An Interview with Chris Air
Chris Air is the creator of 5 Million Worlds RPG!
Chris Air is a neurodivergent game writer living in Alsace, France, publishing games under the 5 Million Worlds Press moniker.
Mario | La esquina del rol Games: Chris Air, Welcome to La Esquina del Rol. It's been a while since I met you thanks to Iko's discord. It's amazing how many great people are there. Today I'm honored to have you as a guest. I'd like to start by asking you to share with our readers who ChrisAir is and what you are currently doing in relation to the hobby?
Chris Air | 5 Million Worlds Press: Hi Mario!! I'm honored to make it onto your roster of interviews with La esquina del rol! Thank you for having me.
So yeah, I'm Chris Airiau, a.k.a. ChrisAir, a neurodivergent game writer living in Alsace, France, publishing games under the 5 Million Worlds Press moniker. Whether for 5MW Press or as a freelance writer, I write adventures for Mothership RPG, The Lost Bay RPG, Cloud Empress RPG, and a few small adventures for other indie systems.
Right now, I'm working on several different Mothership adventures with various publishers, giving Eryk Sawicki a hand with Milk Bar RPG development, and writing my very first tabletop roleplaying game, 5 Million Worlds RPG for deep-future, transhuman space adventures.
Mario: It's great to know that you reside in France, Chris! I like your country, I spent a short time there finishing a master's degree.
When I talked to Johan Nohr he told me that he grew up without direct influence from dnd because in Sweden they had his own game version. In your case, in France, how did you venture into the hobby?
Chris Air: I immigrated to France in 2010, but it was here that I played my first real ttrpgs—not counting those no-rulebook, Toonami- and JRPG-fueled games I played in high school. I've actually never played any D&D, whether TSR or WotC, ha. (Even those insane homebrew high school games were more Outlaw Star than Final Fantasy.) I'm a spacehead, through and through. For as long as I could read, I've been obsessed with sci-fi, and sf lit especially. Fall 2016, I was actively seeking out how to curate and experience new science fiction stories with friends.
This research helped me uncover the first game I played, the GMless Shock: Human Contact by Joshua A.C. Newman: a first contact game heavily influenced by Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. I had a lot of fun, but I think it was a bit "much" for the board game friends I'd roped into it, haha. It took another two years after that game ended before I tried running another ttrpg, the OSR standard Stars Without Number. I played in a year-plus long campaign, and ran two campaigns of my own homebrewed setting, the first couple 5 Million Worlds sectors.
In 2021, I backed The Desert Moon of Karth, and started playing Mothership 0e about a month or so before the 1E Kickstarter. The kind reception and encouragement to create in the Mothership community is what truly brought me into the indie ttrpg scene.
Mario: First, where are you really from?
Chris Air: Alpha Centauri.
No, I grew up on food stamps in Indiana, managed to land a good uni scholarship, and lined up a job in France just after graduating. Sometimes, even after so long, biking through these streets feels just as dumbfounding as interstellar travel. Like, how am I even here? What have I done? Cue: "Once in a Lifetime"
Mario: LoL! You made me laugh…
So, unfortunately, we still don't have Mothership translated into Spanish, but it's amazing the community that has emerged around this game. What do you think is the reason for this great community?
Chris Air: Ha, honestly at first, being embraced by the Mothership community felt the same, but over time I learned that this kindness wasn't luck, but purely intentional. Everyone who makes Mothership stuff wants other people to make the best games possible. They want to help others do their best. These creators strive for high quality in gameplay density, and strong vibes through design. And they share their practices. Without folk like Marco Serrano, Violet Ballard, and Christian Sorrell, and so many more friendly souls who encouraged me as I stumbled through learning game design (a stumbling that's still rolling on), I'd have never dreamt to try to make it this far. So why is the community great? Because the people are not only immensely creative, but generous with their kindness as well. I can say the same thing about The Lost Bay community. At least, that's been my experience, and the experience I've been trying to pay forward too.
But yeah, Mothership hasn't been translated into French either, which is a real shame. Sans version française, I can't nearly as easily spread that excitement for this game to the francophone ttrpg community.
Mario: Something that really stands out to me is your adventure writing - how do you approach designing these adventures for so many amazing games (TLB, Mothership, etc.)?
Chris Air: Thanks, that's what I dig most, the adventure writing. For sci-fi stuff, I've just been obsessed so long I know what I want to mash together, what trope I must twist, untread ideas to explore, or overdone ideas to subvert. For any game though, making that conscious effort to inhabit the setting is essential for creating.
My brain never shuts up, so the ideas are the easy part. Making them good, useful at the table, this is the real work.
Write, play, repeat.
Mario: For those of us who are just starting to write science fiction adventures, what would be the best advice you could share with us for writing a good adventure in keeping with the genre?
Chris Air: I feel like there's no easy way to advise someone how to be literate in a genre other than "Read, read, read," which to be fair, is the same advice I'd give to any aspiring writer. For sf: Read Science Daily and other academic/scientific journalism. Read novels outside your genre. Read nonfiction. Read modules for the system you're writing in. Then read even more.
You can learn tropes through play, sure. Video games, tv and film are very good at boiling down genre trappings. This is especially useful for ttrpgs, where ideas gotta be big to engage with players. (Subtlety is great for fiction, but I find it's quickly lost at the table.) Everyone knows Alien, though, right? My favorite sf ideas live in sf literature. And the new stuff, not old white man sci-fi. So I would recommend familiarity with the sf lit scene to improve sf game writing.
In my admittedly limited experience, sf game writing becomes about how to seed novel (or less common) sf ideas to players, and skirt expectation in fun, digestible ways that folk can engage with.
I feel like my adventures fall into two camps: "What a weirdo, yikes!" and "What is this place?" Or, NPCs/creatures and locations, arguably the components players engage with most. This is the writer's chance to express their ideas to the players in a module. GM-facing mechanics can amplify those ideas, e.g., your doom clocks, infection tables, overloaded encounters, etc.
In short, learn how to use the tools of the craft to express sf ideas. Experiment! Create a one-page adventure to test out a mechanic, and move on. Hah, just add a constant cloud of "read" to that same mantra: write, play, repeat.
Mario: If you don’t mind, I’d like you to tell me a bit about your game 5 Million Worlds RPG. Honestly, I haven’t played it, but I’ve read it several times. I would love for you to tell us why this game came about and what you intended when you wrote it?
Chris Air: 5 Million Worlds RPG is a deep future space adventure game, using the Panic Engine (from Mothership RPG fame) to give player characters Limit to replace Stress. Players can risk keeping Limit for downtime character and project advancement, or use Limit Breaks during adventures to overcome adversity.
In 5MW RPG, Earth is myth and Terran descendants live across the titular 5 Million Worlds. Before they disappeared, the Serpents created incomprehensible technological wonders that still remain, affecting the lives within 5MW Space. Player characters are Avatars, an outcast cadre of highly-skilled people who travel the worlds. Most do so in reply to the Serpent's Call: Help those who ask.
In that spirit, free community copies of *5MW RPG: An Avatar's Primer* will always be available.
I am currently working on kitting out the rules with transhuman backgrounds, called Forms, with the amazing Roque Romero as illustrator. When they're ready, these five transhuman Forms will be added to the A5 zine: Trad, Looper, Emulant, Flesher, and Visard.
I spent the whole of 2024 writing short 5MW adventures for my newsletter to begin testing out 5MW adventure writing. I'm preparing these seven adventures for release on itch in the free 5MW RPG Adventure Archive. I hope to supplement the base rulebook with 5MW Sector zines that contain worlds inspiring sense of wonder, new transhuman & posthuman (as alien) Forms, and adventures focusing on social clashes within discrete locations.
Mario: First of all, I have to congratulate you! Since I read 5MW (by the way, I love the name), I was amazed that with only 8 pages, you can actually run something incredible in a science fiction tabletop setting. That is truly fantastic. You've done an excellent job synthesizing exactly what is needed, and I admire that greatly.
Also, I think the twist you've added with the concept of "the limit" and how breaking that limit can even help in the face of adversity is something I really like. And, well, the second thing I truly enjoy is the setting. Tell us a bit about it, as I think it adds to a very well-rounded product that's definitely worth bringing to the table.
Chris Air: Thanks for your kind words about the 8pg ruleset. Honestly, I cannot accept credit for that, as the rules are a reskin of the Mothership 1E Pocketzine that Sean McCoy released a few years back. My sole addition was dividing Limit into a boon/bane table. Well, that and the single spread adventure, I suppose.
Not only is Earth a myth, but even the origins of the ubiquitous Serpent Tech left over in 5MW Space has mostly been forgotten. Yet all peoples of the 5MWs are Terran descendants.
I'm aiming to get all essential lore into the tables. Ended Careers / Mementos replace Trinkets / Patches. Each Mind has its Serpent's Call & Loadout. Each Form has its own duo of Background tables and Limit abilities. The skills, weapons, equipment all carry the responsibility of communicating lore so GMs don't have to spend time explaining a the setting.
If I've learned anything through NSR game design, it's that you want folk playing and immersed in the game as quick as possible, just "It's far future space, and look at all this stuff that makes you weird. Ready to go visit some worlds?"
Mario: Sure, I get what you're saying, but it needs to be acknowledged anyway. For example, I'm using the trophy system for my space horror RPG and I've added a stat called “Rust” to abstractly represent equipment and armor wear, supply depletion, and oxygen deprivation. It works like Ruin, but when you run out it starts to consume your Ruin, then a race against the clock begins to try to survive. At first glance, it may seem insignificant, but it actually ends up adding something new to the depth of gameplay that the system already has in and of itself, haha. So I give you the credit you deserve hahaha!
Personally, I really enjoy settings that play out through tables. I appreciate how, in such a compact format de 5MW, you've managed to define an attractive scenario for the game. Tell me, what direction is 5MW going to take in the medium and short term? I know you're eager to move the project forward, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on where it's headed.
Chris Air: Thanks Mario.
The first and most important goal is to finish the beta of 5MW RPG: Avatar Primer. That's the main piece of work to get through the door. Otherwise, I have one 5MW Cluster zine in the works to release alongside another upcoming project, the first of the adventure setting modules.
I have lots of plans and ideas for the GM guide, solo protocols & games, Form zines, adventures, etc. But ideas are cheap. For now, I'm going to focus on finishing the game writing, trying to find my sci-fi people, and playing.
Mario: That sounds truly amazing, and you have my full support to achieve it. To learn more about you and your upcoming projects, where can the community follow you and even reach out to you for collaborations?
Chris Air: Folks can reach out to me on bsky, follow my monthly newsletter 5MW Rokaner Reports for game and development news, and check out my published games at https://chrisair.itch.io/
