My Kickstarter campaign for MÖRK KÖPHETS: A Dead Mall Dungeon Crawl, has just launched! Check it out here!
We are one week into Zine Month and there are already over 130 projects live on Kickstarter, Backerkit, Crowdfundr, and itch.io, with another 70 getting ready to launch later this month! That’s over 200 new indie projects in the tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) space to look forward to!
If you are looking for a place to start, you can find three recommendations for projects to check out below. Or you can take a look at my own Zine Month submission, which just launched today!
What is Zine Month? Take a look at my previous article on the subject:
Previous Recommendations
The Colony - Magical Apocalypse HexCrawl by Gabriel Kerr
The Sorcerer’s Fate by Nerdronomicon
Type: Adventure | Genre: Fantasy | System: Dungeon Crawl Classics
Darkness and mayhem await the village losers sent to learn the sorcerer's fate in this 0-level funnel for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Many of you will know that Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) is one of my favorite fantasy RPGs, and that one of the reasons for that is the 0-level funnel. The idea is to take a handful of untrained (level 0) peasants, throw them into a deadly dungeon environment, and only those who come out the other side are ready to become level 1 player characters.
There are no shortage of DCC zines in this year’s Zine Month, but I want to highlight The Sorcerer’s Fate because, much like my own project, it is author Nerdronomicon’s first commercial project on Kickstarter.
The adventure promises to be expansive, with at least three locations to explore as you and your fellow villagers investigate a catastrophe on the other side of the hills that is spreading a blight into your land. In addition, the Kickstarter boasts the following features:
Eight new demonically corrupted creatures.
Seven new confounding magic items.
A pretty cool puzzle.
Handouts of creatures, essential objects, and locations.
Mayhem.
Terror Vision by Lex Mandrake
Type: Adventure | Genre: Science-fiction | System: Open D6
Don the jumpsuits of Spectral Exterminators in this point-crawl ttrpg adventure across a fictional 1986 NYC
While not explicitly stated on the Kickstarter page for legal reasons, Terror Vision is a new adventure designed for the Ghostbusters RPG released by West End Games in 1986. I was so impressed by author Lex Mandrake’s bravery in publishing an adventure for an RPG that went out of print over thirty years ago that I couldn’t help but back it on the spot.
While the Ghostbusters RPG is out of print, the system that West End Games used to create it is freely available under the Open D6 license. Lex has recreated a simplified version of the Ghostbusters rules using the Open D6 license for anyone who backs the Kickstarter, meaning you do not even need a copy of the original game to play.
Grotten - 1 Bit Deeper by Tommy Sunzenauer
Type: TTRPG | Genre: Fantasy | System: MÖRK BORG-compatiblie
Minimalistic oldschool tile-based dungeon crawl TTRPG. Solo, co-op, with or without a GM. 1-bit dark fantasy setting.
A funny thing about tabletop roleplaying games is that in many cases aesthetic trumps gameplay, and Grotten’s 1-bit video game visuals are my ideal aesthetic.
Emulating the old-school rogue-like RPG video games of yore, Grotten sees you randomly generating a dungeon to explore and obstacles to overcome. Using the included set of tiles, you build the dungeon, encountering monsters, treasure, and other characters along the way.
The game can be played alone or with a friend, or used as a tool for quickly creating and populating a dungeon for other games. The core rules are based on the MÖRK BORG system, making it instantly compatible with other MÖRK BORG products, but are also simple enough to be easily translated into other systems.
Zine Month Continues
That’s it for this week. Do you have any Zine Month favorites you’d like to share? Post it in the comments! I’ll be back next week with another batch of recommendations.