Great ‘beer & pretzel’ RPG. Our table loved the tenets, miracles and divine retributions and wanted more. As the GM, it was fun to lure players into breaking their tenets and offering them methods of penance that escalated their situation.

Great Esher-esque dungeon with a fun ‘other world’ theme. I love one-page dungeons! Especially when the layout is purposefully logic-defying, it’s great to have it all in one place.

Speaking for myself, I already submitted a version of my game. But I still wanted to give it a passover before the jam is over. Most importantly;

• Apply the beak zine template.
• Fill in some remaining blanks
• Make some minor adjustments to the existing mini-scenes.

I will be at a convention this saturday and would like to offer the game there for free. I will have time to work on it and print it friday morning. So I will reserve time then to make my last changes for version 1.0.

We are in the last week of the TTRPG Jam. Time to get your project to the finish line! If you are struggling, re-read granny’s jam tips on the cover page and readjust your goal to something more realistic. Then, some other things that might help;

Set a submission time before the deadline that suits your schedule, and block time in advance.

Share your plans in this thread if you would like some accountability.

Have a work meetup with a friend and each work on your own thing (this is called body doubling, and can help you stay focused).

Good luck everyone!

Sorry Virgil, your submission has been disqualified. The jam page mentions a strict no-AI policy.

Hi everyone. Fanterland is hosting a new jam, this time together with Slowquest, and it starts next month.

This one is not specific to Cloud Empress, but you are welcome to make a Cloud Empress module anyway.

The theme is Vikings & Myths.

Read more about the jam and sign up here: https://itch.io/jam/the-rpg-jamboree-vikings-and-myths

This game’s stuffed with tools and tips for tongue-in-cheek shenanigans: catchphrases, yelling out your special move, ad-lib commercials, camera directing and my fave: d20 last words (I made it d6).

Had a blast playing this. For character creation you just roll some tags, and it immediately gives you an idea for your character. Burning tags felt meaningful and fun.

EDIT: GM’ed it now as well. Lots of fun to push players and see how much they are willing to burn to succeed.

Border Riding shifts storytelling focus from a community towards the border that shapes our perception of where We end and They begin, creating a refreshing and insightful way to explore identity and xenophobia.

Stacks of Goblins creates chaotic shenanigans with ease and adds a layer of fun by allowing players to take spots in the stack from each other and even the role of narrator!

Haven’t laughed more in any other game. Sock Puppets shows that you don’t need resolution mechanics when players know exactly what the assignment is and how to stir the pot.

The princess gifts suit the genre very well and nudge players towards a gentler tone of adventuring.

The GM procedures for generating maps and locations on the fly is fun, and the setup and random tables inject the weird-hope tone of the game, making it distinct from other post-apocalyptic games.

Best safety, communication and ritual design I’ve seen. System and intent are a great match.

We debased ourselves in demonic depravity beyond what we thought ourselves capable of, because we could no longer endure society debasing us even further. A grim theme balanced out by the psychedelic effects of our rituals.

Played this yesterday and everyone had an absolute blast! Just when your secret crush asks you for a dance, a kaiju appears to terrorize the town! The constant push and pull between your personal desire to move within society, and your vow to protect the innocent as a sentai ranger was palpable throughout. Loved it.

Hi JorisotB, I have sent you your key via the e-mail address listed on your website. Please enjoy.

Small update. Máté, one of the other wardens at my local Cloud Empress group  and author of city district Agapee, has combined several winter jam modules into one hexcrawl. You can check it out below. Small disclaimer; 'fallen tower of agapee' and 'upsilon city crash site' refer to the fact that in our campaign, these places in the sky have indeed crashed down by now. 

We want to explore the possibility of combining this and the guide in my previous post into one adventure zine. With the consent of each contributor of course. If you want to be notified if this does happen, the easiest way is to sign up to my newsletter. https://fanterland.substack.com/

Each of the 5 adventure sites is an A5 trifold. Those can't be printed at the intended size with regular printers for A4 paper or similar. You can print it at a different size or on multiple sheets, but if you want the intended format, I recommend our printed products. There is some limited stock still available, we just don't have the webstore up in the air right now. But you can reach out at p.elroy [at] gmail [dot] com.

With the Winter Jam at an end, in a way it has only begun. With all the new modules available to us, wintertime has become an exciting time to explore the Land of Cicadas. Here's a little guide on how to create a rich winter campaign in the Land of Cicadas. 

0. Bringing your existing summer campaign into winter

Odds are you already have a campaign going and are in the middle of summer. If not, skip this step. It might not seem like it, but there are plenty of ways to transition it into winter! Here are some ideas.

• Travel to the other hemisphere. The party has ruffled the wrong feathers and need to disappear. Snow Traders from across the hemisphere will take the party back with them, far away into a land that is now in winter, for a price. Use the module Snow Traders and any of the region modules in the section 'Look for Greener Pastures' below.
• Timeslip! Like watt mentioned, Cloud Empress includes plenty of the weird so that wardens and creators can use that to diegetically mould the world to fit their own ideas. A freak slip incident can take them forward in time. Perhaps related to the slippery winter weather from the Whiteout! module.
• Alternate reality beyond the slip. Just like cursed people can emerge from alternate realities through the slip, so can you. Here, it's winter. It seems to you that everyone shares a curse here. To them, you're the cursed one.
• Help a community of farmerlings prepare for winter. If the players want to devote themselves to hard work preparing the Farmerlings for the harsh winter, how about you zoom out with a storytelling session or montage that spans months? @parodical_son suggested using a game like The Quiet Year, which I think is a great shout.
• Winter has come early. As the Century brood came early, so did winter. Perhaps with a transitional session for fall to happen. What caused winter to come early? Perhaps it is related to the Whiteout, or a wish granted by the Cloud Empress. Perhaps the answer is as unknown as the answer to the early arrival of the century brood. Perhaps the answers are connected.
• The slow burn. It has to be included. And this is how my own group did it. Between sessions, a week passes for downtime. If you play long enough, it's winter. 

Several of the options above could also be used to bring players back from winter to summer so that you can always go back to summer content in the future.

1. Wintrify the Land of Cicadas

Follow  the steps below to wintrify the existing Land of Cicadas.

1. Swap the Couriers Table with Couriers from Snow Traders. This adds winter trade and new adventure hooks for The Land of Cicadas year one.
2. Adjust Travel Rules from The Land of Cicadas according to the Travel in the Whistling Valley rules in Chalk and Ice. This adds harsh winter weather and deters hunting, gathering and finding shelter.
3. You could swap the Weather Table from the above travel rules with the Regional Weather from Oriven, based on personal preference. This adds winter weather specific to the microclimates players might travel through.
4. Add the characters Soot and Soil to Tack Town. This adds a sense of slowing down during winter, and philosophising about the bigger picture.
5. Hold the Dance of the Dead festival from the Lowland Festivals , in which farmerlings bring their dead to the frozen feeding grounds.
6. Freeze the acid lake in the east, and have four local settlements compete to be the champion of this year's Little War On Ice using Challengers on Ice.
7. Reread what the official year one materials have to say about winter, priming your mind to reinterpret existing prompts that were written for summer. How is Tack Town changed by the Council's Winter Heads? Are all the cicadas gone now? Has the 29th expedition fully retreated? What's the Order of the Broken Bread up to in their absence?

2. Hand out wintry stuff to your players

These are things you can give to the players, or place somewhere for them to find, adding themes of winter through their characters.

• The Engagement Bangle (Wedding of the Winter Lord); whichever player character wears it will have a story that unfolds in between adventures through hallucinations wherever they go.
• Commune with the Dead, a winter ritual, when the dead can't be buried.
• New player character jobs. These are not winter specific, but deserve a mention as they're a lot of fun: The slipsinger, the Sporebinder and the Brood Prophet.

3. Session 1: Trap them in a blizzard

When in doubt on how to start your winter campaign, start in a blizzard  while traveling. If you wintrified the existing Land of Cicadas, you'll probably find that traveling is way too dangerous. That means you're doing it right. There's a good reason people do not travel in winter. When players find themselves in great peril on the road or in the wild without any decent shelter, that's a great time to lure them into one of these strange and isolated locations until the blizzard subsides.

• Perhaps the blizzard is unnatural; an ethereal curtain of falling snow. This could be the first introduction of the Whiteout, and could set players on a longer path to find Brightstar Experimental Laboratories. If they can find shelter first that is. Perhaps in one of the following locations;
  
• The Crack (Slipping Through the Cracks), for when you want to give your characters a place they could spend up to a week in. 
• A cave ( The Tearful Tragedy of the Hannelore-Marr Party) provides 'slip-looped horror'.
• A pillbox with a small bunker (Low Lying Mist), when you want to explore the intimacy of two strangers reliant upon eachother to survive the isolation of winter.
• Nebb's Nook (Cold Comfort at Nebb's Nook), when you want the creepyness of a small isolated family and 'infant curses'.

4. Even settlements are frostbitten by winter

If your characters survived the road or the wild, well done. But even the settlements aren't safe. Here are some new settlements with wintry situations to confront your players with.

• Timbrilin (Stolen Summer).  A settlement under siege, with a battle between two large groups playing out in multiple phases.
• Marzanna (Marzanna's Blazing Heart). Somewhere in the Breadbasket. A strange device that protects against winter's bite has gone wrong.
• The Hollow (Hollow Wishes) explores the seeming aftereffects in winter of the missing Cloud Empress' travels during the summer.
• Frosford, a frontier town from which players can Journey To The Crystal Caverns.
• Lake Beryl (Beneath the Lake); a town with a dungeon underneath, hiding a cool secret.

5. Look for greener pastures - to no avail

The roads, the wilds and the settlements are all dangerous during winter. An ideal opportunity to tempt your players to find greener pastures beyond the confines of the hex map. Spoiler: things only ever become stranger, never safer. Here are some new regions to explore.

• The Whistling Valley (Chalk and Ice),  a region once known for its chalk, now run dry. 
• Oriven (The High-Desert Region of Oriven) with several microclimates and plenty of the strange.
• The Fen (Beneath These Grasses Grieving), a new biome which holds back the Slip and memories.

6. Forfeit outdoor travel and spend a whole campaign inside

If players come to the conclusion that winter travel is a fool's errand anywhere  in the Land of Cicadas, they are correct. The wise choice would be to give up travel altogether. With the modules below, it's also an interesting choice that can last you a campaign. But will they go up? Or down?

• Players may travel upwards to the Upsilon Cloud city, a collection of modules with enough districts to have a winter campaign without traveling outside its walls. Use this if you want a big city that lasts you a campaign.
• Players may travel downwards to The Unseen City, an underground biome. The module contains the adventure Down the Snail's Spire. Within the mazeworld of the Unseen City lies the Marble Palace. While more details about this palace are underway, you can already play Frozen Wings, an adventure in the Marble Palace. 

I played as a Slipsinger for the first time the other night. The more magic they perform, the more out of control they get, until ultimately they self-destruct. Knowing this from the start was very liberating as a player. It encouraged me to play passionately and recklessly. Would recommend.

The jam period has ended with an impressive number of submissions from newcomers and familiar designers alike. Check them out and leave a rating if you like them. But now the fun has only begun. With a pletora of new content for your Cloud Empress game, what will you be using first?

https://itch.io/jam/cloud-empress-winter-jam/entries

Creators who submitted within the period are eligible for 1 of 20 Cloud Empress patches. Winners are selected randomly. More on this soon.

For those like myself who missed the deadline for whatever reason; we are accepting late submissions. Just upload it to Itch and send me the page link at p.elroy+winterjam [@] gmail.com to submit your game.

Cloud Empress Winter Jam Weekly Roundup: Week 3

• Three new winter adventures and a ritual have been submitted. Go check them out! If you like it, don't forget to rate it. https://www.itch.io/jam/cloud-empress-winter-jam/entries
• We've now entered the last jam week. Submit your entry on time to be eligible for the Cloud Empress patch giveaway. Need help? Let us know!

I havent been having this issue on macbook air m2. You could try asking in the  CE-fan_content channel of the Worlds by watt Discord server too. https://discord.gg/QNfWUSNGDc

Cloud Empress Winter Jam Weekly Roundup - Week Two of Four

Three more fantastic modules have been submitted to the jam. Go check them out. Remember to leave a rating if you like it; this helps the creator.

We now enter week 3 of 4. How's your concept going? Have you had the chance to get started on it yet? Now's as good a time as any. How's the progress going? Could you use some help? Let us know.

https://itch.io/jam/cloud-empress-winter-jam/entries

Another layer has now been submitted; Antaglos. You are again welcome to use it as the setting for an adventure of your own.
https://itch.io/jam/cloud-empress-winter-jam/rate/3236646

Cloud Empress Winter Jam: Week 1 Wrap Up

The first jam week is over, and we end with the power of three:

1. Three entries submitted.
2. Three previews shared.
3. Three weeks left to go.

Three submissions

The first submissions have already been wonderful, from adventures in the snow, to city discricts to keep your players busy while they're cooped up during winter.

• The Belly by Chloe Shields
• Hollow Wishes by Myrmidont
• Antaglos by Nino Ray

Three previews

There's more adventures already underway, from an unassuming mystery to a full on battleground. Join the #ce_fan_content channel on the worldsbywatt Discord server to join the brainstorm.

• Blood in the Snow by @Christian | MeatCastle
• Stolen Summer by @TysonNW
• Challengers on Ice by @tomateunmate

Three more weeks

If you want to join but haven't started yet, there is still plenty of time; let us know what you're thinking of and join the fun. We have plenty of resources to get you started:

• Cloud Empress module templates
• A seminar by watt on writing literary adventures for Cloud Empress & beyond
• Lots of third party resources for TTRPG design in general.

https://itch.io/jam/cloud-empress-winter-jam

The bottom layer of Upsilon City has now been submitted; The Belly, by Chloe Shields. You are welcome to use it as the setting for an adventure of your own.

https://chloeshields.itch.io/the-belly

So... game jam to fill Antarctica with adventures?

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.