MTV Geek: How did “Torchbearer” start?
Thor Olavsrud: “Torchbearer” started off as a hack of “Mouse Guard.” “Mouse Guard” has all of this really cool wilderness adventure stuff. It really makes playing out crossing rivers, dealing with the environments and the weather really fun and engaging. And I thought it would be interesting to take that experience and move it to a dungeon. So I started to think about what it takes to survive in that environment. We went back and played lots of “Basic D&D” and tried to pull out the things that we loved about it and then add stuff to really bring out this concept. In “Torchbearer,” time really drives the conditions that you get: you become Hungry, you become tired, you become angry, and so on. So the time pressure really drive decisions: Do I go on? Do I stop and make camp? Do we get out of here? We also focused on light, because light is so important underground. If you lose your light source, you might never get out. We are not that quite unforgiving in Torchbearer, but it is very important to get that element in there.
Luke Crane: One of the things that Thor has also perfected is the teamwork mechanics. It’s the same basic fighting system that “Mouse Guard “uses, but Thor has added on another layer that just increases the tension. You have a pool of hit points that represents your team. If you get knocked out of a fight, a teammate can drag you back into a fight, bring you back to your senses. So the fights get very desperate, where it will be one last man standing and trying very hard to out maneuver the opponent, to bring team members back in. It makes combat a lot more dynamic.
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