Only six(-ish) hours to go before the jam starts! Have you got an idea and the tool to bring it to life? Let us know in the Community page or on the #ce_fan_content channel of the Worlds by watt Discord server. 

If you want some context on how to hit the tone of adventure writing that Cloud Empress is known for, watt has done a seminar to share insights on just that.

Happy new year everyone! We're just one small week away from the jam. Do you know what you're going to make yet? Do you have all the tools you want to use at your fingertips? Discuss in this thread so that we can help eachother be ready to go when the jam starts!

In case you missed it, there's been a few updates regarding the available resources.

• watt has updated the Cloud Empress module templates to correct a few issues regarding non-standard asset use. You can download the latest version from the Cloud Empress Third Party page. They will also have a podcast tomorrow on writing content for Cloud Empress.
• I'll write more details about the setting module I'm co-creating somewhere this week.
• I have updated the list of general creator resources on the front page of the list. Here's the current list:
  • TTRPG Creator Resources Masterpost is a great overview of general TTRPG creator resources.
  • My curated list of free public domain TTRPG creator tools on Itch.io, including an A4 trifold pamphlet template for Google Docs, Microsoft Word and Canva by Hugh Lashbrooke.
  •  Public domain art resources, a TTRPG blogpost by Exeunt Press. See also Part II.
  • Explorers Design has great blogposts on TTRPG layout design.
  • How to Photobash Art for your Zines Youtube video by Chaoclypse. See also Noise Dystopia Machine, a photoshop tool for this method.

The fall of the city is not a done deal. Rather there is a little faction play in the setting, and the various houses can take from the monument to boost their own petty goal. But they will be taking blocks from the proverbial jenga tower that will eventually fall if they keep pulling.

Connecting the ecological themes of Cloud Empress with the threat of an increasingly long and harsh winter definitely sounds cool. Perhaps even in some way caused by the chalk as a pollutant - directly or indirectly - or nature's defence against the polluters.

Having a worldwide yearlong winter would definitely sound like a campaign-defining feature to me, rather than a local adventure. So if that's not what you're going for you could try making it a more local meteorological phenomenon, perhaps with the threat of its expansion?

However you choose to go about it, I'm looking forward to see what comes out of it!

Hey! I also ran into this problem. If you open a template without installing any of the fonts you should get a pop-up in Publisher about missing fonts, which should lead you to the following messages in the font manager. 

The missing fonts are ITC Serif Gothic, AndroclesOpti-Heave and Futura PT. You can fix this as follows.

1. AndroclesOpti-Heavy is included in the zipfile of the templates in its own separate folder. Just install the font inside that folder.
2. ITC Serif Gothic is a font that is free for commercial use and can be downloaded from various places, such as https://www.freefonts.io/itc-serif-gothic-font/.
3. Futura PT can be downloaded as well, but looking into it while writing this response, it seems to be free for personal use only.  https://www.dafontfree.io/futura-pt-font/

I'm guessing the absence of the latter two fonts went under watt's radar because these were already installed on their machine. I'll check in with watt.

Not much is known about winter, because summer is the time of travel. Even late fall and early spring are omitted from the weather table, which tells us something about how harsh winter itself must be. But there are little pieces of information here and there in the official materials that give an impression of what winter might be like in the Land of Cicadas. Here are some snippets that I came along. Did I miss any?

Rulebook

Farmerlings live in cycles, hunkering down in the winter with new friends and partners, dispersing in the summer to become smaller targets for emerging Imago, matching ceremony and practicality in equal measure.

Each year there is a rush to collect [chalk] before the weather turns wet and cold, and the chalk turns foul in the fall rains.

[The Lordlings’] kindness diminishes with their winter food stores, and [sellswords have] been sent off into the snow one too many times. A full stomach and a warm place to lay down is enough for most Sellswords.

Imago rise in the summer and sleep in the winter, consuming vast quantities of bone and tree sap.

Even lifelong experts throw up their hands when asked where the cicadas go in the winter,

For all its dangers, the summer is also warm and free. The summer is a time of great migration in the Lowland Wastes. Folk collectively yawn, stretch their legs, and get to traveling after a hard winter in tight quarters.

Land of Cicadas

All prepare for fields to burn, folks to die, and Imago to head into winter fat on the bones of humanity.

[Tack Town:] In the market, travelers buy handfuls of seeds with their winter savings, preparing to make their way back to ancient farmlands. There is no singular day of departure, just a growing feeling that it is time to move on. Folks trickle out, four or five at a time, and only the old and unwell stay behind preparing Tack Town for its next winter.

[Tack Town:] Spring, Summer, and Fall Heads of Council are picked by lottery while Winter Heads are elected for their frugality and sound judgment.

Newsletter Downloads

Dance of the Dead: Even in Tack Town and the Living Land’s protected towers Winter’s cold fingers inflict cruel punishment on the vulnerable. Unable to bury their dead, costumed Farmerlings mournfully waltz the dead’s funeral urns to final resting places in Feeding Grounds after the morning frost ends, but before the Imago appear.

The wardens of the RPG Night Utrecht have come together to create a suitable setting for our winter campaign setting. While it started as a local project, we would love to share it so that others can join and fill it with adventures. Of course you are welcome to do your own standalone thing, but if the setting inspires you to write something for it, we would love that.

Upsilon City
the falling chandelier

Upsilon City is a sky city that is slowly falling apart as its lordling houses pilfer crests from its central monument piece by piece. It has began to slant, and new buildings are erected on top of the old in lopsided angles. From the high observatories, to the fungal growth below thriving in proximity to the Spread. The anchors that are slowly eroding are alike the sword of Damocles for those whose entire livelyhoods reside in the city or the Wastelands below.

We will add more details soon. Please let us know if you're interested to join. There's a couple of ways to do so;

• Let one of the disctricts inspire you to write an adventure module. 
• It might be cool to create a tiny hexflower for the Wasteland below if you want to join the setting, but would rather write for the Wastelands instead of a cloud city.

It's great to hear from you again Esben. Max and I fondly remember you checking in on the game's progression during development. It gives me so much joy to know Incarnis has enriched your storytelling. May the gods be with you!

Is this still up to date? I want to hand your commission pamphlet to my Mothership players at an open table campaign.

Just played this with two friends and it was such a lot of fun! Fun premise, evocative prompts and welcoming presentation. I really enjoyed discovering the animals and their ecosystem together.

Love it! Small request... could you make the weather conditions that cause exhaustion bold? That way I'd have all the weather info on one sheet!

Latest playtest copy of my jam game was not at a stage where I wanted to publish it online. Sad to say I missed the deadline. 

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” ~Douglas Adams 

But I am committed to finishing this now, and I have the jam to thank for thar.

Talldave when Im behind my laptop Ill send you the commented doc I had while reading!

Hi,

Loving the feel of the PDF copy. Mine has an issue which I'm not sure is just me or something else. When opening the PDF that I downloaded today in Acrobat Reader on Windows 10, some pages have backgrounds that do not load, causing white text on a white background. From the preview on the Itch page I can tell that there is supposed to be a background color there. Screenshot below. 

Cheers! 
Peter

Hi ajstamm,

I've copied the reply to your question from the kickstarter comments below. I think you added a question on creating a new card here. The creature card represents the creature itself, so you can treat it as such. When the gods interact with it, you may change it to reflect any transformation it has undergone, as you would with any other creation.

Copy-paste of Kickstarter reply:
---------------------------------------------------------- 

Incarnis was not designed with solo play as a core focus, but it is something we want to encourage and support, so any feedback in this regard is much appreciated. The module Feuding Pantheons on page 34-35 includes automa which we think can be dropped into a solo game nicely to add some agency outside of your own control.

You are exactly right about the landmarks. In Incarnis, Domains are what make things mythical. So a 'mundane' city has a form (this could simply be 'city'), but does not have a domain yet. As you say, it can receive a domain during play and become something mythical. A Sky city, an underwater city or even a new god.

Fabled creatures are first and foremost creatures rather than places. During playtesting, we received feedback that it was confusing to call a creature a landmark, so we phrased this as a creature dwelling. Either way, the intention is simply that you create fabled creatures and give them a place in your play area. Feel free to move and change your creature around as your fiction demands!

We hope you have fun with the game. Please feel free to message us if you have any more questions or feedback.

Hey, I just noticed you already uploaded something. You're ahead of me on that count. I enjoyed reading it! I tend to take notes when I read stuff, happy to share if you're interested, but I don't want to overstep :)

Yea, I should really count my blessings on having people around who are up for a messy playtest. If you wanna do an online play test sometime for your game, hit me up.

Since my last post I've followed the following recipe.

Ingredients

• The bare minimum of what counts as a unique idea.
• The philosophy of rapid development and minimal viable product; break your product up into a series of stages. Only do the bare minimum to get to the first next stage and nothing else. Then, share the result to get feedback, and only then move on to the next stage. It is scary. Do it. 
• Knowledge of games to steal from. If your core idea is unique, your building blocks don't have to be; the only way to realize a unique idea is to stack building blocks in a unique way. It does not matter if the building blocks are unique or not. The way you stack them is already value that you create (if you want to sell, be aware of copyright).
• A safe space to fail in. Like a group of friends who will enjoy a playtest night together even if the game bombs.

With the above ingredients in mind, the recipe is just the stages of your product, with something to show at each stage. I am using the following:

Recipe

• unique idea. I've pitched my idea to the community as soon as I had anything close to an idea. Product: idea pitch.
• Core moves. I then wrote down the core moves of the game (Powered by the Apocalypse style) and left details and even some key components blank, and turned on the bat-signal for a playtest. Product: Incomplete moves list.
• Play-test to fill the blanks. I then ran a playtest session with friends who will enjoy an evening together even if the game bombs, and who are cool with me filling those blanks in on the fly. There's just something about a live session that sets my brain into motion in a way my writing desk does not. In game development, playtesting is king. Do it ASAP. Do it often. Just one session was enough to fill the minimum amount of blanks  I think I need to fill to write a minimal viable product of a public playtest kit on itch. My aim is to finish the playtest kit in the next few days, encourage people to hopefully give one round of feedback. Product: Playtest kit that addresses intended blanks (v0.1). Contains complete core moves (the game's ingredients) and procedure of play (the game's recipe).
• In the first playtest, there were known blanks. I play tested to spark inspiration to fill them. The playkit is a bare minimal core with no intended gaps. I hope that I can quickly find people to use the playtest kit with the purpose of finding unintended blanks, and use their feedback to create a new playtest kit that fills these unintended blanks. Product: playtest kit that addresses unintended blanks (v0.2).

This is the product I aim to deliver for the game jam.

Of course there are next steps:

Repeat the last step. Products are v0.3, v0.4 etc. Do this until a playtest round no longer yields significant blanks.  Product: core game that has no longer been showing significant design gaps (v1.0).

•  Then, if if I want, I can expand my core game by repeating the whole recipe all over again towards creating v2.0. The only difference then would be that a unique idea is no longer a requirement, as I would still be building on the idea of v1 0.
• Use that feedback for one update round, and then finish this game jam with a play tested player kit v0.2 that is playable, fun, and begging to be expanded. 

I'm Just saying this because it has been my roadmap, so far it has been working for me, and hopefully it will inspire you towards something that works for you. By keeping it simple and minimal, it was possible to go from 0 words on paper to a play test within a week. Do the thing!

Oof.. this is soooooo tempting. I'm late to the party. But the question is.... can I?

Hi Leafo,

I can't find any e-mail from Itch.io after the one on Tuesday 3rd asking to contact from another address. Strange! But regardless, thank you for letting me know that it should work now. I tried it right away, and my backers have now received their keys.

Kind regards,
Peter

Thank you! Much appreciated :)

Hi all,

I tried to send keys of my game to my Kickstarter backers, but need admin approval to do this for the first time. It's been 21 days since I received word from them, and still haven't received that approval, with no apparent explanation. Does anyone know about anything that's going on that would explain the radio silence? I'm 100% sure that I'm sending to support@itch.io , but received only 1 reply, 21 days ago, and nothing after that. I thought maybe it was just the holidays and everyone's on vacation, but I do see admin activity. Help! :)

Thank you,

Peter

We've released Incarnis on itch.io two weeks ago after a successful Kickstarter campaign, and tried to send the backers their keys through the interaction tab of Itch's developer dashboard. Only after pressing send were we notified that approval is required to do this. There was no warning  about this on the interaction tab before pressing send. 

The problem is, that in order to tell people that they can trust the e-mail from itch.io , we had to send out an update prior to sending the keys, telling our backers that they can trust the pending email from Itch. This update was now two weeks ago, and in the meantime we have been distributing our game with workarounds, where we would have loved to do so through the storefront so that we could see the number of visits and downloads. 

This issue could have been easily prevented if there was just a simple warning on the interact tab before pressing send, so our request is to please place one to avoid unexpected issues for other developers in the future.

Looking into it, we noticed that there have been similar reports asking for this approval step and possible waiting time to be signalled clearly, so that developers can take this into account when releasing their game. There was no response about placing this warning back then, but hopefully we can hear your thoughts on this now. 

Kind regards,

Peter