ANNOUNCING NEW PROJECTS
Zine Quest / ZIMO / Backerkit's Pocketopia. Spaceships and Pulp Horror.
Oh my, it’s been awhile, but I’m happy to be back. I’ve set The Guac aside for a few months to make sure the focus was on making games and moving forward on our projects. The flow has been great, and there’s a lot to announce from the work.
Here’s what we’re talking about below:
Cryo Drakus: An Alien Reconnaissance RPG (Upcoming Release)
Blackthorn: A Pulp Horror RPG (Upcoming Release)
Cool Links
Spicy Tuna Update (Including Greenhorns and The Hands That Feed)
CRYO DRAKUS
Cryo Drakus has upgraded substantially since our free beta release. Expect an alien reconnaissance rpg where players investigate alien hives that have populated around Earth 50 years after we barely survived an alien invasion. It’s a game of fear and uncertainty, and balancing risk with the hope to learn about the alien threats.
Cryo Drakus is looking to be a nicely sized 36 page zine including a complete adventure in the back!
Carly A-F is now illustrating an alternative cover and the cover to the accompanying adventure zine.
I’m excited to announce that Josh Hittie has hopped on to write the adventure zine and develop the mission structure. He’s bringing an incredible amount of ideas and clarity to this and I’m stoked to continue forging our doom clock mechanic together.
For editing, I’m working with Jarrett Crader for the first time with editing, but you might know we work with him at Space Penguin Ink who warehouses and fulfills our books.
We’re going live on February 4th and the Kickstarter Prelaunch page can be found here.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcoserrano/cryo-drakus-an-alien-reconnaissance-rpg
BLACKTHORN
Blackthorn is pulp horror roleplaying about surviving supernatural crisis. This one-shot system focused on urgency and survival has gone through several iterations, but I’ve rested on a d12+d6 system I’m really excited about.
Blackthorn supports lethal gameplay where players expect to need to pick up new characters in order to drive forward the horror narrative. It’s about a quarter step towards funnel play, and I’m stoked to start sharing more of it.
We were invited to participate in Backerkit’s inaugural Pocketopia event starting in mid-March, and Blackthorn seemed like the perfect fit. The sign up page is also up if you want to be one of the first ones to know about the launch. The zine is looking to be about 24-28 pages including a ready-to-play adventure in the back :)
https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/353bf3a5-29e2-4ac2-ba9d-1ddf20894866/landing
POCKETOPIA CROSS COLLAB
One of the cool features about Backerkit’s Topia events is cross collabing, which in short, is a way to thank backers for supporting both projects by giving away a free bonus item.
I’m excited to announce that we’ve paired up with Stillfleet Studios, publishers of Stillfleet, Blister Critters and more. I’m really happy Wythe and Michael decided to reach out to us. They’re stand up, and I like their work.
So for the collaboration!
Stillfleet is launching a new quickstart zine for their gritty sci-fi game, with a Saturday-morning cartoon twist called Enter the Nostalgiatron! They teamed up with artist Michael J Cohen of https://www.arkwulf.com/ to create this adventure on a floating techno-dungeon capable of bending the laws of time and space.
This collaboration might seem a bit odd from the difference of look, but I think it’s more convenient for people to not be buying two near-exact games. And, I know we’re going to deliver on some great co-writing for a classic horror themed playset, but Blackthorn is getting the perfect bonus scenario for backers with a 1950s cult classic inspired collaboration piece! I’m really excited to announce more soon!
COOL LINKS
Switching off Spicy Tuna stuff real quick, there’s a ton of stuff that I’m excited about in the tabletop space.
Firstly, some admiration for Alfred. I love reading the Haus of Valley blogs. Alfred wrote about making Soldier Splashing All Alone, the solo rules for Constant Downpour alongside other process videos. I feel like I learned a ton working with Alfred on solo procedures, and the blogs are further insight to their design work.
https://hausofvalley.blot.im/making-a-citizen-sleeper-ttrpg
https://hausofvalley.blot.im/how-i-write-solo-rules-pt-1
https://hausofvalley.blot.im/how-i-write-solo-rules-pt-2
https://hausofvalley.blot.im/archives
Speaking of Blogs, the BLOGGIES are currently in it’s final round, Best Debut Blog.
https://sachagoat.blot.im/bloggies-2024-commence#whats-next
SachaGoat, the host of this year and a winner of the 2023 Bloggies, shared these screen reader hacks for your android and apple devices – which I am going to use to better stick to the rpg blogosphere this year.
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.accessibility.reader&hl=en_GB
Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph449fc616c/ios
My favorite recently read adventures:
M. Allen Hall’s getting two shout outs.
Diesel Service for The Lost Bay is a really wellcrafted, slightly linear adventure where the players witness a hit-and-run car accident and investigate what turns out to be a giant caravan of semi-trucks. It’s some awesome and unexpected modern horror.
The Will of the Forest for The Lost Bay is a cursed point crawl through a park where the players are stuck and must figure out how to escape.
Kienna Shaw wrote Labyrinth of the Bride for Cloud Empress which takes place during the calling of the emperor’s collapsed monument new bride…but the bride kicks ass.
Sebastian Yue wrote Echoes of Memories for Cloud Empress which features killer clones roaming the Rustbucket. A+ clone horror with an awesome decommissioned laboratory to explore.
Tiny World TTRPG Jam
I’ve never participated in a jam, despite a few false starts. But, this jam is very fitting for areas I want to explore for Cryo Drakus, being playtime back on Earth in between missions. I think I’ll aim to get some frames written up for a number of pilot hangouts so I can better write advice on how to run downtime and random tables to do so.
SPICY TUNA UPDATE
Huge Greenhorns News!!
Books are arriving at Space Penguin tomorrow! Zines, patches, etc arrive by the 27th, and fulfillment commences in February. The expedited copies arrived from Friesens and it’s fantastic.
Backers know that Greenhorns blew up to 152 pages. It has dozens of hours of gameplay between creating planets, bounty hunting, and scrawling across the sandbox of Kruxor. I’m stoked for backers to receive it, and for the public release.
The future of Greenhorns is bright. We will be developing all new bounty hunting zines and planet layer zines this year and are expecting to run another crowdfunding campaign for it this summer.
The Hands That Feed Update
The THTF manuscript has been audited and we’re working through leveling it up. Layout and illustrations have been a little bit slower as we were finishing Greenhorns and taking a small break from working on large hardcovers with the zines mentioned above, but we are well on track for May fulfillment!
Late pledges are still available on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcoserrano/the-hands-that-feed
Spicy Tuna Store! + Available Books
We are dedicating time in Q1 for our online store to go live! It’s been a long time coming, and we want our books to be more readily available.
The other major effort towards making our books more readily available is taking the time to reach out to retail and distribution partners.
2025 Releases
The first releases you can expect from us is Greenhorns: A Weird Space RPG and The Hands That Feed with Broadcasted Violence! And Carved Like a Covenant, in Feb/March and May respectively.
>February we’re funding Cryo Drakus, and we’re aiming for a June release.
>March we’re funding Blackthorn and expect a July release.
>June/July we’ll be funding new adventure zines for Greenhorns and are aiming for a quick turnaround late August release.
>August/September we’ll release a new Tunaverse/Mothership, again with a quick turnaround October release.
We’ll plan the rest of the year from their, but at the very least we’re planning on getting adventure zines out for Cryo Drakus and Blackthorn before the end of the year.
The big story for us is a focus on much smaller projects than we’ve been making. For me personally, the creative flow for zines has been fantastic. I feel like I’m doing even better work and running into less roadblocks with these smaller scope projects. Additionally, and more excitingly, we hope to greatly expand the number of writers we work with to make this happen!
More news to come, but that’s it for January!
Thank you for reading through!