Zalea Liu

Online nickname(s): zalea.bsky.social

Introduction 

Hi! I’m Zalea. I’ve been a ttrpg and game design enthusiast for over a decade. I love being surprised by new systems and ways to think about this wonderfully diverse medium; any game store I’m at, you’ll find me buried deep in the RPG section, looking for the next weird indie game that’ll blow my mind. Coming from a mostly “non-traditional” RPG background, I can bring a fresh perspective to the ENNIES.

Why do you play/run RPGs?

RPGs descend from one of the most ancient past times: sitting around a fire and telling each other stories. Roleplay is also an almost universal childhood experience. I play RPGs because, in an age of increasing commodification of entertainment and knowledge, they allow us to connect with our roots, using our imaginations together to tell stories and experience adventures that simply wouldn’t be possible in any other medium.

The ENNIES requires a major commitment of time and energy. What resources do you have that will help you discharge these responsibilities? Will your gaming group or other individuals be assisting you? Does your family support you?

I attended a rigorous engineering college and obtained a master’s degree, and published a peer reviewed paper while doing so. I also worked for 6 years in tech, so I’ve got the work ethic to deal with the workload of judging. I read blogs and books on running ttrpgs and ttrpg theory crafting in my free time. I’ve got a very supportive gaming community and a loving partner who is also a ttrpg enthusiast.

Judging requires a great deal of critical thinking skills, communication with other judges, deadline management, organization, and storage space for the product received. What interests, experience, and skills do you bring that will make you a more effective judge?

I love studying and thinking about game design; I read as many blogs from ttrpg creators I can get my hands on and moderate a twitch stream for a prominent professional video game designer. I think critically about all media I consume, not just ttrpgs; it’s a vital skill that I actively work on improving. On top of that, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had a lot of experience with deadline management in both my academic and professional lives. I collect both ttrpgs and board games so I’ve got plenty of experience organizing them, too.

What styles and genres of RPGs do you enjoy most? Are there any styles or genres that you do not enjoy? Which games best exemplify what you like? Do you consider yourself a fan of a particular system, publisher, or genre?

I primarily enjoy fiction first RPGs. The genre I’ve played the most is probably descendants of Avery Alder’s Belonging Outside Belonging system; I love the way you can do traditional GMing duties but also switch off to being a player. For GM based systems, I like powered by the apocalypse style games because their design usually encourages gameplay that move the narrative forward. Stonetop is definitely my current pbta obsession; I love how GM best practices are built explicitly into the game. I’m also partial to solo journaling games. I’ve written over 60k words for my long running game of Apothecaria.

I tend to avoid grid based tactical games. I think they can have stories just as rich but I simply prefer my grid based tactical combat in separate games like wargames or computer games.

List (up to 5) games you’ve played in the last 2 years. What drew you to playing them? Which did you like best and why?

– Cantrip: I facilitated this game a ton for both my friends and people at conventions. It’s made by one of my favorite indie designers, Hipólita, and everyone loves a magical girl witch academy

– Sleepaway: this game plays with the horror genre in a lot of unique ways: the pre-session ritual, the cards, the conspiracy theory corkboard. This was one of my longer campaigns and it really surprised me how well our narrative held up without a central source of authority

– Apothecaria: A game that was life changing in many ways for me. I’d given up creative writing since high school, convinced that I wasn’t “good enough”. This game showed me that you can just write for the hell of it. I was drawn to this game by the idea of having a Stardew Valley where all the characters come from your imagination. 60k words later and that initial impression was absolutely vindicated

– Thousand Year Old Vampire: I’m a sucker for vampires (no pun intended) so of course I had to try this game. I binged it in one night and started a second playthrough the next day. It introduced me to solo RPGs and I’m forever grateful for that

– Signal to Noise: given that I like journaling games, why not a two player epistolary game, where one character is on a generational colony ship, hurtling away from the other character stuck on Earth? I loved how you delay your emails to each other the further you are apart in game, and even have the option to randomly scramble your message a little to represent interference. Small touches that immerse you in the narrative that much more.

Have you been a game master in the past 2 years? If yes, what games have you run? What made you decide to run those games?

Stonetop – I absolutely love the iron age setting and did a deep dive and read over a dozen history books and papers to get a handle on the time period. The inbuilt player investment via village building and extensive advice on how to GM the game makes for one of the smoothest and most immersive experiences I’ve ever had playing a game. It felt like its design was uniquely introspective in how it actually plays at the table. The beautiful books were the cherry on top.

Summarize the criteria you would use to determine if a game deserves to be nominated for Best Game.

– Most importantly, how does this game advance the medium as a whole? I believe the best RPGs are game changers that influence the design of games afterward
– Game design. How thoughtful were the designers about how the players will interact with it?
– Game presentation: the presentational aspects of the game like artwork and typography
– Empirical results. It’s important to do lots of research to see how people from a range of different perspectives reacted to it. “Best” will always be subjective but there should be some degree of widespread acclaim. Of course this will naturally tend to favor games that can reach a wider audience, but that’s the innate drawback to having to pick a best game

How will you judge supplements or adventures for game systems whose core rules you are unfamiliar with or you believe are badly designed?

I’ll definitely try to gather information from people who’ve actually played the material if I can’t play it myself. Rules or a scenario on paper are one thing. How things actually play out can be drastically different from how you imagine. To paraphrase a famous saying, no plan survives contact with actual play. As for “badly designed” core rules, I don’t want to do a cop out and say there’s no such thing as bad design, but I’ll note that a lot of the time it can simply be that a design focuses on something that’s simply not too my taste. However, in the case of a supplement or adventure, I think it should be judged on its own merits since it’s not the responsibility of the add-on material to significantly alter the design decisions of the original (then it would count as a hack instead).

How would you like to see the ENNIEs change? What should remain inviolate?

I’ll be frank, I think the ENNIES judging process could have a more diverse pool of lived experiences to draw on. So many of the most thought provoking RPGs I play are made by queer people, people of color, and women and/or other people of marginalized genders. It would be lovely to have more input from those communities because ttrpgs are most fun when there’s all kinds of perspectives at the table.

As for what should remain inviolable, I’d say their adaptability. ttrpg design is very accessible so there’s always tons of new ways the medium evolves. I loved that a solo RPG section was added this year, for example.