I've been having a kinda crazy couple of weeks, so I apologize for being quieter than I was at the start of this thing. I promise I haven't forgotten about y'all! I've got one more Designer Diary in the queue, and I'm cooking up some upgrades to make this book even better.

In the meantime, however, a podcast to whet your appetite: the latest Ansible Uplink.

In it, Eryk Sawicki from Peregrine Press sat down with Chris Auriau (who you may recognize from fellow OB Month project ⁠Paramour by Josh Domanski & Chris Airiau) to talk through Electric Sheep Shuffle. The first module I wrote for OB (and I think the first one I'd written for any game?)

It is honestly a really neat podcast in general, but this one is particularly of interest to people excited for Vaporwave Wanderlust, and/or people who've picked up ESS in the Add-ons. 

Wake up DreamScapers, two new stretch goals just dropped.

Got some exciting news from our friends over at SoulMuppet HQ. They've got some really rad new goals for the new OB Sourcebook, Outlaws X Corprations, and they're cruising right along to make them happen.

The first is a really gorgeous map of space made by Joshua Clark, with locations and notes on random encounters by Zach Cox. Space, as we know, is big--and this is built to give you some tools when you need them, but room to expand on your own. Check out their updates for more, it's going to be great.

The other is a really exciting team up with artist/game designer Galen Pejeau, known for games like Stoneburner and Inevitable. If you've ever seen one of those car manuals from the '60s to '80s, with detailed schematics and breakdowns of parts to repair, and you're anything like me, you've always kinda wanted that but for a spaceship.

If Outlaws X Corprations hits £75k, we'll get that. I want it. So if you haven't already picked their project up, you should! Otherwise, tell a friend! 

Back with another Designer Diary, this time I want to talk about the development of the new Faction I've promised in the book. I meant to be brief, but this one got a little lengthy... 

As I started designing the Data Heist, it became pretty clear that someone was going to need to actually initiate it. That's RPG design 101, isn't it? You need someone to give the PCs a quest, or else why would they do it?

Because I always do things in a clear and logical order, I started instead with a target: a megacorp. Nobody likes Megacorps (well... actually nevermind). So, what would they have in the DreamScape?

Somewhere along the way to answering that question, I also thought about "the Disney Vault". A concept that creates artificial scarcity by intentionally putting some content out-of-print for a while. (There's probably a production reason that's their excuse, but I remember as a kid hearing people talk about how even second-hand Disney VHS tapes were hard to find and expensive).

(Also, if you don't know what a VHS is, ask a Millennial and watch them crumble to dust)

I've been listening to an audio drama podcast called The Strange Case of the Starship Iris. In it, the crew of the Rumor (the ship where most of the show takes place) are smugglers who specialize in contraband media. The show itself is quite good! It is also one of the most effective examples I've encountered of the "Podcast as a piece of in-universe media" that I've listened to.

If you're seeing where this is going, let me introduce my new faction: The Boilerplate Syndicate. I've been pitching them as "What if Napster was a spaceship that landed in your neighborhood a few times a year and handed out banned books, bootleg DVDs, and anarchist zines until the Government chased them away?"

Yep, it's the Scholastic Book Fair, but make it criminal.

That said, I also didn't want them to be just criminals. Banning media is generally a bad thing, but I couldn't quite picture Mobsters illegally printing copies of 1984. There's no real profit in it. So what if their motive wasn't profit, but faith?

I wanted to be really, really careful not to just reinvent a religion we already have. I've already written some games to work out my religious trauma, and Catholicism in Space is pretty well-trod ground (I've also never been Catholic).

I also think that human thought and the entire literary canon is pretty spectacular. The things we've done with words and images as a species is pretty awe-inspiring. Humanity has created books, films, speeches, poetry, plays, the "Chimera Ant" arc of Hunter x Hunter, paintings and sculpture.

What if that's what they believe in? What if the idea that human thought is potent and powerful and should be free is a core tenet of their faith? It's the future, it's science fiction. Why not?

It also occurred to me that this group probably wouldn't think of themselves as criminals. They're just exercising their faith, they're just trying to keep people educated and keep ideas free. They probably wouldn't call themselves a "syndicate". They'd probably have another name. One WordHippo.com search for "words related to books later" and I landed on the Latin phrase Vade Mecum, which is an old term for a how-to guide, which literally translates to "go with me".

They call themselves the Vade, but they're known to hostile governments as The Boilerplate Syndicate.

I'm genuinely excited about these guys. I think the concept has legs--so much so I've already started jotting ideas down for another module with them as the focus (perhaps for next OB month...?) But for now, they'll be a little mysterious.

Alright, we are cruising past 3x funded, which is bonkers. I did set out with an unambitious goal, but are y'all sure? (To be clear, this is a joke). 

I haven't set any Stretch Goals per se, but I have been trying to think of things I'd do if I had budget for them--and suddenly I've got some budget. I'm currently investigating three options:

Nothing concrete yet, but I'll keep you all posted. I'd love to do all three, and honestly, I think we're in a good place to do them all. 

Let's take a quick behind-the-scenes peek at the Vaporwave Wanderlust dev process, in a way that would be more exciting than watching me write. (I don't know that these diaries will be a regular feature, but this was a lot more fun to write than I expected). 

If you backed the project, you (hopefully) have a clear picture of what Commway Communications built the DreamScape to be: a low-poly VR world that's reminiscent of the early '00s and '10s internet. It's supposed to be like the Metaverse or Second Life but good.

But, what is it supposed to do?

It is an in-universe hub world that players can access from anywhere in the Sector they happen to be. My core idea was letting PCs search for information or meet NPCs on other planets without having to move the entire party. If your game doesn't have an internet analog, then this layers right in. If you do have one, it's just another representation of that.

As written, DreamScape only connects the star system players are in. If you crew is in the core book's Sutler System, you couldn't chat in real time with someone from F-Infiniti's Senna system. Technically, this is a purely fictional boundary (although it eliminates the need to figure out how interstellar communications would work). For that kind of communication, I added a feature called the App Agent (I swear I wrote that before the phrase "Agentic AI"* was everywhere): Programs that you can send to another system and then wait for them to come back with info.

I've written up other useful internet features, like private meeting spaces, cloud storage, and e-commerce sites. They seemed like natural fits, and useful things that Commway could make money from, justifying the DreamScape's existence in the world.

The other big inspiration of this was '90s VR Arcades, where you could go and play (probably not very good) VR games, so naturally, we have to have room for PCs to play games. I've written a couple of small games, but you could also easily slot in a 1-page game for sessions where one or more people can't make it but you don't want to cancel.

That said, it did feel like my book was still missing something, so I skimmed my older books. The other three modules all include a location and an adventure (Actually Station-bound Semitones is 8 locations and 8 mini-adventures, but you see my point), so what was missing became pretty obvious. Then it was a pretty easy question to answer: What would be cool to do in a VR world?

The almost obvious answer: A Data Heist. (More on that later, maybe?)



* This book is human made, I don't use AI in my processes. I just also work in the tech industry, so I spend a lot of time hearing about it at work.