Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 2/323

Phil Conners Memorial Edition

Found while doing some office re-organization. I’m stoked! I have another one lurking about, as well. I need to frame these both. Also: Proof of Life!

The two-headed mole rat that lives just outside the bunker stuck its heads up out of its burrow, made a note of its shadow, and then consulted the 2023 Farmer’s Almanac to subsequently proclaim there will be six more weeks of Winter. To which the rest of Texas said, “No shit.”

It feels strange to have all of my friends and compatriots in their various enclaves and bunkers around the state reporting no electricity and crazy car-killing slabs of ice when we here in the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker remain covered in drizzle in temperatures several degrees above freezing. There are snowflakes on the weather apps, but drizzle rain and partial sunlight on the ground.

I’m not sure whose idea this was, but I’d like to make a formal proposal that we go back to four unified seasons, wherein the temperatures are consistent throughout the country, and we don’t have things like polar vortexes, inland hurricanes, rains of frogs, or any of the other weird-ass  one-in-a-million meteorological phenomenon they have to keep subjecting to poor Austin, Texas on 911: Lone Star.

ZineQuest, Kickstarters, and More

I’ve been participating in ZineQuest on Kickstater for the past four years. I started doing this as a build up to being able to publish Polite Society as a 5e game book. Then a bunch of stuff happened, most of it personal in nature, and it took me down a very different path. Now we’re at ZineQuest 5, and while I’ve written a LOT of words on Polite Society, I’m still no closer to making a splat book for Polite Society happen.

Instead, I’m going to lean into what I’ve already been doing and release the rules as a series of zines! GENIUS! This keeps me working on the thing I really want to work on, and it keeps me on a deadline, which I really appreciate, even when I set it myself and have to bad-mouth the editor months down the road.

Here’s the link to my ongoing campaign: Polite Society: the Zine for Thieves, Rogues, and Ne’er-Do-Wells. It’s doing well, but I’ve got a big funding goal, my largest ever, and I would really appreciate any amplification you’d care to give it. If that means money, you are awesome. If that means sharing links to all of your D&D playing people, then you are differently awesome. Either way, I thank you sincerely.

And as long as we’re dropping links like day three of a chili cook-off, here’s a few more from friends of mine in the online Zine/RPG space.

Levi’s Combs Dungeon Malarky is a fun, weird, sword-and-sorcery kind of zine for your OSR games (but here’s a hint—Levi’s stuff works great for any fantasy rpg game).

I worked with Billy Blue recently on Ogre’s 11, and he delivered fantastic art and was a real joy to work with; professional, enthusiastic, and timely. He just wrote his own zine, called TLD RPG, and it’s a low buy-in, full of his artwork, to boot. Recommended!

Trevor Stamper is a DCC whisperer. His Tales from the Smoking Wyrm zines are excellent supplements for Dungeon Crawl Classics. He’s on the sixth issue now, but you can always dip back in and score back issues with Add Ons (and I think you should).

Jeffrey Jones came up with a novel idea, aimed at old school and OSR players: write thoughtful essays about core concepts in AD&D, such as a creature type in the Monster Manual, or some rule set found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. He’s on the second issue now. Check it out! Gary’s Appendix #2

James F. Kelly has a great zine called Delver, chock-full of cool tables and stuff to roll on the fly. He’s funding Delver #7 right now, but you should look into all of his zines. They are packed with cool ideas, props, cut-outs and more.

And Finally...This is not a Zine, but that’s okay, because it’s my favorite thing so far this year. Jess Nevins has completely rewritten the bare bones of 5e D&D to fit his historically accurate (not boring) weird-magic Norse odyssey, called The Fury of the Northmen.

You must click through and check out the amazing art Jess commissioned for this book—and also, take a peek at how he’s reworked Vikings to be both as historically accurate as scientifically possible, and also as magical, bad-ass, and batshit cool as you’d want to play in a D&D game setting. Go see for yourself, and know that supporting this project (and all of the others listed here) helps individual content creators just trying to their best work and make something cool to share with others.

Keep a weather eye on the blog, and prepare for a larger than normal media report on Monday. The boys have been busy.