You find yourself trapped in a confusing illusion…

Notes on Smoke and Clouds…

…is a monster manual pitch/prototype for a Tabletop RPG set in a fantasy version of ancient China. Inspired by wuxia and xianxia media and tropes, this project explores the portrayal of monsters in Chinese folklore, bridging the gap between Western TTRPGs and Chinese storytelling.

The layout for the book was inspired by traditional Chinese books, which left blank spaces on both the top and bottom of the page, called “sky’s head” and “earth’s feet” respectively. The information and illustrations were printed out on rice paper then hand bound using Chinese stitch binding. The nature of Chinese stitch binding means that one sheet is folded to create two separate pages instead of a spread, so the information and its related illustration are in two different spreads when printed. The contents of those spreads have been adjusted for clarity on this website.