Roll Britannia? Local games for local people...
Plus Wyrd Science issue 6 is ready to ship!
I’ve said it before but one of my favourite things about Wyrd Science is that I get to have odd ideas and then make talented people to execute them for me. If you squint it’s a bit like being a medieval king. For instance, after interviewing Dan Abnett about, amongst other things, completing the epic Warhammer Horus Heresy series nearly 20 years after he kicked it off, I wanted something special to pull it together.
Dan is after all not just one of the most important Warhammer writers out there but also one of our most celebrated comic writers. Luckily I knew just the person to bring my idea to life, in this case the brilliant Flops, who as ever took my incredibly rough notes and made it all so much more. I mean, just look at that. You’ll find Flops’ illustration, and my accompanying feature, in our latest issue which is at our warehouse now and shipping this week. So if you’ve been holding off ordering it, now would be a pretty great time to do so.
It was great to speak to Dan, a genuinely lovely chap who has done so much to shape the Warhammer 40,000 universe into more interesting shapes over the years. Something that came up in our chat and that i’ve been thinking about since was both Warhammer’s intrinsic British qualities and indeed wider British traditions in literature, and especially sci-fi and fantasy.
As I say elsewhere in the issue when reviewing the OSR setting book Beyond Corny Gron, something that I’ve enjoyed in recent years has been getting to see people, from all around the world, creating fantasy settings based on their own cultures. But at the same time since, for both cultural and commercial reasons, these books are mostly still tied to at least some kind of D&D adjacent system it’s left me wondering, what if?
Settings can be wonderful things and often more than enough to capture the spirit of a place, but what would, for instance, a Philippine, or Chinese or Indian RPG look like created ex nihilo without the looming influence of Gygax & co. What would a game’s actual system look like had it been developed from scratch in a society with completely different attitudes to life and death or community and individualism, or even just different gaming traditions to draw from?
Maybe, probably, hopefully, they exist and I want to know about them.
Games are a part of our cultures, and on some level - consciously or not - reflect the beliefs, concerns and philosophies of what is around them. In recent years you may have stumbled across people talking about decolonising Dungeons & Dragons, and when you get past the rage and bluster those three words often summon there’s some interesting ideas there.
But my take is that despite its hegemony, its huge international appeal, D&D is American, as American an art-form as say hip-hop, jazz or superhero comics and in that it reflects many of the good and bad things of American culture. If it was just part of a much wider ecosystem rather than the whale that barnacles adhere to, we’d probably be able to accept it for that. Much as I abhor how it’s made RPGs a monoculture, that’s possibly more on us than it.
So what does a British roleplaying game look like? In some ways that’s an easy question to answer, and people did when I asked it on BlueSky the other day.
As you’d expect there are familiar touch points, Fighting Fantasy, Maelstrom, Dragon Warriors, Warhammer in all its versions, obviously. Grim dark, mud & blood, low level - a more grounded often, sharing DNA with the likes of 2000AD in their attitude towards authority, maybe a touch of Monty Python in its sense of the absurd, or the influence of that particular strain of British sci-fi as brought to our screens by people like Nigel Kneale.
(As an aside it’s always interesting in these conversations that Warhammer, set in an ersatz Holy Roman Empire and today published by an Irish company comes up by default but something like The One Ring, based on the Ur-British fantasy about a group of Home Counties lads walking to Birmingham doesn’t).
Whilst these are all valid, again we’re really talking about settings here and these are still all games that different as they may be in tone ultimately derive from D&D (and also very much reflect a pretty specific time and strata of British society, perhaps alien to many nowadays).
I can’t presume to say what a game created by someone who inherently believes in, let’s say, reincarnation or dharma might look like but as a Brit I’d love to explore more what a British RPG could be beyond all that mud & blood, bitter satirical digs at Thatcher and the like.
Kieron Gillen’s DIE makes a decent case that so many of the ingredients that were required for D&D style RPGs to emerge were fostered on this side of the Atlantic, so maybe British and American cultures share too much for a newer art form like RPGs to ever be totally distinct. But maybe not, so if you’ve somehow not skipped this and have something to add other than ‘for god’s sake shut up John’ I’d love to hear.
Right! On that note there’s a few cool things crowdfunding this week we’d love to tell you about, some interesting link to dive into so and I really don’t want to bore you off buying the new issue, so I’ll leave you be until next week
John x
When you can’t play the new issue of Wyrd Science but hopefully it will open you up to some new games.
Anyway the new issue is in our warehouse now and ready to ship, so if you’d like to read about… *Deep Breath* ALIEN, Art by Nohr, Bad Moon Cafe, Beyond Corny Gron, Call of Cthulhu, Castle Rat, Damnation: The Gothic Game, Dan Abnett, Deathmatch island, Deth Wizards, Dreams and Machine, Dungeons & Dragons, Fancy dice, Fantastic Medieval Campaigns, Gabriele Cardosi, Gangs of Titan City, Game Therapy UK, Games Expo UK, Harrow County, Heroes of Cerulea, Necromolds, Pendragon, Polish RPGs, Mausritter, MÖRK BORG, Mothership, Rascal, Shadowdark, Speculative Fiction, Tales From The Loop, The Arcanist’s Tavern, The Job, Warhammer 40,000, When Nightmares Come, Wyrmspan, Yr Hobyd and probably some other stuff then you’re in the right place.
Grab a magazine, one of our three issue bundles or one of our amazing t-shirts now and you never know if around 500 of you did that we might even be able to make another.
Goblins, Gobblers & Veggies
As a man of culture I am of course a huge fan of Kev Adams, the former Citadel Miniatures sculptor whose iconic goblins captured, almost more than any other range, the anarchic spirit of Warhammer in the 80s and 90s.
So take it as a great compliment that when I first saw the Goblins, Gobblers & Veggies Kickstarter I assumed they were a re-release of some of his old work. As it happens they’re actually both new and the work of Jonas Marquardt of beQuest Miniatures who has perfectly channeled Adams’ gobbos’ joie de violence here.
Cast in white metal this unruly mob features a motley collection of Goblin wizards, bounding beasts and, bizarrely but absolutely welcome to the party, a mob of vegified goblins. Yes, if you’ve always wanted to send an angry carrot or broccoli stem into war now is your chance. Wonderfully bonkers stuff.
Mat Pringle - Singing Up The Sun
Mat is, of course, the artist whose work will have been most people’s first encounter with Wyrd Science, having provided the cover for every issue to date. But ours is a relationship that goes back much longer than that and for probably more years than either of us care to remember I’ve enjoyed chatting shit with him about everything from odd music to even odder pagan folklore.
Bringing that all together in one tidy looking bundle is Singing Up The Sun, “an illustrated celebration of folk music focusing on the strange and magical stories behind over seventy traditional folk songs from the British Isles.”
Currently crowdfunding through Unbound the book will be not only filled with his incredible art but also the reflections of singers, artists and performers from folk music and beyond, digging into the roots of some of the strangest and most stirring songs from the British Isles.
Traveller's Guide to the Seasong Islands
We don’t often feature 5E stuff here, no militant dogma there or anything it just often feels like it exists in a parallel world to us. Still, for the past couple of weeks I have been low key obsessed with this picture of a rather chill looking parrot merchant riding his big beetle into town. As ever it’s sentences like that, that remind me why I love fantasy games.
Anyway that Parrot comes straight from Traveller's Guide to the Seasong Islands, a new project from artists and games designers Rose & Niels, whose RPG papercraft skills we’ve long been fans of (Rose was also behind the charming Adventure Presents.. Tiny in the Tower game).
Essentially a mini-setting, the Seasong Islands are a tropical paradise filled with all manner of brightly coloured fauna and flora (only some of which have serrated bills for rending flesh from bone) to seek out, locations such as taverns and markets to explore, plus a load of random encounters and quests to bring the place to life.
If you’re looking for something less dank and dangerous and more tilted at the wonder of exploration then this could be well worth checking out.
Finally a collection of things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, found down the back of the internet’s sofa…
Briefly back in the UK the other week I rolled a 20 on a charity shop perception check and found a pristine copy of the 1990 Fighting Fantasy Poster Book, which prompted me to ask is Les Edwards’ cover art for Daggers of Darkness the most wonderfully batshit fantasy illustration ever? Have your say… Honestly i’d just like to know what brief Ian Livingstone gave him…
Talking of Fighting Fantasy, a nice recollection here from author and games designer Gareth Hanrahan looking back at youthful summer holidays lost in the Forest of Doom.
Scientists have discovered never-before-seen shapes up to 1,300 feet long beneath Antarctic ice. Which sounds like the intro to at least half a dozen different cosmic horror books and films.
Always nice to see wargames in the news for good reasons and the BBC reports on a club in Sunderland who have been given a £5000 grant to provide additional services to the area (or buy three resin Warlord titans).
New Scientist has a normal one and questions whether we could set Uranus on fire to harvest its diamond core. I mean at this stage why not?
A game i’ve been meaning to dip into for a while now is Kelsey Dionne’s Shadowdark, and this week she’s just released a short, free, supplement for playing the game solo. Whilst you do still need the rules the game’s quickstart is a free download too, so I plan to put in a couple of hours on this over the weekend. (hat tip to The Soloist for alerting us to this).
Running all August on the social medias is #RPGaDAY2024, find out more and get involved here…
Long time readers will know we have a soft spot for bestiaries and so we were delighted to see The Grognard Files tackle the subject in the first of a two parter looking at their favourite books of beasts. Great to see the Forbidden Lands one get a mention as it’s definitely one of our favourites from the last year or so.
Josh Reynolds pops up in this section fairly often, but with good reason. Anyway check out his latest newsletter for, amongst other stuff, a short story about an Arthurian werewolf fighting Cthulhu, not something you get every day.
And because we like to encourage a varied diet here let’s end this week on something completely different but still worth reading, Michael Hahn’s reflections on seeing musicians, in this case Bruce Springsteen, multiple times on a tour. Lovely writing.
Great update as usual. Looking forward to getting my next issue in print! Thanks for the hat tip!