The snows have begun to fall. Lanterns burn against the winter dark… and you uncover the secret of a centuries-old cult preparing for the “holy birth” of something that should never be born. An adventure of silence, faith, fear, and the unknowable.
A Midwinter’s Terror is the first of our horror adventures for Monte Cook Games’ Cypher System. We’re looking for funding to pay for the creative development and release of the adventure. Backers get the deluxe PDF for just $10. At the $15 level they get VTT tokens and images of the NPCs and Monsters on individual images for showing players without all the page copy. And finally, for streamers, an additional $5 gets you a set of overlays in HD and 4K sizes with a place for easy logo placement in your favorite streaming app.
If the campaign succeeds, we will continue selling PDFs of A Midwinter’s Terror on our partner shops (currently only driveThruRPG) for higher prices. The overlay set is exclusive to Backers.
The snows have begun to fall, chestnuts roast on open fires, and the lanterns of Hungervale burn against the encroaching winter dark…
A Midwinter’s Terror, is a Christmas-themed cosmic horror adventure for Monte Cook’sCypher System, inspired by the haunting traditions of Ramsey Campbell, Laird Barron, and H.P. Lovecraft, the psychological horror mysteries of Shirley Jackson, and cult-centered horror film classics including The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Wicker Man.
This chilling tale invites you to step into the snowbound hamlet of Hungervale, where wreaths are adorned with sigils, carols are sung with words from forbidden hymns—and the miracle of birth may herald the End of the World. And it can be played as a standalone adventure, or as the starting point for a decades-long and world-spanning horror campaign.
In A Midwinter’s Terror, uncover the secrets of the Covenant of the Black Cradle—a centuries-old cult preparing for the “holy birth” of something that should never be born. At the heart of the story lies a young woman carrying a child the villager cultists call “the Star Made Flesh.”
Whether your players arrive as investigators, pilgrims, or stranded travelers, they will find themselves caught between desperate townsfolk, ancient rituals, and a whispering presence beneath the frost.
It’s an adventure of snow and silence, faith and fear, and the terrible choices that define humanity in the face of the unknowable.
Prolific Publishers ZealZaddy has published 42 products to DriveThruRPG. Some are designed for use in Cypher System and other (older) products are compatible with Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. They are priced from Free and Pay-What-You-Want to $24.99. Check out our DriveThruRPG store.
Horror (and Other Genre) Streamers As well as publishing, we are well-known Twitch streamers of horror games like Old Gods of Appalachia and The Magnus Archives (by Monte Cook Games), Harrow: The Blighted Plane (by Underground Oracle Publishing), and Tales From the Loop and Things From the Flood (by Free League Publishing). We release our stream VODs to YouTube, too.
Catch our current Twitch Streams. Enjoy our past streams, GM tools, and TTRPG talk show StoryTalk on YouTube.
Horror Love So let’s just say that we know and love dark, psychological, eldritch, folk magic horror stories and we’re excited to release our first horror PDF. This also explains why we are creating streamer-friendly tools into the Backerkit campaign.
This deluxe PDF is built in landscape format for easier screen use. Features full bookmarking, indexing, and hyperlinking throughout the book and also to other related ZealZaddy products. The PDF will include NPCs, artifacts, cyphers, locations and other material.
What Awaits Inside:
A two- to three-session horror adventure.
Full cast of malevolent and duplicitous NPCs, each with secrets that may damn or deliver Hungervale and fully revealed with stats, histories, descriptions, and GM intrusions.
Tools for subverting familiar holiday traditions into eerie rites and symbols.
A complete town gazetteer, The Booke of Hungervale, detailing its history, cult secrets, and atmospheric stories.
“Moral Horror” rules that let GMs emphasize dread, ambiguity, and the cost of choice.
New and unique cyphers, artifacts, and loot.
60 gorgeous and terrifying pages fully bookmarked, indexed, and hyperlinked.
Professional illustrations throughout to help you and your players visualize the adventure.
Released & fulfilled via DriveThruRPG as a downloadable PDF.
If funded, we’ve lined up some awesome stretch goals at the following funding levels:
$400: List of names — Hungervale: O, the Humanity! A sourcebook of local history, flavor, and lore, detailing 100 NPCs with competing loyalties, agendas, and goals, and in-depth tables for incorporating them into your adventures.
$750: Magic Items of Hungervale — We’ll create additional artifacts (including at least one that’s cursed) and cyphers that can be found in the village of Hungervale.
$1,000: Additional Villager NPCs — We'll create additional villager and cultist NPCs to enrich the setting even more! Full backstories, stats, and motivations (both personal and for the cult and ceremony).
$1,500: Short Story in Hungervale — Cliff will write a short story set in Hungervale, complete with NPCs, cyphers & artifacts, locations, and more, all spec’d out for play.
$2,000: Map of Hungervale — We will create a beautiful map of Hungervale.
Note: Some stretch goals may deliver later than the main product.
As a small indie publisher, ZealZaddy relies on our community of storytellers to help us bring dark dreams to life. Your day-one pledge not only builds crucial momentum for the campaign—it tells the world that strange stories and bold creators still matter. Every pledge goes toward paying our talented writers, editors, artists, and layout designers a fair wage for their craft.
If you’ve explored our Free City of Vadashar campaign setting for the Cypher System, you already know what to expect: deep lore, atmospheric writing, and adventures that stay with you long after the dice stop rolling.
Can We Count on You?
When the bells toll in Hungervale and the snow begins to fall, we want you standing beside us—ready to help summon A Midwinter’s Terror into being.
Cliff Dunn is a long-time writer and editor, as well as a student of history. As such he also works as an auctioneer and researcher for historic and artistic auction items. He has been writing (and gamemastering) ZealZaddy’s Vadashar urban setting for decades and releasing a series of supplements on DriveThruRPG to build its foundations. A Midwinter’s Terror is our first horror release (although we have written three). The second one, The Terrifying Secrets of Dr. Darkenveldt’s Castle will be released in 2026 and the thrird is an adventure anthology with guest writers called Billy Beaver’s Bloodbath and is also planned for a 2026 release.
Scott Coventry is a career creative director and designer. He has been a game designer for many of those years. He has worked in advertising agencies and design studios, publishing houses, and marketing & PR firms, while doing graphic design, layout, and creative direction for clients like Mayfair Games (Lunar Rails), Tarancon Board Games (Safari Turbo), Paradigm Concepts (Arcanis Books), and ZealZaddy’s own library of content for Cypher System and DnD5e. He has helped other companies develop marketing strategies and processes, and consulted with companies on business development matters in various industries and markets.
Art of the Fantastic Some artists we’re using, include:
This campaign will fund extraordinary art, writing, layout & design. While we plan for the best outcome, we know that there are things which can occur beyond our control.
Our biggest risks to date are financial (as is the case with most crowdfunding projects). So we wrote the narrative manuscript in advance and are currently doing its gamification! To mitigate as much risk as possible, we have a small contingency fund that we can draw upon should the need arise.
We are committed to keeping a level head when introducing additional Add-Ons, Stretch Goals, and Incentives.
ZealZaddy founders Cliff Dunn and Scott Coventry are new to crowdfunding. To make up for our potential blindspots, we have decided to do this product as a digital-only product. If difficulties do occur, we will provide you honest, dependable, and regular updates on the progress of any delaying situation.
