2020

The pandemic hit.

Oracle Sight came to an end, but I couldn't stop thinking about Kobold Quest. Why had players connected with it so strongly? What made people come back year after year to play a game they already knew? I realized it wasn't the dungeon. It wasn't the fantasy setting. It was the stories.

Every table became its own adventure. Every impossible plan created another unforgettable moment.

So the next challenge became clear:

How do you put that experience into a box?

I dove back into playtesting, studying player feedback, convention stories, and years of hard-earned lessons.

This time, I left the dungeon behind.

The kobolds found themselves in a magipunk future—a setting filled with arcane technology, unstable gadgets, and infinitely more things that could explode.

The shift wasn't just practical. It opened the door to entirely new ideas and gave us the freedom to build a world all our own.

The very first prototype was nothing more than a stack of index cards spread across a table.

From there, it evolved into a modular, hex-based spaceship crawler where the station itself grew as players explored it.

In 2023, after years away, I returned to Gen Con to debut Kobold Quest: Orbital Heist.

The response was fantastic.

But after another year of playtesting, I realized I had a new problem. The game had become too balanced. Every mechanic that made it cleaner also made it a little less surprising. Games took longer to finish. The rules became harder to expand.

And the narrative—the thing players loved most—was slowly being sacrificed in the name of rules, mechanics, and a prebuilt mission on a rail.

At the same time, Orbital Heist’s physical footprint made manufacturing increasingly expensive, and global uncertainty meant production costs could change dramatically overnight.

For the first time since Kobold Quest was created... I stopped trying to improve the game. Instead, I started asking a different question.

What if I was solving the wrong problem?

After convention after convention, I found myself dreading the same feedback. "The game started to drag."

Something wasn't right.

I stopped chasing perfect mechanics. I stopped chasing perfect balance. I remembered why I'd built Kobold Quest in the first place. It was never about building the perfect game.

It was about creating joy.

About watching complete strangers sit down at a table and leave laughing about a story they'd made together. It was time to pick up the original threads and weave them back together into something new. A chaotic, beautiful tapestry of player-driven storytelling. The kind of game I ran back in 2018.

Only this time... with better cards. Better artwork. A western frontier. And an uncompromising focus on chaos, improvisation, narrative, and unforgettable experiences.

I didn't want players solving my story.

I wanted to build the perfect playground for them to create their own.

The very first mission was simple.

“Board a train. Rob it.” That's it.

Then the first group opened the first train car and found a BearOwl quietly waiting to say hello.

At that moment, every player at the table realized the same thing. They had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. Every train car became stranger than the last.

Somewhere near the end they discovered the boss, a telekinetic Brainkiller floating six revolvers around himself like deadly satellites.

Different groups handled it in completely different ways.

Some derailed both trains. Some tried to negotiate. Others charged in, guns blazing. Every table told a different story. Every ending was different.

And every group walked away talking about the adventure they had created together.

I was having fun running again.

I couldn’t wait to see what the players would do, to watch the story unfold, to see the thrill and joy in their eyes. I was EXCITED to run the next session.

That's when it hit me.

I wasn't making adventures. I was building a system that creates stories.

Everything else fell into place. The missions became easier to write because I stopped trying to answer every question. Instead... I started leaving holes on purpose.

Not because I didn't know the answers.

Because I knew the players would come up with something better together.

That's not lazy game mastering. That's the entire philosophy behind ScrapWyrm Games.

The best stories don't come from the rulebook.

They come from the people sitting around the table.

That's the game I've been trying to build since 2018.

The ScrapWyrm Games Philosophy:

We build the playground.

You write the legends.


Thank you for taking the time to read our story.

Whether you're joining us for your first adventure or your fiftieth, we're grateful you're here.

We can't wait to see the stories you create.
-Shawn Fortier
Founder & Lead Designer
ScrapWyrm Games LLC