I’ve made no secret of my love of Black Armada and their games. I first encountered the pair talking about how to run crowdfunding campaigns. This was early in their crowdfunding journey and where so many campaigns were promising the moon, Josh Fix and Becky Annison actually came at their project with a solid plan, pragmatism and a professional mindset. I made a note to follow their then upcoming Lovecraftesque and sure enough, the game was delivered on time and swiftly became one of my favourite Lovecraftian horror RPGs of all time. 

Over time, Black Armada have experimented with different forms of games, from single-book Powered by the Apocalypse darlings, small zines, booklets and a glorious boxed set full of cards. This time, they’re trying something I don’t believe anyone has done before… a roleplaying game that’s an advent calendar.

The original Advent of Abomination was a fascinating experiment by Josh Fox, put out through the Black Armada Patreon but also with a short print run made to sell at that December’s Dragonmeet. I’ll admit, I’m used to bashing together my own props, proxying cards and so on, so I downloaded the file (I am a patron of theirs, of course, which people should also keep in mind with this article). Christmas came and went, and I forgot about it.

At a future Dragonmeet, I was having my usual catch-up with the Black Armada gang and saw they still had a copy of the Advent of Abomination. It was their last or second-to-last physical copy and Josh explained how much of a faff it was to make them. A valuable project which was unlikely to happen again. And I understood that line of thought. The advent calendar had some nice enough art, but the doors weren’t all cut entirely squarely, some I had to finish off the cutting with. It was a lovely product, but a logistically-difficult one.

The Advent of Abomination is a roleplaying journaling game which contains the rules on the reverse of the calendar and prompts inside the doors. There’s a guide to the tone of each set of days to help the escalation, a star rating for each prompt to show the level of strangeness and then three mystery doors which you pick the order to open when prompted. That helps make each experience unique to the playthrough, along with how you’re approaching your character, the setting and the journey.

I’m a player who has often banged on about the tactile experience of games, even things like idly stacking dice or opening booster packs. It’s something I think about a lot, so getting to open up a door to an advent calendar every day to get greeted with a new prompt was a lovely experience (yes, even for a horror game). It also worked well for an experience of portion control. I’ve started some solo campaigns like Thousand Year Old Vampire and the ritual of having to open a new door every day acts as a good reminder to keep this up.

I had a great time with Advent of Abomination and posted each session here. Spoilers of Advent of Abomination, of course:

• Introduction, Day One and Day Two
• Days Three, Four and Five
• Days Six, Seven and Eight
• Days Nine, Ten and Eleven
• Days Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen
• Days Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen and Nineteen
• Days Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two and Twenty-Three
• Day Twenty-Four
• Day Twenty-Five

If Advent of Abomination was a tricky beast to make, why are they returning to it? The main change was proper manufacturing, which crowdfunding will help with. As well as re-releasing the original Advent of Abomination, Josh has written a new advent calendar with more of an action movie vibe to it.

The Advent of Adventure is inspired by Christmas movies like Die Hard and Home Alone, with you journaling as a Christmas Elf trying to rescue Santa from a dragon. This calendar has a more all-ages tone than the Advent of Abomination and art from Bri de Danann.

I love the idea of this being a version of the game which you could share with your family, telling a story with them or letting your creative kids make their own story.

The Advent of Abomination is getting a makeover with art by Harrie Leith and of course will be professionally printed just like the Advent of Adventure.

The Kickstarter is currently live, with physical and digital copies of the calendars, as well as colouring pages and more. You can check it out here.