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If you spend any amount of time on crowdfunding* websites such as Kickstarter, Backerkit, or Crowdfundr this month, you are going to be seeing a lot of new tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) projects from people you’ve never heard of before (including me!).
*Crowdfunding: the practice of obtaining needed funding (as for a new business) by soliciting contributions from a large number of people especially from the online community - Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary
Since 2018, Kickstarter has run an annual promotion for independent creators of RPG zines called Zine Quest. Over the years the concept has spread, and now Zine promotions can be found on many different crowdfunding platforms under banners such as Zine Month and Tabletop Nonstop. February is now a major time for funding indie projects, but terminology surrounding it can be confusing, so I am here to break down what this month is about.
What is a Zine?
Zines are short publications, usually no more than 50 pages (anything more is difficult to staple), in an A5 or 8.5”x5.5” form factor (the size of a piece of paper folded in half). Zines are a popular form of distributing independent media due to being both cheap and easy to produce, often requiring nothing more than a home printer. Zines have a long cultural history, and can cover just about any topic, from art, to poetry, and even roleplaying games.
In the RPG space, zines are often created by individuals looking to add content and rules to their favorite games, such as collections of magic items to find, monsters to fight, or new abilities for players to use. But there is no limit to the type of media one can put into a zine. Many feature player tips, interviews with creators, and general essays about the hobby.
As time has gone on and advanced printing techniques have become more accessible, zines have become more commercialized. The exact definition of what constitutes a “zine” is a topic of debate. Purists would argue that the spirit of a zine is scrappy and incredibly personal, while formalists insist a zine can be incredibly polished and well-funded so long as it sticks to that A5 zine-format. Most of the promotions we will be discussing do not have strict definitions for the word “zine,” giving creators a lot of flexibility in their projects.
Zine Quest, Zine Month, and Tabletop Nonstop
Zine Quest was started in 2018 by crowdfunding website Kickstarter as a way to promote smaller indie developers in the TTRPG space. The premise is simple: start a crowdfunding campaign in February for an RPG zine and you get the Zine Quest tag, to be showcased alongside dozens of other Zine Quest submissions. There are no rules, and the support does not go much beyond that. Simply releasing a project at the same time as other similar projects is supposed to increase visibility.
In 2022, Kickstarter garnered some controversy, first by announcing that they would be incorporating blockchain technology (that which powers Bitcoin and NFTs), and then by changing the date of Zine Quest from February to August with little to no warning. Frustrated by these things, indie developers banded together and created their own promotion: Zine Month. Like Zine Quest, Zine Month projects take advantage of a group release to generate hype around their projects and enable cross-promotion. Unlike Zine Quest, Zine Month projects can be released on any platform, including Backerkit, Indiegogo, itch.io, and Crowdfundr. Projects released on Kickstarter also qualify for Zine Month, allowing creators to market under both banners.
As part of Zine Month, Crowdfundr hosts their own promotion called Tabletop Nonstop. Tabletop Nonstop promotes anything TTRPG-related released on Crowdfundr in the month of February, not just zines. Crowdfundr differs from other crowdfunding platforms in that minimum crowdfunding goals are optional and creators get access to funds immediately upon reaching their goals, making Crowdfundr campaigns very flexible. It is also available in more countries than either Backerkit or Kickstarter, making it ideal for discovering works from the international community.
Zine Month Spotlight: The Colony - Magical Apocalypse HexCrawl
Type: Adventure | Genre: Science-fantasy | System: Agnostic
With so many projects being released over the next month, I want to do my part and highlight some particularly interesting projects.
To start, there is a new release from Gabriel Kerr [
] over on Crowdfundr. The Colony is a post-apocalyptic hexcrawl in which you play the survivors of a world-ending calamity exploring the devastated surface for the first time in a hundred years. Like any good hexcrawl, the map of the world is divided into individual hexes, with each hex containing some kind of adventure hook or bizarre location to explore.The Colony is a system-neutral old-school adventure, meaning that it can be played with any ruleset or game you choose to plug it into. Given the post-apocalyptic vibes and emphasis on mutations, I imagine the Mutant Crawl Classics RPG would be a great fit for this.
Here’s an overview of the contents according to the Crowdfundr page:
The Colony will be a 64 page A5 PDF zine. It will contain:
a map of the surface world
100 keyed hexes
8 factions
mutation rules
hexploration guidance
Gabriel Kerr is a Brazillian TTRPG creator and publishes the newsletter GaboKerr’s RPG Insights. He is prolific, full of game design insights, and very transparent about the life of an independent creative. If interested, you can subscribe to his newsletter below.
What’s Next?
As Zine Month goes on, I will share weekly updates highlighting some of the interesting projects coming out, on top of my regular schedule. Hopefully, you’ll discover something you like!