Zoa Tan, turning the kaleidoscope

Zoa Tan turns out to be more dreamlike and childlike fantasy than I first thought. The first vision I had for it gives way to another, and I suspect that over the course of this project it will turn (and return) to other visions. My first impulse was to hold onto the first image, discipline and develop it, but that's not where the art of this goes. So, instead, between developing the mechanical hacks and spark tables to support these sorts of fantasies, I will follow the fantasies themselves on their own terms, as long as they sustain themselves.

This version is subtitled "Enchanted Planet."

[Front Cover Image: An aerial view of a sea of saffron colored grass dotted with tall, thick-trunked trees capped with bushy crowns of pinks and oranges straight out of Moebius's hallucinogenic palette.]

Far has the Children's Crusade traveled from the plague cities, your ragged banners ever raised though sometimes wavering. Long have you followed the Piper's bright tune, your voices raised in weary song. But finally in the Bright Reaches you have found the promised Forgotten and Safe Place where the Great Festival may begin.

Now you must explore your new world and find the sacred relics upon which the Great Festival depends. You are not alone, strangers hold some of the relics as their own, and your welcome is uncertain. Will you make a new home for yourselves here, or will the Piper's mad hope finally burn to ash in your mouths?

Zoa Tan is a Cairn-based cooperative role playing game featuring courageous and cautious characters engaged in exploration, negotiation, and conflict punctuated by moments of wonder and discovery, truce and defeat, intimacy and transformation.

[Back Cover Image: A view of a waterfall at night. It glints with sparks of yellow, red, and violet. At its base, the water cascades over a massive silver pine cone with a door in the middle of it. On the far left, pale fingers curl at the edge of the frame and an elongated and utterly white feminine face peeks out from the side, straight lipped and black eyed.]