OVERZEALOUS: Playing the game

Update: Overzealous is now available!

 

This post is adapted from an update I wrote for my current Kickstarter campaign.

Overzealous! Your cult has no chill. It's the upcoming solo game of cartoon zealot mayhem. In this post I'm giving an overview of the fervour-filled gameplay.

1. The game's start

To start, you’ll establish who you are as a god, what sort of world you are trying to enter, and what cult has started worshipping you. Most of these details are free-form, so you can create as full an introduction as you like or get right into the game.

For example, you might have fled a collapsing universe, finding that a secret society of malcontents at an observatory have learned your name from the stars. They call themselves The Exalted Circle Of The Infinite Spiral and are, at least initially, dedicated to summoning you.

2. The game's stats

Weeks pass within the world as you play. Each week, your cult may indoctrinate more people (as measured by a stat called Cultists). At the same time, their worship of you amasses more eldritch power for your arrival, which the game calls Imminence.

But this overzealous level of devotion has some downsides.

• Heretical ideas can spread in the cult (increasing Divergence, the amount the cult has drifted away from its purpose).
• The cultists can get more overexcited about bloodshed (increasing Fervour, the measure of zeal the cultists are experiencing).
• Ancient horrors can be drawn to the power being generated (increasing Monstrosity, the number of monsters hanging around being fed table scraps by your cultists).

3. The game's acts

As an outsider god, you are trapped behind the veil of the unreal. Your ability to reach into the world and meddle with things is limited. Each week you can attempt one action.

To win, you need to perform the Immanentising Ritual. This requires enough cultists and psychic potential built up (represented by the Cultists and Imminence stats).

Actions can change your stats, and may have side-effects. For example, you can send an avatar of yourself to admonish your straying cultists, greatly reducing Divergence but raising Fervour. Or you can expend a sliver of amassed power to snuff out some of the monsters hanging around the cult’s camp, substantially lowering Monstrosity at the cost of Imminence. Other actions solve problems, attract more followers, and so on.

The game has nine actions in total, intended to cover any number of situations, and the gameplay focuses on making good choices with them. If you need to, you can come up with your own action with an appropriate cost and consequence.

4. The cult's acts

Each week you’ll roll the dice to see what further trouble the cultists have got into on their own initiative.

If they have high Fervour, they could attack a nearby town, gamble on fights between their pet monsters, or start a holy war.

If they have high Divergence, they might sacrifice an unpopular cultist, merge with a sect of diabolists, or start raising the dead.

Events can affect your stats in various ways, or cause ongoing problems to develop.

You'll likely end up beset by long-term problems. Each week you’ll have a chance that a problem that the cult has unleashed takes its toll. For example, if the cult has a plague of cannibalism, you might get –1 Cultist and +1 Monstrosity when a cultist turns into a ghoul. If they are in the middle of a religious schism, you can get +1 Fervour and +1 Divergence as they passionately declare each other heretics.

It costs precious actions to resolve ongoing problems in your cult.

5. The cult's stats

You only need paper, a pen, and dice to play Overzealous. I’m including two downloadable printable extras to help, a stat tracker and a mini zine.

You can use the stat tracker to record changes from week to week, using a pencil, tokens, dice, chewing gum, or anything you can drop on the sheet. The book also includes a copy you can cut out or trace.

And in the spirit of the upcoming Zine Month, I’ve made a cute little palm-sized zine to accompany it, just for fun.

 

6. The end acts

Overzealous usually takes about half an hour to play, but you might take it more slowly to follow all the game book’s writing prompts. These have you record the events taking place and how you (as a fettered god) feel about your progress, and give room for creative embellishments.

If your negative stats creep up too fast, your cult can fall apart. If you manage to complete the Immanentising Ritual, though, you can enter reality, and win the game. How does the rest of history go? How do mortals react?

I hope you'll check out Overzealous on Kickstarter!

OVERZEALOUS: Inspirations, Illustrations

Update: Overzealous is now available!

 

"Out-of-control fantasy cultists in a cute cartoon style" is a compelling idea, and I've had glimpses of it in lots of different media. That's how Overzealous, my solo game of cult mayhem, came to be! Let's get into it.

First off, if you haven't checked out Overzealous, it's funding now on Kickstarter! Take a peek:

Inspirations

I’ve mentioned that the idea was sparked by the cartoon zealot artworks made by Gordy Higgins, which he generously released into the public domain and which have informed much of this game’s look.

These little characters get up to all the things you would expect of unhinged fantasy cultists. In Overzealous, those are all self-inflicted problems and divergences from what you’d prefer their goal to be: performing a grand summoning ritual. I’ve adapted some of the characters to add a few more kinds of trouble they can get involved in.

Another inspiration was the video game Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster). The ‘whimsical cultists’ dynamic and cute cut-out 2D style were big draws. The recurring motif I’ve adopted (a red dangling dagger) may have been subconsciously influenced by Cult of the Lamb’s recurring visual symbol of a crowned red eye.

I enjoy the humour that can come from having to rely on characters with poorly-aligned interests. The Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night in Guards! Guards! (Terry Pratchett) are a secret society full of petty self-important personalities.

My battered old copy of Guards! Guards!. Plus a little companion zine I’ve been working on.

I was also influenced by Sinister Hovering Orb (Penguin King Games). In that game, you play as an inscrutable eldritch entity with unclear goals, operating at a cosmic level yet interacting with mortals.

Speaking of humour, I’ve also been influenced by games that lean into bombastic, non-heroic jokery, such as Kobolds Ate My Baby! (9th Level Games) and Wizards (Markerslinger). You’ll see a bit of that kind of thing in Overzealous.

 

Influences

What about motivation for the actual gameplay design? My main design criteria for this one are

• Tactical play with well-defined actions and outcomes
• Easy to learn, quick to play, challenging, and replayable
• A flexible amount of self-directed roleplay journalling
• Actions and events that support the game’s tone

Of the solo pen-and-paper games I’ve played, one with all those traits is Dwarf Mine (Paper Dice Games), whose approach I learned a lot from.

 

Artwork

Overzealous has a bold, hectic, cartoonish look in keeping with its tone. My choice of black, white, and red means that much of the style is based in black-and-white artwork.

The core illustrations are by Gordy Higgins, and I’m also using many pieces by Evlyn Moreau, who has great cartoon linework, and a few illustrations from other artists.

Three gleeful cultists getting into trouble. Art by Evlyn Moreau.

(I’m committed to using no AI for any game project. I support artists by licensing their art, buying from their stores, and/or supporting directly on platforms like Patreon.)

The book uses a lot of eldritch symbols and other decorations, plus a set of glyphs associated with the game stats: Fervour, Divergence, Cultists, Imminence, and Monstrosity. For these I’m using art by Alderdoodle, Lorc, C M Gorynych, and Daniel F. Walthall.

Typography

Decorative text for headings and embellishments requires good typefaces. 

The Overzealous title logo uses the Moonrock and So Run Down fonts, with embellishments in Witch’s Scroll and a dagger by Lorc.

The thin, handwritten, slightly esoteric lines of Moonrock and Witch’s Scroll by Sophie Grunnet (Art SilverGlass) are a good fit for the project. So Run Down font by Raymond Larabie (Typodermic Fonts) blends ‘cartoonish’ and ‘cursed’.

 

OVERZEALOUS: Your cult has no chill!

Update: Overzealous is now available!

 

 

⭕ You are a powerful entity ready to manifest as a benevolent god
⭕ You see a cult has formed to worship you
⭕ You try to guide them towards the summoning ritual
⭕ ...They're all bloodthirsty, bickering zealots

It's a shame your cultists are so

OVERZEALOUS

I've just launched the crowdfunding campaign for my solo TTRPG of cartoon violence and cult mayhem! You can become a backer now to help summon the game into reality, and get a print or digital copy of Overzealous.


Play the game as an exasperated would-be deity, trying to do make do with the cult you've been given. Trying to ignore that they've called themselves something like "The Exalted Children Of The Abyssal Mantle". Trying to shepherd your cultists into performing The Immanentising Ritual, so you'll be summoned into the world and win.

Standing against you are the bloody squabbles and bizarre interests of your cultists, counterproductive stabbings and spiritually-pointless sidetracks from the overall goal. These will increase inevitably increase the cult's Divergence, Fervour, and Monstrosity stats.

A tactical game for solo play, Overzealous has an irreverent tone and a loud cartoonish feel.

You'll get the game as a 42-page book with print-on-demand option, plus a print-and-play companion zine and page of stat trackers.

Caution: Murders. Religious schisms. Profanity. Cannibalism. Cultists summoning nameless tentacled horrors, then making them fight. Heresy. Deliberate plagues. The inspiration of poets. Hordes of the undead. Stolen artefacts. Mystic energies attracting ancient demons. Death spirals. Hobbyist grave-robbing. Blood sacrifice. Lots and lots of candles.

 

Joinnnn usssss

Overzealous: Your cult has no chill!

Update: Overzealous is now available!

 You are a long-forgotten god. You’re benevolent and mighty, and ready to manifest in the mortal world! Unfortunately, the cult of worshippers who aim to summon you are weird, bloodthirsty fanatics.

Your cultists sure are OVERZEALOUS!

 

 

A pen-and-paper game

This is a solo RPG I've been developing, which revolves around dealing with your overenthusiastic cultists. It's tightly focused on dice-based cartoon mayhem!

You play to win, trying to keep your cult on track. If you fail, it'll all fall apart, sending you back into the sleep of centuries. There's light colony management aspects, lots of random tables, and a chaotic energy to gameplay.

 

 

My aim with this Kickstarter project is to pay for the costs of layout and print production. Sign up for notifications to get the game at a cheaper price and directly support my work!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/overzealous-your-cult-has-no-chill?ref=dhl826 

 

"You don't get to choose your worshippers"

👁️ Watch from the void. Puzzle over the bizarre squabbles of your followers.

👁️ Gently guide them towards your immanentisation.

👁️ Try to keep them on track. Wait, are they stabbing each other again? Damn it.

 

 

 

Monsters of the Month: Malevolent Revenants

The crumbling monuments of the living are haunted by spiteful remnants. Rotted bodies stir in their catacombs and merge in shambling hordes. Powerful mage-wights linger under peat mounds, poring over parchment secrets.

Portents stalk the ruins, faceless dry flesh barely containing their wrathful spirits. In ancient sepulchres deep beneath the earth, towering warriors guard glittering treasures. Above them, the night's silence stutters with the cackles of bestial ghuls. 

 

Monsters of the Month: Malevolent Revenants

A collection of undead horrors, this is the last of the mini-bestiaries I'm putting out for D&D 5e/2025!

New monsters. Special traits. Tactics advice. Lots of variant forms.

Live on Kickstarter! 

Check it out here! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/monsters-of-the-month-malevolent-revenants 

If you missed earlier collections, you can pick them up as add-ons!

Corpse prisons! Kitbashed bone golems! Toadstool-encrusted ghouls! Sear them with the light! 

Craft wizards out of Wiki articles

The Kickstarter campaign for my weird 2025 Zine Quest contribution is wrapping up, and I'm blown away with the level of support.

Wiki Articles Are Wizards [citation needed] is mostly about making bizarre wizards from wiki articles and showing them off in duels. In this note which I'm cross-posting from a Kickstarter update, I'll show you how it works.

Step one: Find an article.

Any decently long article with descriptive bits will do. Let’s choose the Wikipedia article on ‘puzzles’.

Step two: Generate some wizard aspects.

Amongst the zine's many tables, some (pages 10–17) give you templates which turn wiki article content into wizard features. Choose a template, then fill in its blanks by picking something out of the article.

For example, sometimes you'll be asked to use a little bit of description from the article, turning it into an activity, descriptor, or thingummy. Other times you'll compress and mangle names from the article’s references into a fantastic name. (See page 8 for more info!)

We'll pick out some descriptive phrases from our chosen article on puzzles: ‘riddle of the Sphinx’, ‘hangman’, ‘missing square’, ‘used the resulting pieces as an aid for teaching’, ‘16th century’. We turn them into wizard traits:

• Kangdell the Sphinx’s Hangman was cast down into this world from the Great Dreaming sixteen centuries ago. From head to toe, his body is missing squares; he uses the pieces as an aid for teaching.

Note that 'Kangdell' is a mangled name from the article's reference section.

Then we can pick out some more content from the wiki article and use it to construct more traits: ‘the Maze of Games’, ‘the World’s Biggest Puzzle’, ‘put pieces together (or take them apart)’

• They call his lair the Maze of Games. His minions are automata which put pieces together (and take things apart) without cease. The work currently open on his lectern is titled: The World’s Biggest Puzzle.

Pages 18–21 are full of even more tables, to give our wizard some personality descriptors. We use these by choosing the first and last letter of the article title, which in our example are the P and S from ‘puzzles’. Add some random rolls for the relevant tables and we find that Kangdell is 'particularly proud', and 'somewhat spiteful'.

We round it out with a few more traits, in particular merging a few categories from the article into his research interests: ‘requiring strict adherence to a particular kind of order’, ‘Category: List of impossible puzzles’, ‘Category: List of puzzle types’, ‘Category: Mechanical disentanglement’

• People find Kangdell the Sphinx’s Hangman to be particularly proud and somewhat spiteful. He requires strict adherence to his particular kind of order. He amuses himself by disentangling types of impossible puzzles.

Step three: Create spells, defences, and artefacts.

Now that we know what Kangdell is like and have a sense of his 'theme', we create his magical arsenal from article content, using some simple guidelines for spell names (pages 22–23). We'll create three spells, three defences, and three artefacts.

Picking some descriptive content out from the wiki article and turning them into spell names: ‘becoming’, ‘hidden object’, ‘the size of a sand grain’, ‘sawed around’, ‘many riddles’.

Three powerful spells Kangdell knows:

• Swilsnor’s Hidden Saw
• Spoerork’s Many Riddles
• Become The Size Of A Sand Grain

Then picking out some article content that sounds more defensive or obscuring: ‘World Cube’, ‘three cups’, ‘unite the elements’, ‘enigmatology’, ‘disentanglement puzzles’, ‘the outline’.

Three of Kangdell's magical defences:

• Eymaugladoun’s Three Cups of Disentanglement
• Pftpievandal’s Enigmatic Outline
• Uniting of the World Cube’s Elements

Our wizard should also have some magical treasures and objects of power! This article has lots of great possibilities, and I ended up choosing: ‘nine linked-rings’, ‘temple tablets’, ‘cartographer’, ‘a perplexing problem’, ‘folding problem’, ‘advanced device’.

Three artefacts secretly in Kangdell's possession:

• Botesmackar the Cartographer’s Advanced Device
• The Nine Linked Rings of Folding
• The Perplexingly Problematic Temple Tablets

Step four: Pick extra lore and traits.

We can add detail to Kangdell the Sphinx’s Hangman by sprinkling in lore and special powers from the extra tables of Ancillary Wizard Information (Part 6 of the zine). Here are some possibilities:

• Should his staff ever be broken, Kangdell breaks into the same number of pieces (and is mildly inconvenienced as a result).
• He has fragmented memories of four centuries in the jar, bored out of his brain (which was all he was at the time).
• Kangdell wears socks and sandals and carries a little grimoire in his deep-pocketed robe.
• His tower is cuboid, and moves when nobody is watching. Its stones are lined with symbol-inscribed tiles.

There's lots to do with Kangdell!

Our wizard is prone to petty grudges, magical disputes, and ego clashes, and as a result, his cabal will be duelling in the Great Wizard-Off. For information on this and so much more, check out the zine! Available now!

This post was updated in June 2025.

Wiki Articles Are Wizards [citation needed]

Wizards are disquieting, unique, and steeped in magic. This wizard leaves a trail of fungus wherever he goes, and keeps his spells under glass. [1] That one is nine feet tall and orbited by tiny comets. [2] Another has matchboxes full of slithering tongues, which do his talking for him. [1][3][disputed – discuss]

Announcing Wiki Articles Are Wizards [citation needed], a tome of instruction for crafting such twisted sages! [clarify]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/wiki-articles-are-wizards-citation-needed

➡️ Step one: Take any article from Wikipedia, or another wiki

➡️ Step two: Follow some simple rules to transform it into a weird, dangerous wizard

➡️ Step three: Pit your wizards against each other, using a tournament-style mini RPG

➡️ ...Or use them as inspiration for characters or villains [ambiguous] in your own games!

Enjoy a hefty tricolour [4] zine with:

➡️ Rules for creating arsenals of spells and protective amulets! [citation needed]

➡️ The truth about true-names! [5]

➡️ More wizardly lore than you can shake a staff at! [original research?]

➡️ Random tables for wizard anatomy, habitats, peculiarities, and more! [vague]

 

 

Inspired by: Wikipedia deep dives, and wizards from old pulps and comics, GLOG, Discworld, and Dying Earth! [1][2][4]

Follow the Kickstarter to get notified when the campaign begins! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/wiki-articles-are-wizards-citation-needed

Monsters! Horrors & Abominations is on Kickstarter!

Can you ever have enough weird horrible monsters?

Are you ready for...

• Sapient coral!
• Were-angels!
• Infinite sky legs!
• Crooning rot!
• Primeval lizard gods!
• Undead swarms!
• Void oysters!
• Rule eaters!
• Divine parasites!

This year has been spent hewing away at my new creation, Monsters! Horrors & Abominations, a hefty tome full of unique, flavourful monsters for use in your D&D 5e games. The whole book is designed for running combat encounters, with dedicated tactics advice, new traits and powers, encounter tables, a touch of humour, and tons of variants for each base creature!

Help bring the project to life on Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/monsters-horrors-and-abominations

Monsters! Horrors & Abominations

It's the Halloween season. And that means...

My new book, ‘Monsters! Horrors & Abominations’, is coming soon to Kickstarter! It's a 210+ page bestiary crammed full of weird and flavourful monsters for D&D 5e, like the...

👹 Endlessphant (wrinkled grey elephant's leg with a million knees)

👹 Big scaly one (gormless rubbery hound-god of trolls)

👹 Void oyster (nacre-petrifying abomination from beyond the stars)

All streamlined for combat encounters and delivered with tactics information, modern design innovations, great illustrations, and a touch of humour! Between base creatures and variants of them, we're looking at a total 240 monsters, ranging from Challenge Rating 0 to 20!

 

Unsettling, unspeakable things found underground, amidst the unholy and undead!

Follow along now on Kickstarter to get notified on launch!

Steps to a Hero (end of the campaign)

Do you want fantasy characters who have deep ties to their world? Backstory that directly affects mechanical traits? A fun, fast, unique character creation minigame?

We're down to the last 24 hours of the Kickstarter campaign for Steps To A Hero. It's the 125+ page book implementing a lifepath character generation system designed for compatibility with D&D 5e!

Thanks to everyone who's already supported the project!

What's a lifepath?

A lifepath is a unique tool for producing a roleplaying game character, beginning them early in life and setting them down a path to become the person that the player will begin the game with. It tells a story about how a character came about, replacing the common process of generating race, background, ability scores, and other traits.

A lifepath is a process of discovery, and each step on the path is an event, decision, or encounter which will reveal things about your character – generating both backstory and game-mechanical traits as you go. Everything in the book is streamlined for 5e, overriding or complementing parts of the base game.

What's in the book?

In Steps to a Hero, you’ll find

• Everything you need to develop characters with lifepaths for fifth-edition fantasy roleplaying
• 300 unique lifepath 'steps', each one combining a piece of weird/medieval fantasy short fiction and corresponding character traits
• A comprehensive set of rules describing the lifepath process, plus optional rules for tweaking character generation
• A ton of 5e game content including hundreds of new background features, and methods to make many millions of possible stories and backgrounds
• Support for 12 ancestries, including all the classics, plus half-djinni, half-minotaur, half-dryad, and shorewalker

Discover the remarkable story of each character’s early life, and determine how those experiences gave them the unique abilities and traits in their background.

 

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Venture forth!

Jade Perida: A 5e character made using lifepath generation

The Kickstarter campaign for my new book is three days in and has reached its funding goal. Today I'm sharing a 5e fantasy character created with the Steps to a Hero system.

The book has several ways to randomly generate character ancestries. For this one I used the balanced method, which has a small bias towards human ancestry. In today’s case, nine dice rolls gave us djinni and elf ancestry, and the story of someone's life.

Jade is not a physically brawny character, but a mental powerhouse. The uncovered story of her life is a driven and noble one. She set off at age 28 (young, for someone with elven blood) on a three-year journey.

Jade has one lifepath step from each ancestry, and another four steps that are events in her life. Jade is a bit of an outlier in that she didn't learn to use any tools over the course of her lifepath, but she ended up with plenty on her character sheet: lots of languages, skills, weapon proficiencies, starting equipment, and background features.

Steps to a Hero includes an optional rule for selecting a class based on the character's lifepath. In return for this constraint, a character can transfer a point from as many as five ability scores into one of their choice (to a cap of 19). We applied this rule and found that Jade is torn between Paladin, Wizard, and Cleric. Given her modest physical attributes and the righteous path in her background, Cleric is the obvious choice! The final step was to transfer a point from Intelligence to raise her Wisdom to 19.

You can follow along with the campaign to get more updates like this one.

Now on Kickstarter: A lifepath system for fifth edition fantasy!

Do you want characters to have deep ties to their world? Backstory that directly affects their mechanical traits?

We're crowdfunding the creation of a book that lets you create incredible characters using a uniquely tailored lifepath generation system. Click through to check out the project:

Lifepaths tell the story of a character’s early life, and let you discover how those experiences gave them the unique abilities and traits they start the game with. A lifepath is a process of discovery, and each step on the path is an event, decision, or encounter which will reveal things about your character.
​
We're writing Steps to a Hero, a 127-page book that will be available digitally or as a physical volume via print-on-demand. It contains tons of new game content, including 300 unique “steps” affecting a character’s ancestry, actions, and fortune, a lifepath system for combining those steps into millions of possible backgrounds, new background features, new ancestries, and more.

Back the book on Kickstarter to get a reduced price as thanks for your support in bringing the project to life!

Let's make character creation a journey of discovery!

Tarb, the Strife-heeled: Half minotaur, half orc, all brawn

Tarb is a Fifth Edition character built with my upcoming lifepath system.

Tarb is a distinctive fellow! Half minotaur and half orc, with the physical ability scores you would expect from those ancestries, he set off at age 18 and spent 11 years questing, standing guard, and sailing. Tarb’s lifepath is made up of three heritage steps (from his minotaur and orc ancestries) and three endeavour steps (from events in his early life).

This particular character ended up with lots of proficiencies and background features, but no tool proficiencies. A finalisation stage pruned back a few more features I rolled for him, and permits him to start with extra hit points instead. He knows two languages, and doesn’t start with much equipment. These traits are all the result of how his lifepath turned out.

By using an optional rule in Steps to a Hero, we can select a class for Tarb based on his lifepath using a points-based system. The class we end up with is Fighter! To build a powerful warrior, this rule also empowered us to transfer a point each from Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma to raise his Strength from 15 to 18.

If you want to be alerted when my Kickstarter begins, click through the banner below!

 

Kickstarter ending soon, and design thoughts

There are just 24 hours left on my first Kickstarter: A Fistful Of Curiosities.

Something I discovered in working on this project is that certain elements are always useful for small self-consistent curiosities.

Those elements boil down to: reasons for the thing to (still) exist, ways in which the thing is discoverable, and something to make player characters interested in the thing.

A weird medieval fantasy setting in turn shapes what those elements will tend to look like. In particular, for the ten curiosities I'm publishing, there are:

• 4 instances of undead creatures
• 6 instances of old location-based sorcery
• 4 instances of huge monsters
• 5 instances of dwellings
• 4 instances of natural terrain features
• 4 instances of catastrophes
• 5 instances of cyclical or continual processes
• 4 instances of old foreboding stonework

 

A Fistful of Curiosities: Kickstarter

Our new project, A Fistful of Curiosities, is now live on Kickstarter!

It's a collection of ten small, self-contained location-based fantasy mysteries. This toolkit will be great for game masters running fantasy role-playing games with pen-and-paper or at a virtual tabletop.

By backing the project before publication, you brighten our day and incidentally get the resource at a special reduced rate compared to later publication!

The Kickstarter runs for 15 days. You can check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/a-fistful-of-curiosities-game-masters-resource