Inscrutable Cities

Inscrutable Cities is a fabulist journaling game about conjuring a new world into being by traveling through it.

It requires no cards, dice, or tokens, and falls somewhere between "lyric table-top role play," "interactive fanfiction," and "guided meditation from an alternate universe." It is designed to be suitable for both solo play and with a group, in person or remote. The shortest possible complete play-through takes about half an hour.

A Note on the Source Material

This game is inspired by, and in response to, the works of Italo Calvino, primarily but not exclusively Invisible Cities. Without getting too into the weeds here, my conceptual goal is to allow players to re-experience the awe and mystery of the worlds Calvino so meticulously built in language, without his unrelenting fixation on women's bodies, among other things that sour a lot of his fiction for me.

Q & A:

What steps are involved in this project's continuation?

In addition to revising and adding to the initial draft of the game, I'm also:

• Designing the cover art in both full color and printer-friendly black and white.
• Designing and typesetting the interior layout in both full color and printer-friendly black and white.
• Designing and testing an html version with dyslexia-friendly font, screen-reader-friendly markup, and colorblind-friendly palette.

Some things I would also love to do, were resources no object, but which are only really possible past a certain threshold of support:

• Make the whole game totally free, very cheap, or by suggested donation.
• A custom in-browser randomizer that will pick outcomes for you if you're feeling indecisive or want to add dice-roll style suspense into your session.
• Physical zine copies with cute paper and everything. Ah, the dream...