Cloud Empress is finally available at retail + Electrum Archive Interview
Welcome to the worlds by watt newsletter. I’m watt, creator of the ecological science fantasy tabletop roleplaying game Cloud Empress. For all things Cloud Empress, go to CloudEmpress.com or support me on Patreon.
Cloud Empress is available at Indie Press Revolution
If you’ve been waiting patiently, the Cloud Empress Starter Box, Land of the Living Hardcover, and Land of the Dead Hardcover books are for sale at Indie Press Revolution. IPR has been a great partner, so pick up your copies today!
Cloud Empress will also be available at the Origins Game Fair in the IPR booth, June 17th-21st.
Interview with The Electrum Archive creator Emiel Boven
This week, I interviewed Emiel Boven, the creator of the science-fantasy setting/system called the Electrum Archive. EA came to crowdfunding around the same time as Cloud Empress, and they share a lot of the same DNA. In fact, I think it’s probably the best content to integrate with Cloud Empress if you’ve run out of material in the Hereafter.
Can you tell us about the creation process of Electrum Archive, Issue #01, from the inception to the published zine?
After creating DURF, I knew I wanted to create something with a little more character to it. I was working as a postman at the time, so while biking around delivering mail, I just started imagining this world and basically brainstorming most of the setting and its people. So after I quit that job later that year, I decided to take all the notes I had written in my notes app during my mail route and pour them into a zine. I funded the first issue through itch.io during zine month and spent most of the subsequent months fleshing it out. You can still read all the short development updates I wrote during that time if you scroll down on the TEA 01 itch page: https://emielboven.itch.io/tea-01/devlog
Why did you decide on adding issue numbers to the Electrum Archive’s releases?
Hubris.
What was your thinking in making your own ruleset for Electrum Archive rather than using an existing ruleset?
It started as a Cairn hack, but I quickly realized I wanted the system to be a bit more setting-specific, and to do that, I needed to change some things.
Electrum Archive, issue #01, has some incredible adventure hooks and encounters. Any secrets or process tips for creating so many diverse and varied table entries you can share?
It helped a lot to have a lot of setting notes which I could mine for ideas. I’ve noticed it is incredibly hard (at least for me) to come up with loads of interesting hooks and encounters in one sitting, so I try to spread the work out over multiple writing sessions. Another big help with the encounters was my then editor and now co-author, Ava Islam. After about 80 encounters, I was kind of dried up creatively, especially since we had a pretty high standard for what we considered an “interesting” encounter, so she helped out with getting the last few written. So I guess my tips are: pace yourself and collaborate.
Electrum Archive has a very visually striking interior, particularly its use of negative space and backgrounds with white text. How did you land on this look?
I messed around a lot with different layout ideas and ornamental elements. One of the things I wanted to do was make a black and white interior, which wasn’t easy to print at home. That may sound a little strange, but coming from DURF, which had this very printer-friendly design, I wanted to make something where I could experiment a little more with bold black shapes and not worry about it being printer-friendly. This decision and the decision to forgo interior colors also flowed from the game’s theme around magical ink and my want to celebrate good black-and-white art.
Each of the Archetypes in Electrum Archive levels up/progresses differently. What challenges (if any) did this pose to the game’s development?
The classes are what changed the most during development. I’m still going over them every now and then, wanting to alter them in small ways, but eventually you just need to stop touching it and live with the results.
Anything you’d like to change about issue #01 if you could go back in time and do it again? (or re-release the title in the future)?
I’m really happy with the setting, so no changes there, but since I’m not a great game designer, it would mostly be system changes to fix small things I’ve run into while running the game for a longer time now.
In the second issue, I introduced an alternative level 5 feature for the warlock archetype, which lets them fight psychic duels with other warlocks. I wish I thought of that one for the first issue, since it is so much cooler than the level 5 feature in the first issue.
Besides that one, I’d probably make a few small changes to the way speed rolls and armor are handled during combat. I’ve had some ideas around tying them together in an intuitive way to speed up decision-making in combat, but we’ll see if that ever takes shape before an inevitable hardcover omnibus.
What’s the future of Electrum Archive? Any other upcoming projects you’d like to highlight?
Right now, I am focused on finishing the expanded version of DURF. Lots of art to be done for that one still. But after that, I really want to release the mostly written Elder ship dungeoncrawl adventure I wrote in 2024. Ava ran two sessions of it when we were at BreakoutCon in Toronto last year, and folks really liked it. We just need to edit it and find a good format for it, but we’re both busy people.
We have been brainstorming the content for issue 03, which will explore the Sunless Princedoms below the surface of Orn. So hopefully we’ll get that one rolling quickly after DURF Expanded is wrapped up.
Where can people find you and your work?
I’m mainly active on Bluesky and Instagram these days (@emielboven), but if you want bigger periodic updates on projects I’m working on or just cool stuff I’ve seen/read/played, I have a newsletter called Lizard Mail:
Embroidered patch Patreon level is now cheaper
Originally, the interview above was part of a TTRPG book club for Patreon, but with low turnout, I’ve decided to rework my pledge levels. In general, I’m trying to reduce as much as I can to devote time and effort to writing and creating cool stuff.
Here’s how my Patreon is changing:
Benefactor level reduced from $10.99 to $4.99 per month, with a focus on the embroidered patch as the primary reason to upgrade. I want more people to get these cool patches (designs forthcoming in the next month or so). Subscribe for a year to get a cool, exclusive worlds by watt patch.
Sustainer level removed as I am stopping the book club due to low participation.
Supporter levels ($1.99 per month) will now receive all Patreon content except for the exclusive embroidered patches.
Releases of expansion content will likely be a bit less frequent but more substantial in size. The first Burial Cloud Expansion is looking like a full zine, for example.
If you’re interested in supporting the creation of Cloud Empress and Burial Cloud content, you can support my Patreon here!
That’s it for this month! Thanks for your support, and reach out with any questions or suggestions in the comments.
Lovely article. Enjoyed the interview section. Always cool to get insight into a person's creation.