Zines, things great & small — Exalted Funeral's new releases for Shadowdark, Mothership, and indie RPG supplements

Recently I wrote about 3 of Luka Rejec’s zines, short but approachable RPG supplements that marry great aesthetic design with concise wordcounts. Today, I take a broader view with Exalted Funeral’s zine releases. These cover a variety of game styles, some working as standalone experiences while many bolster existing games. While smaller and less expensive than a full book, there’s a lot one can pack into 40 or 50 pages. These releases feature wide experimentation with content types and visual style, and show off a breadth of experience from the Exalted Funeral banner.

Ooze Nun- Setting/adventure for Mothership

Ooze Nun is the kind of thing that epitomizes the attitude of a zine. Short, aesthetically extravagant, and purposefully grotesque, it uses the format to punch above the scant weight of its words and pagecount. Ooze Nun is an adventure for Mothership, perhaps the premier scifi horror OSR game out there. I’ve never written about Mothership here, but suffice it to say I’m a fan of its rules and presentation, which share much in common with Free League’s Alien RPG.

Ooze Nun takes clear inspiration from 80s-era grindhouse splatter films. Its pink and green neon violence tells the tale of Planet 85, a corporate pleasure-planet styled after the final days of Earth. Colonies Ringwald, Springsteen, and New Jayfox have befallen extravagant catastrophes that beg investigation.

In a work this short, anything more I write would spoil the mystery, but I can’t be faulted for discussing what is admitted in the premise and description itself. Sacremuck the Impenitent, Ooze Lord of the Void, has come to enact the RezOozerection. He spreads across the land, literally, by means of the swirling ooze that is his very body. Players will face challenges in body and soul, threats that will transform and corrupt both in horrific fashion. There’s little in the way of formal rules, consisting mostly of locations, enemies, and tools to use both. This can easily support an adventure on Planet 85, if with some help and fleshing out by the GM.

Hexen vol. I, The Antiquarian’s Anthology - class, lore, and adventure for Outcast Silver Raiders

First of all, how have I never heard of Outcast Silver Raiders before now? I’m in love with its red/white/black color scheme and suggestive use of negative space. The muddied paints are evocative but primal, their unfinished edges letting your brain fill in the smaller details. It’s perfect for horror, and that’s before I say anything about the occult vibes or the simplistic but (from what I can tell in one zine) appropriately tuned rules.

The supplement itself has a lot to uncover. It contains the Antiquarian class, a delver of secrets and magical rituals. I don’t have the core book to compare against and provide context, but I can say there’s a thematic but useful set of abilities tied to its various areas of knowledge.

From there, we have a plentiful list of mind-bending Eldritch artifacts and optional rules for stress/horror. These are welcome inclusions in a horror game, and work along similar lines of Darkest Dungeon, if you are familiar. Rest and success can reduce the stress that you accumulate through your adventures.

My favorite inclusion might be the Epiphanies: revelations about the world that add horrific potential as a medieval resident tries to reconcile their limited worldview with the horror of their encounters.

Rounding everything out with a cult faction and an adventure, replete with full dungeon, and I can safely say this has broken the boundaries of what I consider a zine to be capable of. This is no thaw; this is spring. It’s a full, bountiful addition to what appears to be an already content-rich game. I’ll definitely be checking out the core release in the near future.

Milk - Quick-Delve adventure for Old-School Essentials

A concise adventure, Milk serves as a great example for how to design and present a dungeon delve. The first page is its map, followed quickly with an overview of the experience, then the adventure itself. This dungeon is deliciously weird, featuring multiple factions vying for control of a magical chocolate factory. Both the art and overall tone match that perfect line between gonzo and grimdark, with none of the…baggage, shall we say, of comparable adventure Blood in the Chocolate. (I advise you not to look it up.)

For a short release, there’s appreciable variety in the puzzles, encounters, and items at play. That’s not to mention the dungeon’s design itself, with some looping pathways and good environments for battles or negotiations. Quick to prep and easy to use at the table, the book doesn’t skimp on usability or inventiveness despite a short pagecount.

Zombie Brain Eaters: Suburban Decay in the U.S.A - Zombie survival for 5 Alive

An interesting mix of punk and sincerity, this supplement for 5 Alive, a system wherein you roll 5 or higher for success. This game is all about its death spiral: you start out with d12 at full health, but reduce your dice type as you take damage. You change difficulties by changing your starting HP, and therefore how quickly you downgrade dice.

The zine opens with an in your face artstyle that I can’t pinpoint but to say that it’s incredibly familiar – the kind of scrawled violence I’ve seen on album covers, band posters, and dive-bars for decades, but can’t pinpoint to a single source. Despite this, its introduction features worthy insights on the origin of the zombi myth. It’s not heavy context, but provides good framing for those not in the know.

This is a simple, self-contained game. Your character has one of five specialties, like increasing crit range for constructing things or being more efficient with medical kits. The variety is minimal, but this is not a game about character building. From there we get concise but effective rules on combat, travel, noise (which attracts zombies), and equipment, with 12 premade characters to use upon death. You’ll also find rules for specialty zombies, human NPCs/enemies, along with sample locations and an adventure. There’s a lot in here for under 60 pages, and it’s definitely enough to keep you engaged for a few adventures. Progression is mostly through equipment, or regression should you succumb to the pathogen.

Forest of Exile - Secret Doors adventure for Shadowdark RPG

With multiple small hex-crawls and dungeon locations, the strange fey machinations on display make Forest of Exile a memorable adventure. It’s an interesting mixture of freedom and railroading, with a few too many assumptions about player direction melded in with lots of caveats and extra options for specific details. This might be the one release of this bunch that would benefit from being a longer title. The book has lots of great ideas and direction, but too much of it is dumped on you in giant blocks of text with scant organization. That’s only true within a given location, where the many motivations, options, and procedures crowd one another out and make the book difficult to use at the table.

More generally, the book does take time to break out important NPCs, the overall thrust of the adventure, and the underlying narrative. Once you get into it, there’s great variety to be found in the mutating landscape, as dream slowly converts into nightmare. Ancient grudges by the Leanan Sidhe encroach upon settled lands, with little care for the inhabitants therein. The deeper you delve into this adventure, the more its creators’ minds run wild. I won’t spoil much, but I do want to note one of my favorite details: an ever-burning forest full of hostile whispers.

1-900-Phantazy - Brief game/adventure styled on dialpad phone-based gaming

Styled as an old-fashioned call-in RPG (kill jester), this uses the parlance and procedures of something you would play with a dialpad…almost to a fault. Fogey that I am, I have to wonder how much of the target audience has the cultural knowledge to know what this game is about. Its insistence on maintaining tone also creates some mild confusion: it uses “dial” instead of “roll” for dice actions, and an Operator for GM. You start with a budget and damage reduces that value (a skeleton does 25 cents of damage). What the game says you need to play (like a credit card and dialpad) aren’t actually necessary. That’s just the styling of the game, which includes old-fashioned tips as if this were an NES game.

The game mostly functions via 1d12 and several d6s. The d12 is your main die for action, with d6s used mostly for damage. 11 is always bad, 12 is always good, and everything else works off of variable target numbers. 11s reduce hp outside of combat while 12s increase it, both at a value of 25 cents. The rules are a little spread out. Those details that I placed right after one another have a few pages in between in the book. Overall the authors don’t seem too concerned with navigation. You get a lot of talk about equipment and specialized rules before a clear idea of what you’re actually doing, and how some of the basic rules work.

There are several classes, each with distinct special abilities and results of d12 die results. From there we find equipment, lots of monsters, and a brief intro adventure. What we have here is full of style but not as full of usability. You take damage in percentages of 100 because of the money theme, but deal it in values of 1-6. The class abilities are generally interesting, and this could be good for a throwback 90s game night with some chiptunes on in the background.

Game Masters of the Multiverse - Collectible art cards

This set of 18 cards, identical for all purchases, feature some of the best and most vibrant works commissioned for EF books over the last few years. Each card has a quote/game reference with artist credit on one side and cover art on the other. Apart from mentioning the sturdy cardstock that supports them, there’s nothing I can tell you that would be more valuable than showing you a few so you can see for yourself. I don’t know what one does with these, maybe use them as book marks or seating charts for a wedding, but art doesn’t have to have such a functional purpose. If I could encourage the designers to do anything, it would be to make these available as posters or something similar. This art needs to breathe, in as many forms as can take it.