Between the Skies
A downloadable game
Between the Skies Collected Hardcover Edition is out now on Exalted Funeral !
Note: The free pdf below is the first version of the game, released digitally in 2022. The most current hardcover edition, which is rewritten and redesigned with new procedures, tables, and art, is linked above.
Between the Skies is a cosmic fantasy game of travel and exploration across endless worlds.
Between the Skies is also a set of modular procedures, tables and methods that can help spark your imagination in any game of weird fantasy adventure.
The procedures and advice guide you in playing a fluid, fiction first game, where rules are at the service of your world and your shared judgment.
Everything in Between the Skies is modular and can be used with the rpg system of your choice, or no system at all.
- 200 pages of tables and procedures to spark the creation of endless, strange worlds, their inhabitants, and their goings-on
- 70 tables for everything from encounters, NPCs, factions, adventuring sites, and spells to creatures, petty gods, and daemons
- Life path character generation. Create your character by traveling the planes & spheres, and maybe dying!
- Procedures for travel, combat, spellcasting, trade and more...
- Solo and collaborative play guidelines
- PDF is hyperlinked, cross-referenced and bookmarked throughout with links and references both in text and in table results
- Inspirations include: Jim Parkin's Any Planet Is Earth, Daniel Sell's Troika!, Ben Milton's Maze Rats, Chris McDowall's Into the Odd, Scrap Princess' Plane Scrap, Emmy Allen's The Stygian Library, and the cauldrons of creativity sometimes called the New School Revolution (NSR) and Free Kriegsspiel Revolution (FKR)
- Currently exploring options for a print version. Further updates to follow...
Download
Development log
- Between the Skies hardcover // September 18 on Exalted Funeral99 days ago
- Between the Skies 3 out March 6, and moreMar 05, 2024
- Against the Grey / Between the Skies 3 update / hints of things to come...Feb 23, 2023
- Between the Skies Volume 2, to be release on 7/15 on Exalted FuneralJul 07, 2022
- Between the Skies Volume 1, now available in PRINT at Exalted FuneralApr 06, 2022
- Between the Skies 1 week update BtS Itch collectionsFeb 08, 2022
Comments
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Just started reading the HB and the page about making games while transitioning made me tear up. From one queer/trans creator to another this stuff is amazing <3
oh thank you so much
that means a lot me 🌸
Just got my HB. So lovely! I love the nods to ecological interstitials and the blurring of those borders. Great work! Thanks!
Thank you ! I'm so glad you appreciate the ecological aspects - and just really appreciate your kind words : )
O huffa. It just came in the mail. Its so beutiful. Im so happy you got to make a hardback. The art is amazing! Great job, i hope you get a lot of recognition for this. Ill swing it around like its a bible!
Awww, thank you
It means a lot that you think so : )
And heehee what an image !
I heard about this from the episode on Yes, Indie'd. I have to say, I have been looking for a good PbtA/Story Game framework for telling stories across many different realities for a long time. There have been efforts that have come close, but this, oh this. :)
I'm curious about the floral cover designs for BtS, though. Does anyone know what the inspiration is for them?
It makes me think of the Voynich Manuscript.
I'm so glad you like it !! Really appreciate the comment.
The just released Exalted Funeral hardcover collections is even bigger, better, and more beautiful ; )
Re: the cover: It is a collage I made from the following:
Mary Vaux Walcott, Mountain Rose-Bay (Rhododendron catawbiense), 1932
Edme-François Jomard, ed., Zoologie Echinodermes, 1809
Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, Star Cluster in Hercules, 1882
(The new hardcover has the top two elements, but the Trouvelot starfield is replaced by a single color.)
Oh, thank you, Huffa!
I guess I was more curious as to why you chose flowers?
Maybe it's inherent in the text, I'm hoping to get the Hardcover soon (I'm in the UK so not sure what shipping is going to be like). Really, can't wait to give this a go. I have been musing about a multiverse setting for such a long time.
Oh that's a good question...Let's see...
It was really about the juxtaposition of the flower and the starfish, and the way that implied some kind of strange, new life through the simple act of laying one image over another. This resonated with my ideas about textual juxtapositions giving rise to new imaginings (I talk about this a bit in my Yes Indie'd interview.)
I also made that image within days of coming out and starting to transition (more than 2 years ago now), and this notion of blossoming into as-yet-unknown life, felt very personally important to me. As I talk about in the Preface to the hardcover, the game is really intertwined with, and emerged from, my first experiences of transition and queerness. That image capture those experiences for me.
I love it! Thanks for taking the time to explain. I must have zoned out for a moment while listening.
By the way, this game and this creation makes me feel like you're a person after my own heart, Huffa!
For my part, I have collected a number of settings, themes and vignettes (like situations) which I've wanted to explore. Now I can finally do that.
Thank you for making it!
Oh that's so good to know : )
I hope you weave together all sorts of wonderful things !
any word on a printed compilation? Vol 1 is sold out on exalted funeral. Would like it all in one…
Yes ! I've recently finished work on a compiled, expanded and redesigned hardcover version, which will be coming out on Exalted Funeral in the not-too-distant future. And I will update you all here when there is a release date.
Dear Huffa,
wow this is great. i'm trying to play this with my 4-year-old but he looks at me all weird when i try to explain oracle results to him. that means full success, i guess?
i wanted to ask if you can publish the content in computer readable format (eg. YAML) for third-party tool creation? Ironsworn* does this and it's an incredible resource.
I'm so glad you're enjoying it with your kid. This made me smile : )
I won't be updating this version. I've recently finished work on a new revised and greatly expanded version of the game, which will be released on Exalted Funeral soon-ish. And I appreciate your suggestion, and will look into converting it to a computer readable format.
In the Spells section you cite: Betty Bactontine. " Fragmentary Powers v2.0 - A Tarot Deck Generator for Janky Super-powers," Paper Elemental, June 17, 2021.
Alot of Blogspot blogs do not readily come up in Google and I was having a hard time finding it, so I wanted to leave this link here for others in the future:
https://paperelemental.blogspot.com/2021/06/fragmentary-powers-v20-tarot-deck.ht...
Thank you ! : )
Hi! Great stuff here. So on the exalted funeral website, it says volume 3 is coming mid-February. Was it from last year, or is it 2024? Thanks!
BtS 3 will be out in February 2024 !
I'll be doing post about it in the next couple days.
In that post, I'll also be giving some more info on the next, big, upcoming Between the Skies project, as well....
That's great to here!
This is really cool, but does anyone else have the "th" missing from the front of any paragraphs that start with those letters? Or is it just me?
It looks like also any instances of "fi" are missing too.
Hey, thanks for pointing this out !
Are you seeing this in every paragraph ? Or could you post some page numbers where you see it ? If I can fix it, I'll post a revised PDF!
So the issue fixed itself when I switched to the Google drive PDF viewer. But yeah, any sentence that starts with "th" is completely gone, and many instances where "fi" should be the text is missing.
sounds like a ligature issue in some PDF viewers, may need to make sure to embed the font if it's not already done. Those are two common ligatures where the font combines the two characters to make a special glyph like dash and greater than sign (->) could become an arrow.
Hi, just encountering this, I love it! Brilliant work. Questions: Can you elaborate on the 4(?) print volumes that will be available from Exalted Funeral? Is it the same content as the PDF or has it been expanded in some way? And there will be four total volumes? Also, what's the best way to toss you a couple of bucks as a way to say thanks?
Thank you so much : )
The plans for the remaining print volumes are a little in flux at the moment. Here is what’s certain: vol 1 & 2 are released in print on EF, both contain some revised and new content. Vol 3 should be out in the next couple months and will contain new content from me, as well as an adventure written by Iko (Lost Bay) and illustrated by Evlyn Moreau.
After that there are some exciting plans in the works but it’s a little too early to talk about them now.
In terms of saying thanks, beyond buying print copies from EF, the best thing you can do is rate and review the game and share it : )
Thanks so much!
Thank you so much for your kind words : )
That's a great question. In fact, Between the Skies emerged from my attempt convert Any Planet Is Earth to weird-science-fantasy. In brief, I went through all the setting material in APIE, essentially a series of tables, and create science-fantasy versions of each element/table. In the process, I ended up expanding things, adding new approaches etc. But the skeleton that I built from was extracted from APIE. And I think you could absolutely do the same thing with BtS. I can't say it's not a ton of work haha - but you can, at least, use it as a guide for all that work.
Between The Skies has officially become my son's favorite game. We're playing it all the time. The thematic blend is just enchanting him top to bottom.
Aww, that’s wonderful. Thank so much for sharing.
Exalted Funeral says there is a volume 2. Is there a Volume 2
i was just about to ask the same thing :O
Thanks for pointing that out! Just a technical glitch over at EF - fixed now.
Volume 2 is coming out very soon, but it’s not out yet. I will absolutely update you all when it’s up and ready for purchase :)
Just want to clarify that this question and my response were made before volume 2 was released. It's out now and available on Exalted Funeral here: https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/between-the-skies-volume-1-pdf?_pos=2&_p...
I think I gushed a little bit on my podcast about this, hehe. Great stuff and can't wait for the kickstarter hardback at the end of the year. wink, wink!
https://anchor.fm/rich-fraser/episodes/Cockatrice-Nuggets-217-Zines--Zines--Zine...
Omg, can’t tell you how much I appreciate your read through. Of course, I’m so glad that you like the book. But even more so, you really captured so many of the things I’d hoped to accomplish with the spark tables, biblio, etc etc
We we will see about a hardcover, I would certainly like to see that happen ;)
This is an amazing compendium and reference, as well as a super game in its own right.
https://dozensanddragons.neocities.org/25.html#between-the-skies
Thank you so mucb, dozens, for such a kind and thoughtful review! You really got to the heart of core elements of what I was hoping to achieve - very happy it came across
Thanks for the discord links and further reading. Cant wait to dig through the theory articles.
Excellent, hope you discover some good things for your own gaming / designing!
I have a lot of sympathy for the Troika roleplaying game even though I don't think anyone really knows what it is exactly, other than an equal parts absurd and surreal exploration of the OSR trend. Still, Between the Skies seems to me to be exactly in that vein, offering mainly a big bunch of random tables linked together with the promise of a malleable space opera setting on hallucinogens, the kind of game where you can play as a swarm of mutant bees aboard their flesh-cloud shaped ship. If this description, and the prospect of playing very narrative games (actually leaning more on the side of FKR) doesn't scare you, reading this game - free! - may interest you.
Thanks for the very insightful comment, Côme! Troika! was certainly a big reference point for me - and I would say 'you can play as a swarm of mutant bees aboard their flesh-cloud shaped ship' is a pretty good summation of one of my design goals :)
I hope that BtS will serve as a good resource for players like me who like Troika! and 1) prefer FKR/ultralight play and 2) would like some extensive procedures/tables for developing and exploring their own weird worlds. I should note, I've also included a set of procedures for using Troika! backgrounds and converting them to be used alongside other BtS PCs (p. 39–40).
I am quickly looking through it and the amount of resources is overwhelming... in a good way.
Thanks, Steve! I aim to overwhelm, in a good way ;)
I can’t believe this is free! Thoroughly filled with amazing prompts and sparks. Love it!
Thank you, Zac! 🌸🙏🏼
What an incredible resource
I run a Spelljammer campaign and I think this is so fantastic! I can’t wait to use it.
thank you so much, Amanda! I can’t wait to see what you do with it - I hope it helps inspire some wild, wondrous adventures :)