Wyrd Science Issue 5 Is Out Now!

plus we look at Beyond The Pale and dig up some cool stuff for you to check out...

Well it’s a real thing at last and hopefully already in the hands of many of you and being enjoyed, or put aside for the Christmas interregnum.

As someone who has basically taught themselves how to do all this on the job, the part where I click confirm, hand over several thousand pound to a printer and wait to see what basic, day-1-in-graphic-design-school, mistake i’ve made is frankly terrifying. Thankfully we appear to have gotten away with it once again and, even if I do say so myself, reckon this issue has come out looking pretty good.

Packed with great features on games like DIE, Blade Runner, Barkeep on the Borderlands, The Doomed, Warhammer 40K, Paranoia, Votes for Women and lots lots more, you can check out some of the spreads here…

Anyway I won’t labour the point, if you subscribe to this newsletter then you should have a pretty good idea of what we do. Still, if you haven’t bought a copy yet please do, as we really would like to keep making them and need your support to do that. So why not head over here now, grab a copy in print or PDF and give yourself something to escape into over the Christmas break.

Right onwards, upwards, and onto issue 6. What wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie might that be all about then…

John x

---

Beyond The Pale

We’ve never exactly hidden our appreciation of Yochai Gal’s Cairn under a bushel, and we’re pretty sure that it’s, by all accounts flossy looking, 2nd edition due for release next year via Space Penguin Ink will be one of the big stories in the indie/post/whatever-OSR scene.

Ahead of that though Gal is Kickstarting Beyond The Pale, an old school inspired module, ostensibly for Cairn but like most these things easily ported to any OSR adjacent system, that is rooted in Eastern European Jewish folklore and mysticism.

The title itself refers to The Pale of Settlement, a region of Imperial Russia that existed from the early 18th century up until the Russian Revolution. The Pale was the only part of the empire that Jews were allowed to live in, though even here they were mainly excluded from the major cities and left to form their own small communities or shtetls.

The module takes this area as the inspiration for its setting, with the focus on the village of Kest. A small yet divided settlement Kest is populated by a range of characters from learned scholars to folk magic practitioners, ambitious politicians and rogues alike, and surrounded by a hostile wilderness filled with creatures culled from Jewish folk tales, such as the dybbuk.

Whilst there’s plenty to do and mysteries to solve within the community itself this being an old school adventure there are of course dungeons to explore too, two to be precise, both of which are based upon Jewish symbolism. One for example is modelled after the Sefirot, the ten emanations of God’s will, that to be fair does happen to look quite like a dungeon floorpan or some kind of next level skill tree system.

The team behind the book have been working on this for over two years now and what we’ve seen of it looks wonderful, with beautiful illustrations courtesy of artists Ezra Rose and Shari Ross and layout by Eli Seitz. Published by Lost Pages, whose equally esoteric Book of Gaub featured in our third issue (which you can read for free here), this stands to be a stunning looking and incredibly unique book.

Campaign Ends: December 21

---

A collection of other things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, culled from around the web...

• Those of you who have read the new issue may have spotted a brief plug for Adam Rowe’s book Worlds Beyond Time, a, and I quote, “definitive visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi art.”
  
  We had planned to go big on this but unfortunately ran out of space in this issue, still we have just spotted that the publisher has just reduced it by a pretty chunky 50%. So if you’re looking for a last minute present for the sci-fi art fan in your life (or more likely fancy getting yourself a little something extra), check it out here.
  

• Speaking of presents the Soloist polled 30 game designers and has produced a pretty good gift guide for the indie game fan in your life. Leaving aside the fact that not a single person recommended a Wyrd Science subscription there’s some great stuff here to check out.
  

• Talking of the new issue I can’t wait for you all to read the wonderful piece Dan Thurot wrote for us on politics in board games, but whilst we wait for that we have to tip this essay he put up on his own Space-Biff site this week on his feelings towards AI art. Well worth ten minutes of any one’s time, it echoes not just many of our sentiments but has sent our brain spinning off in myriad other directions. Brilliant stuff.
  

• Elsewhere Geoff Engelstein wrote a really interesting piece on his substack this week looking at designing adaptive systems for solo tabletop games. Whilst its focus is on board games there’s a lot here that might set off some cartoon style light bulbs above the heads of RPG and wargame designers too. It’s definitely got me tinkering with a couple of ideas for more interesting combat systems.
  

• There’s a huge bundle of games over on Itch at the moment currently raising money for the organization Medical Aid For Palestinians. A minimum donation of $10 gets you 256 titles including the likes of Anamnesis, Monster Care Squad and World Champ Games Cybermetal 2012.
  

• Need some inspiration for your next Vaesen scenario, how about this recent discovery of a vast and yet terrifyingly empty gravesite in Finland.
  

• Wizards of the Coast, or rather Hasbro, continue to shit the bed in what really should have been a golden year for Dungeons & Dragons. with the release of both the movie and Baldur’s Gate 3. Having opened their 2023 account with the OGL debacle they’ve closed it by binning a large number of their staff, including what is increasingly looking a significant percentage of those working on the new edition of D&D.
  
  With that due for release next year (May seems to be the proposed date right now) and the game celebrating its 50th birthday next year too we can only begin to imagine what they plan to do to totally screw that up.
  
  As ever Shannon Appelcline had some interesting things to say about it all…
  

• The new issue of Fortean Times is out, and like always a must read for anyone interested in the weird. We were particularly taken by Chris Wheatley’s feature on “cursed video games” like Polybius. We’d love to know if you can think of any similar examples from the world of tabletop games…
  

• And finally, in what is sadly becoming an all too regular occurrence this week we bid farewell to another legend of British comics, Ian Gibson. One of our favourite ever Dredd artists and the man who brought us such iconic characters as Halo Jones, you can read 2000AD’s tribute to Ian here.