5 Zines I Never Stop Talking About
Imagine there was an introduction to this listicle and that you really liked it.
Artefact
Artefact by Jack Harrison is a game about developing the history of a magic item over the course of generations. Ideal for solo play but also a ton of fun when played with others. A friend and I have had an ongoing game in a shared Google Doc for the past couple of years where we occasionally drop in and write a bit more about a magic pair of sandals with an incredibly bloody past.
The original zine is gorgeous but it’s now also available in what Jack calls a "beak zine" format that’s super portable and ideal for pulling out at conventions.
Pick up Artefact here.
The Vast In The Dark
The Vast In The Dark by Charles Ferguson-Avery is a setting/adventure zine about exploring weird alien megastructures and seeing what strange things you find down in the darkness. It’s sold as being compatible with fifth edition but you can use it with any system you want as it’s entirely system agnostic. It contains really simple but powerful procedures for generating a hex map of the world and then detailing the dungeons that it contains, and you could get years worth of play out of this one zine.
Pick up The Vast In The Dark here.
The Vanilla Game
Jared Sinclair’s The Vanilla Game is my favourite rules-light version of D&D. It’s clearly the product of how Jared actually plays the game rather than something "designed" and as a result it’s super streamlined and easy to run. The spells and monsters are a delight (especially the vampire). I’ve run this a bunch of times and always had a blast with it. And the best part is that the entire text of the game is available for free at vanillagame.carrd.co
Keep an eye out for the print version at Spear Witch.
Have You Heard About The Beast?
Have You Heard About The Beast by Sealed Library is a tavern storytelling game. You and a group of friends, seasoned adventurers and spinners of bullshit all, sit around a table and tell increasingly tall tales about a monster you heard Our Kev met once on a dark night somewhere. You each build on the others’ stories, one-upping each other until you finally get drunk and brazen enough to head off into the night and actually fight the damn thing you invented.
Pick it up here.
Thousand Thousand Islands
Words can’t adequately describe Thousand Thousand Islands by Zedeck Siew and Mun Kao. It’s part setting book, part adventure, part daydream. It’s some of the best writing you’ll find in RPGs, detailing a weird patchwork reality for you and your group to get thoroughly lost in.
Find out more here.
If you liked the things on this list you should support the creators and buy them. And if you like me, consider leaving a tip on Ko-Fi.
