Instructional Design·Project Management·Visual Information Design
Most of what a producer does on the first morning of a shoot is instructional design: the plan lives in a few heads, and by call time it has to live in everyone’s. I’ve done that for more than 30 years in media production, including 14 years producing independent film and television. Since 2021 I’ve been the producer of 20 Below, a tabletop roleplaying game built by a fifteen-person team, and the case studies here come from that shipped work.
“I review everything visual on 20 Below, down to type that smears and an arrow a few pixels low, and Feral treats every note like it matters. When I asked for Jack of all Trades to apply itself instead of making players do the math, it went from a request to working in the tools, and Feral kept me in the loop the whole way. I always know what’s changing and why.”
“When I reviewed the gear shop in the Character Creator, the rules were right but the wording made new players stop and reread. Feral took every note I flagged, rewrote the steps in plain language, and had the new version back to me to check before it shipped. What stood out was how seriously feedback got taken: nothing was waved off, and nothing went out until it read clearly.”
“I found a link in the Character Creator that led nowhere, the kind of small thing that makes a new player lose trust in a tool. Feral had it fixed and released quickly, and thanked me for catching it. On 20 Below, a bug report from anyone on the team gets the same attention as a design decision, and everyone can see when it’s done.”
“I’ve spent a lot of my time on 20 Below trying to keep the rules balanced, from the damage scale and critical hits to the venom on a single spider. Feral makes that work possible: every design question gets tested with simulations and real numbers before it goes to the team to decide, and the result goes into every part of the game at once. I’ve never had to wonder whether a balance fix actually landed.”
“Before 20 Below, I’d played exactly one campaign, so I came to the design team as a beginner. Feral bends over backwards to make the game playable and understandable for gamers at every experience level. I never felt like the rules were written for someone else, and when something tripped me up, the next version was clearer.”
“Feral was part of our product video team at Zebonky, shooting product cinematography and creating motion graphics and logo reveals for our launches. They’re reliable on set, easy to direct, and bring a producer’s eye for organization to their part of the work. I’ve also known Feral through UNO’s film program, and the work has always been this dependable.”
Katie Garagiola · Owner, Zebonky
“I was Feral’s assistant director on The Quest, Project Z and Extraordinary. As producer, Feral turned the plan into something the whole crew could run on: clear schedules, call sheets people could actually use, and department briefings before anyone had to ask. When the day changed, Feral adjusted fast and made sure every department knew. It made my job on set far easier.”
Plynlymon Sanguis-Ryder · Assistant Director, The Quest, Project Z and Extraordinary Related: Production Credits
How I Work
I’m the hub of the 20 Below team: communications, a language expert, an engineer, a web development consultant, four game designers and seven playtesters. The team brings the problems, the decisions and the final check stay with me, and an AI assistant speeds up the work in between. Every case study credits who did what.
Each study follows the same shape: the problem, who it was for, the options weighed, the decision, and what happened. Where the outcome isn’t measured yet, the study says so.
