Hey there, greetings from an overcast Scotland! Much shorter newsletter this week as I’m travelling and have only managed to grab a few minutes on the laptop.
Anyway before we get on to some fun stuff here’s your, no doubt, interminable reminder that *deep breath* issue 6 is up for pre-order, print copies of issues 3, 4 & 5 are available in one discounted bundle, PDFs of issues 1-5 are available for a steal at both Itch & DriveThruRPG and we have some incredible t-shirts on sale now, including our new Łukasz Kowalczuk collab and a handful of the ones we did with MÖRK BORG’s Johan Nohr, those have been sold out for ages now but we just found a box with literally a handful left in.
Right, that done i’m off to enjoy some bracing Scottish air. So until next week…
John xxx
THE WRATH OF THE GODS
Weirdly perhaps, but one of the things I always loved about White Dwarf in the days before featuring anything non Games Workshop became verboten was the adverts. As an otherwise skint kid they were a window into the strange world that lay beyond London’s suburbs, one filed with weird zines and even weirder play-by-mail games and photocopied rulesets for RPGs and war-games.
And then of course there were the miniatures, oh the miniatures.
Tucked away in between the decidedly more professional Citadel adverts would be ones from both established companies, like Grenadier, and what were probably one-man operations running out of a shed somewhere in the midlands, fuelled by cheap speed and cider. Rarely any pictures, just tantalising lists, ‘Warbot with Gyroblaster - 35p’, ‘Satanic Archdeacon - 55p’, ‘Bar Table with Sleeping Drunk - 45p’, that kind of thing. Each one a promise of, well, of something.
Anyway, one of the many joys of embracing the booming miniature agnostic war-game scene over the past few years has been to once again pore through the ranges of the many independent miniature sculptors out there. And what’s often so great with these things is that just like when I was a kid it’s always a two way street. You start off by thinking, Ok what horrible little bastards can I find today to play Deth Wizards with, and then you stumble across a load of miniatures that inspire you to create something new and maybe even original just for them.
A case in point is this new Kickstarter from Wyrm Forge, The Wrath of the Gods. A set designed by Boris Woloszyn and inspired by Herzog’s classic film Aguirre, about a group of conquistadors’ descent into madness as they plunge through the Amazon in search of gold.
Filled with character you instantly want to put these little fools through a very bad time. And maybe it’s because i’ve been re-reading the WFRP Lustria book recently, but seeing them has set my mind ablaze with ideas for all kinds of different games that could feature these doomed souls set in those Skink and ratmen infested jungles. Anyway, check them out and maybe get inspired yourselves.
HELLUVA TOWN
Ever fancied dropping an anvil on someone’s head? Well it looks like you’re in luck, as 40 years after Greg Costikyan’s Toon first introduced the idea of cartoon violence into RPGs, Italian publishers Acheron (Brancalonia, Lex Arcana etc) are back with Helluva Town to offer fans another go with the comedy outsized mallet.
Set in the gangster filled New York of the 1930s, and specifically a part of the Big Apple where only cartoon characters live, Helluva Town is a simple to learn four stat RPG that uses playing cards for its core mechanic and cartoon logic for everything else.
We’re always up with games that lean into and play with the internal logic of other mediums and fully illustrated by Shawn Dickinson, who did the art for the Cuphead comics for Dark Horse, Helluva Town looks like the kind of book that would have cartoon wolves bellowing ‘Awooga! Awooga! whilst their eyeballs pop out on stalks.
Finally a collection of things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, found down the back of the internet’s sofa…
As people of culture we’re obviously big fans of Mckenzie Crooke’s Detectorists and were particularly taken by this series by illustrator Sean Coleman reimagining Andy and Lance’s pastoral adventures as a series of Penguin paperbacks through the years, and which are now available as postcards.
Talking of books, if you’re not all over the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series then the next anthology to go on sale looks like a great starting point, curated by those Weird Walk lads The Haunted Trail features 15 classic spooky tales of ramblers find that beneath the pastoral surface of the countryside lies a much less green and pleasant land.
This year’s Ennie Awards nominations have been announced and, yeah, not too bad. Plenty of things on there that we’ve talked about and enjoyed over the past 12 months, so worth having a look.
A King Ghidorah Tiki mug? Why must I be afflicted with this terrible unshakeable lust for ridiculous, completely inessential things.
Having had to close because, well everything has been terrible of quite a whole now, Jam Bookshop has thankfully found a new premises in Portobello Road in West London. Stocking classics, graphic novels and oddities, let’s hope their new spot works out, if you can’t make it to the shop you can order online here for now.
Nerds unite! Bringing Dungeons & Dragons players & stamp collectors together, the Royal Mail have just put a special commemorative set on sale to mark the game’s 50th anniversary. I’ll be honest bit disappointed that all the art is from I’d say about 2010 on, I’d have loved an Erol Otus stamp but still fun to see and the special edition in the treasure chest/mimic pack is nice.
Did you know that there was a 1000 page RPG based upon Wing Commander II - Vengeance of the Kilrathi, me neither until this week. What a world we live in.
Can someone please stat the BIG MAC HAT.
God man, I'm such a big fan of the British Library Weird Tales, but I think in the US there's some we don't get! What a travesty.