The Guac 009: Planets to Die On, ZiMo/ZineQuest, + Dying Butterflies
Art and Layout Sneak Peaks, Updates, + a Ton Videos
Hi, Family!! I hope February has been kind to you. It’s always an inspiring and hectic month in indie TTRPG world, and it’s no different this year. There are a ton of beautiful zines coming out. Our work has been going smoothly too, and although there’s been a number of pushed back deadlines, the projects that are funding and in fulfillment stages are on track to be fulfilled soon and on time!! Soon we’ll be on an even better track, but for now here is the SpicyTuna update.
The Guac 009 Docket
A Butterfly Dies Final Week
ZiMo/ZineQuest Highlights
Constant Downpour Remastered Update
Outsourced Art Reveal + Update
Next Month + The Guac 010
A Butterfly Dies Final Week
Christian Sorrell of MeatCastle Gameware just finished editing the “A Butterfly Dies” manuscript on Wednesday!! Looking like the art, layout, and proofreading will be done by the end of the month too!
I’m excited to be working with Christian again!! Their edits leveled up the manuscript a bunch! Christian also has important first-hand Primal Quest experience that benefitted the playability for the weird stone & sorcery setting.
A Butterfly Dies is a hex crawl placed in the forested and volcanic mountainside of prehistoric and mythical Michoacan, Mexico. Developed for Primal Quest, players must navigate local conflict while exploring the oyamel forest.
Find out more here
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcoserrano/a-butterfly-dies
ZiMo / ZineQuest Highlights
There are a ton of great people in the indie TTRPG scene, and a bunch of them do small publishers a huge favor by making great videos or podcasts talking about our work. Here are some of the people who I’ve grown closer to, have had great conversations with, or other outlets and articles I know of and could easily chase down links to.
Hopefully, there are some new projects you’ll learn about, and having all of the links here will be helpful.
Wobblies & Wizards
Logar the Barbarian does awesome short-form interviews and brings great energy to the conversations. He’s been really giving to the indie community and I’ve had a lot of fun talking with him on and off the podcast. Listen to Wobblies & Wizards for a pure audio experience that gives you great creator insights in interview format.
LINK TO ALL EPISODES
https://anchor.fm/wobbliesandwizardsSome of my favorite episodes so far
HOSS by Tim Obermueller https://anchor.fm/wobbliesandwizards/episodes/Hoss-Compatible-with-the-Mothership-Sci-Fi-Horror-RPG-e1uu3h7
These Stars Will Guide You Home by Albi
https://anchor.fm/wobbliesandwizards/episodes/These-Stars-Will-Guide-You-Home-e1uit6r
Wobblies & Wizards also covers Ready Play Games, our zine A Butterfly Dies, Dungeon Malarkey, TLD RPG, and more!
Game Pitch Series by Dieku Games
Garry reached out to me earlier this year to check out the signup form for Game Pitch and I really love both his idea behind the Game Pitch and what Garry wishes to do with it. Listen to Dieku Games and the Game Pitch Series if you like to see short and awesome slideshows, see more of the in progress work, and hear a ton from the creators in pitch based with bonus back and forth.
Game Pitch Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9wgt1BOPPpNHI8KRDm4Mc4xdPF51XFFb
Some of my favorite pitches so far:
The Bastardized Classics by Matthew Morris and Jon Davis
The Bloom by Goblin Archives and Josh Domanski
Dieku Games also covers
Tabletop and Tentacles with Kristopher McClanahan
Kris has been churning out videos for Zine Month and I’ve been a big fan of his since 2021, both as a publisher and video maker. Listen to Tabletop & Tentacles if you want concise 2.5-5 minute videos that bring a great energy and feel like 3rd Party campaign page videos. Run downs, ambiance, feel, and additional takes from Kris.
Zine Month Playlist (21 Videos strong!)
Some of my favorite videos so far
Derelict Delvers by Cezar Capacle
Dead Air by Fiona Ruthven
Tabletops and Tentacles also covers Sins of Eden Prime, Beneath The Sea of Dust, Hit the Road Jack Solo and more!
The Weekly Scroll EP 068 [ The Adventure Archive]
It’s all about ZiMo 2023 and Hunter and Ryan share their enthusiasm for all of their favorite projects. Listen to The Weekly Scroll if you like Kickstarter page scroll-throughs and want to hear excitement behind a ton of projects.
They cover Demon Lord Expansion for Twelve Years, Lordsworn, A Butterfly Dies, Project Ecco, and more!
More great episodes from The Adventure Archive
https://www.youtube.com/@TheAdventureArchive/videos
Linda Cordega Spotlights ~50 games from Zine Month on Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/zine-month-indie-games-ttrpgs-horror-fantasy-scifi-1850082416
https://gizmodo.com/indie-ttrpg-game-crowdfunding-zine-month-zimo-quest-1850114238
Dicebreaker’s Live Stream + 31 Zine Month Picks
https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/roleplaying-game/best-games/zine-month-2023-rpgs
Third Kingdom Games Mini-Interviews
Todd Leback is doing short form email interviews posted as blog posts for ZiMo23. I love these formats because it gives the creators time to share more with every question answered. A lot of behind the scenes and thoughts.
Todd covers Chris Air, Mark Finn, Cezar Capacle, and more so far!
BLOG LINK
https://www.thirdkingdomgames.com/blog
There are a ton more people doing great work showcasing small publisher’s projects that I didn’t get to, but I hope this is a great introduction to a bunch of games nonetheless.
Constant Downpour Remastered Update
We’re sending the files off to the printers Friday!!
104 pages in and were stoked to share ‘em! Once the hardcover is in the printing queue, we’ll be finishing up the 8-page zines so we can send those to print by the first week of March.
Solo Ruleset
Alfred Valley is working through the solo rules for Constant Downpour Remastered now! We had a few back and forths that I’m excited about and Alfred’s vision to make sure solo works even if you’ve read the book!
Backerkit Update
TLDR Backerkit no later than next week!!
I keep begrudgingly pushing this back because we’ve had a hard deadline of Feb. 20th from our printers before the start of yearbook season which would delay CDR until August!! Delays are a result of underestimating the time it takes to do all the finishing touches on a project. Especially in the layout and proofreading stages. I’ve double backed on promises with both Backerkit and other project deadlines multiple times now. Things are leveling out and we should maintain better expectations from here on out.
OUTSOURCED UPDATE
We revealed the team in The Guac 008 and I’m happy to reveal new art from Evangeline here!
The other big news is the Luko Fin Corp duology ( Constant Downpour Remastered and Outsourced ) is now a trilogy!!
As originally intended, each book is designed to work seamlessly stand-alone, but all three together to offer a long-form campaign.
Here are the books:
“Outsourced” [Zine]:
Introduces Luko Fin Corp and gives all of the corporation’s details for Wardens to interweave Luko Fin Corp into their games. This includes introducing the three Death Planets (Venus 3, Trace Atko, & Celsio-X) where Luko Fin Corp send mercs to die.
The brightest highlight is the “Escape From Jiri Clovis Bunker Mission” written by Christian Sorrell!
“Constant Downpour Remastered” [Hardcover]:
Survival campaign set on Venus 3. The crew must survive the harsh landscape of Venus 3, and throughout their struggles it is slowly revealed that the Potamo Major (one of Luko Fin Corp’s alias) rigged their rocket to crash. Getting off Venus 3 requires trusting Potamo Major to send the crew back to Jiri Clovis Bunker or pairing with the rebel group Poto Minor to hi-jack a rocket and escape Potamo Major.
“Planets to Die On” (WIP Name) [Zine]:
Two adventure building toolkits for Celsio-X and Trace Atko. The first generates a hex crawl across a frozen barren land packed with monstrous burrows stalked by two massive horrors - the Wooly Revenant and Wraith Apparition (each with their own running procedures).
The second generates tunnel systems on a blasted hot planet complete with random encounter tablesand The Red Death horror. Built for one-shots, mini-campaigns, or expanding existing planets or areas the crew finds themselves.
“Outsourced” and “Planets to Die On” will be our next Mothership campaign funding in Late April/May!!
I got really stumped on making a worthwhile and exciting toolkit for the back of Outsourced. Anything short enough to fit wasn’t as helpful or exciting enough. So we broke it off into it’s own zine. Evangeline will be illustrating this zine as well.
With “Planets to Die On”, I’m really excited to add Three More Boss Level Horrors to the Tunaverse. I’ve really enjoyed making these tight and easy procedures to run big bads. The Wooly Revenant, Wraith Apparition, and The Red Death all offer unique experiences. The worldbuilding part of the adventures compliment the horrors well too!
Excited to share more soon!!
Next Month + The Guac 010!!
Free Pamphlet Next Month!!
4 Free NPCs that connect Orbital Debris with Knights of Lazarus and Familiar Faces Vol.1 !! They’ve been written, but I didn’t have time to finish the art for these NPCs yet. The ever-expanding Tunaverse! We’ll continue to drop more free NPCs that tie together modules, including tying Orbital Debris in with the Luko Fin Corp trilogy sometime in the near future!!
The other goal for The Guac 010 is to share more progress with the open-source layout project. SpicyTuna’s open-source layout project has been on the back burner for a few reasons, but we’re excited to get these style guides out to everyone with enough variations to keep them cool and unique for a huge number of creators to use. If you’re an indie game designer who wants to learn more about layout or just have it made easier, stay tuned for it, and feel free to drop me a line!
Thanks for reading this month!! We’re stoked to share our updates and share all of the Zine Month / Zine Quest love going around.
Have a beautiful day!!
Stay connected
Twitter: twitter.com/spicytunarpg
Instagram: instagram.com/spicytunarpg
Email: marco@spicytunarpg.com