Classes

Concept: “You are constantly jacked into your Vapestim-Pack, emitting vapor clouds. You have to stay sedated! Drugs for everyone! Down with the luxury elite!”

Content: A class for the languid lotus-eater and sedate spice fiend who wants, or needs, to constantly moderate their mood–and who wants everyone else to, too.

Writing: Class detail descriptions and mechanics explanations support one another well to present a cohesive concept through the document.

Art/Design: Two-page pink-heavy spread layout highlights a vaporslave illustration, a rendering of capsules, and an early GUI in addition to distinct sections of text framed as a cassette track list.

Usability: Class details are organized for quick identification of desired information, and different aesthetic components invite further exploration and engagement.

Concept: “Are you more human than chicken or more chicken than human? Engineered to be tastier, juicier, more finger-licking good. Implanted with a brain that was not your own, and GMOd to decay at a slower rate — so when the skies fall, only you and the cockroaches will be left ruling the roost.”

Content: A class for the egghead who enjoys fowl play, whether it’s original or extra crispy.

Writing: Since this class is an homage to the creator’s “Vat-grown Repli-clone” class, chicken-themed references and puns abound that provide the class with intriguing and unique options/mechanics. 

Art/Design: Wide spread in a yellow/orange color scheme with a graphic of a chicken embryo (much like the repli-clone class’s graphic) toward the left, while three columns of content take up the bulk of the page. 

Usability: Each column of text content has its own visual design, but each provides a consistent presentation to distinguish headings, labels, emphasized text, and so on. Searching/selecting text may cause some issues due to unexpected spacing between and clustering of characters.

Concept: “Engineered to be better, stronger, faster; implanted with memories that are not your own; and genetically encoded to degrade at an accelerated rate. Live fast, die young embodied. And your time is almost up.”

Content: A class for the discarded or obsolete duplicant who wants their maker to pay for their profane hubris.

Writing: Drawing on iconic literature and film for its inspiration, class features are concisely packed with ideas to spur introspective and destructive roleplay.

Art/Design: Sleek spread layout of class details complemented amazingly with green/pink color scheme to highlight page elements, with a large background illustration of a vat-grown fetus to underscore the character’s origins. 

Usability: While there’s a lot happening on the page, it’s eminently readable, with high contrast and bordered framing of text guiding visual navigation through the document.

Concept: “In CY, it's easy to feel like there's nobody to trust. Everyone wants creds or drugs or alcohol or fame or whatever, and most people are willing to backstab each other for it. But you- you're secure. Your friends would never betray you, and you make friends very easily, at least, with some people. The kind of people who have greasy black feathers and pick at trash dumps, or gnawing teeth and skitter under floorboards, or slimy skin and creep through the gutters. Your friends have your back. Anyone who wants to get to you will have to go through them.”

Content: A class for the rat bastard who works best with partners, the nastier the better. 

Writing: Inspired class features that bring a feral animal-loving misfit to life, complete with mechanics for one or more vermin companions.

Art/Design: Full-color version is yellow-on-black with rat photographs with color treatments as backgrounds, while print-friendly version is black-on-white text. Both versions use single-column text content layout.

Usability: Distinct sections are immediately recognizable in both versions thanks to consistent heading/label presentation and white space. Full-color version employs an additional handwritten-aesthetic font for labels and emphasized terms/phrases.

Concept: “‘They thought you were insane, now they realize you were right. But were you? It doesn't matter, because it is too late for them. You must survive…’ An old man or woman who have spent their lives preparing for the apocalypse who now finds themselves in a perpetual never ending one. Will they survive? Even thrive?”

Content: A class for the punk who’s well-stocked for nearly any apocalyptic occasion.

Writing: Brief, extremely flavorful tables and mechanics that round out assorted approaches to playing a vindicated prepper, provided in a mix of straightforward and tongue-in-cheek tones. 

Art/Design: Bright green on a red cloudy pattern background, organized mainly in a three-column format.

Usability: Consistent presentation of content sections via organization, headings, emphasized info, etc. all make for easy navigation and identification of desired details.

Concept: “You hail from a world unknown to humanity, far beyond the outer bounds of the Terran solar system. All data projections point to planet Earth as the site of some great future calamity, one that will resonate throughout the entire universe—but what could it be, and why here? You’ve been stranded on Earth (what’s left of it, anyway) for a few months now, and so far, only one thing’s been made abundantly clear: this place is a shithole, and nobody’s coming to rescue you.”

Content: A class for the stranger in a strange land with no way to leave it.

Writing: Class details mix levity and bizarre sci-fi tropes for a unique class experience in a cyberpunk milieu.

Art/Design: Black-edged white text on black, pink, and gray with some green text accents. Class features are arranged around a central illustration of a visitor over a background pattern of criss-crossing X shapes.

Usability: Visually, this is a busy spread, which may make reading/scanning difficult for some, augmented by the lack of embedded text (so no searching or copying/pasting). Bold text for important info and labels consistently helps distinguish individual list items and content sections.

Concept: “It was nothing like they advertised; there were no off-world colonies, no bold unknown, no strange new worlds–only more cramped corridors and self-devouring consumerism in the name of the tourist industry. And then one night SOMETHING shocked the shuttle systems, and you began floating in a most peculiar way…”

Content: A class for those who were changed in irrevocable, horrifying ways when they walked among the stars–and who are now shackled to the earth once again.

Writing: Vivid, evocative descriptions of features and mechanics are both illuminating and unsettling in the best way.

Art/Design: Two two-page spreads with class details and a set of alien infestations, with white text on dark background throughout. An image of a void-warped freefaller emphasizes the cosmic horror at the core of this class and the effect it has on the character.

Usability: Easy to navigate, read, and comprehend, with key components visually embellished for identification of their significance and purpose.

Concept: “Zip guns are sold everwhere, as multipacks in bodegas and as singles in vending machines. These mass-produced deadly toys are made of the cheapest materials in the cheapest way possible and designed to break after a single shot, but that's all you need, right?”

Content: A class for the venn diagram intersection of firearms fanatic and gashapon addict.

Writing: Concise, approachable descriptions of class features and mechanics with a dash of thematic flavor to glue the concepts to the setting.

Art/Design: Plain text format with whitespace between paragraphs and lists. 

Usability: The file format allows for incredibly easy resizing/formatting content in one’s preferred text editor or word processing program.