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You might have thought ZineMonth is over, but there are still some projects that are funding and can use your help! The team at Spooky Bell Games is raising funds for Hard Light Dynamic. Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less. A: Josh: The Hard Light Dynamic is a Cy_Borg adventure zine that is like a heist turned psychological horror adventure. Players will have to deal with mad scientists, their weird experiments, and the rogue AI that is distorting reality. Chris: Josh nailed it. Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. A: Josh: This is my second ZiMo project. I was one of the people who helped create The Holy Artifacts of the Sacred Tragedies with a bunch of people over at Storeywood. I learned a lot about producing a zine, and without a doubt my number one takeaway was make a plan and stick to the plan as best as you can. Everything goes a lot smoother when you've got a schedule. Chris: This is my second Zine Month and second Zine Quest project (third project in total, thanks to the weird moving and overlapping of events the last two years). My last project was a Mörk Borg adventure and setting book called Beyond Deep that I created with Wes Ascolese, who is the other part of Spooky Bell Games. One of the biggest things I’ve learned so far is to finish as much of the project as possible before going to crowd funding. I always leave room for adjustment and input, but having a solid plan and a knowledge of what you want to make, and what you have executed so far, goes a long way. Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out. A: Josh: I’m really excited for some of the encounters that are packed within! I really like a lot of psychological and acid horror, and I think we wrote some fun events that will help create that kind of atmosphere for the players. When we were doing the first play test, there was one specific encounter that I think unfolds really well and shows that something is definitely going on. Chris: We’ve really created a tool box to go along with the story of the adventure, so even if you have read the book and are running the adventure, there are pieces of it where you don’t know which thing is going to happen. I really want people when using the book to really be free to push hard into the weird and unsettling aspects of it all.

Christopher Willett is raising funds for the DCC/Mork Borg/OSE adventure Ziggurat of the Blood God. Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less. A: Beneath the overgrown ruins of an ancient temple, Ichtaca, King of the Underworld, waits. It has been centuries since he has received proper tribute and his thirst for fresh blood knows no bounds. Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. A: This is our first time participating in Zine Month. However, this is our 5th zine and kickstarter. I wanted to get some experience under my belt not just running a Kickstarter, but also fulfilling on them. I know that Zine Month is very popular and the last thing I wanted was to enter it with no experience. Now that I've run and fulfilled on 4 Kickstarters, I'm much more confident and know what to expect. We've also pushed ourselves by offering our adventure in three (3) different RPG systems (Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old School Essentials and Mork Borg)! And we're also offering an 18"x12" color poster of our cover artwork. Something we've never done before. Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out. A: Ziggurat of the Blood God is influenced by Mesoamerican culture, and the twist comes halfway through the adventure. That's where it collides face-first with Ancient Alien conspiracy theories and the fact that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If you're a fan of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, you'll be a big fan of the twist. The adventure uses fresh new monsters like the Atocatl, a squid-faced jaguar that will drag you off into the dungeon. Players can choose whether they want to make sacrifices to Ichtaca the Blood God or if they want to destroy him and his waning cult.

Spilled Coffee Creatives, crafters of interactive storytelling games and experiences, are raising funds for Beneath Hallowed Halls. Our team consists of Ali Mark (she/her) and Nell Quinn-Gibney (they/them), both of whom are writers/game designers/graphic designers/about a dozen other hats! Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less. A: Beneath Hallowed Halls is a social deception game of friendships that run deep and bodies that are buried even deeper, built in the Powered by the Apocalypse system. Get drunk off vintage brandy, ramble about your obscure intellectual passions, and most importantly, don't go down for a murder one of your friends committed. Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. A: We have been producing immersive, interactive material for several years now - LARPs, murder mysteries, escape rooms, TTRPGs, and more. Much of our work has actually been in the corporate field, designing and hosting team-building events for organizations ranging from tiny businesses to Fortune 500s. We enjoy this work, but are trying to shift focus to our passion projects - such as this game! Beneath Hallowed Halls is our first game we're hoping to publish in physical form, and our first ZineMonth project. We have been big fans of past ZineMonth projects, so when we started talking about the bones of this game last year, we decided that ZiMo creates the exact kind of community we want to be a part of. Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out. A: We're absolute devotees to the Dark Academia genre - we love the tension, the friendships, and of course, the betrayals. We also love PBTA and we knew this was the system we wanted to use - it's an incredible game for genre emulation and interpersonal drama. It doesn't often focus on player vs player action, however. In a bizarre combination, we pulled inspiration from the game Paranoia in formatting our GM guide and PvP mechanics.

The duo are using itch to raise money for Bastardized Classics. Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less. A: The Bastardized Classics attempt to recreate classic modules with a modern sensibility. Experience adventures as old as the hobby in a compact format, with a rules-lite design ethos. Designed with Micah Anderson’s Bastards. system in mind, The Bastardized Classics are easily adapted to any version of dragon games. Vault of Doom reimagines the much acclaimed S1 Tomb of Horrors while Peak of Woe gives a new set of eyes to the wonderful S2 White Plume Mountain. Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. A: Jon Davis has done two previous projects for ZineMonth: In the Light of a Setting Sun: Saddlebag Edition, and Wild Blue Yonder #1. Setting Sun was his first foray into crowdfunding and he learned a lot from that experience, mostly to keep his goals realistic. Wild Blue Yonder was Jon’s second project and he would say it taught him to come to the table with a finished product; Jon stresses how much time and effort would've saved if he had worked on the manuscript for just a bit longer before launch. Matthew Morris has ran/been a part of three Kickstarters (two of which were Zine Quest) and had one very successful project for ZiMo last year - Lilliputian: Adventure on the Open Seas. He has definitely learned a lot and would encourage others to work in groups of creators when possible. This community is full of awesome people with shared interests, this sea of potentially great partnerships can and should be leveraged; not only can cool products come as a result - but friendships can be formed. Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out. A: In these older modules, you really don't get much of the surrounding area around the adventure location. You might get some names and some setting detail, but there's nothing really for your players to interact with. With Vault of Doom and Peak of Woe, we really strove to make the hexes surrounding the titular dungeons just as interesting, if not more so. In addition to a better fleshed out surrounding, Vault of Doom and Peak of Woe are just two of the four Bastardized Classics coming in 2023. Summer will see the release of Vale of Stars (S4 Expedition of the Barrier Peaks) and Cave of Fiends (S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth). And, there’s more! We’ve already released our bastardization version of B2 Keep of the Borderlands; it can be found for FREE on itch.io titled Bastion on the Frontier. Jon Davis (@sivads_santum) and I are running this project together. HODAG RPG is doing artwork as well.

David Jackson has written three separate world-building pamphlet games. You can find his project up on Kickstarter here, his itch page here, and him on Twitter @proton_31. Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less. A: I've written three worldbuilding pamphlet games that use Takuma Okada's Alone at the Table system. They are designed to be both solo games and game master tools to explore some ways that journaling games can support the game masters solo project of preparing for game sessions. Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. A: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. This is my second Zine Month project. I itchfunded Roguelike Megadungeon last year and have still not completed it, my thoughts on megadungeons have been developing a lot especially with Sean McCoy recently popularizing the idea for 2023 with his Dungeon23 project. I would say that the main lesson I've learned is that there is a sort of chicken and the egg effect in crowdfunding where you need the money to pay artists and editors etc to make a game but that you need the games to get the money to pay people. Last time I pitched something pretty expansive and abstract, where this time I am pitching something very concrete and totally finished using art from creative commons and patreon. In addition to finishing the games ahead of time I also planned out the promotional calendar so hopefully the whole process will be a lot more efficient and less stressful the second time around. Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out. A: Alone at the Table games are a slice-of-life style of world building game that can be detail oriented while not requiring statistics or governing bodies to be planned out. I think of these pamphlets as an approach to GM prep that is inside-out rather than top-down. So instead of prepping a world or situation from the perspective of its architect, you visit it from the perspective of a traveler or citizen. This can be an easy way to see your campaign world through a fresh set of eyes.

The folks over at Knight Owl Publishing (publishers of the recently released Deluge and Aquatic Adventures) are raising funds for Old School and Cool Vol. 4, the Undead Issue. Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less. A: Old School and Cool vol 4 is dedicated to the undead. Mostly it will offer a range of undead with unique powers for players to choose when their characters die but there will be tables, resources, and a gazetteer about a Necropolis city. Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. A: We've done quite a few at this point. Each one gets leaner and more focused. We don't have any stretch goals because we just want to focus on making the core as good as it can be and in the hands of our backers as quickly as possible. Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out. A: We're excited about how dynamic the undead path will be. Starting off as a skeleton, you can gain xp and become a zombie or a ghast and new powers. From there you can become a draugr or ghoul, and so on. It's an entire inverted world of player agency and emergent storytelling.

Levi Combs of Planet X Games is raising funds for Dungeon Malarky. Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less. A: DungeonMalarky is an illustrated guide to weird hazards, unusual monsters, curious magical items, magical plants and bizarre spell components inspired by the literature of Gary Gygax's infamous Appendix N and centuries of folklore, legend and myth. In these pages you can find a ton of page-to-table RPG resources for your weird fantasy role playing games, asking yourself "Just what does the biodiversity of a weird fantasy campaign look like anyways?" Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects. A: Dungeon Malarky will be my 5th zine in 4 years for Zinequest. The most important thing I've learned is that all of your projects should be 100% genuine, come from an authentic place and that they should always be something that you wish you were playing yourself. Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out. A: DungeonMalarky is based on a counterculture classic and is unlike anything we've done at Planet X before. You can use this zine in any sort of fantasy RPG, though it lends itself slightly more to weird fantasy than, say, high fantasy. Fans of DCC, Swords & Wizardry and similar systems will especially get a charge out of the lore and ideas presented in Dungeon Malarky.

Gods Demand, a new 'zine by Charles Ferguson-Avery, and the first physical product I've gotten in from ZiMo22

Just use the code ZiMo22 at checkout for the discount to be applied.

*Loot the Room is crowdfunding a project for ZiMo22, but they're doing it via their own website instead It's also the last day to get 25% off of the 'zines that I stock, as ZiMo22 winds to a close.

A: For ZiMo23, I'm raising funds for a print run of S.A.D. (small and delightful) Zines Volume 2.

they've just released The Haunting of Cliff Cove , a Scooby-Doo inspired zine that was funded as part of ZIMO24