Horrors of the Americas Jam

Where we expand the scope of Liminal Horror!

Sep 24, 2024

Anyone who has been following along for some time has known that I’ve been playing with the idea of a grand campaign/large scale work spanning across the Americas. At this time I’m excited to announce our next jam! The goal of this is to explore the horrors that dot the massive landmass that is North and South America!

We have some cool ideas in store for this one, with a lot of different supports in place (some killer templates from Josh Domanski) and an end goal of a collected community work!

Follow along at the jam (and may submit something).

October 7th to March 2025

https://itch.io/jam/horror-of-the-americas-jam

HORRORS OF THE AMERICAS JAM

Join the Liminal Horror Community in cataloguing the strange and weird across the Americas! Coming October 7th!

https://itch.io/jam/horror-of-the-americas-jam

There are many places in this world where the veils of reality are thin. Where the strange and unexplainable occurs, where horrors prey upon the lives of innocents. But a select few fight back against these dark forces, travelling the back roads to uncover the truth and help those in need. Now, this task has fallen upon you. So be prepared to crisscross the continent, investigate the paranatural, and battle cryptid creatures, demonic entities, ghouls, ghosts, and the forces of evil.

The Horrors of the Americas is a game jam for Liminal Horror. The system's official releases have focused in on Pacific Northwest, but as we all know, the weird things that go bump in the night are not bound to a single region. The goal of this jam is to widen the scope, and bring in different horrors, weird occurrences, and legends from featured locations all across North and South America.

While entries are encouraged to be in all shapes and sizes, this jam is focusing in on short form usable content that’s easy for Facilitators to snag and bring to the table as needed. This might be plot hooks, Resonant Artifacts, creatures, detailed locations, short adventures, noteworthy NPCs, factions, or anything you think is useful that can fit on a couple of pages. As this is the Horrors of the Americas jam, each of these entries should be intrinsically linked to a specific location in some manner that can easily be plotted onto a map. The jam itself will act as a catalog the weird, strange, and horrifying across North and South America.

To help with this, Josh Domanski created a fantastic template for making short form Liminal Horror content and used them to create some exemplar Case Files. We will also be launching the jam with another writing seminar on The Weekly Scroll (October 6th, 10am PST).

Horror of the Americas Jam - itch.io

CREATING A COLLECTED WORK

Creators will not only have the option of submitting to the jam, but also entering to be included in an anthology collection that will be put together upon the jam's conclusion. A field guide of sorts. The Liminal Horror team will assemble to work, including some framing resources to tie it together so that you can create your own horror road trip campaigns. The digital version will be released for PWYW with current plans for a print on demand book through LuLu.

If there are enough entries (or buzz) there may be subsequent jams/Field Guide collections.

THE WHAT AND THE HOW

Entries will be plotted on a massive map of the Americas, creating a sort of grand campaign of threads in which Investigators can travel the continent to battle with the weird and unknown things. These can include monsters, Resonant Artifacts, NPCs, Factions, single locations with threads or hooks, maps, artwork, adventures, or short fiction. There is no limit on the tone, sub-genre, or inspiration, but be aware that any racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory content is not allowed and entries found to include such subject matter will be removed. Please by mindful of the origins of folklore and local legends when considering adapting them.

Free to use Affinity and InDesign templates for this jam can be found HERE. These are not required to be used but should help lower the barrier to entry for folks who struggle with the design aspects or refining their writing to fit the format.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

All entries to the jam must follow the guidelines provided below:

Entries must be located in either North or South America. The location must be clearly listed in your entry and on the project page.
You can submit as many times as you would like.
If your jam entry is being submitted to be included with the collection (see below), you do not need to have the Liminal Horror third party compatibility license text directly in the entry itself, as thatʼll be handled collectively in the introductory matter. However, please ensure that language is present on your entryʼs itch.io page. If your jam entry is intended to be entirely independent and not submitted for the collection, you must include that language somewhere within your entry as normal.
Feel free to charge whatever you'd like for your submission. PWYW (pay what you want) is always a good place to start, but don't feel limited to that. We do suggest having Community Copies available for those who are in a tighter place financially.
Please promo and share your submission on the Liminal Horror Discord https://discord.gg/VdmSHXaqTT
If you are interested in submitting to the collected work there are additional formatting and guidelines to consider (see below)
You can submit to the jam without needing to also submit to the collection.

RESOURCES

Horrors of the Americas Writing Resources: This document collects the advice for each type of entry, many entries providing preview text from the Deluxe Edition (Field Guide Resources)
Horrors of the Americas Templates: Josh Domanski has created a template that can be used to format your entry for both the jam and the field guide collection. It provides a framework for entries that will make them easy to submit both to the jam and the resulting collected work. The templates also doubles as advice on different types of Liminal Horror content, so they may prove useful even if not used directly. https://unenthuser.itch.io/liminal-horror-design-templates
Case Files are short-form resources for Liminal Horror. These may be factions, creatures, short adventures, Resonant Artifacts, or locations to investigate. These are designed to be quick to pull out and bring to the table, either for a single session of play or to bolster an ongoing campaign. https://unenthuser.itch.io/case-files-vol-1

Adventure Writing Resources: A collection of LH resources for creating adventures and content - Adventure Writing Resources | Liminal Horror (liminalhorrorrpg.com)
Liminal Horror Library - A collection of resources for Liminal Horror games that can act as exemplars - Liminal Horror Library - A library of resources for your Liminal Horror games
Liminal Horror Discord Server: Please take advantage of the active participants on the server for any questions you may have or if you're in need of collaborators - Liminal Horror Server Link
Horrors of the Americas Example Entries: The Liminal Horror dev team has prepared a small handful of example entries to show the general direction we're hoping to see from folks

ENTERING TO BE INCLUDED IN THE FIELD GUIDE COLLECTION

While some entries will be standalone (both in length and content), a preponderance of the works will be eligible for submission the Field Guide.

The secondary goal of this jam is to create an anthology collection of the entries to be bound together in a single book. There are additional requirements that come alongside this, so read the jam carefully to know exactly what is needed to be consider in inclusion in the final work!

This is a secondary submission. Entering the jam through itch.io will not automatically submit your entry for inclusion in the collection as additional permissions are required. Also note that we are constrained by an available amount of space, so entering does not automatically guarantee inclusion in the final product.

COLLECTION LOGISTICS

For the final collection, the Liminal Horror dev team will be commissioning a cover and some interior art, along with creating a road map and framing for the entries. The resulting book will be considered an official Liminal Horror product.

Digital Release The collection will be offered on the official Liminal Horror itch.io and DriveThruRPG pages as PWYW. Any profit from the PWYW will be used first to pay for the art from the book, and then will go towards building a Liminal Horror creator fund to aid in assisting third party creators with their projects (examples of previous uses are the Pride Month contest, Jam rewards, dev support to third party publishers).

Physical Release: The current plan is to host the collection on Lulu for print-on-demand. The list price is currently planned to be set at $15. This covers print cost (estimated $8.50-10), Lulu's share, and a few dollars extra. Any profit (Lulu estimates around $3.50) from the book will be used first to pay for the art from the book, and then go into the Liminal Horror creator fund.

DriveThruRPG POD may be explored at a future date (and will follow the base price + $4 additional for development pricing model). As this will require additional formatting and administration, the topic will be considered after the digital and Lulu launch have been completed.

Twisted Classics Jam

We recently wrapped the Twisted Classics Jam and had so many fantastic entries that are ready to go for your Halloween Season games! 35 stellar submissions. The Liminal Horror dev team are currently reading through all of the entries and oh boy are they fantastic!

They’ve all been cataloged in the Library here: https://liminalhorrorlibrary.com/tag/twisted-classic/

Deluxe Edition

We’ve been hard at work completing the manuscript, working on art, and building the design templates. More peaks to come.

Third Party Print Hub

On the newly launched https://liminalhorrorrpg.com/ we will be creating a Third-Party Print Hub that highlights Liminal Horror modules and adventures that are available in print.

While these are also catalogued on the https://liminalhorrorlibrary.com/ we wanted to have an easy place for people to find physical products. We also will be launching a print-on-demand guide to help support creators in getting things to print with minimal investment/logistic support.

Print Support for your Twisted Classic Jam Entries (or other Liminal Horror adventures)

Goal: To create a sustainable way to help bring more LH adventures to print without being a large upfront cost to creators.

tl;dr: Launch your adventure as print on demand through Lulu (or drivethrurpg or hosted on your own site) and the LH team will work hard to collect those on the main website and promote them.

Thought Process: As the LH dev team continues our journey growing, one of our main areas of focus is supporting new creators. One of the reasons around hosting the jams is that it helps us build momentum as a community. We also acknowledge that a big part of ttrpgs is the idea of tables being able to buy physical books. There is something about being able to crack open those pages and reference a physical object. The downside is that getting a book to print often involves a lot of work and cost (ordering stock, shipping it to your place, packaging and distributing). One great way to get started is to have your adventure hosted on Print On Demand (PoD). This allows customers to buy the work, and it gets printed and shipped to them without an upfront cost to you.

LH Third Party Print Program: The LH dev team will create a page on the main liminalhorrorrpg.com hub to host print products by creators. This will be at no cost, and simply link to where people can purchase the books (and their digital counterparts). We will also catalog them on the liminalhorrorlibary.com as their own entry!

PoD Steps:

1. Write and design you adventure, getting it ready to print! Remember that each printer has its own specific margin/design guides.

2. Set it up as Print on Demand

Lulu (resources) https://www.lulu.com/publishing-toolkit

Formatting (Book Creation Guide) Includes PDF specifications, spine guides, and formatting terms to help you print your book https://www.lulu.com/sell/sell-on-lulu (selling on the Lulu bookstore allows you to set up print on demand for no cost, sell direct to customers, and Lulu prints/drop ships them).

Drivethru (resources)

Overview: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/joininfo2.php
Book cost and formats: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/pub_pod_cost.php
Quick book specifications: https://help.drivethrupartners.com/hc/en-us/articles/12780800178583-Quick-Specifications-for-Print-Books#h_01HFVSQQNE7CNT9CBGDAMQC835

3. Price your work. A pretty standard rate for adventures is $10-15 for zines, 20+ for perfect bound soft cover, 25+ for hardcovers. But you can set it to whatever you like.

4. Launch the title!

5.Start making money of print titles as well as your digital options!

6. Reach out to the LH team to let them know your work is in print:

- discord

- LH library submission

- DM

7. LH team will post it to the library, the main hub page, and promote print projects regularly in newsletters, etc

If you are selling your print product (not PoD) Steps:

1. Finish your adventure

2. Get it printed and shipped (to you or a distributor)

3. Start selling it online.

4. Reach out to the LH team to let them know your work is in print:

Discord: https://discord.gg/VdmSHXaqTT
LH library submission:

https://liminalhorrorlibrary.com/

5. LH team will post it to the library, the main hub page, and promote print projects regularly in newsletters, etc

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