Greetings Horizoners,
A really short note today. Well, it was until I started writing it.
The crowdfunding campaign for AFTERWORDS: The Far Horizons Guide to Death finishes tomorrow night, Friday 13th October, at 11:59pm UTC+1. At time of writing, that’s 34 hours away. Time is short for us on Earth, but it’s even shorter for Afterwords, so if you want it, act now!
AFTERWORDS is an anthology of short indie tabletop roleplaying games about death, chosen around the themes in a central essay which looks at diverse attitudes to death and what unites them. We look at the feelings, myths, rituals, and superstitions around death; ultimately, we want to enable conversations between people on these subjects formed around the safe lens of play.
We’re featuring voices from all across the indie scene with interesting games that hit a massive variety of topics and tones:
Farewell, My Heart is Jess Marcrum’s heartbreaking game of final conversations and care between a terminally ill patient and their caregiver, with the long-hidden feelings of love between them bubbling to the surface. This is a hard game but a vital subject, and it’s one we’re stoked to share with you.
Shadow Market is Poorna M’s gloomy game of selling your time for money, or spending money to buy fortune. In short, it sounds like a less-than-subtle reference to how capitalism forces us to consider our lifespan as a personal resource. Staring superstition squarely in the eye and laughing, this game is a sly look at how we all long to bite the hidden hand of the market.
Upon the Digital Sea is Jeremy Borders’ reflective game of how communities come together around the individuals they serve, and how their existence can be as tenuous as our own lives. Examining this through the modern context of online communities, we hold our breath as we assess who will remember us – and how – when we shuffle off this mortal coil.
Charon Rails is Keith Asada’s whimsical game of corporate psychopomps ferrying the dead in the afterlife industrial complex. You think it’s hard to make a difference in your job? Try being a psychopomp battling against the void monsters whilst trying to comfort the dead. “Your death is important to us” is the message, but it sure is hard to see that through the bureaucracy.
Our essay is by Bastien Trotobas-Gibelin, and through carefully conducted interviews with neurodiverse and neurotypical people, it forces us to examine the differences between attitudes to death from different points of view to our own: how we differ, but more importantly, how we’re all actually the same.
AFTERWORDS: The Far Horizons Guide to Death is crowdfunding to raise money to pay all these cool people, and nearly twenty coop staffers too, as well as fund a print run of the hardcover book.
The hardcover edition will be printed by a premium offset printer in Lithuania, and will feature black linen covers stamped with silver foil, bookmark ribbons, and endpapers printed with gravestones personalised by backers and staffers alike.
If you don’t want the hardcover, we gotchu: there are softcover PoD coupons included with every pledge, as well as digital editions. There’s also a hardship tier in case you’re strapped for cash, and tiers where you can personalise one of those gravestones we mentioned before. You can also buy five community copies for strangers on the internet, or even get a game with one of the creators.
If all of this sounds like something you’d be into, please consider backing today. We honestly think you’ll love it, and that there’s no way in heaven or hell that you could regret the decision. But – and I can’t stress this enough – time is short, so you’ve got to head over to the Kickstarter page and back today.
Thank you so much for reading this far. If you can’t back the campaign, then please consider sharing it on whatever social media platform you can, or just tell a friend. Every little helps at this final step, so if you love the Far Horizons CoOp and believe in us, then please lend us just a little of your time. We truly and deeply appreciate it.
That’s all we’ve got for you this time. Until next time: make cool games. wage class war.
Regards,
— F.H.C. //