Please forgive me.

I’m terrible at this. I don’t like schilling for my own work, I don’t have much of a stomach or ego for it. However, since I am creating something I want to get out into the world, I’ll start with that and then nest it with enthusiastic support for some other projects you should check out.

First, If you haven’t taken a look at my Kickstarter entry for #zinequest, Ghostlike Crime, please do.

Second, here’s an update that I shared with backers, but I wanted to repost it here for some more exposure. It also contains some analysis of DCC as a system that you might find interesting.

Ghostlike Crime is a compatible expansion of the Dungeon Crawl Classics role-playing game (DCC RPG) system for a number of reasons. Besides the supportive community that I gush about on the campaign page, its hackable nature was intentionally built in by its architects. This is certainly illustrated by the number of projects that are based in DCC that are currently running here on Kickstarter. It’s a veritable DCC field of dreams(nightmares?)!

Here are the projects I’ve backed and why I did:

The Lesser Key to the Celestial Legion has only 4 days left so I’d suggest you get on it now. Where Ghostlike Crime strips out all gods and patrons with its modern day dystopia, The Lesser Key will expand them in a myriad of different directions. The nuance of religion, the gods, and their messengers can have a huge influence on the world you build in your games and the more expansive these aspects get the more prompts you have for your characters to get involved in fantastic things outside the (demi-)human condition. I’m excited to integrate all of this into my DCC games.

Reckoning of the Gods-Into the Shadow Realm is a DCC module with a two part adventure. Modules are the life’s blood of DCC. This was an intentional design in having a single core DCC rulebook and no supplemental rule sets. Instead, the tweaking and expanding of rules have been custom fit to the modules where they have appeared. In addition to being two fleshed out adventures, Reckoning of the Gods-Into the Shadow Realm adds the titular Shadow Realm as a new way to adventure. I think this could be an easy philosophical and mechanical integration into Ghostlike Crime’s concept of parallel dimensions.

Terror of the Stratosfiend is another #zinequest project based in DCC. Billed as “tentacle and sorcery”, the setting is one of portals and warp gates opening on our earth and the implications of what weirdness pours through them. I’m seeing this as a great way to mash up alien horrors into a world suddenly exposed to previously unknown powers and malevolence. It plays out to me as an epic level event to the street level setting of Ghostlike Crime.

For Glory! Issue #1, Hexanomicon is a toolset that looks invaluable to DCC Judges. Hexcrawl style of play is perfectly suited for old school games and this project does the job of making running a game in either a campaign or connecting together a string of adventures a much easier task. Once again, this plays into the intention of DCC (and one that I love) in not piling up a bunch of background fluff and expecting all the players to buy into it. This gives the creative world building part of playing an RPG over to discovery during play. Hexanomicon will facilitate this excellently, with stickers and tokens to boot!

Lastly, Thanks for reading this far. I’ll put away my salesman role and return for some more direct RPG talk soon.