> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.superjumpmagazine.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Interviewing Writer Leon Richardson About Their TTRPG, Rangers of A Broken World - URL: https://www.superjumpmagazine.com/interviewing-leon-richardson-about-theittrpg-rangers-of-a-broken-world/ - Published: 2026-09-21T01:30:48.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-21T09:31:55.000Z - Description: Adventuring for hope in the post-apocalypse - Author: Benjamin Macready - Tags: Interview, Rangers of A Broken World, Evil Hat Productions, TTRPG, Tabletop Gaming, RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, Post-Apocalyptic, Blind Snake Studio **Leon Richardson is a Canadian designer of both tabletop and digital games.** You can find their work online at [Blind Snake Studio](https://blind-snake-studio.itch.io/), which they describe as "a charming little RPG boutique just off the main road." Their current titles include [Blazing Hymn](https://blind-snake-studio.itch.io/blazing-hymn-ultimate-collection), an Evangelion-inspired TTRPG about overcoming eldritch angels through the power of music; [Commandment](https://blind-snake-studio.itch.io/commandment), a text-based puzzle game where players change the law to escape imprisonment within the Great Court Complex, and [To Swear On Your Honor](https://blind-snake-studio.itch.io/to-swear-on-your-honor), a journaling game about knighthood and devotion. Richardson, alongside publisher [Evil Hat Productions](https://evilhat.com/), is about to launch a crowdfunding campaign for [Rangers of A Broken World](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/evil-hat/rangers-of-a-broken-world/pre-launch), a post-apocalyptic TTRPG about community, solidarity, and rebuilding in the aftermath of tragedy. SUPERJUMP interviewed Richardson to discuss their upcoming game. ### SUPERJUMP Tell us a bit about yourself and your games. ### Leon Richardson Absolutely. My name is Leon Richardson. I am a game designer, writer, occasional dilettante, and who knows what else. I’m from sunny Edmonton, Alberta. I wrote Rangers of a Broken World. I currently write games under the name Blind Snake Studio, but until recently it was under the name Peach Garden Games. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c0/e7/c0e78dd7-e7af-4603-8ab9-09f05cab06f3/content/images/2026/09/Blind-Snake-Studio.png) Blind Snake Studio. Source: Leon Richardson. ### SUPERJUMP What’s the premise of Rangers of a Broken World? ### Leon Richardson The premise is that the world of this game was effectively destroyed about 100 years ago. The mountains in the middle of the continent melted; they buried everything and dramatically altered the climate. Now humanity is trying to rebuild in a hostile, challenging, and wild world. The characters are the titular rangers. They’ve made pilgrimages to the world’s most dangerous places to meet the stationary monument gods and gain a fragment of their power that they can use to protect the rebuilding humanity. ### SUPERJUMP So this pilgrimage happened before the start of the adventure? ### Leon Richardson Yes, It’s a built-in part of your character’s backstory that they have already made a pilgrimage. ### SUPERJUMP So by doing that they become a “ranger of a broken world”; what does that mean? ### Leon Richardson If you’re talking D&D terms, they’re part ranger, part cleric, and part something else. They’re devotees of these monument gods who are frozen in various different kinds of stone. ### SUPERJUMP So that’s where the cleric part comes in? ### Leon Richardson Yes indeed. The ranger part is that they had to travel through incredibly difficult and dangerous territory to obtain this power. They’re experienced survivalists with divine powers. Each class also has a sliver of something else that you might recognise as well. ### SUPERJUMP What are the unique features of these classes then? ### Leon Richardson Well, my precious baby, the Enduring Legionnaire, is part ranger, part cleric, and part necromancer/paladin. They’re knight-like warriors that stand alongside the dead to defend humanity against the memories of warfare that still haunt this world. The Tidal Navigator is part ranger, part cleric, and part bard. They use music because they took a journey on a ship, and on a ship, music helps people work together. It helps keep people in union, and it helps keep people entertained. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c0/e7/c0e78dd7-e7af-4603-8ab9-09f05cab06f3/content/images/2026/09/Legionnaire-2-1.jpg) The Enduring Legionnaire, Rangers of a Broken World. Source: Evil Hat Productions. ### SUPERJUMP Like a sea shanty? ### Leon Richardson Yes indeed. They’re a little bit pirate as well. ### SUPERJUMP Are there any more classes that you’d like to talk about? ### Leon Richardson Well, there are seven of them. The Volcanic Tracker is another very rangery one. They’re the most kind of “ranger” one, although they can also do a bit of shape-shifting. Their pilgrimage was to a tropical volcanic region, and so their powers are very chaotic and lively. They’re about existing in a world that’s always changing and unpredictable, and often very dangerous. ### SUPERJUMP I was initially planning on asking at the start if you had a favourite, but you mentioned that the Enduring Legionnaire was “your baby”. Does that make it the favourite? ### **Leon Richardson** The Tracker and the Legionnaire are my babies. The Tracker because I found it the most challenging to design. I took multiple attempts at it, and none of them felt right until the most recent one. The Legionnaire, as I mentioned, I’m from a very cold environment, and the monument that gives people the power to become legionaires is in a frozen labyrinth, so their powers of cold are very resonant with me. ### SUPERJUMP So you’re drawing from your experience of Canada there? ### Leon Richardson Yes, I actually listed living in Canada as one of my inspirations. It’s where I live. ### SUPERJUMP The magic system is built around these two resources: scatter and blur. They’re both tied to the ranger’s sense of identity. Could you talk about that for me? ### Leon Richardson Absolutely. So I’m a mentally ill person; that’s also where I live. One of my symptoms personally is dissociation. I’m better with it now, but when I started this game, it was much more frequent. What happens when you scatter, which is when you cast your own spells, is that a little bit of yourself leaks out into the world and blends with the world around you to create a magical force. So scatter goes up rather than down, like you’d expect a magic point system to, because it’s a measure of how much of your identity is outside your body. So a bit of you never leaves the environment; it’s always just outside of you. Blur, on the other hand, is used when you use abilities related to your special ally. The Legionnaire, as I mentioned, their ally is the dead. Each class has a different ally. When you blur, your identity gets tied up and tangled with the identity of your ally. So for a legionnaire to overuse their blur abilities, they lose track of the difference between themselves and the dead. A lot of their symptoms are similar to depression. They feel as if they’re already gone and that the world is cold and distant. Both of these are measures of how much of your identity is your own, and whether you’ve scattered into the outside world or blurred into someone or something else. That’s the difference between the two. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c0/e7/c0e78dd7-e7af-4603-8ab9-09f05cab06f3/content/images/2026/09/Tracker-2-1.jpg) The Volcanic Tracker, Rangers of a Broken World. Source: Evil Hat Productions. ### SUPERJUMP What were the inspirations for this system? You’ve mentioned that you’ve drawn upon your own experiences with your mental health, but how did it all come together? ### Leon Richardson I have such a strong passion for co-op mechanics in games. In the original draft, what I wanted was for players to put words together from their own character sheets to make spells. Players can still do this, but it was the only magic system in my first draft. Then what happened was my players kept bossing each other around instead of actually cooperating. ### SUPERJUMP Oh no. ### Leon Richardson After a bit of thought, I switched magic from the cooperation pillar of the game to the nature pillar of the game. So instead, the GM has a list of words representing the environment, and the player can combine with the environment as if it were another person. That was what really stuck, and what really gave the game the identity it has now. ### SUPERJUMP Rather than the standard D&D stats of strength, dexterity, etc., you’ve used a different set of what you call “facets”, correct? ### Leon Richardson Yes. ### SUPERJUMP So you use terms like daring, understanding, and adaptability. Is there something those terms express that the standard D&D ability scores aren’t able to? ### Leon Richardson As I’ve said, I’m very passionate about mental health, and I’m also very passionate about disability representation and accessibility. One problem that I had with Dungeons and Dragons is that I don’t like many of the stats. I don’t like having an intelligence stat; I don’t believe that intelligence is something a person objectively has or doesn’t have measurably. I don’t think that’s true, and that idea has been used to perpetrate some real cruelties against people. Just look at the history of IQ testing and the racial bias in that, so I’m very against it. IQ has still left a legacy of how we look at the world. We still subscribe to some of the downstream ideas that came from it. So I wanted a system that instead of depicting objective realities of a person’s mind and body, I wanted a system that depicted how a person approaches their problems, and the different approaches that they are more or less skilled at. So adaptability, daring, sensitivity, subtlety, and understanding. Understanding doesn’t mean intelligence; it means how likely you are to solve a problem using knowledge. A person can know volumes upon volumes about a subject, but if they approach a problem by doing the most direct action, they have a higher daring than understanding. It’s not a measure of what they know; it’s a measure of how they use it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c0/e7/c0e78dd7-e7af-4603-8ab9-09f05cab06f3/content/images/2026/09/image-13.png) Windswept Cavalier, Rangers of a Broken World. Source: Evil Hat Productions ### SUPERJUMP Those specific terms you’ve used for the facets: daring, understanding, sensitivity, and adaptability. Why have you chosen those? Did they all come together at the same time, or did you build them out one by one? ### Leon Richardson Those came together more or less at the same time. It was pretty tortured because I spent a long time knowing that I didn’t want an intelligence stat, but “now what”. So I went in circles for a while before I hit on it. Then they kind of emerged pretty organically. ### SUPERJUMP One thing that’s very important to this world is music. The DM/GM is called a “conductor”. Can you talk a bit about that? ### Leon Richardson Musical theming speaks of a certain harmony, grace, and connectedness. Music is one of those things, alongside food, that’s universal and brings people together. So leaning on that helps me envision the characters bringing people together and supporting communities, in a way that’s natural and real to the world we live in. I’m also just a sucker for visual musical motifs; clefts and lines and what have you. ### SUPERJUMP Shall we talk about divinity in your setting? There’s this pantheon of sleeping stone gods the rangers get their powers from called Deiliths, and they’re contrasted with the “noble demons” who aspire to be gods but “lack the empathy” to be divine. Is there a sort of heaven and hell divide there? ### Leon Richardson I didn’t think much about afterlife stuff. It’s less heaven and hell, and more a hierarchy. The Deiliths, before they became stones, were just the gods. The noble demons are below them in power because they’re not capable of forging connections with others. They’re all shackled by a “noble obsession,” and this is very much a commentary on the rich and noble and wealthy. I’m not pretending or hiding that; it’s very real. They don’t care about people, but they have an all-consuming obsession, which is the only thing that matters to them, so they can be reasoned with, and they can even be manipulated if you know what they’re obsessed with, but under no circumstances can they be meaningfully befriended. ### SUPERJUMP Can you give an example of a noble demon character and their obsession? ### Leon Richardson There’s the Ambassador of Pearl, and she’s obsessed with purity. She won’t allow any other noble demons into her domain, or anything tainted by other noble demons. She will simply kill anyone who has been tainted; she does not care, it doesn’t matter. She’s accompanied by these hunting hounds that call her when they find something. She’s statuesque and ice-cold, but I wouldn’t describe her as “murderous” because that implies a certain degree of wilfulness which I don’t believe she’s got. She will kill… ### SUPERJUMP But dispassionately? ### Leon Richardson Very much. ### SUPERJUMP So what about the Deiliths? The stone gods. ### Leon Richardson Because I’m a bit of a history buff, they’re all named after historical or legendary figures. I don’t apologise for that. Volcanic [Sceafing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceafa) is the chaos god that lives in the lava tubes in the Coral Coast. It is the god that appoints volcanic trackers. There’s a story in the book of Scaefing taking the form of a crocodile and accepting offerings from someone, but never having any intention of actually changing their circumstances or changing the future. The real core lesson of the god of chaos is that things are going to happen and there’s nothing that you can do. Beckoning [Atossa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atossa) appoints effectively the rogues of the setting, beckoning infiltrators; she’s the goddess of revolution. She seeks to appoint people who can topple regimes and undermine guards. The pilgrimage to meet her is in a ruined city that’s staffed with guards; it’s implied that she put those guards there so that anyone who could see her would be able to get past them. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c0/e7/c0e78dd7-e7af-4603-8ab9-09f05cab06f3/content/images/2026/09/Infiltrator.jpg) Beckoning Infiltrator, Rangers of a Broken World. Source: Evil Hat Productions. ### SUPERJUMP So are these gods flesh-and-blood people, or are they made of stone? ### Leon Richardson They were flesh and blood, people. They’re currently sleeping in the form of monuments. All that you can see of Atossa now is a marble hand emerging from the hillside, and infiltrators have to sneak past all of the guards to get to that hand. ### SUPERJUMP Are the Deiliths a benevolent pantheon, or do they vary? ### Leon Richardson They are benevolent, but because they’re asleep in stone, there’s something a little bit deistic about it. They want to help people, but they do so by empowering people. It’s very rare that they do any divine intervention other than granting power to people that they believe can help. Even prior to the cataclysm, they were already stone monuments. ### SUPERJUMP So they’re empathetic gods unlike the noble demons who lack that empathy? ### Leon Richardson I didn’t want to write a world with evil gods. I wasn’t interested in that. The tagline of Rangers of a Broken World is “together we can survive”. So the notion of togetherness, and people looking out for one another and rebuilding their communities, is important. In that kind of world, I wanted to depict not being able to, or willing to, care about others as a weakness. So the reason the noble demons fell short, and the reason the noble demons of our world fall short, is because they do not care about humanity or other living things, fundamentally. ### SUPERJUMP So possessing empathy is divine, and lacking it is demonic? That’s an interesting message. ### Leon Richardson In the book, I describe the world as kind but not always gentle. That’s very much what I was trying to convey with this. ### SUPERJUMP Would you say that’s a reflection of our world? ### Leon Richardson I don’t know that we live in a kind world, but I wish we did. There’s a lot more focus in our world than is healthy on immediate comfort, and less focus on what is genuinely beneficial to ourselves and to our communities. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c0/e7/c0e78dd7-e7af-4603-8ab9-09f05cab06f3/content/images/2026/09/rangers-of-a-broken-world-book-art.jpg) Rangers of a Broken World Cover Art. Source: Evil Hat Productions. ### SUPERJUMP Thanks very much for that. The very first sentence of the game’s introduction is “this is a game about hope”. Since the game takes place in a broken world, does that make hope more important than ever? ### Leon Richardson Hope is a concept that’s very important to me. There’s very little that we can accomplish without hope and, speaking as a person with depression, I know what the absence of it feels like, and it’s so bad. I think I treasure it all the more when I can feel it. Believe it or not, most post-apocalyptic media is challenging for me because of this feeling of hopelessness. I wanted to tell a post-apocalyptic story that was focused on rebuilding, hope, and people coming together to find a way forward because they have to. The cataclysm was a tragedy that cost countless lives, but it was a fresh start. 100 years later, people get to choose what kind of world they build now. It’s these small glimmers that give people the ability to carry on when things are difficult. The world has ended, but it didn’t end all the way. What kind of future do we want, and how can we make it possible? The [crowdfunding campaign for Rangers of A Broken World](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/evil-hat/rangers-of-a-broken-world/pre-launch) is currently in its prelaunch phase on BackerKit. It's due to go live later this year. More information on the game, as well as design diaries written by Richardson, can be found on the [official site](https://evilhat.com/rangers-of-a-broken-world/). --- Thank you to Leon Richardson and Evil Hat Productions for their time and resources with this interview!