I'm not sure how the roundups for this month will look. As most of you may be aware, February is ZineMonth, and there are a *lot* of new projects being crowdfunded. I'm conducting a series of interviews with creators this month, and there are a enough that it looks like I will be posting at least two per day, every day except Mondays (which are reserved for the Roundup). These interviews will post at 1:00 am and pm every day. The roundup may be a bit sparse for the next few weeks, especially for projects release on itch, as many of those publishers are focusing on ZiMo stuff. In August, the first time I did these interview series, I was posting links to past interviews in each Roundup, but this time around there are just too many for me to keep up with that. If you're interested in following along, though, be sure to checkout the blog periodically!
If you're interested in checking out ZineMonth projects there are two separate organizations sponsoring them. The first is Kickstarter, and it is called "ZineQuest 5". You can find the directory of those projects here. "ZineMonth" was started last year by a collective of indie publishers when, at the last minute, Kickstarter moved ZineQuest to August and left a lot of people in the lurch. You can find ZineMonth's webpage here.
*Kickstarting, but not associated with ZineQuest, is the project Wraithlands, a Celtic dark fantasy, that I thought looked pretty cool.
*I'm super excited about the Electrum Archive, Vol. 2. This is Emiel Boven's zine, and it features some absolutely stunning artwork and an imaginative setting.
*Also on Kickstarter is a new, and eagerly awaited, Kevin Crawford project. Cities Without Number is his cyberpunk game, and at the time of this post it's around the quarter million dollar mark.
*Darkness of the Memimonde is a Victorian pulp horror rpg that uses Tunnel Goons, by Nate Treme, as a ruleset. It looks to be an interesting take on the genre.
*Cursed Swords and other Bladed Objects is a free 7 page pdf from Lucky Dice Games. It is pretty much as it sounds.
*Armored Storyteller Publishing has just released The Lair of Amanitus: Campaign Drop Dragon Lair. It features a green dragon lair and is compatible with OSE and similar systems.
*Arcane Imperfections Vol 2 is short pdf with new spells for OSR gaming. It looks like this volume focuses on druidic spells.
*Breaker Press Games has just released the Outlier, a new class for DCC.
*They Might be Heroes is a one page, rules-light, OSR-inspired game that has had all OGL material removed in response to WoTC's recent mess.
*Mork Borg: Book of Misery 2 is now out, and has new classes, monsters, and options to bedevil players with.
*I saw this mentioned over on Discord a few weeks back: Rodney Hampton has released The Mage's Companion, a collection of rules written for OSR games to give wizarding characters name-level activities.
*Love Mutants of Castle Heartache is the new Valentine's Day module by Goodman Games. The title makes me think it should be a Spinal Tap song.
*Secrets of the Black Crag, by Chance Dudinack, is an eagerly awaited nautical hexcrawl that is now out on Drivethru.
*Tyler Dood has release Core 8 Spellcasting, an alternate spellcasting system for Old School Essentials and other similar games.
*Odious Uplands, by Jason Sholtis and published by the amazing Hydra Cooperative, is now out. It's the anticipated sequel to Operation Unfathomable.
*Return to Trostenhal is another free adventure written for Dragon Warriors by the fine folks at Red Ruin Publishing.
*I've got a couple of projects crowdfunding right now.
Hex 14.42 -- Troll Mountain is the last hex in the Keep of the Rawhide Gang cluster and is officially part of ZineQuest. It'll be a 32-page zine with two small dungeons, thoughts on trolls, and more.
I'm trying out Crowdfundr as an alternate way to raise money for monthly publications, and am currently raising funds for the nineteenth issue of Populated Hexes Monthly. It's still cheaper to buy a subscription or join my Patreon, but I'd like to reach a point where I can commission new cover art for each issue, and I'd testing out the waters with Crowdfundr.
*I've also added a couple of new titles to the webstore.
Two titles by 3, 2, 1 . . . Action: Children of UMA, their post-apocalyptic game, and Minisub Mania, an adventure using those rules.
Scrap Rats, the game of space salvage that uses the Mothership system, is also just in.