Join the Liminal Horror Community in cataloguing the strange and weird across the Americas!

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 thatʼs 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.

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.

There are several moving pieces to this, so please read the information below carefully.

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 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.

Example entries can be found HERE.

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. 
• You entry must be wholly created by humans. Any entry found to use generative AI for art or text will be removed.
• 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, even if the content or format is different than the scope discussed here.

ENTERING TO BE INCLUDED IN THE FIELD GUIDE COLLECTION

As mentioned above, 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 please read the following carefully.

Please note, 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.

All entries for inclusion in the Field Guide collection must follow the requirements below: 

1. Length: Given the logistics of the project, preference is given to entries that are short and an even number of pages (with a two page minimum). Single page entries will still be considered, but may require editing/reformatting for inclusion. Applicants may submit as many of their entries as they'd like, but in the event of an overflow of entries, restrictions may be put in place with only a single entry per creator being used.

2. Logistics: There are some logistics that must be considered when submitting. The templates provided for use should help, but their use is not required.

• Files need to be print ready, including formatted for CMYK. The print will likely be using coated paper, so adjust your color profiles accordingly.
• Size: US Trade (6in. X 9in.)
•  Bleed: 0.125 in. 
•  Margins: 0.5 in. outer, 0.75 in. inner gutter. Maintaining the inner gutter is very important, as the POD copy will be a perfect bound softcover.
• Typefaces with open commercial licenses are preferred to ensure we have the rights to use them in the final product. Common type foundries like Adobe's or those that come standard with your software are also acceptable.
• Your entry must clearly identify the following: The name of your entry, the location in the Americas that your entry is set within, and the creative team that worked on the entry. Please see the templates provided in Resources below for an example formatting.

To ensure the best quality with the print-on-demand copies, please format using the following guidelines:

• Ensure your pages can be exported in single page portrait orientation 
• 300 dpi minimum for images 
• RGB images converted to CMYK 
• Solid blacks as k100 
• Black and white images set to grayscale 
• Vector images rasterized 
• Embedded fonts 
• Transparent layers and vector images flattened 

3. Permission: Applicants maintain full copyright and creative control over their entries. By submitting, you are simply licensing your entry to us for inclusion. The form at the following link gives us permission to use your work in the collection and will help us keep track of entries. We cannot include your entry if you do not fill this out. https://forms.gle/t5p4jqFTGN8RRKdY7

4. Submission: Files are submitted through the same google form.

• If you have an Affinity file, please provide it as a package with the typefaces and embedded assets (File > Save As Package). This will be the simplest means for us to collect the files together and add additional features like page numbers, as we will be using Affinity to assemble the collection.
• If you do not have an Affinity file, provide print ready pages format PDFs, both as a standard export and including a bleed of 0.125 inches, as well as any embedded fonts.
• Include a text only manuscript.
• Any additional assets or images.

You may only enter work for which you have the proper licensing/ownership for. If you enter your submission to be included in the collection, you are licensing it to be used by Goblin Archives LLC to be included in the Field Guide and you still retain full ownership of your work. By entering your work, you grant the LH dev team permission to make edits and adjustments as needed to align with the intended formatting. While we want to keep the submitted work as intact as possible, these changes will be made in order to create a cohesive text. This may include adjusting text, including framing information, page numbers, and headers, or adjusting the formatting in the event that difficulties are encountered while stitching everything together.

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.

Communication: 

You will receive email confirmation that your submission was received within a few days of submission. Please be patient as these need to be managed manually. If 7 days pass without response, feel free to send an additional email or reach out to us on the Liminal Horror Discord server. There will be a separate communication letting you know if your work was chosen for the collection after the completion of the jam.

If you have any questions in the interim, please feel free to reach out to us on Discord, send a private message, or email to the address listed above.

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. - Liminal Horror Design Templates
• Case Files: Example of short-form resources to serve as inspiration for the general direction of subject and scope that we're hoping to see from folks - 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
• Another Writing Seminar On The Weekly Scroll: Making short form horror content. To launch our new jam we will be hosting another seminar on the Weekly Scroll October 6th @ 10:00am PDT. If you have any questions please share them on the discord.