It’s hard to describe the scope of the indie tabletop roleplaying scene during an average month, but it’s never more difficult than in February. For the past three years, February has been home to Zine Month—or ZiMo—during which indie TTRPGs attempt to crowdfund books and games.
ZiMo is a community-forward project that was created from Kickstarter’s 2019 Zine Quest initiative as a way of bringing back old school RPG zines, and has since expanded into an industry-wide movement across multiple crowdfunding sites. The sheer expanse of games being crowdfunded, promoted, and developed is overwhelming, but I’ll try to give y’all a place to start and what to look for. As a ZiMo alum, this movement has a special place in my heart, and I hope that everyone finds at least one game (or two, or three, or a dozen) they’re excited about.
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Discovery has always been a problem when it comes to almost any game that isn’t published by either Paizo or Wizards of the Coast. That being said, both Kickstarter and CrowdFunder are using their platforms specifically for Zine Month. Kickstarter is doing Zine Quest again (the initiative that started it all) and CrowdFundr is supporting Tabletop Nonstop, both focused on small RPG zines and games. There are some games crowdfunding on itch.io, which offers less customization and even less opportunities for discovery, but keeps everything in one place. Indiegogo is another option for crowdfunding, but there’s not a lot on there at the moment and the discovery options are extremely poor—and the sorting options are skewed towards popularity rather than any other metric.
Honestly, and it pains me to say this, a lot of folks are on Twitter promoting their work. It’s a great place to find and follow creators, not just during Zine Month, but throughout the year. Many designers and indie outfits use ZiMo as a barometer for their future slate of projects, not just the project that they are immediately funding. There’s a feeling of camaraderie online, and often one designer will hype up other projects, lending their support to multiple games either through promotion or acting as a “guest writer” for other games. You can also look on the Zine Month site for a self-submitted list of crowdfunding projects.
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One of the really great things about ZiMo is that so many games are being offered at low price points—PDFs can go for as little as $5. So even if you have a small budget you can still pick up a couple really great standalone games or modules, and support small, indie creators. There’s a lot of really great work being done with popular systems. Mothership, Primal, and Old School Roleplaying-based RPGs are all getting some incredible third party content.
So here’s the thing: there are hundreds of games crowdfunding this February. I can’t possibly list them all. I am, however, going to pull out a couple favorites in the following slides that I think you should check out. Hopefully you find one or a few that you might enjoy.
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Don’t worry too much; I’m planning three more of these roundups. Your favorite has time to make the list. Additionally, you can peruse the ZiMo website here to get a firehose’s worth of new games! There’s so many incredible games and wonderful designers promoting their work this month, that I can’t possibly list them all. That said, I hope that everyone finds at least a few games they’re willing to try out in February.
If you think that your favorite ZiMo game (or your own!) deserves to be on this list in the future, send me an email. I’m excited to hear from you.
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Source: Gizmodo