Zine' Gaming

I like the Zine culture in games like DCC, OSE, the Borg games, and a few other communities. This is a freer publishing model where ideas matter more than presentation, artwork, or quantity. Another part of me dislikes the Zine culture, since my shelves end up a collection of dozens of randomly sized, digest-after-digest piles of small books mixed in with the corebooks.

While Zines are great, they bloat my game and clutter my shelves. The compilation works sometimes put out later help a great deal, but I have not found a solution for the clutter. I use magazine organizers to pack them all together, but they are rarely usable when in those holders.

Still, Zines are better than the alternative: the overdone, 500-page hardcover, AI-text-filled, AI-art-packed, all-encompassing, rarely playtested giant volumes of game expansions put out on crowdfunding sites. I would rather have 16 pages of playtested, solid material in a stapled-together journal than a 500-page, barely-playtested sewn-bound hardcover any day. A little clutter is far better than a shelf packed with hardcovers of high-volume and low-quality content.

A beautiful hardcover does not always mean what is inside is functional or well-designed.

In a Zine, there is so little there, and the presentation can't distract you, that what is inside better be well-thought-out and solid. In most cases, they are. There are times when all I want is a one-book game, with no zines and no expansions, and I have those, too.

But in general, the Zine culture is good for the hobby, lowers the barrier to entry, and emphasizes ideas and well-tested concepts over flashy presentation.