One Page Dungeon Classics: Gullet of the Rust Demon

I recently had the opportunity to run Gullet of the Rust Demon, written by Dan D. of the blog Throne of Salt. I ran it using Ashes Without Number, placing it in a preexisting sandbox. This dungeon first struck me because of its unusual map and its only monster, The Ooze. An indestructible mass of flesh and bone, it retreats after taking 1d20 damage, rerolled every encounter. The first room of the dungeon is an atrium with 6 doors leading away from it, and bizarre statue of "a tangled, tortured mass of humans" with a bottomless hole. The statues features imply some sort of explanation to the Ooze, although the dungeon itself doesn't provide anything to this end. Each room contains oddly specific contents that also imply some incomprehensible purpose to this location, rather than giving it away, each room really just piles more questions on top. Room 6 is a personal chamber/prison cell with "I am feeling ill" written on the wall. This room in particular is an opportunity to present an answer, is the Ooze maybe the person who was here, a final cultist of some sort maybe, and his curse led him to crawl into the bottomless hole under the statue, turning him into the cursed Ooze that haunts this ruin? We'll never know, but anyone who runs it will interpret it in their own way. While I realize this open ended-ness is an invitation to be creative, I think more fleshed out lore would make it a more satisfying adventure to run.

The primary conceit of Gullet of the Rust Demon is that it is an escape room style dungeon. After entering, the doors slam shut behind you, and you have to solve the puzzle of the dungeon to escape. My players, being paranoid dungeon-heads, searched the entrance to the dungeon, and discovered evidence of the trap door and managed to circumvent the trap with a chopped down tree from nearby. This didn't affect the experience too much. They still explored the dungeon, looting and pressing their luck with the Ooze, until they decided to call it and came out with a fair bit of technological salvage. The exploration of the central atrium and its surrounding rooms punctuated by Ooze attacks was a very different kind of dungeon crawl, especially because the party had a clear escape route through the front gate propped open by a tree trunk as an option. I thought the mechanics of the dungeons design created awesome tension for the delve. Ultimately the origin or purpose of the Ooze was not important, and the players got their treasure. If I ran it again, I would want some motivation for the Ooze, so that escaping the dungeon isn't the only puzzle. Lets say the Ooze was the last living cultist, who gave their body over to their evil god as a way to continue to exist after it lost the faith of its cult. The Ooze will attack any who violate its sanctum, but in fact more than anything it wants to be worshipped once again. 

Interview with Caelin Araven

I interviewed my friend Caelin Araven, author of Eco Mofos modules Cathedral of Hope, The Deluxo Waste and Continent Kimera. He was sharing some interesting thoughts on the "weird" in fiction so I interviewed him about it.

David Jackson: Hi Caelin, thanks for joining me in this interview. So, were going to be working on an Eco Mofos collaborative project together and one of the themes of Eco Mofos is "weirdhope." For the interview we’re going to do a theme of weirdhope also. So yeah just to start off with can you introduce yourself as a writer and talk about your interests and your writers journey that made you what you are now. 

Caelin Araven: Yes, so I'm Caelin Araven. I'm I guess the biggest third party writer of Eco Mofos at the moment. I’ve published a number of small modules for Eco Mofos, also for smaller indie games. For me I feel about the journey that brought me here, I feel that my life is kind of culminating to Eco Mofos and even something beyond that that I haven't reached yet. I started writing when I was 16 which is now around 20 years ago. I started Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition in 2011 but I gave Dungeons & Dragons up because someone was toxic in my group, and I didn't play for 5 more years. But back in 2017 I found a pathfinder group and I started homebrewing and GMing. And finally found my way into the homebrewing community and then through there into indie RPGs. I joined a game jam, got into the Lost Bay server, and from there I found the Eco Mofos game jam before Eco Mofos was published, and decided to back the Kickstarter and write for Eco Mofos. 

DJ: So you also wrote some fiction. You wrote a novel right? 

CA: Yeah I started writing poetry and short stories. But in 2016 I wrote a novel. But all of my proof readers didn't read it in the end and I got very depressed, and that's actually how I came to the Pathfinder group. Because I wanted some feedback that was instant and I wanted to look people in the face and see what they thought about my story telling. 

DJ: Thanks for sharing that. So you're also currently planning a few projects including possibly a crowdfunding project, although I think that's sort of up in the air. Is there anything you want to share about that stuff? 

CA: The crowdfunding is up in the air at the moment. I recently got some money that allows me to not do the crowdfunding. But the idea behind it was that I redo the layout of all my zines into kind of a brand layout of Caelin, still recognizable as an Eco Mofos zine, but also recognizable that I wrote it. And for that, with the money I wanted to make a distribution point at my house so I could print the zine and have them sent all over the world. 

DJ: Um how would you print them, are there local printers in your area?

CA: Yeah, I got a contact with an anarchist print shop, which prints for donations. So you dont have to pay at all, but they expect you to pay the cost of the ink and the paper. 

DJ: That's actually super cool, what's the name of that printer?

CA: An old friend of mine. It’s um Paper Jam.

DJ: That's awesome. 

CA: Yeah.

DJ: Ok so the first "weird" question, or the big "weird" question. At some point you mentioned recently, that you don't know what the word weird means or what weird is, which I thought was super interesting. And um, I know you've been thinking about it a bit and exploring. So, can you tell me now, what is weird?

CA: Yeah um. I think its ultimately very subjective what weird is, but the weird I was looking for in that sense when I said I don't know what weird means, is kind of I feel a narrow point on the spectrum, between the unknown, wonder, and the mundane and known. And what I’m missing mostly is wonder in my writings. 

DJ: So it has all those things or its somewhere between them?

CA: Yeah its a way inbetween yeah. I think there's a bit of all those four: unknown, known, wonder and mundane, is needed, but in the end it leans towards wonder and unknown where you find the sweet spot of the amazing feeling of weird that I’m looking for.

DJ: How did you get to those four?

CA: Yeah I was thinking of all that I dont like about my writing. And I think it is that I always overexplain everything. Because I’m both writing fiction but also writing kind of a rule book for GMs when I make a module, so I’m over explaining my worlds a little bit. And I feel, that yeah, lets see, so yeah the unknown was missing a bit, but also I don't get the feeling of wonder because I know what's behind everything that's happening in my worlds.

DJ: I see. That's an interesting point, there's a relationship or tension between usability and I guess the poetry of weirdness. I feel like weird can be explained, though, I can imagine, I guess it would be nonsensical explanations. I feel like I’ve seen really dense weird information being conveyed but actually the information doesn't make sense. Or it's alluding to something you don't understand. So yeah it still does capture that in between point. 

CA: Yeah you need a frame of reference to get what you don't understand also. 

DJ: Yeah I like that the mundane has to be there also. It reminds me of, also, have you heard of the uncanny valley? (note from David: the Uncanny Valley is a theory that zombies and androids look unsettling to us because they are close to normal humans, but slightly off.)

CA: That's how I got to this theory.

DJ: Yeah. It's what’s familiar, but feels just a little bit off.

CA: So there are some pretty well known writers and I guess some old fiction that influenced role playing games and you know modern writers, and even people within role playing games who write weird stuff. Some examples we've talked about are HP Lovecraft, right, one of the main creators of cosmic horror and the weird as an idea. And within the OSR, I think Patrick Stewart, his Deep Carbon Observatory is super weird. So does that canonical weird fantasy description, does that fit to your description of weird?

DJ: I feel Lovecraft at least does a lot. I feel what Lovecraft does really well is that the protagonist and the reader are on the same journey of discovering the weird at the same time. So they discover pieces of wonder and unknown. Yeah piece by piece. It's also the same journey that happens with the protagonist and the reader in their heads and I really like it. And I’m a big fan of Patrick Stewart and Fire on the Velvet Horizon and Veins of the Earth and have been a massive fan ever since I got the books. I feel the monsters in Fire on the Velvet horizon are really weird, yes. And they really evoke a sense of wonder in me, something that I wouldn't have gotten without the book. It's something that I really want to achieve one day in my writings

DJ: I know I feel like I’ve seen Fire on the Velvet Horizon, but I haven't read it so I don't know it that well. Can you give me an example of something?

CA: There's something, um there's a I feel it's kind of a slug man. But he goes into towns and he can't be harmed by anything except violence by law. So he tries to stay inside the law, but also tries to change the law, so that he has more chances to rule society.

DJ: That's a good one. Is there another OSR author that you consider weird? 

CA: Well talking about Eco Mofos, that of course has the weird in it. I really like how David Blandy uses the tables to limit the explanation of the world. So you get a lot of freedom to interpret the world and the weird itself.

DJ: Yeah that's a cool thing about it too, because I guess the weird is an inbetween point it leaves room for the reader, like you were saying like Lovecraft does, for the reader to imprint their own fears onto these things. So, I guess the weird is also related to um fear a little bit and bad things in society right, like bigotry. The weird has been discussed in that context a little bit by some philosophers, like Kristeva who I think you know. Even Lovecraft, right, he was notoriously very racist, so his weird is also that. So, how does that aspect of the weird affect your writing and your understanding?

CA: Yeah I feel it kind of falls into the same categories as the unknown and the mundane and wonder. Maybe this is then a negative connotation of wonder. Um, but I feel it's still the same idea. You've got the mundane, the normal life, and then you've got what exposes it, that it is mundane. Because it's unknown for the people that are living it. So for example in Eco Mofos, you've got the magic from the Punks, and a lot of Wasters don't like magic, I feel in the universe as David once explained. So the wasters are the mundane and the punks are the weird, and the magic is the unknown. So yeah. I feel it's the same tension that's happening in the others.

DJ: Yeah, I think so. What is wondrous for the Punks, is scary for the Wasters and those are both two sides of wonder. That's interesting… Yeah there's a lot to think about with that one. So, last question, so the flip side, we've mentioned the weirdhope aesthetic which is associated with Eco Mofos. Which is, I think, a very interesting aesthetic that combines the weird with some hopefulness like the wondrous fantastic post-apocalyptic world of Eco Mofos. So, what about hope? Not just as a fictional device, but also in people in communities who are making and playing games together. 

CA: I think hope is very important in our world. I think there's a lot more hope in the world than we usually see. And I think it's important to expose that so that other people also become hopeful in what they are doing about the future of the world. In our games I think we can give out a really strong message of hope, kind of also mimic the world a bit to show that in Eco Mofos. That life goes on and there's always room to grow and build a world that is better for everyone. And what I want to say is that I really like the community of Copy/Paste co-op and because a lot of us write modules for Eco Mofos and other games, but David Blandy and Daniel Locke, have given a lot of us the opportunity to also publish our modules with them. Which I feel is also an expression of hope, because it's very difficult to publish modules on your own, and this way it lifts someone up, gives a spotlight. It's important I feel. It's something if I ever write my own game I want to continue also. 

DJ: Yeah I think hope is an expression of a lot of things, including giving and sharing reflects a hope that you can impact the world in a positive way. If you are negative or nihilistic, you don't have any hope that anything you do will change things so you don't give or share. So, I guess do you have any final thoughts or comments?

CA: Not really, it was nice to have this interview, I’m excited to read it.

DJ: Yeah thank you!

Zine Month Postmortem: The Prelaunch Centered Campaign

This year my Zine Month project, Dead Internet Theory, funded $1910 on BackerKit. Last year my project Roguelike Megadungeon funded $1934 using Itchfunding. You'd think these two campaigns with their nearly identical funding amounts would be similar, but they had some surprising differences. I'll try to do a quick look at how they were different, and what can be learned. Disclaimer: I am not a knowledgeable industry insider. This is mostly a note to myself while its fresh in my memory. 

The graph shows the difference. The Roguelike Megadungeon crowdfunding campaign's funding (blue) climbs steadily over time with a few surges, while the Dead Internet Theory amount (red) has a big jump at the start, a long flat part after that until half way through the month, and then a tail that curves upward toward the end of the campaign. Talking with the agent from BackerKit while setting up my campaign, and from the native resources provided by BackerKit, the Dead Internet Theory funding pattern is standard. What makes it so different from the Itch funding curve, is that BackerKit allows you to collect emails before launch using a pre-launch page, while Itch doesn't. While Itchfunding, I always saw more immediate results when I made social media posts, because I didn't frontload all those backers with a pre-launch page. During the first half of the campaign on BackerKit I sometimes promoted with no effect, and even lost backers! 

My biggest take away is that pre-launch follower count and base pledge value determine your campaign. I had about 100 followers at time of launch with a base pledge tier of $20. I made about $1000 in the first two days of the campaign and ended up funding about twice that in the end. More or less exactly how the BackerKit agent told me it would go.

So here are my thoughts for a campaign planned around prelaunch followers: 

Create a prelaunch page that collects emails 6 or more months in advance and promote that as much as you can. Make the goal equal to or less than your follower count times your base pledge tier divided by two. Plan the scope around that. Push back the launch date and rework the prelaunch page if needed. Spread out stretch goals over the same amount of money as the funding goal once over. Promote your launch, and then save energy for the second half or even last week of the campaign. 

System and Stop-Flows

In the recent blog post, Rules are not neutral!, Humberto Tramujas describes Umberto Eco’s concept of the open work. "Some artworks are intentionally structured to invite participation and interpretation. These works are not closed, fixed narratives but open systems allowing multiple paths of engagement." A open work rule system is then like a prism that can invite in, reflect and transform flows of play.

TTRPG play is a flow of imaginary events, punctuated by pauses in the fiction to make decisions and dice rolls. Moments where play stops are where the flow of play is redirected. What you do during pauses in play and how long you stop for are the most contentious issues in TTRPG design and discourse. There is a relationship between the two, where the series of in game events call for adjudication, and where a decision leads to changes in the fiction. 

Stop-flows are places where flows are redirected, separated, and transformed into new flows. In the case of TTRPGs they can be mechanics, lore, or really any arbitrary way to make a decision. Flows can be restricted and redirected into a limited set of behaviors, but they can also be redirected release new creative flows of play. 

Flows of fiction travel through people as we tell and create stories, and through culture, as playstyles rise and fall in popularity through rulebooks, actual play streams, blog posts and subcultures. These flows of course are paired with flows of money and merch. The flows of money are a central part of the greater ecosystem, giving it structure and imposing the most profitable flows over and through people. Flows of culture that depended on flows of money stamp out "open work TTRPGs" which in contrast invite and generate a multitude of new flows of fiction. 

Interview: Wilderwhim

I interviewed writer, artist and musician Wilderwhim, who is crowdfunding a Zine Month project right now called Doors of Dimensia, an OSR inspired TTRPG adventure generator in a demiplane connecting all places through the multiverse. You can find it right here. He is also collaborating with me on my Zine Month project, Dead Internet Theory, as a stretch goal writer and stretch goal heavy metal album musician. 

David Jackson: Thanks for being here for an interview I'm excited to see Doors of Dimensia and I'm excited to work on Dead Internet Theory with you of course. So I have a few questions prepared. The first one is: What was your first experience with TTRPGs? What was the path that led you to here?

Wilderwhim: Thanks yeah glad to be here, stoked to be working with you as well. The first experience I guess would be a few friends were playing I think a session of 3.5 in an LGS that I was playing in a I think probably a magic tournament or a magic the gathering draft, and if I remember correctly they asked me to fill in for an NPC which if I remember right I was like a magic shop merchant, and you know just being a goofy idiot and like selling the party like dubious potion bombs and that kinda stuff. It didn't really grab me then because I think the guys then didn't take what they were doing very seriously.  I was very very loose. When tabletop role playing games grabbed me it was because my now wife was GMing and was trying to put together a group for 5E. I started playing with her and when that group fell apart, I was like well that was pretty cool, I feel like I should try my hand at GMing, and when I started doing that it was kinda like when you discover any other medium for the first time. It was like oh wow, this is like something that's been missing from my life the whole time. It was like this book shaped hole in my heart that is now being filled. It was very gratifying. I had been training to be a comics artist at the time, and I just started applying those skills to making tabletop games, and it just kinda like snowballed from project to project and like here I am. 

DJ: Cool, yeah, have you made any comics? 

WW: Yeah I have. I was doing a webcomic for a while, but I burnt out on that because it would've been right around when Covid happened the first time in 2020, and there was just a lot of chaos going on with my day job. Still this position that I'm in at the library and we didn't know if we would be able to circulate items, you know that kind of stuff. And that petered off at the same time that I actually started getting serious about releasing tabletop games. I feel like one kinda naturally fed into the other.

DJ:  Thats cool, yeah I do go back and forth among my different hobbies as well. So maybe someday you'll get really passionate about comics again or something. So yeah, next question then:

What metal album cover art should be an adventure module?

WW: Easy its Mirror Reaper by Bell Witch and if you're unfamiliar with Bell Witch, they're like a super slow doom band, that they play, Mirror Reaper is like I think and hour and twenty minutes and some change of doom, and its album cover is like this super massive wraith that's coming out of a portal, its reaching its hands out and like holding the portal to the side, and if I'm not mistaken I think its like a Beksiński painting, like if you're familiar with any of his work, really impressive oil paintings of hell and demons and shit. 

DJ: Oh yeah, he's definitely a classic. So, what would the adventure module use this guy for?

WW: I feel like there would be some sort of hell ritual involving a massive gateway and theres probably a cult thats trying to summon this titan wraith, and that image of like its reaching its hands through and its grabbing the edges of the portal and its pulling itself out, it would be the beginning of a boss fight. I've felt that way ever since I saw that album cover for the first time. I'm just like, that definitely like the beginning of a Darks Souls boss fight.

DJ: Ok so third question: You wrote, made art and recorded an album for Pulvis et Umbra which is, it's like uncommon for people to do in he hobby space. So are there through lines or connections between these different types of media when you made Pulvis Et Umbra, how did you tie things together? And also as a side question, are there other artists in the hobby space doing similar things?

WW: Yes and yes and yes and yes. I feel like well naturally, it was a module for Mork Borg which is obviously reverential of the music Sacred Bull makes. Not necessarily like of the band Sacred Bull. I'm sure Johan Nohr has never heard of my band, but all of the, if you look in the front of Mork Borg there's a list of suggested listening, like every band in that suggested listening, are bands that either I listen to or someone in my band listens to, completely normal, I'm pretty sure Bell Witch is in that list like other legends, not necessarily metal, like Godspeed You! is definitely listed as one of the bands, probably Candlemass I would imagine. The idea for doing Pulvis et Umbra, was knowing about Putrescence Regnant, which is a first party Mork Borg product that is a soundtrack and I think they called it a bog crawl, and it's just a swamp. You're just trying to get through a fucking swamp, and that was scored by, I think it was Dead Robots. And the folks who made Putrescence Regnant made another album module thing called Death Robot Jungle. So it's like those were definitely the inspiration but from the flip side from the music side, every heavy musician I know especially people here in my scene are multimedia artists of some kind. Everyone in my band, were all visual artists, photographers one of the guys is an oil painter. Every Sacred Bull album cover, like literally every one, including the album covers for Pulvis et Umbra and the zine cover, all internally made art. Oil paintings and drawings by guys in the band. Typically I thinks its pretty common for heavy musicians to also be into table top. I remember running into a buddy of ours who's kind of a local scene mainstay, little bit of a legend in his own way, just like rolled up to me out of no where and said "so you're doing a Mork Borg product huh? Thats pimp." And I was like "thanks man", hahaha. You know these art forms are like really synergistic and there's probably more crossover than people realize. 

DJ: That's awesome, its just like normal for you, I wasn't expecting that as an answer. 

WW: Yeah well. More normal than you would think. 

DJ: So next question, It seems like there are thriving TTRPG and music scenes in your city, its kind of a segue, like your collab with Mystic Punks. So yeah this is just a continuation of your last answer I guess. What are some cool aspects to the scene that people might not know about, but would think are cool?

WW: I'm going to actually start with something very uncool, which is that like, famous people like to hide in Athens [Georgia]. Like actors, musicians obviously, Athens is kinda legendary from its psychedelic rock music scene from the late 70s and the 80s, bands like REM, I have personally met Michael Stipe many times out in public like I used to work at the 41 which is a kind of, its not the biggest venue but its kinda like the longest running one, Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana, Against Me, I've seen so many incredible bands play that venue but the uncool thing is that people like to hide here and not participate in the scene. Its very strange, but to the flip side of that, what's really cool is that Athens has a very strangely concentrated pool of tabletop role playing game talent. Obviously Jay Domingo of Mystic Punks, another guy I want to shout out is Wayne Peacock, he is the creative director of Kismet Games, they've released a few things recently, specifically the game Rustwater is awesome. He and his creative partner Dee used to work for White Wolf in the 90s. I'm pretty sure they worked on one of the editions of Werewolf from that time period in tabletop games in World of Darkness, he's been around for many years. And then most explosively most recently I hung out with Caleb Zane Hewitt who is the guy behind Triangle Agency. That guy is local too, surprise. The gold Ennie award winning psychedelic tabletop. Its weird it's such a small town, it really is a small town. I can't express that enough. People will move here are quietly make their masterpiece and release it just like go back into hiding. It's very strange.

DJ: I imagine they just like the atmosphere, its like a creative place where they can relax, but yeah its pretty whack to like not participate in the local scene

WW: And I'm not, I don't wanna be, its not like I'm calling any of the people out that I just mentioned. All those people, they've all worked with me on various things. Like Mystic Punks, we had a whole actual play thing and Caleb has very graciously donated his time to my library. But like the super famous people, like I've seen James Franco like in the street. Yeah, Mike Pence came one time to like a UGA game and there was a fleet of helicopters and like carrier jets that flew over our small town, its crazy. I used to joke, that it was on some ley lines, like there's some ancient power underneath the earth that is just drawing people who are like sensitive to creative energies. That was probably a little more woo woo than you were expecting. 

DJ: That's cool, no I'm down with that kind of thing. It can be real in some sense for sure. Ok, last question: If you are not familiar with the micro-genre of Post Dungeon Fantasy, this is a super online genre, its kind of like the idea of traditional dungeon crawling plus modern elements, like teenagers who have to go to school and they have smart phones and the gig economy. 

WW: You could say Persona Core.

DJ: Yeah yeah exactly! So this mash-up is something I've noticed in your work Pulvis et Umbra and Doors of Dimensia. What do you think of this genre and what appeals to you?

WW: I think the genre rules, I didn't know it had a formalized name until I read it in your message. My answer is a real downer. I'm sure. My answer is a real downer but I can preface it with like at least I can say were trying to do something with the downer answer. Which is our world is careening towards climate catastrophe faster and faster every day, and our nation states are back sliding into authoritarian fascism more and more every day. In fact right now here in Athens, there is a city wide general strike in solidarity against ICE. Obviously someone has to be here to run the library to make sure people have access to printing and the internet. Like in front of this big storm. But if I was working in retail, I wouldn't be going into work today. The average person not only knows these things are wrong but they've basically felt the ripple effects of it their entire modern lives. And it definitely builds up like sediment and eventually is starts to weigh you down if you don't do anything about it. And I think a lot of people don't have a creative outlet. Obviously a big one for me is playing drums in Sacred Bull, its an aggressive loud ass band were like I'm literally hitting my drums as hard as I fucking can without breaking something and sometimes I do break something, I've busted you know fingers and I've made myself bloody on he drumkit before, but a lot of people don't have that literal energy outlet and a lot of these games offer people a way to be able to do shadow work, to use a tarot term, to take the dark energy that's been kind of like building up in their psyche, and put it into something, in the way that most artists just kind of do intuitively. And I think the best way to engage with that is to die in a fetid dungeon you know. Just to like dungeon crawl your way to feeling better, it feels right in the wrongest way, but its good that people have a good outlet for it. Its something that they can do. Essentially they're just unknowingly making folk art. And that's just I think part of the human soul, its been with us since time immemorial and tabletop is a way of tapping back into that. Especially with all these broken machines and systems that are not working systems that are not working for like 99.999 percent of the people on the planet. But its nice that they can stab a goblin and feel better about it I guess.

DJ: That was a deeper answer than I was expecting I guess. Yeah it expresses the modern alienation. 

WW: I think tabletop is the prime place for that.

DJ: Its a new genre, I mean its not new but its rising in popularity constantly and I think that is a reflection of how people are thinking and changing these days. Cool, so I guess we'll stop it there. 

WW: Ok, well thank you for having me, it was great to talk with you here. And I am all in with Dead Internet Theory, I am looking forward to working on that with you and excited to see it get made.

DJ: Thank you, I'm excited to see Doors of Dimensia as well. I really enjoy your writing, this next work looks like an awesome concept. 

Check out and back Wilderwhims crowdfunder for Doors of Dimensia now!

A Short History of Zine Month

The other day I was asking Jordan about the relationship between Zinetopia on BackerKit and Zine Month. Since he was involved in the formation of Zinetopia, he had an interesting perspective. We both agreed that it's hard for this sort of history to be transmitted in the community, so I wanted to put it somewhere, here. I've added some historical context for a more full picture of this annual tradition in the TTRPG hobby world.

On November 1st, 2018 Luke Crane, then head of games at Kickstarter, published an official announcement calling it, "Zine Quest, a Tribute to RPG Zines". It emphasized the importance of zines in the TTRPG hobby since its beginnings in the 1970's, referencing the classics Judges Guild and Alarmus & Excursions. There is a quote from prominent TTRPG historian Jon Peterson describing zines as the "primordial soup" of TTRPGs. They also released guidelines including a requirement that all projects needed to be zines. As a brief aside here right up front, I should mention that Crane has since been fired over his willing involvement in some drama that is much to involved to get into here. This history isn't intended to idolize Crane or anyone else involved. 

I won't add much more, and leave you to Jordans account, but I will sprinkle in some facts from the Zine Month website which will be shown in italics. I should also mention that Crowdfundr has also hosted a Zine Month event of their own called Tabletop Nonstop since 2023.

BackerKit doesn't have any serious connection to or any say in Zine Month. It's still the same decentralized, ad hoc, "do what you want/are able to" organization. 

Last year, I noticed the high number of ZiMo projects aiming to fund on BK, so I recruited Tony to help tell them that they should do something for the month of February to centralize the marketing and clicks for these projects, whether they wanted to use the name Zine Month or not. I argued it would be a win-win. Their response was to make a new entry in their -topia event series for February, calling it Zinetopia. 

Any RPG zine project anywhere releasing or raising funds in February can say that they are doing so as a part of Zine Month.

Zine Month was created by Charlie and Alex C, Bella/Nuclear Obelisk, Sam Sorensen and later joined by Tony Vasinda as a reaction to Kickstarter ignoring their Zine Quest community one year, not mentioning whether they would hold it again until I think less than a month before, not providing any marketing in the lead up, and just expecting people would come back no matter what, whether KS cared to hold an event or not. A lot of small creators didn't like that their chances of funding each year were so tied up with KS's whims through Zine Quest. 

So they started ZiMo to specifically counteract KS's share of the market, encouraging people to raise their funds and release things anywhere under the ZiMo banner and supporting each other to counteract the lack of KS marketing. They had the following aims: 

Education: provide information about where creators can host their zine, from pre-order sites, digital distributors, or crowdfunding platforms. 

De-Monopolization: Creating additional avenues of how projects are funded and spreading awareness of where projects can be found and financed will create a healthier community. 

Democratization: The indie TTRPG community is a global one and everyone should have a fair opportunity to have their ideas and creations shared, not just the financially successful ones. 

Doing a Zine Month project on KS was not allowed for the first year or two. Then people felt it was against the purpose of it to restrict where people could crowdfund, so that restriction was lifted. 

ZiMo is the small-time, anyone-can-do-it counterpart to KS's Zine Quest, trying to break its hold on the zine market since a lot of creators didn't like KS for [take your pick of legit reasons].

The Kaves of Krampus

Krampus by Tony Jaguar

These tables are intended for use with my procedural map generator Roguelike Megadungeon. The dungeon generation procedure and a worksheet are after the tables.

When not prowling the night streets looking for children to eat, Krampus makes his home in caves deep in the most haunted, mist-shrouded wood, terrorizing the local wildlife. Forest creatures fight back and enact justice on him and his little helpers. Other powerful creatures are drawn here, it is not just Krampus' world. Snow dragons and blizzard elementals dwell here, ambivalent to his pretensions to greatness.

Empty 1-2

1 Boom box playing a tape of Christmas songs

2 Enchanted garden with ice sculptures

3 Fake snow machine

4 Snowman built from giant skulls

5 Penguins

6 Stolen Christmas lawn ornaments

Monster 3-4

1 Krampus' reindeer construct stable, one with elemental lava nose

2 Krampus' little helpers

3 Blizzard elemental

4 Squad of small forest creatures

5 Snow dragon

6 Krampus

Trap 5

1 Cursed mannequins in Christmas sweaters

2 Thinly frozen pond

3 Falling icicles

4 Springboard into mouth of a giant nutcracker 

5 Sharpened candy cane trap

6 Salvation Corps bell ringer with viper in his kettle

Special 6

1 Time elemental ghost

2 Fey court

3 Human children prisoners

4 Forest creature skating rink

5 Satanic altar

6 Ginger bread cabin

Treasure

1 Crusaders cuirass

2 Christmas tree with golden star mace

3 Hockey stick with ribbon and puck

4 Dreidel warhammer

5 Giant golden hare with an emerald in its forehead

6 Snow control mittens

*    *    *

Start with a blank dungeon worksheet, pencil, eraser, and at least 1, but ideally 36 six-sided dice.

For the most efficient approach, get a block of 36 six-sided dice, roll them all at once, and arrange them into a six-by-six square. Copy the numbers over to the worksheet to generate the dungeon, each row of dice creating one room.

• The first and second dice are the Location. Count across (first die) and then down (second die).
• The third die is the room’s Size. Write its Size down in its block. Can determine Treasure type.
• The fourth die is its Stocking. 1-2 Empty, 3-4 Monster, 5 Trap or 6 Special.
• The fifth die is the type of Stocking. Listed in the above tables, write them down.
• The sixth die determines if there is Treasure. A 1 means the room has treasure. Use the Size (the third die) number to select from the Treasure table.

Next, draw room walls using Size. Enclose a number a blocks equal to the rooms Size. Interpret a room’s Stocking when drawing the room so that its form matches its function. Erase the Size numbers you wrote on the grid previously, and write room Stockings directly on the map. Finally, add doors and passages as you see fit.

If you roll the same location for more than one room, combine their Sizes, Stocking and Treasures.