It seems like last month ended up hosting every single TTRPG jam all at once. In order to manage all of them (and provide some fruitful creative constraints) I’ve been working on a game that functions both as my entry into the Dice Exploder 1 Hour or Less Jam and the Free Zine Week 2025 Bundle Jam, meaning that it’s a zine game you can play in less than an hour. You can get it here:
Visit Beautiful Carcosa
It’s a trifold travel brochure for taking a vacation to Hell, more or less. You use a deck of cards to procedurally generate the map and the events that take place there, and try to collect enough souvenirs to leave before the portal home closes in 30 real-world minutes. It’s a rules-light one-shot you could pull out for people who’ve never played an RPG before, but it’s also arguably OSR/NSR adjacent, given that it consists of exploration turns, random encounters, and creative problem solving through the items you have on hand. The part I’m most pleased with is the sort of rogue-lite element of leaving travel reviews for the city as comments on the store page after a game, so that you can be encountered as an NPC in future games played by other people. It’s PWYW, so there’s no reason not to pick it up!
In other news, I’ve also properly set up a publisher account of Drive Thru RPG, so you can buy Black Iron Engine there now!
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