Since I was a kid, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving has been one of my favorite stories. I decided this year that it would be fun to work on a one shot adventure for at least one of my favorite tabletop rpgs featuring the Headless Horseman, then decided to host a jam and encourage others to do so because why not? So here's how it works:
- The jam runs from October 1st to November 1st, 2024.
- You can submit as many entries as you would like, but just one entry per game system. For example, I am planning on writing multiple Headless Horseman adventures: one for Vaesen, one for Shadowdark, one for Hell Night, and one for Pirate Borg (and probably a few others as the inspiration hits me...I'm also working out adventures for Mothership and Cities Without Number). You can do this too, for any system you'd like, and you can submit all of them.
- You must include the Headless Horseman (or some variant as is appropriate for your chosen game system as long as it's still recognizable as the Headless Horseman) as a central element in the adventure.
- You can write your adventure for any tabletop game system or none (system agnostic).
- You must follow the OGL/SRD/3rd party rules of whatever game system you are using.
- Your adventure can be up to 20 pages. It's meant to be a one shot adventure!
- Tokens, maps, music, etc., are all okay.
- Submissions must be in PDF, A5 or A4 paper size format.
- AI art and/or text is not permitted. This is for humans by humans. Public domain/creative commons art and kit bashing is allowed; use attribution where applicable.
- All entries must be free/pwyw.
- No hate of any kind permitted: no racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, misandry, etc. Keep your bigotry in the basement. No one wants it.
- Every participant will receive a Headless Halloween sticker for participation, just to say thanks for having fun with me! (The stickers I designed are posted above. Each person will get at least one of these, maybe even both!)
PLUS (and this is the cool part): three entries will be selected at random and will win pdf copies of these games (with permission from the publishers):
- Pirate Borg: these guys have gone a step further and decided that they will provide a code for 50% off for all participants post-jam for the core book digitally, AND once we get at least 25 submissions to the jam, they're going to double down and provide three discount codes for physical books as well for the random winners. (Winners would just need to pay for the shipping. )
- Worlds Without Number
- Stars Without Number
- Cities Without Number
- Mothership
- Hell Night
- Against the Darkmaster
- Darkness of the Demimonde
- In addition, one of the three winners will also receive a choice of Shadowdark or a Cursed Scroll Zine.
Please note that none of the publishers are sponsoring or endorsing this Jam; they just donated prizes for which I am eternally grateful and appreciative.
In case you need it, here are links for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.
Any questions? Reach out and ask!
What are you waiting for? Get writing!
October 15 update: Guess what? I've decided to get some dice made! Follow along and pick some up! Headless Horseman d6 dice