February is RPG Zine Month. The promotion encourages creating RPG zines, 5.5” by 8.5” booklets full of core rules, source material, and tabletop adventures. If you’re a fan, here’s Kickstarter’s list of ZineQuest offerings and Backerkit’s ZineMonth crowdfundings.
KULT: Divinity Lost - Dark Realms and Other Horrors from Helmgast
Immortals: Hubris & Glory (5E) from Black Lantern Productions
Trinity Continuum: Steam Wars from Onyx Path
Strange Tales of the Painted Wastelands from Agamemnon Press
Rustwater Quickstart from Kismet Games
KULT: Divinity Lost - Dark Realms and Other Horrors from Helmgast
- END DATE: Fri, February 28 2025 12:00 PM EST.
- SYSTEM(S): Powered by the Apocalypse (KULT: Divinity Lost variant)
- PROJECT TYPE: Sourcebooks
- MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: SEK 1,500 + S/H for the PDF and print versions of the four sourcebooks
- WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? This campaign offers four new books: Metropolis, The Illusion and the Borderlands, Scarlet Bride and Other Tales, and Broken Reflections. Four books in a single campaign is ambitious, but Helmgast knows what they’re doing. The latest version of KULT: Divinity Lost is an award-winning RPG (Ennie Awards for Best Writing and Best Cover in 2019) with a dedicated fanbase. Metropolis expands on the Eternal City, an important location in this game. The Illusion and the Borderlands deals with the dimensions/planes that the supernatural inhabit and where they overlap creating unique boundaries. Scarlet Bride and Other Tales and Broken Reflections offer adventures, with Broken Reflections being more of a horror starter collection. If you’re a fan of KULT, beautiful artwork, and a haunted world, this campaign is worth investigating into.
Immortals: Hubris & Glory (5E) from Black Lantern Productions
- END DATE: Sat, March 1 2025 2:00 PM EST.
- SYSTEM(S): SYSTEM(S): Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition (2014)
- PROJECT TYPE: Core rulebook and campaign setting
- MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: €40 for the PDF versions of the three books
- WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? Dark fantasy meets a mythical version of ancient Greece with a lot of support out of the gate. Black Lantern Productions is crowdfunding three books: The 250-page Immortals: Hubris & Glory Corebook, the 150-page Hades: Guide to the Underworld, and the 150-page Immortals: Descendants of Chaos. The game provides all of the content you’ll need for your quest for immortality. Sea adventures, the Underworld, new magic systems, and Greek mythology come together for an epic world. If you’re interested, check out the campaign page for a free PDF preview of the books.
Trinity Continuum: Steam Wars from Onyx Path
- END DATE: Feb 27, 2025 at 2:00pm EST.
- CROWDFUNDING ON: Backerkit
- SYSTEM(S): Storypath Ultra System
- PROJECT TYPE: Sourcebook
- MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $25 for the PDF of the book and the POD discount coupon
- WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? It’s 1897, and the weapons of war are coal-fired steam rig mechs complete with Roman soldier heads. In this game of world wars and espionage, you’ll crew a mech for monarch and country. Larry Blamire’s graphic novel series, Steam Wars, is coming to tabletop via Onyx Path Publishing’s Trinity Continuum RPG. This project is an alternate branch of the Trinity Continuum RPG continuity, so you don’t need to know the in-game history of TC in order to enjoy this game. As a standalone game, this is a great spot to jump into both Larry Blamire’s world as well as the Storypath Ultra System. If you’re a fan of steampowered mechs, Steam Wars, Trinity Continuum, check out this Backerkit campaign.
Strange Tales of the Painted Wastelands from Agamemnon Press
- END DATE: Sat, March 1 2025 1:32 PM EST.
- SYSTEM(S): Old-School Essentials
- PROJECT TYPE: RPG zine and sourcebook
- MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $30 + S/H for the PDF and print versions of the zine and book
- WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN?The Painted Wastelands is a gonzo wasteland hexcrawl adventure setting for Old-School Essentials. The world is magic, aliens, mystics, floating cars, deserts, and all manner of weirdness. If you’re a fan of everything and the kitchen sink OSR settings, this is the world for you. This Kickstarter expands on the setting with a fresh zine – Strange Tales of the Painted Wastelands – full of new adventure locations and The Painted Wastelands Player’s Guide, a guide for players.
Rustwater Quickstart from Kismet Games
- END DATE: Fri, February 28 2025 11:59 PM EST.
- SYSTEM(S): “OSR-style, roll-under riff on systems from The Black Hack, FLEAUX! and Black Sword Hack”
- PROJECT TYPE: Quickstart zine
- MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $23 + S/H for the PDF and print versions of the zine, maps, and a PDF adventure
- WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? The world fell a century ago, cursed so humanity was no longer the technological supremacy of the planet. Can you survive in this weird fantasy world? This is the story of a project iterating and increasing its fanbase with each pass. Introduced as a PDF in 2024, physical copies were printed for Pax Unplugged and, through encouragement, the quickstart is going for a physical print run via this campaign. If it succeeds, it’ll lead to a full game. Kismet Games is building an audience by starting small to let those that would be interested in a post-apocalypse OSR that this one is coming. If you want to sample this game, check out the campaign page for more details.
RPG Zine Month Selections
Each year there are stacks of great RPG zines released during zine month. I want to highlight just a few of the many great zines that are available.- THEY BURNED THE BOOKS from Dreaming Robot ends on March 3, 2025. Reading is banned, which hurts society, but mages most of all. As mages, players fight against illiteracy using a real world book that they’ll read and destroy as they use the printed words to craft their spells. The game takes ideas from Fahrenheit 451 mixed with crafting roleplaying as you destroy print to save reading.
- Wiki Articles Are Wizards [citation needed] from Periapt Games ends on February 28, 2025. Don’t want to damage a book? Then this might be more to your liking. Play as a wizard generated from poorly sourced Wikipedia articles. Using the article, you’ll shape your wizard and battle the other players using the random content you’ll find on any wiki platform.
- So Many Horrid Ghosts from Spilled Coffee Creatives ends on February 28, 2025. Keeping with the literary theme, in this game you play as William Shakespeare’s fictional, and fictionally dead, characters. Your goal? Revenge against The Bard that wrote your death. You’re working to take down the opening show of his latest play, that’ll teach The Bard.
- Starships & Soldiers - A Mothership Sci-Fi RPG Toolkit from Hammer City Games on Backerkit ends on February 28, 2025. This project is an homage to Starship Troopers, the Robert A. Heinlein version not Paul Verhoeven’s film. You’ll get rules to modify your Mothership campaign to make it feel more like Starship Troopers, Helldivers 2, and Halo. If you’re a fan of Mongoose Publishing’s early 2000s official RPG, but want to use the Mothership d100 ruleset, this may be for you. As an added bonus, if you back this Backerkit campaign and A Secret Chord: An Adventure Zine for The Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG campaign, you’ll help to unlock some partner project rewards.
- Quest for Zines: a Zine Quest Zine About Zines from Philip Reed Games ends on February 28. In this zine about zines, Philip Reed interviews a variety of zine creators including myself (Disclaimer). The interviews range from designer and publisher advice to talk about the industry and upcoming projects. If you’re a fan of RPG zines, this is a neat look at the state of RPG zines in 2025.
