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Dirt City Blues - Redemption's a Bullet Away

Created by The World Anvil Publishing

Dirt City Blues is a TTRPG ispired by Sin City and the cinematography of Quentin Tarantino, about people who should know better: burned-out Badasses with hair-trigger tempers, messy pasts, and a real knack for making things worse before they get better. But Dirt City Blues is also a game about redemption, about that one last heroic act that drags you out of hiding. Someone knocks. Someone bleeds. The quiet life ends. You hang the apron, kill the lights, and step back into the fight. We aim to start shipping physical rewards by July 2026. Digital rewards for already-existing books will be sent when orders are locked down (Mid January 2026). Once they're ready, all other digital rewards will be made accessible (estimated Q2 2026). Pre-order sales are final. Shipping will be charged closer to fulfillment. You can check estimated shipping prices HERE (Shipping and Fulfillment section)

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Pre-Campaign Update #2
6 months ago – Tue, Oct 07, 2025 at 08:20:06 AM

Hi all,

Welcome to the second pre-campaign update for Dirt City Blues!
If you haven’t checked out the free Quickstart yet, you can grab it right now [HERE].
The campaign is launching in just a couple of weeks, and we still have a few things left to reveal.

In this update:

  • Poll Results
  • The Bullet Dice Set
  • Episode 2 of Raffaele’s Dev Diary
  • A new video interview with Raffaele covering many aspects of the game

Ready? Steady? Go!


Poll Results

First things first: in the previous update, we asked you what kind of vibes bring you to Dirt City Blues, and what extras you’d like to see in the campaign.

And the winner is… John Carpenter! (with Tarantino being a close second)

Message received. We’ve already got a few things planned in that direction, but if the campaign goes exceptionally well, we now know exactly where to draw further inspiration.


The Bullet Dice Set



One of the rewards you’ll find in the Dirt City Blues campaign is the custom Bullet Dice Set: a full set of stylish d6s shaped like, well… bullets.

We’ve confirmed with our manufacturer that these beauties won’t just look cool—they’re also balanced and fully functional, just like standard dice.

The three colors correspond to the system’s three-tier dice mechanic (Standard, Advantage, and Drawback)—a format you’ll recognize if you’ve played Dead Air: Seasons or Valraven: The Chronicles of Blood and Iron. That said, they’re d6s, and you can use them with just about any game you like.


Dev Diary – Episode 2

The first episode of Raffaele Vota’s Dev Diary received some great feedback, so here’s part two, straight from the designer himself, as he continues his journey to bring Dirt City Blues to life.

Over to you, Raf:

Why did I choose Monad Echo as the engine for Dirt City Blues?
Well… truth is, I’ve always been better at adapting something that already exists than inventing from scratch. Call it a character flaw.

I’m what you’d call a chronic malcontent. Every time I write something, I second-guess it, tear it down, rebuild it, and second-guess it again. Over and over. A lovely little creative death spiral that rarely leads where I hoped it would, at least not in my head.

I know—it’s a me problem.

People like what I make. Hell, most of the folks who’ve picked up my self-published games on Itch.io seem more than satisfied. By all accounts, I should just take a deep breath, blow out the anxiety, and flash a smug little smile.

But anyway. Let’s not get too soft here.

A while back, after years of circling the idea, I was finally pulling Dirt City Blues together using my own minimalist system. As usual, I wasn’t fully happy with it. Then my buddy, editor, and behind-the-scenes consigliere Andrea “Il Pardu” dropped the line that changed everything:

“Boss, why don’t you take a look at the system from Valraven and Broken Tales? The official SRD just dropped.”

Damn him. I’d known Alberto Tronchi, the mind behind those games, for years. Always respected his work, as a designer and as a novelist. Seriously, look him up. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Alberto’s novels are not translated into English, at least not yet).

So of course I threw everything back into the blender. Again. Typical me.

Long story short? Monad Echo turned out to be a perfect fit for Dirt City Blues. This game needed a system that could handle the weight of these stories—stories about ex-operatives, the Badasses, who walked away after some devastating Trauma. Guys who shelved their guns and tried to disappear.

But the past? It’s a dirty fighter. It comes back swinging, dragging them, their loved ones, and half the damn city back into the muck.

And these Badasses? They answer the call.

Because no one else has the guts, the grit, or the lead to fix what’s broken. Because, for some reason, they still care—about someone, or something, in this cursed city.

And that core question? The one that always comes back, no matter the mission?

“How far are you willing to go to get what you want, the way you want it?”

Monad Echo nails that question. Its mechanics let you play with calculated risk, personal suffering (which, beautifully, turns into XP), and emotional bonds that aren’t just flavor: they shape your story and your growth.

It let me do everything I was trying to do, only better. Cleaner. More human.
You’ll learn more during the campaign.

[the Dev Diary continues in the next update]


The Video Interview

Tommaso again now. Here’s a little conundrum we’ve run into while presenting all our projects: only a few people on the team feel truly comfortable speaking in English. Sure, they understand it, and they can speak it, especially if you threaten them with a waterboarding session, but let’s just say it’s not their comfort zone.

All our games so far have been written in Italian first, then translated into English. That’s never been a real issue, but it does put me—your friendly, glorified producer—in the position of having to speak on behalf of the writers more often than not. I don’t mind doing it, but it’s not exactly my dream role.

Luckily, technology has our back.

After experimenting with a previous project, we’ve learned that translation tools have gotten really good, even for video. So, here’s a conversation between Raffaele and Tuccio from Around the Game, originally recorded in Italian, and now available in near-flawless English.

Raffaele dives into many of the mechanics you’ll find in Dirt City Blues, so it’s definitely worth a watch:



Until next time!

Pre-campaign Update #1
7 months ago – Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 08:31:03 AM

Hello everyone,
and thanks for your interest in Dirt City Blues.
If you’re not sure why you’re getting this email, chances are you’ve followed us in the past for one of our other games—Dead Air: Seasons, Valraven, Broken Tales, Bitter Chalice, and so on. In that case, welcome back. Dirt City Blues is our next game, and it’s coming in hot.

I’m Tommaso, Creative Director at The World Anvil Publishing, and this is our first pre-campaign update. In this message, we’ll cover three things:

  1. Actual Plays
  2. The first episode of Raffaele Vota’s Dev Diary
  3. A poll to help us fine-tune the vibes you’re looking for in Dirt City Blues

Let’s go!

Actual Plays

We waited a bit before releasing these to give you a chance to check out the Quickstart Problem on your own.
But if you’ve already played it, or if you’re just curious to see how the game works in action, we’ve got you covered.

Below you’ll find two full games:

  • One in English, run by yours truly
  • One in Italian, run by Dirt City Blues lead designer Raffaele Vota

Check them out!

🇬🇧🇺🇸 English



🇮🇹 Italiano



Dev Diary

I'll leave the stage to Raffaele, lead developer of Dirt City Blues.

Let me tell you a story.
Which, really, is my story, stitched together from bad choices, half-baked plans, and all the usual over-the-top antics of someone who never quite learned to shut up (or to put the damn pencil down).
But this story, at least this one, after all these years, finally got itself a grim and well-earned happy ending.

The year was 2005. I was at Lucca Comics & Games, the biggest game convention in Italy, presenting my very first game.
Well, the first one that actually got published.
Even back then, I was already hooked on action movies—but not the trendy stuff of the time, all polished leather and bullet time, still riding the Matrix wave (which itself was just doing its own version of Hong Kong cinema).
No, I was into the other kind. The grimy, low-budget, straight-to-VHS B-movie kind.
The kind you watched not for quality, but for the sheer joy of weird choices, raw energy, and the desperate search for that one flash of genius that could lift a mess into cult territory.

That’s how One Shot One Kill was born.
A glorious mess, full of everything I could shamelessly and irresponsibly throw together at the time.
It was wild. Reckless. Probably lawsuit-worthy. But hey, I got lucky.

One Shot One Kill, or OSOK, as we used to call it, became both my worst enemy and my greatest ally.
As I once wrote on my Instagram (yeah, they made me open one)—it’s impossible to ignore how much that clunky first game shaped my path as a designer. If nothing else, it taught me exactly what not to do.

Back then, making a game didn’t require game design theory.
You just took stuff, copied it (poorly, like every great B-movie), reworked it, and threw it into a layout, hoping your enthusiasm would carry you over the finish line.

And somehow… it worked.
OSOK became a small cult hit—just like the trash-action movies that inspired it.
And I? I became something halfway between famous (with a million air quotes) and infamous.
As I like to say: “notorious… in a friendly way.”

But those were the years when the first translated indie RPGs started landing in Italy, shaking things up.
Games that didn’t just tell stories: they worked.
They had rules with purpose. They were instruction manuals first, style second.
And yeah, some of them had too much style—but they made me think.

So I dove back in. Hard.
I started reading seriously. First in Italian, then poking around English forums (as best I could, back when automatic translation was more guesswork than science).
And eventually, I realized it was time.
Time to leave OSOK behind and start building something deeper.
Something darker. Something tighter.
Something that still echoed those over-the-top roots, but knew how to walk the shady alleys instead of clowning around in the sunshine.

If OSOK was the Ninja Terminator of Italian RPGs… then what else could I write, now that I had the tools?

It was time to stop playing in the daylight and take a walk into the shadows.
Down the back alleys of sin, grit, and bad decisions.
The path wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t fast.
I wrote other stuff. I shelved the idea. I rewrote it. Again and again.
But I’m still here. Tougher than I was, and still burning with the same urge:

To tell stories that leave a mark.
Like a bullet.

[This Dev Diary continues in the next update]

The Poll

Hey, Tommaso here again.

Take a minute to check out the poll attached to this update and cast your vote. We’ll use your feedback to help shape some final details and potential Stretch Goals for Dirt City Blues.

We’ll be back next week with more news.
In the meantime, if you’ve got questions about Dirt City Blues (or anything else, really—I’m a good listener), feel free to drop a comment below.

PS: Missed the trailer for the game? Check it out now!



– Tommaso