Write or Die!

The Winchester Document Zine
Designer(s)	Beth Jackson	Artist(s)	Beth Jackson	Publisher	Beth and Angel Make Games
	1+		5+		5+m

What is a Zine?

Essentially, Zine is a term from the 60~80's where indie creators are able to release small creative works. Originally, they were published in magazines; now a days, they are either released in PDFs or collective printed works. It could be a board game, roleplay game, or really any other type of work of art.

As such, our coverage of Zines will be much shorter and will touch lightly on the actual rules of the game; most of our other articles cover game rules pretty well. With Zines being smaller games, we want to support the creators of these works especially since most of their games are a few dollars each anyways. If the Zines we cover sound interesting to you, please support the designers. 

Game Overview

You wake one morning with a note in your hand that reads..."The next time you write something will be your last!" You blink and the note vanishes. 

• What does it mean?
  • Was it real?
    • Was it just your overactive imagination?

These questions linger in your mind. Eventually, you convince yourself it wasn't real and decide to turn it into a joke for your friends. You attempt to write little notes for your friends to spook them out, but you find as soon as you started writing, you were compelled to keep going. "How long will this last and why can't I stop? What happens if you were to stop?" you ask yourself..."I thought this was just something I imagined..." When you are finally able to force yourself to stop, what you wrote vanished. You keep trying until you finally write enough for the compulsion to go away, and finally, the note you wrote remains. This happens over and over every time you try to write...

This was the tale of one such person inflicted with what is being termed "The Winchester Document" curse. Now, you find yourself inflicted with the same curse. You have heard rumors of people surviving this curse, but it is unclear how. The only thing that is consistent is that they kept writing until the voice in their head told them enough, but each time they began writing, the time seemed to get longer and longer. 

Final Thoughts

It is a neat writing exercise wrapped in the format of a game. It reminds me a lot of the National Novel Writing Month and other similar challenges where writers will spend a set amount of time (or target a number words) to focus on creating their works. This game is basically that in a bite size form. You competitively focus on creating a brief work in the allotted time or you must throw away what your wrote. It may seem harsh, but I kind of like it. If you find yourself struggling to create something in a small amount of time, would you be able to make it into something larger anyways? If nothing else, you can leave the game thinking about what you were trying to create, and maybe you will form a better vision for it for the next game where you will fill the allotted time. 

It is a neat little concept that helps push your creative juices. Feel free to even put restrictions on what is written like a theme or some other bounds. Be sure to check it out on their website if you like creative writing games. 

Giveaway Opportunity

If you were to write a 1-2 sentence note passing the curse to a friend, what would you write? Like the WVGamers Facebook page and post your answer to the post where we shared The Winchester Document article link: https://www.facebook.com/wvgamers1/

Tabletop Nonstop on Crowdfundr 

Angel and Beth are taking part in the Tabletop Nonstop on Crowdfundr Event throughout February. The spotlight is on zines, and they are planning an engaging and interactive campaign that includes:

• Making 16 zines from a list of prompts (some voted on and some chosen by Angel and Beth). These might be games, perzines, photography, poetry... who knows?
• EXTRA MODE: They will make at least 5 more zines from submitted challenges. These will be voted on, and contributors can buy more to challenge us directly.
• Designer's Notes Editions: These add notes to detail their design choices, inspirations, and more.
• Bundles of our past zines.
• A co-op zine made with a good friend of theirs, Rochelle Boggs, who's also running a campaign of her own! Rochelle does super cute art and even has an expansion for her Winnie the Pooh game being funded! She will be offering a different co-op zine including us in her campaign as well.

Links/Media

The Winchester Document Shop Page

 Crowdfundr Link for Beth and Angel Make a Campaign (affiliate)

Disclaimer

WVGamers received a review copy of this game for review. This does not impact our honest review of this game. 

WVGamers was provided an affiliate link for the campaign that will result in a small affiliate payment to use if you back their campaign.