Ewen Cluney [pronounced Aaron Cluney] has worked on many notable games; he translated Maid RPG and Golden Sky Stories, wrote the Ghostbusters retroclone Spooktacular, and has created original games such as Kagegami High, Angel Project, and Pix. Cannibal Halfling contributor Sabrina TVBand sat down with Cluney after writing about Maid RPG and Spooktacular to ask him about his work.
Continue reading Ewen Cluney InterviewCategory Archives: Indie Frontiers
Exploration and analysis of the cutting-edge RPG work happening in the wild. This is the best place to find new games, experimental design, and up-and-coming authors.
Zine Month 2024 Round-Up
Lock your credit cards, hide your wallet, tell your banks to close early, because it’s February and that means a veritable deluge of new tabletop roleplaying game zines taking their shot at getting created with some crowdfunded help. Down the hall Aaron can be heard trying to keep his head above water with the first wave of ZineQuest projects on Kickstarter (there’s an alarming number of gargling sounds), but as has been tradition I’m taking a look beyond the white-green halls of the original ZQ to see what other excellent projects can be found in the wider Zine Month 2024.
Eat the Reich (Backerkit Preview)
The date: 1943. The location: Nazi occupied Paris. Your assignment: to climb into a pressurized steel coffin. Survive a drop from a few thousand feet. Make your way to the Eiffel tower, where the Fuhrer’s airship is docked and drink all of the party leader’s blood.
Relevant note: you are a vampire.
Sometimes you need a self respecting monster (or six) to take care of the scummier ones.
A backer preview of Eat the Reich released in October 2023 (fittingly on Friday the 13th). It is an RPG written by Grant Howitt (the creator of the Honey Heist), illustrated by Will Kirkvy and published by Rowan, Rook and Decard (the publishers of DIE RPG), and it is a completely, totally and 100% unapologetically anti-fascist joyride.
Continue reading Eat the Reich (Backerkit Preview)
Zine Month 2023 Round Up #2
A ride or die Filipino adventure where the indigenous magic and monsters still dominate the archipelago. A seaside vacation meant to both help your health and help you find love, provided you can solve the murder. Living a version of your life affected by ADHD. It’s down to the wire, but there’s still time to check out another batch of Zine Month creations!
Zine Month 2023 Round Up #1
A map for every adventure and an adventure for every map. The horror of magical academia. Making sacrifices to a river spirit. Last of Us a la Twin Peaks. Tracking down an entity that consumes time itself. Another February, another month of roleplaying game zines, and I’m back for more Zine Month spotlights!
Tiny Tome Kickstarter Review – 50 Games in 50 Pages
The single page roleplaying game certainly has a place in the industry. Some of them have become very popular, and some have even won awards. All of them take on the challenge of game design with an eye towards keeping rules lite and tight, trying to do more with less and deliver a focused experience. From a publishing perspective, though, there are problems. If you want a physical version, you’re printing the PDF or whatever out at home. Publishers aren’t going to do a print-run for a game on a single piece of paper, right? Well, maybe they just needed strength in numbers, because the Tiny Tome project is going to bring us 50 single-page roleplaying games in a neat book curated and published by Long Tail Games!
Continue reading Tiny Tome Kickstarter Review – 50 Games in 50 Pages
Zine Month Round Up #5
Practicing a new (and literally newer than most) language via a roleplaying game. The exchange between the distance between two people and the people themselves. A doomed mech pilot trying to help the survivors of their people reach safety. Delving in the darkness, maybe never to return. Saving the Jewish people by masquerading as Queens. We’ve done it once, twice, thrice, and four times before, let’s check out one last batch of Zine Month games and make it five, then have a serious talk about itchfunding!
Zine Month Round Up #4
Artificial intelligences trapped in a video game. A baker’s dozen of bounty hunters. High adventure on the high seas. A quantum camping trip. The story of a skyship through the ages. We’re more than halfway through Zine Month 2022 and… nowhere near halfway through covering every project, gosh, who could? But we’ve got another five of them that are worth your time and quite possibly your money, so let’s count it off with Round Up # one, two, ah one, two, three, Four!
Zine Month Round Up #3
Sending messages to someone you’ll never see again across growing interstellar distances. A giant whirlpool crawling with pirates. A bar crawl on the borderlands. Trying to make sure your people don’t fall off the map. A rescue mission into an environmentally hostile forest chock full of horrible mutants and dragon cultists. A veritable library of zines. Zine Month ’22 continues onward at a typically breakneck pace, although maybe that’s just the time dilation we’re all going through… nevermind! You’ve had two rounds of ZiMo content already, so how about a third?
Zine Month Round Up #2
Diving into a sea of dreams to pluck secrets from memories. Goblins going grocery shopping and making a mess of it. Horrible abominations made by scientists who say ‘who’s playing?’ when accused of playing god. A mirror-themed adventure that would have Link and Samus feeling right at home. Death metal Viking cats. Zine Month continues. and so does our coverage! Given the contents of this particular round up and a bit more time to ruminate on things, I’ve got some Thoughts about Zine Month itself and its relationship to Kickstarter… but we can talk about those later! You’re here for the zines, so let’s see what we’ve got!
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 