Strife Liberated!

You will know already if you were a backer of the project, but Wild Skies: Liberating Strife is done and set out to everybody. It’s available at fine retailers everywhere and has even been reviewed. It’s March and I feel like I have not come up for air since I started putting the Liberating Strife manuscript together in August of last year. Well, I am taking this moment to breathe. *three deep breaths*

When we chose to set the first Wild Skies book in Europe we always knew “The America Book” was going to be the next one we did. Being two “Yanks” ourselves, it only made sense. We took the same assumptions about the period and the technology level we want for the Wild Skies world and adjusted everything to an America context. What if everything Nikola Tesla said he could make actually got made? What if there was no “trust busting” and bigger and bigger companies unified into one mega-corporation? What if American politics of the period was stanch isolationism backed by the highest level of tech in the world – all leased to the army and air navy by said mega-corporation? Well, that’s the America we present in Liberating Strife.

That was what Brandon and I brought to the table. This was bigger than our previous project with two additional writers brought on. To over-simplify their contributions, John Kennedy was our “company and dissidents” specialist and Josh Sinsapaugh was our “culture and counter-culture” expert. The depth of research those two went to and the results they produced fill me with joy. Instead of just giving players a bunch of American tech and some American animals, this book paints an almost complete picture of the United States of American in this alternate reality diesel punk time line. Corporate structure of the United Dennington Trust; it’s there. Boardroom politics at the highest levels; covered. The popular and underground music scenes; explained. Traveling the roadways and airways; yes. All the countries of North America; have their own section. This is a 130 page book and it’s page 67 before you get to anything with game statistics; before that it’s all world information. Considering three of the four main writers grew up with Palladium’s Rifts* Wold Books, maybe it’s not a surprise.

The book also has a lot of great art in it. Showcasing art is another thing we get from the game books which are our roots. The cover by Chuck Walton and Eduardo Domínguez is another great one. Inside, in addition to another slate of great pieces from Mike Mumah of animal people doing all the things (shout out to my favorite, the Jazz Age party on page 87) and Aspen Aten doing another map for us and Brian Manning’s work on the weapons and vehicles, we have 30s-looking national parks posters from Steven Wu and action scenes by Steven Cummings. All together Wild Skies: Liberating Strife doesn’t just give you some stuff from America, it lets you play Wild Skies in America.

Case in point: In January I ran a game of Wild Skies using some adventure seeds we had sent to Kick Starter backers right after we funded and the pre-gen characters in the book. I was laying awake in bed the night before thinking about the game and trying to account for everything the players might want to do. I knew my game was full of people who had signed up specifically to play Wild Skies – I knew they would want to test the full potential of the game. As I lay there, I feel like I went through all the stages up to cosmic brain, because with all the material in the book flashing through my head and all the sessions I have run over the last few years I knew I could handle any situation which came up. If they wanted to go on a road trip, or try to take over a night club or ride the rails, or become air pirates, or stay in the work camp and investigate the original mystery, I could run that. When it came to it the next day, I could indeed run it and we had a great time. People like a game I helped create! It’s an amazing feeling.

Wild Skies: Liberating Strife is Wet Ink Games product number WIG-108, which means there are 9 Wild Skies products out there now. I haven’t talked about them all here so be sure to check them all out on DriveThruRPG.

Liberating Edits

All month long I have been doing some heavy lifting to get our document for Wild Skies: Liberating Strife ready to send to our editor. As much as getting the first book turned around required growing pains, this follow up almost seems to involve more. My writing partner and I had never put together a book by ourselves before. Now, even though we have done that, we have never put together a book from other people’s writing before. There are five total writers for this book and getting everyone’s pieces in hand and stitched together took more work than I expected. Also working with an editor is new to me. Growing pains.

Thankfully, my work is now complete enough that I can shift the project to someone else for a while. I am looking forward a few lighter weeks. There are, of course, a few more pieces to actually write and we don’t have all the final art in yet. Then we have to look at the edits and apply the advice. There is still a good bit of runway before this thing takes off, but we are moving forward. There will be a lot of good information and really nice hooks to hang adventures on when this book is finally done. Keep up with all the updates here.

Am I Dieselpunk?

In support of Wild Skies: Liberating Strife, Brandon and I have been recording a few podcast appearances. Most recently we were on The RPG Brewery. Since we’ve called Wild Skies a dieselpunk game, we also appear on the newest episode of The Dieselpunk Podcast. They asked a question they ask of all their guests; “When did you know you were dieselpunk?” My honest answer to the question is: “Only when you told me I was”.

To step back a little bit: while Brandon and I were developing Wild Skies we always said we wanted it to be dieselpunk. The game was always set the 1930s and took inspiration from the ’20s and ’40s as well. To us, it was about staying in the technological brackets of “after airplanes” and “before jets”. The “punk” comes in with the idea “all problems can be solved by adding a bigger engine”. With these ideas set, I don’t feel we had to work that hard to make our game dieselpunk. We looked to the political, cultural and technological elements of those decades for our inspiration and naturally remixed them as we saw fit.

John and Eric of the Dieselpunk Podcast use the definition “retro futurism of the 1920s through the 1950s” when they talk about what dieselpunk is to them. I first encountered that definition last fall when John interviewed Brandon about the release of Wild Skies: Europa Tempest. By that definition, some of my favorite pop culture is dieselpunk even though I never called it that before: The Rocketeer, Batman: The Animated Series, Dark City and Nausicaä Princess of the Valley of the Wind. If I push the definition a little more to include what was actually produced in the ’20s-’50s, virtually all of my favorites are dieselpunk: Dashiell Hammett, H.P. Lovecraft, noir films like A Touch of Evil and the aesthetics of Soviet propaganda posters. I’m dieselpunk. Who knew?

Being on the show was great. I listen to a bunch of podcasts, but that was only the second time I have been on one. Brandon and I know what we like about our Wild Skies setting and about role playing while our hosts know about trends in dieselpunk, but almost nothing about role playing games. There was a lot of room for us all to learn from each other.

One idea mentioned in passing on the show which I want to weigh in on is the question: is dieselpunk about the particular technology or about the aesthetics of a setting? For me it’s all about the aesthetics and the attitude of remix culture. It’s what I call the blender. It what you put in the blender comes from the dieselpunk era, what you get out of the blender is dieselpunk. As with steampunk and cyberpunk “genres” before it, so much more fits under the umbrella of the name than just the technology of the time in question.

I have an important point about this. The remix is needed because the pop culture of so much of the past was so one dimensional; that is, white male heroes. For me, remixing the past in a “punk” way allows women, people of color, homosexuals and anyone else who tended not to be in focus, or allowed to be heroic of escape from stereotypes to become the center of action on their own terms. Again, steampunk led the way and it’s one of the things I appreciate about it.

I think dieselpunk – at least what I want it to be – should do the same thing. As a creator I need to open up the playing field so anyone can have adventures in the textures of this period. We’ve tried to make the right steps with Wild Skies: Europa Tempest. We present women in our NPC crew and in leadership positions. Our supplements include gender non-conforming and gay characters as well. As we assemble Liberating Strife, I realize there is still room to grow as my own awareness of the importance of representation grows. As a person who can so easily see myself in the pop culture I love, I feel an extra pressure to present my remix in a way where other people can see themselves as well.

“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.