Today’s review is about a suburban dungeon called UNIT DH-17. You may want to snag a copy to follow along! (No, seriously. Pick this one up.)
EDIT: Back when I ran this module it was functionally system agnostic. Now, the system it was designed for is finally available. You might wanna check out The Lost Bay if 90’s horror vibes with you the way it did for me.
The Architect
Our last interview was all about fitting more on the page. Now Iko is here to give us some room to stretch out.
The banner of The Lost Bay is a good one to rally around— if Iko’s thumbprint is on a project, there’s a really good chance it’s going to be something great. They’ve touched a lot of good stuff! Among other things, Iko is an editor, game designer, writer and podcaster. Heck, they even have their own Substack. So Iko is no stranger to talking about games. We have a lot to talk about, today, so I want to jump right into the interview:
Room for Conversation
Q) Iko, you're a master of "less is more". There's enough negative space on these pages to fit a second adventure. The resulting look is clean and bright, leaving plenty of room for DM interpretation. How do you edit yourself, deciding what's good enough to grace the page?
IKO: First of all thank you so much for inviting me to speak about layout design. I feel a bit insecure about my design skills, I am still exploring and understanding how design works and what I like about it. So I appreciate very much being given the space and opportunity to reflect about it.
It’s funny you say there is a lot of white space because I almost find UNIT DH-17 clogged, haha, at least in comparison with another work of mine like SKYREALMS. But being objective I must admit, yes, there is a lot of room for more info here. This comes from different places.
First my cognitive abilities. Fill a page with text and diagrams, and it just looks loud and messy to me, even if it’s not. I get easily lost in large text blocks, stacked info, or long bullet point lists. Five of something is probably the threshold where I start to sweat when I read or compose a page.
Second, I'm a self taught designer, and I’m very much influenced by my professional background, which is in filmmaking. So I try to apply to layout what I’ve learned in my 9-5 job. And specifically something I try to be careful about is rhythm, as in visual rhythm. It’s a tough spot to find, you’d want your work to be consistent, but you want it to have variety and rhythm. Usually I print the drafts, and just flip the pages, scanning them quickly to check the flow of the zine. This probably comes from video editing. But this attention to rhythm is not about variety for the sake of it, or defeating boredom, it's about conveying information. I might need some information to stand out, because it’s relevant to the game, and I can do this in two ways: with words, saying something like "Hey, this is important, you need to remember it," or by breaking the rhythm visually. This is what I try to do with the No Way Out spread.
And lastly, it’s about typography. If I’m going to fill a page with large text blocks, I know that picking a cool font won't be enough. The more text the page is going to carry, the less it’s going to forgive bad typographic practices. Micro details and impressions are going to matter a lot, especially if the page is going to be printed. That might be counter intuitive, but laying out a text only book, like a novel, is far from an easy task. At least if you want to do it properly. Bottom line, I don’t feel I have enough knowledge yet for this kind of work, so lots of whitespace is my comfort zone.
Q) You've used some very modern typefaces throughout DH-17 and mixed it with some really expressive, loose illustrations and enough splatter to remind the reader that this is a horror module. On several pages you have made the headers take up a lot of visual space, abandoning consistent structure for aesthetic impact. It's really effective because you haven't overdone it. How do you make sure each page is graphically interesting, without making them difficult to navigate?
I love game books that transport me to a strong universe. I don’t need them to overdo visually. But I expect visual design to be a part of the game experience/universe/rules. I’m convinced that the looks of the book will have as much effect on my gaming experience as its mechanics. Take one of the simplest books out there, visually speaking, Mörk Borg bare bones edition, it’s just text. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, and looks like a sacred text from an evil cult. I’m transported as soon as I start reading.
I know a lot of folks would argue against this, but it’s how I experience gaming. It’s all make-pretend. When you play a horror game, you’re not scared because the rules are magically able to trigger fear, you’re scared because you allow the circumstances and the experience to scare you, because you agree to believe in those rules. Visual elements are just a contribution to that playful, fun, and sometimes serious, operation of suspension of disbelief. Images and visual patterns trigger associations, thoughts, emotions. I’m far from being an expert in cognitive science, so I just follow my taste, personal obsessions and pick the images, or try to build the layout that works for me.
For UNIT DH-17 I had little time, because I designed the book in roughly one month for ZiMo, and I had little budget to commission art. So using public domain images, and working with typefaces was the only way I could make “drawings”.
Again, as mentioned in the first answer, most of the visual choices are made to try and convey information. There’s a general mood, which recalls the 90s (or a specific version of the 90s). It has a loose punkish vibe, which is linked thematically with some of the characters of the zine. In terms of balance, I often try to put one major concept or mechanic per page to make the book easier to navigate.
And lastly I rely a lot on feedback from members of the community. I shared a lot of UNIT DH-17 drafts on The Lost Bay server, and the Good Sleep Collective server, and feedback from the community has been fundamental to find the right balance and overall artistic direction of the zine. Thank you, community <3!
Q) Tables can be tricky. For some designers, the very word triggers anxious thoughts, but you seem very comfortable with them! In fact, you have three different kinds of table arrangements throughout UNIT DH-17, and not one of them is difficult to read or inconsistent with the rest of the layout. Can you talk to me about using tables as elements of design, at all?
Me flipping the zine: I have three different kinds of tables? Really? Damn, that’s true. I had no idea. Tables freak me out as a designer. They’re always the thing I layout last. I find my tables dull. I try to make them less dull. Then periodically I find them not legible, and just before finishing the zine I try to quickly design the simplest possible tables. That’s my table design routine. Often they don’t have classical cell borders, they’re just lists rather than tables. Tables freak me out as a reader too, again the five of something rule, that’s why I try to make them as simple as possible.
When I design tables two things happen generally. I rewrite the table contents, after I’ve picked a general design and font size. At least when time allows for it. I rewrite in a way that makes the tables more legible. I couldn’t do this on a lot of the ALMANAC tables (SKYREALMS setting book), and that was really annoying. So for UNIT DH-17 I rewrote nearly all the tables once I laid them out.
And secondly I try to understand how many times the table is going to be used in the game, and in which circumstances. Is it a character creation table? or is it a table that needs to be found and referenced in the midst of the action on the fly? I try to adapt the design choices to those specific context elements. But eh, sounds very scientific like this, but it’s not at all. Mostly it’s just me trying and trying again until I’m satisfied or fed up. It's a lot of guessing.
Bare, Beautiful Bones
Paper is expensive. The economical thing to do is use every square inch, but Iko’s use of white space is absolutely decadent. This works because they are a master of giving a GM just enough structure to understand the intent, and enough room to let their imagination run wild. Flipping through the pages of SKYREALMS is like going on a nature walk. There’s a lot of fresh air on those pages and yet there are always enough trees to look at, if you catch my meaning. UNIT DH-17 is a very different project— more suburban horror than weird whimsy— but it still delivers information with Iko’s iconic gut-punch efficiency. Here’s a treat: Iko also talked with me about why some of the spreads are really giving 110%. It’s the interview that just keeps giving, folks!
NO WAY OUT
IKO: The rule/mechanic presented on the NO WAY OUT page is pretty simple, but consequence-heavy. So I needed a way for it to be remembered, and not get lost in the flow of the book. I guess readers might remember the page heading rather than the rule itself, but it's OK, I just need the concept to shine through.
JUSTIN: I actually laughed aloud when I saw this page. How often do you see 16-17 words given their own page? It’s incredible. You’re incredible. There’s nothing but an ink splotch on here for decoration. The fact that this stark warning is facing a really busy page is absolutely brilliant, too. It gives the reader a chance to brace themselves before diving into the thick of things. This didn’t just leave me with an impression, it slapped me across the face and made certain I understood what kind of danger I was getting into.
DOOM/DIFFICULTY LEVEL
IKO: The DOOM page is pretty simple. There’s a huge heading that allows to identify the page, because the GM is going to need it several times throughout the game, the rest of it is sort of like a notepad, a form you have to fill.
The DIFFICULTY LEVEL page is a bit harder to decipher. It requires you to stop and take some time. You’ll need it only once though, at the beginning of the game. The size of the fonts (heading and text blocks) grows with the difficulty, making it easier to understand the mechanic at play. I could have numbered the levels: difficulty level 1, 2 etc… again, I could do it with text or visual design. Text is more accurate but requires more time to be processed. Visual design is more immediate.
JUSTIN: Difficulty Level is my absolute favourite page in the whole book. It’s so dark compared to the rest of the game, and it’s so early in the layout it really sets the tone for everything that comes after it. I really like that you chose a slow-burn method to convey your intentions here. The incremental font size is doing some really heavy lifting, escalating tension and demonstrating how deadly you can make this dungeon.
The Doom table is doing the same thing in a smaller way, with the surprise appearance of the BBBEG of the dungeon. Her entry is set in a different typeface and it takes almost as much visual space as the DOOM header. Add a couple splatters to imply violence and bam! Masterpiece. You really understand the horror genre, Iko.
Navigating Dungeons
As a game master, I tend to write my own modules instead of running other people’s because adventures tend to be very information-dense. There’s always too much going on in too small a space and I get very overwhelmed. Iko is a lot like me, so they design for people like me, and I think it’s worth talking about what information they deemed essential enough to stay in the book. This is the kind of dungeon I want to reference when I design my own.
Stick around if you want to do a little walkthrough with me…
The inside cover gives us a quick “what is this book for”, a blurb about the system this dungeon was designed for, and some content warnings.
The facing page serves as an establishing, panoramic shot for the setting: it’s literally written like the script of a movie. I get the name of the town, a nostalgic vibe-check, and an at-a-glance understanding of some of the local factions that might become relevant in the story. Nice.
Flip the page and we find out what kind of special skills you can give to PCs in this adventure, and what tools you can arm them with.
Facing that, you zoom in on the setting a bit. We learn some history, we get some rumours… this page is just rife with plot hooks. This is actually what got me excited about DH-17, because it gave me, as a game master, everything I needed to get my players invested in the story.
The next spread tears us away from nostalgia and right into threat-territory: these are the DOOM and DIFFICULTY pages. We learn about how threats progress.
Immediately after, like a hammer-blow to the chest, we have the NO WAY OUT page and the ENCOUNTERS page. There is almost nothing on these pages, compared to how information-dense the first spread was. Iko gives us less and less before they throw us into the actual dungeon…
… which of course begins on the next few pages. The dungeon is organized over the next few chapters by floor. Each level gets a few spreads to show us a floorplan, describe each room in sparse detail, and tell us how certain objects can be interacted with. We get little chunks of foreshadowing in journal entries and bloodstains. Iko keeps the PCs on the razor’s edge of danger at all times.
Rounding close to the end we get a spread about the NPCs and monsters. The BBEG, M/OTHER gets her own page, and everybody else fits neatly onto the other. I really like how their stats are given in very lightly-shadowed boxes: it’s not intrusive at all but it makes them easier to find.
The final spread gives us a table describing the consequences for surviving, leaving the players with lingering effects, like a horror movie with a jump-scare right at the end. Finally, we have the credits. I like that they’re at the end instead of at the beginning— I have a new appreciation for the people involved now that I’ve seen what they can do.
Physical Copies
As far as I know, there was only one way to get a physical copy of UNIT DH-17: it was originally released in the FEAR BUNDLE on the Lost Bay Studio Website. It was worth every penny, but it’s currently sold out. Iko says they plan on reprinting the bundle, so if you see it, jump on it!
I’ll update this post if there’s a physical re-release. Unit DH-17 is quite literally the best dungeon module I’ve read this year, and I think it should be in everyone’s collections. It’s among REALLY GOOD COMPANY in the Fear Bundle, which contains work from other creators I admire very much (Alfred Valley, Fari RPGs, and recently ENNIE-nominated Exeunt Press among them).
That’s all, folks…
Iko, you’re a total babe. Thanks for giving me so much of yourself in this interview, I really appreciate your design perspective.
I’m bad at updating every two weeks on schedule, but I’ve got a bunch of interviews in the ol’ hopper and I’m probably gonna just post them every Tuesday for a little bit as a catch-up.
Thanks for reading.
Regards,
Justin Vandermeer
amazing interview, justin! came here from iko substack's and now i will be forced to stay :)