As we approach the end of the year, I want to thank you for your support for Cloud Empress. Whether you backed the Kickstarter, bought Cloud Empress digitally, or subscribed to this newsletter, you’ve helped me make this strange dream of a world a reality. I’ve been up to a lot this month, so let’s dive in:
Expansions are now available on DrivethruRPG
Cloud Empress: Land of Cicadas and the Cloud Empress Year One Adventure Bundle are now available on DrivethruRPG!
Progress on retail distribution will advance more quickly once we’re past the chaos the Christmas holiday causes at the post office.
Cloud Empress actual plays and interviews
The newly launched Escape Vector Podcast set its sights on Cloud Empress! The Escape Vector Podcast plans on featuring interviews, discussions, and actual plays focused on Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, Cloud Empress RPG, and CyberpunkRED. They have two evocative actual plays of Last Voyage of the Bean Barge and an interview with me where we discuss aesthetic design, my publishing history, and the future of Cloud Empress. Take a listen!
It was also a pleasure to dive into the nuts and bolts of my philosophy of crowdfunding during an interview with the Weekly Scroll Podcast. We discussed the importance of building and maintaining trust as a publisher as well as the impact of the customer experience on the product experience.
Farmerling Law & Order
Content warning: non-detailed mentions of violent crime, abuse, indentured servitude, punitive disablement, shunning/social exile
By habit, Farmerlings walk carefully among friends and strangers. Any place folk come together there’s bound to be conflict, disagreement, harm and hard feelings. Many such conflicts can be resolved through talk, tolerance and the guidance from community elders. When a community can’t find resolution through usual methods, the seek a Walking Judge. Walking Judges aren’t elected or appointed.
Often times a nearby village calls for another village’s wisest elder. When the word spreads, it may come to pass that Farmerlings call on this elder again and again. Soon, this wise elder spends their life on the road resolving local disputes and recommending sound courses of action as a Walking Judge. Between humble and exhausting journeys, Farmerling villages treat Walking Judges to their finest accommodations in exchange for sound judgment in uncertain times.
Crime, Punishment & Restoration
Farmerlings root their punishments in labor and tending to the land. Why toss a moldy ear of corn out when half might be salvaged? Why forgo tending to next year’s crop due to a single poor harvest? Farmerlings treat human lives like precious seeds. Most situations require a temporary, lengthy, or permanent separation of the aggrieved parties.
With ample small villages dotted across the Breadbasket, it’s not hard to find another spot to settle, although righteous pride often fogs clear thinking. Worse offenses can call for sentences that exile the guilty party from Tack Town -- particularly devastating when trying to survive a hard winter outside the city’s boundaries. There is little patience for those who unnecessarily attract Imago, wantonly consume provisions, or destroy crops and livestock. Offenders who threaten greater Farmerling existence or who do no willing accept sentences are branded by Magicians and excluded more permanently from society.
Farmerlings are not alone in the Wastes, and their relatively forgiving conventions contrast the methods of their cohabitants. Intolerant Spore Keepers quickly shun even their closest kin when those kin commit a crime against the community. Brood Monks require the guilty to undertake dangerous religious pilgrimages to Imago locales for forgiveness. Lordlings afford little forgiveness. Cloudling justice often results in dismemberment or death.
Love from the Meaties
Finally Cloud Empress won an award (with a big asterisk). It was great seeing Christian Sorrell’s Meaties 2023 awards share some kind words about the joy of playing Cloud Empress. Christian worked on the first Cloud Empress campaign helping me with game development and playtesting and will be helping an upcoming Cloud Empress project, so take Christian’s praise with a grain of salt and the aforementioned asterisk!
That’s it for 2023! I’ve got big plans for 2024 that I can’t wait to share. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a happy start to the new year.
Request: could you link to the pdf of the newsletter expansion right away? Having to wait until it goes up spoils whatever exclusivity advantage having it as an image file offers (if that is the reason for doing it that way). Essentially I will have to use the next newsletter as a reminder to go back and look for the pdf anyway, so I'm not ahead of the game at that rate.