Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Lot of non-Wyrd Science stuff going on at the moment so apologies but this and perhaps the next newsletter or two will be a little shorter whilst that’s dealt with (stop cheering at the back there!).
There is still lots to share with you though so just to run through a couple of key things, the lovely Jim Rossignol asked me some questions about the magazine and what went wrong in my life for it to happen. So, if you’ve ever wondered about why on earth we make a print magazine in this day & age then now’s your chance to discover that and lots, lots more.
As a little bonus I provided Jim with a code that will get you 20% off everything in our store including both the latest issue of the magazine and our Johan Nohr and Lukasz Kowlaczuk t-shirts (I think the code runs out mid November) so do check it out.
This week also saw a huge migration of people to Bluesky fleeing the latest stupid whim of Twitter’s idiot king. Since this meant we came to the attention of a lot of new folk we created a new bundle on DriveThruRPG, and so for the time being you can get PDFs of every issue we’ve published for just £6 (if you own any of them already it reduces the price further). Seems like a good deal to me.
Right, we’ll leave it there as there’s some cool stuff for you to check out below (especially the ‘We Are Not Alone’ recording which i’m listening to for the fourth time as I type this) and I better get back to this terrifyingly long to-do list.
Laters!
John x
DRAGON TOWN & THE DARKNESS BELOW
Dragon Town & The Darkness Below is a new system neutral fantasy adventure from the scarily prolific artist, game designer and more, JP Coovert. Set in and around the titular town, whose mayor - a Gold Dragon obviously - has gone missing, Dragon Town provides you with a dozen different locations to explore, hundreds of NPCs and all manner of strange and arcane items to get your mitts on.
Coovert describes the adventure as ‘light in tone, but heavy on danger’ and that’s perfectly captured by his gorgeous illustrations which fill the book and bring to life its strange inhabitants, whether that’s the scrumpy loving slimes, mischief making Goatlins or roaming gangs of feral feline felons.
Each of the locations has some kind of whimsical adventure tied to it, such as magical apple tree orchards and cider factory that are being plagued by the aforementioned slimes, and each reveals a little more of the mystery of the missing mayor as you progress through them.
Designed to be used with basically any of your standard (and indeed non-standard) fantasy systems, I’d probably pair this with something like Nate Treme’s Tunnel Goons and I can see it being a perfect stepping stone into the life ruining world of TTRPGs for any relatives of a susceptible age.
The whole book is pretty much ready to hit the presses (in fact you can check it out almost in full here) and looks gorgeous, practically laid out and designed for ease of use at the table but also full of so much charm and character that it almost makes me wish I could stand being around children long enough to play it with them.
Thankfully most the adults I do know have never bothered doing much in the way of growing up and so armed with our own not-exactly magical cider I’m sure we will still get plenty of use out of it just with thankfully less risk of it coming into contact with chocolate covered child hands.
Finally a collection of things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, found down the back of the internet’s sofa…
We’re big fans of Carly AF’s art here at Wyrd Science, and we especially love this new limited edition print of everyone’s favourite Federation starship, the USS Enterprise NCC1701 boldly, and indeed brightly, going about its business rendered in Carly’s inimitable style. [Vice Press]
Between 1980 and 1992, John P Timmerman, Ohio businessman and member of the Center for UFO Studies recorded 1,179 witness reports of extraterrestrial encounters from members of the public. ‘We Are Not Alone’ is a wonderfully evocative 30 minute compilation of excerpts from Timmerman’s tapes. A wonderful cultural relic you can expect to hear samples lifted from this on dozens of hauntological ambient LPs over the next 12 months. [BBC Sounds]
We all like print media here, right? Well good news as former EDGE magazine art editor, Andrew Hind, has launched a new magazine, ON, focused on video games and we have to say it looks absolutely gorgeous. With eight different covers on offer I bought the Mario Hanafuda one so quickly you’d think i’d just run over a Bullet Bill. [On Magazine]
There’s no denying the impact that Actual Plays have had on the RPG industry over the last decade, what has surprised us is how there hasn’t been as much impact on actual game design as you might expect. Anyway it turns out Zedeck Siew has been thinking about that too… [Zedeck Siew]
Archaeologists have discovered a secret chamber hidden beneath Al-Khazneh, the mysterious rock-cut tomb in Petra as seen in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. Whether those present at the discover were required to make a SAN check is at present unknown. [Smithsonian Magazine]
Idle Cartulary reads through the new D&D Player’s Handbook and delivers one of the more even handed verdicts we’ve read so far. [Playful Void]
A clear sign that we need to get a life is that we always get a kick out of there being two Steve Jacksons who came to prominence in fantasy gaming at around the same time, and that to complicate matters the US Steve Jackson ended up contributing to the UK Steve Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy series. Anyway we were reminded of this curio this week as it has just been announced that US Steve Jackson will now be publishing UK Steve Jackson’s aforementioned Fighting Fantasy books in America. [Steve Jackson Games]
Of course the important question that has been vexing us since we heard is whether Steve Jackson Games will continue the venerable tradition of US publishers of taking the iconic looking FF books and giving them absolutely dog shit covers. [BlueSky]
We’re a little late to this but Exeunt Press have been hosting MORKTOBER, I think you can probably figure out what that is yourself, but among the more interesting things emerging from it is a whole slew of solo tools from The Soloist’s Patrick Beuchner to enjoy. [The Soloist]