Wyrd Science issue 6 - Out now!
it lives! plus necromantic revenge fantasies and democrats in disarray!
It’s a literal unboxing this week as a box of Wyrd Science made it out of Brexit island and arrived here in Belgium. I’ve said this before but as someone with no training or hands on experience of graphic design before this mag, the wait between sending our printers several thousand pounds and opening a box up to see if i’ve made some terrible mistake is, let’s say, fraught.
Thankfully, once again, we seem to be in the clear. I’ve already spotted a couple of annoying typos, what you get for editing this thing several nights in a row at 4am but I have to say it looks, and reads, good. It’s always a very odd sensation finally getting a new issue in my hands, by that point I’m normally sick to death of it and have vowed to never do anything as stupid ever again, and then it’s here and, well, I can’t help but start planning more things.
Whether there will be more things though depends on the next couple of weeks, so a huge thank you to everyone that has already bought a copy and if you’ve been patiently waiting for proof this thing actually exists before buying, well, now’s the time to grab a copy, a bundle of back issues or maybe even one of our awesome new t-shirts, as they’re all shipping now.
Anyway, why not check out some of the spreads…
Right, onwards & upwards. Speaking of which about 30 seconds after I sent last week’s newsletter something obvious occurred to me. At one point in my long ramble I’d said… “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 of course whether we know it or not we’ve probably all played a game that was…
Yep, Snakes & Ladders or Moksha Patam as it was originally known in India where it was originally developed as a lesson, of sorts, about karma. If you have a few minutes it’s worth having a read of the game’s Wikipedia page, which provides a great example of how even the simplest of games can tell us something about the society that produced them, and how they adapt and change to reflect the different cultures they pass through.
Like I’ve been banging on games can tell us as much about a time, place and people as music, film or any other aspect of our culture and society. But, we’ll leave that there for now as having dispatched around 1000 copies of the magazine worldwide this week and so we’re relocating to the forest for a couple of days of fresh air, barbecue and boardgames and I have yet to do the food shopping.
So on that note i’ll leave you to read the rest of the newsletter and I hope you all have an incredible dice filled weekend.
John xx
NECROVENGE
Having spent an enjoyable chunk of time recently playing Snarling Badger’s Deth Wizards I have to say I’m in the mood for more necromantic shenanigans, so Necrovenge arrives at just the right time.
A solo RPG from Danish game designer Philip Jensen, Necrovenge sees you step into the mouldering slippers of a failed necromancer. Having just crawled out of the grave, having been put their by some low level do-gooding fools, your job is to stitch yourself back together, rebuild your dank domain and wreak revenge on the land of the living.
To do this you use a standard deck of cards and the prompts in the book to develop the narrative and guide you on your path to unholy vengeance, think Thousand Year Old Vampire, whilst any encounters are then resolved using rules based on MÖRK BORG’s system.
The game can also double just as a dungeon generator for your regular old school inclined RPGs, so you can play through the game on your own before hosting an open day and sending your regular gaming group in to test the defences of your necromancer’s new lair.
As you’d expect, Jensen is an art director by day, the book looks great to with what we’ve seen so far looks beautifully designed, and with the promise of all kinds of fancy extras like Swiss binding, red edging and metallic foils if they can get enough backers. So well worth checking out.
CHICAGO 68
By now I don’t think you need to guess our stance on whether tabletop games should tackle political, social or historical subjects, but just in case you may be unsure this week we uploaded Dan Thurot’s feature, from WS5, on that very subject here. If you haven’t read it please do, Dan is probably my favourite writer when it comes to board games these days, and this is probably the feature I’m most proud to have published in our brief existence (also the one I received the most angry pushback on but anyway…).
Which brings us to Chicago 68, a new game from Yoni Goldstein, set around one of the greatest shitshows in recent American political history (and my god is that a all-you-can-eat buffet to fill your plate from) the 1968 Democratic Convention.
First, a quick primer for those of you who didn’t get into writers like Hunter S. Thompson at too young an age and become obsessed with late 60s/early 70s US politics. The 1968 convention took place against a backdrop of extreme global unrest including the May 68 protests in Paris, the Prague Spring in Eastern Europe, the start of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, mass repression by right wing dictatorships in Central and South America, the Civil Rights struggles in the US, the ongoing Vietnam War and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. It was, as they say, interesting times.
With all that going on a divided Democratic Party descended upon Chicago in August 68 to choose who would face Nixon in that November’s election, and this time the booming counter-culture was coming to party as well.
The party establishment, headed up by the infamous Richard Daley, wanted to install the pro-war Hubert Humprey as the candidate, the fragile coalition of anti-war protestors, freaks, beatniks, hippies, Yippies, protestors, leftists, jugglers, mime artists and the like wanted, well they wanted lots of things, but principally their man McCarthy to top the ticket.
The result was open warfare on the smoke -both dope and tear gas- filled streets of Chicago, as Daley’s stromtroopers gleefully set about stamping out any sign of protest and/or improvisational street theatre.
It’s a great backdrop for a wargame and it’s this battle for the soul of the party which Goldstein’s new game looks to simulate as over the course of five rounds players take on the role of either the Establishment or the Demonstrators and win hearts, minds and cold hard votes to see whose man will earn the right to be curb stomped by Nixon and his crooks later that year.
Im terms of both gameplay and its use of historical/political events the obvious parallel is with Tory Brown’s Votes For Women. Players draw from a deck of action cards that represent historical events, build up support on the map and bring convention delegates over to their side, all whilst gaining extra points for either cracking hippy skulls or trying to win over Middle America via Guy Debord’s theory of the Spectacle.
No prizes for guessing which of those two approaches ended up being more successful in real life, but hey maybe you’ll have more success, after all that’s what these kind of games are for.
Finally a collection of things, both interesting and inspiring, gaming related and not, found down the back of the internet’s sofa…
My love of print media started early and was probably cemented when aged 8 I got my first byline (and £5 reward) in the wonderful Battle Action Force. It was a strange comic that mixed and matched the brightly coloured adventures of our favourite plastic war dollies with harrowing stories from the two World Wars where poor trench bound conscripts would often come face to rotting face with the remains of their comrades, needless to say I (and thousand of other horrible little British kids) loved it.
Anyway we have great news if your emotional development was also fundamentally altered by these strips, as this Christmas they’re bringing out a 3 volume treasury, so we can relive those horrific juxtapositions again and again and then get angry that the incredible Rad Shadows Roboskull now seems to go for up to a grand or more on eBay.At Don’t Eat The Meeples Matt Montgomery looks at a genuine game changer, Donald X. Vaccarino’s deck building classic Dominion.
More woe in the increasingly perilous world of gaming media, as the soulless bean counters at GameStop pull the plug on Game Informer and casually and callously remove its archives from the web. Cultural vandalism.
The Tactical Painter gets angry at Sabot bases, and well I guess we all need a hobby, Anyway the result is some lovely modelling, I’m especially taken by his casualties and creating little dice pockets, something i’ll have to have a crack at one day.
Author John French has been doing a cracking little series on World Building, packed with useful advice for both speculative fiction and game writing. Part III has just gone up but I do recommend reading the lot.
We’re big admirers of the Mothership RPG but it’s always interesting to read dissenting opinions when there’s some actual thought behind them. Which brings us to the A Knight At The Opera blog which find the game’s central mechanic lacking.
Heidelberg University are looking to host a Warhammer conference and shine a scholarly light on the grim dark future of humanity, and are looking for people to take part now.
Finally away from games it’s been a crushing week for AI companies as the world of finance finally start to see what’s been obvious all along. If you read one thing this week it should be the new issue of Wyrd Science, but if you can manage something else then Ed Zitron’s excoriating piece on what’s happening is an essential read, and then if you want more follow that up with Brian Merchant’s chaser over at Blood in the Machine.
Because generally speaking the tabletop game world is absolutely useless at promoting itself (or just hates us) I’m still trying to get a handle on everything announced at Gen Con, but one thing that did catch my eye was the news that Free League will be releasing a 2nd edition of their hugely popular, and we’d say pretty good, ALIEN RPG.
Does it need a second edition, I mean it’s only been out a few years? Still we guess it makes commercial sense with a new film about to drop, and at least promises to be backwards compatible with some interesting people involved and seems to be incorporating miniatures too now so we’ll keep an eye on it.Talking of ALIEN lets end this week with a nice piece by Alec Worley looking at a couple of the lesser known b-movie influences on Ridley Scott’s claustrophobic space horror.
"I’ve already spotted a couple of annoying typos..."
I am genuinely sorry to do this to you: your autocorrect changed Dan's name from Thurot to Throat.
Your latest issue looks fantastic - great job!