Squeaking in under the wire, Meditating Munky is raising funds for Ninetoe's Guide to Monster Hunting (ending on February 22nd).
Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less.
A: Ninetoes’ Guide to Monster Hunting is a combination of a monster compendium and Hex Crawl regional setting. Illustrated with maps and creatures by Meditating Munky and written by the compelling Ninetoes himself! This zine will offer four monster huntsand more will unlock with stretch goals. Meanwhile, the compendium will offer information, clues, and flavor to create a thrilling hunt for your band of adventurers.
Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects.
A: This will be our 2nd Zinequest and 3rd Kickstarter we have run! We did the Seventh Moon Adventures collection last year which was a collection of 6 one shot zines. We also ran a big Kickstarter for Tome of Dungeons, a book of fifteen plug and play dungeon crawls, and a deck of cards with traps, puzzles, items, and creatures - all of which are going to print now and will be shipped out soon!
We had a blast on our last two projects, and we learned a lot from both! One of the biggest things we are doing with this Zinequest is just simplifying some of the things. With the last two Kickstarters we ran, we had all sorts of rewards from hardback books, deluxe foil-stamped books, a huge collection of zines, a slew of poster maps (literally over 36 posters between the two projects), multiple card decks, and all sorts of other goodies, and that was great, but this one is being simplified in there are just a few tiers now. We have STL files, a PDF, the VTT edition, a Print run for our zine, and then the Deluxe tier which gets everything. Managing a bunch of tiers was stressful to say the least, so we wanted to narrow everything down and focus more on just making the core book the best it could be.
Another thing we did with our last Zinequest was we ran a campaign for 6 different zines, and it seemed that people would rather just support a bunch of smaller projects rather than one really big one with 6 different zines. A lot of folks back multiple projects during Zinequest, so they don't want to drop everything they have to spend on one project. So that is why we are taking this approach to make one healthy-sized zine and make it something that a DM can use for a long time. We are planning for the base book to be about 30 pages, and as more stretch goals unlock we will be adding more to it. If we hit all of our stretch goals we project the book to be close to 50 pages in size!
Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out.
A: So this book is going to be focused on exploration and tracking some legendary monsters! We have a huge Hex Crawl we are using that will really ensure no two groups will share the same experience, and we also have our legendary beasts! We are starting with four of them in the core book, but as I said earlier, we will be unlocking more monsters with each stretch goal! Hunting a legendary beast is no easy task either, you often have to lure the beast out. To hunt it, you will need to find out what it hunts, where it hunts, and what attracts it, too! Furthermore, we want to introduce some crafting mechanics to really utilize the surrounding regions, the plant life, and of course, once you locate and trap (or defeat) a monster, ways to use them in recipes as well!