Wyrd Science Issue 4 Out Now!
+ we speak to SoulMuppet's Zach Cox & win new RPGs from Rebellion Unplugged!
After promising to take just a couple of weeks off over Christmas The Gazetteer is finally back. Sorry about that, as is often the case life happened. Still, here we are, and to make amends we have a brand new print issue for you too.
Yes, issue 4 of Wyrd Science is here and looking great, in no small part thanks to the incredible work of cover artist Mat Pringle.
Inside it’s another bumper 112 page issue covering everything from RPGs such as Chaosium’s new Rivers of London, The Troubleshooters, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play and Errant, through to dungeon crawlers like Frosthaven - the massive new sequel to Gloomhaven and wargame/board game hybrids such as our game of the month (that’s a thing now) Undaunted Stalingrad.
There’s lots, lots more on top of that so order a copy today or why not even take out a subscription, which gets you up to 20% off the cover price and means you’ll never miss an issue.
As you’ve no doubt noticed we’re also now on Substack, to cut a long story short our old mailing list provider wanted to start charging us an ungodly amount. We’re not the greatest business minds at Wyrd Science, but we do have our limits.
We’ve wanted to expand our online content for a while now anyway and Substack does potentially give us a way of paying for that. In the meantime though rest assured that whatever else we launch here, The Gazetteer will remain free for all, please consider sharing it with others who may like to subscribe themselves.
Absolute professionals that we are we’re still figuring both exactly what this will all involve but for now welcome to our new home, now please go buy the new issue of the magazine, it’s a belter.
John x
In our new issue we speak to Zach Cox, co-founder of British RPG publisher Soulmuppet Publishing, about the highs and lows that come with not only getting games made but actually into people’s hands. If you’ve ever considered giving it a go yourself there’s some great advice there.
With their latest RPG, “Doomed Arthurian Western” Inevitable, live on Kickstarter now (and until May 11) we invited Zach to give us an insight into what occupies their time when not dealing with shipping problems and VAT returns…
What are you... playing?
I'm in 3 weekly gamess right now, all playtests for stuff written by my friends!
Wednesdays is Godslingers, a space fantasy western about being a cowboy with a magic gun that has a dead god in it, written by Kalya Dice of Ratwave Game House.
Thursdays is The Bronze Circle, a cockney dark comedy crime PbtA game where you do CRIMES in a big horrible slum outside a fantasy city you aren't rich enough to be allowed into, written by Edwin Moriarty of Moriarty Games.
And Fridays is Saltstone City, a 80s/90s mystery investigation game where you play neurodiverse kids discovering the supernatural , written by Nick Spence who created Gangs of Titan City for SoulMuppet.
I'm also playing a lot of Warhammer: Horus Heresy. A new army list came out for normal shitty dudes who aren't space marines, and I'm having fun throwing my normal, innocent plastic men to their certain deaths.
… reading?
Personally, I'm currently trying to read the works of Mallory, Le Morte d'Arthur and whatnot, and failing cos I don't speak Middle English.
For work, I'm reading Gareth Hanrahan's new Heart sourcebook A Dagger In The Heart, a fucked up time travel dungeoneering purpose-crawl about trains and your heart's desires. It's good and Gareth writes in modern English so I'm having much more fun with that than with The Matter of Britain.
… listening to?
My main music hit at the moment has been Do Nothing, a Nottingham based band I've been a fan of across three previous names and more than a decade of local scene releases. Check out Happy Feet for some nostalgic soft pop-punk?
I'm also continually hammering Colin Stetson's work, filled with hyper maximalist saxophony polyphony. Other stuff on repeat at the moment is the new albums from Boy Genius and Theo Katzman, and comfort albums from Paint The Sky Red.
… watching?
I'm currently having an absolutely fucked Australian absurdist comedy arc, so I'm watching Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe (while visiting Australia using a VPN cos it's only on ABC View). It's a tad crass but it makes me chuckle. Succession is in its final season and continues to be the best show of television, even though I viscerally despise every character.
… and working on?
Inevitable is still happening. We're live on kickstarter and knocking over stretch goals left right and centre. I got the manuscript back from Will Jobst so there's edits on that.
We're also about to start work on a second big Orbital Blues book, think a Haynes manual but for spaceships. When that's done, I'm doing vampires. You've been warned.
Since we featured Rebellion Unplugged way back in our first issue, the tabletop game publisher (and of course sister company to the “galaxy’s greatest comic” 2000AD) have picked up a head of steam releasing their tabletop version of sneaky Nazi-killing sim Sniper Elite, a freshened up edition of Ian Livingstone’s 1980’s Judge Dredd board game, Dread: Dredd - a wholly unexpected Mega-City revision of Epidiah Ravachol’s Jenga fuelled RPG and a second issue of their Adventure Presents… series.
Following on from the Grant Howitt & Chris Taylor penned Tartarus Gate, Adventure Presents… Tiny In The Tower is another complete RPG, system & scenario, presented in a handy magazine style format. Written by Rose Whittaker, the game puts you in the shoes of bold adventurers tasked with investigating a wizard’s disappearance and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that whilst rooting through the errant sorcerer’s tower some Honey I Shrunk The Kids style hijinks ensue.
With a simple system, a fun and engaging scenario and the best looking cheese dice we’ve seen for a while, Tiny In The Tower is both a great introduction to RPGs for kids and a cosy little palette cleanser for your normal gaming group in between grotesque games of MÖRK BORG and the like.
If you’d like to get in on the action then you may be in luck as Rebellion have kindly given us 3 copies of both Tartarus Gate & Tiny In The Tower to giveaway. To be in with a chance to win simply smash the button below and tell us the name of the ‘great and powerful’ wizard whose disappearance you must investigate.
Get your answers in by midday (GMT) Friday 29th April. Good luck, and why not keep up to date with what else Rebellion Unplugged are cooking up over on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram.
A collection of other things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, culled from around the web...
Prompted by the recent claim by John Stallard of Warlord Games that ‘wokeism’ is the greatest threat to historical wargames, Goonhammer have set out their stall. Well worth a read and consider it cosigned by us.
More news has emerged about the upcoming Gloomhaven RPG, including the eye watering amount of miniatures they’re producing, Polygon have the details.
Wyrd Science’s own Mira Manga has been busy over on YouTube recently as she’s immersed herself into the grim dark Warhammer 40K universe, check out her channel for interviews with the likes of Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill.
Meanwhile another of our regulars, artist Łukasz Kowalczuk has been collaborating with the MÖRK BORG crew on a weekly web-comic, To Hell and Galgenbeck. Busy lot aren’t they…
Did you know in the early 20th century there used to be a petrol station in London where the pump was a giant Egyptian Pharaoh style head? Nor me until last week but there you are, get that in your next Call of Cthulhu scenario.
An interesting piece here on Rome’s Naumachias, massive - and brutal - naval reenactments fought by gladiators for the amusement of the people.
As someone who comes from a family filled with hoarders and who is currently sat surrounded by more games and miniatures than i’ll ever have a chance to play with in this lifetime, this feature on John Townsend - collector of ephemera par excellence - hit home. Still it’s a lovely piece by Bob Fischer and well worth a read.
A Dominion invasion via a wormhole in space or just everyday billionaire space pollution? Sadly(?) it looks like the latter, pretty though…
Going back to 2000AD for a hot minute (new readers be warned this is a regular occurrence) they just announced a new book, Comic Book Punks, out later this year looking at the revolutionary British comic creators of the late 70s.
Game designers take note, Michal Gotkowski has pulled together a brilliant resource and archive of public domain images and giving it a rather fine title too…
Hey, remember when Wizards of the Coast decided to nuke all the goodwill they’d built up with the RPG community earlier this year? Well it looks like the trading card arm of the company was feeling left out and so sent a bunch of strike breaking, cartoonishly evil goons round to a YouTuber’s house after he leaked some upcoming Magic cards. Quite a choice there.
Ok, that’s it for this week, please go buy our new magazine xxx