The World Anvil Publishing
CREATOR
5 months ago
Project Update: Pre-Campaign Update #2
Hi all,
Welcome to the second pre-campaign update for Dirt City Blues!
If you haven’t checked out the free Quickstart yet, you can grab it right now [HERE].
The campaign is launching in just a couple of weeks, and we still have a few things left to reveal.
In this update:
- Poll Results
- The Bullet Dice Set
- Episode 2 of Raffaele’s Dev Diary
- A new video interview with Raffaele covering many aspects of the game
Ready? Steady? Go!
Poll Results
First things first: in the previous update, we asked you what kind of vibes bring you to Dirt City Blues, and what extras you’d like to see in the campaign.
And the winner is… John Carpenter! (with Tarantino being a close second)
And the winner is… John Carpenter! (with Tarantino being a close second)
Message received. We’ve already got a few things planned in that direction, but if the campaign goes exceptionally well, we now know exactly where to draw further inspiration.
The Bullet Dice Set
One of the rewards you’ll find in the Dirt City Blues campaign is the custom Bullet Dice Set: a full set of stylish d6s shaped like, well… bullets.
We’ve confirmed with our manufacturer that these beauties won’t just look cool—they’re also balanced and fully functional, just like standard dice.
The three colors correspond to the system’s three-tier dice mechanic (Standard, Advantage, and Drawback)—a format you’ll recognize if you’ve played Dead Air: Seasons or Valraven: The Chronicles of Blood and Iron. That said, they’re d6s, and you can use them with just about any game you like.
Dev Diary – Episode 2
The first episode of Raffaele Vota’s Dev Diary received some great feedback, so here’s part two, straight from the designer himself, as he continues his journey to bring Dirt City Blues to life.
Over to you, Raf:
Why did I choose Monad Echo as the engine for Dirt City Blues?
Well… truth is, I’ve always been better at adapting something that already exists than inventing from scratch. Call it a character flaw.
I’m what you’d call a chronic malcontent. Every time I write something, I second-guess it, tear it down, rebuild it, and second-guess it again. Over and over. A lovely little creative death spiral that rarely leads where I hoped it would, at least not in my head.
I know—it’s a me problem.
People like what I make. Hell, most of the folks who’ve picked up my self-published games on Itch.io seem more than satisfied. By all accounts, I should just take a deep breath, blow out the anxiety, and flash a smug little smile.
But anyway. Let’s not get too soft here.
A while back, after years of circling the idea, I was finally pulling Dirt City Blues together using my own minimalist system. As usual, I wasn’t fully happy with it. Then my buddy, editor, and behind-the-scenes consigliere Andrea “Il Pardu” dropped the line that changed everything:
“Boss, why don’t you take a look at the system from Valraven and Broken Tales? The official SRD just dropped.”
Damn him. I’d known Alberto Tronchi, the mind behind those games, for years. Always respected his work, as a designer and as a novelist. Seriously, look him up. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Alberto’s novels are not translated into English, at least not yet).
So of course I threw everything back into the blender. Again. Typical me.
Long story short? Monad Echo turned out to be a perfect fit for Dirt City Blues. This game needed a system that could handle the weight of these stories—stories about ex-operatives, the Badasses, who walked away after some devastating Trauma. Guys who shelved their guns and tried to disappear.
But the past? It’s a dirty fighter. It comes back swinging, dragging them, their loved ones, and half the damn city back into the muck.
And these Badasses? They answer the call.
Because no one else has the guts, the grit, or the lead to fix what’s broken. Because, for some reason, they still care—about someone, or something, in this cursed city.
And that core question? The one that always comes back, no matter the mission?
“How far are you willing to go to get what you want, the way you want it?”
“How far are you willing to go to get what you want, the way you want it?”
Monad Echo nails that question. Its mechanics let you play with calculated risk, personal suffering (which, beautifully, turns into XP), and emotional bonds that aren’t just flavor: they shape your story and your growth.
It let me do everything I was trying to do, only better. Cleaner. More human.
You’ll learn more during the campaign.
You’ll learn more during the campaign.
[the Dev Diary continues in the next update]
The Video Interview
Tommaso again now. Here’s a little conundrum we’ve run into while presenting all our projects: only a few people on the team feel truly comfortable speaking in English. Sure, they understand it, and they can speak it, especially if you threaten them with a waterboarding session, but let’s just say it’s not their comfort zone.
All our games so far have been written in Italian first, then translated into English. That’s never been a real issue, but it does put me—your friendly, glorified producer—in the position of having to speak on behalf of the writers more often than not. I don’t mind doing it, but it’s not exactly my dream role.
Luckily, technology has our back.
After experimenting with a previous project, we’ve learned that translation tools have gotten really good, even for video. So, here’s a conversation between Raffaele and Tuccio from Around the Game, originally recorded in Italian, and now available in near-flawless English.
Raffaele dives into many of the mechanics you’ll find in Dirt City Blues, so it’s definitely worth a watch:
Until next time!
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