underside dev diary #13: deworming

i love worm. underside only exists because of worm -- it started life as capes in the dark, a hack of blades in the dark that made it about worm. most people on this patreon, i would wager, are here because they love worm! but the longer i and citizen abel work on the game, the more we're confident that this is good enough to print, good enough to sell--and because of that, we've spent this development cycle stepping away from making a 'worm fangame' and towards making a 'dark superhero game' with no identifiable IP connections that just so happens can be perfectly used to play a game in the setting of worm.

this isn't really too uncommon in the indie ttrpg space -- see fellowship, galactic -- but i want to be clear that this move hasn't just consisted of us filing all the serial numbers off. the release version of underside will contain a whole suite of worldbuilding tools, several optional rules for character creation -- still centering around trauma, because that's one of the things about worm that really resonates with the core of what underside is about, but implying different mechanisms and origins for 'powers' as a concept.

other than the simple economic concerns, another reason for underside moving away from being a worm fanproduct is that ultimately the world of worm, while fascinating and well-drawn (it's a good book! read it if you haven't and have a spare like. month) -- is really myopic and centred entirely on north america, with the rest of the world painted as (at best) broad caricature and (at worst) google translated racist nonsense. as a venezuelan, i don't want to publish a ttrpg set in a world where the only mention of latin america is it being 'controlled by cartels' -- instead, i want to give GMs from around the world the tools to make their own city or a city like it into the backdrop for gritty, angsty, traumatized cape action.

this doesn't mean too much for the actual meat of underside, but it does mean that a lot of the lingo from capes in the dark is going to be dropped -- the game still owes an unmistakable debt to worm, and isn't going to shy away from that, but opening it up to receiving other influences, to taking cues from the better parts of stuff like the boys or invincible or even the more interesting stuff coming out of mainstream superhero comics has opened up loads of really cool possibilities that i'm excited to delve into.

hope this update doesn't seem too insubstantive! next time i'll make sure there's lots of juicy screenshots and tables :)