Today we’d like to introduce you to Maxine Newman
Hi Maxine, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Back in the summer of 2012, I had graduated from law school and was interning at the Albany Public Defender’s office in Albany, NY where I lived at the time. Law hadn’t been my dream career—what I really wanted to do was write and design games, something I’d done for fun as a hobby for years before ever doing it professionally. Around that time, The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games had just been released, and I found myself making my own scenarios for the game, posting them online to the tune of thousands of downloads. I was trying to find a job in law when I saw the job posting—Fantasy Flight was looking for a new card game developer, and not just that, a developer to work on The Lord of the Rings card game. I thought to myself: Ah, I’ll apply just for fun, I’m not going to get the job anyway.
To my surprise, I got the job. They’d already seen some of my content online and I guess they were impressed! So I picked up my whole life and relocated to Minnesota in December of 2012 to work for my dream job as a designer at Fantasy Flight Games. At first I worked primarily on The Lord of the Rings, but eventually I got the opportunity to design my own game alongside designer Nate French, and that’s how the award-winning Arkham Horror: The Card Game was born. I worked on that game almost exclusively for over 6 years, from 2016 to 2022. Over time, I also contributed to many other card games, including Legend of the Five Rings, Netrunner, and Marvel: Champions.
Around 2019, just before the pandemic had everybody in the company working from home, I started working on my book, The Key and the Crescent. At first, it began as a series of character shorts about a girl named Poppy, and from there it quickly spiraled out into a much longer story. At the time, I was also working on a short story with a self-insert character—a woman named Penelope who studied abroad in Japan, much like I did in 2007. Eventually I wound up combining both of these ideas into a single novel, and The Key and the Crescent was born. I ran a Kickstarter in November of 2020 to get the book self-published, since I didn’t want to go through a traditional publisher at the time, and with 264 backers, I ended up raising just over $10,000, which was more than I ever could have expected. Currently you can find copies of the book on my website and also on Amazon.
Just before leaving Fantasy Flight, I also got the opportunity to work on the core rulebook for Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game by Edge Studios, which was a fantastic opportunity and a great way for me to branch out into other areas of game design.
In 2024, I left Fantasy Flight behind to work at a new company, Earthborne Games, comprised mostly of ex-FFG employees. I now work on expansions for Earthborne Rangers, which has been a wonderful experience and a lot of fun!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It hasn’t always been easy! For one, I left a fairly lucrative career choice in Law in order to do my dream job, which I don’t regret for a second, but it was a tough choice, for sure, and money was sometimes very tight. In those early years, I survived mostly on instant ramen and PB&J sandwiches. I had to move almost every year, typically due to apartments jacking up their rent. So I lived light, without much in the way of possessions or decorations. Most of what I owned were books—as an avid reader, I could never go far without them.
There were also times I butted heads with higher-ups in the company. As a creative, I had my vision for how I wanted things to be, and as somebody who approached the industry from the perspective of a consumer, I wanted things to be as consumer-friendly as possible. But my ideas weren’t always aligned with the nuts and bolts of actually running a business, and when Asmodee acquired Fantasy Flight in 2014, there started to be more and more oversight on all of our products—for better and for worse. At first, the card game department at FFG barely had a manager, let alone producers. By the time a decade had gone by, we had a manager, producers on every product line, multiple review committees, and a franchise development team that oversaw all of our internal IPs. None of these were bad additions, but it was definitely a challenge moving from full creative control to this system of oversight and quality assurance.
But the toughest part, by far, was my transition.
Around the time the pandemic was keeping everybody indoors and I was working feverishly on my book, I finally started taking steps to become the real, genuine me. I started seeing a therapist, received multiple diagnoses (fun times), and started the long journey to becoming who I am now, which included HRT and a total upheaval of everything I thought I knew about myself. I started off small—dyed and grew out my hair, pierced my ears, etc—and with each little step, I found that I felt more and more like me. So I kept going. And going. And going. And lo and behold, I felt lighter, more confident, more happy.
The end result saved my life, but it was always a tough journey to get there. I wrote a lot about my experiences, including a blog post I called “The Light and the Tunnel” that describes that journey in greater detail, which you can read on my website (https://www.bewaretheblackcat.com/post/the-light-and-the-tunnel). Coming out to my friends and family was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but luckily I have fantastic friends and a supportive family whom I love dearly, and I thank my lucky stars every day that I have the support network I have.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work is twofold—I’m a game designer and a narrative writer, and I specialize mainly in games that combine the two: that is, intricate game mechanics and a robust narrative. Most of the games I’ve worked on in my career have been card games, especially campaign-based card games where you build a deck that represents your character (or, in the case of Lord of the Rings, a deck representing a fellowship of characters), and take that character on a narrative journey with a beginning, middle, and end.
The thing I’m probably best known for is Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which pioneered this approach of a card game mixed with a narrative RPG. Players build a deck that represents their investigator and embark on narrative “campaigns” in a 1920s horror-themed universe based loosely on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and other notable horror authors who contribute to that mythos (Robert Chambers, Clark Ashton Smith, etc). Arkham Horror: The Card Game won several game of the year awards in 2016 and 2017, and was nominated for nearly 10 others.
What sets my work apart from many other games is the focus on narrative and immersion. Many board games and card games are very mechanics-heavy and theme-light, focusing mainly on the experience of playing the game rather than the experience of being one with the game’s world or setting. My games, while still robust in terms of strategy and game mechanics, tend to focus more on immersion and emotion. I’m particularly inspired by the concept of “ludonarrative harmony,” that is, when a game’s mechanics line up perfectly with its theme and the story being told, and players can almost narrate what’s going on as they play. What’s more, players can use the cards to create their own immersive stories apart from the one I’m trying to tell in the background. There’s nothing quite as immersive as using the card “Barricade” to lock your friend in a bedroom with a hungry ghoul while you frantically attempt to safely reload a .45 Automatic in order to protect yourself. (This happened to me and Nate during an early playtest of Arkham Horror: The Card Game. It’s the moment I knew we had a gem on our hands!)
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I can’t thank my coworkers at Fantasy Flight Games enough, especially the artists and graphic designers who helped breathe life into my many designs over the years. I must have written thousands of art briefs during my career at Fantasy Flight, all of which were expertly brought to life by spectacular artists, and I don’t think the Arkham Horror or Lord of the Rings card games would have received nearly as much critical praise had they not looked so fantastic.
By far the people I owe the most to are the ones who worked alongside me. To Nate French I owe much of my success, as the original designer of Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and my co-designer on Arkham Horror. He was my mentor, and taught me much of what I know about designing good games. I also have to thank Caleb Grace, my partner in crime whiIe I was working on Lord of the Rings, who really helped me grow as a designer and picked me up many times when I was down. And to the rest of the old card game team at Fantasy Flight, who were a pleasure and a delight to work with.
Lastly I owe a lot to the many friends and fans who supported me during my transition. I seriously could not have survived without them. I owe them so much and I love them to death.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bewaretheblackcat.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natsunoai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxine-newman-863193279/
- Twitter: https://x.com/NatsunoYoru
