Geek Native has logged several hundred RPG and related Kickstarters launching during Zine Quest. In the end of week podcast highlights show I talked about the time pressure created. It was a moan. So, in contrast, here’s one man with an absolute love for Zines.
That man is Tim Hutchings, the designer of the multi-award-winning RPG Thousand Year Old Vampire.
Warning; there’s plenty of swearing in this pitch. The first minute addresses Tim’s new Kickstarter, A Fantastic Longing For Adventure; the remaining 20+ minutes is a tour through decades of enthusiastic zine collecting. Oh, that $1,000 Tim wanted for the zine? With over a week to go, there’s nearly $30,000 pledged, and you can see the latest total on the project page.
A Fantastic Longing For Adventure has a gimmick; with the zine, you’ll get three coloured sheets of plastic to look through. One sheet will be red plastic, one green and one blue. When you look at the zine’s colourful pages through the lens of this coloured plastic, you’ll see new images revealed by the colour contrast.
As there are three sheets of plastic, the game is designed for three people.
Nay, not just a game, a simulator. A teenaged Tim Hutchings almost-virtual-reality experience in which you and your two brave companions (I am actually choking with laughter as I write this) get to be me for an evening. And I tell you how to play D&D, among other things. In fact, the name for this zine was originally Tim Hutchings Tell You How to Play AD&D because it’s true and it’s an homage to Rodney Anonymous Tells You How to Live, a music program hosted by the lead singer of the Dead Milkmen–my favorite band at the time described in this zine.
Hutchings is also embracing the lost cost vibe that some people feel are an essential beat for the zine heart (and some suggest has been lost from some Zine Quest projects), and the project warns that the contents were bashed out in a few hours late at night. It’ll be messy.
Thus warned, let’s look at the pledge tiers.
For $5, you are thanked with three different PDFs. Why three? The coloured layers intended for the print product are split into separate documents, so three people each have something different to read.
A pledge of $15 will get you the printed zine and those three pivotal sheets of coloured plastic.
Other tiers are available, including one for retailers, but one of note is $100, which gets you the signed zine and some original art.
As the zine is finished and just needs to be produced, you won’t have long to wait, and the estimated delivery for the project is July 2021.
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