — to start transitioning in the past year or so. I went into my freshman year of college introducing myself as Barclay, he/him, for the first time, and I had hoped that that would prevent most people from misgendering me. In some cases, that was true. Other queer people my age are generally pretty good about gendering me correctly. However, it was only a matter of time before people slipped up — when they got comfortable, they started saying “she” off-handedly, and I was too scared to ever really correct them. It led to a vicious cycle of me wondering why don’t they see me as a man? I channeled this into this game.

“DNLD.DNRO.” is more for a cisgender audience than most of my work. A vast majority of my work is made for a queer audience, especially trans people, but that game is about trying to get cis people to understand how much pain we experience when we’re misgendered. It’s so difficult to express that amount of frustration and anguish to someone who has never felt it. Using a mechanic that inherently forces a feeling of frustration, of building rage and anxiety, of expecting disappointment, was an important part of my creation process for that game.

I felt good after I made it. I was able to have a piece of art that I was proud of and say I’d made a game. It was the first game I published, and sharing it with other trans people and hearing them express that they connected with it made me feel really accomplished. It was also a quick creation — something that I poured a lot of myself into but made and published in just a few days — so it’s almost something I published and haven’t looked at since. I don’t know if a cis person will ever play it or take it seriously, despite the fact it’s a game for them, but I don’t really care.

Many of your games are tight, poetic creations. What draws you to that style of tabletop games, and what do you think it does best?

I adore poetry. I write a ton of it, and there’s a collection of my poetry in the bundle as well. I find that poetry is a lawless, formless medium in the way that I use it, and it’s the best way for me to get out my feelings without worrying about making it “good”. I’ve written poetry since I was a kid, so I gravitate naturally towards the practice of writing.

I’ve also read a lot of games that have that similar addition of prose woven into the mechanics, the rules. I don’t get a chance to actually play games often — most of my friends are online, it’s difficult to schedule, etc. — so a lot of the games I enjoy are actually games I’ve only read. Because of that, I think tabletop games are just as much about playing the game as reading it. I want to make work that you can feel a connection to without ever playing it. “DNLD.DNRO.” is about the universal trans feeling of being perceived incorrectly — we all know how that feels, we can all connect to that. “Detangle” is about breathing through the pain, working through your feelings. Even if you don’t “play” it, I hope that it can be somewhat therapeutic.

So I suppose what it does best is getting a connection with the reader or player. It helps them feel more connected to you, as the creator of the game, even if they’ve never spoken to you.

Conflict of Interest, your other game in the bundle, uses spies to interrogate taboo or culturally unaccepted love. Do you think tabletop games work well as allegorical tools?

First of all, I just want to say that “Conflict of Interest” is my favorite thing I’ve made. I love spies, they’ve been a special interest of mine since I was a kid. The concept of spies are not only cool, sleek, and (quite frankly) sexy, but they invite so much allegory and storytelling. This game was heavily inspired by the musical “Spies are Forever”, which is about a spy in the cold war who is also a homosexual.

With that out of the way, I’ll answer the actual question. Tabletop games are ripe with opportunity for metaphor and allegory. When you roleplay, you’re already putting a layer of disconnect between yourself and what you’re doing — many people end up playing characters that need to explore a part of themselves that they need help exploring. For example, one of my own player characters is a father (which I am not) who needs to come to terms with feelings he hasn’t fully processed, and is an absolute people pleaser (which I am). These are things I need to come to terms with as well. All of that to say, tabletop games are already a vessel for allegory. Making games that accentuate that are just adding more layers to it, creating more depth. “DNLD.DNRO.” does this as well — I purposefully used a mechanic that was frustrating in order to replicate the feeling of frustration that the subject matter creates

What are the strengths of duo games versus larger roleplaying games that assume a group and facilitator?

As I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to find people to play with, and it’s hard to find time. I really love solo games because they’re easy to play — you can pick them up and put them down whenever you have some time to spare. Duo games are good for this as well. It’s much easier to find one person who wants to play something and schedule time with them than playing with five or six people.

Duo games are also inherently more intimate. Instead of trying to play with six people and focus on it, or having one person that has to run everything for everyone, you’re focused on just two people — yourself and your partner. My games are all about this kind of intimacy and vulnerability, so making them for a smaller number of people is important to me. Relating to that, I also think you’re more likely to play a duo game with someone you trust deeply. Especially a game like “Conflict of Interest”, that’s all about intimacy and trust. This only emphasizes that connection to one another.

What other trans game designers would you point people towards if they enjoy your work?

My friend Sasha (she/it), or stargazersasha, is one of my biggest inspirations in game development. “Conflict of Interest” is built on the engine of her game “The Girlfriend of my Girlfriend is my Friend” and “DO NOT LIE DOWN. DO NOT ROLL OVER.” was created for its TRANS FUCKING RAGE JAM, which I mentioned earlier. I also highly recommend checking out Possum Creek Games and BreathingStories by Logan Timmins — they’re a little different from my style, slightly less intense, but I still think there’s a connection there.

Check out more interviews from Caroline here, along with my series of TTRPG-focused interviews.