#SCIENCE FICTION

[koyoriin]

"for all of my life, a stranger i remain"

https://twitter.com/koyoriin https://patreon.com/koyorin https://instagram.com/koyori_n https://bsky.app/profile/koyorin.bsky.social

[humanoidhistory]

Publicity still for Mad Max 2, aka The Road Warrior.

[1-moebius-1-universe-1]

[darklongbox]

Vampiress. Art by Jose Gonzalez

[murdercide626]

Mother Brain

by Mike Cossentino

[science70]

Popy 1978 toy catalogue featuring Chogokin, Lupin the Third, Spider-Man, Starzinger and Tōshō Daimos toys.

[koyoriin]

sketch

https://twitter.com/koyoriin https://patreon.com/koyorin https://instagram.com/koyori_n https://bsky.app/profile/koyorin.bsky.social

[humanoidhistory]

Blade Runner concept art by Syd Mead.

[vermilllionsands]

Godzilla vs. Mothra (1991)

[phantastische-illustrationen]

Analog March 1965 - Prophet of Dune (John Schoenherr)

[christiansorrell]

Play-By-Blog #0: Cloud Empress

My first Play-By-Blog (of Luke Gearing's The Isle) just recently wrapped up, and now, we are getting the next one going with Cloud Empress: Land of Cicadas! If you missed our run through The Isle, you can find all of the entries here.

Recently, I ran a poll to see what folks were interested in for this second Play-By-Blog and the voting was an exact tie between Cloud Empress and Mausritter, but since I'm the one doing all the writing, I was the tiebreaker and chose Cloud Empress and its hexcrawl, Land of Cicadas, as a new twist on the Play-By-Blog format and because the game has a set of solo rules in which you create and play as an entire party, not just a single character.

If you aren't familiar with Cloud Empress, here's a quick description straight from the game's product page:

Cloud Empress is an expansive, Nausicaa-inspired fantasy campaign setting for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. Cloud Empress places you in a world ruled by the patterns of giant magical cicadas. Cloud Empress creates a new Earth, thousands of years in the future inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Hiromu Arakawa’s Full Metal Alchemist.

The full rulebook for the game is FREE over at DriveThruRPG.

Land of the Cicadas takes this world and opens it up across a large hexmap, allowing us to explore the Lowland Wastes (Cloud Empress's take on a farflung future American Midwest) during the summer of the Century Brood and 29th Expedition (an ongoing military incursion from the Cloudling cities).

If you missed the last Play-By-Blog, here's an idea of how it works:

I write up the situation, NPCs, and more, just like a DM/GM.

You vote in the poll to help decide the party's next course of action.

I roll the dice, resolve actions, and write them up in the next entry.

So on and so forth for the rest of the adventure!

With all that said, let's get into Party Creation, vote on our first decisions, and get this whole thing started! Thanks for coming along for the ride.

We'll be generating 3 characters for our starting party. For the sake of our first poll and the number of base Jobs available in Cloud Empress, I'll take the top 3 most popular results and roll up a character for each (unless the All Random option wins the entire poll, in which case all characters will then be randomly rolled). So if Sellsword gets 8 votes, Lordling gets 4, Magician gets 3, and Courier gets 2, I'll roll up a Sellsword, a Lordling, and a Magician.

For variety's sake, we won't double up on Jobs (unless All Random is chosen, in which case it would be possible to get doubles of a Job within the party).

In Cloud Empress, there are 4 different Jobs available to characters:

Sellswords can handle themselves in a fight, but long to find a home. The long lost fighters and gritty mercs of the Wastes.

Lordlings are groomed to lead and strike fear into those around them. Strange and privileged, they stand out among the Wastes.

Magicians sacrifice their bodies to cast dangerous spells. Esoteric but powerful. There are no old Magicians.

Couriers are scrappy travelers who’ve witnessed the best and worst of the world. The salt of the chalk-covered Earth.

After we have our characters, we'll get our starting location and our initial job - the focus of our travels across the Land of Cicadas - from the Solo Procedure tables. Then, we'll be off!

[spirk-trek]

Brooker Bradshaw, Lee Meriwether, Naomi Pollack, & Kenneth Washington

S3E17: That Which Survives ⋆.˚ ✧ · ˚⊹ ·