Interview with Josh from Lone Colossus on Wyrmlings and switching genres in TTRPG publishing

While at Origins Game Fair 2025, I interviewed Josh from Lone Colossus about his experience publishing Wyrmlings and what it was like to shift from publishing grim dark to all-ages content.

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Hi Josh!  What is your backstory?  What cool stuff do you do? 

Professionally, I am a neural engineer.  I work on embedded software for an implanted device, and I have a PhD in Neural Engineering. 

Sweet!  So, you’re a doctor?

Yeah, but not a medical doctor. 

And you publish a whole bunch of different tabletop RPGs?   What work do you do there? 

I do a mix of both new systems and products for 5th edition D&D. There are three main 5e products now and one bigger RPG project and one smaller one.  

For Wyrmlings, that one is a little bit different from some of the other projects you’ve done; what was your motivation for Wyrmlings? 

I normally run dark fantasy campaigns, and, at some point during one of those campaigns, we just needed a break.  We needed to do something that was really lighthearted and fun.

I ran a Fate one-shot of Wyrmlings, and I didn’t feel like the system did what I wanted it to do, but I was also inspired to make a system that would do what I wanted. 

One morning, I woke up, had the entire idea in my head, and put it down on paper.  Then we started testing it. 

That’s cool how needing a break turned into inspiration for this. 

Yeah, it was needing a break, then while I was at work before the one shot I had this idea for the first three lines of a kid’s show song.  Everything else kind of came from that.  Those are actually the first three lines of the theme song that are on the Kickstarter page, then I commissioned a whole song from there. 

I think it’s interesting how this one spark started such a big project.  

How was making Wyrmlings different from the other projects you’ve made?  Because it has a different vibe with that lighthearted all-ages feel. 

It was very different in that most projects that I make, especially for 5e, are much more game design oriented, but Wyrmlings is a very rules-lite system.  I ended up doing a lot more writing work on it, hired writers to do adventures, and even got someone to help me flesh out more of the talents.  I was like… I have written enough of these, and I need someone else to help come up with more ideas!

It was different in that I feel like I had the initial idea and created the skeleton for it then got assistance to flesh it out before going back in to edit it. 

That’s something I’ve been trying to do too – it’s nice to see what others think about your game and then bringing all their input together gives you something unique. 

Yeah, and it ended up changing the way I did my next book too. I ended up writing less of that and did more work to bring in new ideas.

For those who are looking to switch genres or try out publishing or writing a game in a new way, what advice do you have for them? 

It will be a lot like starting over in some ways.  You can’t necessarily rely on your existing audience depending on how far you’re branching.  

I went from a dark fantasy 5e supplement base straight to an all-ages TTRPG, and I think I had about four of my original backers come over to the next project, so it was a fully new audience. 

If you plan on doing that, you will be juggling two different audiences. 

If you pick something that’s an adjacent genre, like grim sci-fi from grim fantasy, you might have more overlap there. 

But also, if it’s something that you want to do, you can make it happen, you might just have to work with a little bit lower budget.  

Do you have any final shoutouts, words of advice, or anything we have missed in our chat? 

I would say to take a look at the credits in Wyrmlings, and check out everyone who is in there because they’re all doing their own awesome work!

Well, thank you very much for doing this interview, and I hope you have a good rest of your convention!

Please go check out Josh’s work, and you can get a 10% discount at the Lone Colossus shop by using this link or using code TTRPGkids!