The Long Watch Wants You to Bootleg Its Manual and Spread the Uncanniness

For most crowdfunding campaigns, bootlegging is a threat to be managed. Yet, the maker of The Long Watch — an uncanny solo RPG that is currently funding a physical edition on Gamefound — is actively encouraging it instead.

Alongside the professionally printed Beaconer's Guide to Beaconry manual, backers at all tiers receive a second digital version: a bootleg-optimised zine file, which has been specially formatted for cheap printing at home or bad photocopying at your local copy shop. This thing is designed from the ground-up to be perfect for duplicating, beating up, dog-earing, and leaving somewhere an unsuspecting stranger might find it and, thus, be recruited into the ranks of The Long Watch.

Taped to a bus stop.
Stuffed between two very serious books at your local library.
Slid underneath a neighbouring cubicle in a public toilet.
Wherever you think people strange enough to want to tend a transdimensional lighthouse might be hanging out.

"I don't mean the 'steal and sell my work' kind of bootlegging," says designer, Nerius, from Studio Squidink, "but rather the kind where you photocopy the manual and spread them around just for the love of getting others into a game you're a bit obsessed with."

This is an idea that is rooted in the designer's own experiences growing up amidst punk zine culture, street teams, and wheatpasted posters. Times when groups of teenage friends may or may not have abused the school photocopier, churning out pauper's decks of Magic: the Gathering and RPG rulesets. Actions that started due to a lack of cash, but then graduated into acts of anarchic creativity.

This is a sensibility that runs throughout The Long Watch, which sees players becoming members of a severely underfunded organisation, dealing with transdimensional weirdness with no training and whatever tools they happen to have lying around.

Creating a Legacy

The bootleg-optimised zine is not just a file that is adapted for printing and photocopying, though. It's also a way to extend your Beaconer character's legacy. There are areas in the zine that are specifically allocated for players to add their own marks, individual Beacon glyphs, comments, and other in-character forms of vandalism.

This means that every time a player's copy of the zine gets photocopied, passed on, copied, and passed on again, their character's marks get carried along with it. That version of the zine accumulates a lineage all of its own, traceable back to this specific, unhinged Beaconer. They become cemented(ish) in legend(ish). Who knows where future copies might end up?

It's another way in which the designer of The Long Watch is trying to extend solo gameplay beyond the table. The game already has a mechanic in which players can correspond with other Beaconers for a type of asynchronous sharing of solo play. In both cases, physical documents change hands to spread the weirdness.

Nerius went a little deeper into the subject of bootlegging in The Long Watch in a recent interview with Mike Ortiz of Arcane Circle.

The Long Watch is live now on Gamefound until October 14th, funding a physical edition that includes the manual, the bootleg zine, a custom card deck, a hand-carved linocut-stamped notebook, and other physical accessories. The first digital edition of the game remains available for free, donations welcome, on itch.io.

Links:

• Gamefound campaign: https://gamefound.com/projects/studiosquidink/the-long-watch
• itch.io page: https://studiosquidink.itch.io/the-long-watch
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thelongwatchrpg
• TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@thelongwatchrpg