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Today we talk with Scott from ZealZaddy about their current TTRPG crowdfunding campaign, A Midwinter’s Terror. You can find them at https://zealzaddy.com/.
Hi Scott, thanks for talking to us. You’ve got a new TTRPG crowdfunding campaign on Backerkit now. Can you tell us about it?
A Midwinter’s Terror is an eldritch/cosmic horror adventure for Cypher System. It’s set in a village that is home to a cult trying to bring “the star made flesh” into being. The imagery ties into the nativity, as there is a coming birth to (maybe?) herald the end if the world. The players come into this in any of several ways, from travelers driving through to anti-cultists.
We wanted to create it because, well, Halloween deserves to extend into the holiday season as much as Christmas pushes back into Halloween and Thanksgiving. Why? Because of the fact that Halloween is the best holiday and deserves more time. Period. Plus, in horror, there is joy in subverting the sacred.
A Midwinter’s Terror is described as “a Christmas-themed cosmic horror adventure”. There’s a long literary tradition of tales combining horror with holiday themes, A Christmas Carol being an obvious example. Did you take inspiration from any of these stories?
Sure, to a degree. But where A Christmas Carol is a ghost story—it has a happy ending. That’s not a requirement for our adventure. As a matter of fact, that kind of ending is unlikely. This could, though, be a great start to a longer running horror campaign. I even think it would be easy to adapt it to either Old Gods of Appalachia or The Magnus Archives.
A Midwinter’s Terror takes inspiration from various horror media like the haunting traditions of Ramsey Campbell’s The Hungry Moon and the short stories in Cold Print; Laird Barron’s story collection The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, and The Croning; H.P. Lovecraft’s many tales; the psychological horror mysteries of Shirley Jackson like The Haunting of Hill House; and cult-centered horror film classics like The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Wicker Man.
You’ve described A Midwinter’s Terror as cosmic horror. Is this your favorite style of horror? Do you feel like cosmic horror is particularly suited for a TTRPG adventure?
I wouldn’t say any form of horror is our favorite. More like there is horror we love and horror we enjoy a little less. Slasher stories, for example, are less likely to come from ZealZaddy because we generally find it less appealing. We have a deep appreciation for supernatural and psychological horror, things with patience and pacing, and like those, cosmic horror can do that and give you a lot of leeway in storytelling for TTRPGs. We love its monsters, its disconnection from humanity’s morals and laws, and its mood of unearthly foreboding. It can be unsettling and highly disturbing because it can absorb the tropes of other horror genres and spread a layer of cosmic indifference (or worse, otherworldly interest) on top.
A Midwinter’s Terror is just the first horror release in our pipeline. We are also designing the adventure The Terrifying Secrets of Dr. Darkenveldt’s Castle, and an adventure collection by various authors called Bill E. Beaver’s Bloodbath (a weird take on Five Nights at Freddy’s).
A Midwinter’s Terror is an adventure for Monte Cook Games’ Cypher System. Do you think that the Cypher System is a particularly good fit for this sort of adventure?
Internally we debated between Cypher System by Monte Cook Games and Daggerheart by Darrington Press (Critical Role’s publishing company), but because we wanted this to be a modern setting, Cypher was a better fit. We also are more comfortable with Cypher System since we already publish products for it. What A Midwinter’s Terror really needed from a system is to be built around narrative storytelling—and Cypher System is perfect for this. We also want the adventure to be great for the GM to play with and have a lot of freedom to expand the characteristics of the village, cult, and plot lines. We may even add a section on how to make the adventure fit into various times and genres from Fantasy to modern.
Finally, we are just learning Daggerheart, so felt unprepared to publish for it just yet. We do plan on streaming a Daggerheart campaign starting in January 2026 as a way to test the system, play with friends, and learn the ins-and-outs of the game from a hands-on perspective.
Are there additional parts of the Backerkit campaign besides the main adventure? Are you planning any stretch goals?
We have some really cool stretch goals planned and we would love to achieve them all because they will be great additions for the GM and their players:
The first stretch goal is Magic Items of Hungervale. There are already some artifacts and cyphers in the adventure, but if we reach this level, we will add additional ones—including a cursed item or two.
Second up is Additional Villager NPCs. This will be a list of NPCs living more on the periphery of the story, but with ties into it that can enrich the environment even more. And what GM doesn’t love a large mass of potential opponents, co-conspirators, informants, or simple obstacles?
The third will be a Short Story set in Hungervale, and it will be complete with NPCs, cyphers and artifacts, locations, and more. This can give a powerful feel to the town through a literary example.
Lastly we have a beautiful Custom Map of Hungervale.
Note that some of these stretch goals would be delivered after the initial release of the adventure because of the time needed to create them (particularly the short story and the map).
I also want to mention an add-on that is available for just an additional $5—a set of Overlays for Streamers. Since we stream a lot, we believe supporting streamers is important, but don’t want to burden the non-streamers with those costs.
You’ve released a lot of TTRPG projects, how did you decide to get into this, and what’s your favorite part of development and design?
When we started, we wanted to create an urban fantasy setting, one we played in for decades: Vadashar. But we realized there was no way to start with the entire setting—not because the market can’t take one, but because it was so much work to create that we feared we would not complete it if we had that amount of work staring at us. So we decided on a strategy we called a drip-strategy. Release supporting, foundation-adjacent, parts first in smaller products. Things like NPC collections, magic items, locations, and such. These smaller projects are all in preparation for the crowdfunding campaign for Vadashar in 2026.
Of course, the D&D5e debacle caused disruption for us, and we decided to move our fantasy products to Cypher (and perhaps Daggerheart). Why Cypher System? Several reasons:
- As we watched all this happen, we saw how Monte Cook Games reacted. They showed respect to third-party creators with the CSOL license and SRD release, while also not eliminating their own responsibility to maintaining a safe and functional environment.
- MCG’s safety tools help foster a better environment for GMs and players.
- MCG fans reminded me of Apple fans in that they expect high-quality art and design, which MCG supplies. But so do the third party suppliers. Also MCG fans seem to support and actually purchase products from third party creators. Something necessary for third party creators to thrive.
- Another thing we found terrific was that they respected the community by not trying to absorb or eliminate the Cypher Unlimited group. Even supporting them and helping them grow. Many companies would try to own the community rather than treat it as a benefit and allow it to thrive on its own.
- Cypher System itself is simpler than D&D5e, and is built for narrative storytelling first and foremost, with mechanics second. But it’s completely functional and infinitely more flexible. Some GMs and players may not like this, but the ones who do will like our products. We find Cypher System easy to alter, too.
Do you commission art or graphic design for your projects? What advice do you have for other aspiring creators about art, design and production?
Graphic Design: As for graphic design, I am a professional graphic designer and art director in and outside of the industry. So, we do most of our own graphic design work—from logo design to layout. We’re even doing a little type design work.
Illustration & Cartography: We use some combination of custom commissioned art, stock art, composited art, (occasional) historic art, and art we create ourselves. We would love to use only commissioned art but the economics of that are impossible. We both do our own cartography and hire cartographers.
Writing and Editing: Cliff, my partner in ZealZaddy, is the writer and editor for the majority of our work. We do sometimes hire writers or editors for narrative and gamification efforts.
Besides the games and adventures you’ve published, ZealZaddy does a lot of live play streams and videos. Do you have a preference for designing games and adventures, or for producing and running live streamed games? What’s your favorite thing about live streaming games?
ZealZaddy is two people, so we both have different interests. Where they align best is the writer/designer combination. We also both love GMing, but I prefer streamed actual plays, while Cliff prefers games at a physical table. Cliff does great game preparation, but really likes to arrive and start running. While I preferred streamed actual plays for several reasons: I get to create overlays (which I find enjoyable), I meet people from across the globe (the best benefit), and I get to create a show that is built around the backstories created by players from different perspectives. I like a game that is a showcase of performance talent.
A lot of those reasons are also why I like having a TTRPG talk show (StoryTalk), with the added value of learning about things in the industry that I don’t know much about.
I know you attend a lot of game conventions. For others who might be looking to create in the TTRPG space, how important do you think attending conventions is?
It’s both not important at all, and immensely valuable at the same time. There is no requirement or need to go to cons. You can learn everything you need, meet people to play with, and build a community without going to any cons. Full stop.
But what you CAN get from cons is re-energized when exhausted, meet people you respect or look-up to, find collaborators for bigger projects, learn details about industry happenings, talk with publishers directly about upcoming products, have a blast doing cosplay in a hyper-public space of like-minded people, make friends throughout the industry, and get a feel for the current zeitgeist of the TTRPG space. None of that is necessary, but all of it is helpful and joyful. You can also spend a small fortune on games you’ve never heard of but must have!
What else would you like to let our readers know that we haven’t asked you?
We have a really different stream coming soon called Paperbag: The Roleplaying Game Show. It’s a Twitch streamed RPG gameshow. We’re close to starting but are looking for:
- A few small sponsors to provide product as prizes.
- We would love to get some GMs to provide role-play scenarios for use on stream (we’re making a form for submissions). In exchange their stream would get a shout-out and a link to their channel in chat.
- We are interested in perhaps doing the first few episodes as a charity stream, but we could use a little help getting that side of things rolling. Maybe a collaborator in that space.
I hope this helps understand where ZealZaddy is at the moment and a hint at where we’re going. A Midwinter’s Terror is our first Backerkit (we started a Kickstarter for an NPC folio that is still collecting followers), and we chose to do AMT as a micro-crowdfunding campaign. A small funding goal so we can test the waters, learn from doing it, and then do larger ones later. If ZealZaddy does anything, it’s test and adjust. If you want to learn more, you can reach us at Scott@ZealZaddy.com.
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