by Shayla Montalvo
A biomedical engineer by day and game writer by night, William Little brings his long-time hobby to life with his newest work, Criminal Spirits, a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) set in a 1920s New York City speakeasy. Players engage with crime, magic, the mob and police while dealing with the speakeasy’s own supernatural customers.
Behind the game is Glorious Fate, a rules-light narrative system the Northport writer developed to give players the freedom to shape the story through characters and decisions.
“Rules are almost secondary and so I wanted to make sure that I had a very interesting setting which would, you know, lend itself to very interesting characters to play with,” Little said. “You’re trying to give people the ingredients to make a story with.”
His interest in tabletop RPGs began long before he started creating his own. In middle school the now 45-year-old Little would often run games with his friends, starting with Middle-Earth Role Playing, a 1984 tabletop RPG based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit.” Even 30 years before there was a campaign to launch, Little was diligently working to build worlds.
“Just because I was the one who had the book,” he said. “I was the one who got my friends to sit down and play it.”
Little’s professional life, however, brought him to engineering. As a biomedical engineer, he has a master’s degree in biomedical from Stony Brook University as well as a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Alongside that work, he continued playing games and gradually developed a clearer sense of what he wanted from them. For him, it was gravitating toward fewer rules lending itself to more room for improvisation. After years of running Fate, Little found himself changing parts of the system to suit the way he and his players enjoyed playing.
Photo: The logo for Criminal Spirits, a tabletop role-playing game set in a supernatural 1920s New York City speakeasy. (Courtesy of William Little)
Eventually, he decided to start writing down his approach and developing it into something he could publish. Glorious Fate, the system he used for Criminal Spirits, was born.
Before Little had settled on the supernatural speakeasy, he brought several possible worlds to his players to see what caught their attention. The final setting draws inspiration from a wide range of genres, from modern tropes to classic fantasy — monster movies, heist stories and fairy tales — bringing together unusual characters that can create both trouble and companionship.
“I want them to feel like they’re having fun pretending to be a character, that they’ve overcome and achieved something as that character during the session,” he said.
Making that experience work meant letting other people into the world he had written. Getting that world into players hands involved demonstrating at local venues, including Cosmic Comic and Games, and at out-of-state conventions.
In September, Little made a weeklong trip to promote the game at locations spanning from Connecticut to Maryland, while also organizing sessions through the online social platform Discord. For his demonstrations, Little developed an introductory adventure that could be played in three to four hours and began running it for players, finding an audience and determining what did and did not work.
“Players never interact with exactly what you might have expected them to when you’re just writing in your own head,” he said.
Early sessions led to revisions to the pacing and content along with changes to rules that Little realized he had held on to mainly because he was accustomed to them. By the time Criminal Spirits’ crowdfunding campaign ended, Little had run the introductory adventure more than 30 times. Getting people to sit down and play offered a more direct way to introduce his work. Although the internet has made it easier to publish independently, he noted, getting people to notice what has been published continues to be a challenge in itself.
“I could have written this game 20 years ago, but there’s no way I could have published it,” Little said.
Before asking people to support Criminal Spirits through crowdfunding, Little published smaller books to demonstrate that he could finish and release his work.
“I wanted to have something out there to show that, yes, I can actually write books,” he said.
The BackerKit campaign ended October 1, exceeding its projected funding goal. Little said his next priority is following through, with plans to release the digital version by the end of the year and ship physical books in winter.
Little has no intention of slowing down, he hopes to publish more adventures and settings, eventually turning the work that began as a childhood hobby into his main job.
Criminal Spirits is available for pre-order on Backerkit. For more information, you can also go to Gloriousfate.com
Photo: Northport game creator William Little developed Criminal Spirits, a tabletop RPG featuring mobsters, magic and supernatural characters in a 1920s New York speakeasy. (Courtesy: William Little)
Shayla Montalvo is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.
