From Stand-up to Tabletops: Comedian Andrew Orvedahl Discusses His New Role-Playing Game Duster

Dungeons & Dragons was the Devil’s work. At least that’s what many religious Americans thought in the 1980s, when the classic role-playing game was at its original peak. Many children in Christian households weren’t allowed to bring the game into their homes, which gave it an air of danger and mystery that only made them want to play it even more. The Satanic Panic hasn’t fully gone away, but they just don’t make ‘em like they did in the ‘80s anymore.

Comedian Andrew Orvedahl grew up in just such a household. A member of the Denver-based trio The Grawlix, and co-creator and co-star of the TruTV sitcom Those Who Can’t, Orvedahl was fascinated by D&D as a child but couldn’t actually bring any of its books or modules into his house. He didn’t finally start playing the game until he was in his 30s. He fell for D&D’s fifth edition so hard that games ultimately became as much of a passion for him as comedy. Shortly before the pandemic he formed a company called Occupied Hex to publish his own original games, which so far have included a stripped down fantasy game in the mold of D&D, and a more modern concept where players role-play as stray animals. Orvedahl prefers simple, elegant rules for his RPGs, making them accessible to those who aren’t overly familiar with the form. His latest game, Duster, is a post-apocalyptic Western played with two traditional six-sided dice; its Kickstarter runs until next week, and has already raised more than twice Orvedahl’s goal.

Paste recently talked to Orvedahl about Duster, his love of tabletop gaming, and how it intersects with his career as a comedian.

Paste: Duster’s described as a “a post-apocalyptic gaspunk roleplaying game set in the new west.” What can players expect from your game and its setting?

Andrew Orvedahl: As a huge fan of both post-apocalyptic and western fiction, I finally decided to smash both these interests headlong into one another. The resulting game should please fans of either genre, and really strike gold with fans of both. The game itself is based on my own original game engine centered around one simple six-sided die, and my goal was a game that’s quick to get started, easy to learn as you play, and flows smoothly throughout. I’m particularly proud of my combat system, which is still about tactical strategy but every turn can be different for the players, and it moves at a nice speed.

Paste: What are some of your influences, both on the game design and on the overall concept of the game?

AO: As I mentioned, I’ve been a fan of both western and post-apocalyptic fiction forever, and I’ll digest pretty much anything in either genre, but I’ve always enjoyed the Fallout videogames, of course the Mad Max films, and there’s an ‘80s movie called The Blood of Heroes starring Rutger Hauer that I absolutely loved growing up. On the western side of things I was a big fan of the scheming and treachery in Deadwood, and John Hillcoat’s dire western The Proposition (he also did the film adaptation of The Road, another favorite). Also all the classic westerns from the ‘70s and ‘80s that were rated PG somehow but were more messed up than a lot of our modern rated R films. Finally, I once had a telephone customer service job, and the only media we were allowed to consume was a shelf of books that was almost entirely Louis L’Amour novels, and I think I read about 50 Louis L’Amour novels at that job. As for the design aspects, I’m a huge fan of Stephen Dewey (Ten Candles) and John Harper’s games (Blades In The Dark, Lasers + Feelings), and their unconventional game designs kind of illuminated the fact that I could design my game however I wanted and could leave some old conventions behind.

Paste: The post-apocalypse is an evergreen setting for fiction, especially with us continually finding new ways to destroy ourselves. Still, what sets Duster’s world apart from other games or movies with similar settings?

AO: Surviving an apocalypse is something a lot of people are fascinated with, especially me, and it’s a weird fantasy to inhabit! I think there are a few distinctions we can make with post-apocalyptic fiction: there’s near-event, where the survivors are raiding grocery stores for canned goods and fighting over looted medicine, and this ranges all the way to far-event, where the world looks radically different and the survivors may have little to no knowledge of the world that came before them. My setting in Duster inhabits a bit of the middle. It is definitely not near-event (there are no more grocery stores or canned goods) but there are remnants of the old world. In Duster, the apocalypse doesn’t hit in our modern times, it hits decades down the road, so the remnants of the old world are more science-fiction. When player characters find these buried mysteries they will also be an intriguing unknown for the player behind the character. These sci-fi flourishes really help Duster stand out on its own, I think.

I don’t think mixing western aesthetics with the post-apocalypse is particularly new; we see it in movies often without it even being a story point. In the world of Duster, these survivors have intentionally rebuilt their small pockets of civilization to old west levels of technology. They do not trust any higher technology (or anything made from plastic), and it’s almost universally shunned. The big exception to this of course are motorized vehicles, which have been included simply because they’re fun. I always wondered why the straggling survivors in Mad Max films are driving gas-guzzling V-8-powered cars, but those logistical concerns are always drowned out as soon as the gas pedal is mashed and the car disappears in a cloud of dust.

This intentional bent toward the old west aesthetic also sets Duster apart from worlds where it might be more happenstance.