#zimo 2024

My ZiMo 2024 project is live! Here's what you can expect to find inside:

The Dispossessed is a Playbook for an alien stranded in London, far from their homeworld. Explore the city through unfamiliar eyes, pick up items to repair your damaged spacecraft, and try to keep from losing yourself to the strange customs and culture of humanity.

Tamesas, the Lord Putrescent, is the new Mastermind. The erstwhile god of the Thames, he has emerged from a long slumber only to be corrupted by the pollution pumped into his home by the fires of industry. Can you stop him from razing the city to the ground?

Hark! A Ghastly Serpentine is the first Threat in the base zine, as a trio of river hags descends on London to infiltrate its sewers and transform its inhabitants into piscine monstrosities. But why are they here, and what do they want?

Silence Falls at Speakers' Corner, the second Threat, starts with a mysterious force stealing the voices of suffragettes. When politicians and the police get involved, it's up to Hargrave House to resolve the situation without civil unrest spreading throughout the city.

The Lights of Rotten Row, the third and final Threat in the base zine, features a force escaped from the Fae Realm, abductions of Hargrave House's associates, and a potential secret changeling (possibly unknown to even themselves!).

As always, an early-access text-only version of the zine can be found here:

Currently 28% funded after 2 days of the campaign! I feel good about the pace so far, and to hopefully keep things going I wanted to highlight an experiment I'm doing for this ZineMonth 2024 project: community physical copies.

Community copies obviously have a long legacy in indie ttrpgs, but I want to use this campaign in the spirit of ZineMonth to get physical copies to people who might not be able to afford them. Anyone who backs at a digital-only tier (hardship or regular) is entered in a raffle.

People who back at higher levels donate a physical copy to this raffle, and if we fund I'll select winners to receive a free physical copy of the zine (shipping covered by me). And should I end up with more donated copies than possible recipients? I'll figure it out lol

This experiment could certainly blow up in my face, but it's an explosion I'm willing to risk. I also plan to offer digital community copies when all is said and done, so it doesn't matter if I perhaps pay a little more money to get the game to people who want it.

If you want to get in on this experiment and want to infuse some Hyde Park goodness into your Victorian monster-hunting escapades, check out The Hauntings of Hyde Park on @crowdfundr:

JayEmBosch on Twitter was kind enough to read through my game, so I want to return the favor for a fellow Crowdfundr...er. (Crowdfundrite? Crowdfundrian?)

Body horror and space: two great tastes that taste great together! The Stone-Flesh Gift is gorgeous and creepy and tactile in the best ways.

First off, the map is incredible. Navigating through stylized human organs as the map? Genius. Stunning. Feels like a Victorian anatomy textbook come to life, both familiar and alien at the same time.

The adventure hooks are good, but my favorite has to be Stone-Flesh Angel: The players, stuck on a hostile planet or decaying space station, witness the Gift land or dock near them. They don’t have time to consider the ramifications of boarding. Find out how to control the Gift.

Almost every room has a Neurolink, something a player can connect to to get information about their surroundings, but this comes at a price and isn't always clear. Instead, it's presented in poetic, metaphorical language, the way that the ship understands itself.

My favorite:

NEUROLINK (d5): 1. You tire of the pace of being. 2. You’re the tradewinds of a dried up planet. 3. You have no mouth, and you must wheeze. 4–5. You feel the bated breath of an expectant mother cradling her egg.