Unknown Dungeon Newsletter Autumn24
The Unknown Dungeon Newsletter for Autumn 2024
It’s been a busy few months, during which I’ve not posted a newsletter. I think that’s a good indicator to shift them from ‘monthly’ to ‘periodical’. It saves me writing, and subsequently you reading, posts just for the sake of it. That said, there’s some interesting stuff crowdfunding at the moment, and some cool stuff coming down the pipeline!
One-Page RPG Jam
Over the summer we held the 5th annual One-Page RPG Jam. You can check out the 665 submissions on the jam page. If you joined the jam (even if you didn’t submit), and haven’t already done so, please take a couple of minutes to fill out the community survey to help inform future jams!
And if you’re not already on the Discord server, you can join below.
Cool Stuff
Long Tail Games’ Tiny Library card collections are great little slices of TTRPG ideas and I highly recommend picking them up. Over the course of the year Ash at LTG has been curating a new list of cards through a series of jams, and now you can get the cards from the first three jams in this new expansion.
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/tiny-library-tiny-expansion-11
If you’ve never heard of TEETH by Jim Rossignol and Marsh Davies then you’re missing out. A grotesque, twisted horror take on 18th-Century England powered by a paired-back Forged in the Dark ruleset. Bundle of Holding is hosting a bundle that includes not just the core rulebook, but two one-shot modules including Night of the Hogmen which is absolutely brilliant and worth the price of entry by itself. If you level up the bundle you get the expansion More Teeth, as well as two more one-shots.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TEETH
If you’re on the fence about TEETH, just read this blurb for the one-shot Blood Cotillion.
The players are formidable assassins, disguised as husband-hunting ingenues, who must root out the occult evil that lurks in the manor, destroy it, and ideally survive. Amid ballroom intrigue and occult savagery, the ingenues make horrifying decisions to achieve their victory over the supernatural, and also over polite society.
Crowdfunding
There’s some big IPs crowdfunding at the moment, with Discworld and The Smurfs both up on Kickstarter, and Welcome to Night Vale on Backerkit. I’m not linking to them; they are easy enough to find if they’re your jam. Instead, here are some cool, smaller, projects.
Everspark by Cezar Capacle has a few days left over on the lesser-used Crowdfundr. Cezar makes some amazing stuff and Everspark looks to be no exception. I won’t call Everspark a heartbreaker, but it is a FRPG with dreams of streamlining playing, which I think we can all agree is a noble goal. Also, you can play as this guy:
The main tier gets you the PDF and a print-at-cost voucher for Lulu so you can get the physical POD.
https://crowdfundr.com/everspark
A Fool’s Errand is a beautiful-looking post-apocalyptic science-fantasy game where players take on the role of fools. The uses tarot cards to fuel collaborative world-building as well as the core game engine and the setting is based on a retro-futurist D&D actual-play.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strautmaskreplica/a-fools-errand
A second edition of Aaron A. Reed’s underworld generator toolkit Downcrawl brings not only a book to the table, but a deck of cards that spread the many tables from the book across the 36 cards to make creating your underworld a breeze. The campaign also includes a whole bunch of other options, including a spiral–bound reference book, an adventure zine, and two more random generator decks.
https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/aaron-a-reed/downcrawl-2e-roleplaying-in-a-weird-wondrous-underworld
Radar
November brings with it Tuesday Knight Games’ Mothership Month; a collection of over twenty Mothership crowdfunding campaigns happening over a 30-day period from a broad range of third-party creators and one first-party hardback book. Mothership has one of the most creative third-party communities and there’s already a wealth of beautiful and interesting zines out there. Backing multiple projects
during the month can get you bonus loot, and I’m excited to see what is coming out.
https://www.backerkit.com/c/collections/mothership-month
Finally, the new and updated Dungeon Master’s Guide or 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons drops this month. Your mileage may vary with the WotC’s industry dominator, but I really like a lot of the changes they made in the Player's Handbook, and I’m interested to see what they do with it this time (2014’s version is famously a mess) and the alt-art covers of these news core books are all gorgeous.
Until next time!
James