Welcome to Zine Month! A place where indie TTRPG artists and creators can crowdfund their Zines from February 1st - February 28th.
Come celebrate the creativity and collaboration from a diverse group of creators running projects centered on TTRPG adjacent content, from dice to trackers, from journals to maps, and monsters to heroes, and all the in-betweens.
I was putting all the updates into the DISCUSSIONS part of BackerKit! Gosh, I can be such a dolt. Let me recap EVERYTHING then!
Update 1: FUNDED
Well hell, Maggots, you all do a damn good job shaping up and putting your wallet where sweet Liber-Tea is!
From all of us at Hammer City Games and the collective Terran Forces fighting for freedom and the Settled Worlds across the galaxy, thank you for making this project a reality!
We are already hard at work crafting this beauty (as of this moment, 80% of the writing is complete, and we are awaiting Hodag's art to come in!), and hopefully we hit those stretch goals and pack it with even more craziness!
Well Ho-Ly Shit Maggots, you have decided to impress me the tiniest bit by blowing THREE stretch goals out of the water! Almost brings a tear to my eye...
BUT THEN AGAIN SO DOES MUSTARD GAS, AND THAT AIN'T SPECIAL NOW IS IT?!
Thank you all for your incredible generosity! As such, we are now adding: - The Planetary System Generator in Part II of the book gets an overhaul and enough tables to make GURPS and Traveller sweat. Like seriously...its gunna get NUTS. Exotic planets, exotic atmospheres, exotic stars (do NOT look up what a Quark Star is) and more! - More Battlefield stuff! More tables, more ways to kill, more airstrikes, more DEATH FROM ABOVE! We're implementing a new Pay-As-You-Go Air Support System, where you get to use your hard-earned Freedom Bucks to purchase trucks, heavy equipment, napalm strikes, nuclear missiles, and more while boots-on-the-ground! - We will add another alien race for you to kill: the Slin! Think discount T'au! Living on the gas giant Slin Prime, these bipedal air-surfers have learned to harness the floating islands of their home planet and rare resources to create a truly odd and anachronistic society. Expect a meaty appendix with the Slin detailed in all their glory, AND an expanded battlefield table for determining which planet will be glassed next!
Keep up the firepower and the momentum, WE STILL GOT 24 HOURS UNTIL YOU CAN'T GET THE FREE TEMPORARY TATTOO ANYMORE!
Apologies, maggots! I was overcome by the need to rest after a horrifying space-flu caught me unawares. Thankfully, it seems none of you were able to bungle up this operation in my absence, hoo-rah and all that! You even managed to knock off a stretch goal!
- The Poster will be laminated and double-sided with more HodagRPG art on one side, and the hexmap on the other! That way you can use it for battlefield representation, OR have it stuck to your wall to drool over!
Because of your contributions and insane work ethic, we have instituted a NEW stretch goal!
- $35,000 - Post-War Vignettes - You know what the most boring part of war is? War. It's 99% boredom, 1% shit-your-pants scared. Instead of the rinse-and-repeat jump into the fray of battle, between missions, you need to relax, go on separate missions on space stations, infiltrate enemy ships, or even deal with - *gasp* - POLITICS?! With this new appendix, roll for vignettes between battlefield missions which can turn the tide of war, or find ways to relax so that you aren't stuck just playing battle after battle in a Sector 86 campaign!
Hope you're all staying warm in these chilling times (February) and enjoying the post-holiday, pre-spring doom and gloom! We have one way to lighten the mood: Hodag has been busy drawing and arts-ing away at some stuff for S&S, and he recently sent me a preview of the Human Infantry and the Halgian Ghasts. Have a look!
We have plenty more on the way, covering every empty bit we have in the book! On the other hand, writing is about 75% complete, just sprucing up the Planetary Generator and ensuring all the rules make sense.
We wanted to make it rules heavy to ensure you get ALL the information you could possibly need when traipsing through the stars!
Quick reminder that there are only a few days left to back Fear of a Daily Planet! As I've been working on the next draft, I found a bit more room in the layout. So, I'm resurrecting a monster that I cut a couple drafts ago!
There was originally going to be four more locations beyond Burgom's Haven, on the planet's surface under a large dome, to reveal more about the printer colony's resource extraction, and there lurked a beast malformed of poison solid. But in the end, these locations were largely superfluous and somewhat anemic, and they distracted from the faction interplay the module was originally built around, so I ended up cutting the exterior sections.
But not all that's cut is lost! With some tweaks, I've brought back from the dead what once lurked in the plastic mines beneath the colony. Bioaccumulator is a mass of Fair-All brand microplastics with the naturally formed sentience of all that lurks for ages long, and it wants to work its way up the food chain by subsuming others for a change. That means you'll be getting a fifth monster in this dungeoncrawl!
Bioaccumulator WIP art, subject to change
If you haven't yet, consider backing Fear of a Daily Planet before the campaign ends to get it at below retail price!
We’re down to less than one week for the campaign. I’ve been MIA due to a recent bout of COVID-19, but I’m back now.
We’ve hired an editor to work with Jordan on polishing the manuscript for Bride of STAR Station, and Jordan and Curious Friend will star working out the art plan and layout for this fun prequel zine.
We’re figuring out our meeting and production schedule for the main book now, layout is our limiting factor. We are in D.N. Wilkie’s queue rn, and layout will begin in earnest in the Spring.
We’re so excited to bring you this zine and to close out this short three week campaign strong!
Today, I'm here to present the newest piece of art from Tasca Skelton, which will represent the Diamond suit in No Mercy For Monsters. (If you missed the art for the Hearts suit, you can see that here.) Diamonds: The Need
Diamonds are The Need—your obsession, your desperation, your poisonous connection to the monster you’re hunting.
The Need by Tasca Skelton
Absolutely fucking gorgeous.
Tasca was inspired by several prompts in the suit for this piece, but what she ended up creating sums up the overall tone that runs through the entire game perfectly.
We're in the home stretch on this campaign now, folks, and we could use your help in spreading the word. If you're excited about No Mercy For Monsters, we'd be very appreciative if you'd tell the people in your own social circles about it. Small outfits like ours depend on word of mouth to extend our reach, so every kind word on socials or to your friends who might be interested means the world. 💜
Thanks again for all of your support, folks!
- Jess
Other Radness
As we've already funded, we'd like to share the love a little in our updates to other ZiMo projects that we're excited about
It's simply not ZiMo without a cool Borg to back, and Wyatt Trull has delivered with Accursed Deck Scum.
Accursed Deck Scum is an all-new 19+ page Zine for Pirate Borg, written by Wyatt Trull and fully illustrated by Zarch Cardoza. Available digitally and in print-on-demand as an A5 softcover—the perfect size to castigate your players with. Slaughter your crew as the Caribbean Werebeast, eat 'em as the Cannibal Cook, or suffer for their benefit as the Living Figurehead, and more!
The Living Figurehead is such a gnarly concept that I absolutely love, but given my current project here, I feel like it slightly betrays the Caribbean Werebeast. You can check them both out on his Kickstarter page and pick your fave for yourself.
Wow, that was neat! GUN WIZARDS fully funded in less than an hour! Thank you to the backers and everyone who has supported this project. I can't wait to share, and to get these backer rewards out!
