Interview with So Many Robots

The content creator behind Songs of the Spellbound Sea shares about their journey in TTRPG!

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Jared: First off tell us a little about yourself.

SMR: I’m Somanyrobots! A game designer and content creator for 5E. Despite the name, I’m a solo developer and not a robot (anti-AI in all its forms, in fact). My most recent project is Songs of the Spellbound Sea, a 336-page 5E supplement I kickstarted last summer which is going to print ~right now. I’ve written 3 classes, well over 100 subclasses, and several hundred spells, including half of the Spells That Don’t Suck project.

J: When and how did you get started in tabletop games?

SMR: My first TTRPG was AD&D 2nd Edition, back in the early 2000s, when I was a teenager picking up my older brother’s books. I played that for about five years and loved it, but set it aside when I went to college, for time reasons. I occasionally poked at some stuff in the years after that – a little Powered by the Apocalypse stuff, a little Numenera, a little Shadowrun. In 2019, I played the first of Owlcat’s CRPGs, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and it inspired me to want to play D&D again. So I sought out my local groups and made some friends that way, then poached those people to start a series of three campaigns that have been running 6 years now.

J: What made you want to make content specifically for tabletop games?

SMR: In mid 2022 I got the bug to start writing my own material. Partly I’d been hanging out in a lot of homebrew communities, getting a feel for how to do 5E design; partly I was chafing at how small the pool of official content is. I did a few subclasses that turned out well, and just kept on from there.

J: Next tell us about the beginning of So Many Robots?

SMR: In October 2022 I got the idea for the Troubadour, my first full class: cutting a bard back to half-caster and filling the gap with other cool stuff. Once I’d made that, I realized that if I ever wanted people to actually use it, I’d need to market and promote it forever. And the way to do that was to become a bona fide creator. A few months later, I had a website and a regular posting schedule; by the start of 2024 I was prepping for the book

J: Where did the name “So Many Robots“ come from?

SMR: It’s just an old internet handle I’d been using for years; I think I coined it when I was in college or shortly thereafter. It’s quirky and fun, and unique enough that I don’t really have to worry about confusion or muddy search results.

J: What can people expect coming into your website/social medias etc?

SMR: My website is mostly a catalog of all the stuff I’ve made; it’s got dozens of subclasses on there, plus classes, spells, etc. It gets new stuff all the time. I post on Bluesky, Mastodon and Reddit too.

J: What do you see as the future of So Many Robots? Goals?

SMR: In a perfect world, I’d love to keep making 5E content, eventually branching out into other games when cool ideas pop up. And I think I’m going to be able to pull that off. But 5E is in a really weird and delicate place right now. Everybody’s waiting to see how 2024E fragments the market; it’s not clear to creators whether 2024E will become 95% of D&D, 80%, or 50%. If 2024E becomes the only game in town, that’s a lot less exciting to create for; the niche of “carefully tested and rigorously balanced homebrew” is a lot smaller in a game where the basic balance is substantially wobblier. The likeliest scenario is that most of my content will keep being targeted at 5E (2014), with conversion guides to players can adapt it to 2024E, Tales of the Valiant, 5e++, or any other splinter game they like.

J: What projects do you have coming up?

SMR:Right now I’m working on a smaller, digital-only release; something in the same vein as Spellbound Sea, but substantially lower investment and cost to produce. Probably one class, one species, a few subclasses, and some other bits and bobs. I want something that’s a quicker cadence and a more reliable release cycle than just doing every-other-year Kickstarters. (To be clear, I want to do those too! I’m sure I’ll do more crowdfunding for bigger hardcovers. But going straight into another one right now would be way too exhausting.)

J: Anything else you would like to add?

SMR: Songs of the Spellbound Sea is going into its print run right now! If you want to pick up the hardcover, now’s the time to make sure one gets printed for you. The PDF’s also available if all you want is a digital version.