“I always want to give back as much as possible to the people who brought us here. That’s wonderful. And if I can do that, then I want to do it. – N”.

At Spellenspektakel Utrecht (2025 edition), I ran into Nathan and his partner Laurence at their stand. After a brief chat about their product, I quickly realised that Worlds at a Glance: Towns & Villages was created with Nathan’s unstoppable drive and passion. I decided to investigate this further later, at Spel Antwerpen (2025 edition), by means of an interview.

Worlds at a Glance: Towns & Villages, a new tool for Game Masters in Dungeons & Dragons

Esmeralda: What a beautiful stand you have at the fair. I am very curious about the story and the creation of Worlds at a Glance: Towns & Villages. Can you tell me a little more about it?

Nathan: Two years ago, I started marketing my book Worlds at a Glance: Towns & Villages. My goal was to first build a community, the result of which you can now see (laughs). The people here at the stand are all volunteers from that same community. Then we started Kickstarter, but more about that later. I built the Game Masters World community together with Shiu, who is currently busy talking to people at the stand there. She is mainly responsible for PR with the community and for the store.

I’ll briefly outline what Dungeons & Dragons is for those who are unfamiliar with it. Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), a role-playing game in which you sit around a table and someone tells a story; that’s the Game Master. The players chime in to say what they want to do and how they want to act in that story.

Before you can start a game, it requires a lot of preparation. Part of that is worldbuilding, i.e. building your world. This often takes hours of preparation. You need a town, and that town needs shops. Those shops need people and items that you can sell there. That’s what Worlds at a Glance: Towns & Villages is all about. It’s in the name: “At a Glance” means that you can actually see it all at a glance.

My book helps you present your world to your players immediately, by simply providing hundreds of different descriptions that you can constantly change as you read them: shop items, people in those shops, missions you can undertake in the Thieves’ Guild, and so on.

Esmeralda: How long ago did that idea develop?

Nathan: The idea came about because I was running a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons myself. I noticed that a lot of work went into building the world. I would rather be working on the quests and coming up with the big bad guys than inventing every place in detail. Especially because it often happens that my players don’t go to the places I have prepared, but to the places I haven’t prepared. So I wanted to find a solution for that. That’s how the idea for developing this tool came about.
In 2023, it started as an Excel file. Then I thought to myself: actually, an Excel file is really ugly and, above all, clumsy. I thought it would be much more convenient to turn it into a book, with nice tables and a clear layout. Then you could open it up on the table in front of you, instead of looking at a computer screen (laughs).

I don’t like sitting at computers. I much prefer board games (laughs). That’s ironic, because now I’m always sitting at a computer developing new products. But… when I play, it’s always at a table. I find that much more enjoyable!

At the beginning of 2024, we started a promoting campaign. We went to various trade fairs with our idea for the product and gave a small demonstration. Our idea was received with great enthusiasm. In April 2024, we launched it on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is a platform where you can raise funds for a product that does not yet exist before you go into production. So instead of working with a publisher, we chose that option. After thirty days, you have to see whether you have achieved your goal or not. And yes, we certainly did. We raised almost 300,000 euros.

Worlds at a Glance: Towns and Villages has therefore become a success. We have already sold more than 4,000 copies.
And every year since then, sales have continued to grow, which is fantastic. We have now launched a second product on Kickstarter. We have already raised 200,000 € for it. We are also very much looking forward to the opening of our shop next year.

Esmeralda: What is the product you’ve now put on Kickstarter?

Nathan: It’s called Encounters at a Glance: into the wild, so it’s almost the same name. The difference is Towns & Villages and Encounters. With this product, you leave the city and go to, for example, some dark castle that is a few days’ journey away. So the focus is on what happens during those days of travelling. Very often, that is minimised. In the sense of ‘You arrive at the location, roll a dice’.

Other examples: you encounter a goblin who wants to fight you. Or you encounter some wolves who cause problems. This is, of course, due to the fact that Dungeons & Dragons requires a lot of preparation. To make that easier and more fun, Encounters at a Glance: into the wild does everything it can to help you in such situations.
It tells you what you encounter, see or can do while you are travelling.

In the existing books for Game Masters, the writers focus mainly on fighting. That is, of course, a very important and fun part of Dungeons & Dragons, but for me, the chemistry between your players and how they interact is at least as important. Not all GMs always pay attention to that. So we came up with a concept that focuses on this issue. In it, we offer situations that make it possible to do more ‘role-playing’, so to speak. In addition, there are a hundred encounters that can be used for different locations, 25 for the forests, 25 for the ocean, 25 for the swamps and 25 for the mountains. Depending on where your players are travelling, you can always encounter something special.

For example, you might encounter a goblin who is going on a date, but he is a redneck and his date is an uptown girl. He then asks your players for help in learning manners, what to wear, how to tidy up his house, and so on.
These are a lot of fun little tasks that your players have to perform. Depending on how well they do, his date will go better or worse. So this has nothing to do with combat or fighting, but it does add a funny and connecting note to the game.

Esmeralda: Does the Grunk from Grunk’s Tavern, who is featured on the banner here, also have a place in it?

Nathan: Well, in Worlds at a Glance: Towns and Villages, at the end of the book, you’ll find a short story about Grunk, how he started his journey. One of my dreams is to write books about the characters we’ve created. I’ve currently created four characters that I want to bring back in my books. For Grunk, the first character, I collaborated with a very good friend to tell Grunk’s story.

For the second book, Encounters at a Glance, I am now collaborating with someone from our community to tell the story of Mildred.

Esmeralda: I’m curious to see how the character will turn out in the end, but maybe we should just leave that as a surprise.

Nathan: (laughs) Yes, perhaps! The point is that it’s just really fun to be able to work with people from our community and create things together. I’m now in a position to say, ‘I know you’ve wanted to write something for a long time. Would you like to write something for our next book?’ Then it will be in bookshops all over the world. I just think it’s a really nice way to collaborate with others.

The Grunk’s Tavern, a new quirky game shop

Esmeralda: I see a large banner at your stand announcing your shop, The Grunk’s Tavern. Where will this shop be located?

Nathan: In Lange Nieuwstraat in Antwerp, where the ’t Appeltje theatre used to be. I didn’t know what that was myself, but I think a lot of people who often visit Antwerp do, or so I’ve heard. The good thing is that it’s easily accessible, both by public transport and by car, because it’s above a Q-Park, and also by bicycle.

Esmeralda: Okay, that’s good news for people like me who have difficulty getting around by public transport because of their wheelchair. So it’s easy to get there by car? That’s certainly not always the case these days.

Nathan: Yes, by car, tram and bicycle. They are also renovating the ring aroundin Antwerp. There will be new footpaths, a cycle lane and a tram. I think the tram stops near St. Jacobs church, which is only a hundred metres from our shop.

Esmeralda: I see other products at your stand. Will these also be sold in your shop? Are they all your own designs and handmade?

Nathan: At the moment, not all of them are our own creations, but we are working on it. Take our dice, for example: for now, only the boxes are custom-branded. The factory that makes our books also produces dice. We are currently developing four of our own dice. Until they go into production, we sell other dice.

The candles you see here were made in collaboration with people from Germany and someone from our community. The rest of the products here are part of the existing bundle and can be found in our Worlds at a Glance: Towns & Villages box set. If you only started by purchasing the book, you can buy the other products separately afterwards.

In the shop we are going to open, the intention is to sell everything. But what I also want to do, something that other shops may not do, is to provide a platform for artists who develop their own products. Artists who do not yet have a platform to sell their creations, except perhaps online.

Esmeralda: Can I assume that this should all be in line with the D&D trend, or is it broader, for example, also including board games?

Nathan: No, definitely broader! Board games too. What I would like to do is give people who have invented a board game or already have a prototype the opportunity to display the game and give them a place to promote their creations.

Esmeralda: Great, that’s a really nice opportunity and a great platform you’re offering.

Nathan: It’s actually part of how I want to live my life: I always want to give back as much as possible to the people who have brought us this far. That’s wonderful, isn’t it? And if I can do that, then I want to do it.

Reusability and sustainability as a theme

Esmeralda: Another thing I wanted to ask: I’ve already studied the box set at home, of course. I noticed that you’ve thought about the reusability of the various elements, such as the shop cards that you can write on with a marker and then erase. How important are reusability and sustainability in your products?

Nathan: Very important! (laughs) What I find important is that all our products are reusable. To the point that we even made flyers at one point that you could cut up to make game pieces for Dungeons & Dragons. The idea behind this is that they don’t just get thrown away.We did indeed think about the shop cards you’re talking about. They are all wet erasable. This means that you can write on them with a marker and wipe them off with a wet cloth. This applies not only to our shop cards, but also to the initiative trackers and city maps in our box set.

We also thought about our stickers: we deliberately chose vinyl stickers. Paper stickers are not reusable, while vinyl stickers are to a certain extent. It’s something we consider very important: as little waste as possible.

Esmeralda: So you’ve paid a lot of attention to making it as user-friendly and sustainable as possible. That’s great to hear.

Nathan: Yes, indeed! That is certainly appreciated on Kickstarter. The idea of making the cards reusable came about after I saw that people liked to fill in their own cards. Then I thought: ‘How many cards can you put in a box?’ Now there are eighteen. Not very many, but you can reuse them. You can always wipe them clean.

When players have been to a shop or you have come up with a shop yourself, you can write it down, wipe it off and come up with a new shop. That’s how it came about with the help of the community, and because reusability and ecology are important values to me.

Esmeralda: So, there are great prospects: a new product, a new store, and a lot of passion being put into producing things in the future! I want to thank you very much for the conversation, and I hope to see you soon at The Grunks Tavern.

Nathan: I love talking about my passion, so you’re very welcome. (laughs) That’s great, we’ll see each other soon!

Looking back on the interview

It was a pleasure to meet Nathan at Spellenspektakel Utrecht and Spel Antwerpen edition 2025. When you meet Nathan, you immediately feel his drive and passion. The fact that, as a creator, he finds it particularly important to help and connect people is wonderful to see. This is also reflected in his products, as evidenced by his next book. The focus here is mainly on the bond between players and making it easier for GMs to prepare and get to playing more quickly.

The commitment of Nathan and his partner Laurence to bring a breath of fresh air to the landscape, in which “together we are strong” and cooperation between different actors is paramount, is heart-warming. They brilliantly convey their vision, in which sustainability and opposition to the throwaway society are central, and integrate it seamlessly into their products. It’s great that Nathan, at 33 years old, is able to make his mark on the D&D landscape.

Another admirable commitment at the start of their shop is that they respond to the difficulty young creators face in promoting, publicising and distributing their games. Nathan wants his shop to be a place where these new games, made with passion and commitment, can also find a home. I think this is really cool, especially because I’ve noticed through my contacts with new creators that this is a real hurdle they face.

Above all, Nathan wants to bring people together and make them happy. He even plans to organise speed dating for game enthusiasts. He wants to give people from the community the opportunity to realise their dreams through the success of his products and the possibility of opening a shop, for example by co-writing or making candles.

For a description of the Worlds at a Glance box set, you can read my review here or on the reviews page.

The Kickstarter campaign is still open. More information: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/worldsataglance/encounters-at-a-glance-into-the-wild

Text: Esmeralda Wolf