The Art of Darkness
Rebellions on the edge of space, Johan Nohr's new art book, coughs, splutters & more
A somewhat croaky and early hello this week, as I’m afraid today’s Gazetteer finds me struck down by one of Grandfather Nurgle’s many blessings, reduced to making the occasional pathetic groan in the hope that a healing mug of tea might magically appear from the other room, perhaps along with a restorative slice of apple cake.
Sadly thanks to the magic of noise cancelling headphones that doesn't seem to be doing the trick right any more, so I guess I should bravely soldier on with the rest of the newsletter as there’s cool stuff to tell you about that cares little for my virus ridden state.
So, first things first the obligatory plug, Wyrd Science issue 5 is still up for pre-order, and whilst doing so won’t make the bees in my brain or razor blades in my throat go away it might make my reduced circumstances vaguely more tolerable.
Charity aside it’s an amazing looking issue that ranges right across the tabletop game wilderness in search of fun, adventure and treasure and kicks off with a deep dive into the history of dystopian settings, and how our golden visions of our future in the seventies soured.
Alongside that we speak to those responsible for bringing some recent dark futures, such as Paranoia, Blade Runner and The Doomed to our tables, there’s a great chat with W.F. Smith about his Ennie Award winning Barkeep on the Borderlands, Dan Thurot looks at how engaging with politics can make our games better, Stu Horvath treats us to a look inside his amazing new book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, and that’s just scratching the surface.
Pre-order now and maybe grab some of our back issues at the same time whilst they’re discounted. Ok, marketing done, i’m dragging myself back to bed to leave you to read on in peace.
Till, hopefully, next week…
John x
Outer Rim Uprising
With the Mothership 1e boxed sets edging ever closer to making landfall like some frost-rimed planet killing asteroid it’s a good time for Wardens to stock up on some horrible new adventures to put your players through.
Those looking for something fairly substantial to tackle could do a lot worse than check out Outer Rim Rising, a new and rather wonderful looking bundle of adventures put together by The Lost Bay Studio and featuring contributions from several familiar names such as David Blandy, Iko, Josh Domanski and Alfred Valley.
Set in the far fringes of known space, the Outer Rim is a terrifying place where unknown alien lifeforms lurk behind every corner, tyrannical corporations indulge there every whim, twisted science is let loose on the galaxy and rival factions compete for survival and dominance. So all in all exactly the kind of place to hang out in if you’re looking for some quality space horror action.
Available in three different tiers, the Insurgent Bundle gets you the three core adventures, maps and player aids whilst going up to the deluxe Uprising Bundle gets you a fancy looking box stuffed with a smorgasbord of adventure material, supplemental pamphlets, player facing aids, props, a campaign book to string it all together, musical soundtrack and lots more.
All in all that should be more than enough to keep you and your gaming group in void based terror for the best part of a year or so.
Art by Nohr
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the past few years, in which case make some space please, Swedish artist and graphic designer Johan Nohr should need little introduction. As one of the co-creators of MORK BÖRG, and the man responsible for its distinctive look, it’s fair to say that his impact on the indie RPG scene over the past three or four years has been pretty significant.
If that was the sum total of his work that would still make for a good CV but Nohr has been generous with his pen and as well as creating new, horrific, illustrations and laying out several official MB releases he has contributed to dozens of other titles, from third party releases such as Forbidden Psalm to completely distinct games such as Chris McDowall’s Into The Odd. He even found time to do us a rather disgusting t-shirt last year.
Art by Nohr then is, as the name suggests, a deluxe art book bringing together for the first time his work made between 2006 and 2023 from sketches and doodles to complete pieces that have been created for games, bands and just the hell of it.
If you own any of the official Stockholm Kartell releases you’ll know the Swedes don’t like to scrimp when it comes to fancy design and print techniques and this book is no different. Clocking in at a mighty 232 pages, it’s a deluxe coffee table sized book, featuring all kinds of foils, eight colour printing, silk screen details, art stickers and more to perfectly capture the feverish nature of Johan’s work. An essential document for anyone interested in the visual design of tabletop games.
A collection of other things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, culled from around the web...
When I started Wyrd Science it wasn’t White Dwarf or Dragon but the likes of Mundial and Little White Lies that I hoped to in some way emulate. The latter of which continues to provide inspiration and inspire envy as they celebrate their 100th issue with an exhibition at the Coin Street Gallery on London’s Southbank (until this Sunday).
Talking of other mags, sometime Wyrd Science contributor Will Salmon interviewed Alan Moore last year for SFX to talk about his, then, just released collection of short stories, Illuminations. Anyway, with the book now out in paperback they’ve uploaded a longer version of the interview online now and you can read it here.
I might as well throw this out into the universe but one of my long held dreams for WS has always been to get the aforementioned Alan Moore to sit down and chat with Michael Moorcock about the history of (British) speculative fiction.
Whether that might ever happen, who knows, but if you’d like a preview of what half of that could be like, get a brew on and crack open a fresh packet of hobnobs as The Grognard Files have an audience with Moorcock this month. It’s a wonderfully rambling chat that leaves games to one side to instead look over his career in books and film, and has earned Dirk at least another 12 months of support from us on Patreon.Right, perhaps something vaguely tabletop game related…. The Guardian spends a day wargaming with the department of war studies at King’s College London. An interesting if somewhat disconcerting read… Boom, boom, boom.
Something that I’ve thought about a lot, and almost pulled the trigger on a feature a couple of times now, is the various hows and whys of playing the ‘bad guys’ in wargames, both your standard issue world ending fantasy bastards and, in the case of historical wargames, actual tiny war criminals.
It’s a slippery subject that needs to be approached with care, so hats of to Goonhammer and their writer, Edwin Moriarty, who have just published this excellent piece looking at exactly this topic. Well worth a read.This week it’s the turn of massive German games convention Essen Spiel to lace up their clown shoes as they claim to support creatives in the industry whilst using hideous AI art on their marketing materials. In their defence they said, oh no, wait sorry they said nothing.
Still at least someone has found a spine, and hats off to Backerkit for taking a stand on the issue here.
Dicebreaker have just announced details of their second annual Tabletop Awards with the public voting open until October 16. Still no category for best allegedly-quarterly print tabletop game magazine I notice though, cowards.
Just in time for spooky season the brilliant Hellebore zine is back with their annual Samhain issue, pre-order here! A wonderful read for anyone with an interest in folklore, the occult and esoteric.
They say Twitter is dying (it is) and yet here we are having the most popular tweet I think we’ve had for around 18 months. I’d love to say it was a lovingly crafted joke, call to righteous action, link to our new issue, or one of the several thousand word features we’ve lovingly published, but no.
Fans of eCommerce and shitpost marketing may be fascinated to know that this generated approximately zero actual sales and instead just made our phone really annoying to use for a day or so and me a bit grumpy.
The subscription still doesn't work. I can't get the 4 issue offer.