Happy Monday to all our wonderful backers! We're over the midway mark of the crowdfunding campaign and heading towards the finish line. We're rapidly approaching our next stretch goal, so if you've not encouraged your friends, family, co-workers, etc. to hop aboard the OSA/Pinball Backer Train, now is as good a time as any!

Tomorrow (February 3rd) at 2 PM EST, we'll be live-streaming on the Goodman Games YouTube channel and sitting down to talk with some of the artists who contributed to both projects. Please stop by and join the discussion.

Now, let's get our motors running and check in with writer Bob Brinkman as he discusses the process of designing a DCC RPG adventure based on the classic pinball game Centaur.

 

I am absolutely in love with pinball machines. I always have been. There is something about that cabinet art that just pulls me in. I am deeply drawn to the ringing-pinging of targets as they get hit and bonuses as they are scored.

 

I am also very, very…very bad at pinball.

 

Put me in front of an arcade game and I can unlock every secret in Revolution X. I can walk through Shinobi without taking a single hit. Pinball, though? Give me a roll of quarters and 10 minutes and watch me get cleaned out of quarters in record time. Having once worked in an arcade that didn’t have pinball machines, I used to walk across the street to a place called Sudsy Malone’s to let their machines eat my paycheck… and eat my paychecks they did. 

 

As bad as I am at playing pinball, there is just something enthralling about the way that so many machines hint at their stories. Gazing at the art, piecing together the broader lore, these sorts of things are like heroin, impossible to stop once begun. In this case, I had a chance to dig into promotional materials, old schematics, tech info…. And dig I did.

 

When we were first told about this project at the writer’s retreat, Joseph took us to play pinball, and several of the games being licensed were there. Most of the team lined up to play Gorgar, and understandably so, but for me, the real highlight was Centaur. The backglass already looked like something out of a Mutant Crawl Classics adventure. Since doing some writing for the MCC core book, and doing the short adventure The Neverwhen Rock, I’ve wanted a chance to return to Terra A.D. This was really the perfect chance.

 

Pinball Crawl Classics has given me a chance to dive in and really explore the black and white world of Centaur. There is something about the starkness of the black and white alongside the melding of flesh and metal that really drew me into its world. How could I not jump at the chance to work on an adventure based on the game, broadening it to bring to MCC fans? 

 

Plus, you cannot tell me that it doesn’t look more than a little like Brad McDevitt’s work.

 

Of course, looking at the backglass is all fine and good, but in the case of Centaur, it is an evocative character and not much else. The playfield has some interesting art and themes but I was uncertain as to how I was going to bring that feeling to the table. Then it hit me…

 

The playfield literally became my adventure’s layout. The drop targets, bumpers, and ramps weren't just inspiration; they became locations. The multiball feature? Those provided me with the orbs of power. The paths the ball takes became the routes the players would follow through Echo Canyon. Even the tilt mechanism found its way in. I couldn't resist making the unstable power relays a callback to that quintessential pinball hazard.

 

Why I think this whole thing works is that that pinball machines are already narrative engines. They tell stories through sound, light, and motion. Every chime, every bell, every bonus counter tells part of the tale. I just had to extract and decode that story and expand it into something players could explore on foot rather than as a silver ball.

 

The biggest challenge was injecting the source material with playability. I wanted players who knew Centaur to see the connection immediately; to recognize the aesthetic, the themes, and the DNA of the machine. But I also couldn't let nostalgia override good adventure design. The playfield layout worked remarkably well as a map, but some areas needed expansion or modification to create interesting tactical choices and exploration opportunities.

 

The cybernetic horror elements practically wrote themselves. The stark black-and-white aesthetic translated perfectly into the harsh world of Terra A.D., and I used the Chromadeath (the draining of all color from the world) as both a plot point and environmental effect by way of explanation. It's meant to be unsettling while directly tying into the machine's visual identity. Sound became surprisingly important. The game's bells and chimes aren't just for atmosphere; they're providing a reminder of what's at stake. 

 

The Centaur himself was the easiest part. The backglass practically handed me a complete character design. Half-machine, half-mutant warlord? That's pure MCC gold. Once I had his motivation I just had to give him a lair worthy of a boss battle.

 

This project reminded me why I love pinball in the first place, every machine is a world waiting to be explored. This time, I got to step inside one.