Cursed Scroll Zine, Vol. 1: Diablerie!. RPG Zine. by The Arcane Library

Seth Stauffer

One of the great aspects of tabletop role-playing games is how open-ended they are. This freeformness isn’t just for people at the gaming table, but for anyone seeking to create content. One such evolution has been the dearth of zines developed for TTRPGs. The Arcane Library adds to this style of product with its entry, Cursed Scroll. The first issue reviewed here centers on the theme “Diablerie!” and includes some dark, twisted resources for gamers. 

This zine embraces the dark, gritty tone exemplified in the core rulebook. It’s 68 pages long, which may seem fairly substantial, but it’s full of diverse content and not at all overwhelming. By its nature, this shouldn’t be a cumbersome product, and it isn’t. Everything is succinct and readable. 

There are character options, a hexcrawl, monsters and more! I’m presenting this in broad strokes, yet this zine really does a great job of compressing a lot of material into one inexpensive product. It’s literally filled from cover to cover, as the last page (back cover) is a chart for treasure.

After reading through Cursed Scroll, I really liked what I saw, but found myself wondering why bother publishing a zine? Why not just print the content as supplements?  Is it just the aesthetic of a zine that’s appealing? Perhaps it was the newness of Shadowdark as a product, since Cursed Scroll was published around the same time. I can understand if The Arcane Library were inviting people from outside the company, and giving them a venue to create content, but this isn’t what happened. It feels like an odd choice from The Arcane Library itself, since the game’s author and supplement writers wrote all the content for the zine as well. There’s a lot to like about the freeform approach of zines, and The Arcane Library tried to capitalize on that with Cursed Scroll. It’s issue number one, so it will be interesting to see where this publication goes. A zine probably isn’t necessary for the company to be producing on its own, but it could transform itself into something else as Shadowdark cultivates its own dedicated player base. In this case, it could evolve into something that offers unique content by the players, for the players. A supplement such as Cursed Scroll isn’t needed to enjoy the game, but it is a nifty way to get a session going with a bit more content and very little prep.