Zine Quest 4: Tiny games about outlaws, outer space, and animal drag

This year’s Zine Quest has been a contentious one. The annual celebration of small-format, tabletop role playing games was established in 2018. It is held every February. This helps independent designers start the new year with some cash. Kickstarter decided to hold the event this year in August to align with Gen Con. Zine Month was a popular choice for many designers, but they were less than happy with the decision. Zine Quest 4 was a relatively quiet affair. But while there aren’t as many projects filling the associated tag, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some bangers in the mix.

Zine Quest is a great opportunity to see unknown artists emerge with innovative ideas that fit the two week funding deadline and small-book format. We’ve selected some standout RPGs, adventures and supplements from the current entries that carry the torch high.

A two-page spread, blurred so you can’t read it.

Image: James Lennox-Gordon

One of the largely hidden gems of the indie RPG scene is Jason Tocci’s 24XX system, a modular ruleset that the designer has massaged over dozens of genres and story structures. 1400 Lo-Fi Hi-Fantasy follows suit by packaging five micro-games all designed to a low-fidelity, high-fantasy setting — exactly as it says on the tin.

The five small games designed by James Lennox Gordon are available online since a while, but now players can get them in an actual zine. Quest is about as classic D&D adventure as you get, while Planes leans into a more interstellar fantasy. Sneak and Mage aim to replicate their respective classes’ experiences in a contained game, and Below delves into dungeons both dark and dangerous. You can plug all five into one another in any combination, and the zine includes instructions and other aids.

How about if? RuPaul’s Drag Race It took place in Amazonia? Take Dragula (the Boulet Brothers’ show, not the Rob Zombie joint) but fill it with the denizens of a zoo. That’s the essential premise of Ball of the WildThe collaborative storytelling role-playing game ‘The Animals in the Mask’, where players dress up as animal characters and play together as a group. Designers Nat Mesnard and Adriel Wilson are not shy about the title’s inspirations and describe the experience of play as embracing silly performances that ultimately allow our true selves to take center stage.

The players alternate between Mother Nature and the Judge, as Mother Nature awards prizes for the best performances in various categories. Each player has one tool to roll throughout the game, and that is a die taken from the standard Polymorph array. Every die has its role, and each one is different. However, everything in the game encourages improvisation and emerging narrative. Ball of the Wild is adamantly queer and celebratory of loud, public gender performance — whether that matches or deviates from the daily lives of these animals — with a simple but clever metaphor providing set dressing.

Two men on improbably ostriches engage in armed combat among the clouds. A trio of bridged minarets rises in the background.

Jeff Williams

It’s not every day you see a competitive RPG. It’s less often one crops up with such a wonderfully silly name and premise as Flying Ostriches & Floating Castles. You can play this RPG solo, or in a multiplayer PvP mode where knights are flying ostriches while holding jousting matches between the clouds. Its rules are derived from Melsonian Arts Council’s Troika!, but doesn’t require that book to hit the table.

You have the option to either explore the overarching story of the cloud castles with their mysterious builders, giants, or you can hop around the procedurally generated hexagonal tile map looking for mountaintop treasure or dismounting enemy ostrich Knights. The combat system is simple and allows for easy character creation. Flying Ostriches & Floating Castles remains a lightweight experience, but there are plenty of additional systems — including a castle exploration game-within-a-game — if players want to fully embrace an evening of ridiculous role-play.

One bounty hunter, all by himself and with no weapon to guide them around, lands on an uninhabited planet. They have a name, a species, and their target’s supposed crimes with which to track them down. The nearby townsfolk’ll know more, but they don’t trust interlopers — armed interlopers even less. Bounty hunters bring trouble, noise, and death, no matter what that supposed Nomad’s Code dictates. The bounty hunter will need to work — or pay — their way into the town’s good graces to find their target. Catching the scum and villainy of the galaxy isn’t the hard part, it’s making sure they aren’t pulled down into the muck along the way.

It is importantA tabletop game for solo players where you play the role of Nomads, interstellar bounty hunters. Sessions play out as above — track down a target using minimal information on one of six planets before ultimately deciding the outlaw’s fate. Two six-sided dice comprise all of the game’s checks and skill rolls, and session lengths are largely up to the player. It is importantAllows for ample time to engage in world building through journal entries. Players choose from one of six different Nomads, each with their own combat strengths, as the central figure of a story that’s equal parts Star Wars, Cowboy BebopPlease see the following: Blade Runner.

Indie RPGs have been a huge hit in the past few years for those who love confined spaces and the dark vacuum of space. One Breath LeftIan Howard’s debut game, titled, is a fitting fit within that framework. The storyline of an individual survival in abandoned, derelict space ships filled with mystery and danger, is portrayed by Ian Howard. As contracted Explorers, players must comb the ship for useful tools, hints at what exactly happened, and ultimately for the ship’s manifest. Their oxygen supply keeps them on track, placing a limit to their exploration into the dangerous and dark unknown.

Each action is costing oxygen. A random deck of room cards will generate the layout for a Wreck. Players encounter perils along the way and ultimately have to decide if pushing forward is worth the risk of running out of breathable air… or worse. Between sessions, players can use their earnings to fulfil desires or purchase escape routes from dangerous work. One Breath Left’s book emulates technical manuals from the 1950s and ’60s, giving the whole game a feeling of chunky and perhaps unreliable tech that might fail at the worst possible moment.

Zine Quest is a major source of adventure modules, especially in relation to popular systems such Mothership. This ship is actually a tombIt stands out by promoting a procedurally-generated, potentially demonic colony vessel which players can build while they explore. Groups board the Advent Dawn to discover what happened to the massive craft’s mission to distant stars. Although its experimental drive enabled it to slide into spaces between dimensions to reduce travel time, it appears that something sinister and alien emerged from the other end.

The book’s 72 pages will detail over 20 locations, dozens of unique monsters and threats, and plenty of twists on both as the Advent Dawn morphs around the group. Visualize Event Horizon’s preoccupation with occult horrors lurking in the quiet stretches of space combined with a classic dungeon crawl where the players will struggle to keep their wits handy and their eyes sharp. It’s a perfect fit for Mothership’s panic mechanics and already looming sense of dread.

I’m over this interminably hot summer and long for the season of falling leaves, crisp cider, and a chill wind heralding the spooky season. This transitional period is a time for stories that remind us of necessary decay and the bitter aftertaste of life’s joys, and Strangely, Under the AutumnIt captures that tone. Graham Gentz’s “game of pastoral horror” for a group of shared storytellers draws heavily on the animated series Surround the Garden Wall embraces all the paradoxes in cozy ghost stories.

The Traveler will be the main character, narrating the story of characters traversing the Never Was liminal terrain; the Arcadian who represents the land and its inhabitants; and finally the Terror who acts as the dark threat lurking in shadows, along with its influence and calling cards. The roles can be interconnected in a variety of ways. Each one will add to, subtract from, or enhance the story’s progress. The push and pull of the characters creates conversation that hopefully leads to a rich story with heartwarming and spine-tingling moments.

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