SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - ArkLaTex Artistry’s Brittney Hazelton speaks to Nathan Treme about the Highland Paranormal Society game publishing company he began in 2018 and his music.
Shreveport native, Nathan Treme created the locally based ‘Highland Paranormal Society’ game publishing company, designing miniature and easy-to-learn tabletop roleplay games. Some of his games can even be printed from home.
How did Highland Paranormal Society start?
Nathan explains he found a punk-rock sort of subculture of people just making their versions of Dungeons and Dragons. He got very into it and started making his games in 2018.
“I like Dungeons and Dragons. I was playing that for a while. I got into that, and kinda like everything I get into I do kinda a deep dive and find what the underground version of that, that is being made. There is so many awesome roleplaying games that are being made, you know? Just by people who grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and then they just came up with their own version of it. Or when it went from one version to another, they didn’t really like the changes, so they just kinda focus in on the thing they like and end up making their own game,” explains Treme.
He started to get a good response to what he was putting out into the world, some of the games even allow you to bring over your characters from other games. Some of his games include Tunnel Goons, which is his most well-known game, In the Light of a Ghost Star, a Sci-Fi roleplay game, and games like Dogtooth Valley, which push the limit of how minimal you can make a game, being only a business card in size.
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“Sometimes I call my games, and say they are like DnD if you are not good at math,” jokes Treme.
Treme has also hosted game jam events, challenging others to make their own games based off his game Tunnel Goons, which he says has over 150 games made based on it. Additionally, Treme’s Highland Paranormal Society has a very successful Patreon, with 640 members subscribed, where he publishes games and other content for his fans. His Patreon’s monthly subscriptions range from just $2 Paranormal Investigator, $5 Paranormal Researcher, and $10 Paranormal Entity. Those who are Paranormal Entities even get random miniature games mailed out to them sometimes.
Some of Treme’s games have also been published by outside publishers, including a book of many of his games called The Haunted Almanac through a game publisher named Games Omnivorous.
“They contacted me about a kind of a collection of over a two-year period of stuff I put out on Patreon. So, I gave them all of that stuff and they had this really amazing designer kind of lay it all out in this beautiful kinda-hard cover book. And that, I think there is maybe a few copies left in some stores, but that is about to sell out of its third printing,” says Treme. " They did such a good job making all my weird little-sized games.”
He has also collaborated a few times with other game designers, mostly ones on Discord, but Treme says there are cool people designing games in the area.
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“Kinda the cool thing about tabletop roleplay games is even if you are playing it, you are in some way a game designer already. If you are the dungeon master, you are doing some game design just preparing the session,” says Treme. “Its a hobby that there is not that much of a barrier between player and creator.”
See one of his games, Pilgrims of the Nighted Path, played by Youtuber channel, Funhaus:
His music
Treme is not only a game developer, but also a visual artist and active musician who is in several different bands and projects, even previously performing at SBC Zombie Walk before.
“That was more my solo stuff, very synthesizer and drum machine based. I’m usually using a vocard through my voice, so I got kind of a robot voice going on. Definitely, a sort of heavy synth wave kind of sound is what I’m usually going for,” says Treme.
Nathan Treme is both an electronica-style musician/DJ but is also a rapper. He is in multiple bands locally, including under his own name Nate Treme, Blood Punch, and the Mutant Dad.
Treme has been in Blood Punch for a long time with his best friend Raven, and they would do rap and hip-hop. It started out because they were obsessed with Waka Flocka Flame.
In recent years, he and his brother, a guitar player, started Mutant Dad. The project consists of taking synthwave and mashing it together with some sick guitar riffs.
How does he come up with songs?
“Once I kinda get the rhythm going, sometimes it’s just about playing around with synthesizers, you know, just nerding out with the sound until I get a sound that I really like. Or if I am using samples, I love sample-based music as well, finding a sample, some kind of sound and using it in a new way, I think that is really fun,” says Treme.
When it comes to samples, he has a sampler who cuts samples in different ways he can’t always control, but he enjoys the unpredictableness.
“I like riding the line between, where it is almost just noise but then it kind of, I don’t know, it melds into this rhythm coming through and it turns into a song,” explains Treme.
He even does this unpredictable mixing in his live music sometimes.
“Sometimes I do sets that are very much just making a bunch of noise then I’m like trying to bring it all together into something. I’m kind of making it up as I go. I like doing that a lot,” explains Treme.
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