Orbital Debris Comic + Looming Danger

Hey, Family!

We are getting in a good groove here with work/life balance and I finally have time to host Story Camp :) This is a camp I’ve been planning all summer for the kids in my life (ages 5-11) where we will be creative, share stories, and build stories together through drawings, comics, prose, and playing TTRPGs – Kosmosaurs is first!!

I plan to share Story Camp “curriculums”, resources, and create cool assets like blank comic pages that will be free on the itch.io page in the future. I want to make it easy for anyone to run for their kids or kids in their lives. Three cool resources for kids and stories:
Bastionland Podcast episode with Sam Doebler

Sam Doebler’s website/blog https://dreamingdragonslayer.com/

 This Pixar course from Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/pixar/storytelling 

If you are new here (Hi!, Orbital Debris crew!), check out the free pocket mod notebooks in The Guac 001. There are also some awesome inspiration bits and a big update of what’s happening with Spicy Tuna RPG.

The Guac 002 Topics:

• Spicy Tuna Update

  • Sci-fi Adventure and Worldbuilding Notebooks + Zine

  • Knights of Lazarus + Familiar Faces Shipping Update

• Orbital Debris Snippet

  • Free One Page Comic for Jean Verne’s Mecha Graveyard Hex

  • Art!!

• Mothership Discord In-Universe Artifact Jam

• Palau

• The Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela

• From the Bookshelf: Trees

Spicy Tuna Update [End of July 2022]

Sci-fi Adventure and Worldbuilding Notebooks + Zine

We’ve received a ton of wonderful feedback for the notebooks, and have done several iterations on the versions since the beginning of the month. I’m super confident with where they are at and am excited to share them soon. We are shooting for a Kickstarter September 13th, 2022.

Huge news!! Sam @goblinmixtape made us three playlists to build your worlds too. Here’s a sneak peak of the “For the Dark Worlds” playlist.

Knights of Lazarus + Familiar Faces Shipping Update

Familiar Faces reprint is finally in!! I’m goddamn proud of these. Shipping continues and we should be sending the final packages out by this time next week!!

Orbital Debris Snippet + Free Comic

I’m super happy with this comic! And, excited to share it as a free asset for Orbital Debris. Made for the Mecha Graveyard hex written by Jean Verne.

Why the comic? Here’s from the author, Jean Verne

These traps are quite powerful and could easily wipe out a group of inattentive players. Make sure players are aware the place is rigged…

Looming threats are awesome! It opens up a ton of opportunities for roleplaying and real time problem solving, and makes for some of the best “A-ha!” and “Hell yes!” moments. More on looming threats below :)

Feel free to download and print the comic for use with Orbital Debris in the future or use it as a cool in-game artifact outside of the adventure.

The final two images are of The Maker and The Great Digger, 2 of the most important NPCs in Orbital Debris. The Maker is a genius engineer gadgeteer who ruthlessly leads his cult. The Great Digger ferociously leads the Bloody Burrowers in her badass mech suit.

Hint hint…Both TPKs and treaties are an options. (Can’t say too much more, but Orbital Debris is SOOOO GOOOD!)

Mothership Discord In-Universe Artifact Jam

The inspiration for the one-page comic came from the Mothership Discord Lo-Fi Jam that started July 29th. In short: 16 pages or less, Lo-fi, nitty-gritty old school photocopier inspired fanzines with 0 stats and 0 mechanics. The type of zine a CHARACTER would make. Make an in-world artifact that builds the lore of the Mothership setting.

This Jam is super new creator friendly too! Join the party :)

I’m working on two concepts - one of which is a collection of one-page comics showcasing artifacts The Laughing Sphinx Co may or may not have found while cleaning space debris. I thought the comic format would be a fun way to show what crazy alien artifacts and creatures do without providing stats. Plus they’ll be fun to print off as one-pagers to periodically hand players.

Palau, Rock Island, and Reefs

I don’t have much to add besides thinking it’s a stunning!
Space coral ecosystem anybody??

More about Palau and 4 other underwater wonders here

 And https://www.britannica.com/place/Palau/Climate

https://coralreefpalau.org/our-team/about-palau/

The Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela

Carved from volcanic rock, and chiseled to detail, these churches were constructed to create a new Jerusalem on African soil. The main group of 11 churches includes many features including complete drainage systems, trenches, and underground tunnels that connect the churches.

The craft and wear of time have made these monoliths stunning! Two thoughts about writing applications:
1. Dedication to the intricacy of long-term survivability (drainage systems, tunnels, etc) These types of details in the worlds we create add a ton of flavor. (re: Underground 

2. Transporting tradition. So much detail went into teleporting the holy land to Ethiopa. Keep the religion or strip it away, there is something extremely powerful about maintaining cultures and beliefs. 

Find out more https://www.wmf.org/project/rock-hewn-churches and https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lali/hd_lali.htm

From the Bookshelf: Trees

Two thoughts from Trees:
The first is just a few of their successful minimalist covers. They did a fantastic job making the covers evocative with color and composition. Some zines that Trees’ covers remind me of now -  The Isle (Luke Gearing), Picket Line Tango (Emily Weiss, Ian Yusem), and a lot of what Nate Treme does.

“Standing out” is something I think a lot about for our future zines. The indie scene publications are so diverse and incredible, it’s interesting to look for styles that haven’t been touched yet or creating more in a style that isn’t as represented.

The second is the imminent threat of danger. The obvious trap. The looming threat literally standing high above everything around it, for the entire public to see. 

Ten years after they landed. All over the world. And they did nothing, standing on the surface of the Earth like trees, exerting their silent pressure on the world, as if there were no-one here and nothing under foot.

I love what this does to characters and players at the table. We took this route with the giant traps in Knights of Lazarus. Jean Verne did it on a larger scale with the Mecha Graveyard traps in Orbital Debris. Trees pushed it way farther! It would be lovely to see more of what Trees did in TTRPG modules.

You can find more information about Trees here.

Thanks for reading this far! I hope you found good use out of what was shared :)

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Have a beautiful day <3