Pretendo Games

This week I released a new game for the Eclectic Bastion Jam titled QZ, short for “quarantine zone.” It’s a science-fiction RPG inspired by Roadside Picnic and Annihilation, designed to send modern-day scientists, soldiers, and scavengers on expeditions into an area where the laws of nature no longer apply.

QZ is by far my longest game to date—currently about 78 pages with covers and illustrations, about twice the length of Agents of the O.D.D. About a third of that is full-page, Creative-Commons licensed illustrations, and much of the rest is a bunch of modular tables, like 100 “alterations” the QZ might have on your body, 20 encounters in each sector of the QZ (City, Wilderness, Wasteland, Tunnels), 20 contacts for each of the major factions in Town (the Lab, the Guard, and the Underground), 20 artifacts with strange effects, and so on. And the page count will almost certainly increase after I have a chance to playtest it. (I have a feeling I’m going to want to offer more pre-made artifacts, I’m still itching to put in a terrain mapping procedure I started working on but didn’t have time to finish for the jam, and I already got some good suggestions about making an environmental anomaly generator….)

If you have a chance to read it, I’d welcome your feedback—and if you manage to run it, I’d love to hear how it goes!