10 new relics, Cloud Empress: Rulebook release, and Outer Rim: Uprising interview

The Cloud Empress: Rulebook, free on DriveThruRPG!

This week I released the Cloud Empress: Rulebook on DriveThruRPG. In the last three days, over 700 hundred people already downloaded a copy and Cloud Empress was featured in DriveThruRPG’s newsletter! From the beginning, I’ve kept the Cloud Empress: Rulebook free to lower the bar to entry into a new setting, share resources more easily among new players, and generally get the word out about the awesome stuff we are creating. Drivethrurpg is probably the largest storefront in the ttrpg industry. From what I’ve seen, games that do well on Drivethrurpg stay relevant for years, so any kind of engagement there means a lot.

Here’s my ask to you, if you enjoy this newsletter, please download a free copy of the Cloud Empress: Rulebook right now. If you have two minutes, give the game a quick star rating, a review, or a comment.

10 Relics from the Hereafter

One of the joys of the Cloud Empress Newsletter is sharing monthly content that I couldn’t fit (or didn’t think to put) into the page limit of the first Kickstarter books. Based on your votes last month, here are ten new relics to add to your games of Cloud Empress:

1. Adolescent Giant’s Eye. The eye of a stunted Bone-skin Giant, it’s nerves have been coiled creating a wearable bracelet. The eye longs for its tortured kin. The iris looks in the direction of the nearest Bone-skin

2. Blackpowder Bullet Teeth. A brutal and competitive trade, Sellswords occasionally rob their rivals of all valuables on hand; chalk, weapons, and teeth. Overly cautious or previously victimized Sellswords use ancient implants to augment their martial capabilities. Take 1 Wound to surgically install the Blackpowder Bullet Teeth by a doctor or healer. The wearer gains one additional equipment slot for ammo.

3. Huddling Fish Bauble. A cheap blue plastic fish with an inscription that reads, “Made in Vietnam.” When dropped into a pool of water, nearby fish splash and wrestle to be closest to the bauble.

4. Overflowing Chalk Pipe. Magicians unable to continue practicing magic, rarely lose their lust for chalk. Chalk tinctures, smoke, baked goods and snuff provide momentary connections to the Slip and remind the very old of years of miracles long past. Generous Magicians enchant chalk pipes for their old mentors. When buried for a week, the pipes become ready to smoke. This chalk discovered inside is low grade stuff, pulled from the soil and not suitable for trade or spell casting.

5. Self-flapping Memory Book:An ancient handheld tome labeled with spaces for names, addresses, and contact numbers. Crafted with a moving internal mechanism, the binding spontaneously flips to an entry when that entry’s name is spoken aloud. It’s original use is lost to time by a people with far fewer contacts, but Bodyhoppers prize such books for organizing forgotten or soon-to-be-forgotten details.

6. Leveraging Crustacean Cracker. A huge spring-loaded slide lever once used to move plastisteel transportation crates. Farmerlings have adapted these levers to trap and kill crab rats through thousands of pounds of instantaneous pressure releasing all at once. 2d10 Damage, adjacent. Requires 30 minutes to reload.

7. Optical Adjustment Headset. Goggles capable of restructuring humanoid eyeballs. Eye color and vision problems can be changed by practiced operators overnight. Some Cloudling jailers also cruelly use these devices to induce temporary blindness during an imprisoned person’s incarceration. Requires 1 stick of chalk to use.

8. Torturers’ Truth-teller. A punitive and exacting tool used by traveling judges and criminal elements to extract the truth from willing and unwilling parties. Fingers are placed into a ring that closes tighter and tighter when a lie is told. Finger amputation is rare, but entirely possible.

9. Universal Pilot’s Ring. Pirates, thieves, and fugitives assembly ingenious key rings for stealing thopters and air barges. The most effective rings include ancient charms that override nearby piloting systems. Small heatpicks on the ring are used to melt through panels when more precise (and less destructive) measures become impractical. Requires 1 stick of chalk to use.

10. Haunted Harmonica. A tiny polished harmonica only capable of playing a single squeaky song. No matter which note is blown into, the mouth organ always plays the melody to All Along the Watchtower.

Interview with Iko of the Lost Bay Podcast, Lost Bay RPG, and forthcoming Outer Rim: Uprising

I’m talking with Iko, creator of the Lost Bay RPG, the Lost Bay Podcast, and several amazing game bundles including the upcoming Outer Rim: Uprising bundle for the Mothership RPG. In the interview, we talk about the joys of collaboration, creating a sense of childlike wonder, and adapting international themes to a US market. Here you can also listen to Iko’s interview with me about Cloud Empress on the Lost Bay Podcast.

Your work strikes me as very eclectic, you host a podcast, you publish these amazing bundles, created an online store, and you’re designing your own RPGs. In all these areas you’re doing work that is top of class. How do you think these projects reflect your goals as a creator? What connections, thematic or project-related, do you notice between your efforts?

That’s a great question. The common impulse behind all those projects is probably the desire to work with others. I’ve always been fascinated by the creativity of other people. I love discovering how other people work, how they think, their worlds. It’s fun, it’s extremely inspiring. I remember as a little kid, spending hours observing grown-ups working, fixing, building. I have the impression that a lot of the steps involved in the creation of a TTRPG are a form of craft, and I like building connections with people involved in this craft. Having a store and working as a publisher, particularly on bundles, has given me unique opportunities in that sense. I also think it’s important to help talented people be discovered. Create structures that can support them, and be beneficial also to hobbyists. 

The Lost Bay tabletop RPG First Look dropped a little over a month ago including your adventure for it UNIT DH-17. From the outside in, it looks like you’ve been pouring your heart into the project for several years (you even named your podcast the Lost Bay in preparation for its release). Why have you taken a deliberate multi-year development approach to the Lost Bay’s release?  

Honestly, I didn’t plan any of this. I worked on various media in the past, including film, and if I knew I wanted to do something with the Lost Bay, I wasn’t sure how. When I started working on TLB it wasn’t even a game, but rather a series of audio logs, then micro-fictions. Then I started playing RPGs again, after a super long hiatus, and pretty quickly I ran adventures in an early version of the Lost Bay. At that time I was living in Paris, France, and the Lost Bay was explicitly set in Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean sea where I grew up, and which inspired the setting heavily. In Paris, everybody has an idea of what Corsica is, so that made sense. When I started working to translate the Lost Bay in English, to bring it to an international audience, to people who might know much about my little island, I had to do a huge amount of work to adapt the original game/setting. The design goal was trying to keep the flavor, but make it open so that people with different backgrounds could project themselves in it. The game is set in an alternate version of the 90’s, in weird suburban areas stuck between the city and a mighty nature. In it you play as powerful young adults who are touched by an ancient force, the Weird, and who are faced with the horrors that swarm the Bay. I was glad to find out that some folks read it as Southern California, or that in Taiwan, a person is having plans for an adventure that fits their own cultural background. This is pretty exciting and rewarding, and I want to support this openness. This is why for the release of the physical copy next year, I’ve commissioned four designers from three different continents. They are working on modules written from their own perspective, with their own vision of the Bay. You know that, as you’re one of them and I’m excited to have you on board!

I wasn’t sure if I could tell people yet! I’m so very excited to be working on a module for the Lost Bay . I’ve had this mid-90’s alien family drama floating around in my head for 8 years that I can’t wait to work on together. Okay, let’s talk Outer Rim: Uprising, your newest Kickstarter project. This will be your fifth or sixth RPG bundle. For those who haven’t seen iko’s bundles, they’re usually about a dozen pamphlets, maps, and booklets on a single theme, a single creator, or a single system. Where did the idea to create these gigantic creative collections come from? 

They come from Pochettes Surprise. It’s a French toy for younger kids. Usually a big paper envelope filled with random paper and plastic toys : dino, plane, ufo, ballerina. We bought those to make up our own little games and stories. I remember vividly the awe and excitement when we opened those pochettes and poured their contents on the floor. That’s the spirit of The Lost Bay Studio bundles. They’re Pochettes Surprise for grown up RPG hobbyists. The physicality and variety of the items is as important as the gaming opportunities they give. Especially for Outer Rim Uprising, as it’s the first bundle we publish made with only 100% original content, designed specifically for it. It’s highly modulable and scalable. You can do anything from using one single tool to spice up your session, play a ready to go one shot, or build an extensive campaign. It comes with a special zine, the Campaign Handbook, that is packed with guidelines and procedures to help you craft quickly your game session, short or long. 

I’m very eager to get my hands on a Pochette now. What has it been like coordinating the creation of Outer Rim Uprising? What did you look for in the creators you worked with? 

ORU has a theme, present throughout all the bundle entries, in many different ways: we’re at the far edges of the galaxy, where there are no rules anymore. Corrupt giant corps push their tech experiments beyond what is conceivable, ancient xeno horrors roam freely, humans and androids organize rebel factions. I looked for designers who had familiarity with three central notions of the bundle: corps, horror, rebellion, and who have a very personal approach to design. I wanted each item to be super flavorful, and I think we definitely hit that design goal. The bundle has been built from the interaction between all of us. A lot of talking was involved! It’s been like a six months long game jam. There is a great variety in the bundle items, but, as the bundle was designed from scratch, all those items are tied together, and build an extensive emergent setting.

What is one item in the bundle that gets you really excited? 

Globally I’m super excited by all the player-facing accessories, like Sorry to bother you, a NPC card deck by Victor Merino, inspired by 90s trading cards, or Bones on the Ground, a pack of in-game flyers calling to rebellion designed by Chris Airiau. In the higher tier we have two beautiful player facing maps/blueprints. Even the exclusive patches that will be rewarded to the first 48h backers are actual patches of in-game factions. These player facing accessories give physically to the bundle, and make it become more than a collection of zines. 

That said, there’s one item which has been expanding considerably and I’m particularly excited about. It’s the Campaign Handbook, the connective tissue of the bundle. It offers so many cool tables, generators, patches, hideouts, factions, gear, even custom classes, all tied to the theme of the bundle, both cross-referencing the other bundle zines and adding new material (a sector map, a rebel ship, and much more). And on top of this, they feature a series of super cool frameworks designed by Josh Domanski to help you quick-start an Outer Rim Uprising game, one shot or campaign, or even including third-party zines. Included are procedures to manage corp behavior and response over the arc of a longer campaign, making corps not only a vague evil background entity, but the new true antagonist NPC. The Campaign Handbook is a playground inside the playground, and it alone is probably enough to back the bundle!

Thanks so much to Iko for sharing about their experience and design philosophy. Well, this has been a big month, and there is only more exciting stuff to come in 2023. Next month you’ll find out more about farming in the Lowland Wastes, and I’ll have more news about the Cloud Empress release. Questions, comments, just put them in the chat!