Farming with the Wind

Unseen City expansion, interview with Dr. Violet, and more!

Fulfillment of the Kickstarter campaign is underway and I’m thrilled to be getting Cloud Empress out to backers soon. Physical copies of Cloud Empress should hit retail in early December. You can grab digital copies of the Cloud Empress: Rulebook and Last Voyage of the Bean Barge on DriveThruRPG now. Don’t forget to rate them once you’ve had a chance to read or play them!

First 3rd Party Cloud Empress Expansion

My friend Chris Airiau has released the first published Cloud Empress 3rd Party expansion called the Unseen City.

“Underneath the Lowland Wastes, the abandoned city squirms. Couriers slip through the Byways linked by forgotten Gate Magic to discover overworld shortcuts and trade with Mystlings. Can you navigate the twisted maze of the Unseen City to find havens, or will you discover only horror in the darkness?

The Unseen City is a new underground Biome for Cloud Empress, an ecological science fantasy campaign setting for the Mothership® Sci-Fi Horror RPG. The Unseen City is a 20pg full-colorDF, which includes the Unseen City adventure Down the Snail’s Spire.”

Grab your copy of The Unseen City on DriveThruRPG today!

Early Cloud Empress Impressions

Early feedback on the Cloud Empress: Rulebook has been extremely positive. Kate over at Rulings and Ruminations has a three-part analysis of the world of Cloud Empress.

"Cloud Empress" emerges as a profoundly complex and multilayered game, bustling with an ample scope for exploration and potential development. Its ecological science fantasy setting artfully merges tangible environmental concerns with the enchanting allure of fantastical elements, creating a rich, immersive world where players navigate through both physical and psychic wreckage. The rulership of giant magical cicadas invites players into a unique ecosystem where conventional logic is defied, prompting them to adapt and evolve their strategies in an environment that is as unpredictable as it is captivating. Moreover, the juxtaposition of survival amidst the relics of a bygone civilization and the exploration of human emotions and relationships in a seemingly desolate world adds a depth that is both compelling and evocative. Players are not merely survivors but also explorers, navigating through physical remnants and emotional landscapes, which could pave the way for a myriad of narratives and adventures, each fraught with challenges, mysteries, and emotional depths, rendering "Cloud Empress" a game pulsating with endless potential and multifaceted exploratory paths.”

Read more of Ruling and Ruminations Cloud Empress analysis here.

Farming with the Wind

Here’s this month’s fan voted Cloud Empress expansion on farming in the Lowland Wastes.

Having watched the Torturers’ Fleshthreshers from a distance, most Farmerlings want nothing to do with pesticides, poisons, and plowing. Farmerlings hold to the time-honored ‘Wind Way’ of cultivating a crop. Decay, rust, and rot always undermine temporary ingenuity and epic human undertakings with persistence.

The wind is joyous, silly, and resourceful at spreading life. Novice Wind Way growers spend seasons merely observing the natural world around them before ever touching a seed. Under the tutelage of the old hands, novices finally learn when to toss a clay-covered seed, what straw to cover a crop, and how many mussels to collect before the population is harmed.

It’s true the Lowland Waste’s harvests are small and scattered, but also somehow awful predictable. Farmerlings trade their often modest surpluses with the Cloud Cities above for the clean water needed to purify chalky crops and quench their chalk-coated throats.

Interview with Dr. Violet

This month I was a guest on auteur Mothership module publisher Dr. Violet’s queer Substack newsletter the Adventure Gaming Periodical. We talk about queer art creation in the tabletop gaming space, parenting, and solo gaming. Here’s an excerpt of my writing there:

“In my writing and game design I’m able to express a free-er version of myself not bound by the physical and social constraints I live in. Putting work out into the vast internet that is specifically queer-coded is still scary. I try to be upfront and make my experience of gender obvious and integral to what I create. I hope being upfront about my identity acts as a lighthouse calling queer folks towards me and letting transphobic people know that what I create will likely upset them. My best work also explores my existential questions rather than my political answers. I’m a lot less confident I know how to solve the world’s problems. Not leading with a singular political message allows for greater connection and community building. I’d like the Cloud Empress community to come together around doing good for the planet and each other, with the understanding that ‘doing good’ is very context-dependent.”

Read the full interview on the Adventure Gaming Periodical here.

That’s a wrap for this month! Next month I’ll be back with news of an upcoming Cloud Empress project!