Hello, backers! 

Vocurro is shaping up to be an incredible journey for your players, whether they’re a group of mages, knights, and rogues, or a crew of pilots, space rangers, and medics. We’d like to take an opportunity to share some design snippets from Monte Cook himself, and a testimonial from one of the players in his fantasy playtest.

So recently, I learned about remipedes. These are eyeless crustaceans that look like colorless, segmented centipedes. Each segment has a pair of legs, like a centipede, but they're like little flippers because these things live underwater. In caves. Not only do they have sophisticated mandibles, but their head has six strong, arm-like appendages for holding prey while the mandibles bite, over and over. To top it all off, they can also inject a powerful neurotoxin. Of course, in the real world they are only a few centimeters long. But in a fantasy world, a giant remipede might be more like 5 feet long. 

Moral of the story? If you're exploring the natural limestone caves that are a part of the megadungeon, stay out of the water. Or maybe don't, because there's something really important in the submerged cave below them for all the adventurer/cave-divers out there. 

—Monte 

(Nothing to worry about, right? Right?!?)

Kate, one of the internal players in Monte’s playtest, had a few tidbits to share as well. 

“Our Jewel in the Sky playtest as a fantasy party really does playtest the megadungeon itself—from noting that we needed an idea of how much it costs to stay in the definitely-not-haunted-tavern, to whether we use Effort on each or just one roll to make the undead run away before we had to. (Even if we are incapable of rolling above a 10, and are essentially clown shoes when it comes to in-character decisions)!" 

—Kate, aka Sparks, an Intuitive Dragonfolk Cleric who Blazes with Fire 

We can’t wait to share more details about the dungeons as they come to life! 

Thanks for your support!
 —Team MCG 

Greetings, explorers!

We hope your summer is full of adventures, whether you’re outdoors or hiding from the weather in your preferred gaming habitat.

We checked in with Monte, who has been designing and running playtests for Jewel in the Sky and this is what they shared with us:

Playtesting and design continue at a rapid pace for Jewel in the Sky. In the games I'm running, I've found that the Event Tracker (the new name for the "clocks" discussed in the campaign) really makes the dungeon dynamic. Triggered when players roll 1s or 20s (or both) in the session, the tracker may result in interesting changes. The dungeon’s inhabitants move around, new inhabitants move in—often introducing some new potential story element—conflicts among inhabitants resolve or flare up, or some aspect of the dungeon changes. Even relatively minor events, such as an inhabitant moving through a dungeon area, can have big repercussions to the PC's adventures, because the inhabitant might leave a formerly locked door open, reveal a secret door, or something similar.

—Monte Cook, June 2026

I don’t know about you lovelies, but we definitely have a waaay higher percentage of folks who consistently roll 1s; hard stares go to Bruce and Kate for this! Who in your group is going to have the dials of the Event Tracker spinning, or have you found the ways to sacrifice to the dice gods for leniency?

Keep in touch for more updates. Thanks for your support.

– Team MCG