The City Cut Loose

A STORY-GAME FOR 3–6 PLAYERS

This game is still in development! It will be fully released before August 20, 2024.

The City has existed for generations, suspended between What Watches from Above and What Lies Below. But now it has been cut loose! 

Tell the story of a city flying far from everything it’s ever known. Will the Architecture & Artifice crumble or climb to new heights? Will The City’s People thrive or struggle through rough travels and strange transformations? Will it weather The Winds, Rains, and Skies, though calm sunsets may give way to howling lighting storms? And what of The Many Fabled Beasts that stalk and flit about the city? And finally, what will become of the city when it arrives at its last destination?  

What kind of flying city?

This game is equally at-home (or flying from it) with medieval propeller cities and futuristic space nations. Here are some ideas to try:

• a solar-punk hover-craft way-station
• a carnival held afloat by balloons
• a fairy-castle suspended in a soap bubble
• a citadel carried on the back of a Roc
• a brick and iron town-square torn away in a hurricane
• an unborn-wish-of-a-city nestled on a dandelion seed

Or play to find out...

How is it played?

Players share narrative control of the city and also each play a role.

• Roles
  • What Watches from Above
  • What Lies Below
  • The Winds, Rain, and Skies
  • The Architecture & Artifice
  • The City's People
  • The Many Fabled Beasts

Players move through three phases of play.

• Phases of Play
  • The Departure. Quickly sketch the city and context, then depart!
  • The Journey. Take turns drawing oracle cards or rolling on a d100 table, then using the result and prompt to narrate what happens to the city and those traveling with it. (Optionally, players can create a record, history, or art of memorable parts of the journey.)
  • The Arrival. Each player draws or rolls twice, then picks a result and tells a unique part of the city's epilogue.

Mechanics and system

This is a GM-less lyric game. It uses 6 starting prompts to establish the city and setting; then 100 oracle prompts (in card or table form) which have pre-established odds — 28% positive, 28% negative, and 44% complex.

Change up the deck of cards or table if you like — removing prompts 73-100 for a more regenerative, positive story, or removing prompts 1-28 for a more gritty, horrific story. Feel free to create your own prompts too! Make this game yours. :)

For a completely different feel, try out an oracle deck of your own. The Citadel oracle deck is very on theme; but any Tarot, LeNormand, or other oracle deck will do the trick.

While the mechanics of this game are original, I got plenty of inspiration from other systems, and think you'll like this one if you enjoy the prompt-based storytelling of For the Queen or Descended from the Queen games; the contemplative lyric journey of the unpublished gem The Loveblind Bird; or the fast, lightweight single-word prompts in the absolutely gripping, addictive unpublished games The Legend of Aesthetic and The Zone of Aesthetic.

-----------------------------------------------------------

This game was created for the #noStringsGameJam hosted by Darling Bat Games

It was designed in the Tamien Nation and Chochenyo lands, also known as San Jose and Oakland, on the unceded territories of Chochenyo, Muwekma, and Tamien Nation Oholone peoples.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Thank you so much to TheShivingTree for being my first playtester — and for the haunting blood-red tears of rust dripping down the face of our city; to Michelle for reminding me to cut, cut, cut words; to Kona for hosting this jam and getting me creating again; to Emily for believing in me; to Amy and Morgan for jamming with me; to those who playtested this game at GPNW; and most of all, so much love and gratitude to the friends who journeyed with me when I was cut loose.

-----------------------------------------------------------