Time for an update!

(Give me a like if you get the reference )

– First draft of the book is so close to being done I can taste it. I’m in the final stretch of the final chapter, and I don’t think I’ll need more than a few pages to cover what I want to say. This means soon there’s a complete draft to show people, and when the Kickstarter gets off the ground I’ll be able to say “there’ll probably be delays, there often are, but at least the text is already done!”

It feels pretty great. We’ll see how much of it survives the process of revisions etc, but at least it’ll be *something*

– I’ve said this in a couple of different contexts by now but I think it bears repeating: There will be no AI-generated content in this project. I don’t personally consider generative AI to be an ethical technology and I don’t like what it’s doing to the ability of people to work as artists and illustrators. I won’t get too much up on my soapbox here, but suffice it to say there’ll be a zero tolerance policy for AI slop in official Luna City Blues products. I’d rather publish the book completely without illustrations than use something made by AI.

– Still no dev blog or much of a presence on other platforms, sorry. Been a bit swamped with other stuff. But I’m still planning on it.

Hello there! Hope you’ve survived summer. Or if it’s not summer where you are, I hope you’ve survived whatever you’ve had 

Some updates:

– Cults and Apostles done, as are most of the Mechanics chapter including character generation. It just needs some more examples, and I’m reworking the mechanics for trade/money/resources/equipment.

– Otherwise, the first main draft of the book only lacks the chapter on scenario design. Since that sort of thing is pretty much my jam, I don’t foresee mjuch problems. I’ve written chapters on how to design mystery-solving type scenarios into several of my previous games, and this will be pretty similar.

– I’m thinking about how to ramp up the PR bit. I mean, I’m a writer, doing PR isn’t really my strong suit and I have limited time and energy for these things but… I’m currently thinking about creating some sort of dev blog, probably at the official site. In the future, I’d write my updates there, then make sure to cross-post to Facebook, Instagram, maybe even the dreaded X. And also probably posting it to a mailing list of some kind.

The idea would be to try and get a bit of wider reach for these things. Without it leading to me getting swamped by PR stuff 

Alright, time for a small update again: Right now I’m finishing up the last of the Cults chapter, looking forward to writing some Apostles the next few days. I’m hoping to get most if not all of this first draft done over the next 3-4 weeks or so. Still on schedule! And when the draft is done, I’ll be able to start pulling all the other stuff together, like illustrations etc.

Meanwhile, I’ve started on this beauty. The novels really are something! Their strong pulpy feel might not be very well-suited for Luna City Blues, but I still enjoy them for what they are. And it’s also kind of interesting since they seem to work with a slightly different version of the 1/2e canon… I mean, the first book had the internet! Pretty sure “hacking” wasn’t a thing back in the day. This second book also talks pretty openly about the impressiveness of the terraforming of Venus, while the original RPG was pretty careful not to go into much detail. The jungles were just kind of *there*. I know 3e went into more detail, but still – I enjoy seeing different variations on the MC canon 

I remember when the Golgotha comic ran in Magnum, the legendary Swedish anthology magazine. Magnum also introduced me to translated versions of various 2000AD classics like Judge Dredd, Warlock and ABC Robots. And now I’ve added this beautiful collected edition to my Chronicles collection (and pile of research material for the game). I like how Bisley’s art lands somewhere between the clean-cut muscular heroics of Bonner and the gritty, atmospheric Bergting images.

Writing progresses nicely; most of the world-description is done. I’m hoping to have a complete first draft by the end of summer, but we’ll see. This week, I’ve mostly been writing about cults – their structure, how they protect themselves, etc. I’m really looking forward to writing the next chapter – the Apostles!

So as a Chronicles fan and a lifelong scifi reader, I can’t help but be interested in theories and news around “planet X”. When I grew up, it was number 10, but then Pluto got demoted…

I’m absolutely fascinated with the idea that it’s easier to detect planets in far-off-solar systems than in our own. There’s a lot we don’t know about our own back yard!

And a lot of the theories activate the MC part of my brain. Like this one here: https://www.caltech.edu/…/caltech-researchers-find… A planet 10 times the size of Earth, orbiting the earth at a pace of one revolution per 10-20 000 years. Monstrously huge, veiled in darkness due to its enormous distance to the sun. Maybe there are ruins there, maybe a large metal tablet…

Another hypothesis is that it’s actually a black hole… (https://www.astronomy.com/…/planet-nine-may-be-a-black…/) Which would, of course, alwo be kind of awesome. Maybe it’s both? An enormous Dyson sphere-like mega structure built around a black hole, somehow acting as both power source and a conduit between here and Unspace, or Beyond, or wherever the Legion’s been banished to…

(None of this is in any way official canon for Luna City Blues by the way, I just like to think about these things)

About 1/3 of the book’s chapters now have first drafts. All the Luna City, Megacorp and Brotherhood stuff has been written, next up is a chapter on secrets and then on to cults and the Legion. Looking forward to it!

My process in writing RPGs is pretty iterative – I start by writing a big outline, a hierarchal bullet point list where pretty much every “fact”, every thing I want to say in each chapter and under each heading, has its own bullet point. Then, I go through the outline and do a first draft of each chapter. (Playtesting takes place before & during this process.) When the first-drafts are all done, I go over them once myself to see if I can catch some language errors or other problems. After that, I usually try to find a small group of volunteer proofreaders.

So… yeah. Currently just working through the first-draft phase, while simultaneously reading some more MC and trying to find time for playtesting. So far this has been kind of difficult – I’m working full-time as a teacher, and right now is pretty much the busiest time of year for us. Grading and whatnot. So… I hope to get some more playtesting done once things calm down a bit 

Since writing the book, and internal playtesting, has now begun in earnest I thought it’d be a good idea to also try to communicate a little bit more, and more frequently, on social media. I’ll try to have something for you at least biweekly from now on – no promises, just an ambition. I’m not a full-time rpg author I’m afraid, and sometimes Real Life™ life gets in the way. But without further ado, here’s a bit of a baseline – this is where the project’s at:

– Disclaimer: Everything I write and design is of course subject to change, so anything you read in these updates is preliminary.

– Playtesting: The character creation system, including a lifepath system, has now been playtested twice. Once with some dear old friends of mine, and once with a group of semi-strangers that happened to be in the right Discord channel at the same time. So far, so good – the base game will (like 1/2e) only support the creation of freelancers, but there’s been a pretty exciting spread of different characters with a lot of variation on that theme. The lifepath system – generating the character’s “chronicle” (see what I did there?) – has been a lot of fun and has led to some real dystopian-but-fun storytelling. The image accompanying this post is from one of the playtest sessions.

– Writing: The texts on all the Big Five megacorps now have a completed first draft, as does the more broad “Luna City in general” text. Next up, for me, is the Brotherhood and then a bit about the conflicts and relations between the megacorps. My goal is to provide enough conflicts and interesting tidbits for GMs to grab hold of when building scenarios, but still keep it kind of short and sweet. This is not a maximalist game; lots of established details from earlier editions will either have to wait until future supplements or simply be left for the GM to import on their own.

So… that’s about the gist of it. I’ll try to keep on top of the comments here (barring previously-mentioned Real Life™) and answer questions as well as I can.

Regards

Mikael Bergström

Designer/author/etc

We know it’s been quiet on news regarding Luna City Blues, but we want you to know the project is alive and well!

Text is being written, and we’ve gotten the first sketch from an illustrator (who we can reveal at a later date, but it’s a doozy!)

Most of late of 2023 was spent drawing up the game, world, and lore. And reading through the books for the previous editions! Mikael, the lead designer, has re-read most of the books published for the previous editions and some of the tie-in novels. They’ve been a great inspiration and stepping stone for what we want to create with Luna City Blues, something based on what we all know and love.

We know there isn’t much actual news and it’s been a long time of silence. We hope to get more regular updates out, now that we’ll soon have more to show!