Greetings Horizoners,
You’re probably aware as to why but I’m thinking about death a lot recently. Honestly, as someone who has struggled to come to terms with this for a long time, confronting this behemoth of a project is either a brilliant subterfuge or a terrible distraction. I’m impressed as to how much my brain is able to sidestep “yeah but this is death fren” and instead say “what promo activity are you going to do tomorrow Marx?” and that’s delightfully refreshing.
Promotion and marketing is tiring. It’s work, y’all. It’s labour. When you see people doing it, unless they’re the kind of people who love it (and I might posit that these are rare AF in the indie TTRPG space), please bear in mind that they don’t like it. They have no love for it. It’s just something they do so a) you get to see cool stuff and b) they get to sell cool stuff. Like on the world of Arrakis, there is no c).
Anyway. You probably know why I’m back in your inbox after such a short break.
Afterwords addresses things like this in its central essay, Embracing Empathy & Diversity by Bastien. Regardless of your neurotype, you’re still going to die, and you still have to come to terms with that. So it’s an angle we can use to develop an intuitive understanding of one another. I’m very excited to see what Bastien has to offer us. I think it’s going to be cool.
We’re not just looking at this essay though, and we have four (and then some) games which are going to go into the anthology. Poorna M’s Shadow Market, for example, takes a philosophical thought experiment like The Trolley Problem and reexamines it through the lens of superstition and myths around death. Would you sell your own longevity to benefit the fortunes of another? Is that, ultimately, what capitalism asks of us? (yes)
That’s not the only game examining myths. Keith Asada’s game Charon Rails looks at the myth of paying the Ferryman to cross into the afterlife. I guess back in Greek times there were fewer people dying; nowadays, there are millions more dying everyday than probably were ever born, and to compensate, you have to imagine that there’s a kind of industrialisation to that. Recently I watched the final series of His Dark Materials on the BBC, and there are scenes in the world of the dead where the dead are processed in giant warehouses. I think Charon Rails, with its psychopomp train operators ferrying the deceased to their personal valhallas, is going to look a bit like that, except (hopefully) less industrial, less bleak, more whimsical, more hopeful.
There’s a kind of whimsy to Upon The Digital Sea by Jeremy Borders, too. In this game, we get to examine not only our own brief lives, but also how those lives tie into a broader web, and also how communities, particularly online communities, live and die. What happens to community spaces that we build ourselves around – and that build ourselves around us – when we pass away? In looking at this issue of digital remembrance, Jeremy hits upon crucial questions of the digital age, but also (like Aleks Krotoski’s The Digital Human) longer-standing philosophical questions about who we are in relation to others. Deep stuff.
In the end I guess we have to hit on the deepest topics, because death itself is serious as well as all the other stuff we mentioned. Nothing cuts deeper than the death of a loved one, and when that death is tied up with the idea of unrequited love, and caring for someone in the final stages of their life, that’s a deeply moving story. This is exactly what Jess Marcrum is examining through her epic Farewell, My Heart – this idea of a relationship that could have been, that maybe will be, but will be all too brief regardless. There is a death at the end of this game, and it’s coming at you like a juggernaut; you can’t stop it, or slow it down, and you can only hope that you can tell them what they mean to you before the end. It’s a message for us all.
Afterwords: The Far Horizons Guide to Death is crowdfunding now. You can get all of these games and the essay in one single PDF for £19 (£15 for hardship), or a very beautifully crafted linen-bound, foil-stamped hardcover for £38. We have art prints available, gravestone illustrations in the book you can have dedicated to you, community copies, and so much more. I think you’ll want to get in on this, and I hope you join us before the end of the campaign on Friday 13th October, 11:59pm UTC+1.
If you can’t afford what we’ve got on offer here, I really hope you can engage with Afterwords: The Far Horizons Guide to Death in whatever way you feel able to. Retweeting, liking, commenting: those are free! I’m posting on Twitter and Bluesky everyday, sometimes more than once. We’re talking about the games, and asking questions about death that you might like to interact with. There are people posting on Mastodon and I’m retweeting that. You can find me, unexpectedly, on Instagram too (no-one is more surprised than me). And as ever there’s our Discord server where I’m happy to answer any questions you have, which may or may not be related to the Guide to Death.
I’ve had a podcast appearance this month (The RPG Goblin) where I went into a lot of detail about the games and the book, and my own feelings on them. And I’ll be on the Plus One Exp Twitch stream on Tuesday 18th September, 9:00pm UTC+1 (4:00pm ET). Tony Vasinda is a great and enthusiastic voice for the scene, and I hope you’ll come along and find out what Afterwords is all about.
One last thing we’re doing that will outlive the campaign is the Afterwords: The Death Jam. After all, why should we have all the fun? Make an analogue game about death, publish it on Itch, add it to the jam. Have fun, play with the themes, mess around with the format. Jams are an important part of modern indie TTRPG design, and we love to see whatever people throw at it. So maybe join in, if you have the energy.
Lastly, remember: we love you and cherish you, and we want you to be happy. And also back AFTERWORDS: The Far Horizons Guide to Death before the campaign ends. ❤❤❤
That’s all we’ve got for you this time. Until next time: make cool games. wage class war.
Regards,
— F.H.C.