This OSR Zine Is Worthy Of A Read (or 10)
And the 3 questions it makes me ask about my zine
As someone who, now, puts out a monthly zine, I think it only proper to share about some zines that I think are crushing it.
The first zine I want to talk about is a new one, issue one in fact. It’s called Witches of the Wenderweald from
. As someone who has a faction of witches in his setting called The Witches of the Blackened Earth, I thought, “Ooo, more witches!!”
The first two page of the zine open with a series of artful panels each explaining, in a brief phrase,
what has happened to this world and why
who are the people in this world with what their purpose is and
it sets up who will be in conflict in this world
Perfect set up. It answers the who, what, where why and a little how.
There is an introductory letter from the author Odinson and after that you jump into character creation on page 5.
In this issue you are choosing between being a witch or being a hunter and the zine describes each of those with reserved details but when you read it, you know what you’re getting into.
The rest of the zine has some fun offerings
a hex map, with key and 2 lightly fleshed out locations.
a couple of monsters keyed to a traditional monster, a “it’s kinda like this”
a divining board to roll your dice on for boon or bane
a chart of deities
plenty of tables to roll on with creative mechanics.
Along with the artwork, this zine is self contained. You have a whole world in one place. You don’t have to buy another zine in this series, but who am I kidding, I’m buying #2 whether I need it or not.
As a zine creator, now, I look at every zine and ask myself 3 questions before I change anything about my zine:
Is this who I am as a creator?
As I said earlier, the artwork in this zine is excellent, dark, moody and devilish. My zines are not nearly this dark because my setting is not as dark as Witches of the Wenderworld but I certainly want to play in this world, run it for others and allow it to influence the witches of my world.
I love to play in dark places but find it hard to create dark places. But who knows, maybe this Wene
Is this what my audience wants?
Yes, Wenderweald is definitely what my audience wants but it also seems they want something lighter, more grey-ish than black. I’ve only put out 8 zines, to this point, and I have had some good feedback, no major notes, but that doesn’t mean I won’t experiment with art or mechanics.
Am I willing to steal?
Yes, now, I won’t steal art, names, whole worlds, etc. but I will steal things like formatting, styles and the ideas for a mechanic like the oracle or the doom die.
In the book Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon says,
“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”
― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Wenderweald has a ton of great ideas.
So, won’t be stealing as I will be collecting and then morphing ideas into the things I think fits me and fits my audience.
What do you think? Are you a lover of zines? A creator of zines?
What flavor of dark do you like? Let me know.