Welcome back to Crowdfunding Carnival! We’re more than halfway through February, and Zine Month is still going strong. As I covered a couple of weeks ago, Kickstarter’s Zine Quest and Backerkit’s Zinetopia are the key leaders of the month, with Kickstarter’s event currently a little more than double the size of Backerkit’s. Still, you’d be making a mistake if you didn’t check out both.

Overall funding rates are high, with the combined total being north of 70%. Still, there are a number of projects looking to still cross the finish line, and some of them are certainly deserving of more attention. For this mid-month check-in on our zine events, I’m going to focus solely on projects that are still looking for that final push before February is out.

Before we get into it, I’d like to highlight a few non-zine projects: Blades ‘68, the groovy supplement to Blades in the Dark, is campaigning on Backerkit and it looks smashing, baby, yeah! Over on Kickstarter, Free League is bringing the Trudvang setting to Dragonbane, and Green Ronin is campaigning Mutants and Masterminds 4e. Definitely some cool stuff going on, but let’s stay on target, and try to get some zines printed. Every campaign below isn’t quite funded yet, so if any of these sound interesting, consider throwing a few dollars towards the designers. They’ll notice and appreciate your contribution much more than the big guys above.

Backerkit

Backerkit has done an impressive job pushing its campaigns across the finish line, but there are a few that still need some more help. First up is On Call, a werewolf RPG with a specific and fascinating conceit. In On Call, you play a werewolf who, on the next full moon, isn’t allowed to shift, instead being responsible for whatever problems arise as the rest of the pack is shifted that night. The mechanics are relatively straightforward, but the premise of the game is tied to a broader setting called the Revealed Universe which has been given just enough detail in the campaign to intrigue me. I hope we get to see more where this setting goes, and what these designers get up to.

The next game has a very particular theme, but one which should find its share of weird fans. Meet the Johnsons is a game about a family, but specifically a very rich family. That’s important, because the game focuses on not only exploring those family dynamics, but also making everybody in the family suffer. While the designer uses The Sims as a reference for the sort of schadenfreude that’s the intent of the game, it is still going to be a strange position for most people going into an RPG. That’s one of the reasons I want to see it reach its goal, though; weird and different are always the best part of Zine Month.

TTRPGs are a great way to focus design on gameplay elements that may not otherwise be brought front and center, and Gossamer Frontier is a solid example of that. Gossamer Frontier is a solo RPG that puts you in the shoes of a starship captain that can sail the gossamer, a fantasy weave that runs across the galaxy. The big focus, though, is your crew and the relationships you build with them. If your favorite part of Mass Effect was the romance, Gossamer Fantasy is aiming to be exactly that kind of game.

How I heard it is a storytelling game that’s unique not for the stories being told, but for the intended set and setting. The game is very much intended to be played around a campfire, and everything from the GMless mechanics to minimal equipment to the wire binding is intended to make that easier. Around a campfire you and two to five friends will tell a story of a folk hero, using the mechanics to share contributions and nudge the story in different directions. Instead of playing a hero, the game is about how the stories of heroes get shaped in folklore and what those stories end up looking like.

Finally, we have Your Diagnosis Comes With a Free Sword. This is a game specifically about neurodivergence, examining and attempting to deconstruct the narratives around diagnoses like autism. Even neurotypical folks like myself have heard some of these narratives like ‘autism is a superpower’, and we’re of course equally familiar with the mainstream understanding that neurodivergent conditions are crippling, chronic diseases. Your Diagnosis Comes With a Free Sword is trying to examine neurodivergence neither as debilitating nor superhuman, but rather ‘as a different point spread’. The designer is speaking from his own specific experience, but there are plans to expand the game and include multiple additional perspectives as well.

Kickstarter

There are a few interesting zines on Kickstarter which haven’t quite crossed the finish line yet. First up and very close to its goal is Dragonfly Motel. This is a game of surreality, where the eponymous motel is only the starting point for a game that’s intentionally leaning in to the dream-like sense of things kind of making sense if you don’t think about them too hard. This is an English translation of an existing French game, so I think the ingredients are all there for something really interesting.

Next up we have ALL-CARDS, a storytelling game which brings in whatever trading cards you already own. Whether it’s cards from games, tarot decks, or just straight up baseball cards, you can build a deck that help your character progress through the story and maybe throw some roadblocks to your opponent. And while the game is intended as a one-on-one, somewhat adversarial game, you can play it solo too. I’m a big fan of repurposing other gaming accessories you have around, this could slot in next to the DIE scenario Mugen Clash though with even more card mechanics.

Another interesting zine worth looking at is Knightcore. Now, the campaign describes knightcore as an aesthetic, and the game as aligning to that aesthetic through not only visual design but also mechanics. This is ambitious, especially within the context of a zine, but it does look like the team here is pulling off something at least different. I see this as having similar vibes to something like Pendragon or Mythic Bastionland, but I guess we won’t really know how ‘knightcore’ it is until we have a zine in our hands.

A game which certainly hasn’t gotten as much love as I personally think it deserves is Settlement. The game involves playing a settlement, seeing it grow from a small village to a big city. Each player takes on a different aspect of the settlement, be that something concrete like a religion or guild or something more abstract like ‘law and order’ or ‘commerce’. Based on 24XX, this game sounds like it’s taking all the right points from mapmaking games before it, and I’m intrigued to see how it comes together.

Finally, a game that scratches the itch for ‘meta’ play that at least I have. Murker of Morks is a battle royale game show that takes place in the extradimensional space between all the other Mork Borg-compatible games. So Mork Borg, Cy_BORG, Corp Borg, Pirate Borg, Vast Grimm, Frontier Scum…and a whole lot more. The game directly borrows from a number of the games I’ve mentioned but is compatible with essentially all of them. If you’ve ever wanted to smoosh all your Borg games together, you now have a perfect excuse.

Five Year Retrospective

Zine Quest 2021 was huge, both because of the continuing momentum of the event as well as the intensified interest in TTRPGs thanks to the pandemic. The zines covered here read like a best-of of small games from the last decade: Bucket of Bolts, Back Again from the Broken Land, Torq, External Containment Bureau, The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl, Errant…hot damn. The convergence of internal talent and external circumstances made for a veritable bonfire shooting off inspirational little zine-shaped sparks in every direction. While the pandemic momentum made 2021 special, 2022 was also the year that Kickstarter shot itself in the foot by attempting (and failing, mind you) to move Zine Quest to August. By the time the entire zine movement that Kickstarter both started and nearly killed recovered, we were in the post-pandemic doldrums of 2024 and 2025. Is 2026 better? Not clear yet. Most of the really good zines from 2021 were only clearly that good after they delivered and we could start reading and playing them. Still, as much as I don’t know what this year’s crop will bring, I’m confident we’re going to get some quality in the mix.

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As Zine Month has changed over its seven year lifespan, I’ve also been changing the way I cover the events. My hope is that this format, where I once again zoom in on projects and especially give some love to those still trying to fund, is more useful for all the crowdfunders in the audience trying to figure out who to throw some dollars to. I think this year more than any year before Kickstarter has a serious competitor, and Backerkit is going to stay around in a way that many of the other crowdfunding sites have struggled with. I’m excited to get some of these zines into my hands, and even more excited about where all the new game designers will end up after their successful projects. As always, read some games, support some campaigns, and I’ll see you next month for another Crowdfunding Carnival!

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