ZineQuest 2: The Quest for More Zines™ has arrived, and I have the pleasure of previewing a few standouts before they hit the printers. So, expect a reading of the tea leaves as we lean in.
Here’s what it says on the tin…
An RPG about desperados robbing the train to Hell.
Spin an allegorical Weird Western yarn as your sharpshooters, fiddlers, homesteader widows, and other Desperados attempt a Hellish train heist. Will you claim your prize from the train, or be overcome, damned, or broken by the heist?
Cloven Pine Games
PDF Backer level: $5
Physical Backer level: $12
The Weirder West
When Sergio Leone made his mark on the western, there was something alien about it, as though nothing on the screen—no matter how wide— was in the same universe as other westerns.
He took the drek of TV serials and ground it down it into a heightened art, but not with subtlety. In his wild west, armies materialize from thin air, bullets weave around desperados walking in the middle of the street, and dying men, drained of life, spend what’s left of their life force to hurl themselves from rooftops.
John Wayne never sauntered into Leone’s vistas, and I suspect even Leone’s Man With No Name couldn’t have stood firmly in the bonkers cliche-fueled extravaganza that is The Great Soul Train Robbery.
It’s a game of simple rules, uncomplicated objectives, and enough sticks of narrative dynamite to blow everything up before it gets boring.
It’s wilder than wild. It’s capital-w Weird West.
What’s the product?
The Great Soul Train Robbery is a 32-page zine that expands on the original #DreamJam two-page release with more illustrations, better layout, and some additional turn-key game content.
Playstyle. Pickup-and-play one-shots. I like to think of these as boutique games. They don’t craft multi-session epics; they craft riveting one-night affairs. Think of it like a blockbuster movie.
Genre/Setting. This game is riding full steam into the supernatural west, so if you’re looking for an open world like Red Dead Redemption, keep looking. This game has only one destination: the infernal city of Dis. Your desperados are on board to get their prize and then get off if they can.
System. It uses the same framework as Honey Heist but has to flex differently. The conceptual comedy of bears having human agency, but only as Guy-Ritchie criminals is core to that game and its tone.
This game drops the surreal comedy and turns its action movie dial to 11. That means Gatling guns and “Devil Went Down to Georgia” vibes. Your two stats, which tug at each other, are Lover and Sinner.
The Lover (What I like)
The beauty of mechanically light games is that they stay functional so long as the story keeps moving and the GM has enough resources to keep setting down track.
Based on what Alexi has provided in the original, we’re going to see more of that in the next 30 pages. More refinement of player character options and more game-able information about the train itself. Tables for individual cars, details, and challenges.
In my ideal projection, The Great Soul Train Robbery will have the engine of an indie RPG and a little more body (and appendices) of SWORDDREAM and OSR.
The Sinner (What I fret)
Let’s get them funded. I want to see what whitespace in the margins, art, and graphic design will do to its usability. Despite being mechanically unfussy like a blunderbuss, the two-pager’s cramped quarters on two pages make it appear more complicated than it is.
The zine will have the opportunity to be the exact opposite. Much needed reformatting will let this work breathe and show off any tools, tables, and fluff it has in the baggage cars.
The Conductor (What I love)
We need more six-shooters in roleplaying games. I know we have Boot Hill and Deadlands, but those mainstays are getting dustier every year—dustier than the frontier roads they’re set in.
The Great Soul Train Robbery is entering the fray by firing from the hip.
The system’s mechanics appears mostly out of the way, an anchor for just a couple of the genre’s themes: white hat and black hat and endings. The illustrations and tables (loot, train cars, and complications) inform the furnishings of the story.
The result is a campy thrill-ride with Weird™ b-movie action and characters hurtling towards damnation or leaping off the train in a dubbed Wilhelm Scream.
And that’s the real engine to this zine. It’s the expectation—the tension of knowing the tropes, the timeline, and the literal destination of that train— the game is about endings. The rules are concise. The session is singular. The setting is doom. And players get characters—like human rental cars—excited to crash them in marvelous explosive ways.
Three hours of guns, grit, and characters with lives like fuses? That’s a staple of westerns from Leone to the Cohen Brothers, no matter how weird.
The only questions are what additions might do to the journey. Will it increase the replayability? Speed up play? Add texture? Hone the spurs towards a more specific authorial vision?
I think spending a fistful of dollars on The Great Soul Train Robbery ain’t a bad way to find out. It might even be your huckleberry.
Who should back?
You should back if:
Fans of Honey Heist and movies like 3:10 to Yuma and The Good, The Bad, and The Weird
Your group’s playstyle leans heavily into one-shots and infrequent game nights
Roll tables and lists of room contents make you excited
You shouldn’t back if:
Crunchy games with feedback loops, subsystems, and mechanics are your jam
Reading and prepping for the game session is your primary reason for buying
You want serious, subtle stories told in the American West ala Red Dead Redemption 2
The idea of character death or failure makes you dissatisfied
Train tickets to Hell start as low as 5 silver dollars.