I am not above backing down from a previous, secret promise I made to myself not to back any more Kickstarters for a while.
For the most part, I’ve held the line pretty well, but gosh darn it does Zine Quest really put a promise to the test. And the promise has failed.
Not A Place of Honor by David Lombardo just ticks two giants boxes for me, and I pretty much instantly backed the zine on Kickstarter.
This isn’t an advertisement, but I a definitely going to use my tiny platform here to signal boost stuff that I get really excited about. Here’s an intriguing summary posted by the creator on Reddit:
“Not A Place of Honor is both a supplement, and an “in universe” object created by the fictional Bureau for Arcane Neutralization of Esoterics (a sort of fantasy SCP Foundation). The idea to format it this way came from the Field Guide To Hot Springs Island, and I just love the idea of rpg supplements you can actually hand your players and say “this is what you find”.
It’s part travelogue, part scrap book, and part “found footage” about the exploration of millennia old sites dedicated to containment of dangers. The design of these ancient containment sites is based off of an actual US government research project to determine how to mark the danger of buried nuclear waste in a way that would be effective for 10,000 years. See excerpts from the document here.
That document makes the rounds in TTRPG circles every once in a while, and ever since the first time I saw it, I always had the thought that all those warning systems and threatening architecture would be like candy to most adventuring parties. I wanted to recreate these ideas in an RPG context, to test if they would work (they will not work).
You can check out the Kickstarter page to see a couple previews of spreads to get an idea of how I’m approaching this, and also see the incredible artwork being made for the items.
Also we have a super cool promo video that I just want everyone to see.”
Will I ever use this in a game? Maybe, maybe not, but from the summary and previews on the Kickstarter, it seems quite readable, so it’s worth a look in my book just because I love reading about the answers to the question of how do we communicate with people so far in the future in any meaningful way.
Anyway, if this looks cool to you, the pdf is a steal on Kickstarter, and please go back it! I’m not affiliated in any way with the project. I just think it’s neat.
