Island Life... From Cursed Pirates to Deadly TV shows...
This week we look at Tim Denee's brilliant Deathmatch Island, take to the horrible high seas with Gold Teeth and ponder the unstoppable RPG juggernaut that is MORK BORG...
New logo, who dis?
With issue 6’s publication date receding in the rear view mirror we’re finally looking ahead and cobbling together some kind of plan to keep this stupid ship afloat. A big part of that will be finally building a new website and creating a more coherent identity for all this nonsense, which with no money to pay someone who knows what they’re doing means me looking at endless amounts of comics and album sleeves (so no change there) whilst throwing various fonts together and cursing the existence of the letter W. Anyway v0.000000002 above, who knows where this will end up, hopefully in the hands of a professional.
Anyway, that’s more than enough sausage making for now, so apart from upsetting graphic designers this week we’ve also been thinking about gaming events, what with Essen Spiel announcing a record 204,000 attendees, following on from bumper summer attendances at both Gen Con and UK Games Expo. It’s clear that even if it’s not done with us, we’re (mostly) done with Covid, big events are back in town and the tabletop boom of the past few years is, thankfully, showing few signs of slowing down.
But it’s not all mega-cons and much like Wyrd Science appeals to the more discerning (quick calculation…) 0.01% of the tabletop game community, there are countless events out there providing more bespoke experiences, such as this weekend’s Furnace in Sheffield, the upcoming Trick or Retreat (23-27 Oct, Derbyshire, UK) or the likes of the Kraken in Germany.
It’s something we’d absolutely love to cover more of in a future issue, so do drop us a line or leave a comment and let us know about the events and cons that you swear by, the ones that do something a little different, or go out of their way to create a memorable, unique experience and deserve some love.
Right, on that note I have to go and write about music for money so I will leave you in peace to read the rest of this week’s newsletter, filled as it is with all manner of wonderful things for you to get your teeth stuck into.
John x
DEATHMATCH ISLAND
On the off chance that you aren’t checking in on this substack every few days then you may have missed that we just posted Chris Lowry’s review of Tim Denee’s Deathmatch Island, an inspired mix of everything from Squid Game and Battle Royale to genuine reality TV shows like Survivor.
We’ve been following Tim’s work for a while now after we stumbled across his beautifully illustrated play though of Thousand Year Old Vampire and had been following the progress of Deathmatch Island with increasing mix of anticipation and impatience.
Thankfully the end result more than lived up to the promise, a fascinating game that asks questions about where our ridiculous culture is heading, looks incredible and is unlike nearly every other TTRPG out there right now, we’d made it our game of the month in issue 6 and with very good reason.
Anyway, we want more people to know about it and so here we are, click the link below and check it what Chris reckoned was “a roleplaying game unlike anything else you’ve ever played”.
GOLD TEETH
Look, I’m a simple man with simple tastes, if I open your Kickstarter and the first thing I see is the line ‘Oceans are battlefields’ then there’s a good chance you’re getting my money. I don’t make the rules, I certainly wish I didn’t have to follow them, but that’s where we are.
Thankfully in the case of GOLD TEETH, the new piratical RPG from Jim Rossignol and Marsh Davies, I will almost certainly be getting a damn fine looking and playing game to go with my Master & Commander reference as the pair have form with both the original Georgian monster hunter RPG TEETH and their medieval comedy of terrible capers False Kingdom, ranking high amongst our favoutite indie RPGs of the past couple of years.
GOLD TEETH then returns us to the 1780s but this time transplants the action from the dismal horror haunted fields of England to the, admittedly equally horror haunted, Caribbean. Ah well, at least the weather might be better.
Anyway, following the detonation of an occult bomb the Antilles is now cut off from the world by a briny bastion, whilst within those watery walls all manner of occult terrors have been unleashed. But, as they say, one man’s cursed apocalyptic wasteland is another’s treasure and that potential plunder is what brings you to this rotten region.
Free from the prying eyes of kings and emperors you can maraud to your black heart’s content, ferment rebellion or just live the free and not-so-easy life of a pirate. Sadly it won’t be all tropical resorts filled with horny boomers, instead you’ll have to contend with the envoys and emissaries of rival powers, the salty shenanigans of other piratical types and of course the myriad cursed monstrosities now roaming both land and sea.
Making use of the Forged in the Dark system, the game contains full rules for ship engagements and landlubbing encounters alike, a roll call of occult horrors to tackle and everything you need to roll up your own cursed Caribbean so you can fully explore the now arcane Antilles by ship and foot, engage in epic naval battles, before entering port for a spot of subterfuge and skullduggery, shanking and stabbing your way across the archipelago with wild abandon.
Filled from cover to cover with Marsh Davies’ illustrations and Rossignol’s dark wit, GOLD TEETH should make for both a fine follow up to its ENNIE nominated predecessor and worthwhile addition to any respectable, or otherwise, gaming shelf.
MORK BORG HERESY SUPREME
In our most recent issue we looked at how MÖRK BORG has, in its brief horrible life, already spawned all manner of strange stuff, from t-shirts (go on just a few left in stock) and shower curtains to an 80s style text based computer game. Taking the latter to a whole other level is Heresy Supreme, a “side-scrolling semi-procedural” computer game which pixelates Johan Nohr’s twisted art, bringing the miserable doomed world of Galgenbeck to our screens.
Explore the dying world, hit awful creatures in the face with flails, wield terrible occult powers that are as likely to explode in your face as do what you want, and become a corpse, repeatedly. It might be more of a side scrolling action game than RPG but it certainly looks like the developers, Italian studio Morbidware, understood the brief.
If that’s not enough this campaign features some of the more out there add-ons you could hope for, ok maybe a printed zine version of the computer game is normal enough, even the soundtrack on yellow vinyl is not too weird but if you really want to go all in then you’re in luck as there’s seven life-sized MORK BORGed resin goat heads and even a completely one of a kind MORK BORG guitar on offer.
I mean, on reflection we probably should have waited and ran that feature in the next issue, ah well.
Finally a collection of things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, found down the back of the internet’s sofa…
Have you read Walt’s brilliant feature on Barkeep on the Borderlands yet? You really should. Anyway if that got you wanting more bar-crawl fun then the recent Barkeep Jam is over and the game’s creator WF Smith has picked out a few favourites. [Prismatic Wasteland]
I think I could listen to Brad & Yochai all day, anyway the latest episode of Between Two Cairns is up and this time they’re looking at Kelsey Dionne’s Cursed Scroll #1. [Between Two Cairns]
If our recent feature on Pendragon has got you in the mood for some Arthurian action well you’re in luck, as Chaosium have now opened up Greg Stafford’s legendary RPG to community content [DriveThruRPG]
There’s a bundle currently being put together on Itch to support Ukrainian hospitals and they’re looking for titles, so if you want to get involved check it out. [Itch.io]
A great review by Dan Thurot of putty monster mashing wargame and Wyrd Science fave Necromolds that, I’m happy to see agrees with many of my feelings about the game just in better words. [Space Biff]
An interesting look at how Rebellion - publishers of 2000AD as well as various computer and tabletop games (inc a forthcoming new edition of Tunnels & Trolls) - operate, probably would be a better world with more people like Jason at the helm of major companies. [Forbes]
Are you a Warhammer player of a certain age and get all misty eyed at the thought of Goblin Green? Of course you do. Polygon looks into the story of this most legendary of Citadel paints… [Polygon]
A jaw dropping look at an astonishingly bizarre occult scam ‘The invention of European bee shamanism’, honestly I had to pick my jaw up off the floor several times reading this. Why can’t these people throw their money at magazine publishers instead?! [Ecstatic Integration]
As a follow up to that the brilliant Dr Francis Young has just started his own substack which is well worth checking out, and in response to the above bee shenanigans looks at the lure of these kind of secret traditions amongst neo-pagan (and indeed mainstream religious) movements. [All Old Strange Things]
Sticking, and indeed ending, with the wyrd I loved this essay, the first in a series looking at the intersection of music and the esoteric, covering one of my favourite LPs The Fields of the Nephilim’s ridiculous and sublime in equal measure Elizium. [Dead But Dreaming]
On the subject of gaming events, my absolute favourite gaming weekend of the year is Peaky, in April, where 30 or so gamers get together to write freeforms (small parlour larps) that are then played on the Sunday. So Friday night and Saturday are spent writing, while Sunday is for playing the games. We've been doing this since 2001! http://uk-freeforms.wikidot.com/peaky