Hi, we're Mottokrosh Machinations, a mainstream-adjacent little studio that makes roleplaying games, supplements, and apps. Spearheaded by Frank "Mottokrosh" Reding, and collaborating a diverse cadre of amazing artists, editors, writers, and gamers. We started in 2018 as blogging vehicle for Frank, and have since published a number of acclaimed books, including science fantasy heart tugger, Hypertellurians.
We take pride in our craft, and fill our books with art, illustrations, maps, and tight, yet playful, graphic design, all to make them supremely useable at the table. We are lazy GMs, so we like our information concise and to the point, and easily referenced. Combine this usability with whimsy, bizarre ideas, overindulgent use of wordplay, and you have the Mottokrosh Machinations brand. Layer in accessibility, diversity, and inclusivity, and you have our values.
All the texts of our machinations and blog posts are released under a creative commons license (art remains the copyright of the relevant artist), so hack and slash it up, include it in your work, whatever you like. We believe in making our games as easily and widely available as possible. Most of them are available right here as web pages too.
The Team
Frank Reding - Writing, Graphic Design, Publishing
Or Mottokrosh. I made that nickname up on the spot for a video game many, many years ago, and it stuck. Whenever I need to provide a username to register for an account, I use "Mottokrosh" - it's always available, unless I already signed up before, and forgot about it.
I come from a web design and development background, and have been gaming pretty much non-stop since my youth. Growing up in Luxembourg in the late 70s and 80s meant that I had never heard of anything so frivolously fun as Dungeons & Dragons. In an invigorating stroke of irony, it was the anti-roleplaying propaganda movie Mazes and Monsters that opened up this world to me.
Immediately, my friends and I set to recreating the game, based on what we reverse-engineered from the movie. We made a play board, assembled rag-tag miniatures and cardboard cutouts and set off to explore castles and caves, and fight traps and foes. And it was fun, even though we had no idea what we were doing.
Crew
Here are some folks we regularly work with.
Editors & Authors: Chris Coleman, Karen Reding, David Fuller.
Convention Crew: Ani Anjum, Anna Molla, Kara Payne, David Fuller, Tina Reuther.
Playtesters: Ani Anjum, Anna Molla, Jason Durall, Kamil Pauliny, Kara Langford, Kara Payne, Tina Reuther.
Artists
We have been lucky enough to work with awesome artists. Below are some of them. If you'd like to work with us, get in touch! We're aiming for diversity first in our commissions, and we're a tiny studio with limited projects, but we want to hear from you, for that perfect future collaboration.
