ZineQuest 3 Finishes Strong – Can’t-Miss RPGs Closing Soon
February is over, but ZineQuest 3 is still going. As the Zine-fueled RPG extravganza winds down, take a look at some of the fest’s finishers.
We are fans of ZineQuest here at the Bell of Lost Souls. The month-long event, which offers RPG designers of all stripes the chance to crowdfund small but impactful projects over the course of a two-week long Kickstarter campaign with the only stipulation that it start in February, is a treasure trove of amazing RPG tools and talent. Whether you’re looking for your next indie darling, or for a supplement to some of your longtime favorite RPGs, there’s just a ton to love here.
While we can’t cover everything, you’ll want to head down to the ZineQuest main page to see what deals you can still back before the last days of ZineQuest 3 come to a close. Here are a few of our can’t-miss favorites.
Kitchen Knightmares
Inspired by the popular voice-based game, This Discord Has Ghosts In It, which you’ve probably heard was good bu haven’t played, Kitchen Knightmares is a hidden-role RPG that will have you and your friends saying things that only 90s kids will remember, while using Discord to pretend you’re knights, wizards, and/or college kids all at once in a very cool late night diner.
Kitchen Knightmares is a discord-based LARP in the vein of hidden-role games and mysteries. Based on the ground-breaking hit from Will Jobst and Adam Vass; This Discord Has Ghosts In It, players gather on a bespoke Discord server, assign roles, and engage in some light-hearted and very chaotic roleplay as they take on the persona of their characters.
In Kitchen Knightmares, the characters in question are:
- A Medieval knight sent forward in time to the wild year of 1999
- The Wizard who sent them here; at the diner tonight to soak up victory
- The Diners, regular 90s college kids here to have a good time and cause trouble
Kitchen Knightmares is light, chaotic, and incredibly fun for everyone who plays- because it’s a fairly rules-light game it makes a fantastic first-time roleplaying experience, and because it’s all on Discord and has no dice setup is quick, easy, and anyone can do it!
The Last Will and Testament of Gideon Blythe
This is an incredible ‘Keepsake Game’ which is a game that’s designed “to produce beautiful, memorable artifacts through the whole course of the gameplay process, as a collaboration between […] designers and players’ imaginations.” Essentially, by playing the game, you will create a custom artifact colored entirely by your own play.
In this case, it’s a family album that you’ll create through journalling, as you print, cut out, and paste together a notebook that details a heritage you all but turned your back on…
You are the seventh son of a seventh son, and you have forsaken your name. After many trials, you turned your back on your family legend and your inheritance in the hopes of living a simple life. But now, at the reading of your father’s will, you must make a choice: return to your lineage in order to receive a priceless boon, or forever turn your back to what could have been, in order to shed the burden of your destiny.
The player will figuratively and tangibly build up the layers of secrets, dark paths, and old wounds that Gideon Blythe and his lineage created in the name of holding on to the family inheritance. A combination of handwritten prompts and player-generated ephemera create the chaotic path of their character’s personal history.
Yee-Paw! High Raccoon
When trouble comes to a critter-filled town, it’s up to the players, as denizens of the town of Brightspear to band together to try and drive off a no-good Raccoon bandit. Using traps, wits, and a bit of luck–as well as a handy deck of playing cards, you’ll find out what happens in this animal-filled game with Western flair.
Yee-Paw! High Raccoon is an independent tabletop role playin’ game fer 1-6 critters of Brightspring. You and yer friends are gonna need to band together, recruit the townsfolk into helping, set traps about town, and ultimately defend yerselves from Rocky and his ilk. You ain’t a gunslinger but yer willin’ and able to fight.
The zine itself has a lot goin’ on. It is written in an old western narrative voice… much like what yer readin’. Complete with fine cuttin’ edge photography and collage artwork of the citizens and villains of Brightspring. With NPC character generators, twenty different occupations, ten reasons Rocky is comin’ to town, a cowpoke can replay this game to their heart’s content with all this fine content!
The Wizard’s Grimoire
By Apocalypse World co-creator D. Vincent Baker, the Wizard’s Grimoire is the story of an ambitious wizard reaching for power. The game was originally a tightly focused game that detailed a story happening to a single character with multiple players opposing you. The Wizard’s Grimoire Zine will detail new characters or wizardries to unlock.
At the heart of the game is the grimoire: a text of many sections and its own set of rules. Each section represents a wizardous advancement you can achieve, a new spell you can learn or act of wizardry you can undertake, but each also has its own rules for unlocking and studying them. Don’t read ahead! You can only read the sections you’ve unlocked and studied.
Most wizards’ grimoires also include “safeguards,” sections you unlock by improper study. These include magical curses, setbacks, and disasters. Trigger a safeguard and the spellbook may rewrite itself, summon a destructive creature from another world, or even send you reeling 10 minutes back into the past. Keep trying to study it without disarming the safeguard, and it’ll keep sending you back!
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Happy Adventuring!
