Nessun Dove is a collective of (mostly) Italian creators, including momatoes, the award-winning Filipina best known for ARC: Doom. They're currently raising funds for The Magus & The Oracle, a solo-journaling game that explores lonelines.
Question. Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less.
Answer. momatoes' The Magus is a solo RPG about pathos, calamity, and the infinite loneliness of power where you use dice and pen to write the unique history of your character's quest for arcane mastery. Along your journey, you will be guided by the Oracle: a companion deck of system-agnostic inspiration cards filled with prompts, art and keyphrases to add new layers of meaning to your story.
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: NessunDove's first entry to ZineMonth was in 2023, with On the Way to Chrysopoeia, the first English edition of an epistolary ttrpg. It was a wonderful experience, partly because the studio had already worked on the Italian edition beforehand and had fallen deeply in love with the game. This collaboration with momatoes to create the first complete print run of The Magus follows the same premises: even though this is her first ZiMo, momatoes has always made creating community between gamers a priority, with projects such as AcrossRPGSEA gathering rpgs made by local and diaspora South-East Asian creators. Basically, it's a bit cheesy, but we believe teamwork (between creators and with backers) is the key to a good ZiMo project.
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: We've always found The Magus very cool for its ability to combine storytelling with crunchiness that goes beyond "draw a card and answer this prompt"... Which makes it kind of ironic that we decided to combine this new edition of the game to the Oracle inspiration deck. Turning the prompt tables from the game into card draws will greatly increase the variety of Spells and Bonds encountered during the game, making The Magus that much more replayable. It's also an excuse to create a beautiful object, brimming with weird inspiration from remixed public domain artwork and original illustrations from momatoes.Â