There’s a lot of good zines out there. Far too many to keep up with. But here’s the ones I found most interesting, in no particular order. For me to consider something a zine, it just had to be 5.5”x8.5” (or maybe 6”x9”) and short enough that it at least could be staple-bound even if my particular copy wasn’t. That said, all the ones I mention below were 5.5x8.5” and staple-bound. Without further ado, here’s my favorite zines that I first read in 2023! Might be that one or two of these is a good Christmas present for someone out there.
I can’t recall when I first heard of this, but Luau Lou was selling it at NTRPGCon this year. Levi Combs happened to walk by and sold me on it. He said something to the effect of this is "X-Files meets Twin Peaks and you play as public access TV hosts” and proceeding to tell me how it was the most creative thing he’s read all year. Plus, Joey Royale created it so it was a done deal. I bought a copy of every volume that Lou still had. When read through them, I immediately emailed Joey asking where I could get the other volumes and then ordered the rest from his Etsy page. Do yourself a favor and get them! The mechanics essentially a simple d6 pool system, but the flavor and writing is just so good. I wrote my own little adventure for it.
Sean Ritcher makes wild stuff and this is no different! It’s DCC meets Mario Kart with guidance on converting any DCC adventure. It included a level-0 funnel called Bone Giant’s Paradise and three separately published adventures for this: Two Clan Tango, Dagon in 60 Seconds, and Hell-Climb! This length zine has new occupations, different types of karts and armor, driving rules, new monsters, and a ton of random tables. Though I haven’t actually brought this to the table, it’s such a creative take on DCC that I can’t help but love it at first sight.
This is the one official zine for the Black Sword Hack: Ultimate Chaos Edition. my primary enjoyment of it is for the awesome adventure it has in the back (which I have not run yet). It has tons of great tables, interesting NPCs, and really smart layout. The adventure is kinda like a sword-and-sorcery take on The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
I ran this as my Halloween game this year and it was so much fun. It’s written for Prole, Nate Treme’s coin-flipping based system, but I ran it using Academia Arcana (hey, I got to playtest whenever I can). It was simple and you could easily convert it to pretty much whatever system you enjoy best as long as there’s some way to be a kid who’s trick’r’treating.
It’s basically a hexcrawl with 16 detailed hexes and some amazingly flavorful random encounter tables. These aren’t those random encounter tables where everything is combat. These are ones that promote narrative and childhood shenanigans. Cannot recommend this enough.
Vampire Blood: A Slayers Guide
Another Joey Royale joint! He has such a unique writing style that I find so unique and wonderful. I love vampires and this has 3 variations on the bloodsuckers! It’s all statted up for DCC so easy to use for that. It also comes with a sweet little adventure in the back so you get a good vampire hunt. Did I mention it’s set in Fairhaven so you have a WHPA13 connection too? If I’d had more time during spooky season, I’d have run this too.
What were your favorite zines of 2023? I want to know!
What Else Is Going On?
Tim Kask on RAW
Tune into the Goodman Games Twitch channel for Rules as Written on December 12th! An ol’ curmudgeon is crawling up out of the cellar: Tim Kask! Pretty sure he doesn’t run his game by any rules other than his own so this is sure to be an interesting chat!
Etsy
So apparently my Etsy decided to unlist my t-shirts? Not sure when that happened but they’re back up! So if you know a nerd in need a clothing, buy them a shirt for Christmas!