Crowdfunding & Playtesting

Two Brand-New TTRPGs from Elliot and Brian

Feb 03, 2023

Big News! Today is an exciting and nerve-wracking day for me and Elliot because we are taking our first steps towards launching two brand-new TTRPGs! We’ve both been looking forward to sharing them with you for a while and we thought there was no better way to kick off Zine Week 2023 than by announcing both of these projects on the same day.

It’s Finally Arrived!

Elliot here! I am currently a ball of excitement and anxiety in equal measure because today is LAUNCH DAY! Project ECCO is now live on Crowdfundr. What’s Project ECCO? I thought you’d never ask.

Project ECCO is a game of time travel and cosmic horror—a solo journaling game with a twist.

Solo journaling games typically facilitate the telling of a story or exploration of a character through prompts. Some fantastic examples include Anamnesis, The Portal at Hill House, and The Wretched.

Project ECCO does this same thing, but swaps the journal for a full-year planner.

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You are an agent, nameless and dedicated.
You have been tasked with tracking an all-consuming Entity through time across the year of your planner.
Along the way, you’ll discover time anomalies, evidence of the Entity’s influence, and pieces of your identity you didn’t know you had lost.

The mechanics, spread across seven time-travel Devices, make use of 6-sided dice, playing cards, tarot cards, and modifications to the planner itself. As you play, you’ll keep track of your inventory, identity, and encounters on a 2” x 6” bookmark that slides right into your planner.

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To bring this game to life, I decided to turn to crowdfunding for a couple reasons. One, I knew this project was more ambitious than my previous releases, requiring a multi-part print run and more dedicated design and illustration time. Two, I wanted to hire a team of collaborators to help make this the best game it could be, and I am so proud of the team we’ve assembled.

Samantha Leigh - Guest Writer

Will Jobst - Editor

Brian Flaherty - Layout Artist

BE/HOLD - Composer

For more info on these incredible creators, check out the Crowdfundr Campaign!

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I cannot wait to get this game into people’s hands. There’s a lot of work to be done. But with your support, we’ll have the resources and time to make it happen.

Cheers to Launch Day!

Elliot

My First Dungeon: Playtest Edition

Readers of this newsletter will be familiar with my first foray into TTRPG design with my one-page spy game Double Agent, Double Trouble. I had so much fun designing that project that now I’m back with a new game called Schröedinger’s Cats and I’ve decided the very best way to do my first playtest is on this podcast!

This season Elliot and I are discussing our thoughts on game design, how to incorporate playtest feedback into revisions, and letting you peek behind the curtains of something you rarely get to see: a first draft of a game, warts and all.

Schrödinger’s Cats

Schröedinger’s Cats is a game of kidnapped cats and quantum mechanics that draws inspiration from the mechanics of games like 10 Candles and Fiasco and the aesthetic of Honey Heist and Something is Wrong with the Chickens.

Everyone knows that we cats have 9 lives.
Once spent, they linger and frolic in an in-between place called The Liminality, neither living nor truly dead.
They are our friends, ourselves, our invisible companions.
Now, someone has begun to steal away our spent lives, imprisoning them somewhere beyond.
To find out who and to rescue ourselves, we must find a way to this liminal space. To be both alive and dead.
We must become…Schrödinger’s Cats.

Download a FREE pdf of Schröedinger’s Cats (ashcan version)

Above is a link to the game as we will be running it in the playtest. At the end of this season I’ll release an updated version of the game complete with all the changes that I glean from this first playtest.

Recommendations

February is here which means Zine Month has begun! Here are some other dope Zine Month projects you should check out.

GRANDMOTHERSHIP - Grandmas?? In space??? Need I say more??

Horse Girl - A one-of-a-kind body horror transformation into a horse (funding for a print run but the PDF is already available).

Traysikel - A motorcycle fantasy adventure about identity and the lengths people will go to erase or preserve it (in pamphlet form! I’m a sucker for a good pamphlet).

Live Event

If you are local to the New York area you should swing by our personal favorite Friendly Local Gaming Store The Twenty Sided Store on February 11th from 1pm to 4pm where Elliot will be hosting an open play tournament of his first TTRPG, Abominations, as part of the store’s Designer Spotlight series. Abominations is a tactile, GM-less TTRPG for 2-6 players. Using a set of letter tiles and some 10-sided dice, you will create one-of-a-kind monsters of your own design. Then take them into the ring for a fight to the last scraps.

Don’t miss it. It’s gonna be a blast!