Experience Points has been nominated for an Ennie for Best RPG Related Product!

"The working title for my book was Experience Points...but in the end, I wound up calling it Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, a title I think speaks more broadly to the act of playing RPGs, rather than their mechanics.

It’s not a gigantic guidebook to tabletop RPGs. Rather, it is a small collection of chapters that, for a variety of reasons, didn’t appear in the final book (and I would invite readers to give these chapters the same sort of charity they might give to the deleted scenes included on a DVD). Nevertheless, I felt, in some way, that they still merit the motivated reader’s attention. They add additional texture and context. They’re a little more relaxed, a little more reflective of my personal interests, a little less concerned with the big picture and what posterity might think."

-Stu Horvath, author 

About the book:

These are the chapters cut from the full MIT Press encyclopaedic history of role playing games, Monsters, Aliens, & Holes in the Ground, written by Stu Horvath, co-host of the Vintage RPG Podcast. 

In this companion zine, readers will find entries "a little more re-laxed, a little more reflective of [Horvath's] personal interests, a little less concerned with the big picture and what posterity might think." You'll find entries on Aftermath! Paranoia, Stonehell and others.

The Team:

Written and photographed by Stu Horvath
“Paranoia” chapter written by Ed Coleman
Cover illustration by Kyle Patterson
Layout and design by Derek Kinsman
Line editor: Orrin Grey
Copy editor: Jamie Springer
Fact checker: Joe DeSimone

40 pages, digest sized saddle-stitched zine. Color throughout, includes PDF.