Welcome back to another Crowdfunding Carnival! It’s not just any Crowdfunding Carnival, though…it’s February. And that means it’s time for Zine Month! And this is a big deal, because for the first time since 2022, it’s actually time for Zine Month, not just Zine Quest. Backerkit has stepped into the ring and it looks like they’re going to stand toe to toe with…wait, I’ve just gotten word that Backerkit’s Zinetopia event is capped at 63 projects? Meaning that if we extrapolate from Kickstarter’s typical Zine Quest growth profile they’ll end up being around 30% of the size? Hm. Oh dear.

It’s not a bad showing, to be clear; 63 non-Kickstarter projects is more than we’ve ever seen from the alternate Zine Event folks since Kickstarter made the confusing decision to move Zine Quest to August. But ultimately there were more Zine Quest projects live even by February 2nd, and unlike Backerkit Kickstarter will let you tag any zine project started in February as Zine Quest, so we’re likely to have well over 200 projects by February’s end, if not even more. It is notable, though, that while the number of projects live in the first week of Zine Month is similar this year and last (around 150), the split is around 60/40 Kickstarter and BackerKit, meaning that a lot of people took Backerkit’s rival Zinetopia event seriously.

I’m going to try something a little different this year. Frankly, listing out 60+ zines with brief descriptions is both not something I’m sure is that useful, and also makes my hands hurt (especially if I’m going to do two of these this month). So instead, I’m going to give you a peek into my day job: That of a consultant. That’s right, I made a graph.

The red side is full games, and the blue side is supplements. The supplements side is utterly saturated with dungeons, with 5e and a 5e-derivative taking commanding leads. Most of the ‘others’ are people writing supplements to their own games, a tack I’m not really a fan of but which has been present in Zine Quest for a long time now. As I consider the full game zines I did see, it occurs to me that there is a distinct split in which tradition shows up where. The game side is overwhelmingly indie; there are a few people making weird dungeon things but for the most part all of the games are based on telling weird, different, or just very particular stories. Meanwhile, the supplements are either in the OSR tradition (which covers every game listed except for 5e and Daggerheart) or are just runs at the popular games of the moment (5e and Daggerheart, and arguably also Shadowdark). Most of the truly weird and interesting supplement zines are system agnostic, because what makes them weird, interesting, and honestly my favorites are that they’re about the author’s special interest, not any mechanics. Notably absent from either side are particularly trad games; the traditional RPG has turned more and more into an IP play (either an outside license or an organically produced one), which means most trad game designers treat fanzines at best indifferently, at most times with mild contempt, and at worst with a cease and desist. I do use the term ‘Trad Party’ in the chart but that refers only to the fact that the game is set up with a GM; there isn’t a lot ‘trad’ about the games otherwise.

To show a bit more about how Zine Month is going this year, I’m going to dig into a few of my favorite zine campaigns. Instead of just exhaustively listing them, I’m going to take a top 3 from each of my three classic categories: Standalone games, system-agnostic gems, and supplements of note. If you do find yourself wanting to narrow down the Zine onslaught this month, start at Backerkit’s Zinetopia event. Yes, it’s going to end up quite a bit smaller than Zine Quest when the dust settles, but these 60+ campaigns are well-curated and contain no AI, not something you can say about Kickstarter. I will be looking through Kickstarter too, but there’s just a bit more dross there (twice as many 5e campaigns as Backerkit, for example).

In the standalone games category we have three very different games, each with a unique genre and unique mechanics. First off is F*** I am a Sucker for Hexagons in Space, which is a solo journaling game about, well, hexcrawling through space. Roll d12s, detail out new star systems, and enjoy some exploration. I’m down with the concept anyway, but name-dropping Becky Chambers as an influence is a cherry on top. After that we have Fantasy in my Backyard, a map-making game that uses one of my favorite RPG pastimes: futzing with Google Maps. Using a digital map and a deck of cards, 1-6 players go through your city’s map and find locations to turn into important fantasy landmarks, both learning about your city and doing some worldbuilding as well. Finally we have The Bottle Episode, and this just sounds like fun. Players build up their fictional TV show, choosing genre and tone as well as key details like the theme song, and then move on to creating characters with their own catchphrases and fan shipping plots. Finally, after everything is created and everyone understands the assignment, the players play out a bottle episode of the show, a classic low-budget episode that takes place in one room and makes heavy use of flashbacks to already-filmed scenes. The specificity of this one makes for a potentially great one-shot game.

Next up are system-agnostic supplements, the bits, bobs, and special interests that make for fantastic zines. The first one is mechanical but completely inspired: Triple-O. Triple-O gives mechanics to let you ‘be a solo GM’, running a character or characters through adventures or campaigns while you run the game. Player emulators are not as common as GM emulators, but I could see this having a lot of use, especially for GMs with a ton of ideas and not enough players or calendar alignment. Next up, possibly betraying one of my special interests, is Great Hexpectations. Great Hexpectations is a zine of hexagons, loosely connected although apparently useable in one big hexcrawl which takes all the different resources in the zine and smooshes them together. Hexmaps, random tables, and adventure seeds make this useful in addition to being wonderfully geometric. Finally, another literal but quirky zine, is Slightly Random Tables. Spark tables aren’t new, per se, but the 10, 20, or 100 entry tables in this zine are all for things that are fairly low-impact but still interesting. Slightly underpowered Gods, slightly dangerous spices, slightly implausible cryptids, and the list is at least slightly longer than that.

For the supplements of note, I tend to look for zines that are interesting, doing something a bit different than what’s out there. For instance, Twisting Unseen is a Mothership Zine which sees the players building the dungeon as they go, making for a unique and potentially horrific riff on Betrayal at House on the Hill. Another unique supplement is Blood in the Needle. It’s a seemingly normal Mork Borg dungeon, except it fits on a bookmark. Not a lot else to say, but it’s cool. Last but not least is Dungeon Death, a supplement for Shadowdark that sees your party isekai’ed into a 16-bit video game console. The zine explicitly adds a ‘Gamer’ class, taking Shadowdark’s OSR mechanics and supplementing them with a nice chunky fourth wall to break. Probably not as emotionally intense as DIE, but I’m still primed to love some ‘sucked into the game’ action.

There is of course one more game to get us to an even ten, and though the self-promotion is obvious, I will still say earnestly this is a zine you should check out. Our very own OG Cannibal Halfling Seamus Conneely is campaigning a print run of his zine-sized game Tales from the Cockpit, a Lost & Found game about a giant robot. If you aren’t familiar with Lost and Found, it’s a schema written by Jack Harrison of Mousehole Press and used for games like Artefact and Bucket of Bolts, both of which are fantastic. Tales from the Cockpit is also fantastic, but I’m hardly an unbiased observer here. Still, the game has already seen some success and now it’s getting a print run thanks to readers like you; go check it out if you haven’t already.

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February is off to a big start, with two services bringing the zines this year. I’m going to keep watching, and more likely than not there will be even more zines in the middle of the month (as well as our monthly five-year retrospective). Let me know what zines you have your eyes on, and any designers you think will break through because of Zine Month. As always, play some games, support some creators, and I’ll see you soon for another Crowdfunding Carnival!

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