Kris H.

In the flesh! Chromatic Shadows Core Rules beta!! #occult #cyberpunk #rpg

I'm pretty sure there's secret backdoors to each universe inside those respective Bradstreet illustrations ;)

Someone recently called Chromatic Shadows "just a shadowrun ripoff" which I thought was cute. But it got me thinking. CS if anything, is as much a Vampire ripoff. The inception was basically "what if I made a cyberpunk using everything I learned from running WoD for 20 years?".

I'm finishing up the last of the 7 pregens for Chromatic Shadows Core, writing everything on a sheet & transferring it over onto a stat block in the book. The new character sheet has been a huge improvement and a lot of fun to interact with. Filling in dots is incredibly satisfying and tactile!

Oh yeah, that's a given. It's more of a question of were you also a half cyborg neotribal who grew up in the Garden State ATZ and saw half your commune mind wiped by the black orb thing in the old bunker?

I wrote a one-shot for Chromatic Shadows set in the "Free City of Newark" as a Johnny Mnemonic reference, but I'm starting to really feel the whole Newark Sprawl idea as a setting.

Unapologetically setting my occult cyberpunk game in New Jersey.

That “three megabytes of hot RAM” line from Neuromancer is in grave danger of becoming vindicated

Got to make small, yet wildly unorthodox games and slowly scale up ;)

Anyone else get grossed out by ai writing? It's so obvious at this point and it's fucking everywhere. I'm literally doing the thing I used to do with ai art looking for the extra fingers. Now I'm scanning down through paragraphs looking for rhetorical tells, ready to nope out.

I feel this. Ai and the algorithm and the whole human instrumentality project hasn't been great.

Get this awesome adventure for as low as 0 dollars, but if you do decide to pay, 50% of proceeds are going to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine and the other 50% is earmarked to buy art from my Ukrainian artist.

I'm thinking any of these could be fodder for future blog posts and maybe shorter zines?

Been hashing out a ton of new ideas for Chromatic Shadows including new roles, backgrounds, character flaws, a whole "outside powers" subsystem, void scars as a player facing mechanic, but...I'm 285 pgs into a revised core rulebook, and i don't think it's the time to make this any more complicated!

Here are my reflections on and inspired by the Film 'We are Making a Film About Mark Fisher' on the Everyday Analysis website.

The film is currently screening across the UK and Italy:
everydayanalysis.co.uk/february-202...

Instant Chromatic Shadows adventure ideas spring to mind.

The toughest pill I've had to swallow is that if I don't make peace with the fact that there are limits to what a (budgetless) solo developer can accomplish, I'll never release my games. Some aspects of said games are inevitably going to be clunky, but they can be improved in the future.

Yeah. The bigger you go too, the more "clunk" creeps into the design. We do what we can to reasonably close the loopholes and smooth the rough edges, but it takes time and actual engagement to see the weak spots. Scoping projects "incrementally" is really the best way forward for small creators.

Downtime Actions are quickly becoming one of my favorite new mechanics in Chromatic Shadows Core. What operator wouldn't want to start a loyal street gang or build a tricked out safe house or spend a month detoxing from narcochips?

Ooh whatcha get?

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...

Dead Internet Theory gets it backwards, actually. The humans online, they're all dead: zombies, and ghosts, every one. The AIs are alive, fecund, vital. So very hungry.

Made me think of this quote (it's Stendhal, I remember it from Agamben), "La beauté est une promesse de bonheur".

Pretty much yeah

With Chromatic Shadows, I boil the heist down to "mission phases," each with clear benchmarks and objectives. An interactive worksheet keeps things player facing. Once the "action phase" kicks in, an alert level begins to rise as PCs draw attention and the enemy gains awareness. #cyberpunk

👾👻The dice rolling ethos of Chromatic Shadows.
🎲 Risk for reward.
🎲 Fictional framing is consequential to each test, and to who rolls.
🎲 No repeat tests. Forces adaptation and creative workarounds on failures.

Finished lines for Jadis the Generalist--cyberpunk character art for Chromatic Shadows Core. Colors next! Art by Ross Hayes.

Close up shots of the new Chromatic Shadows character sheet. Maximum geometry for optimal cyberpunk vibes.

Art by Ross Hayes!