235 bloom: Two Childhood Friends Tell the Future of their Hometown through Actual Play. Oh, and there's Mecha.

A new actual play podcast, "Canopy Archive: 235 bloom" tackles the future of a real Midwestern city at the end of this century.

235 bloom - the premiere series of Canopy Archive, a collaboration between Des Moines & Dragons and the Institute for Manufactured Futures - is a work of speculative fiction taking place in Des Moines, Iowa, in the year 2089. It uses indie tabletop roleplaying games, including Salvage Union by Leyline Press, ECOPUNK: 2044 by Dice Kapital, World Ending Game and The Ground Itself by Everest Pipkin, Conquest & Glory by Kyle Serafin, and Dog Eat Dog by Liam Liwanag Burke to imagine a city learning to adapt - and defend itself - within a climate changed Midwest:

In 2089 Des Moines, Iowa, along the “2-3-5”, a highway-turned-metro-transit hub, communities are in an ideological struggle to make real their own visions for the future. This is a land of suburban agri-jungles, community-scale 3D printers, and up-to-two-story-tall battery-powered mecha. The federal government has become mostly irrelevant to people's everyday lives, as communities have been largely self-sufficient for decades. Through a handful of independently-produced roleplaying games, 235 bloom explores the invasion of the Des Moines metro by plutocratic ideologues, following the stories of Emil, an Emergency Services Cooperative worker who is in over his head in the Civil Resistance, and Baz, a hotshot BE-TLE pilot whose mercenary cooperative has returned him to his childhood home. 235 bloom also features seven guests to help scaffold the future in which this story takes place, over three prologue episodes.

Friends since first grade, Jordan (of the Institute for Manufactured Futures) and Paul (of the Des Moines & Dragons podcast collective) grew up together in Des Moines. Last week they launched this 16 episode, 35-hour miniseries as part of a larger, ongoing collaboration they're calling the Canopy Archive. 235 bloom features cover art by Des Moines artist Maddy Fusco, music by Des Moines musician Javier Lopez of Goatfoam, and additional voice acting by Des Moines born-and-raised artist LIPING VONG. The show also features guests throughout 3 prologue episodes, including Dan Umthun of The DOOMCAST, Lisa Irey of Irey Shire Gardens, Annelise Tarnowski and Tony Tandeski of Des Moines’ premier gaming cafe The Rook Room, and out-of-state guests who take on the roles of competing private military contractors in the future invasion of Des Moines, including rapper and podcast producer Tony Williams, Jennings Mergenthal of the Department of Puppet Studies, and artist/educator/software engineer Anniessa Antar.