Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name is Ryan and today we have a very special guest.
That is what how you doing today?
What? So good, so good.
Happy New Year. Yes, Happy New Year.
This is the first episode, technically the first episode of
the year because the review did happen on like the 30th.
So, so you're kicking us off for 2025.
And for those that can actually see the stream right now or
YouTube, thank you for watching this.
Hunter is not here. Obviously today we are going to
continue our writing seminar series, which apparently that
has become this with what here? What?
What is today's writing seminar and what are we going to be
talking about? Yeah, so we can kick over to the
presentation. The name of the seminar is
Writing Literary Adventures for Cloud Empress and Beyond.
So we'll talk a little bit about, you know, why we're doing
this, but the idea was to expand it a little bit beyond just
writing for Cloud Empress to to share a little bit about my
workflow and and support winter game jam that's coming up.
So really excited about that that I'll talk more about.
So I'll just give a little intro to me before we happen to the
more, you know, presentation aspect.
My name is Watt. I'm a Korean D tabletop
role-playing game designer and best known for Cloud Empress.
I've been writing since 2011 pretty seriously for
publication, but only writing for TTRPG since 2021.
We're going to be talking a lot about writing today, so I just
thought sharing a little bit more about my writing history
would be helpful. I have a number of like smaller
games and and stuff that I've done on game jams and stuff that
you can find on my itch dot IO as well that I'll be mentioning.
And you can follow me on Blue sky in the link below.
So I also have a publishing company.
It's just me, but Worlds by Watt is the name it goes under.
So you may see that on some books including Cloud Empress.
And the real goal of my publishing work and and writing
work to some extent is trying to make the world like a kinder,
stronger place through the TTRPG writing that I do.
And so some of the other aspects I'll just call out real quick is
that made a pledge to donate 1% of all of the company's profits
to climate related charities and actions through this
organization called 1% for the Planet.
We also have a Cloud of Risk Creators Fund that funds
marginalized and underrepresented authors
creating adventure content in the science fantasy setting.
Real quick, yeah. The presentation, I don't.
I believe you're going through it, but it is not advancing for
me. Oh, interesting.
Let's try. Are you seeing it now?
I am and it is advancing. OK, it's going now.
Yep. Cool.
Let me know if we have more issues.
Thanks. Very absolutely.
So this is a picture of my head from the past.
This is my logo that you might not have seen, and this is Cloud
Empress. It is a Nausicaa inspired hex
crawl campaign setting. It's science fantasy.
It has giant cicadas and and magic and all sorts of stuff.
But it's compatible with the mothership RPGD 100 system,
which is called the panic engine for sort of non mothership
setting content that you'll see more of that.
It's sort of a newer title that's come out just a little
bit about the history of Cloud Empress.
We did a campaign in 2022 to 2023.
It was a number of Zine books that came out and then there was
a, we're doing a reprint, which is a hardcover box set reprint
including two new setting books that's currently in fulfilment.
So we kick started it in 2024 and it'll be coming out
hopefully late summer, early fall for 2025.
Really excited to to have a number of like awards and and
praise for the book. So I want to silver any for best
writing. There's the awards.
Cloud Empress was selected as a 2024 awards recipient.
Recently been named a couple top ten games of 2024, including the
weekly scrolls number two overall game of 2024.
So very humbled and excited to have folks recognize the work
and and be excited about the writing in particular.
This is just a picture of what the new stuff is looking like.
Just so you get a better sense of sort of the art style and
graphic design. Very 70s inspired.
Like I said, Studio Ghibli, Nausicaa, Hayami Zaki kind of
inspired as well. Why are we doing the
presentation I mentioned a little bit earlier, but there is
a Winter game Jam or Cloud Embrace.
It runs from Sunday, January 5th to February 2nd, 2025 S about
one month. It's created by someone named
Peter and a team of regular Cloud Empress players and and
wardens from the RPG Night Utrecht in the Netherlands.
Probably seen that incorrectly, but they put together this game
jam to create winter content. Cloud Empress is set during a
particular summer, so they wanted some winter content to
play year round. And so really excited that they
held this for us and and that this will be happening because
it's just a month. Really encouraging folks to
focus on short form content, one page expansions, pamphlets, mini
zines, those kinds of things. So I created some templates as
well that you can use. I put a picture here that you
can see, but there's A1 pager, a trifold pamphlet, and a booklet
template to get you started with some sort of official branded
Cloud Empress materials, and you can grab that from the link
below. Cloud umbrs.com/thirdparty.
Those are for Affinity, which is what I use for for layout, but
there are some other free templates I think listed in the
game jam as well. Just a little bit of a note
around third party content. It's a pretty standard, at least
in the indie tabletop role-playing game Third Party
License. You're free to create compatible
work with Cloud Empress and monetize it.
There's just a couple little stipulations and you need to
include a, you know, blank as an independent production of your
your publisher name and not affiliated by my company.
And you can't use copyrighted material such as Cloud Empress,
like original text and artwork. So what are we going to be
talking about today? What are literary adventures?
We'll talk about that in a bit, but my three primary goals for
this this presentation today. First to define this this
concept of literary tabletop role-playing game adventure.
And next share my method for writing TTRPG adventures with
some specific practical advice for writing within the Cloud
Empress setting and hopefully just overall inspire you to take
some risks. Express your creative, authentic
voice in tabletop role-playing game adventure writing.
So I have a whole page of caveats.
One of them that I mentioned earlier is that I've only been
in the scene since 2021, so there are probably many more
examples of adventures that that I could pull out if I read them.
I have not really seen any discourse around this idea of
literary tabletop role-playing game adventures.
I don't know, Ryan. We can talk about that in the
Q&A if you've seen stuff. There is one post that I found
that sort of posits the idea or mentions that, you know, there
could be more literary writing in this field, but doesn't
necessarily define what that would look like exactly or, or
bring a number of examples, more contemporary works.
My the other piece with that is that on this is something I'm
sort of cobbling together to sort of explain my writing
process and summarize some of the work that I do.
So no TTRPG authors to my knowledge actually categorize
their work in this own way. It's not some kind of movement
or something that people are talking about themselves.
And I didn't use this kind of thinking necessarily when I was
actually writing Cloud Empress, at least the first content.
This is just a a sort of summary and categorization that helps me
understand my work and might help you understand it better as
well. The other big piece is like all
taxonomies, in my opinion, categorizations eventually
become meaningless if they become way too broad or way too
narrow. And so this is really just one
tool to help you understand some of the work that I've been doing
and, and how I think about my own work.
So feel free to use it if it's helpful.
If not, you can throw it away or ignore it.
And in bold and, and sort of mega important is that you know
that there's not one best way to write an adventure.
There's not one best way to run a tabletop role-playing game.
There's lots of different types of games, lots of different
adventures. They're for different audiences
with people with different tastes, wants, desires,
etcetera. And so calling something like
more literary than something else, does it mean it's better
written or that it's a better game?
It's just may have some certain characteristics under this sort
of arbitrary taxonomy that we're going to be positing.
So why should we care whether ATTRPG adventures literally not
before we even happen to some of the definitions?
Why do I care? Well, I, coming into the
tabletop role-playing being seen, especially the indie
scene, struggled to sort of understand why I like certain
adventures and certain TTRPG writers more than others.
I, I couldn't really put a finger on what made something
more successful to me, you know, and, and I enjoyed more.
I mean, I could say, oh, I like this more than that, but
thinking a little bit more deeply about that has helped me
sort of define my own work and help me create my own voice.
I like to develop some creative principles for projects that I
work on and some pillars of design that you'll see in in
like video game design and those things.
So this has helped me create, create my creative voice.
I was also interested in finding parallels between some of the my
favorite fiction. I I've been a long reader and
read a lot of fantasy and science fiction in particular.
And so I wanted to see what comparables and what elements
could be drawn from my favorite science fiction, fantasy and and
literary fiction over to TTRPG writing and ultimately create
writing that emotionally move people, intellectually move
people. The other piece, and I'll, I'll
say this a couple more times, at least with my writing philosophy
is that I read and maybe Ryan, I don't know if you're in this,
this camp, I read a lot more TTRP GS and TTRPG adventures
that I get to play maybe by a, a scale of like 12:50 or more.
So I read a lot and what I was thinking around creating
Clonopress was creating something that would be very
enjoyable as a reading experience and as a game
experience. And really thinking about the
reader as a valuable audience member, not only the players at
the table or the the GM or warden who's running it at the
table in that particular moment. So let's get into definitions.
What is a literary adventure according to what me I was a
librarian for 10 years. So to start with what a literary
adventure is, I thought we'd start with defining literary
fiction. The categorization of
contemporary fiction and and modern fiction.
Literary fiction is a loose and inadequate definition.
It's used conversationally in certain ways around work that
feels more serious, that's more intricate, often more
pretentious or challenging to read.
It's often not applied to genre works such as fantasy or science
fiction work or horror, although that's more recognized nowadays
than in the past. I found this definition or
characteristics from this blog called Bookish Bay that's linked
to your that I think helped me understand the concept and and
apply this to RPGs and adventures in this presentation
which is these 4 characteristics.
Rich prose and meticulous use of language, nuanced exploration of
characters in our lives, thought provoking themes, and an
emphasis on the human condition. And if we contrast that with
maybe more genre fiction or popular fiction, those tend to
be more concerned with plot driven narratives, external
conflicts, and the use of recognizable tropes versus some
of these elements. So 1 is not better than the
other it there tend to be these trends at least when we
arbitrarily categorize things into genre.
And the other piece too with with the word literary and
literature and all that kind of stuff.
Often times it's just this catch all for anything that people
think is well written. So something they feel is well
written. Well, that's literary.
That's literature. Quite arbitrary at times as
well. These are some literary fiction
examples I particularly like. There are more standout examples
that maybe define the genre in general, but these are ones that
I draw inspiration from. Blood Meridian, A Visit from the
Goon Squad, The Stranger, The Invisible Man, As I Lay Dying,
The Crying Lot 30. And like I said, I draw a lot of
inspiration from literary fantasy, literary science
fiction. Slaughterhouse 5, Shadow and
Claw, Tejano and the whole Earthsea series, Dahlgram, A
Scanner Darkly, Who Fears Death, and the Southern Reach series
are all big inspirations in my tabletop role-playing game
writing. And I'll include those sometimes
in some of my Kickstarter marketing and always get a kick
out of when people say, oh, Dahlagram, you know, that's so
exciting. So going back to that
definition, this will be the sort of framework I'm applying
on my own work and, and some adventures that I've read and
examples that I'll call out. So this rich prose and, and
stylistic use of language, that exploration of characters in our
lives, thought provoking themes and the emphasis on the human
condition. So these are some examples of of
works. Again, these authors I'm
guessing would not categorize this work this way.
I've never seen them do that, at least in my experience with
their work and social media presences.
But The Aisle by Luke Gearing is a really pivotal work in the
development of Cloud Empress. If you're not familiar, it's
really good. You should check it out.
It is notable for first, having no artwork.
There are maps, but there are no other forms of artwork.
The second piece is that it doesn't have hardly any summary
text. And so at the time that it was
published, I saw people saying I'm running this as AGM and I'm
not reading ahead. So we're all getting surprised
and and folks were able to do that.
It really feels like an active discovery during the reading
process, which I think is particularly unique.
And it was just a really enjoyable read while also having
some larger humanistic themes I think embedded in some of the
characters and descriptions. There.
A recent read that included a quote from that you can take a
look at when I when I send the PowerPoint out later is Crushed
Depth Apparatus by Amanda Lee. Frank is so good.
This was one of the most unique examples of NPC writing I've
seen. I'm guessing there are other
examples like this, but Amanda uses quotes from each character
with a brief multi word description of their occupation
on the submarine. I think it's a particularly good
example of how a pretty simple concept, it's a haunted
submarine. We see a lot of that kind of
stuff, particularly in Mothership.
It's a haunted ship. There's a monster on the ship.
This is a really great example of how to use literary writing
and fantastic prose to that. Maybe not elevate it, I'm not
going to use that, but to really embellish the the humanity and
the themes that I think Amanda was exploring it and just such a
fantastic read. So I really encourage that. 1000
Thousand Islands by Zedex Sioux. I'm not sure how in print that
is. I know you might still be able
to get a copy of Reach of the Roach.
God, I didn't list that as my title because I haven't read it
because I'm sort of afraid of cockroaches.
So that's on my list, but that might be more available. 1000
Empty Light by Alfred Valley Silent Titans by Patrick Stewart
is sort of this gonzo adventure into these giant beings that
it's it's quite strange and creative and playful and
imaginative while also being fantastically written.
And I'll call out one Cloud Empress adventure.
I, I love all the adventures we published, but Labyrinth of the
Bride by Keanna Shaw, I think does a particularly good job of,
of creating this sort of eerie literary style that I, that I
really enjoy reading as well. So just a few examples.
The, the other thing I'll return real quick.
I think there are many more examples of literary games or
literary inspired games. So a lot of Snow's work,
including the Wizards and wastes, I think is a great
example. But we're talking about
adventures today. So there are more examples of
games that have a literary style or have some really fantastic
writing that explores the same kind of themes.
But our focus today is writing expansion content and short form
adventures. So that's what I wanted to focus
on, at least in terms of my recommendations and references.
So the last sort of major portion of the presentation
today is really how to write for Cloud Empress and how I write
literary adventures, if we want to call them that.
We'll go through some specific examples, but I wanted to start
with some of the goals that I had when I started writing Cloud
Empress and still do writing expansion content for the game.
I like to have a question or something that's troubling me.
I like to explore that through the writing process and the
design process of tabletop role-playing game.
So with Cloud Empress I was interested in exploring my
questions and anxiety related to climate change and really what
does human resilience mean? How do humans and and people
find the joys within life in a increasingly challenging
environment? But also this the sense of hope
that comes with resilience. And so Cloud Empress takes place
in a post post apocalypse. The apocalypse has happened and
people are still living in this rural life, finding joys amidst
giant cicadas and and lots of challenges.
As a publisher, a lot of my work is inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's
work and so wanted to draw out these morally complex characters
and villains that Hayao Miyazaki is is most known for.
That I think makes his work exceptional and humanist and,
and political and, and very great.
We talked about it a couple times and I'll I'll probably
bring it up a couple times more, but really wanted to make the
reading experience as enjoyable as playing it.
My idea is, and I think I hear some of this from players, that
if we can evoke an emotional reaction from the reader,
they'll be better able to transfer that reaction and
interest in the world to their players.
So even though something might not be as easily digestible or
as easy to parse at the table, if we can create a memorable
reading experience, it's possible that that can become
more impactful at the table than simply having some bullet points
about a character that are really maybe simplistic or high,
super high level for that character, such as the Amanda
Lee Frank quote, right? It's a quote that's not going to
be great table reference, but it might be especially evocative so
that you get to know the character and remember them.
Surprise the reader is something I'm really interested in doing.
I don't use a lot of explanations upfront where I
sort of explain what's going to happen.
I like to let the text unfold and uncover as the reader and
the players go through it. On a design perspective, I
wanted to show the ripple effects of violence.
Rather than this idea that violence and this problems.
If someone's dead, I'm over. I wanted to show that violence
creates more violence and harm and trauma.
With all of these goals, I realized pretty quickly that I
was writing for a relatively experienced game master.
It's not to say that newer game masters can't run Cloud Empress,
but I decided due to time and space constraints mainly didn't
have enough room in the books and and didn't think I was maybe
the the best person to write a bunch of GM advice based on my
own experience and and skills. So I don't do a lot of hand
holding in the text themselves. It sort of presents itself and
let's GM sort of figure out how to create mechanisms around
that. Although there are supporting
elements within the rule books and one of the big things we'll
talk about and some of the questions that we've already
gotten for the Q&A is this idea of how to use tropes and
familiar elements and draw inspiration.
Because tabletop role-playing games are imaginary spaces in
most cases and you're you're traveling through them.
You don't have full artwork for everything you're meeting and
everything you're seeing. I wanted to use science fantasy
tropes. Nausicaa Dune Star Wars A New
Hope to create this shared understanding of the world that
people could quickly latch John based on shared cultural
experiences while subverting their expectations deliberately
and consistently so that it didn't feel highly derivative.
Or again, going with that element of surprise.
Ultimately, I want to write adventures that I want to read
and play. I think writing stuff that
interests you and excites you is probably the only way to to
capture an audience interest as well.
Shout out to the Liminal Horror writing series, by the way, that
those presentations are fantastic.
I really encourage folks to look at those.
This was sort of covered in in one of the, I think session two
maybe. But I have two forms of
adventures primarily, and there's some Gray in the middle.
But I have these introductory one shots in Cloud Empress, last
voyage of the Bean Barge and funeral, the anti St. which have
these sort of clear hooks that draw players into the location.
And they typically trap players there or, or create really
compelling reasons why they can't leave or if they leave,
they're going to be in serious harm.
Typically those types of adventures have three to four
major NPCS that get the little headshots and the belongings and
and things that we'll look at in a minute.
And I like to introduce setting elements as if players are new
in those locations and experiment with forms and and
additional mechanisms and create sometimes novel gameplay
experiences. Or in the case of funeral of the
for the anti St., that was my like murder mystery kind of
take, whereas less voyage of the bean barge is sort of this ship
adventure crashing ship kind of thing that I've seen at times
and other tabletop open games as well.
These ones I find require play testing to to make them work
when I the first versions of these did not go very well.
And so iteration and play testing really made them sing a
lot better and work a lot more cleanly.
The other type of adventures that we'll be spending today's
presentation on are what I call locations in conflict, where
they are interesting and compelling situations happening
at a particular location in a particular moment of time.
But I don't use formal adventure hooks or super apparent or
explicit reasons for the players to be involved in these
locations, especially in the text itself.
I really generally don't care if the PCs leave.
Cloud Empress is a sandbox hex crawl.
And so one of the really great benefits is that if folks aren't
interested in something, they can just do something else.
So if they come upon the situation and they say our
characters wouldn't be invested in this, they can go somewhere
else and the warden or the GM still has resources to keep the
session going. Whereas obviously in other
systems or other frameworks or these one shots, if you say to
your word, and we don't want to do this, our characters wouldn't
do this. Their their prep would be thrown
out and they might not not have something to run for you.
So you kind of have to make up reasons or or keep your
characters in that space for the sake of your wardens and GM
sanity and and prep. In these cases, I typically do
one to two major NPCS. These can be difficult to play
test and I find generally not like especially critical to play
test if the mechanisms of the game are functioning properly.
So we're going to be again, focusing on these these
adventure locations. And so this is one from Land of
Cicadas. It's called Pennants Farm.
You can see the spread here. And we'll sort of pop into
different elements as we explain my writing process for it.
So I don't exactly always follow this, but I generally with
location and conflict, create a concept to find the space and
then fill in the details and we'll go through each one of
these ways to approach the adventure location.
So ideating a concept, I especially like this part.
It's very fun. What I like to do is take one or
two tropes of science fantasy or fantasy or science fiction or
horror, but I like to mix them together in ideally new ways or
add a third element that complexifies them.
We'll talk more in the Q&A section.
I think there's some interest around inspiration use, but
ideally what I like to do based on experiences give inspirations
time to settle. So sometimes I'll read something
or see something or play something that I get really
excited about and I want to bring to the tabletop
role-playing game space or adventures.
And often times when I start writing in that vein, when I'm
really excited about something directly after seeing it, in my
experience, the work can feel extremely derivative.
It's like a one for one of what I just watched or, or doesn't
necessarily have my unique take on things or or doesn't sound
like my writing. So I like to let some of my
inspirations kind of digest over months or years.
And after I've been thinking about something for quite a
while, a lot of the, the details of that text have become fuzzy.
And I sort of fill those in with some of the themes or ideas I'm
trying to explore with adventures and, and the setting
in general. I like to find questions or
concepts I've been grappling with.
But what that means too, is I think it it's successful, you
can, you can tackle social issues or economic or
environmental issues or political issues.
I think best and most effectively by bringing
questions to the setting rather than definitive answers.
I find that work that you're trying to espouse a certain
ideology or a a particular answer tends to feel preachy or
it feels like the the writer or the words trying to tell a
particular story. And that can feel restrictive
and and unfun for the players. So bringing some pieces together
that can engage players in conversations about social
issues or political issues or environmental issues can be
really interesting. But exploring the question and
the nuances around those issues I think has been most successful
for me at least, and seems to resonate with Khada versus
readers, which I'm excited about.
South, looking at this pennants farm example, the tropes that I
sort of brought to this adventure are floating spores
from Nausicaa. Nausicaa has this whole spore
jungle with all these floating things that that are highly
infectious and dangerous. The Last of Us has zombies.
There's some zombies in this adventure and just throwing a
third element in the crucifixion of Christ, this Christian
imagery that that I'll sort of talk about with one particular
character. The questions I was thinking
about consciously or subconsciously, sometimes these
happen more than than writing out specifically ahead.
But was just how is the fear of the unknown manifest in
societies? How do people view miracles when
they occur during the moment rather than in hindsight?
So we can all apply a different narrative to things like after
the fact, but what what is the experience of the unknown in the
moment? So with this general concept, I
started writing out the adventure.
I centered a lot of the writing around NPCS.
I think it's where I get to do some of the most interesting
writing in Klonopris because I'm not having to define the actual
physical space that players need to navigate.
And so I think it's best to be cautious at times with
navigating space, which we'll talk about.
But I like to create morally complex NPC's that make simple
solutions to the conflicts that are going on impossible or
really challenging to implement, so that more complex
negotiations, challenges, problem solving needs to happen.
Even though I'm trying to write more nuanced NPCS, sticking to
two or three main ideas can be helpful just to fit within the
the text box that I have. Like to make everyone a bit
tragic. I try to put some hope and
resilience in there too, but everyone's a little sad with
that. I try to make a whole person
captured in a specific moment in time.
One of the things that is somewhat unique about Cloud
Empress, at least explicitly, is that it takes place during the
summer of the Century Brood. And so it's got this very
particular time that it's happening in over a three to
four month period. And so writing NPCS, you're
writing them during this time period.
The two new setting books advance the timeline a couple of
months, so they start to take place in the late summer, early
fall. So when the the setting book
takes place is sort of when we're experiencing that
character. Like I said, I like to try to
evoke some kind of emotional response, really exploring
internal conflicts, doubt, Shades of Grey, uncertainty
within a character. I like to, well, I think it's
essential that I expect the reader to take time and effort
to read the text before running the adventure.
So one of the assumptions and just things I've had to come to
terms with is that more prep will be necessary probably to
run Cloud Empress than maybe other games.
They're not as table reference ready.
So some games you can throw on the table, they've got bullet
points, they've got bolded text that really help you run it in
the moment. Whereas with Cloud Empress, you
will need to sort of digest and think about the character.
Maybe you'll need to to do some work ahead of time and maybe
make additional notes with some of those bullets.
And this consequently also means that 1G Ms. understanding of an
MPC may vary from another. And not being so concerned with
representing the character exactly the same across games or
players and groups having the same kind of consistent
experience, really letting interpretations vary and how
certain characters are played or acted within a certain conflict
be relatively different depending on who's running them
and what the PCs are doing in the environment suggests for
those individual groups. So when we look at the pennants
farm and PCs, the major NPC for the space is Spike Head.
He is a corpse that came to life miraculously.
He looks quite alarming. One of the things I'll mention
too is I generally don't write what can be shown at artwork.
I'm trying to get better at alt text in the new release so that
it is more accessible for folks of a variety of abilities, but I
generally don't write a lot of physical descriptions if I have
artwork to express those. He's or spike heads trapped in
an outhouse spike heads childlike and innocent.
But we know that spike head, based on the information and the
rules, is largely infectious and dangerous when injured in
particular. And so the characters in the
space are dealing with this. What can be considered a
monster, right? And that the sport keepers are
the alternative group or faction.
They're a group that that race spores and Cellars.
They're used to fungal infection, so they've got
flamethrowers. They're going to burn spike head
to death in the near future. They're generous.
They do check the players to make sure that they're they
aren't carrying infection, but then they offer food and really
invite the players in. They're deadly.
They have weapons and they have experienced taking out these
creatures and they're on a mission to end the infection and
help the region. That's that's there's this white
spore infection that's propped cropped up that's really
unusual. And so they're they're on this
mission. A lot of the sport keepers just
sort of stop it and curtail the damages that are happening.
But they also want to start a life in the destroyed village.
They've come from another village.
The village is now unoccupied because of all the death that's
happened here with the infection.
But so they are imagining this future for themselves in this
space in future summers and in in, you know, longer term.
So with the location writing, I tend to keep layouts and maps
fairly simple. I do look for and want to avoid
movement paths, especially indoors where there's no
choices, where it's sort of the single singular railroad or
snake that people have to go on. So I try to give some branching
paths that can create things interesting.
And there's a lot of writing on dungeon design in particular
that you can access with a quick search engine search, looking
for opportunities to sneak in poetic flourishes and and sort
of exercise prose that makes it a little bit more interesting to
read. Sometimes these location
descriptions can feel a little utilitarian.
I like to include a few boring spaces to accentuate more
interesting room 1. So sometimes a room may not have
a lot going on, but I think that can create a more surprising
element in a future room or a more realistic sort of
interpretation of of space and time.
One of these things, this is like a a weird, maybe not weird,
but it's sort of obsession for me is that spaces should be
useful to the people that sort of exist within the world,
right? And so most of the time we're
talking about humans. So humans need places to eat,
sleep and void their bodily waste.
So I always try to write kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms
in the locations, particularly bathrooms.
So I've seen when we were doing some of the adventures, the
minis in adventures, some of them didn't include bathrooms.
And I'm like, we need to put a bathroom in somewhere.
Like let's, let's put the bathroom in.
And they don't, Those can be those boring spaces, or you can
put one or two elements in there.
But I always try to put a bathroom somewhere just to make
it feel more real. I don't know, I, I, I get really
caught up when, when spaces become a little too unreal
without those those basic things.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a location in a specific moment
in time. One of the things that I do is
freeze the MPCS in specific locations as needed.
So in this case, the sport keepers are always setting up
this pyre when the players get there, they're always making
dinner in a certain area. Time does not advance until the
players get there, which is maybe a little video gamey, but
in many cases, once the players sort of engage with the world,
timers can start. But I think writing wise, it's
most interesting to put things in in a moment in conflict and
then once the players get there that the clock sort of starts
and consequences can start happening.
If players really go somewhere totally different or it's months
later, then I think some adaptation may be necessary.
But again, the the narrow time frame of the land is Takitas
sort of helps in that regard as well.
So this is what Pennants Farm looks like.
It's a small village in the midst of this flame cleaning of
these this infection. PCs have likely experienced the
white sport at least rumors of it.
So they have some prep for this, you know, adventure to come.
The sport keepers immediately sort of call out to the PCs and
hold them at gunpoint to investigate whether the the PCs
are infected or not. Once they're cleared, they're
invited into dinner really generously and they can, they
can have a meal and and warm and pleasant conversation.
But we also have Spike House in the Spike head in the outhouse
who is calling for assistance and speaking through this barred
window. Really sympathetic character,
probably to the players who sort of asking for help, but quite
alarming looking and again, potentially dangerous.
This is the next part, which is the writing your ass off.
This is just right. As hard as you can, right?
As best as you can. I think some notes on that are
sometimes I'll, I'll feel myself in autopilot and I'll say, OK, I
know what's going to happen. I know what's going to happen, I
just need to write it now. And a lot of times I find that
when I'm doing that, I'm leaning too heavily on trope.
So I'm saying, oh, I know what's going to happen.
And a lot of times I'll be pulling from like a movie or ATV
show or what I expect AAD and D adventure to look like.
And so when I start feeling things are especially simple or
obvious, that's when I stop and, and sort of subvert expectations
or think about a more interesting approach.
Sometimes this happens during a revision as well.
I like to this is something I got from a blog post that I I
can't remember where or who, but this idea of putting 1 original
or unusual idea at least on each page.
So what's something like really unique to the setting or the
space that that is not present or maybe the players haven't
seen before or the reader hasn't seen before.
There's not a whole lot that's original, but again, you can
combine things in new ways or put new contexts around tropes
and elements that might feel unusual.
I like to focus on the sound and appearance of language.
Sometimes I'll real read the pros out aloud to to hear how it
sounds. In line with that, I generally
avoid adding game mechanisms in my writing.
So I don't say make a speed check, make a body save.
I do not like reading those in adventures.
I find them really boring. I find them break up the text.
I see Ryan's head nodding and this goes in line with who is
your audience. So if I'm writing for a more
novice or inexperienced game master, maybe I would include
those. But the assumption here is that
wardens will use this text in a variety of ways.
They'll need to make their own decisions.
It's not a reference text at the table primarily, although you
know, you certainly probably want to have it on hand.
So the idea with that is just that they can do that on their
own. They can listen to the
situation, listen to the players and make those calls on their
own. I like adding poetic phrases
wherever I can, but not in a way that they intrude or become
obnoxious. If something doesn't feel right
or feels boring or some some paragraphs, I just I'm like,
that's a key for me to rewrite it if I have time and see if I
can come up with something a bit better with that.
In this literary again framework, looking for
opportunities to comment on the greater human experience or the
overall nature of the world and setting.
And that's sort of looking outside of the adventure where
we might ascertain certain elements about human experience
or just something a little bit more poetic that speaks to
things outside of the individual adventure in the conflict that's
happening. So how does this adventure speak
to human nature? How does this adventure speak to
the nature of conflict within our our present day world?
I think that stuff can be really interesting when done
thoughtfully. And, and writing is hard.
It's hard to do. And so good luck.
It's not impossible. Writing bad is actually quite
easy. Writing well is, is more
challenging. So we'll talk more about just
just getting the words on page and and finishing stuff is is so
valuable and not worrying too much about making something
that's great. Just finishing something.
There are some examples here. I'll read the spike head one.
I don't want to do too much reading, but I these are just
some little flourishes that I think I fit into the pennant's
farm adventure that I had that I'm still happy with.
What miracle isn't disturbing for aren't miracles meant to be
a disturbance to everyday life? The world always takes the side
of change, and only one careless cigarette butt is needed to
create a wildfire. So that's an example about Spike
Head within the individual setting and the individual
conflict with the adventure. But it's also commenting on the
nature of miracles and how the world changes, the environment
changes. So the the last piece is filling
in the details. These are the things I generally
find maybe least interesting or feel like the most work
potentially. But that's like stats the
belongings of different characters and items for Cloud
Empress. Just as a benchmark.
The average human has about 30 instinct and three wounds.
You can borrow these stats though from other Cloud Empress
characters or mothership NPC's as they make sense.
When I'm writing a character's belongings, these are like
literally all the things that that character is carrying.
In case the the player steal from them or they die or
whatever, they offer something up or need to trade.
I always try to add one or two belongings that feel like they
complexify the character. So what's one or two things that
are unexpected or or you wouldn't expect that maybe
reveals an insight? Ideally everything sort of makes
sense within the character, but one or two elements that feel
like a subversion. I embed weapons in the belonging
list. So in many games you'll see
combat values sort of show up front and center with each NPC
and animal and creature and, and stuff.
And so my thought is to really embed those a bit so that it, it
doesn't become the first thought of the use of the NPC or that
the, the character or the soldier, whatever, they're a
person who can be dangerous in combat probably.
But that's not the the first way that we're going to look at
them. How I write items and, and
relics, like magic items in Cloud Empress, I typically will
sit down and write a list of those first and then I'll
sprinkle those throughout different adventures.
That's the way that I find most interesting, unless the
adventure sort of hinges around a particular relic or item or
situation, and then I might write it in a different order.
But I, I find I have the most fun and, and the, the my brain
works the best when I'm just writing a set of those items and
then dispensing them across the the setting book.
Some of those examples, though, in cloud Empress are like
crests, which are the noble artifacts that they use to use
their own form of magic spells, sticks a chalk, which is the
currency primarily the only sort of tradable currency, weapons,
unique weapons and relics and slippery stuff, which are just
magical items in the stepping. Those are all good rewards and
sort of encourage players to investigate and and feel like
keep the world a mysterious and magical place, which is some of
the vibe that cloud Empress is going for.
So here's some examples of pennants farm items.
We have spike heads belongings. Spike head has beaded jewelry, a
gourd canteen, moldy book of prayers, packets of sugar and
sport keepers funeral robes. I would say that packets of
sugar may be in the moldy book of prayers are may be unexpected
on a potentially like monstrous looking creature.
There are no relics or particularly interesting items
in Penance Farm, which maybe I should rectify.
But Ebert does send the PCs to this infected household where
there is a relic there. So players that sort of do this
side quest to clear up an additional home that's on the
periphery of the village. There's this thing called the
Hounds incense Burner where when it's lit, it summons these
interdimensional hounds that sort of terrorized the space.
So kind of an interesting item that folks can find in the in
the house located on B9 in this case and the hex map.
The other piece, this isn't present in pennants farm.
It maybe should have been, but I had for whatever reason, I think
with the layout, I was constricted to a single spread,
which is also the reason why I'm showing it today.
But you can include and and maybe need to include this
timeline if the PCs do nothing. Is is sort of the way it's
framed in cloud operas. So if the PCs ignore the
conflict, what advances within the world and what kind of
relevant actions are the NPCS taking to escalate the conflict
and will under what timeline? So this is one of the this this
is called the sleeping giant that this comes from, but it's
in an hourly setting. And then it jumps to three days
and then four days later there's this giant nuclear explosion and
a bunch of cicadas come, you know, eat this giant monster
that's dying. The timeline again establishes
the stakes and key reasons the PCs might seek to intervene and
creates consequences within the world So that players I think
one of the incentives that's often not fully recognized as
designers, we have to talk a lot about like what items can
someone get or what? But I think like guilt, guilt
and and care and community are all incentives as well.
And so if players feel like the world is alive and that, you
know, if they care about spike head or they care about these
for keepers, that becomes a really large incentive and hook,
I think, for why someone would get involved beyond especially
in video games where it's like, I'll give you this chest or I
have a magic item for you that doesn't to me, it happened a lot
of my day-to-day experience. It's more of this like trust and
appreciation or kindness or even with strangers.
There's a thank you where I I seem to care about this person
rather than a like monetized experience where someone's
handing me a $5.00 bill after I've helped them like with their
groceries or something in the neighborhood.
So let's talk about some reflections and final thoughts.
Hopefully that explains my process again, I'll just pop
this slide up again, flipping through quite a few, but just to
to recap the process that I I go through, come up with your
concepts and themes, fill out how that's going to manifest in
the space through NPC's locations and writing itself.
And then filling in the details with those elements that that
sort of RPG fi what you're doing and and make it a game that that
people want to play and enjoy. Now, let's hop over to
reflections. These are just some final
thoughts I've had. First, these are just some
questions you can consider as you're writing or after you've
written something to, you know, think about how much adventure
information was obscured and sort of when did players when
would players receive the information?
How quickly do they figure out exactly what's going on?
Is your text enjoyable for you to read?
Do you like reading it? Does the text evoke any
particular emotions at any point, particularly with the
NPCS? How does the text explore your
questions about real world events, politics, the
environment, your left reality, the human experience?
So those are some things that I think embody what it means to be
a literary a little bit or something that might lean you in
that direction at least. Feeling a little bit more Cloud
Empress related. This is my final unasked for
general advice. I think at this point with how
much content is coming out content right?
TTRPDS, video games, literature, movies.
With so much that's coming out, I am starting to really
appreciate risk taking and weirdness and experiments more
than well crafted convention conventionality.
I grew up as a comic book fan, a big Marvel reader, and I am
very, very tired of Marvel movies because they all seem to
resolve the same way, with the same stakes, with the same
impact on the characters. And so even the, you know, the
Francis Ford Coppola movie, I, I'm forgetting the name, but I,
I just, you know, that was weird, right?
So I like stuff like that. I appreciate things more for
their risks, whether they're successful or not.
That doesn't always mean they're they're great or masterpieces of
art, but, you know, be weird. Try some things.
The other pieces. People can only read what you
publish. So be shipping stuff if you're
interested in this at all, like start on a reasonable project.
I think that's one of the great things about the Winter Jam is
we've set this constraint. We've given you some tools to
make something small. That's how I started doing
tabletop role-playing games from my own background.
I always wanted to write this like science fiction series or
this big novel and stuff, and I would always get 10 pages in and
nothing would work and I'd feel overwhelmed and I'd stop, right?
So I think writing particularly under a timeline, that's how I
do, I have to do all my work now is I have this many months to
get something done or this many weeks or days, and you just need
to finish stuff at least to publish it and have people enjoy
it. So this knowledge that with the
Pennants Farm example for there are things I would, I want to
change, right? But I needed to get it done in a
certain way, in a certain time, in a certain layout.
And so it's OK if things aren't perfect.
If you really care later, you can come back and revise it and
republish it. And people will, you know, have
that version if you so choose. Try to read as much as you write
and write as much as you read. Those are challenging things to
do. But if you want to write in this
field, I think you should enjoy what you're reading.
And if you're not enjoying what you're reading, try to find new
stuff or, or draw inspirations elsewhere.
I like to write with an end product in mind and set some
goals around that end product. So think about the form factor
that you're writing this start with maybe the the deliverable
in your head and things can change.
But I think it's helpful to know, am I writing this for a
pamphlet? Is this going to be just a, you
know, APDF? Am I going to print this as a
eight page Zine? Is it going to be a hardcover?
Am I making this a whole box set, etcetera?
Also, what format you're going to be releasing it in?
Is this a Kickstarter product versus something I'm releasing
an itch? That varies a lot in terms of
what expectations and goals and, and things you might need to do
to make that successful. And finally, your thoughts,
ideas and work are important. Art is so nebulous.
One of the things that, that I, I've been reflecting on,
especially with my Spotify Wrapped in my own cases, some of
these artists, I'm like the top 001 percent or zero, 1% of this
artist listeners. And they're my favorite
musician. I like this, this artist called
Nilafer Yenya, I believe, and I just like her music a lot.
And she's one of my favorite musicians.
And apparently I'm, I'm, you know, I think she's got a lot of
listeners, but I'm like the top percentage point of that the,
the very top of the cap. So the weird thing you're making
might be someone's favorite thing ever, or at least favorite
thing in the genre or favorite thing all year.
And so just because you might not be able to have a wide reach
at this point, it doesn't mean that the work you're not doing
is is valuable. And, and also art is really
important in ways that I don't understand.
It changes people, it changes societies.
It reflects societies in these like unknowable ways that I
think it's challenging when you're writing or creating
something. It can feel like there's many
other things I could do that would have a more immediate and
linear outcome in my life. Consuming media, playing video
games, all sorts of stuff. But art has this profound impact
on both the artist and the society that it's it's published
or or given to. And so I think trusting that the
work you're doing is important and will mean something to
someone creates a a stronger imperative to finish it and to
get it done. So yeah, I think that is it.
I'll give you some next steps. Closing things again, really
encourage you to submit to this game jam.
January 5th to February 2nd. We've again given you some
templates. There's a number of people
involved. We have a Discord called Cloud
and Press Discord that you can there's there's a link on my
website, cloudempress.com, but there's a bunch of people
already talking about what they're going to come up with
brainstorming, coming up with solutions to challenges or
shared questions they're having. I'm monitoring that if you have
questions for me and I will be putting this presentation out on
the slides and maybe some the recording answers to the the
questions potentially that we don't get to on the Cloud
Empress newsletter, which is at worldsbywatt.substack.com.
So if you want this material, that's where you'll be able to
find it in the near future, probably in the next week or two
in January. And it's January 2025 for folks
watching us in the far future. So I think that's it, Ryan,
there's my blue sky again. But I we have a number of
questions that we can dive into if you're ready for it, Ryan and
you are muted, I believe or I'm not here.
I was, I was, I should be OK now.
All right, so got a whole lot of questions here.
How, how long do you want to go for this?
And I'll, I'll start from the top and we'll go from there.
Yeah. What time is it?
Well, maybe we'll do like 10-15 minutes, something like that.
Sounds good. So I think one of the most part
in questions was what's the first piece of advice you'd give
to a first time adventure writer or game jam entrance?
Specifically about Cloud Empress and and the Winter Jam.
I think being a really type A person, I get a really I I get
ahead of myself. And so one thing I would
recommend just, or your first game jam and, and just writing
and doing something creative in general is really check in along
the way and see if you're enjoying what you're doing.
Finishing stuff is awesome and I really encourage it.
But I've done a lot of things in my life because other people
told me I was good at them, right?
I felt good at them, but ultimately they weren't
fulfilling or they were really challenging in ways or felt
creatively draining. So monitor yourself and see
where you're at. But I, I think the thing I would
recommend is, is whatever, however long you think it's
going to take, it's going to take twice as long, studies
show. So pick something small and just
get something done that I would say start with A1 page, just A1
pager. Find some Creative Commons
artwork, maybe as a starting point even, and then write to
the Creative Commons artwork. And I think you, if you, if you
get done with that and you have more energy and you, you can do
another right, you can keep adding.
But finishing stuff is, is so enriching.
It's it is the lifeblood of my life now in terms of just
getting stuff out there. And it also, I find really
alleviates fears of like, what are people going to say about my
work or what are what if it's not perfect enough?
If you really sunk into this like idea of like, I get stuff
done and I get stuff done on a timeline.
As you know, things change, but that stuff can alleviate some of
those fears as well. Yeah, you can't fix something
that never gets put out. So you know it's.
I say that as someone who's been working on something for way too
long and it'll and it won't see the light of day.
I have a couple things and because this is my stream, I can
say it. I just think that this is not a
question, but bathrooms as discourse is definitely a thing.
And it's a very interesting discourse when you read up on
where do goblins shit in the dungeon?
But we don't need to get into that.
But I just thought it was interesting when you brought up
it has to have a bathroom. But one of the things I wanted
to say specifically was you brought up Hai Miyazaki in
Studio Ghibli, and I often see people use those as
inspirations, but specifically for like pastoral and whimsical
things, which is part of Ghibli, right?
But just about all of Ghibli has a much deeper layer to that.
So when you talk about using Miyazaki as an inspiration in
literary adventures or in even Cloud Empress, what what of the
more complex parts of it inspire you or what have you drawn from
that work did? You can obviously see it in
Cloud Empress. Yeah, thank you for the
question. Hayu Miyazaki in particular is
my number one inspiration in in tabletop role-playing game.
I, I, I go back and back to the works and, and I've been doing
reading on and I spent a lot of time thinking about this.
To your point, I think the there's a real like
commercialization and monetization that's happened
intentionally by, by Studio Ghibli, right?
But there's Totoro's everywhere. There's no face everywhere.
There's these kind of kitschy little plushies and things.
But it really at times flattens the complexity of the pieces.
And so I think about my neighbor Tutra, which I saw very, very
young, and this like ambiguity and concern about the mother's
likely spinal tuberculosis. And so it's a it's A at the same
time, it's about the pastoral and about the magical.
It's in conversation with chronic illness and
hospitalization and uncertainty and death and all these kinds of
things. And the central conflict of the
the film becomes about that with this may being missing.
So I think that's something that I, I like to look at gaps in the
market in terms of like a product person and thinking
about what could I do differently.
And, and that was one of the big pieces.
I'd seen a lot of Studio Ghibli inspired, but I never seen
something Nausicaa inspired and on the market or I never saw.
I have an idea for something that Princess Mononoke inspired
Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke 2, I should say, are my my
probably my favorite Studio Ghibli films.
Totoro has a special place in my heart, but some of the more
adult work. And the other piece I think
about is that Studio Ghibli's films at Hayao Miyazaki in
particular, are some of the most successful political works I
think I've experienced. They have a political leaning
and a political message in a way that has developed me as a
person. And again, doesn't feel preachy,
doesn't feel, I don't know, uncomfortable.
It's, it's sort of these, these messages come out of the themes
of the films in a really organic way.
And so that's something I've tried to do is I really think a
lot about politics, climate, economics, I think a lot about
the world's problems about philosophy.
And so I want to put that in my work, but in a way that that
isn't obnoxious. And so I, I think that's been a
great example of Hayao Miyazaki in particular, spreading these
things into his work in a way that feels a part of it rather
than something layered on top or a, a particular message.
Yeah, great, great answer. Like I said, any the flattening
of of the whole thing like you said is, is a part that always
bothers me because I love Jubilee Mono OK is one of them
is my top one or two as well. So if you're doing something for
that, I will be very, very into it.
So going back to literary adventures, somebody asked what
is a literary adventure? I feel like we went over that,
but is there a way to turn a non literary adventure Literary.
So again, it's my arbitrary distinction, but I think what I
would say we have that checklist of like those those elements.
I think one of the things that's often missing from even stuff
that's I I consider very well written dungeon writing a really
interesting TTRPG writing is nothing that I can use in my own
life to to enrich me as a person.
It might be like, Wow, there's this really interesting thing
happening or these two factions are fighting.
But nowhere in the text do I see any kind of slight commentary or
poke at the broader universal experience or the internal
nature of the characters. And so I think adding one or two
sentences about even a character, it can come from a
character, as we saw in the Amanda Lee Frank.
But yeah, you know, people are always killing each other.
You know, even just a little sentence, couple little
sentences in there where characters are commenting about
the nature of the universe. I don't think that's
pretentious. And I think it adds a lot.
And I think digging into the depths of your characters a bit
more, even in a couple sentences, I think those start
to poke towards that way. I think there are many great
writers. I think the harder examples are
to find are where people are looking a bit outside of the
conflict or the genre or things that might be a little bit more
philosophical or political or those kinds of elements that
that may be missing or not included.
Yeah, it really feels, you know, at least part of what I got from
the presentation is that the way that you are defining literary
adventures is really in a depth or like a ability to kind of
like zoom out the lens a little bit and to see more than just
what's currently happening, but how it sets itself into the
wider narrative. I know you talk about human
experience a lot, but I think it's what you just said about
placing it into the context of the world, like, Oh yeah, this
really sucks. It happens all the time.
Gives people like a wider depth of complexity, which is
something, again, you're not really going to get that with
all like, let's make A5 room dungeon thing.
But when you have a sandbox world like cloud inferences,
it's really nice to be able to see how that can fit into the
wider spread of the entire setting.
I I think to treating your characters as more than
material. I think there's this idea of, of
treating people as obstacles or, or using them as, as like clay,
right? This just this actual material
to create violence in many cases.
And so I think to getting out of this mindset of, of what
violence is for. And, and again, this is, I'm not
getting like preachy in the text itself, but if you
disincentivize violence, you have a lot more space for like
spending time with certain characters.
Or if you, if you, and it's sort of the self feedback, you know,
cyclical cycle where if you make more, if it becomes WWE, right,
everyone's going to smack everyone with a chair.
And sometimes that's fun and sometimes people like that.
But if you are trying to do something more akin to Cloud
Empress or, or some of the, the goals that I have, if you take
away the like big bravado in the, you know, spinning water
out of your mouth in the fireworks, like it makes it a
lot harder to kill people, I think, or at least commit like
atrocious acts of violence within the, the game world.
And those things can happen in different spaces and and for
different reasons and not necessarily entirely judgmental
of that, But I think that would be my my other thought on that.
So there is a question that that birches out a little bit.
How do you keep the tension and conflict in a relatively low
violence setting like Cloud Empress?
Or at least not that the setting is low violence, because
obviously violence happens a lot, but the character's actions
and stuff. Because for anyone that's Red
Cloud Empress, there is violence is it's a very specific decision
to do that. It's not just always from my
sword. Now there are parts of the
mechanisms that that affect that.
So so how? How would you do that?
In Clodipers in particular, I've made violence, and I guess it's
in Mothership and some of the elements I pulled from Frontier
Scum by Carl Druid, that violence is really deadly.
And so I think the other piece is that if it happens, it's
really bad mechanically. You get stress, you can die from
a single wound. There's all these things that
that make it really dangerous. So I think the threat of
violence is something to play with.
If this happens, there will be grievous consequences, and we
don't want those consequences to occur.
And so people become more creative when it's it's this
horrible negative. I think the other piece too, is
when you have more enriched characters with more complex
wants, it becomes less of a you must pay the rent.
I won't pay the rent, you must pay the rent.
This back and forth of these simple interests that can be
more hard to play as a warden, But I think that's where our
favorite media, we get to know characters pretty quickly and
it's like, Oh, I could fill in a sentence for that character.
Probably. You can always take a break too
and you know, think about it or but I I think the threat of
emphasizing the threat of violence rather than the the
action itself, the consequences of violence.
I think platypus is in many ways obsessed with violence in
certain ways are really centers around it.
So I think the other pieces in the weeds we come upon the
aftermath of a battle. And so it's like people crawling
around like people in misery, people, whether these soldiers
want to continue the fight or not.
So what? Those types of things could be
really interesting as well without having actual conflict
or combat, I guess. Conflict, yes.
Combat, no kind of thing. A question from Cerulean 5 in
chat that they asked specifically talking about the
phases of writing the adventure you were talking about.
They said how linear or iterative is your workflow in
practice? Are you working through one
phase at a time? Or do you go back to concept and
defining spaces and and and work your way back and forth through
the phases? Or do you generally try to go
through it in a linear fashion? I would say stats and belong.
I don't like grading stats. I don't like grading belongings.
I don't, I will items. I'm OK writing.
That can be interesting sometimes, but that always comes
last because I I think I enjoy that the least.
For whatever reason, it feels less essential, even though it's
probably one of the most helpful things, at least having certain
items and certain things in the game.
So that always happens last. I think the ideation usually
occurs a lot with the game itself.
So the whole game there's this this usually 6 to 9 month
ideation process when I'm working on something else and
wishing I was working on the new thing.
So I think that's the other thing about finishing stuff.
If you finish stuff, you can't work on your new thing that you
want to work on. And so you build up all this
energy for that new thing and then when you get there, you're
like, Oh my gosh. So I think sometimes though, I,
I, there's this, this discovery outliner writing dichotomy that
people talk about or sculptor gardener, where one person
really outlines and figures out what's going to happen and then
they write through the outline. The other person being the like
discovery writer, which is what I sort of call myself or think
about myself where the act of writing, I don't know what's
going to happen and I write and then I discover what's
happening. I find that much more enjoyable
than outlining, even though I'll do some layouts and know some of
the product space that I need to work in.
So at certain times I'll be writing and I'll say, oh, like I
didn't know Spike head drinks tea, you know, or I didn't know
this and that. And sometimes that'll impact the
larger theme. Sometimes it'll impact the
specifics of the conflict so that then I'll go back and I'll
look through to see if I can accentuate that theme in any
way. And I'll do sort of a pass to
like a clean up pass. Editing is really important.
We didn't talk about editing. There's a lot of steps
mechanically. This is really about writing,
but I'll go through and I'll say like, is there, you know, what
are the themes that are coming out?
And it is there ways that I can elevate that or make those more
concise by adding elements later?
And so that's sort of a back pass that that can sort of
accentuate the the ideation pointer, the concepts.
Gotcha, so the question just popped up in chat that is also
on the list from someone from your discord, so I I guess I got
to ask it. Are there any naming conventions
in Cloud Empress? They said specifically for
people and places in the primary setting, something that they
might be looking for when they're writing new stuff for
Cloud Empress in the Jam. Yeah, I'm glad we hit this one
there. There are a list of names in the
rule book that include different regions where people come from.
The largest dichotomy is whether someone comes from the lowland
wastes or they're on the ground or whether in the they're in a
cloud city. People have generally one word
names or with a nickname, and they're typically based on
things within the real world. So someone might be root,
someone might be silver, someone might be snow, someone might be
wind. Those kinds of things are, are
simple names you can use, but they're the setting is also sort
of in the hub of a psychic maelstrom or ripped reality.
So we'll have things from the 1800s peeking through or an old
car somewhere or things that are otherworldly.
And so that that gives a lot of space to have someone named
Henry or someone named Jonathan or what.
I don't know what kind of names I'm coming up with.
So the other thing that I do generally is I like to say names
out loud if people, if the players are going to be saying
them a lot. Certain names look really good
on paper, but when you. So yeah, here's it has farmer
Ling names, cloud Ling names, common names and ancient names.
And so the ancient names are more of the well, some of them
are weird, yeah. So they're they're sort of a
mix. This, this, this can be helpful
in some of the nicknames. But the other thing I try to say
names out loud. So sometimes things might be
really hard to say just with a number of like with it placement
of consonants and things. Also, I generally like to use
names that are a bit funny at times.
So there is a murderous elevator called a little oregano and a
larger God machine called big Oregano.
There are there's a place called the Thickwood, the weeds.
I, I tried to do really simple names.
I think the other thing to avoid generally is people make fun of
it. It's kind of a meme now, but
like my Smith things, my Smith sticks, you know, or or
whatever, like the the just making up words that my moon
phase, you know, like words that describe real world things, but
in a fantasy way can be really cringy to say out loud or read
at times. And so I think the other piece
too, is just coming up with the simplest way to describe
something that feels sort of on brand is usually a good
approach. Rarely introduce new words or
phrases, at least in cloud Empress when you don't need to.
So, you know, I like, I really like Stephen King's use of
thinny like a thin place in the Dark Tower series.
That's a big inspiration. And I think people do call
thinny, Thinny is a kind of a known term, but he could have
called it a number of things, but shows something that was
colloquial and folksy. And I think that's really
interesting. Yeah, I think it's it's it's
funny when people try to try to put the little cloak Williams
and colloquialisms in when they work, they work really well.
I think Warhammer authors, especially Abnett does a really
good job of that. But I don't know if you saw the
Rick and Morty episode where they go to like a post
apocalypse and they keep talking about like the before 4 times
and like the new new machine and stuff like that.
And like RIP on the whole concept of like of, of adding
that kind of vernacular. And it's it's it's yeah.
When you say it out loud, sometimes you're just like, did
you think about that one? But yeah, so how do when using
other works that are that you're inspired by, how would you
become comfortable with being inspired by versus copying?
I am constantly nervous about this.
One of my biggest fears with Cloud Empress was I was just
making Nausicaa with the numbers scratched off.
And I think that is kind of a trend in TTRP GS right now.
It's you have the license version or you have the
unlicensed version. That's that's kind of the same
thing like, oh, we haven't had a XYZ, you know, there hasn't been
a Terminator game yet. I'm going to make the term
Terminator game and it's going to be called Decimator.
And we're just going to scratch all of the license words up so
we can't get copyright and that stuff's cool.
I mean, I want to play in ATTRPG that's based on Terminator, but
I think the new Nosferatu, for example, that's the movie that's
been made many times and vampires are very frequently the
source of of media. So I think it's how do you bring
your unique perspective? And I think that's is also a
reason why taking a more literary approach, if we want to
use that term is, is helpful because you'll be reflecting on
the time period by which you exist and by that nature it will
feel different. Batman, right, It's different
Batman is is different because it's also reflecting on the time
period that it exists in. And so I think those those
movies two more intentionally do that.
I think Batman more intentionally tries to comment
on the time period which it exists in.
So they're a little bit more tolerable to watch.
I came in very skeptical of the new Batman.
I don't know if we needed it, probably not, but it was an
enjoyable watch I think because it had a a different tone and
take and and reflection on the society that it exists in.
So I think that's the piece too. If you really lean into
commenting on the universe and the human experience at the
moment that you have a sentient view of it, even if it is
derivative, it starts to feel unique.
I think the other piece that I'm really inspired by is these,
these, this web of creativity. And so Mobius is another
inspiration of mine. And so you have all these
connections between creatives that I think are really
exciting. And I think in our current
copyright environment and in in IP environment, often times
we're we're maybe afraid of using inspirations.
But Mobius, Mobius's drawings, I think it's Arzak inspired
Nausicaa's glider, right? So that's a really like very
close. And then Mobius did the art for
the Jodorovsky Dune. And so Dune is really inspired.
Nausicaa And so there's all these connections there and
then, you know, Dune inspires alien and there's and some of
the art crew works. So there's this intermixing of
creatives that I think if you don't know what your favorite
work is derivative of, you just haven't like done enough
research on it because you'll start to realize like, oh,
everything is highly derivative of everything else.
It's often times the creative I'm looking at, the references
are like, you know, 20 years earlier than I'm aware of, you
know, in the 30s. Their, their references are in
the 30s and I just don't know what they are right.
And as I do more research, I can start to figure out what those
things are. I would, I would add on just if
you, if you feel that something is a little bit too close, it's
not a bad idea to just acknowledge it and embrace it.
And make sure that if you're like, if this is super inspired
by something, just say even just put it in an appendix in in the
back. Just let people know that you're
not stealing and that an inspiration.
Even even if all you're doing is filing the the numbers off, if
you say this is just this with the numbers filed off, they'll
go OK versus being like, hey, that's plagiarism.
So be careful. But I think especially.
Most people. That's a great point.
Yeah, I think especially other. GRPG creators.
Yeah, like I was, yeah, that's what I was going to say, is that
most TRPG creators will not care if you just acknowledge them.
If you're talking about like big giant IPS, you might get a thing
in the mail, but most creators, if you just acknowledge the
inspiration, are happy to to inspire you.
I think how much are the other pieces?
Maybe 5-10 minutes. I don't know.
I'm having fun. The other thing too is, is like
there's marketing voice and then there's like content voice.
And so if you go into marketing, you talk about your work maybe a
little differently. So it's like, this is the
Nausicaa inspired TTRPG, right? Like that's a good marketing
cook, but I don't want people to necessarily feel that when
they're playing. And I mean, it should echo, but
it shouldn't feel to me like I, I don't see a lot of interest in
recreating something that somebody's already made.
And I think the other piece too, is most media isn't good.
So the fundamental question of TTRPD design in a like as it's
popularized now is why are there four to five people walking
around together consistently? I think so that's the question
you need to answer, right? So it's like not most media
don't have like four or five people going everywhere
together, right? So you need to like answer that
question too. I think with what you're
creating, I don't know that's, that's something that you have
so many good ideas and then you're like, why?
Why would these people be moving around together?
Like there's no answer, so this isn't a good idea.
Yeah, I mean if your characters are over 30, just the fact that
they have 4 actual friends that hang up together is is a bit of
a stretch. So I guess it depends.
So another question from Cerulean 5 in chat they said
what are some of your favorite adventures?
I don't know we we had a list of literary adventures before, but
what are some of your favorite adventures and who are some of
your favorite adventure writers working on it?
I I tried to do the the list to be encapsulate those things, but
I, I Luke Gearing is, is like a favorite of mine.
I did a writing mentorship with him.
So take that with a grain of salt, but I think Luke Gearing's
work is phenomenal and really creative and executed at a high
level. I, I think maybe you're in the
same boat, Ryan. I like reading systems a lot
more than I like reading adventures.
I like, because I think the other thing too, and this is
just for me, which, which is kind of, but I, I, I'm a forever
GM and I like writing adventures and so I rarely run other
people's adventures. I think I'm going to do a
Triangle agency adventure soon. So I'm looking forward to that.
But I generally run my own stuff because I, I need to and I want
to. And I hear that from other
writers as well. So I would say the, the folks in
the list would be a good place to start.
I'm trying to think of other ones that are coming to my mind.
I really like Snow's work. Wizards, the Wizards and Wastes
second edition dot dungeon. Those are those are adventure
adjacent, but they create a framework for adventure, so
that's the other piece too there.
There are a lot of other ways to system a size generation of
adventures. I think electric bastion land
and and mythic bastion land are like some of my new well, mythic
bastion land is not out yet, but one of my new favorite reads.
And that's like a a hex scroll generation.
So that's another thing to look at where it's the myths
themselves. I'm probably getting too
granular, but they kind of become adventures because they
have these set plot points that that you go through on a hex
map. And so that that would be
another example. Electric Bastion Land into the
odd and I also like Frontier scum a lot.
I think the the other piece too is like Frontier scrum.
Frontier scums intro adventure I don't consider particularly
literary, but I consider the book literary because of the
content the the adventurers going through a train where
there's a bunch of like chicken people.
The other thing is, I would say there are so many good
mothership modules. I'm part of a community
mothership, writer, writer, so I get a lot of inspiration for
some of the things they're doing mechanically.
In particular, Joel Hines is a big inspiration and Desert Moon
of Karth is like a huge inspiration on Cloud Empress,
Ultraviolet Grasslands is a big inspiration.
Very different approach to some of the the ways that we're
engaging with the world's that we're presenting, but pretty
exciting stuff. Mark Berg has some good stuff as
well. Yeah, I'm Amodyne Preston Ian
with whole breach and the Blues one.
I'm trying to think any adventure by Ian used to miss
really good. So those would be the other
pieces too. Some of those.
I think Mothership and Mort Burke tend to learn more into
the the genre though, so that's why I didn't include them in my
list, is that most of the time they don't necessarily stretch
out of the, the like the, the adventure of the experience
they're trying to create in the moment.
A lot of times that's the focus. And then there's not this like
extra element of like pondering about why people do the things
they do or those internal aspects.
Yeah, so someone I had had something written down and
someone in chat brought it up, so I wanted to bring it up to
Tyson, writes in chat said. You mentioned not wanting to
include mechanics in the text. Side note, I if people listen,
they're. I wasn't sure if you're going to
chop my head off or not. I don't know.
It's. I think it's great.
I love it because here's the thing and and one of the things
that you said a bunch is that a lot of the way that you write
adventures or the adventure show writing aren't necessarily for
beginner GMs. And I wish more people in the space acknowledged
and worked with like what I have called and what I think I stole
that from Aaron King is called like one O 1 games and
adventures versus like 2O one or three O 1 stuff.
Like not everything is for beginners and not everything be
for everyone. Like not all media is for
everyone and it's not as enough to be for you, right?
So when you have adventures that are more in depth, more complex,
and for more experienced GM's that already know the system, I
love when you're not like roll the perception check.
If it's a 15, do this as like you said, it really breaks up
the flow of the adventure, not just for the players but for the
GM. But they said you mentioned not
wanting to include mechanics in the text.
What is your advice on adding new systems that build on the
existing game? I would say look at what is it?
Oh gosh, What's the Luke peering after A pound of flesh, it is
called. Do you remember what it is or
what's the second? Yeah.
Wow, gradient descent. Yeah, Grady and Descent, I would
say look at Grady and Descent as a really good example.
So I think pulling those out and I try to do some of that in like
mini expansions and stuff. So I think you can layer it, but
just put it somewhere in the front of the book and then just
assume that people are going to be using it.
I think that probably is the way that reads the best to me.
And then two, I think in Grady and Descent, Luke and Sean,
they'll they'll, you know, say this is a character who's not
sure if they're human or not, right?
So they'll reference the like theme that's coming up, but they
don't necessarily they might have some references to the
mechanism frequently throughout, I don't remember, but I think
just, you know, just do a table somewhere, right?
Just put the mechanism somewhere and then just assume people are
going to use it. Or you could even just throw
like Payjex, you know, Payjex, you know, and just refer back to
the page or link it in the PVFI think that stuff reads a lot
better. I yeah, I think reading manuals
for me is so hard. My brain just dies sometimes
when something's written a lot like a manual.
And there's reasons for that. But again, I don't play most of
the stuff I read. And so I'm really looking for an
enjoyable reading experience where I, you know, I'm not
necessarily playing it in my head, but I'm, I'm going through
it like a group might as a reader.
Yeah, again, if it's a starter adventure, I'm I love boxes all
the all over the place saying like this or that or whatever,
especially if it's for a new system.
But for something that's been out for a while and your GM's
are very experienced, like you can, as you said, writing it in
front of the book and allowing them to use it if they feel like
later. Trust, trust your players, trust
your GM, trust the people that want your stuff to not be
dummies like they like. If people are playing the THRBG
under that experience in it, they probably know how to do it,
but you don't need to hold their hand the entire time and I do
like that. So a call out box would be the
best place for that. Separate from the text I I would
say yes. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, that's or like margins, throwing stuff in the margins
like you could do a separate margin or like a half page
little pull out. Yeah, I think those are cool
ideas. So, all right, So what themes
really draw the particular audience that loves Cloud
Empress to Cloud Empress relative to other settings?
Like what? What do you find that the the
real deep lovers of Cloud Empress love about it I guess.
Bugs. We have a lot of bug lovers.
We have a cicadas just pictures of cicadas sub channel on the
discord. So it's really upfront about
bugs. It's like, but cicadas are
different. But you know, roaches like I, I
mentioned reach of the Roach God like roaches I was.
Going to mention. Roaches, like roaches.
I'm, I'm, I'm looking, I'm not seeing a ton of roaches in here.
I haven't even opened. Yeah, I, I, this is going out of
print. So it's like, I really wanted to
have it, but roaches, the poop I've lived, you know, when you
live in places with roaches, it's different maybe.
And well, I mean, I'm sure, you know, I'm sure they live in
places with roaches too. But anyway, I would say the eco,
you know, ecological science fantasy are the three words that
that I put on the cover of the book.
And I try to with art prompts, I try to make sure it sort of hits
all three of those boxes. And so I would say ecological
science fantasy is sort of what to hone in on.
There's this sort of pastoral element.
The world is, is relatively uninhabited.
So there's a lot of sort of emphasis on nature and nature
cycles and, and humanity playing a smaller role within nature.
I think Nausicaa in particular is, is a place to be mined.
Dune, Star Wars, 70s media, science fiction media in general
are all great places to start. And I think violence, thoughts
on violence and and sort of complexifying violence.
There's a lot of body horror to sort of scattered about.
So if you like body horror, that could be another place to
explore theme wise. I touching a little bit on the
same kind of topic here. Someone asked on Blue Sky.
They asked. One of the best parts of Cloud
Empress, but also the most intimidating is how much the
specific setting elements fit together.
Do you have any guidance for adding new setting elements that
still fit within the Cloud Empress world?
Yes, I'm glad. I'm glad people feel like
there's. It's a cohesive world, one of
the most deliberate inspirations from Cloud Empress's Electric
Bastion Land. And Electric Bastion Land does
this really great thing where it's like there's Muppets,
there's the underground, there's the, I forget what they call
that, the Outlands, there's the the Bastion land itself.
And so I think when designing Cloud Empress, I knew I wanted
to work within this world for a long time.
And so I tried to create a lot of spaces for exploration.
And so I think in my opinion, if you're hitting on the themes and
the vibes, there's not a lot you can't explore.
As I mentioned earlier, it's sort of in this Nexus place.
And so one of the characters in the new book has like a 50s
leather research jacket on that's magical.
Or there's all sorts of things that sort of float through the
world from other realities and even people from other
realities. So there's like an Edgar Allan
Poe character in the new one that's sort of like high on
opium in the mud, like, and, you know, sort of pops up and and
characters can deal with them. So there's ghosts.
I think I tried to create. Yeah.
Just a space where anything would be possible and you could
fit it into the world pretty seamlessly.
So I think just sticking with sort of the themes and the level
of technology generally, I think you'll be OK.
And I think those explorations on the borders are really
interesting and and ripe for exploration.
Yeah, I mean the way with the way magic works and time and
everything, things are coming in and out all the time, as you
said. And it is like a a future future
world. It's a Future Past world kind of
thing. So I, I would love to see
someone just go nuts with that. And there's some type of like
outbreak of this. And then all of a sudden, yeah,
you have like 50s greasers and like all the rest of this stuff
just like running amok because of all this like warp stuff that
happened. But but there is a place, if you
stay true to the way the magic works and everything there, you
can kind of just dump anything in there, right?
And there's this thing called the slip, which is just like
these reality storms that that are inspired by thinnies from
the dark tower. And so there will be like one
mile zones or even entire villages that are stuck in time
or from different time periods and or cycling or time looping
are all sorts of stuff. So I think there's a lot of
opportunities. I think it's it's like, does
your idea draw an interesting tropes that get people excited
to play and can you tie that at all to sort of the overarching
theme so that it feels like a fit?
Maybe we'll do like one or two more.
OK, Yeah, there's a, there's a couple more because I'm crossing
off ones that I feel like we hit already that you had already.
My cat's starting to walk all over my table.
I feel like you hit on this one though.
And if we did, we can just move on and says, one, this is from
Blue Sky. It says, my big one is always
media recommendations. I love wrenching a core idea
from the story and reworking it from tabletop.
So beyond the points of inspiration in the book, what
pieces of media do you think represent a solid framework for
a literary adventure? But I feel like you didn't have
like whole slides on. Yeah.
I think though, that I think I'm sort of interested in time
periods now. So one of the things that I'm
sort of exploring is like 2000s and late 90s video games as an
inspiration. So there's sort of this optimism
that I want back in my life. And maybe that's the Rose
colored glasses, but like one of my game, my new games is sort of
inspired by like the, the colorful look of advanced wars,
you know, or some of the Game Boy advanced era colors and, and
positivity and excitement to be alive that I feel like this is
not present in 2025. I'm I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm getting,
I'm going to, I'm not, you know, I'm going to be alive and I'm
going to fight and I'm going to be resilient.
But. Not President 2025.
The excitement to be alive. Not.
Right now, at least collectively.
So I think the other piece too is a lot of cloud Empress draws
on 70s and late, you know, 70s to 85 maybe.
I guess NASA could probably came out in like 91, but early anime,
I guess early anime and and sort of seventies 80s inspired stuff.
So I think picking a time period 84.
OK, thank you. So taking a time period can be
really interesting in the vibes and the collective conscience of
that time period. But I think too looking for
things that deeply emotionally scarred you or inspired you.
I mean, I think it's just as well to do like, what would
Cloud Empress's version of the Titanic be, You know, if the
Titanic was a big movie for you, channeling that into something,
right? It doesn't need to be a ship
that's crashing. It could be a tower that's
slowly falling over. And, you know, you just start
going with there and what does it mean that the giant towers
falling over for society? You know, maybe this tower was a
beacon of hope and now it's tipping over, right?
So you can start to write it based on that and just skew a
couple elements and then maybe throw in, you know, there's a
faction that is like there's a Terminator there, there's one
Terminator that's, you know, that's clearing everyone out,
whatever. So I think combining those
elements, but looking maybe in summary for the things that
deeply impacted you for certain reasons and honing in on what
those reasons were. And also looking at maybe time
periods where we're certain creative communities came
together and sort of did similar work or certain creative artists
did a set of work that sort of stands together and and mining
that for opportunities and and interests too.
There's a couple more, but I I think that I think that we've
touched a little bit on at least most of those are we'll leave a
couple for you for the sub stack and and I think that's that we
hit it all there. So anything that you want to say
to wrap this up? I know across the bottom for the
entire time for those who haven't actually see this is the
information for the jam. And when this episode comes out,
I'll make sure that the links to all that information are below.
But is there anything else that you wanted to say to kind of
wrap up the writing literary adventures for Cloud and Person
Beyond? Yeah, thanks so much for having
me and and it was exciting to talk about this stuff.
And if you have comments or thoughts on the idea or what you
see in some of your favorite TTRPG adventures in particular,
I'd love to hear that, you know, in the comments of the YouTube
when it's posted or on Discord or other things you have
provided the respectful and thoughtful, those kinds of
things. But I think.
More dialogue about adventures in it and expansion content.
I don't know any kind of TTRB dialogue is, is about the
content itself is really exciting to me.
And, and especially when people talk about the, the work that
impacts them on an emotional level or intellectual level.
I think too, rather than we had a really fun time at the table.
That's awesome. But also like, what are the
things that kind of stir you? What are the things that are,
you know, changing your world view or or impacting you?
I'd love to hear like what those are and so I can read them, So
thanks. And, and thank you for coming
on. I know Liminal horror has done
this a couple of times. They've done at least 2.
So you're more than welcome to come back and and meet or beat
that anytime you have stuff coming out.
Obviously you're getting close to I think one of the the most
like number of appearances on the show of anyone, if not
already at the top. So but it's.
Is it Penguin? Penguin.
Now I'm going to I'm I'm, I think I'm not in trouble
anymore. Jerk, jerk.
Who you're going to be. Jared's got me beat now, so I
think I have to worry about. A monthly scheduled episode that
is literally like themed around them.
They don't count anymore. They don't count anymore.
Yeah, but I just want to say thank you.
What? Obviously you're always welcome
here because of not only are you an amazing creative and we love
all the things you do, but you're genuinely awesome person
who really elevates all of the people and things around them.
And we, we really appreciate you and you appreciating us and, and
being open to coming on and, and sharing these things, using us
as, as the way to do that. So we, we're always going to
appreciate that. So thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
So that is the end of writing literary adventures for Cloud
Embers and beyond. As I said, you can find all of
our links below. I'll make sure all of the links
for what are available there as well, where the normal Internet
puts their things. So you can find all of these and
and that's gonna be it. So once again, thank you so much
and thank you everyone and chat for being here.
You all have a wonderful day. Bye.