5 Million Worlds Newsletter, #3
Issue 3, Nov 2023: Road to The Unseen City
This month’s newsletter is a side-step from 5MW RPG into another territory of the 5MW Press line-up: The Unseen City.
On Halloween alongside Bio-Drones & Cryo-Clones, I digitally released The Unseen City, my third-party biome and adventure zine for Worlds By Watt’s Cloud Empress, the ecological science fantasy RPG.
From idea to digital release, The Unseen City has been in the works for just over a year. Because I’m terrible about posting my thought process online as it happens, I’m writing this retrospective on how my brain took this initial idea:
“…a game setting to mix Dhalgren with the underground ruins the Forest people lead Yupa et co. through in Nausicaa. The pamphlet idea is kind of like mixing Annihilation’s Tower dive with Bellona as the sort of entry point to this forgotten realm.”
ChrisAir, on 18 October, 2022
And turned it into this:
Development Process
In mid-October 2022, I playtested Cloud Empress with Watt, and immediately became enamored by the game. Between October and the Cloud Empress KS campaign launch in Jan 2023, Watt and I kept a correspondence about Cloud Empress and The Unseen City. They were super supportive throughout the whole process (and continue to be!), and invited me to take a look a their development documentation.
At the time, the Cloud Empress adventures were set to be pamphlets. I decided to do the same for a third-party publication (3pp) Biome. Pamphlet Pair! That sounds fab, right? I could write more adventure location pamphlets as time went on, and even told Watt at one point I would love to make a zine with everything in it.
Unseen City Pamphlet Pair
At first, the idea was small and contained. I wrote a d20 table and the procedure for generating the point-crawl. The adventure was a bit tougher to cram into a pamphlet, but I did it (even if it wasn’t very pretty).
The original art I was GIMP’d up free-to-use images. With all the text involved, I didn’t need much art. I added these pamphlets as Add-ons for my Bio-Drones & Cryo-Clones Kickstarter. Among the games, The Unseen City was the most popular add-on.
From pamphlet to 12pg zine
Playtesting is so important, folks.
Four days into my Kickstarter, I realized I needed a change. The 1d20 table entries were not enough to run an entire Biome. I wrote up 1-2 sentence descriptions and tried to cram that into a pamphlet, but it was a despicable thing to behold. To boot, the procedure needed refining because it was turning out madness like this:
Turned out the adventure needed changes, as well. The Whorls (areas) varied too drastically and the chase took too long. This sprawling nature was also rather one-note since all players could do was “go down.” In hindsight, this was an obviously idiotic design, haha, but I thought the Gates would inject enough novelty. I added traversal through Gates and secret passages between Whorls to add complexity and choice to player actions.
“Certainly,” I foolishly thought, “if I’m cutting from one and adding to the other, two extra A5 pages are enough!”
From a 12pg to 16pg zine
Not long after the Cloud Empress KS ended with massive success, I realized I needed to improve The Unseen City. My GIMP skills were not enough to make even the rarest, coolest Public Domain finds into “good” art. I did not want the first 3pp for Cloud Empress to be some half-baked zine. I knew I had to up my game.
The first thing I did was contact HodagRPG. Hodag is awesome, super kind, and justly well known for his inclusive old-school style line art. What an amazing collaborator to work with, lemme tell you.
In March, I was struggling with how to do a split cover. Coincidentally, I was listening to the RTFM Podcast, hosted by Aaron MF King and Max Lander (I highly recommend checking out their show and games!). As I was catching up on the backlog, and I belatedly learned of Low-Res Futures, the hosts’ flipbook containing two RPGs: In a Mirror Brightly and Handbaskets. I owe the flipzine concept to these two thoughtful designers.
Mirrored Development
As Watt continued developing Cloud Empress, I followed the changes. In an update to their WIP setting zine, Land of Cicadas, I saw the new tables and mechanics of a Cloud Empress Biome. Hunt & Gather Tables, Hex Descriptions, Encounters, Animals, Friends & Foes. My Biome was undercooked compared to Watt’s work.
I set out to emulate the structure Watt created for the Biomes. The goal was to make transitioning from the Lowland Wastes into The Unseen City an easy venture for a GM running a Cloud Empress game.
Anyway, with the KS over and BackerKit releasing in late April, I wrote “16 page zine” in the description...
What is wrong with me (20 pages)?
What made this continual development a smooth process was the fact that Watt and I shared the same editor for our Early 2023 KS campaigns, Roz Leahy. Always get a good editor, people.
Roz was working with me on BioCryo at the same time she was working on Cloud Empress (and proofreading Mothership 1E. Roz is a boss). After BioCryo, I turned the lessons she taught me during developmental editing onto the Unseen City: rearranged sections, made the point descriptions more evocative, and did my damnedest to keep it brief and clear.
I was still playing catch-up with Watt, too. I added new Spores and Spells; I modified the point-generation and traversal procedure to the finalized version.
There are, however, some remnants in the design of The Unseen City that have their origins in early drafts of Cloud Empress. The Hex map was originally a Hex Fill (hence my point-fill). A very early setting WIP contained A/B environment tables for each Biome. I kept these A/B environment table for the Byways, the connections between points. The character of these tunnels flavor each Level of of the City, and tie the Unseen City together in a cohesive way.
Cover Design
On the Between Two Cairns podcast, I can’t recall which episode, Brad and Yochai extolled the virtues of truly good cover art. My cover was serviceable, but not good. Additionally, Watt's 3pp Cloud Empress logo shifted from the main splat to a "Set in the World of CE" stamp. The best looking part of the old cover had to go (which totally made sense!). So, I contacted Hodag once more!
I plan to use this format with the Unseen City zines moving forward. I feel this design evokes Watt's style while doing its own thing. And hey, if you'd like to use this template for your own Cloud Empress 3pp zine, give me a shout and I'll share the .afpub file with you! (Perhaps I could look into getting an itch page set up for that?)
The Lesson
While it’s fun for a jam, rushing into ttrpg design creates more roadblocks than solutions. I wanted to rush into writing adventures for Ruination Pilgrimage by Donn Stroud, ECO MOFOS!! by David Blandy, and my experience with The Unseen City taught me to temper that wild flame into a useful furnace. Wait until my tool set is ready before burning through my inspiration.
It's not like I haven’t rushed a setting before. In November, RV Games launched a Kickstarter for The Great Crossing Heresies, a gatefold pamphlet I wrote for Mothership. The campaign included pamphlets from the greater campaign setting into a Cerdo Cycle pamphlet bundle. This is another project that has plans for a more focused development in the future.
Scope creep is a real problem for me, and I’m still working on how to cut that back. What has worked, personally speaking, is finishing a very rough draft, working with editors on game development, and defining the scope before working towards a viable manuscript. I didn't do that for The Unseen City, and even though I did with BioCryo, I still had scope issues with the Interactive Terminals!
I was glad for this experience, even if (or perhaps especially because) it was so bumpy. To develop this project as Watt was working on theirs was a great motivator too. The Unseen City isn’t as gorgeous as the Cloud Empress line, but I am still pleased with the result. And like the Cerdo Cycle above, I do plan on returning to the Unseen City.
The Future of the Unseen City
I am currently writing a Mothership zine called Twisting Unseen (tentative title), the second Sleeper Crew Adventure. The module can serve as a bridge into a Cloud Empress campaign, potentially landing the PCs into the Unseen City. When you mess with Gateway technology, that shit can land you anywhere, maybe even on some backwater planet in the 5 Million Worlds…
But more on that on our next return to The Unseen City.
Sharing your struggles and growth is inspiring. Glad I got help bring Bio-Drones and Cryo Clones, lament that I missed Cloud Empress. Hope you can keep improving, aiming high and tempering the wonderful toolset (and support system) you have!