Guess which country Pizza Games is from? The Italian publisher has gone in dark, or at least weird horror, for an Into the Odd-inspired TTRPG called “On the Odder Side“.
Sound good? The Kickstarter community thinks so, as the campaign is many times over its modest funding goal. Yet, it’s a relatively short campaign with about two weeks left to run, and the countdown clock is ticking on the pitch page.
The pitch, like the promised book, is in two languages: English and Italian.
PCs find themselves in autumnal atmospheres in a world with Victorian aesthetics where the familiar becomes unsettling. Characters might be here by choice, fate or misfortune, but they have to deal with it now.
Not only is Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd an inspiration, so is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. While Into the Odd might be a dominant inspiration, it’s not the only TTRPG credited, as Fred Hick’s Don’t Rest Your Head is also featured. That’s a game where PCs cannot sleep and must deal with exhaustion and superpowers.
Marco Ragni, creator of On the Odder Side says that their TTRPG appeals to people who like engaging stories and those fond of the OSR gaming style.
The rulebook will be 48 pages and contain everything you need to get going.
Some have called it Carcosa, others Xanadu, yet others Tír na nÓg, but these are merely names. Mere conventions. This place feels familiar, doesn’t it? Uncomfortably familiar. The neighborhood isn’t much different from where you grew up, though perhaps in your backyard the grass didn’t hum that eerie dirge you hear now. Yet that building over yonder resembles the one where you’ve toiled for twenty years. But the color. Does that hue have a name? It shouldn’t exist, your nose bleeds just glancing at it. Here, nothing is as it seems…
The campaign has been funded, but Pizza Games, an indie player in a growing market, still benefits from people spreading the word. The hobby does too, of course. Backers offering just €1 get the Oddities Almanac as a thank you. That’s about thirty prompts suitable for most horror games.
At only €4, backers get the Oddities Alamanac and Book of Souls for a further 32 pages of rules and setting.
These are low reward thresholds to hit! €7 adds the 32-paged Book of Bones, with settings and tips. While €9 the Book of Madness has tables of eerie ideas.
The tiers above have sold out. Sorry.
On the Odder Side wraps up fundraising on the 5th of December and expects delivery around May 2024.
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