While at GenCon, I had the opportunity to chat with Chris Birch, Modiphius Founder, and April Hill, Modiphius Community Manager, about how they both got involved in TTRPGs AND what it’s been like, from the wonderful to the challenges, to make and be in contact with TTRPGs based on IPs that they personally love.

What are your backstories?  And what cool stuff have you worked on? 

Chris: I started Modiphius 13 years ago now.  I was managing bands in the UK: rave bands, dance music bands, club nights.  I ended up working for video game companies and had a video game T-shirt company. 

Eventually, when I met my wife, she made me realize that I should go back to what I actually loved, which is tabletop games… and here we are!  It shows that it works if you do what you love!

She does the important work of paying the bills and looking after people, and I do the wild ideas and creative stuff. 

April: I’ve always played games; as a little kid I played video games and then tabletop games, but my background is actually in sports nutrition and fitness and restaurant and people management!

I got into playing RPGs with my crew and then I started running social media for my streaming group friends. 

How I got into Modiphius is from running a Fallout game using a non-official system because this system hadn’t come out yet for 2d20.  As soon as the 2d20 system came out, my group switched over, and we fell in love with it.  I saw that the community management position had opened up at Modiphius, and I was already in love with it. I had so many minis and Wasteland Warfare.  I loved Star Trek… oh, just every IP. Chris is the master of getting licenses for the coolest games ever. 

I interviewed for the job, and here I am!  I get to play games that are my favorite video games and shows on tabletop.  It’s a dream job. 

Steph: This is so cool – It’s fun to see the path folks take to get to tabletop RPGs; it’s never a straight path!  I started in engineering, and I’ve met others who came from like… technical writing or education or music too. 

Chris: I mean, I was a big gamer as a kid, but I went into music because I loved big events.It wasn’t until I got fed up with the clothing business that I wanted to go back to the thing I really loved.  It shows that we need to do what we love; follow your passion. 

April: Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life!  That’s the saying, right? 

What Modiphius TTRPG would recommend trying out with kids or young players? 

Chris: I guess mine would be Star Trek.  For kids, it’s very wholesome and feels good.  It’s not about fighting things all the time; it’s about relationships.  I always said that Star Trek was a soap opera that happened to be on a spaceship!

April: I grew up watching Next Generation as a kid, so Star Trek feels like it is for the family.  I think kids would love playing that with their parents. 

Modiphius makes a lot of IP focused TTRPGs.  How is making a TTRPG based on an IP different from making one without a prior content base? 

Chris: If you’re making it based on a big IP, you have all the fan base and art work and assets… the world has been done, so you don’t have to do so much world-building, but you’re fleshing out the adventures. 

So much has been done for you, and you have a ready fan-base.  When we launched the Fallout game, so many people were like… Finally, you’ve done my thing!

When we’re making our own games, like Dreams and Machines and Achtung! Cthulhu, the fun of it is world-building.  It’s fun working on something as cool as Fallout or Star Trek, but it’s fun in a different way, but you’ve also got to do all the hard work of finding the audience, and that’s not easy. 

What about you? 

April: You know this better than anyone because, out of every other TTRPG company out there, I think we have the most licenses.  I see it on social media too, since I’m the one telling people about the games; people know Star Trek, they know Fallout, they know Dune.  

But for those, you have to get approval for everything.  Everything takes time and approvals from the people who actually own the IP.  With Dreams and Machines and Achtung! Cthulhu, which are your babies, you can explore what you want to do with that instead of having to get approval from someone, but, like you said, the challenge is finding the fan base and finding the people who are as excited about it as you are. 

Both have challenges and both have upsides. 

For April, I’ve played Fallout in a charity stream with you before, and it was an absolute blast and it is clearly something you enjoy.  What’s particularly special about it?

April: I’ve loved Fallout for so long, and, like I said earlier, it really was how I started with Modiphius because I love it so much.  

The game that we played in and then some homebrew that we’ve done, I set it in Texas, and there’s not a lot of canon for Fallout in Texas.  So, I was able to take what Chris and the team had done with the TTRPG’s rules.  

In the book, it gives you material for playing beyond the known world of Fallout.  It gives you the rules to make it in your home state to be creative and play and do what you want to explore.  You can do what you weren’t able to explore in the video games, and that’s part of what’s so special about having a TTRPG and what’s in these books.

For Chris, you founded Modiphius in 2012, and it now has dozens and dozens of TTRPGs, board games, and war games.  Looking back at that, how do you feel about having created such a space in the gaming world in just over a decade?

Chris: I mean, the joke is that we always do too much.  I’m always thinking ahead.  I used to have a PR company where we’d have to pitch to keep our work every 3 months, so I always want to know that we’ve got plenty to do for the next few years. 

What’s the next thing in case one of these IPs goes away?  At any time, a license could get cancelled or changed. For Conan, that went away, but we had done 22 books.  I mean, we’d have to be making up stuff to keep going with it. 

When you’re too close to the trees, you can’t see the forest.  

When I look back, I’m like… oh my.  There’s books that we don’t have here anymore, like Mutant Chronicles.  That was one of our first RPGs.  

There’s all these games that exist out there, and it’s kind of amazing to have left this trail of fun. 

And each one is better.  

Each game is better in so many different ways because you learn more about the design, the quality, the writing… and everything that you see now, we started that about two years ago.  There’s that weird delay too.  It takes time to do a good job with it.  

Are there any points we missed talking about?  Or do you have any shoutouts? 

April: DOOM!  DOOM!

Chris: Yes!  DOOM!  It’s going to be big on Kickstarter.

April: It’s coming later this year!  And we just finished a Kickstarter for Hardwar, which was funded straight away!

Chris: That’s our little miniatures and mechs and tanks.  I loved those as a kid.  Again, do what you love and the passion will show. 

Steph: Thank you Chris and April for taking time out of your GenCon to chat, and I appreciate you sharing your history and experiences from Modiphius with us!

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