RIP Jennell Jaquays

This game jam is a memorial for the legendary game designer and Queer activist Jennell Jaquays. Jennell's work was fundamental in shaping early tabletop roleplaying games and how we all assemble maps and dungeons.

She also left a major mark on the video game industry working as Director of Game Design for Coleco, as a level designer for id Software, Ensemble Studios, and CCP Games. She was also one of the co-founders of the video game education program, The Guildhall at SMU.

As a Queer activist, she worked as creative director for the Transgender Human Rights Institute in Seattle was involved in the petition to create "Leelah's Law," outlawing conversion therapy of LGBT youth.

She will be sorely missed as a mentor and role model for countless people.

Return to Perinthos

This game jam seeks entries to include in a published book titled Return to Perinthos as a memorial to Jennell Jaquays. The final book will contain a setting to tying everything together written by the fabulous Luke Gearing!

• At the conclusion of this jam, we will hold a Crowdfundr to sell pre-orders for the physical copy of book and to collect donations.
• All profit from the Crowdfundr will be donated to Jennell Jaquays's family to help with medical and funeral expenses. Future profits from further sales of the book will be donated to Trans Lifeline.
• If you would like to contribute to her family right now, you can use their GoFundMe as well.

Call for Volunteers

To finish the book from the jam entries will require volunteer writers, editors, illustrators, and graphic designers. You can sign up to complete publishing tasks from the Return to Perinthos Volunteer Information Site.

Jam Entry Format

The goal of this jam is create entries for a megadungeon book a la Caverns of Thracia that consists of level sized dungeon tiles. It will be a wire bound U.S. Letter sized book, so the maps can be placed right on a table for play. There is no specific theme, but you can use an Ancient Greek Theme if you need something to get started. We hope to represent aspects of all parts of Jennell Jaquays's career from old school to Dungeons & Dragons to Traveller to Quake and everything in between, so go wild!

Submitted entries can take one of the following formats:

1.  A fully illustrated, written, edited, and laid out spread consisting of one page for a map and one page for a map key
2. An illustration of a map and a manuscript for a map key that is not yet laid out
3. An illustration of a map
4. A manuscript for a map key

Entries that are not complete spreads will be illustrated, written, edited, and laid out by volunteers. We will put out a call for volunteers as we start to receive entries and at the end of the jam. This is a great way to participate if you are unable to complete an entry by the end of the jam. We appreciate contributions of all sorts! If you are interested in talking with other participants or finding collaborators, we have a channel (#return-to-perinthos) hosted on The Lost Bay Studio's Discord Server. If you have more questions about how to contribute you can also email violet@rvgames.company.

Detailed Entry Guidelines

• Map illustrations must fit on a single U.S. Letter sized page.
• Maps can be black and white or color.
• There is no specified scale, but 10' squares is a good ballpark if you need one. You can also build flow chart maps, isometric maps, etc, you don't have to limit yourself to traditional grid maps.
• All maps need to have entrances and exits on their North, South, East, and West edges. These can be paths, doors, elevators, etc., there just need to be ways to link to another tile on each edge.
• Manuscripts have a maximum word count of 750 words.
• For quick to use symbols and icons for the dungeon, please use the Creative Commons licensed icon pack from Game-icons.net.
• If you layout your spread it needs to be on 8.5"x11" pages with 0.25" outer margins, 0.8" inner margins, and 0.13" bleed. It needs to be provided as a PDF that is preferably in CMYK color at 300dpi. We will reach out to you if there are any issues as spreads are submitted and are placed into the book.
  • Layout templates are provided here if you would like something to get you started
  • The font Robot is used in the template and the sizes are as follows.
    • Body: 10 Regular
    • Sub-header: Medium 14
    • Header: Bold 24
    • Title: Black 48
• Entries can use any ttrpg system for providing stats. Please be sure to indicate the system in your text. Go wild and have fun!
• No AI generated artwork or text.
• No racist/sexist/classist/ableist/homophobic content will be accepted. 
• We reserve the right to not publish work from creators who have been involved with any sort of racist/sexist/classist/ableist/homophobic content or any sort of harassment.