By Zack Quaintance — During the pandemic, myself and many others have really embraced table top role playing games, to the point that sales are absolutely soaring for the books that give shape to Dungeons and Dragons. The hobby has become a great way to keep in touch with friends (over Zoom, for now anyway), while getting lost in another world and learning about yourself. It wasn’t always like that, though.

Table top role playing games, Dungeons and Dragons specifically, have a more complicated past within the national media, and it’s this past that gives shape to the new kickstarter comic, Chaotic Neutral. I recently had a chance to discuss this with the book’s writer Mark Sable, and it was a really interesting conversation. You can check it all out below…enjoy!

INTERVIEW: Writer Mark Sable talks CHAOTIC NEUTRAL

ZACK QUAINTANCE: I love the premise for this book. Can I ask, generally, how is this book inspired by old-school RPGs?

MARK SABLE: Back in the 80s, RPGs went through something called "The Satanic Panic". Similar to the censorship of comics in the 50s with the Comics Code, parents and religious groups got scared of games like Dungeons and Dragons, thinking they led to sex, violence and devil worship.

CHAOTIC NEUTRAL asks the question - what if everyone were right to be afraid? I wrote, and Chris Anderson drew, this comic as if it's an artifact of the 80s, an edgy fantasy comic that couldn't be published until now.

But, it's more than just a comic! CHAOTIC NEUTRAL includes a full length role-playing adventure module in addition to the 48 comic, so gamers can play in the same world as the characters in the comic and face the dangers within themselves.

We also have Ryan Browne (God Hates Astronauts, Curse Words) onboard for a satirical version of a "Chick Tract". Back in the Satanic Panic days, artist Jack Chick would create comic pamphlets like Dark Dungeons designed to scare people away from the hobby. Ryan and I have created a parody of these to poke fun at the mania of the time and add some levity to the proceedings.

ZACK: I think it's safe to say TTRPGs are having a bit of a moment. What, if anything, separates the games people are familiar with today from the older RPGs that have inspired this story?

MARK: They really are! I think it's great that RPGs have become more inclusive and accessible. With CHAOTIC NEUTRAL, while we are trying to evoke the past, we're also trying to bring in newer players and readers. We have a much more diverse case it terms of race, gender and sexuality than you would have seen in the 80s, for example.

While I play and love the latest edition of D&D, what I feel some more modern games are lacking is that sense of danger and madness.

By danger, I don't mean that this comic will literally teach you how to summon the devil. But, with both the comic and the adventure, the fantasy world is deadly and no one should be expected to survive without being smart, clever and lucky.

By madness, I don't mean players and readers being driven literally insane like Tom Hanks in the 80s TV movie "Mazes and Monsters, where he plays a gamer so obsessed with RPGs that he can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality.

Instead, when you look at old school RPGs, they'd have these beautiful painted covers, but inside they'd have this amazing black and white art by such luminaries as Erol Otus, Dave Trampier, and Bill Willingham (yes, the same Bill Willingham who would go on to create Fables). That art would sometimes be amateurish, often dark or risque, but always weird. They gave me a sense that anything was possible.

Modern day RPGs can often have digitally painted art, which can be more polished but less inspiring. What I love about Chris Anderson is that he's able to evoke that style, while bringing his own modern day voice to it. I think he also brings a sense of whimsy that balances out the darker aspects of the book.

We want readers and players, old and new, to have fun with this book.

ZACK: What has your own experience with RPGs been, and have they influenced you as a writer and a creator? If so, can you talk a bit about how?

MARK: I've been a fan and consumer of RPGs since I was a kid, with my first games being the red box edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, TSR's Marvel Superheroes roleplaying game and West End's Star Wars RPG, to name a few. I was painfully shy as a child, so I had a hard time finding people to play with. I devoured the rule books and modules nonetheless, and would create my own characters, maps and worlds. That was probably my first fantasy, science fiction and superhero writing.

When the D&D's 5th edition came out in 2014, I finally was confident to seek out people to play with and start to run my own weekly game online, which I've been DM'ing (Dungeon Mastering) for years. That was life changing for me. There is nothing like sitting down with other human beings and creating a shared world together. That has, I think, made me a better comics collaborator.

The reward I'm most excited about for the CHAOTIC NEUTRAL Kickstarter takes advantage of that. I'm offering to run small groups of players through the adventure module that's included with the comic. One of the things I've loved about comics both as a creator and a fan is the closeness between fan and creator, and this gives me a way to interact with readers/players personally. Each session will inherently be unique because of the choices players make, and how I react to them. I'm dying to get to share my love of collaborative storytelling directly with fans.

ZACK: I also wanted to ask about the forthcoming collection of your digital comics series, Dracula: Son of the Dragon. Specifically, I was curious what sort of research went into that book?

MARK: Oh man, I want to say it was literally a decade of research, and in a sense nearly a lifetime. Bram Stoker's Dracula was and his my favorite horror novel. But it always stood out to me that the book never explained how he became a vampire.

At the same time, I remember watching the old Leonard Nimoy narrated series "In Search of..." and learning that Dracula was freaking real. No, Vlad the Impaler wasn't a vampire, but his real life deeds were worse than drinking blood from a few people in England.

I became obsessed with finding a way to link the two, and I never found an origin story that sufficiently explained how the historical Vlad became the infamous fiction vampire. So artist Salgood Sam and I created a comic that told that story.

ZACK: How did you decide where to blur the lines between real history and the horror fantasy elements in that book?

MARK: I tried to stay as close to historical fact as possible. I'm a huge fan of Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell and Jacen Burrows FROM HELL and PROVIDENCE. Like FROM HELL, DRACULA: SON OF THE DRAGON contains endnotes trying to explain and source what really happened in fifteenth century Transylvania and where Salgood and I departed.

The big link that finally made me think I could connect the historical to the fictional was the mention in Bram Stoker's novel of Dracula attending The Scholamance, where he's taught magic by The Devil himself. Dracula means both Son of the Dragon and and Son of the Devil in Romanian. The historical Vlad Dracula was sent by his father, Vlad Dracul (again, Dracul meaning Devil) as a hostage to his mortal enemy, the Ottoman Sultan, and belonged to a real life secret society known as The Order of The Dragon. I thought that it made sense that Dracula's father would have had no problem sending him to The Scholamance and inducting him into the order, and that's where the horror and fantasy elements begin.

ZACK: Finally, getting back to RPGs, specifically the idea of CHAOTIC NEUTRAL, what would your own personal alignment be and why?

MARK: In real life, I'm probably pretty boring, somewhere between Lawful Good and Neutral Good. I pretty much follow the rules, and more importantly my conscience.

But I didn't pick the title by accident. CHAOTIC NEUTRAL is, I think, the most fun way to play. And, from what I've seen, the way many people want to experience the game. Most players don't want to play epic heroes bound by a strict moral code. They want to kill bad guys and steal their gold so they can level up, and have fun doing it. It's often derisively referred to as being a "murder hobo", but I think it's a legitimate playstyle.

CHAOTIC NEUTRAL the comic shows what that would be like. In medieval world, being an adventurer would be an escape from being a peasant or serf - offering you the chance to earn money and giving you freedom that you'd never have when nobility's and religious power was nearly absolute. Of course there are downsides to that, and the comic explores the consequences of those actions.

The adventure module included in CHAOTIC NEUTRAL allows you to play any way you like. As a player and DM, there's nothing more important to me than player choice. You are welcome to play a law abiding citizen that sacrifices themselves for the greater good, go full on evil and side with a demon-worshipping cult, or carve your own path. I'm dying to get CHAOTIC NEUTRAL in readers and players hands so I can hear the stories they've chosen to tell.

Check out Chaotic Neutral on Kickstarter now!

Read more great interviews with comics creators!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.