5 Million Worlds Rokaner Report #15, Form Art Reveal!
RR#15, Five Forms, March 2025
Calling all Avatars,
Hope y’all had a nice equinox. The daily increase of daylight here in France has boosted my mood, and I am looking forward to even more sun.
March was an intense month! I finished:
A new draft of Twisting Unseen to hand to Christian Sorrell for development.
Revisions on Not Enough Scoundrels to include Josh Domanski’s development notes, and handed it to Marx Shepherd for copyediting.
My portion of editing work on Devil’s Due.
The lion’s share of editing on Johnson Squared.
An outline draft and playtest for an adventure a publisher invited me to write (secretttssss).
And of course, none is truly done yet. Even still, I’m amazed I accomplished so much in four weeks. I was also invited to a couple of interviews, including my first podcast interview forthcoming on Diogo Nogueira’s Weird Games and Weirder People.
Lastly, there is art for the 5MW Forms! I decided it was best to work with an artist I know and whose work I adore: Roque Romero. And holy moly, what a good choice that was. Check it out at the end, :)
Liminal Horror Deluxe
On Sundays, at long last, I am running a Liminal Horror campaign. I shot my players the free Investigators rulebooks, and we slid from One Night at Shelterwood Inn into The Bloom. While I often rally about science fiction, my primary school years were filled with horror reading, from Goosebumps-obsessed to King-obsessed, while writing (bad) horror/slipstream fiction. Playing Liminal Horror feels like a dark homecoming, invigorating and exciting.
So naturally, I’m excited for the Liminal Horror Deluxe BackerKit on 15 April. Goblin Archives has been giving sneak peeks at the investigator, facilitator and “bestiary” chapters, with future looks at the new book coming up, too. If you’re into contemporary horror—think: Control, SCP, X-Files, Delta Green, but you play a normal person slowly transformed by dimensional horrors—check out the Liminal Horror Deluxe pre-launch page!
At the Deluxe launch, two other Liminal Horror projects are also launching! Adam STATIONS is working with Strega Wolf Eden on I Don’t Belong Here, a supplement filled with horrors, Fallouts, Resonant Artifacts, spells, oddball NPCs & environments and a solo adventure by Allen Hall. Perhaps without surprise, this thick, art-stuffed sparkbook is inspired by the lyrics of Radiohead. Sign up to be notified on launch!
Allen Hall is also crowdfunding his own Liminal Grimoire, a box set of pamphlet supplements, including five adventures and solo rules for playing Liminal Horror. This is the perfect kit for solo roleplayers and GMs starting a Liminal Horror campaign. Join the launch party for this collection of terrors!
A Dark Harvest, Cerdo remaster playtests
This month, I started playtests for A Dark Harvest, my remaster of the Cerdo Cycle, building it into a system-wide setting and filling each point of interest with encounter tables, faction intrigue, and adventures. I’d like to present my homegame materials I’m making for the players, as I run and write this game. The weekly pressure has been a bit intense, haha, but it’s sort of like a nonstop game jam, as I write chunks for the game, each Thursday.
As I mentioned back in the September 2024 Rokaner Report, this campaign has multiple successive scenarios, inspired by the structure of Another Bug Hunt. I’m testing out the corporate espionage Sleeper Crew Directive set-up: steal intel on Electrorenzo Resources and Cerdo-Sys activities. Out of the two choices for their “Official” job in the system—Rock Hopping and asteroid mining, or Gas Diving the clouds of a Super-Jupiter—they chose the latter on the C2-Thunder Aerostat Station.
Building off the players’ reactions to the barebone prep material has filled me with confidence that the setting holds tension and intrigue for players to dig into. They’ve spent a lot of time investigating factions and their motivations, and have plans to put in place next session before boarding the Gas Diver Platform. I’ve written a push-your-luck gas diving mini-game we’ll test, and then I’ll probably have time to set up the main adventure for C2-Thunder: The Sinking of Waning Twilight.
5MW Avatar Forms, Art Reveal
Meet the five Forms of the Avatar’s Primer for 5MW RPG, courtesy of Roque Romero!
A friend from The Lost Bay server, Roque Romero is an artist from Spain, known for his work in Cairn 2E, Picket Line Tango for Mothership, Codex R for Troika!, and his character illustrations for Valley100. Being on the same timezone were able to work closely on the iterations for these character portraits, but tbh, it was mostly me just being like, “YES! YESS! YESSSSS!” Roque just saw straight to the heart of the project, and I feel like the game’s vibes are superbly reflected in the Form art.
Roque’s art jump-started the writing for the Forms. I find it immensely inspiring, and started outlining possible recent past and current ambitions and the tools to pursue them. Visards are getting a spectrum of unique Uplink VR/hacker tools. Fleshers come with various biotech seeds. Emulants, a range of cybernetics and programs. Looper specialities are their contacts and the spacetravel equipment.
The Trads took a minute longer, but after my talk with Diogo, I decided to go with the cultural baggage that comes with the hubris of being ill-equipped for space but still goin’ for it. What worlds would they come from, that insisted on space travel when the other Forms are so clearly better suited for it? An fun writing exercise, as I’m not just seeking any Trad world, but those who strive for space travel.
Anyway, I’m waiting on that news I hinted at in the last newsletter to kick into overdrive for writing 5MW RPG. In the meantime, I’m hoping in April to complete Not Enough Scoundrels for digital fulfillment (fingers crossed!), hand in the SECRET adventure, get Twisting Unseen into editor Will Jobst’s hands (this is a big maybe), and start another Mothership Month editing job for RAC Computing’s Straight Arrows.
That’s all from me this month. Take care of each other, folks.
Signing off,
Chris Airiau
Loving that new art from Roque!
I look forward to that interview with Diogo.