Hi friends! I put up an open offer to mutuals on twitter to talk about whats exciting them this Zinequest. The first one is here, the second here, and the third here. Today I have the pleasure of sharing some great picks from Clayton. Enjoy!
My Late ZineQuest Three
Are we surprised? My most-anticipated zinequests are about designers.
No? Good. Let’s get out our rulers, our color-meters, and clinking thieves tools. We’re not looking for gilded manuscripts or pristine idols this year. We’re looking for $5 omens and mud-covered goblins clutching a gem or two.
Zinequest is where new designers are born and old designers get weird.
It’s like a scholastic book fair for RPGs. So how do we choose? I narrowed down the list with two questions: who’s working on the project and how new are the ideas?
Here are three Kickstarters I want you to check out:
Lay on Hands: A Solo Dexterity-based RPG by Alfred Valley
Wander the wasteland like some AD&D-style cleric meets Mad Max meets Fallout meets The Dark Tower meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Lay On Hands wants to be the first of its kind. A journaling dexterity-based OSR game with coin-spinning and drawing mini-games. Sounds like the makings of a new game engine to me. And because it’s solo, the only thing that’ll stop me from playing it is me. The bastard.
Design: Very tactile. Valley plans to produce the zine’s visuals with a process called relief printing. A method where ink is applied to pages by pressing down on it with an ink block. This means the zine will be very unique. Pockmarked with tiny flecks, over-bleeds, and imperfections that will carry over into the Mixam copies.
In the Light of a Faded World by Derek Kinsman
What will the world look like when we’re not in it? How will it sound? And what will happen in the echoes of humanity as nature returns?
Derek Kinsman is the graphic designer behind Best Left Buried’s adventure Spy in the House of Eth and Tuesday Knight Game’s Dissident Whispers. With his design prowess, Amanda Lee Franck’s illustrations, and Zedeck Siew’s writing we’re about to see the world in a light not so faded as the title suggests.
Design: Black and white with healthy margins. In the Light of a Faded World is guaranteed to be a haunting but quiet accomplishment for collections.
What We Give to Alien Gods by Lone Archivist
Explore ancient ruins, decipher alien languages, and question existence in this sci-fi module for Mothership.
Mothership is on the verge of its next evolution. And when it evolves, it won’t be a half-letter zine with staples anymore. Mothership will still push boundaries—I doubt the team could do anything less—but we’re close to closing the loop on this incredible era for RPG zines.
What We Give to Alien Gods is going to be the last of Mothership’s products before it goes hardback. And who better to squeeze that stone for innovation than its best 3rd party designer, Lone Archivist? I’m excited to see the new tools and mods they print (and how they might influence more zines to come).
Design: Mothership’s maximalist layout, artwork, flowlines, and hud-displays aren’t going away. Instead, we can expect to see even richer art, more intricate spreads, and a whole slew of new ideas. What We Give to Alien Gods is going to be another installment in ZineQuest’s greatest question, “just how much can three staples be responsible for, anyway?”
ZineQuest Lightning Round
An Altogether Different River by Aaron Lim, Scurry! by Dungeons on a Dime, Not a Place of Honor by David Lombardo (with illustrations by Emanoel Milo of CBR+PNK!), The Million Islands of Doom by Red (with writing by Batts), The Door Locks Behind You by Christian Della Donna, Repugnant! by Terrible Games (literally maybe the grossest RPG of all time), Vis-a-Visage by Max Lander, and Crescent Moon by Ema Acosta.
The Bone Box Chant 