Meet the Jackstag + CE Ennie nomination

Hello! This month I’m back with another creature from the world of Cloud Empress and big news about my Ennie nomination.

Meet the humble jackstag

Jackstags, a combination of a jackrabbit and deer, fill out the Lowland Waste’s thickets and scrub forests prodigiously. Relying on other predators to regulate their numbers, Jackstag’s often starve without Farmerling and Sliplander intervention. These same people call cowardice in their peers “running like a jackstag.” Timid, startled easily, and prone to freeze in excitement, jackstags save themselves by great leaps up to ten to twelve feet.

‘Soft-stomached’, jackstags quickly develop mutations and sicknesses from the areas they graze. Second heads, oozing rashes, and dramatic size variations warn hunters away from particularly chalk-polluted areas.

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Vote for Land of Cicadas, best writing

I am absolutely thrilled that Cloud Empress Land of Cicadas was nominated for best writing in the 2024 Ennies. Getting recognition for my work on the project feels humbling and gratifying.

Fan-voted awards often come down to community support. I’ve seen how even smaller games can take home prizes when people go out of their way to support them. Thanks so much for your support already!

If you’ve enjoyed Cloud Empress or get something out of this newsletter, please vote for Cloud Empress: Land of Cicadas right now.

First round of Rust Wing playtests (success!)

When I’m not working on Cloud Empress Life & Death, I’ve been making progress on my next game, Rust Wings. Rust Wings is a Mausritter compatible adventure game set in a world where stray youth fly scrap planes to forgotten cities filled with deteriorating robots. I held the first two playtest sessions at a local convention called Convergence last week.

With Rust Wings, I’m trying to easily simulate the decisions, consequences, and excitement of navigating physical spaces like in one of Hayao Miyazaki’s chase sequences. For the playtests, I specifically looked at character creation, map making, and a new Mausritter stamina system.

What went well in the playtests:

• Folks loved the three-dimensional maps made of children’s blocks, particularly the current random map generation where I dump a bunch of blocks on the table and sort the mess using some specific procedures. I’ve never seen another ttrpg use children’s blocks, but they worked so well and created a great table presence. Pictures of three-dimensional maps also successfully conveyed height and depth, although questions about scale came up.

• Card-based character creation (players are dealt two cards at a time with character options to choose from) went very well, and got us playing quickly with fairly evocative characters.

• Playtesters regularly spent stamina (HP equivalent in Mausritter) to mitigate risks. Safe, silent, and swift (the three default consequences of a failed test), created evocative moments and interesting gameplay while reducing some of the GM complexity generating fail forward consequences.

• I received positive feedback about the creative Splatoon-inspired items. One playtester thought were more interesting than traditional weapons.

What to work on next:

• I tried a Neon White-inspired mechanism where tools could be discarded for one-time effects, but no one engaged with this mechanism. I also added the option to repair broken weapons, but only one weapon broke and there was not a lot of interest in fixing it. I think tool simplicity works best at this point.

• I'm still working out what three ability scores to use to catch enough types of play. Right now I’m thinking Strength, Speed, and Wit, but need to spend more time on this. I tried splicing, and charm for the third ability, but both felt too narrow and weren’t used frequently enough.

• The stamina system is coming along but needs additional refinement including adding a visual reminder or stamina tool on the character sheets.

That’s it for this month! Thanks for your support and please vote for Cloud Empress: Land of Cicadas right now.