Chaos Reigns!

An Interview with artist and creative powerhouse Chaoclypse

Today, I’d like to share an interview I recently did with one of my favorite creatives in the TTRPG scene, and a killer artist who has worked on a broad variety of projects with many different creators.

Brandon Yu, more commonly known by his nom-de-plume “Chaoclypse,” has also been one of the most communicative and supportive people I’ve interacted with since making the decision to share my own art and RPG journeyings on the interwebs.

Let’s dive in!

1) We’ve talked quite a bit over the last few months and I was surprised to recently learn that you’re pretty new to TTRPGs - tell me about how you discovered them. What was your first game?

I've always been interested in TTRPGs, even from a young age, but just never got into them proper. I remember reading RPG books and always wanting someone to play with!

The way I got into it proper was through Map Crow's videos — that was around mid 2022, I believe. The videos made me really interested about the hobby.

My first TTRPG was Mork Borg — as an artist myself, I was drawn in by the crazy visual design. I got into it initially via solo play (using Solitary Defilement) but I eventually got into a group game, which was crazy fun!

2) So how did you go from that to diving into creating games and supplements?

While soloing Mork Borg, I found myself experimenting a lot and making lots of little supplements for myself. I thought, well, why not release it? That ended up being released as Solitary Depths.

Lair of the Frog God was what I'd consider my first proper dungeon. That was written for my IRL group's first session! It was a blast — one of them was charmed into becoming a cultist of the Frog God and caused everyone else to die! To this day, we still play together (our Discord chat group is called "Lair of the Frogs", haha!)

3) Let’s talk a little bit about your art. What’s your background there - did you always draw or is that a more recent development? Who are your favorites and biggest influences?

I've been drawing for as long as I can remember. I got serious about it about a decade ago — I was in a diploma for multimedia and animation at the time, but honestly it wasn't a very good course, most of my art skills were self-taught, through books or videos.

In university, despite being in a degree for computer science and game design, I'd constantly sneak into the art classes! I got some good instruction there, but given my limited time, again, I'd say most of my art development was self-driven.

I think I've been progressing the most in recent years — I was a solo game developer for a while and have a few games on Steam (SKULL CHAINZ and HAYAI if anyone's interested), but ever since I've been doing art full-time I've seen a ton of growth, especially in regards to pen and ink art.

My biggest influences vary a lot day to day, but currently I'd say: Frank Frazetta, Ian Miller, CROM, Plastiboo, Mystic Barbarism/Robin Harris and David Hoskins. I'm probably missing a ton of others, those are just the ones that come to mind immediately!

4) What are you working on right now?

Working on a whole lot of commissions!

I've also been working on an oracle card deck called the Harbinger of Chaos, issue two of Chaos Crawl and my first full-fledged solo RPG (your solo RPG, Kal-Arath, is one of the inspirations behind it, actually!)

I also want to get more streams and videos done (and sculpting, mini painting, writing, bookbinding...), but it's hard to juggle everything — there's not enough time in the day!

5) What other stuff out there are you excited about from other creators?

Honestly, I'm excited for anything you're making. Tons of soul and attitude! Studded Leather's gonna kick ass.

Tephrotic Nightmares is coming out soon — that's a Mork Borg setting and collaboration between one of my favourite artists (Johan Nohr) and one of my favourite writers (Luke Gearing). I'm hoping to run an open table game here in Singapore in that setting.

6) What games are you playing now? Solo? In a group?

I'm playing in an OD&D game and a B/X game weekly.

I'm also running a weekly OD&D megadungeon campaign called THE MEAT GRINDER and a weekly one-on-one campaign. Once every few months, I also run my IRL campaign.

Occasionally I play solo as well, but honestly nowhere near as often as I used to! I wanna get more sessions of Barbarian Prince + OD&D in.

7) Favorite solo roleplaying resource if you could pick only one?

That's super tough!! I'm gonna cheat here and say my personal binder. It's just a hodgepodge of stuff from various sources (D30 Sandbox Companion, Sandbox Generator, Knave 2e, Maze Rats, Ironsworn, etc)

But honestly, if I couldn't cheat and could ONLY pick one, I guess The Tome of Adventure Design. It's exhaustive! I don't use it at the table all that much though, because of its huge size. You could kill someone if you swung that thing hard enough.

8) Final words and where people can find your work and follow you?

Thanks for the interview! Really appreciate it, especially as a fan of your work!

People can find me on:
YouTube (solo actual plays and art): https://www.youtube.com/@Chaoclypse
Twitter (mostly art): https://twitter.com/Chaoclypse
Itch (RPG zines and tools): https://chaoclypse.itch.io/
Substack (I should really post more lmao):