Welcome to the FM Author Spotlight, a series of interviews that provides an exclusive peek into the world of fan mission creators. In this episode, we are talking to JarlFrank, who has produced a number of interesting and original maps in the last decade.
Aemanyl: Please introduce yourself and tell us how you discovered the Thief games.
JarlFrank: Hey! I’m JarlFrank, and I got into the Thief games in 2009 after reading much praise about them on RPG Codex. I had known about them before that, but always assumed I wouldn’t like them because up to that point, my experience with stealth in games had been limited to forced stealth sections in action games, and those are usually horrible.
But when people whose opinions I trusted kept recommending Thief, I gave it a shot - and ended up loving it. When I had finished Thief 2, I wanted more. I knew about the cancelled Thief 2 Gold, so I googled “Thief 2 expansion” to find out more about that cancelled project. That led me to discover T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age. I made a thread about that on RPG Codex, and the resident Thief veterans informed me that other fan missions exist. Someone made a dedicated Thief FM thread, which became one of the largest ongoing FM discussions outside of TTLG!
I played T2X in summer 2010, and my first FMs in late 2010/early 2011. From that point onward, Thief and its FMs became my most-played game of all time.
Aemanyl: Do you have a favourite genre, style, or theme of fan missions?
JarlFrank: I have a soft spot for several FM genres and styles. One of my favourites tends to be under-appreciated at large: FMs with a distinctly cozy atmosphere. Christine is the absolute master of this style, all of her FMs make me feel at home (not surprising, considering she lives in the same region of Germany as I, and her style evokes local small towns). T2X also had plenty of missions with a cozy feel to them, mostly due to the custom textures and models they used. While the City Sleeps is an extremely cozy city mission.
At this point, I’ve become so familiar with Thief and its FMs that it’s become a “comfort place” for me, so I enjoy the missions that lean heavily into that vibe.
Another underappreciated theme I really like is tombs/dungeon crawls. They used to be rare, but in recent years quite a few excellent Bonehoard-style missions were added to the FM library. It’s a style that seems to have gained some popularity recently, with several entries in the TDP 20th Anniversary Contest and two missions in The Black Parade going for it. When I started playing FMs, tomb crawls were few and far between.
Aemanyl: Can you walk us through your typical workflow when creating fan missions? Where do you typically begin, and how do you approach the different stages of development?
JarlFrank: It depends on the style of mission. I currently have 4 WIP FMs that I fiddle around with whenever the Dromed mood strikes me. Two are mansions, two are cities. For a mansion mission, I just make a large airbrush and build the mansion inside of it. For a city mission, I first place Garrett’s starting position, then the destination that contains the main objective, and slowly build the connective tissue between them.
I tend to complete the brushwork first, then place objects and AIs, and roombrush only at the very end. I assume that’s a common practice, since any changes in architecture will screw up existing roombrushes. For testing, I always add a couple of rope arrows into my inventory and run through the level sections I just designed, to make sure they work well and allow for creative traversal.
Aemanyl: What would be your proudest DromED achievement?
JarlFrank: The floating animals in The New Sheriff!
Aemanyl: What are your main sources of inspiration for your projects?
JarlFrank: My missions tend towards the humorous, making light of common FM tropes and elements of the Thief universe. All the inspiration is in the games and their extended lore - Hammerites, Mechanists, nobles, thief guilds, wizards… there are so many interesting factions in the City, I don’t really need outside inspiration to come up with ideas!
The original worldbuilding for Thief 1 and 2 is quite excellent, and in twenty years of fan missions so much has been added and elaborated on. It’s an excellent world that stokes the imagination and keeps making me imagine new scenarios for Garrett.
Aemanyl: Would you ever like to collaborate with a specific fan mission author that you haven’t had the pleasure of working with yet? Alternatively, are there any creators whose style is similar to your vision of design?
JarlFrank: I work too slow to be a good collaborator, but stylistically I would probably vibe well with KFort. Sadly she retired from making FMs before I even started playing them.
Aemanyl: Are you currently working on any new levels?
JarlFrank: I have two missions that are pretty far along: a modern mansion where the brushwork is mostly complete and I just need to find some decent objects (if anyone knows a good source for low poly modern furniture, please drop me a message! low poly meaning low enough for DarkEngine to load it). And a city mission with an art gallery as its main location of interest.
Aemanyl: What are some of your other interests, pastimes, or hobbies that you enjoy in your free time?
JarlFrank: I like playing other games than Thief, mostly RPGs and strategy games. I’m also an avid reader of adventure fantasy fiction: classic authors like R. E. Howard and C. L. Moore, but also modern authors writing in the same vein like D. M. Ritzlin or Byron A. Roberts.
I also like to take long walks through my quaint little town and look at the houses I walk past. Oftentimes I see architectural details that would be fun to build in Dromed.
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Thank you for reading! We hope that you've enjoyed this insightful interview with JarlFrank. Every Friday you can look forward to a fresh interview with fan mission authors, featuring both the rising stars and the seasoned veterans of our beloved community.
Stay tuned and see you in the next issue of FM Author Spotlight series!
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