Richard Kelly

Concept: “Night. The aquaculture cage maze. A chorus of motors rises against the sludgy lap of the waters. Light pierces the gloom, searching, calibrating, until it falls on a racing skiff. Painted in neon green, the craft banks around a submerged tangle of steel and plastic, cutting the turn slightly too wide. Gunfire hammers the silence. Punctured, the pilot falls from the bow. The boat spins out, catches the edge of another submerged structure, and turns into a spray of splinters that float atop the waves. Three more racing skiffs charge past the wreckage, drivers whooping as they go. The Cy Regatta has begun again.”

Content: Rules for participating in the Cy Regatta, a set of deadly boat races, along with a sea creature that might torment the racers.

Writing: Focused, specific details to explain the rules at play for the regatta, presented directly and concisely. 

Art/Design: Lots of bright color combinations, full-page illustrations, and silhouette backgrounds of text pages/spreads. 

Usability: Single-column text format with large headings facilitates reading and navigating, although some color combinations might strain some eyes, while others may have difficulty reading text overlaying more complex background illustrations.

Concept: “The world is ending, but not fast enough. Poison drizzles from the skies and mats in the gutters. Reality flickers and stutters, but doesn't go out. And the people of this spliced and plated rainsick hell can't afford to starve like ascetics, awaiting purification by the end. It could be days from now that judgement comes. Or it could be never. Their bellies still grumble in discontent. So the people of CY eat. They eat for nourishment and for distraction and to be seen in the act of specific consumptions. They eat scraps and banquets, packaged rations and homecooked platters. They eat, and they look out glitching windows, and they hope the apocalypse holds off for another day.”

Content: Myriad options for restaurants/eateries in CY, with business descriptions, menu lists, and costs for dishes. 

Writing: Each establishment is given its own flavor/style, and descriptions reflect in-universe perceptions of the place and its fare as much as they provide helpful worldbuilding notes for GMs.

Art/Design: While each page includes the same essential components, different font, color, and graphic selections contribute to unique identities for the restaurants included in the supplement.

Usability: Text is consistently readable and navigable even across a wide range of fonts, and only occasionally are there color changes (e.g., from background patterns) that might momentarily disrupt reading. Hyperlinked ToC makes for an even quicker navigating/locating experience.

Concept: “There's a sickness in the streets of CY. Rain drips like a broken IV. Dying adverts flicker in sallow shades. They say the world is ending. Has ended. Will end. They say the howls at night are Cy-Ragers. NanoPhreaks. Nothing to worry about. Nothing abnormal. The water is poison, but it always has been. The air is poison, but how bad can it be? It churns through your lungs all day and hasn't killed you yet. There's nanites in the trash, nanites growing like mold on the walls, nanites in the blood and bones of regular citizens, but all of this is familiar misery. Last night you stared blearily at your face in the bathroom mirror, watching it change. Watching it become something new. As you did, your cybernetics clicked like beetle legs, like teeth shuffling in the mouth of a cannibal. They squirmed and contorted to match your new flesh. You vomited your whole stomach lining into the sink, then washed it out with a swig of cheap ethanol. But the disinfectant didn't purify you. It just made you worse. Tonight, the glitching moon hangs low over the skyline and your body is wrong. Wrong for the city. Wrong for the life that clings to it. Wrong for the alien gods that have touched its streets. You hate them all, and that hate pours out of you in a howl.”

Content: A set of rules to incorporate werewolves into CY.

Writing: Matter-of-fact explanations and descriptions of a variety of factors pertinent to affected characters (transformation rules, clothing options that survive transformation, a “Festering Wolfborg” class, etc.) as well as several lycanthropic foes and their stats.

Art/Design: A mix of black-and-white splash images with brightly colored sections of content, each with its own bold color scheme. 

Usability: Single-page, single-column layouts make for quick perusal and identification of desired content, assisted by a hyperlinked table of contents.