So for those who don't know, the Indie RPG Newsletter is a weekly newsletter that tries to share the most interesting stuff happening in indie tabletop roleplaying games. Recently, there's been a lot of talk about daily writing exercises. The designer of Mothership proposed writing one room every day for 2023 so you ended up with this one massive megadungeon!

To me, daily writing exercises are cool but they're also A LOT. So I was thinking about a weekly writing challenge for myself. I love cities so I was thinking about writing a city. And then I was thinking about low-effort ways for many people to contribute to the same city. And, well, maybe Goncharov being in the air and all, I thought about what about using the newsletter to play a city-building game with my readers.

There are about 2700 readers of the newsletter so this could get messy. I needed some kind of framework so I decided to use i'm sorry did you say street magic by caro asercion. And Caro sweetly gave me permission to do that!

So we've finished with the setup phase, readers have submitted their adjectives to inspire the city (stratified, clockwork, canaled) and we have voted on a name - Immoria!.

So what is Immoria?

Imagine that when people say time is a river, they mean it literally. Imagine the river of time was routed into canals that spread through a great city. Imagine this city as tall, built upon layers and layers of different communities and neighbourhoods. Imagine these canals entered the city at the very top and then slipped and flowed all the way down through the city’s many layers until it escaped and found its way into the sea of chaos. The river of time brings odd gifts and sometimes even odder things wash up on the shores of chaos. Some say the city is a giant water clock. But people who live there just call it home.

In i'm sorry did you say street magic, you build out a city by adding neighbourhoods, landmarks and people. Landmarks are always within a neighbourhood and people are always within a landmark. Readers have already started adding neighbourhoods. We've got Brasspool, Tangent, The Eddies, and so on. I'm organizing all of them on this site here. It's going to be the public archive of sorts.

Last week, we started the first proper round of the game. Every round starts with a compass - which gives you a direction or theme for the round. So when you add landmarks or people, you try to stick to that theme.

People have submitted their compass suggestions and I'm going to announce one in the next issue. If you'd like to play and help build Immoria or just follow along, check out the newsletter!

If you are working on a Dungeon23 project (or D23 adjacent) or if you are interested in exploring D23 projects created by the community you might want to check this:

The Dungeon23 Jam on itch.io

The Dungeon23 Tracker form on google docs

All the projects submitted to the D23 Tracker

It's super exciting to see the tabletop RPG community being so effervescent and creative. Social networks and discord servers are constantly filled with so many cool Dungeon23 posts and it's a bit hard to keep track of who is doing what. That's why I've published the jam and the tracker: to help creators share their projects and TTRPG enthusiasts find cool projects.

We've been working all this last week on designing rolling tables along with instructions and how to for the Dungeon Year Design Journal, and we just released it! The Town Generator alone has 10x 1d20 columns to define your town. Also included are:

2d66 population generator

3d20 faction builder

4d66 NPC generator

3d66 syllable-based name generator.

2d66 Flora and 2d66 Fauna tables

1d66 Biomes

1d66 Weather

1d66 Funky Table (to add to other rolls to make it funky)

1d66 Themes table to switch it up every week or month

2d66 tables each for: Fantasy objects, cyberpunk objects, horror objects, and space objects

2d66 Planetary location table

2d66 for both fantasy and modern rooms

1d6 "Today, let's make..." table

2d6 Question Oracle table.

That's 2,060 entries total across 20 tables. We worked to build these tables for use across many genres of game, or use them to make whatever you'd like.

323. Unburied Treasure: A photo frame shop. Though photo frame is an understatement, its more like a shop for embedding your cherished memories in furniture. For example, you might purchase a beautiful pirate treasure chest, which when opened, reveals your vacation slides.

324. S-h/n-ake it!: A milk shake bar. All the baddest dudes and dudettes with their leather jackets pull up with their hotrods, burst open the door, and politely ask for hot chocolate space cow milk shake. The owner floats the milkshakes over to them with a smile, knowing that whimsy is still appreciated.

325. Stuart's Log Throwing: A place where you can throw around styrofoam loags. Sure they barely weight anything, and they won't fly far, but at least you can make photos where you seem very strong. Other options are also available to throw, such as balls on chain, cheese, and golf clubs.

326. The Mountain Pass By The Sea: Several great cliffs overlooking the oceanic coastline. Its connected by rope bridges, crafted by mountain whales. They say they have a peaceful view over the ocean, but they agree that it can be quite dizzying for first timers.

327. ψchadelic ψntings: An art gallery. Here, the oracular ψpents paint peaceful pictures of pleasent panoramas. one can't shake off the feeling that some of these are from your potential futures, where it all works out.

328. Wet Castle: A hotel in the shape of a castle, on the coast. The building itself is a beautiful copy of the historic MacWeth Castle (whose name is never spoken). Walking on its medieval ramparts makes you pine for simpler times of revelry, like, your last birthday party held at this place.

I started up this account in order to record and share my Dungeon23 / City23 progress and I'm obviously behind. On the sharing, not the writing, I've successfully done my dailies since Jan 1, 2023. A pre-paid postage sachette is en route for you to applaud into and return.

For my city I'm loosely writing assuming it to be run with my game Trouvaille or it's soon to be started rework & expansion, but so far nothing written is mechanically reliant so it's universally compatible until proven otherwise.

Against my better wishes I'm writing the city without an overarching theme or pitch. Discovering my way through the setting as I write, which I'm assured has some creative merit -- assurances I accept for lack of motivation or satisfaction to argue.

I do have pre-laid guidelines I've set for myself though, so I'm not flying totally foolishly into clouds.

Tontine, the guilds' frontier fortress. Built atop and aside a butte jutting up from deep jungle. Official reports from the guilds in The Capital claim the deep bush round below full of danger and glory, residents know otherwise.

So it's still going to be my South-East Asia silkpunk bullshit. BUT! It's not going to be river oriented. Every other city I've written is all river based, not surprising cities usually migrate to rivers go figure, with canal focused intercity pathways. Tontine is a mountainous parcel that relies on underground reservoirs.

I also know I want dirigibles (very few highly regulated, prone to accidents, and not stupid silly like steampunk ones), public transit trains & cable cars (highly accessible, very accident averse, but lots of weird & wild shit happens on them just as a result of the number of people that get on and off), and populated sewers (populated by like normal ass people not just monsters). So with my typical political bullshit there's like an exploration of technological advances in a fantasy/silkpunk setting kinda like what Legend of Korra and The Greenbone Saga propose.

Bit of a rant but it's free so if you want future posts copy-edited you can find my ko-fi somewhere. I'm excited to keep writing and hope to share soon. Play a bit of catch up where I can and ideally start hitting a weekly share routine. 12 districts, 52+ locations factions & NPCs, 365 details.

We find ourselves at the very top of the reservoir, where many start to define the edge of the city proper. Logs cut down by the Waterlogged Logging Co. make their way down the river, often ridden by workers or travelers looking to rest their feet at the end of their journey to the city.

"Drinathmyr, an island city-state off the continent's north coast, was once an Astrarer stronghold though has been divided amongst the Concord Nations after the Twilight War."

The city-state is an island stronghold once held by an ancient power that is now ruled over by several different authorities.