Backerkit imminent; All scenarios received!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 05:15:55 PM

Two things:

ONE: The Backerkit is authorised now, so we're going to do a smoke test and send it out to a limited number of people - and then, assuming that's all okay, we'll send everyone their invites and get it started. Thanks for your patience on this!

TWO: The scenarios are all submitted, and they're really neat! Work is complete on four of them, and we've received the first draft of the other five. They contain: a hyena with a knife, murderous Morris dancing, Neighbourhood Watch midwives, computers made out of shackled drow minds, non-elective plastic surgery, dark miracles granted by a cannibal madman god, and much, much more besides.

We'll put up a link to the pre-order page on here when it's all live - until then, speak soon!

- Grant, Chris and Mary

DONE!
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 01:07:28 AM

Okay, we're done! We'll stop yelling about this now. 

Many thanks to you all for your incredible support - we get to write a sourcebook for Spire, and publish it ourselves, and it's generating something close to a living wage for Chris and I, and we get to commission awesome writers and artists whose work we're really excited about, and and and. It's brilliant. Dream job stuff.  

It can take up to 14 days for Kickstarter to process your payments - once everything's gone through, we'll set up a Backerkit page that you can log into to manage your address, postage, and add-ons. We'll let you know when it's live.

I have spent today writing about drow biotechnological implants to calm myself. It has almost worked.

Yours,

- Grant

Masks, Goats, and THE FINAL DAY
over 5 years ago – Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 09:41:43 PM

GOATS AND MASKS

We've unlocked two stretch goals over the last few days! First up, we're going to adopt and (if possible) name a goat for someone that really needs one in a developing country. In addition, we're going to take a break once the fulfilment is over - the stretch goal is also to cover the cost of the time off. With this goal, you've pushed Grant and Chris ever closer to earning a living wage for writing roleplaying games, which is really exciting.

We've also (perhaps more excitingly) unlocked THE BOOK OF MASKS, which is an in-character brochure of the finest masks available on the market. Some of the masks will have abilities associated with them, so players will be able to take them as advances and make a mechanical impact on the game. The book's going to be illustrated by Iguanamouth, who does incredible stuff - she worked with us on Goblin Quest, and we're really excited to get her involved again.

DAWN OF THE FINAL DAY

It's the last 24 hours of the campaign! So, in a naked attempt to beg you for your assistance - please, share this project, tell your friends, write "STRATA" on your pets and set them loose in the neighbourhood, hire an extremely accurate skywriter to etch the url in the streets over Manhattan, anything. It's a weird business model but we rely on the support and kindness of you, our readers, to succeed. Thank you so much for all you've done already.

Also, just a note - we still have five Cults remaining at the high levels, so if you want to be a part of the city of Spire, now's probably the best time to make that investment. Just sayin'. 

Right. This time tomorrow, we'll stop yelling about this. 

Speak soon,

- Chris, Grant and Mary

Eye of the Beholder interview, One Week!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 09:23:31 PM

We've got less than a week left on this project, and it's been incredible to watch it grow from the start - we've been blown away by the support that the community have put behind Strata. We really weren't sure if we had the market for a hard-copy sourcebook for Spire and, well, you're definitely proven that we do.

This is an exciting time for Spire, and for us as a company in general. The success of this Kickstarter has already allowed us to move towards paying Chris and Grant a living wage for their work, and it's opened up the prospect of more content in the future for Spire (and the Resistance system in general). 

Thank you all, again, for your support - especially all of you who've shared Strata with your friends, reviewed Spire on their website (we haven't had a bad review yet!) and yelled about how much they enjoyed the first book. Without you, this simply wouldn't be possible.

Anyway. One of the core scenarios in the game is Eye of the Beholder, a grim story of body-modification, cruelty and bravery. We spoke with the author, Christine Beard, to get some more insight on what players and GMs can expect to see.

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

You've had many RPG credits in the past. Tell us about them; and, more importantly you. 

 Well, I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and gaming since I was a teen. My dad actually got me my first game book ever as a Christmas present, the D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook, and I never really looked back after that. So about three years ago, when a friend of mine mentioned a project he was working on needed a few extra authors, I figured I had nothing to lose by putting my name in. That project turned out to be Onyx Path Publishing's Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary book, where I actually got to bring dark elves into the setting by writing the "nightmare" version of the sidhe. They're one of my favorite creations so far, because drow have always been my favorite fantasy species. I won't lie, with every sourcebook I work on for Changeling, I try to expand on them a little and work them into the setting! 

 Since then, I've branched out to work on some of their other game lines, mostly within their Chronicles of Darkness setting. I've also had a lot of fun working with John Wick Presents on some of their newer 7th Sea books, bringing some new ideas to the myths and legends of Théah, their rules on fate magic, and the other continents of Terra. Getting to contribute something to Spire has been amazing, because it's unlike any of the games I've worked on before, and I get to explore such a riveting setting with my favorite fantasy culture. 

Eye of the Beholder is a sandbox scenario in the heart of Amaranth. Tell us a little about it and why you chose to set it where you did. 

 One of the things that immediately caught my attention while I was reading through Spire was the aelfir's need to "beautify" everything around them. Pair that with the durance the drow go through, and it seemed like only a matter of time before some aelfir would start trying to improve drow. That's the initial concept I was working with when I wrote up the main antagonist, who takes the dark elves in her service and surgically modifies them to be more appealing (by aelfir standards, anyway) before showing them off as "dolls". I wanted to explore the relationship the drow have with their colonizers and highlight the radical difference in the perception of the two groups; the aelfir think they're doing the drow a favor, but the dolls in question are being ripped away from everything they know and left to the mercy of their masters, who don't always realize when they're being unspeakably cruel. Setting the scenario in Amaranth throws everyone into a world of inscrutable etiquette and propriety, and shows just how different things are at the top of the city, but how much they're still the same. 

 You chose to focus on some fairly dark themes and motivations; is this something you relished exploring? 

 I'm a horror writer when it comes right down to it; I spend a lot of time exploring the darker areas of the human mind. Throw in the aelfir's lack of understanding of ethics, and there's a lot to work with within Spire. For me, there's a lot of darkness going on in the real world, and a game like this makes it really easy to reflect that in a setting people can control; there's a certain safety in exploring these truly horrific, make-your-skin-crawl themes when you can step back and decompress for a moment. The core concepts of the scenario (cultural appropriation, dehumanization, objectification) reflect a lot of things that are happening around us every day, and I did enjoy incorporating them as actions that are unquestionably wrong and cruel. 

 What new elements are you bringing to Spire? We were especially taken with the idea that Drow could be worn as “masks.” 

 The masks! When I first came up with the idea of "dolls", they were just that - playthings, novelties, something you'd display. As I was writing out the scenario and developing the motivations of the characters, I wanted to add in something extra to really set Anessa, the primary antagonist, apart. The concept of "pets" already existed, so just showing drow off wasn't anything new, but the idea that to use them as such a central piece of aelfir culture hadn't been touched on. I've described her before as 'the embodiment of cultural appropriation': she quite literally takes someone from a different culture, changes them to suit her liking, and says "this is a central part of my life, and represents me". In the adventure, she's offering up a number of drow for other aelfir to "wear", and it's just as uncomfortable and cringeworthy as it sounds. But in the so drastically stratified society of Spire, it's easy to believe that its something the aelfir would do, without even realising they're reducing the drow to literal objects. 

 If you could be asked any question by us during an interview, like what’s happening now, what would that question be? 

 Maybe "what's a dream project of yours?" I have an investigative cyber-noir setting, tentatively titled "Cloud", on the back burner. Somewhere between The Matrix, Bladerunner, and the view of a rainy window though a haze of cigar smoke, it's coming together in bits and pieces. I love the juxtaposition of bright, flashy neon and dark, foggy streets, and a world where there's mystery even with humanity's collective knowledge at your fingertips. I've never written my own game from the ground up before, but one day I hope to get it out there!  

---

That's all for now! If you'd like to chat with the other members of the Spire community, you can join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/MSMsV9e

- Chris, Grant and Mary

Cardiac Gleams!
over 5 years ago – Tue, Nov 06, 2018 at 04:33:38 PM

CARDIAC GLEAMS!

Tim Wilkinson Lewis, who's creating the newspaper that will act as a handout for each of the scenarios in Strata, shared the cover of Cardiac Gleams, a pulp fiction magazine that, this issues, features sensationalised accounts of Maxwell Roche  - who runs a detective agency in the Works, but sold the rights to his autobiography (verifiable or not) to fund the purchase of his office. The newspaper will have an exclusive excerpt from this purple prose-packed periodical, which will - we should stress - not actually exist outside of this preview. Anyway, enjoy the art: 

BISQUIET INTERVIEW.

How do you overthrow a city with baking? It sounds like a joke, and it sort of is, but then: it really isn't. Xalavier Nelson joins us for a chat about weird fiction, yeast strangling, and werewolf bar mitzvahs:

Xalavier, tell us a bit about yourself and your work.  

If it's someone will pay me for a Thing and it's related to storytelling, I've either done it or am in the process of doing it! My work ranges from running a cult-y Jeff Goldblum LARP at UK games festival Feral Vector, to being lead narrative designer on Y2K-era internet simulator Hypnospace Outlaw (which comes out very soon), to making an entire accessible role-playing system called Ellipses RPG, to running an empathy-focused column for PC Gamer alongside assorted journalism projects. I love when an assignment has a human core and encourages me to grow, trying new things both as a person and creator. It's a big part of why I enjoy tabletop work so much when I get the chance to do it, and why I pitched to join the Strata team as soon as the opportunity arose!  

Bisquiet is one of the more audacious pitches we received when we put out the call. What was it that attracted you to the idea of revolutionary baking?  

Growing up and learning about the history of marginalized people (including my own), I would found these incredible juxtapositions. People who would be abused in almost every manner imaginable--people not even seen as human--and yet placed in positions of incredible influence. Slaves nursing the children of their masters. Faceless servants shoved into the kitchen, responsible for the very sustenance of an entire household. Cultural movements appropriated by the prejudiced mainstream, and transformed into whitewashed phenomenon. I constantly asked myself how a ruling class in question could handle the dissonance of designating entire peoples as both pariahs and caretakers, but over time, the answer became clear. Simple, even.  

Those people - the people 'in charge' - didn't even consider the potential implications of their decisions. This ignorance can and has formed the foundation for many a resistance, and I can't wait to showcase what that seemingly mundane base of power looks like in Strata. 

 One of the NPCs listed in the adventure is a “Yeast Strangler.” What is that, or would you rather leave it up to our imaginations? 

 Spire is a weird, magical place. Stuff gets...bent here. Bent wrong. Organic material is no exception. That said, bacteria being the unpredictable culinary element that it is (at least when I'm cooking), I imagined yeast within the Spire needs as much strangling as it does feeding. What it's being fed...might not be sugar, either. 

 Unrelated: try the sourdough. It's delightful. 

 Are you planning on bringing any new background elements or rules to Spire with your scenario? 

 I'm hopeful I can fill in many weird, nerdy details about food in the Spire! What does a drow baguette look like? What part of Red Row do Bisquiet employees need to creep through to get ingredients for enchanted, deadly frosting? I'm going to spend way too much time and energy coming up with answers to questions nobody has asked, and I'm going to write the hell out of 'em. 

 If you could be asked any question by us during an interview, like what’s happening now, what would that question be? 

 "What are your favourite songs at the moment?" The answer would, of course, be Werewolf Bar Mitzvah from 30 Rock, and Naive Melody by the Talking Heads, because I am an absolute weirdo who doesn't know the meaning of the words "tonal dissonance."    

---

That's all for now. We're coming up on the final week of the campaign soon, so expect us to start yelling about the campaign a bit more as we approach the end. 

Thanks, again, for the immense amounts of support you've sent our way. We weren't sure whether publishing a sourcebook for Spire - as much as we love the setting and the rules - would be a profitable decision, but you've shown us that there's no small amount of interest in telling more stories and starting more revolutions. We're so grateful to you.

Speak soon,

- Grant, Chris and Mary