Duskvol in Newsprint

So, I’ve been ridiculously productive lately. I count the following:

4–5 separate projects related to RPGs,
3 related to music, and
1 short story I’ve started working on.

I could probably go on at length about all of them, but I was urged to write about one of the RPG-related projects first, so that’s what I’m writing up.

I play in a biweekly RPG group organized and run by Jeremy Tolbert. Lately, we’ve been playing Blades in the Dark. If you don’t know what that is, I’ll assume you’re not into RPGs, but just in case: imagine a steampunky London called Doskvol (Duskwall) and it has ghosts and magic and vampires and cults and so many gangs of thieves all jockeying for position, and the city is in a burnt-skied a post-apocalyptic world and is dependent on an analogue to the whaling industry, except instead of whale blubber it’s the blood of (demonic) “Leviathans” that is hunted for and burned. Everyone’s character is some kind of crook or, maybe, revolutionary. But mostly crooks.

A lot of people think of it as an analogue to Victorian London, but my characters often operate more like people from Early Georgian England. (My main PC is based on the infamous madam Mother Needham; my backup character is a skinny version of John Gay, author of The Beggars’ Opera. When they set out to attack someone, they often prefer the defamation route: rumors, accusatory posters, incendiary pamphlets, and the like. All of that is very early Georgian London, and so is the countercultural celebration of crooks as heroes.

So, I often do the session logs for that group’s games. When I wasn’t doing much writing, my session logs would be in-world fiction from the POV of either my character or an NPC, but these days, I’ve taken to posting my notes along what what I would call “exploded session logs.”

“Exploded?” Yes: the session log isn’t a reiteration of which events transpired during the session: my notes suffice for that. What I’m interested in is imagining how others in the city saw the events, as well as what was going on in other parts of the city. A session of Blades in the Dark has a lot of background “moving parts” like clocks that are ticking offscreen, side-effects of actions taken, Devils’ Bargains that may not pay off for some time, and so on. I wanted to do session logs that hinted at all of that, and also made Doskvol seem alive.

I started quite a long time ago, with pages that allowed one to input plain text ad generate the front page of a newspaper, as well as some occasional poster designs. I graduated to using a template I’d found on Reddit (the Powerpoint Template linked from this comment, in fact). Then I started playing around with Chat-GPT and realized I could use it to put together a reasonably flavorful and lore-faithful one-sheet newspaper in very little time—as much time as it took me, previously, to write one article on my own.

Like most people, I find Chat-GPT unnerving. (I[‘m not experiencing quite the same existential crisis as my friends, but Tom Scott’s explanation of his own existential crisis related to AI makes sense to me.) That said, for generating the kind of bland, skimmable content that ends up in newspapers, it’s pretty reliable, especially since persistence of chats got implemented. It’s also fast enough that I can focus on improving my layout skills—which is half the point, really; I’m trying to teach myself Affinity Studio (especially how to do layout in Affinity Publisher) and this project is in some ways an excuse to put the time in to get better at that.

I’ve put together the documents in an image slider below. You can click on the arrows to move forward and backward through the sequence. I’m not including PDFs here—I don’t know that anyone would be all that interested—but if anyone wants to see them, I can easily make them available.

My first attempt at a Doskvol newspaper, using a newspaper generator webpage—I can't remember which, as this was a few years ago, and for a totally different campaign. It was a pretty direct play report, just not from the PCs or player's point of view.
The first page of a play satirizing our characters, written by what had been an NPC but which became my backup character. It's a highly exaggerated play report: names changed, dialogue invented, and action exaggerated and mocked.
One-page play newspaper generated using that Powerpoint template I mentioned finding on Reddit. Most of the content (excluding ads and headlines) was generated by Chat-GPT, with some light editing. Here, I began in earnest to mix non-campaign related stories with the "exploded" session log approach, an approach that persists form here on.
Page 1 of 2 for the Charterhouse Daily, using a variation on the same Powerpoint template with some alterations. Very much an "exploded" session log.
Page 2 of 2 for the Charterhouse Daily, using a variation on the same Powerpoint template with some alterations. Lots of easter eggs for our game's clocks here.
A wanted poster for what had been an NPC—Walter Halibutt: thespian, playwright, and criminal—who eventually became my backup character. He's the John Gay analogue, though he's not as successful as John Gay was, nor, obviously, anywhere near as corpulent. The image in this was generated by AI—I think Dall-E—but I added the hair.
Defamatory poster my character had done up and posted around Doskvol, attacking the reputation of the Grey Cloaks, who were then in the process of becoming a rival gang coming for us. The cat-abuse bit is horrid, but inspired by an infamous Canadian (Quebecois) film.
The Duskwall Investigator: Page 1 of 4. This was a week when our session had to be canceled, so I spent the time working on a template in Affinity, or, rather, building off a very partial template I bought on Designcuts. Mostly it's just events, rumors, and easter eggs hinting at progressing clocks.
The Duskwall Investigator: Page 2 of 4. This was a week when our session had to be canceled, so I spent the time working on a template in Affinity, or, rather, building off a very partial template I bought on Designcuts. Mostly it's just events, rumors, and easter eggs hinting at progressing clocks.
The Duskwall Investigator: Page 3 of 4. This was a week when our session had to be canceled, so I spent the time working on a template in Affinity, or, rather, building off a very partial template I bought on Designcuts. Mostly it's just events, rumors, and easter eggs hinting at progressing clocks.
The Duskwall Investigator: Page 4 of 4. I've scanned microfiche archives of entire newspapers like this—classified ads for a wild assortment of goods. I figured Doksvol would have interesting classified ads, so I generated a bunch of entries with Chat-GPT. It was, shall we say, more hands-on that most of the generating I do with Chat-GPT.
Page 1 of 2 of the Charterhall Observer. This is a heavily exploded play account: nothing our characters did registered on the public record, but there are links all over: Strangford's speech, for example, or the skyrocketing grades at the Doskvol Academy campus (which are in fact related to a cheating ring we established on campus, while dealing with some professors for other reasons).
Page 12of 2 of the Charterhall Observer. This is a heavily exploded play account: nothing our characters did registered on the public record, but there are links all over: Strangford's speech, for example, or the skyrocketing grades at the Doskvol Academy campus (which are in fact related to a cheating ring we established on campus, while dealing with some professors for other reasons).
My second issue of the Duskwall Investigator (page 1 of 2). I was short on time, so I grabbed the old template and used it instead of building a new one. I was in such a rush I didn't even include any images. Between pages 1–2, about half the content relates to events in-game. (The first three on page 1, and the first on page 2, with the latter being the closest to a direct report of the events during the game.)
My second issue of the Duskwall Investigator (page 2 of 2). I was short on time, so I grabbed the old template and used it instead of building a new one. I was in such a rush I didn't even include any images. Between pages 1–2, about half the content relates to events in-game. (The first three on page 1, and the first on page 2, with the latter being the closest to a direct report of the events during the game.)
Mostly a gag about how craven my own character is, this is a proposed contract to offer to bind a demon to our services instead of binding it into a special gem. The whole point is that it's a craven and ludicrous idea, but that my character would be sure to suggest it. Again, the text was mostly generated by Chat-GPT, and yes, in that archaic legal-writing style, too.

That’s everything so far: posters, newspapers, and contracts alike (but mostly newspapers) but I’ll probably add to that slideshow, and add an update above, when I do produce more. I’m not sure my layouts will be good enough to offer for sale on itch.io, but maybe, eventually.

gordsellar.com

Duskvol in Newsprint

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