After the Fog

After almost four years off the table, James Ernest’s ambitious area-control game After the Fog is finally coming back into the playtest cycle. For the moment, this means that most of this page is wildly out of date. If you’ll be joining us at any conventions in spring and summer of 2025, you might be among the first to play the newest build, and a fresh version will appear on this page shortly.

About the Game

After the Fog is a territory-control game with airships, engine-building, and resource management. The game is rated for 2 to 6 players, and takes roughly 60-120 minutes.

The Dearworth Valley is clearing after centures in fog. Abandoned forests, farms, and mines are scattered throughout the countryside. Players start the game with an airship and a base of operations. They will spend the game exploring the board, collecting resources, capturing territory, and upgrading their fleets.

About the Universe

James Ernest created the Dew Point universe as a fantasy setting for fiction and games. It is a world of roughly Renaissance-level technology, with heavier air and lighter materials that make airships a common form of transportation. The world is plagued by an ever-rising fog, which has separated cultures and power centers as it chokes low-lying cities out of existence.

You can read more about the Dew Point universe on World Anvil. And you can play other (newer, more finished) games from the same universe, including Shipwrights of Marino, Pirate’s Bluff, and several games for the Blossom Deck.

How to Play the Game

You can print a copy of the 2021 edition of After the Fog, using the files below. You can also visit the workshop at Tabletop Simulator, and play if online (like we do!). All of these components are out of date, and will be updated in summer 2025.

• After The Fog Rules (Version 9.5.4, 11/22/21)

• Game Cards PDF (Updated 4/22/21)

• Map Boards PDF (Updated 11/22/21)

• Character Placards PDF (Posted 3/28/21)

• City Placards PDF (Posted 3/28/21)

• After the Fog Workshop on Tabletop Simulator

Printing Your Own Copy: The game includes several different kinds of boards, and several decks of cards. We recommend using card sleeves for the deck, since (along with the rule book) those are the components that change most often. For help in creating your Print-and-Play version, check out James Ernest’s videos on making cards and boards.

• Making Game Boards Video

• Making Cards (Three Ways) Video

About the TTS Version: You will notice that we’ve used existing fantasy minis instead of airships in the online version, so the “rat” is your green ship, the “bear” is your brown ship, and so on. Most of the card art is cartoonish clip art, because that stuff is free. However, the lovely art on the character placards was created for this beta by Nate Taylor. (We also used some of them in Pirate’s Bluff.)

Next Steps (2021)

We expect this game to be in open beta for quite some time. It’s hard to get a regular game night going these days, and the usual in-person resources like local game stores and conventions are not available. But starting whenever game nights and conventions can happen again, we’ll be playing After the Fog every chance we get!

Eventually, we hope this game will become a beautiful retail product. We’ve submitted to game publishers already, but they generally agree that the game still needs work of some kind. And this is why your feedback is so valuable. So, if you enjoy messing about with games that are still not quite finished, we hope you’ll help us improve After the Fog.

Next Steps (2025)

As we mentioned above, After the Fog is finally back on the table. The changes are slight, but they will make a big difference, and we hope you’ll like the results. Please follow us for updates as we bring this old lunker back into the sky.

Thanks!