“O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife...”

Today is the start of the crowd funding period for the first source book for Wild Skies, the premier anthropomorphic diesel punk role playing game. This time we are turning our attention from post-war Europe to North America and the Roaring Twenties of the United States in particular. Taking a line from the song “America the Beautiful”, the title of this source book is Wild Skies: Liberating Strife. The project is live on KickStarter now, so please go there to support the book and help make it a reality.

From the beginning, my writing and business partner, Brandon, and I envisioned Wild Skies as a game to explore the many aspects of pulp-era adventure. This is the first of several planned source books. We wanted to begin with Europe because it is something less often seen, but we always knew an America book would follow. Almost as soon as the first book was announced, we were asked by fans, “So, when is the America book coming?” Knowing everyone considers a source book for America an obvious choice, we expect the project to generate a lot of interest. We will be delivering new animal types, new careers, new perks and quirks; all with an American theme. Keeping with the diesel punk feel we established in Europa Tempest, the America setting has flying battleships and dogfights and cities full of big machines. In contrast to Europe, we have asked for more Art Deco-inspired design in the aircraft and buildings. Inspired by the “current wars” and the early electrification of New York City, we have made electricity a central part of the story but ramped everything up to the point nearly limitless power is distributed wirelessly to everyone.

Beyond the technology, the other huge conceit of the setting is the “trust busting” efforts of Theodore Roosevelt didn’t really stick, nor did the stock market crash of 1929 happen. We posit a situation where all large corporations were instead consolidated into one mega-corporation owned by the Dennington family. Unlike the political tensions we explored in Europa Tempest, we aim to explore economic tensions with the story hooks of this book. What would it look like if a company really acted on the idea “a happy worker is a productive worker?” How do different people make lives for themselves in a ruthlessly capitalistic meritocracy? What other interpretations of “the American dream” are possible?” We also want to explore the international implications of the United States’ isolationist stance.

We had some growing pains over the course of our first project (Customs form? What is that?), but we also learned more about how to do the kinds of projects we want to do in this industry. We are experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect, for sure; realizing now how little we knew before. Though we expect Liberating Strife to be a smaller book then Europa Tempest, we have more help lined up this time. There are four primary writers instead of just two and we have a whole team of people in place to write the stretch goals when, if and as we reach them. We are expecting a quick turn-around on this project and delivery by this year’s GenCon in August. I’m never sure what it should feel like when I’ve “arrived” in the industry, but I think once this project gets funded and we have two full books out in the world as Wet Ink Games, I will feel more like I have made it.

Come fly the Wild Skies with us. This time over America!

I Wrote a Rifts World Book

My writing partner Brandon and I submitted a manuscript we called “The Sovietski Sourcebook” to Palladium Books on the last day of 2012. We knew then it takes a while for a publisher to take all the steps which lead to a book being published. We know that better than ever now that we have our own games company. At last all the steps are complete and Rifts World Book 36: Sovietski has been released! If you are a fan of Palladium, you have seen this coming for a while now. The “raw preview” edition of the book was released in summer 2016. Since then it has regularly been featured in the company’s weekly update. Even knowing it was coming, it was still a special moment to see my name on the cover of a Rifts book. Thanks to Kevin Siembieda, the staff of Palladium Books and all the artists for bringing this book to fruition.

What is the Sovietski?

Rifts is a role playing game set roughly 300 years in the future which assumes humans entered a Golden Age of technology before a nuclear exchange on the Winter Solstice provoked a magical apocalypse which opened the Rifts, magical gateways to every possible elsewhere, and demons and magic beings flooded in; destroying nearly every human civilization. In the time period of the game monster kingdoms and human nations vie with each other for control of the earth. Many human cultures have adopted magic or revived ancient mystic arts, but just as many are committed to technology and cyborgs and power armor are as common as wizards and psychics.

There was a new Soviet Union at the height of the Golden Age and the few people who survived the apocalypse in their bunkers managed to pass their brand of soviet communism on to their descendants. These descendants are the Sovietski, a small (mostly) human nation built on what used to be the great cities of eastern Russia. As the rest of Russia is ravaged by cyborg warlords, ancient demons and gargoyles, the Sovietski keeps itself safe with mandatory military service of all citizens with many converted to cyborgs. They also have tanks, hover tanks, fighter jets and walled cities. Many fans of Rifts like the high technology aspects of the setting so there are plenty of vehicles, cyborg bodies, weapons and cyborg character classes included in the book.

The aspect of the book I am happiest with, however, is our focus on the culture of the Sovietski. We included quotes from communist figures to illustrate the ideals of the Sovietski or to present its irony. We described the unique cultural feel of each of the different cities. We wrote about religious enclaves and festivals and made a random roll table for chance encounters with strangers. We included some of the non-humans which also call the Sovietski home. All of these elements (hopefully) give players the ability to play characters from the Sovietski, not just play with the equipment of the Sovietski. What have the people had to give up to survive in the hostile world of Rifts? What joys have they found for themselves despite the sacrifices?

Why did I want to write about it?

This Sovietski book was something of the perfect project for me. Brandon introduced me to Rifts twenty years ago and I have liked the expansive world of the game ever since. We have role played together since high school and have done so weekly for almost ten years. I enjoy reading about Russia’s history and we both keep up with the news from the country. Working together to write a game book set in Rifts Russia was a natural extension of all our previous experience with Palladium and our shared interests.

As a creator, I always respond to things I like by wanting to add to them. While almost every corner of the Rifts globe has been talked about, there are plenty of places where the coverage has been thin. The “New Soviet Nation” was one of these areas. It was introduced in Rifts World Book 17: Warlords of Russia, with some extra information in Rifts World Book 18: Mystic Russia; about thirty pages in total, and most of that cyborg bodies and vehicles. The nation existed, but its history was not detailed, its political systems were not explored and the motivations of its people were left blank. The challenge was to add the detail we wanted to the setting without contradicting what had already been established in previous books. I think we managed it well.

The project has an important personal aspect to it as well. I have always been interested in the Soviet Union. I attribute this to being old enough to remember the end of the Cold War and the break up of the USSR but too young to have really had any understanding of events at the time. For most of my life, America’s fallen rival has loomed in my imagination as a mysterious shadow of “something important” which is ultimately unknowable because it is gone. I cultivated an appreciation for the symbols of the USSR during my teen years because teens are always looking for ways to mark themselves as unique by defying expectations. In collage when I began to study the broad sweep of Russian history and leaned about the machinations and proxy wars between East and West which define the Cold War, I learned there is little, if anything, to appreciate in the government or leaders of the Soviet Union. Instead, I came to appreciate the remarkable capacity for survival possessed by the Russian people. They have overcome a barely hospitable landscape, defeated invasion forces and endured some of the most brutal government repression in history. I find myself having made something of a complete circuit with this project. My interest in detaining a fictional version of the Soviet Union has only made me appreciate all the more the people who struggled against the real Soviet Union. It is the heroic spirit of those people I wanted to capture. This book is my celebration of survival against all odds. It is my eulogy for the millions killed in Soviet era purges. It is an expression of my hope for a better future for the Russian people.

A role playing game book may not be fine art, but I like to think Rifts World Book 36: Sovietski is in the same tradition as the many works by Russian poets, composers, writers and musicians which have been expressing the same hope for centuries.