Vast Horizon: The Village of Clouds

A Cozy Dark Playtest

People who live on the ground think that clouds are wispy, ephemeral things. But in Vast Horizon we know better. We know the feeling of cloud stuff under our feet. We know the pain of digging through the fluff in search of riches only storms can provide. We may be a small community, but the storm stones we provide help to power the world.

Welcome to my Cozy Dark playtest! I’ve been working on this little game for a couple months now, and it’s getting close to being finished. Now it needs love and attention to flourish and grow. So I’m going to play it here! (I’m also playing it on my Youtube… but that’s entirely beside the point).

The first steps in Cozy Dark are to develop your first adventure concept, come up with the starting threat and investigation tracks, and develop both your settlement and character.

There isn’t a prescribed order to do all this in. I like to start with the adventure concept if I’m coming into the game blank. But if I have an idea stepping into the game for a character or setting I would go with that first and then build the adventure concept.

For this game - because I’m trying out all the bits and pieces of my system - I’m starting from blank and using my oracles and my imagination to boot strap myself into an adventure and setting!

So off to building my adventure concept! I have several oracles to help with this. The first oracle is a table of 20 themes. Then each of those themes have their own tables of 20 story seeds. After that I move to building my adventure sentence, which is always formatted like: “I must (verb)(noun) at (location).” Finally I roll on another table to get adventure modifiers, these are two words that I use to help shape the adventure both now and as the game continues.

So, theme first…

I rolled an 11. My theme is love!

Now I go to the love table…

I roll a 3. “An old flame returns.”

Oh. Interesting. I like where this is going.

Now I roll for my adventure sentence. I end up with:

“I must (build) (Leader and Artifact) at the (Echoing Maze) and then (Endless Lanterns).”

I rolled 20s twice and that means rolling two more times and combining results, so this is a big adventure sentence.

It’s also a bit abstract. I have to build “Leader and Artificat.” Does that mean I need to build something for the leader? Is the leader the artifact? How does that fit in with the return of my old flame?

I’m not sure yet. But I have some ideas percolating in the back of my head. Let’s roll my adventure modifiers.

Drifting. Resonant.

Those modifiers aren’t feeling super helpful to me on resolving this adventure prompt yet, but they give me some setting ideas. So let’s move on to developing my settlement.

The first thing I’m going to do is roll for my settlement size. This can end up being something as small as a tiny hamlet, or it can be as large as a kindom’s capital city. I roll a d20 and end up with a village.

My oracle tells me that a village is “a small rural community with a few essential tradespeople and perhaps a communal building or shrine.”

And now I’m thinking of my modifier words. Drifting and resonant. That’s putting me in mind of a floating village high up in the sky, a place that’s difficult to get to.

A settlement has traits, including Size, Theme, Trouble, 2 values, and a skill. So let’s think all of that out.

Size: Village
Theme: The village of clouds
Trouble: Transporation
Value: We Keep to Ourselves
Value: We Are Smarter Than Outsiders
Skill: Mining Resonant Storm Stones

I really like what’s happening here. I’m picturing a village that isn’t built on a floating land mass, but rather on the clouds themselves. When it storms the village goes out and mines resonant storm stones from the cloud fluff. This is a dangerous task, the threat of lightning is real. But the Storm Stones are traded with outsiders to power magical devices of all sorts. The village hoards the stones until enough are collected, and then traders make the dangerous journey to the world below.

Growing food probably doesn’t work in cloud stuff, so instead this village has floating farms. I imagine these as floating platforms powered by Storm Stone with crops that hang upsidedown. I’m not sure why I imagine that, but I really like it.

Now we need to come up with our settlement’s name, attributes, and approaches.

I’m going to call it Vast Horizon.

It’s got 5 attributes and 10 approaches. I’ve got an array of points to spend in each of them. After thinking about it for awhile, this is what I come up with:

Attributes:
Unity: 10
Endurance: 8
Ingenuity: 9
Mystery: 8
Spirit: 7

Approaches:
Welcoming: 1
Loyal: 5
Stalwart: 1
Fierce: 1
Inventive: 4
Pragmatic: 3
Guarded: 3
Occult: 1
Reverent: 1
Hopeful: 2

That gives us a village that is loyal to it’s own and inventive. They are always coming up with new ways to use the Resonant Storm Stones. They are pragmatic traders when they venture down to the world below. Later I might use these attributes and approaches to make rolls that help defend the village from attack or see how well a trade goes.

And I’ve got the beginning of an idea for a character. Now that I know we are a village on actual cloud stuff I’m a bit in the mind of carebears. I don’t want to play a carebear. But I like the idea of playing something short. Maybe a halfling or a gnome or a goblin? I’ve got an entire oracle for determing species. But I want to stick with one of these three, so I’ll roll a d3 and see what I get.

I rolled a 3. I am playing a goblin.

And this is a story about love. I don’t think my goblin is a hero, especially not to start with. I love these hanging gardens I’m imagining, so let’s make him a farmer. I’ll fill out his traits like this:

Concept: Simple Farmer in the Floating Gardens
Trouble: Bad News: I have a plan
Value: There’s always a better way
Value: There is more to life than farming
Skill: Farming
Species: Cloud Goblin

I really like this. My little guy is a farmer who dreams of a more exciting life. He is always creating new inventions… and they almost always go bad. When he declares that he has a plan, people run for the metaphorical hills. This is a fun, quirky little goblin who is going to be a lot of fun to play. He needs a name, and I need to assign his attributes and approaches.

I’m going to call him Glim Glob the Farmer.

Attributes:
Heart: 8
Grit: 7
Whim: 10
Veil: 8
Ember: 9

Approaches:
Empathic: 1
Inspirational: 3
Enduring: 1
Resolute: 1
Instinctual: 3
Lucky: 2
Deceptive: 1
Knowledgeable: 4
Hopeful: 5
Purposeful: 1

I’m going to leave this here for now. I’ve got the adventure concept percolating in the background. I’m asking myself questions. Is this old flame my love? Is this Glim Glob’s love story? Does the love story belong to someone else, maybe the leader of Vast Horizon? Is the love an old flame and danger combined? Maybe a Storm Stone trader that feels abandoned for some reason? Loyal is Vast Horizon’s highest stat, it feels interesting to have this old flame feel like they didn’t get that loyalty.

I’ll be thinking about all of this. Before I start play I’ll create my first threat and investigation tracks.

I don’t have fancy character sheet yet, but for those interested to see all these stats in the same place, here is a picture of my google sheets character page:

That’s it for now. If you’re interested in joining me on the progress of Cozy Dark and on Glim Glob’s adventure, click the button below to subscribe: