Meet the Team
Colin Fravel
Hi, my name is Colin Fravel and I was on the team building Throes of Throkam. Without having much prior experience with tabletop RPG’s this was a difficult task ahead of me. I was able to learn more throughout research and provide a valuable perspective to my team and contribute effectively in other areas. I was mostly responsible for things that did not require much knowledge of how gameplay would work, and more of the creative development and messaging.
When it came to the longer projects, such as creating the rules of combat, it was important to have someone with little experience to be present. It is not difficult to teach to a player with a background, but it is extremely challenging to write for someone who has never touched a d20. While other members focused on the tables of values for traits, I would be there to proofread and make sure that the game would be accessible to our audience. This greatly benefited the team, and allowed us to create a more comprehensive rule set for our newer players.
I was also able to do world creation, and environmental development to push our message in our map design. Using the cultural information created by Jaiden, I could decide where these larger guilds could be placed to emphasize their differences, but also create a connectivity across the landmass to push the plot of the game.
The creation of Throes of Throkam was an intense and challenging process, but the collaboration of our team made this a much simpler process. I am excited to welcome you to our game.
Jaiden Miller
While growing up, I have always been fascinated with neomedievalism. From watching How To Train Your Dragon as a kid to playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends in high school, I grew up with the medium, and deeply understood its potential for not only a unique experience, but also allegorically. The ability to create a world familiar to our own, while adding fantastical elements where needed, opens itself to metaphor and allegory, as writers, designers, etc. can utilize the fantastical to tackle complex and controversial topics. I brought this experience with me into my own creations, such as an internship I had at Simcoach Games, where I designed neomedieval video games to teach young children history and mythology. At the same time I was playing these games, I also had a front-row seat to the growing political divide in America. Raised in a conservative household while having a liberal friend group, I noticed how both groups formed their own echo-chambers, refusing to listen to any dissenting opinions, and how these groups would radicalize each-other. Knowing the potential that neomedieval games have to not only offer a realistic and engaging experience, but also a rich message to the player, I worked with Andrew, Colin, and Sarvasv to create Throes of Throkam, a game to open people’s minds, and challenge their self-created echo-chambers.
Andrew Carlisle
I’ve played video games almost my entire life, and soon the hobby expanded into Tabletop RPGs, with a preference to Pathfinder. I found a true passion within them. Furthermore, I found enjoyment in deconstructing the videogames I played, in both mechanics and story. I’ve reversed engineered fighting games such as Super Smash Bros, while also discussing the worldbuilding of games such as Guilty Gear. This passion meant that once I was given the opportunity, I was ecstatic to create a new TTRPG with a team, as I could both build a world and create mechanics that I always theorized about.
Furthermore, I’ve always been interested in the meta side of politics. My favorite perspectives were always those about how each side was using certain tactics to gain an upper hand, and my discontent lied in the manipulation of people’s biases such as mob mentality and the general polarization of the masses. Thus, when building the world of Throkam, I wanted to show players how to work for their own benefit and understand the tactics that are used by politicians, and I think the game we’ve built does that very well.
Sarvasv Barara
As someone pursuing a degree in Computer Science, I am far from the standard TTRPG designer. But while I might not have hundreds of Dungeons and Dragons campaigns under my belt or dozens of successful TTRPGs in my portfolio already, what I do have is my creativity and passion. For you see, while I’m not an entrepreneur, or a designer or an artist, I am a storyteller. I make worlds and characters and places and things that you can lose yourself in. Which is exactly where I found my place in ‘Throes of Throkam.’ I built the history of the realm from the ground up. I made characters and events that made our message come to life. Took the characters and settings that I had found unimaginable joy in as a child reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time myself, and elevated them to Throkam, where they could bring that same delight to even more audiences!
As a young adult myself, I am living our message every day. I have lived through the process of navigating political rhetoric and interest groups pushing self-serving agendas, for the first time by myself. That is what moved me to take my talent for weaving stories and use it to build something that reflects the message of political agency and independent thinking that I hope to bring to countless people through my modest contribution to the ambitious idea that is the ‘Throes of Throkam.’