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It's dope when you can tell someone *gets* your work. I think Kismet and I would have built the adventures even further out if we had more page space. We ended up cutting a good bit to make it all fit. OSR modules are great for getting the creative juice flowing, but I find that a lot of them just give the GM a place and a little bit of context. I get the sense that the game devs of those modules thought a lot about the location and what the location is supposed to be, but don't really think about what players will actually try to do at the table. I want my games to feel alive and react to the players, sometimes in ways they wouldn't immediately expect. I really appreciate this review!

You're very welcome! More of this nonsense to come (Zinequest 2025).

I'm a big doofus and don't check my substack often, but I followed! Looking forward to what y'all put out next.

That's very sweet of you to say! I'm actually really bad at math IRL, but that's why we have fantasy lol

Thanks for the praise! Gotta jam as much content into those pages as I can lol.

Glad someone like the philosophic wankery! I love making NPCs for my players to hate.

Trappist Ails feels like one of those murder mystery boxes you can order to do a lil Agatha Christie dinner theater. There are even handouts! 

It's like a mini-West Marches. Fabulous! 

Naughty player characters get the GATE GOLEM

A solid example of classic dungeon design. It could probably benefit from putting smaller illustrations throughout the dungeon write-up that shows the surrounding rooms. 

The visual identity is super striking, making the reader's eyes dance all over the page. I may be biased, but I quite like the Honey Golem.

As as fellow enjoyer of chaos, I'll say that the layouts could probably benefit from one less aesthetic vector. Maybe the bolded keywords of the alternate font could be toyed with for readability. 

Those are ace suggestions! Thanks for the high praise. 

The Obsidian Ziggurat puts the MEGA in megadungeon. Good lord.

Gorgeous layouts, easy-to-reference materials, and a dang Hypercube to boot!

This is the most jam packed entry in the whole jam. Maybe its because the couch can shrink?

I feel like I'm looking at an occult program about to crash my computer and infect both my favorite tarot deck and my Curse of Strahd home game. Sick

Came for the flowers. Fled because flying mantis.

I want to play this to discover what would happen if an adventurer smoked the Bath Salts of Travelling.  Is it considered bathing my character does it naked??

Clear-cut layouts with solid writing and good taste in art. 

Big fan of the Silent Thunders. Rewards for players shouldn't just be a bonus to numbers. The boons on this list are an asset to any Knave's arsenal. 

A fine adventure in its own right, Lost Throne is worth it for its random tables alone. 

SofGB makes me recall my lifelong love for Jorge Luis Borges. An author's search for their Golden Book is perhaps the most sacred of quests. For further studies, I recommend Ficciones by JLB. 

Zaristo the Perfumer keeps making me think of Elden Ring. Perfumes as a magic system is so fun!

A one page dungeon with a strong hand-crafted vibe that fits in your pocket. Effervescent!  

Bronze Lure takes a conversational tone that puts you in the boots on the muddy ground quickly. The isometric Tower illustration is killer. 

A throwback to the days in which TTRPGs were built upon the foundation of the creator's writing skills. Mists builds a well realized location through evocative story telling.

I'm just a wordy little imp I guess. Thanks for the kind wordys!

That's the key! I just need R E S T R I C T I O N S

Yoooo! This is so dope! I'd like to see you do a really complicated multi level puzzlebox dungeon with this kind of illustration.

An adorable little fantasy romp with an even more adorable cast of characters that would kill at any table down for some silly fun. 

About as distilled as a dungeon crawl can get! Infinitely adaptable and easy to slap down at your table. Mine this for your home game if you need a dungeon with technology in it.

The layouts are very clean and easy to reference at the table.  It's impressive that Ashen Moor trusts the GM to carry its somber atmosphere without jamming a ton of garish assets into its page count. Good writing and design should carry the game at its core! Reminds me of Shadowdark's design aesthetic. 

The transparency Burn Baby Burn has about the prompts used in this game jam is refreshing to see. Tracing the way the prompt morphed into a Casino is a testament to the efficacy of the collective thing we're all taking part in. This was a joy to read.

The Dungeons In Between has a dope three dimensionality  that's hard to convey in a static image. This makes it easier to wrap your head around as an interconnected space. Splitting the salient portions up on the subsequent pages to illustrate the exact position of the party is quite effective. 

Recently, I've been made aware that I was trying to reinvent the wheel again. After I saw Cave-Girl's works I thought to myself, "ya know that is just a lot easier." Crystal Gate is a mini-vision of the bigger Depth Crawl I'm working on for Zine Quest. Appreciate your kind words, and being compared to such incredible peers! 

That isometric dungeon map is so dope. The layout of the dungeon all around it sells it, too. Got me re-evaluating how I communicate locations in my own works. 

It takes stones to name a location "The Town of Dull." This is oozing personality, but manages to still achieve OSR brevity and usability. 

The isometric dungeon illustration is absolutely sending me. Evocative of the early days of the medium in the best way.

Thank you!! The chase is probably my favorite piece from this one. I decided it wasn't long enough twice during development lmao!

That's awesome! Just trying to do my part~