Justin Ryan Isaac of The Lone Bards and Halls of the Nephilim blog pointed out Nate Treme’s game jam, Pamphlet Dungeon Jam. The concept, a jam (game creator event) where gamers can show off their one-page adventures, spoke to me as loudly as Kickstarter’s Zine Quest did. To that end, I reached out to Nate to ask him about his games, this jam, and what he hopes to accomplish with it.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Nate, thanks for talking about your #Jam with me. What is Pamphlet Dungeon Jam?
NATE TREME (NT): Pamphlet Dungeon Jam is a game jam where participants are asked to create a tabletop RPG adventure that fits in a letter size pamphlet format.
EGG: What inspired you to create Pamphlet Dungeon Jam? Why run it as a #Jam through itch.io?
NT: I design a lot of pamphlet brochures at my day job. I work for an addiction treatment non-profit and we use pamphlets to share info on our different programs. It’s a great format for fitting lots of info on one piece of paper. So, it seemed like a natural format for gaming.
When I posted pictures of my Pamphlet Dungeons, they got a lot of attention. I really want to see what other people do with that format. A game jam seemed like the best way to invite folks to explore this format, and I love that more TTRPG creators have been moving to Itch lately. I’ve been an Itch fan for a while.
EGG: What’s the ideal Pamphlet Dungeon in your opinion?
NT: For me, the ideal Pamphlet Dungeon will be something I can print out easily [a Letter- or A4-sized piece of paper trifolded into a pamphlet] and run a gaming session from with little to no prep.
EGG: When does it run from/to?
NT: April 1st to May 1st.
EGG: How many participants are lined up so far?
NT: 98 [as of this writing.]
EGG: Will this #Jam include the judging of individual entries?
NT: No, I thought about doing a ranked jam but decided a low-pressure creative jam was a better way to get more people involved. Maybe we can do a contest jam later on.
EGG: With #PamphletJam, what will you consider a success?
NT: If we see some creative and/or fun takes on the format. The area of the RPG world I’m mostly into is the DIY/self–published scene which has a huge focus on collaboration and iterating on each other’s ideas. More people exploring an idea leads to innovations that the whole scene benefits from. I hope to see some cool layout ideas that I never would have thought of doing.
EGG: Kickstarter’s February initiative, Zine Quest, involved creators producing RPG zines and resulted in excess of 100 zines. I think it was an impressive result and, I hope, will lead to a long-term increase in the number of zines that are produced.
Were you aware of Zine Quest? Did it influence #PamphletJam?
NT: Yes, and yes. Seeing all the cool zines got me thinking of trying the pamphlet idea. I love small format print products like zines.
EGG: Tell me what Mount Zorgoth and In The Light Of A Ghost Star are?
NT: In The Light of A Ghost Start is a very simple RPG I wrote mainly for one–shot sessions. It’s designed to be easy to run and easy for new RPG players to pick up. Players take on the roles of Martian scavengers who travel to a strange far future Earth to find ancient human artifacts. It’s in a small zine format and available on Itch and DrivethruRPG.
Mount Zorgoth was an entry in the One Page Dungeon Contest which is also an influence on the pamphlet jam. It’s going on right now and everyone should check it out. Lots of cool one-page adventures come out of that contest. I did not mean to schedule the Pamphlet Jam during the One Page Dungeon Contest, but I’m going to try to participate in both.
EGG: For those who don’t know you or your work, can you share what you’ve done and what you’re working on?
NT: In The Light Of A Ghost Star is my rules lite sci-fi RPG. I have two pamphlet dungeons, The Temple Of The Bat Serpent and The Mephitic Laboratory Of The Pescamancer. Those are all available from Itch.io and DriveThruRPG. Right now, I’m working on a one–page procedurally generated citycrawl called The Stolen City. I’m also working on a fantasy tabletop RPG called Wanderers Of The Strange Earth.
EGG: For those interested in following your work, where can they find out more about you? Where can they learn more about #PamphletJam?
NT: My Patreon (www.patreon.com/HPS) is where I post the latest RPG projects I’m working on, as well as royalty free artwork and early drafts of upcoming projects. I also will occasionally send out Dungeon Junk Mail which is printed RPG stuff I mail to patrons. My website is natetreme.com. Join the Pamphlet Jam at https://itch.io/jam/pamphletjam. I’m excited to see what people submit to it!
Thank you for speaking with me, Egg!
Pamphlet Dungeon Jam runs from April 1st to May 1st on itch.io:
https://itch.io/jam/pamphletjam
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