I saw an artpunk game on kickstarter and it made me angry

Tombpunk.

Darkbad was justified. A glut of interchangable artpunk systems, beautiful yet not so useful flood the marketplace and how many RPG discussion grounds. I guess that’s what happens when a DIY movement turns into a marketing tag. You may not like what you see when I hold a funhouse mirror to this horde of magenta and cyan-lit monstrosities but somebody had to.

Tombpunk is a proudly incomplete RPG with a conversational tone delivered in a mere 120 digest pages. Or so they promise. Not to brag, but I can make an RPG that’s even more incomplete and conversational in 20.

“ you don’t level or get XP in Tombpunk. Just try not to die”

Touche. Before you tell me I should sue, the first edition of Tombpunk is from 2020, predating Darkbad by a good few years. Though it looks like the first edition was timeless black and white with perfectly fine OSR lineart. Where’d you get the idea for purple and white on black, Kris? Seriously though, it’s not possible to make a rules-light artpunk system without copying 10 other rules-light artpunk games. The art and layout look competent. I’ve done enough to know that making any document look competent and chaotic at the same time is a pain in the ass. I’m not mad. Just a little confused, a little disappointed, and actually a little mad (I lied).

Tombpunk was funded in 18 minutes and made . I guess I’m pretty stupid to not have kickstarter campaigns going all year round. Games like this are fun to make, and sometimes even profitable so it makes sense that people keep making more, and honestly after kickstarter fees and production costs and hours on end spent staring into editing programs the money isn’t that good compared to a “real job.” I have to acknowledge that to be seething and coping at that is a little petty. But why would you work so hard on the layout, art, and gamebook as consumer good, only to leave the rules system incomplete? Why are people buying incomplete games when you could smear half-remembered rules and craft paint in any notebook and have something 10x more punk and probably just as good? Seriously, go do something like that.

Stop letting the graphic design geeks have all the fun. Once upon a time, the OSR was a DIY scene. Not very long ago, endlessly rehashing the same thing was an accusation thrown at B/X fans and the purist Anti-Artpunk side of the scene, yet for every B/X rework I see five grimdark cairnlikes, knavehacks, or 100-page ultralites. There’s only one solution. Pick a game and play a decent sized campaign with it. Write cool adventures and publish your better ones. Itchio is easy to use. You probably already know how to use a word processor and graph paper. Blogposts are simple. This isn’t rocket science. Be a collector if you want, but before you post another shelfie of all your favorite Mork Borg ripoffs to /r/osr, post a dungeon map too. Go forth and create.