Rise Of Zero (ROZ) is a pen and paper game currently in development by Author Caleb Dan Gammons which coincides with the stories he is currently writing. The game's idea happened one afternoon on Southern Arkansas University's campus when Caleb was sitting with his friends. Jordan Ott and Jedediah Sikes primarily presented the idea to Caleb, though at the time, Caleb had very little experience with pen and paper RPG games.
Throughout Caleb's four years at Southern Arkansas University, he spent a good majority of time working on Rise of Zero, while also playing pen and paper RPG games with his friends. Caleb grew to love this form of gaming, and found so much enjoyment playing and testing the various game mechanics of ROZ with his friends. At the end of college, when Caleb graduated, Rise of Zero was well on its way in creation but there was still so much to create and the manual was still in pieces. It was still just a collection of different word documents and notes that Caleb kept stored on his computer.
After graduating college in December of 2018, Caleb found very little time to work on ROZ, given that he had started a new job as a construction worker's helper. The little time he could spend on the game, was done on weekends and some evenings but very little progress was being made and very little play testing could be done. However, at the beginning 2020, Caleb began a new job working as an IT. This job allowed him to have a lot more time to begin piecing together the actual game manual.
On 7/30/2020 @ 6:25 PM, all the document pieces of the manual were finally finished being put into a rough draft. The initial draft of the manual had been created. Caleb made the announcement and had this to say:
"Today I stand quite proud. After Four long years, many campaigns, trials and errors. I, The Author, stand to say that I am victorious. 7/30/2020 @ 6:25 PM tonight marks the day and the hour that I finally have put together into one document, the very first rough draft of the Rise of Zero 1st edition Adventure Manual. The Rise of Zero is finally in a stage where I can begin editing it for publishing, as well as passing it off to other DMs to play. I am so happy, its finally an actual complete manual.
The Rise of Zero for those who don’t know is a pen and paper rpg game I’ve been working on for four years. It’s based off of the books I’ve been writing. It’s taken me this long, but it is so worth it. I am so, so happy tonight. Hands down, greatest accomplishment of anything I’ve ever written." - Author Caleb Dan Gammons
Since then, Caleb has continued to work on the manual and today stands prepared to create a website, start writing and podcasting about ROZ in it's entirety. This new pen and paper game is hopefully going to be released by the end of 2022.