AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Ben Milton
With the announcement of Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, we are excited to start talking about everything Labyrinth. This is the first in a series of posts focusing on the authors and guest authors of the game. Our first author is the one that did the bulk of the heavy lifting (having written over 90 of the scenes in the game), and has spent months exploring the Labyrinth in his mind: Ben Milton.
Ben Milton is a roleplayer, gamemaster, mapmaker, and 5th-grade teacher living in Phoenix. He has strong ties with the OSR (Old school renaissance) community, a community that is dedicated to playing and updating traditional RPGs (role-playing games) from the 70s and 80s – who better to write a roleplaying game based on Jim Henson’s classic!
Ben Milton on writing for the Labyrinth: The Adventure Game:
“After I got the job to write 90 labyrinth scenes, the first thing I did was sit down with my kids and re-watch the movie while taking notes. I was shocked at how RPG-like the movie was, once I started looking at it from that angle. The movie is divided into distinct scenes, usually set in a single location, that each present a challenge the characters must overcome to proceed. What struck me the most about it was how frequently the characters had to think their way around the problems rather than brute forcing through them. This was very exciting, as it lines up perfectly with how I prefer to run RPGs like Maze Rats. I tried to come up with as many new situations and problems as possible (while still including many of the scenes from the movie) and added plenty of random elements to make the challenges unique each time they were encountered. It’s been an exhausting but incredibly rewarding experience, and I’m beyond excited to see the game in print form and to hear the stories that emerge from each group’s journey.”
You can find Ben on Questing Beast, a YouTube channel devoted to giving advice to gamers on how to run the best games they can, reviewing RPGs. Ben also writes RPGs focused on simplicity and usability, including the best-selling OSR intro game Maze Rats, where players explore dangerous dungeons filled with magic and monsters… That sounds familiar!
