ZOA: The Nonexistent Game of Verse and Romance

The first edition of ZOA: The Game of Verse and Romance was published by Burning Gold Press in print-and-play form in 2004. Because of its subject matter (famous Romantic poets of the early 1800s) and roleplaying aspects (as well as crafting poems, poets could fall in love with each other and die tragically), ZOA tended to get classed with the story games of the era. The game's designer, Mil Noonan, insisted in several interviews and game forums that it was "straight up a board game"; she had intended "kind of a Twilight Imperium, but for English majors."

After a Kickstarter campaign barely cleared its target, Chocoblast Games produced a physical second edition of ZOA in 2013. It sold sluggishly until a YouTube gaming personality called WaXz made a video about ZOA's infamous "Albion" mechanic for his "Haaaate This Shit" series.

("Albion," named and themed after the primordial god of William Blake's visionary cosmology, was Noonans' way of simulating how the interplay of genius, aesthetics, psychology, and skill gives rise to poetry. The Albion rules chewed up 14 pages of the first edition manual.)

Buoyed by irony buys from WaXz's massive fanbase, ZOA started moving numbers. Today it had a modest and even enthusiastic following, complete with a dedicated subreddit and Discord. Noonan was preparing a streamlined third edition when she was imprisoned for insurance fraud in 2018.

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ZOA was conceived for Year 2 of the I Wasn't Gonna Make This Anyway Jam, which involves "taking an idea for a game and doing literally everything else regarding it that doesn't involve making the actual game." As such, ZOA's presence in our world is limited to a gamesheet with special rules for playing John Keats and some screenshots of chatter from r/ZoaTheGame.