It's been a long time. I've never been good at consistency when it comes to things like this - I think that's the artist brain in me. A lot has happened since the last time I posted here two years ago. In that time, on the creative front, I've been focusing mostly on my photography. In recent months, however, I have also been delving back into content creation for tabletop roleplaying games. Shadowrun was the first TTRPG I ever played. I absolutely loved the world that was crafted for that game - the seamless mixture of science fiction and fantasy in a cyberpunk dystopian near future was exactly what my 13-year old mind wanted to play out my own power fantasies. From my late teens all the way up to my mid-30's, I stopped playing or even really thinking much about any TTRPG.
A handful of years ago, I let myself delve into the world of Critical Role and The Dungeon Run to see what all the fuss with Dungeons & Dragons was about. Consuming that content scratched a certain creative and escapism itch that I didn't even really realize was there. There was something beautiful about watching grown adults taking a social and cultural risk by putting themselves out there for the world to see and play D&D - the game with a stigma attached. I think a big part of what I fell in love with here was the human spirit and the freedom of accepting oneself and one's own interests despite what others might think.
D&D was a gateway experience. I still love and consume Critical Role content, and I would still be faithfully watching The Dungeon Run if events had worked out differently for the cast and crew. (The DM, who is an absolutely amazing writer and storyteller, moved away for personal/family medical reasons.) It was a gateway, though, because after a while, I started to think back to my early teens when I would spend hours with the Shadowrun 2e rule book and conceptualize various different characters and I would imagine playing them in games. One of my favorite concepts was to try and create Wolverine, from the X-Men, in Shadowrun without breaking any of the character creation/development rules. It's amazing how close you can actually get! I eventually bought the latest edition of the game, started re-learning the rules, and looked for an online group to try and get plugged in with. As much as I enjoyed it, I quickly began to wonder how in the world I had ever learned to play Shadowrun in the first place. The mechanics are extremely complicated and their contradictions have contradictions.
That's where Lowlife 2090 comes into play. Mostly by luck, I was scrolling through Kickstarter and I came across Lowlife 2090 and saw that it had already surpassed its funding goal. The art indicated this might be something I would be interested in, so I read further. Much to my delight, this game is very much a science fiction fantasy game set in a cyberpunk dystopian future in the not-too-distant future. The best part is that it uses a d20 system that is leagues less complicated than Shadowrun. Without hesitation, I backed the project.
Fast forward to today and what I'm doing here. The one thing a lot of these games lack is a fully fleshed out, living, breathing world. Lowlife 2090 is set in Mendoza City by default. The game was set in a fictional city intentionally so that players from all over the world could set Mendoza City in whatever country or culture they relate to the most. For me, I imagine Mendoza City is what New York City became. For others, Mendoza City is Sydney, Australia. I love that decision, but I often wondered how Mendoza City interacts with other cities. What other cities are even still around? The areas outside of established cities are wastelands of semi-magical pollution and inhospitible wilderness as a result of climate change. But, there has to be more than just one city left, so what are they like and which ones survived into the future?
With that question in mind, I came up with the "city gazette" concept. These are intended to be smaller documents that provide a framework from which a gamemaster can prime their own creative juices to set their players in. The first gazette I created was the New Hope City Gazette. The second gazette was only just published here, the Tokyo City Gazette. I am also publishing these on DriveThruRPG, but I am publishing them here first so that any of my subscribers can have first dibs on them (and at a discount). The general publishing schedule that I'd like to aim for is to publish here on Buy Me A Coffee in the last week of the month and give my subs a chance to purchase/download the documents first. Then, the first Friday of the month, I intend on publishing to my publisher page on DriveThruRPG.
22 April 2024: Tokyo City Gazette was published here
4 May 2024: Tokyo City Gazette will go live on DriveThruRPG
27 May 2024: Publish Lafayette City on Buy Me A Coffee
7 June 2024: Publish Lafayette City Gazette on DriveThruRPG
etc. until I run out of ideas to publish
What can you expect to see in these? Well, every one of these gazettes will include a backstory for the city, a description of the city's districts, and a description of the city's "key players" - the important people that run things, often both in the shadows and in the public eye. In addition to that, each of the gazettes have a list of plot hooks for gamemasters to use, should they want to, as a starting nugget of an idea to base a job or even a whole campaign on. Some of the gazettes will feature other content, as well. For instance, in the third volume, Lafayette City Gazette, there will be a new monster and monster stat block. Beyond that, there will be at least two new playable classes (and I'm brainstorming a third right now), and I am always throwing around ideas for playable races, new cyberware, new magic items, spells, etc.
If you've read this far, thank you! With that, I do hope you enjoy the city gazettes!
~ Wiley Gambit