Wyrd Science

From the dark gods of cosmic horror

and the gothic spires of Ravenloft,
to the terrifying void of space
and the dark folklore of Vaesen

This is... The Horror Issue

www.wyrdscience.online 3
 Unboxing
Well here we are now, almost exactly a year after
issue 2 dropped through letter boxes we’re back
with our third issue and, just in time for Halloween,
one that we’ve devoted much of to horror.

I’ve always loved horror, and horror games. Some of

my favourite, earliest, memories involve caravanning
in Cornwall and being allowed to stay up late on a
Friday night to watch Hammer Horror films.
Editor
John Power Jr.

Layout & Design

John Power Jr.

As happens, that evolved into several years as a Cover Artist

graveyard haunting, teenage goth and it’s no accident Mat Pringle (matpringle.co.uk)
that the sole surviving relic of my youthful gaming
years is a much battered, but very much loved, 5th Wyrd Science is published by
edition copy of Call of Cthulhu that’s been dragged from country to country
over the years.

As for what happened to the rest of my teenage collection, well... that really is a
horror story, though one best saved for another day.

So anyway, in this issue we dig into everything from the history of horror games
and the gothic literary roots of Ravenloft, to the latest chillers such as Free
League’s Nordic Horror RPG Vaesen, World Champ Game Co’s Campfire and
those games like Mothership and The Wretched that are taking our terrors into
orbit and beyond. Best In Show Ltd

We look at how games have handled horror mechanically, and especially how Registered Office:
they’ve approached mental health, question whether games can, or even 2 Western Street, Barnsley,
should, actually be scary and celebrate the genre in all its myriad forms, from folk
and cosmic through to the stylish cinematic chills of giallo horror. Of course South Yorkshire, S70 2BP
even with all that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what is out there and
the number of games I wanted to include but couldn’t, for one reason or Please don’t send anything to this
another, is several times longer than what we have managed. address, you’ll just confuse and/or
scare our accountants even more
Still, the good news is that thanks to everyone who so generously backed us on
Kickstarter, and all of you who have picked up a copy since, there’s going to be than our bank statements do
plenty more issues to come, and so many more chances to rectify those
unfortunate omissions. Get In Touch
contact@wyrdscience.online
As for those future issues, well, I’m happy to say that we’re already working away
at issue 4 as we settle into our new quarterly schedule. Truly there is no rest for
Find Us Online
the wicked, as many of the antagonists form the games featured here can no
doubt testify. www.wyrdscience.online
Twitter: @wyrd_science
Anyway, on that chilling note I shall let you grab yourself a pumpkin spiced latte Instagram: @wyrd.science
and get on with reading the rest of the magazine as there’s a lot to get through.
Once you have though please do get in touch as we’d love to know what you All rights reserved,
think and what you’d like to see more of in our future issues.
reproduction of any part
John Power, Editor of this magazine without
permission is prohibited

4 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 1

Meet just some of the team who helped exhume this issue....
Jack Shear is a writer and
podcaster based in the
desolate wilds of New York. He
is the author of the Strahd
Loves, Man Kills zine, Planet
Motherfucker, and Krevborna.
talesofthegrotesqueand
dungeonesque.blogspot.com
Anna Blackwell is a freelance
journalist and game designer
who has been helping people
play with themselves with such
acclaimed solo RPGs as DELVE,
Apothecaria, and the cute
animal spin-off Apawthecaria!
blackwellwriter.com
Shannon Appelcline has been
roleplaying since his dad bought
him the Tom Moldvay B/X Basic
D&D set in the '80s and is the
author of the acclaimed
Designers & Dragons series of
books on the history of RPGs
erzo.org
Stuart Martyn is a writer, games
designer and semi-professional
tea drinker who has worked on
several RPGs and megagames.
stuartmartyn.com
Samantha Nelson has been
writing about tabletop and
video games since 2008 for
publications including The A.V.
Club, Dicebreaker and Polygon
and is a member of the Critical
Hit podcast.
Twitter: @samanthanelson1
Emiel Boven is a designer, writer
& illustrator from the Netherlands.
You might know him from his
own projects DURF and The
Electrum Archive or his illustration
work for other creators.
cultofthelizardking.com
Twitter: @EmielBoven
Dan Thurot is best known for his
writing on board games, most of
which you can find at his site
Space-Biff! However, he'd rather
be known for being a good dad
to his 2 daughters, a quieter but
far more worthy accomplishment
spacebiff.com
Twitter: @DanThurot
Table of Contents
Wyrd Science Vol.1 - Issue 3 - AUTUMN 2022
Quickstart - p.4-24
Get up to speed with the world of tabletop gaming as we... find out just who or what the Merry Mushmen are, dig into the archives
with Stu Horvath of the Vintage RPG podcast, celebrate 40 years of Fighting Fantasy and speak to Tazio Bettin, artist of the new
gamebook by Steve Jackson, go all Gardener’s World on you as we look at the brilliant new Goblins & Gardens Tarot Deck from
Jonathan Sacha and reminisce with David Hughes of Plumeria Pictures as they re-release the ‘classic’ film Mazes & Monsters!
mAIN Features - P.26-93
P.26 - I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Games - Shannon Appelcline takes us on a terrifying tour through the history of horror
RPGs, from The Call of Cthulhu through to the indie games of today
P.36 - Wuthering Frights - Jack Shear enters the library of dread to index Ravenloft’s gothic literary roots
P.46 - This Septic Isle - John Power speaks to Graeme Davis, writer of the new Vaesen supplement, Mythic Britain & Ireland
P.52 - Flames of Fear - Samantha Nelson sits down with Adam Vass & Will Jobst to get the lowdown on their game of horror stories
P.56 - Mind Games - Stuart Martyn looks at how RPGs have handled sanity mechanics, that staple feature of horror games over the
years, (spoiler: often not that well...)
P.62 - Dark Future - John Power heads into the cold void of space to see how games like Mothership, ALIEN & The Wretched roll
P.68 - The Importance of Powerful Deaths - Luke Frostick speaks to the award winning studio Rowan, Rook & Decard about Spire
P.74 - In The Darkest Recesses of Ourselves - Walton Wood risks all and examines The Book of Gaub, a new terrifying tome of
malignant magic and sinister sorcery
P.80 - Silver Scream - John Power jumps on his vespa and investigates Blurred Lines, a new solo RPG inspired by Giallo Horror
P.84 - Roll & Fright - Dan Thurot takes a look at horror boardgames and ponders the nature of fear itself...
P.88 - A Field of Horror - John Power speaks to Joseph McCullough about The Silver Bayonet, his new game of Napoleonic Horror
Hit Points - P.94-111
From the hack & slash of Slàine and Warcry’s bestial skirmishes to the likes of Traveller, Orbital Blues and Death In Space, it’s your
one stop guide to all the latest wargames, boardgames, RPGs, solo games, books, film and TV that you should be checking out..
APPENDIX M - P.112
Bard-on-the-run Mira Manga comes out from behind the sofa to get us up to date with her unexpected adventures in horror games
Publish & Be Damned: THE MERRY MUSHMEN
Since dropping through our letterbox in the Spring of 2001, “old school gaming Bric-à-Brac”
KNOCK! has quickly become one of our favourite, and inspiring, RPG publications,
each issue packed full of new rules, creatures, wild ideas, essays and art from some of
the most talented names in the OSR scene.
With three volumes of KNOCK! now on our shelves and A Folklore Bestiary on its way,
we caught up with The Merry Mushmen behind it all to find out where it all began and
what they’re up to next.
Interview: John Power Jr.
Images: courtesy of The Merry Mushmen
So, first of all please introduce yourselves, just who are The
Merry Mushmen and where did that name come from?
Eric Nieudan: We are two aging RPG people from France. I've
been professionally involved in tabletop games since the end
of last century, and gaming since the 1980s.
Olivier Revenu: I worked mostly as a freelance graphic designer
all my life and played my first D&D game in 1981.
EN: Olivier came up with the name so I'll let him answer that part.
OR: If I remember well, we needed a name quickly before
launching the first Kickstarter campaign, and I had in my
current campaign at this time a group of NPCs I liked: a bunch
of scary smiling myconids.
You've known each other, and been involved in the French
RPG publishing world for quite a while now, right? Can you just
tell us a little about how you met and your gaming histories...
EN: We met in the office of a games publisher in Paris circa
2002 and did some work together. I was in charge of Archipels,
a third party D&D campaign setting back in the days of 3rd
edition and the d20 License and I realised that Olivier and I had
the same taste and influences, I asked him to write some silly
fantasy pirate stuff for us. A couple years later, I moved to
Ireland and we lost touch entirely. Until that day in 2018...
KNOCK!’s focus is on old school gaming which, like the term OSR
itself, seems to have a dozen definitions depending on whom
you ask, how do you define it and what is its appeal for you?
EN: I think most definitions are valid, who am I do decide what's
what? Speaking for myself though, I like my adventure-slash-
old-school games to have three things: open situations or
sandboxes, simple and loose mechanics that can we can
amend or elaborate on as needed, and a fair referee who isn't
afraid of letting the dice decide what happens.
OSR games are typically lethal, especially if the players make
the mistake of looking for combat without being prepared, but
characters are easy to roll up, and your next beginner adventurer
just might be the one who gets to become a hero!
Most of the original articles in the first KNOCK! were culled from
blogs, why did you think it was important to have these in print?
OR: I've always preferred to read on paper than on screen and
I love the book as an object. Gathering all these articles in a
single "place" that can be consulted at any time allows us to
show the incredible variety and creativity of the OSR community,
and that was the original idea.
Now obviously there's hundreds to choose from but is there a
particular piece you've featured in KNOCK! that you think sums
up the spirit of it?

So, fast forward to 2018, what happened then?
EN: I got an email entitled 'message from the past' with a proposal
for an OSR magazine...
OR: I had completely lost interest in RPGs around 2002. But in
the summer of 2016 a friend of mine suggested that we play
Tranchons & Traquons, with our children, it’s a very cool OSR
game by Kobayashi, that’s perfectly adapted for young people.
It was fun, so then I started to get interested in this strange
thing called the OSR. I discovered OSR blogs, independent
creations, zines etc. All at once. A shock! A Pandora's box.
I found almost everything that I read was great, hyper creative,
and, very often, very modern.
So that's when I got the idea for KNOCK! And as I saw that Eric
was one of the cool actors in the OSR scene, it was only natural
that I contacted him to do it together.
OR: It's really hard to say, especially since one of the strengths
and charms of the OSR is its diversity, the different points of
view which answer and complement each other like in a ping
pong match. Each article is part of a more global reflection of
the authors' OSR own community.
But I would say that if you have to read only one article, for me
I’d say maybe try one of those written by Arnold K. Cornerstones.
You now have an open submission policy for KNOCK! So what
advice would you give someone who might be taking their
first steps in creating content for games?
EN: Write good!
If you know the amazing fonts of creativity that are the various
OSR sub-communities you'll have an idea of what we like.
Otherwise, just browse one of our issues and send us your best
pitches, blog posts, etc. Oh, and be patient. The new projects
we're on take a lot of time away from responding to emails.

4 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 5


We love the look of KNOCK!, It’s modern yet still nods back to
the original RPG aesthetic, eclectic without feeling like a mess.
What was the biggest challenge for you in terms of design?
OR: The KNOCK! layout is really fun to make. I work mostly in
InDesign and only do one document with all the 200+ pages in.
This allows me to easily move between all the articles, change a
bit here or there, reduce the length of an article, add a visual
on another, and have a global view of the bric-à-brac at any time.
Seriously, it's an easy job and super fun. It's supposed to represent
the diversity and abundance of OSR blogs and authors, so I think
it works on that level. I've been told that the layout of the #3
was a bit quieter than the previous ones, maybe it also depends
on my mood at the moment.
Vol. 1 was a huge success and it’s just grown from there, did
you think there’d be such an appetite for it when you started?
EN: Not at all! With a tiny rep in the OSR, we couldn't hope for such
a success. I think we owe a lot to Olivier's idea of promoting famous
voices of the community, and of course to his kick-ass art direction.
That let us reach deep into this sub-sub-niche and realise that
there's a whole dungeon full of old-school kobolds down there!
6 Wyrd Science
What Do The
Monsters Want?
by Sean McCoy
with art by
Michael Sheppard
Taken from
KNOCK! Volume 1
OR: In fact I think we've been super lucky to reach the "modern
OSR" community and not just the nostalgic one. That's actually
where the most people are, those who are already into DIY,
always active, busy, looking for and sharing new ideas.
So we just mentioned it but your most recent Kickstarter was
for A Folklore Bestiary, how did that come about?
OR: I saw on the net the work of Javier Prado, a great Spanish
illustrator who was working on a book, "Monstros Ibericos",
which included a lot of monsters from Spanish folklore There
were several monsters from the folk tales of the Basque country,
my country, and I asked him if we could do something together.
I wrote some stuff inspired by his drawings and the folk tales
from my childhood. Those ended up as two articles in KNOCK!
and started the Bestiary.
Knowing how tribal people can be about these things, was producing
a 5E version alongside the old school edition an easy decision?
EN: It was easy. Mostly because we believe that there aren't
many 5E products which bring the openness of OSR design to
the Ampersand Brand.
We weren't sure it would appeal to many people but, looking
at the KS figures, it seems like it did. When I see the popularity of
D&D in younger generations, I always worry about those who will
be turned off by the maths-intensive tactical gameplay of 5E. I
mean, I do love a good battlemap scrap but, on a day I don't feel
like it, I know I can play something else. A lot of newcomers don't
know about all these other options.
OR: On the technical side it was a lot more complicated The stats
of a monster or NPC in 5E require three or four times more space
than those of OSE. It required a much more flexible layout.
It also confirmed to me that the two systems, despite their
common origin, really offer two different ways of both playing
and approaching their fantasy worlds. Fortunately, we were
very lucky to work with Islayre who adapted all the OSE stats to
the 5E system. A real titanic job. When you write a monster for
OSE, you spend 90% of the time on the history and the description,
the fun things. The stats are done in a wink after that. For 5E, if
you want to do it right, the stats take at least as much time to
write as the rest.
What is it that makes your Folklore Bestiary stand out?
OR: The idea was to go back to the original sources of fantasy,
to its myths, its popular roots. Folk tales we were told to scare us
when we were kids are inexhaustible sources of stories and
characters. We've been trying to tap into that, trying to forget
the "formatting" of years and years of D&D practice.
Over the years, D&D has become its own genre. The main
source of inspiration for D&D is D&D itself. It is a sign of its
success and it is very good. But actually not that good. I have
the impression, maybe I'm wrong, that all D&D fantasy, at least
as far as the "official line" is concerned, has become moulded,
rationalized, explained.
When you have a rational explanation for something like "why
dragons like to sleep on piles of gold", and you make it
canonical, you gain an explanation but you lose a lot, the
mystery, the weirdness, the feeling of strangeness and
unknown. You reduce the opportunities to think out of the box
and each participant to make their own "inner cinema".
I find that what has become standard D&D fantasy suffers quite
a bit from this, and only ends up sticking to clichés instead of
exploring archetypes, forgetting all the horrific, the wonderful,
the weird and the mysterious, and seriously, what’s the point of
such a fantasy?
It was good at one time, because it made the fantasy worlds
we loved accessible and mainstream, but maybe it's time to go
back to the myths and folk tales from which our imaginary worlds
sprung from. That's also why I like OSR games: they are for a lot
of them exploration and survival games, which induces themes
close to those of our folk tales.
So that's the direction we tried to go with our bestiary, at least
that was the initial desire.
But each monster comes with a lot of gameable material,
random tables, adventures hooks, magic items, NPCs, etc. The
idea is that you can create a whole adventure or campaign with
its own unique atmosphere just by picking a monster from the
bestiary.
“When you have a rational explanation
for something like ‘why dragons
like to sleep on piles of gold’, you gain
an explanation but you lose a lot”
So after the Bestiary what's next for the Mushmen?
OR: We have a lot of things in the pipeline, a lot of ideas and
desires. More than we have time for in fact.
At the same time as KNOCK! #4, we will publish the second
edition of Kobayashi's game Black Sword Hack, which lets you
play in a fantasy setting inspired by those of the 70s (a la
Moorcock, Leiber etc). It's a great little game with a lot of cool
ideas and it's illustrated by Goran Gligović, an artist I like a lot
and whose work fits this universe perfectly.
If the Bestiary is well received, we are ready to unleash a
second volume and we also have some adventures for Old
School Essentials in the works, a generic and minimalist system
to play D&D, the translation of a French game, etc etc etc.
EN: If we don't procrastinate too much, we should have a lot of
fun in the months and years to come!
A Folklore Bestiary is out now
published by The Merry Mushmen
order from themerrymushmen.com
www.wyrdscience.online 7
Cast Pod: THE VINTAGE RPG PODCaST
Coming at us from ‘the clubhouse hidden somewhere in the swamps of New Jersey’,
The Vintage RPG Podcast, and its hosts Stu Horvath and John ‘Hambone’ McGuire,
has been delving into the past, present and future of tabletop games for nearly 5 years
now.
To find out more about the show, and the enviable game collection that inspired it, we
caught up with Vintage RPG’s founder Stu Horvath.
Interview: John Power Jr.
Clubhouse photo: Stu Horvath | Vintage RPG art: Shafer Brown
8 Wyrd Science
Vintage RPG started off as -and still is- an Instagram page to
share your games collection, which sounds, let’s say, extensive...
Tell us a bit about it...
My collection is born out of a couple things. First, natural
attrition: I lost some stuff in a flooded basement and some
other stuff was never returned after being lent out.
Second, stupidity: I sold the majority of my Middle-earth Role
Playing books to Noble Knight and pretty much immediately
regretted it. In the process of replacing all those lost books via
eBay and similar online sources, I got curious about what else
was out there, which led to the third thing: scarcity before the
age of the internet.
There were so many cool RPGs out there that I never heard of,
primarily because they weren’t on store shelves when I was a
kid. I had no idea RuneQuest existed, for instance, which never
fails to astonish me when I pause to think about it. Once I got a
peak at that wider world, I wanted to read all of it, and soak up
all of that art and become immortal so I’d have time to run or
play all of it.
I started posting about the collection on Instagram mostly out
of an enthusiasm for sharing, that was maybe slightly getting
on my friends’ nerves. The collection was and is still fueled by
an ongoing sense of revelation and discovery, and I think it
naturally wants to be disseminated.
I do want to say that folks tend to think I have a large
collection, but I am not sure I really do. I mean, I do have a lot
of stuff (checking the spreadsheets: 5,688 RPGs, board games,
toys, zines, magazine, miniatures, books and miscellaneous
items), but there are certainly people out there with collections
that are far more extensive than mine. It doesn’t feel massive to
me, at least.
On the other hand, I have detailed spreadsheets to help me
find where stuff is, so maybe this is simply an exercise in self-
deception.
And how much do you actually get to play it? It seems like you
have a pretty regular gaming schedule going on...
In terms of variety, I play a lot more board games than I do
RPGs, thanks to my weekly board game group. I do have a
weekly Call of Cthulhu game on Roll20 that started up during
the pandemic, though – we did a bunch of classic scenarios,
then Horror on the Orient Express and now I am running them
through Masks of Nyarlathotep (my third time!). My work
schedule, which has been intense up until recently, has
prevented a more robust RPG calendar beyond that but I am
hoping to change that with some one-shots soon.
I’ve a keen desire to run Destroyer of Worlds for ALIEN, and
Luka Rejec’s Let Us In. Oh, and the Enemy Within campaign for
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. That’s sort of a one-shot, right?
Going right back to the beginning, what was it that sparked
your initial interest in tabletop games, and do you still have it
in the collection?
I recently had a very hard think about this and came up empty:
I don’t know what hooked my initial interest in RPGs. There are
a lot of possibilities I won’t list here, but the first products that
were bought for me (circa 1985 or ’86, when I was seven or
eight) were the 1983 D&D Expert Rules box set and the module
X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield, both purchased the same evening
at the Waldenbooks in Willowbrook Mall. I still have copies of
both, but the originals are long gone.
I have to say, that one-two punch of an intermediary rules box
and a wargame was not really an adequate gateway for actually
playing D&D. Even with the addition of the Basic Rules, it was
mostly a solo map-making game for me for a couple years. It
wasn’t until I got the Gamer’s Handbook of the Marvel Universe
in 1988 that RPGs really started to make sense to me as a kind
of storytelling game you’re supposed to play in a group.
So, as we said this all started off as an Instagram page and
then a year or so after you started that the first show went up.
Had the podcast always been part of the plan?
Nope, not at all. It was all my co-host Hambone’s idea. All credit
for its success goes to him. Never in a million years would I
have guessed people might enjoy listening to me rattle on
about this stuff. But Hambone was right: they do! The world is
full of mysteries.
Had you done anything like it before? We just listened to the
first show again and you kind of hit the ground running.
I had done some podcasting before, primarily associated with
Unwinnable, so that got me comfortable on a microphone.
That notion that we hit the ground running is a little bit of an
www.wyrdscience.online 9
illusion, though – Hambone edited the hell out of the early
episodes and the first one in particular we recorded three or
four times before we got one that we were happy with. Once
we nailed it, though, the basic formula was set.
Talking of that basic formula, there's a lot to be said for a tight
30 minute show, too many podcast seem to think they need to
compete with Wagner when it comes to length...
Ha, our most frequent comment is all variants of “make the
episodes longer.” Never going to happen! A central appeal of
the show, I think, is its brevity. Leave ‘em wanting more, and all
that. I am not sure I am capable of cramming much more than
thirty minutes of facts into my brain at any given time anyway.
The show’s recorded in the same ‘clubhouse' where the collection
is stored. I go back and forth in my head between it being like
Tom Hanks’s place in BIG, the warehouse from Raiders and a
shed, so what's the reality?
Well, for one, I suspect your usage of the word “shed” is a bit
different than here in the States, where it describes a sort of
small outbuilding for tools, gardening supplies and spiderwebs.
The clubhouse used to be a ramshackle detached two-car
garage that I had taken down before a bad snowstorm had a
chance to knock it down. My original idea when we had it
rebuilt was to have a workshop on one side and a photo studio
on the other, with that section open to the rafters and a loft
space over the workshop. As writing overtook photography as
my main gig, I started using the studio as the venue for my
D&D campaign and a regular board gaming group. Eventually it
made sense to just store all the RPG stuff out there. And more
and more of it, until RPG books took over the loft entirely.
It’s a ten-foot by twenty-foot space, which built in shelves at
one end and a ladder up to the loft on the side, which is also
ten by twenty, though under the slanting roof, so you have to
be content to crouch or crawl while up there. I hit my head
frequently. There are lots of posters and a couple of skulls on
the walls to keep it feeling homey, too.
What have you enjoyed most doing the show?
Well, getting the opportunity to chat with folks like Erol Otus,
Russ Nicholson and Tony DiTerlizzi, all artists whose work I’ve
adored for decades, will always be tops. As with everything
coming out of the Vintage RPG project though, there is a
baseline awesomeness to being able to just talk about, think
10 Wyrd Science
about and interface with RPGs as much as I do. Now I just gotta
figure out how to find time to play them more…
Has recording the show changed how you view games at all?
I think the show has been clarifying more than an agent of
change in terms of my views on games. Speaking my mind is a
lot different from writing out my thoughts, I think, and this has
allowed me to see how things fit together in ways I wouldn’t
have noticed otherwise.
Despite the name, the show isn't just a nostalgia fest and you
feature as many new games as you do from days past, and the
last 5 years of so has seen a lot of new games to keep up with.
What in tabletop games has excited you most in recent years?
Nostalgia is a poison that’ll waste us away, especially when
there is such a feast of new and exciting RPG material out
there, with new stuff coming out minute after minute.
The emergence of this whole DIY zine scene is just astounding,
the way it is pushing RPGs in so many directions simultaneously,
into new forms and formats, and doing it with an excess of
style.
Who’d have thought the risograph would make a comeback?
Or that business card games would be a thing? It’s all so fresh
and vibrant and has absolutely no regard for the health of my
wallet.
Nor ours! Still, to help keep the lights on you've got a Patreon that
helps funds the show, what does that give people access to?
Oh man, Hambone’s the salesman, I don’t know if I can do his
spiel justice. Primarily, patrons get access to behind the scenes
looks at our other projects. For myself, my various writing
projects like the book for MIT Press; for Hambone, his
development of the 3,2,1...Action! RPG.
They also get early access to new episodes and, soon, ad-free
versions. Hambone has also started running patrons through
Dungeon Crawl Classics funnels and I aim to get in on that action
soon with Alien and Call of Cthulhu one-shots. There’s also a
private lounge in our otherwise public and pleasant Discord.
If someone reading this wants to give Vintage RPG a shot is
there a particular show you'd recommend trying first?
Our recent episode on my first foray into painting miniatures
got a surprisingly warm reception, so that might be a good
entry point. I think folks are generally safe jumping in on any
episode that features a game they’re familiar with.
Outside of Vintage RPG you also have your own magazine,
Unwinnable, what’s that all about?
I founded Unwinnable back in 2010, initially as just a website
(unwinnable.com), then in 2014 as a weekly, subscription-
driven digital magazine that, in 2016, shifted to the more
manageable monthly pace it continues on to this day.
The magazine is very cleverly named Unwinnable Monthly and
we’ve another smaller magazine called Exploits that is a sort of
collaborative cultural diary.
The whole idea behind all of this was to provide a platform
where writers from all sorts of diverse backgrounds and
perspectives could write cultural criticism (and fiction and
poetry and anything else they want) without worrying about
bunk like advertising or traffic or similar limiters of thoughtful,
creative expression. It’s been a dozen years of amazing storytelling.
Now unlike most of us who hoard big game collections, you're
actually putting yours to use, not just with Vintage RPG, but I
understand that you're also writing a book due out next year,
tell us about that...
I’m pleased to report that it is now past tense – I wrote a book
due out next year. It’s all done, laid out, illustrated and
everything as of August 17! It’s called Monsters, Aliens, and
Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games,
from D&D to Mothership and it will be published by MIT Press
in October of 2023.
It springs directly out of the Vintage RPG Instagram feed. I
selected a few hundred games from my collection that I think,
year by year, product by product, from 1974 to the present, tell
the story of the RPG hobby.
It isn’t a history, really, or the story of specific designers, but
rather a musing on how we play and make these games, and
how both have changed over the decades (and not changed –
the zine scene, for instance, has really been around since the
start!).
The text is accompanied by hundreds of color photographs of
product covers by me, jaw-dropping paintings by artist Kyle
Patterson that distill the character of each decade and spot
illustrations by Evlyn Moreau, Amanda Lee Franck, and Nate
Treme. It's going to look amazing and I hope it introduces folks
to a wider world of RPGs, just like collecting has done for me.
Finally, for obvious reasons, D&D features quite heavily on the
show but your tastes seem pretty wide so if you could only
keep one game, and its supplements, from the collection, what
would you pick?
Folks might guess, given my love of Masks of Nyarlathotep, that
I’d pick Call of Cthulhu, but I’m going to swerve and go with
Pendragon.
Partly because I truly believe it is as close to the perfect
marriage of theme and mechanics as we’ve ever seen, and
might ever see, but also because it is so rich. The core
campaign alone is designed to run over 80 sessions, and that
isn’t counting side quests and multi-session adventures! I could
sink into that for years, easily.
For all things Vintage RPG
point your browswer towards
vintagerpg.com
www.wyrdscience.online 11
ART OF DARKNESS: TAZIO BETTIN - FIGHTING FANTASY So apart from the Lone Wolf books what else were you playing
back then?

Gaming culture has always been lagging in Italy until the last
40 years since a generation of children were lured into Firetop Mountain with the couple decades or so, and even now, it's nothing comparable
promise that they were ‘The Hero’, the iconic Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are back. to the German or Anglo-Saxon gaming culture, so it was always
a struggle to find likeminded players. That forced me to mainly
To mark the anniversary the series’ original creators, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, pursue solo games, and gamebooks were an ideal outlet for
have returned with two new titles, Shadow of the Giants and Secrets of Salamonis, the my gaming needs.
latter Jackson’s first contribution to the line for 36 years.
I already mentioned Joe Dever's Lone Wolf, but there were
On the eve of their release we spoke to Tazio Bettin, the Italian artist whose work features many titles published in Italy in the 80s and early 90s. Fighting
on both the cover of Secrets of Salamonis and throughout Steve Jackson’s long Fantasy was obviously among them, as was Steve Jackson's
awaited return to Alansia. amazing Sorcery! series. Gamebooks in general were very
popular in Italy during my childhood and early teenage years.
Art (throughout): Tazio Bettin (courtesy of Scholastic) The same publisher that published most of the gamebooks
Interview: John Power Jr. available in the market, E. Elle, also published novels like The
Trolltooth Wars.

There were also some roleplaying games being published in

Tazio, thank you for joining us. So we’d love to know who, or
what, was it that inspired you to become an artist, and
especially to work in comics and fantasy/sci-fi art?
Art has always been a hobby and a passion for me. Parents
tend to not see art as a viable career option, and will often
advise their children to study something that will get them a
"real" job. So, following that parental advice, I studied languages
in university but despite that I never really abandoned art, merely
pursued it as a hobby.
It was a fortuitous meeting with a talent scout that changed
everything and made me take the possibility of an artistic
career seriously. I was working in tourism at the time, not a job I
felt was my thing. Then one day a friend suggested that I submit
a portfolio to this talent scout who was attending a convention
here in Italy. I did so half jokingly, telling myself "well why not?"
Against all expectations my portfolio was selected, and that's
when I started taking seriously that possibility, working in
comics. I decided to quit my job and started working seriously
on my anatomies, perspectives and storytelling, until I was
eventually ready to publish my first graphic novel with writer
Victor Gischler for UK publisher Titan Comics.
Secrets of Salamonis isn’t your first game work, and
over the years you've worked with the likes of Games
Workshop, Evil Hat and White Wolf.
Were you into tabletop games growing up? Or did your
interest in art come first?
The art always came first, but the two things aren't really
mutually exclusive. I have been drawing and sketching since I
was a kid, since one winter day when, I'm told, my father took
me in his arms, went to the window, breathed on it and drew
something on the frosted window. I was utterly captivated, like
only a child of less than 2 years can be. We agree that's the
beginning of me having this passion.
I used to draw some comic strips for my personal gratification
in elementary and mid school. Around the age of 6 or 7 I got
my first book ever, and it was a Lone Wolf gamebook by Joe
Dever, with art by the amazing Gary Chalk.
That left a lasting imprint on me. It was both the way I learned
how to love reading, and how I learned about illustration, and
was captured by that world. Later on that led me to comics
and roleplaying games.
Italian. I had a group of friends with whom I met to play at the
local library. Warhammer and Mutant Chronicles were rather
popular during my teenage years, and I loved them for their
imaginative worlds, and the fantastic artwork by artists like the
legendary Paul Bonner, Ian Miller and John Blanche. It was always
the artwork that captured me first and foremost.
So how did you go from playing tabletop games to providing
the art for them?
The first time that I ever drew something professionally was for Do you still find time to play games these days?
White Wolf. That was thanks to the patronage of a dear friend,
Melissa Uran, an artist I was a big fan of for her work in Not as much as I wish I could!
roleplaying games like Kindred of the East and Exalted.
There are several games I love, but most often I play Games
I was still a university student at the time, and it was far from Workshop's Warcry and Age of Sigmar (I'm a miniature gaming
being a full time job. But it felt great to be able to publish my and painting hobbyist), as well as the amazing card game
art. I think there still are people who have some of those old Android: Netrunner by Fantasy Flight under the Wizards of the
RPG manuals in their bookshelves. It was that feeling, the idea Coast license, which I consider the best card game ever
that you had just created something that would last in books, created.
that perhaps influenced me and made me feel that longing
later on when, as I mentioned, I worked in tourism. It was actually too popular! So the license was revoked and the
game regrettably discontinued.
I kept doing some occasional freelance illustrations for White
Wolf until the company closed, as well as for other indie Speaking of roleplaying games, I'm currently enjoying a
publishers and authors from time to time, rounding my income campaign of Lancer, a splendid game about mecha pilots
up a little but most importantly doing something I loved. It only designed by the legendary Tom Parkinson-Morgan, creator of
became something serious after I chose and pursued a career "Kill 6 Billion Demons", which I consider the best comic book
as a comic artist. published in the last decade. You should definitely check it out.

12 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 13


Secrets of Salamonis marks not just 40 years since the first
Fighting Fantasy book was released but it's the first one Steve
Jackson has written for most of that time, how did you get
involved in the project?
Whenever I'm reminded of the uniqueness of this title it's
always both amazing and very humbling. It's a true privilege to
be part of such a momentous project and it's thanks to writer
Jonathan Green, who wrote some of my favourite Fighting
Fantasy titles like Bloodbones, that I was able to participate. I
had previously done an illustration for his Ace Gamebooks and
it was a fantastic experience. He was so kind as to put my name
forward and, of course, I enthusiastically said yes! And was
determined to do my utmost best.
How did it work, were you giving specific scenes to illustrate?
I was given art notes including samples of artwork when a
creature or place had already been drawn in previous books,
and so I tried to recreate the same atmospheres and be true to
the spirit of the book as best I could.
14 Wyrd Science
I took some liberties with some of the details, like the tax
collector carrying a small wooden strongbox for the money
instead of a bag, I thought it made the character feel more
avaricious and covetous. But I always made sure that my
suggestions were okay with Mr. Jackson and in general the art
direction of the book.
Talking of that art direction, throughout your career you've
worked in quite a wide range of styles, do you have a
preferred style or medium, or are you just happy to adapt as
the work demands?
Ever since I started working on comics and reading articles and
guides written by comic artists, one of the concepts that stuck
with me the most was first explained by a great comic artist
and one of my major influences: Brian Stelfreeze. He said that
style is nothing more than a byproduct of what one does just
by creating art, and that fixating on finding one's own style is
just a way to limit your drawing skills.
Ever since, I’ve tried to learn different media, from pencils to inks,
to gouache and oils, and of course digital painting to keep myself
versatile and be able to tackle different subjects and atmospheres.
Your art in Secret of Salmonis definietly captures a lot of the
atmosphere of the original Fighting Fantasy books...
When deciding how to approach the art of Secret of Salamonis,
I had one thought very clear in my mind: I wanted it to feel like
Fighting Fantasy art made me feel when I was a wee lad. It had
to be traditional media. To me, when a gamebook sports digital
art in the interior I feel cognitive dissonance.
“ I had one thought very clear in MY
mind: I wanted it to feel like
Fighting Fantasy art MADE
ME FEEL when I was a wee lad”
I mean no disrespect to the artists who create fantastic works
of illustration through digital media, and it's a very personal
bias, but I definitely wanted my art to have that inked illustration
feeling that made those books special to me, including the
detailed hatching and rich line-art often used to render volumes
and tones of grey. In addition, it's not a technique we see very
often in today's illustration world and I feel like that's a real pity.
Do you have a favourite illustration from the book?
Well, this is a bit silly, but I'm fond of the smaller insert art pieces I
did. Back when I read gamebooks as a child, the choice of
small illustrations often was what made the atmosphere of a
book more than the bigger art.
I don't know why but especially when it depicted everyday
things like your adventuring bag, or some object you
encounter during the adventure. It tells you something very
mundane that makes the world you're reading about all the
more real.
I especially loved inventory art showing a collection of objects,
like what you could find on an apothecary's table. In every
fantasy game healing potions are a popular trope, but what do
they look like? What shape does the bottle have? Or is it a vial?
Or an ampoule? So I was thrilled to be able to draw my own for
work. Like I said, it probably sounds very silly.
And how do you work these days, is it mainly digital?
I almost never draw digitally. It's always pencils, inks, sometimes
gouache or, in recent times, oils. I don't want to lose that
tactile, handcrafted and natural feel that traditional media
alone can deliver. When I create painted illustrations, I often
mix that with digital colours and painting, using texturized
brushes to avoid colours feeling too cold, like I did for the
cover of Secrets of Salamonis. averages of existing images taken from that big cauldron that
is the internet. But what makes people love an artist's work is
But it entirely depends on what I am drawing and what effects I what makes them unique, not the average.
am aiming for. My tarot drawings and the covers for books like
Dan Abnett's Pariah and Penitent are the opposite of that: What makes a Mike Mignola, a Dave McKean, a J.H. Williams III
geometric, almost abstract ink line-art and flat colours without or a Frank Quitely amazing is their unique human journey, a
any trace of volumes or shading, like you can see in traditional visual interpretation of their distinctive, individual sensory
tarot art like the Rider-Waite deck. experience, and a knowledge of techniques that took years
and years of fine tuning. People tend to ignore that part.
There’s been a lot of talk about AI art recently and what effect
that will have on artists, especially comic book artists... They use words like "talent" that diminishes the years of effort,
exercise and fine tuning an artist goes through, as if it was all
So called "AI" generated images can be used by an artist to get innate and came easy to them, when it's something they
some inspiration to start from sometimes, but it's always a worked on long and hard.
jumble of shapes and parameters taken from images and art
and remixed together and averaged by algorithms, following But we live in a world of immediate satisfaction and consumption,
search terms and social media tags. and long processes aren't glamorous. A program that takes
seconds to create an image causes more sensation for sure.
Since the source material is always the same, the result is The word AI used to designate digital entities capable of self-
extremely homogeneous, because it draws from and creates awareness, but because we live in an easily bored culture, we
www.wyrdscience.online 15
need sensational words and any program with the slightest
machine learning capability is nowadays called an AI. B.U.T.T.S Tales by PIERRE MORTEL
Maybe some art gallery could expose some AI generated art to
propose a reflection on technology and what makes us human
and unique. That's the best use I can think for AI generated
images. That reflection is the art, not the images.

So, returning to Fighting Fantasy, it’s a bit of a British institution

but not the only one you’ve hand a hand in, we’ve mentioned
Games Workshop but you’ve also gone from posting fan art of
Judge Dredd to doing your first 2000AD cover last November.
How did you become an art droid?

So far it has been a very natural progression actually. As a kid, I

loved comics, Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy. Among the
comics I most loved were Judge Dredd and especially Slàine.
Eventually I started working in comics, and I came into contact
with Games Workshop by working on some Warhammer
40,000 comics, the Will of Iron trilogy with writer George Mann
and Deathwatch with writer Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

By working on the covers for some Games Workshop novels I

came into contact with the legendary Dan Abnett, one of their
top writers, which led me to working with him on his 2000AD
strip Sinister Dexter, and at the same time I caught the attention
of Fighting Fantasy writer Jonathan Green, with whom I started
collaborating after he saw my art on Artstation. I am very much
looking forward to seeing where this brings me.
But right now I feel like my place is with 2000AD and working
So that’s 2000AD, Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy, any other with Dan Abnett. I'm finding some beautiful, precious support
British titles on your wish list you'd love to work on? and encouragement in expressing myself artistically and that is
a rare blessing.
Oh please don't say it like that, you're exposing my plot to
dominate Britain, it was supposed to be a secret! Joking aside, I Finally, after this book, what are you working on at the moment?
actually hadn't considered that... but it's true that the bulk of
my work is with British publishers and companies. I'd definitely Whether you're a 2000AD fan or not, you should stay tuned for
love to work some more in concept art for animation and the upcoming work that is coming to the magazine. It's the
video-games if the chance arises. most interesting, weird and imaginative comic strip I have ever
worked on, and I think you'll love it!
Remaining in the world of comics, I wouldn't mind widening my
collaborations to some European major publishers. For
instance, I have never worked for the French market of bande
dessinée and I'd be curious to experience that if a chance Secrets of Salamonis and Shadow of The Giants
arose. are both out now published by Scholastic

Many of the influences in my art come from that world through Keep up to date with Tazio’s work at
artists like Moebius and Bilal. I'd certainly also welcome a artstation.com/taziobettin
chance to work with more American publishers. and on Instagram @taziobettin

16 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 17

Monstrous Arcana: GOBLINS & GARDENS
Whilst today it’s most commonly associated with divinatory practices the Tarot began
life in 15th century Italy as just another kind of playing card, so it’s perhaps apt that in
recent years more and more of our games have begun to make use of it again.
Of course that means that you’ll need a deck to go with all those polyhedral dice and
one that’s caught our eye is artist Jonathan Sacha‘s beautiful Goblins & Gardens set.
Reappropriating classic Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual art, he’s allowed its
denizens to roam free amongst collages of flowers, fruit and vegetables and just maybe
find peace at last. We spoke to Jonathan to find out more about this unique deck.
Interview: John Power Jr.
Photos: Jonathan Sacha
18 Wyrd Science
Can you tell us about your art background? Was it something you
formally studied? The deck has an outsider art feel to it but at
the same time the composition of the images definitely feels
like it’s the work of someone who knows what they're doing...
Art is definitely something I've always done, starting from a very
young age.
Although the first time I went to college to study art, graphic
design, I dropped out to play music in a punk band. I did that
for over 10 years and we were really lucky to tour as much as
we did. We were always broke as hell but we travelled a lot and
met a lot of wonderful artists. Back then I was working with
Adobe products that I, maybe, stole and definitely didn't know
how to use, but I found my way to screen-printing for other
bands.
Then when I was about 25 I went back to school and whilst I
strongly considered graphic design again I ultimately opted to
study sculpture. Even then my senior thesis project was all
photographs and braille. So like every artist I can't sit still to
save my life...
Punk music is definitely outsider art. I'm sure to some folks that
sounds corny, but I was exposed to an incredible amount of
truly beautiful people making really original work. And because
it's punk it's always made out of what you can find and not
what you can buy. That makes it special. That means it's more
connected to who you are and what's around you.
So, the Goblins & Gardens deck, what came first, your interest
in Dungeons & Dragons or the Tarot?
I guess it's technically D&D. In high-school, some of us tried to
get into, what I assume, was 3rd Edition and decided it was too
complicated and gave up pretty quickly. I didn't come back to
it until much later, after 5E and The Adventure Zone came out.
I remember listening to that show and hearing them throw out
a bunch of the rules right away and I thought "Now here we
go, I'll just do that!"
I haven't played in a while though. Nowadays I stick to stuff like
Troika! or PbtA or one-page games. I like the silly and the
simple stuff. That's the most fun for me and my friends.
Tarot had been in my periphery for a long time but starting in
2017 I was getting more and more interested in it. It's been a
long and very slow process and I really love the journey I've
been on. Truly, I think I could talk for a whole interview about
that alone. Suffice to say I think everyone should get a few
decks with their close friends and just start playing around with
them.
And what is it about both of them that appeals to you? And
what made you think of combining the two?
I love Tarot for a lot of reasons but I think it most appeals to me
in it's form. It's a very universal thing: a deck of cards. So many
people have committed their art to that format and that means
you have a massive library of windows into near infinite worlds.
It's the perfect storytelling art-form in my opinion. Even just
one deck will consistently turn up new stories all of the time
when you shuffle it and pull cards!
When it comes to D&D.... Well this might be where I start losing
people. Lol.
Honestly, at this point, the thing that attracts me the most to
D&D is that it's so ripe for parody and critique. I'm sure that will
upset some people but it's how I feel. We've put so much of
ourselves into that game that at this point it's inextricably tied
to being human.
The art of storytelling is inherently human. But D&D is also
plagued by war and violence. So it becomes this very
interesting place to explore. Why is the violence so insidious?
Why does this certain type of story keep getting told over and
over again?
And of course we then have to ask where do the gardening
books come into all this?
I actually found an old gardening book on the side of the road
one day when I was walking home from work. It ended up on
my desk next to a copy of the AD&D Monster Manual Vol. 2
that my partner had bought for me. It was a used copy so it
was all drawn on and colored in. I really loved having a glimpse
into the past, at someone else's intimate history with the book.
But then I started thinking about the violence in all the stories
that had been told via D&D and started daydreaming about
what might be happening to those monsters now that people
aren't telling those stories anymore.
That's where the line "What happens to a story after you leave
it behind?" comes from. I fell in love with the idea that for every
www.wyrdscience.online 19

story that's ever been told in the universe of D&D, that
somewhere there's a place where everything that's been left
behind exists together at once.
It could be chaos but it could also be anything! And when I
think about it I imagine all the monsters finally having some
peace and quiet without the DM and the players around.
Maybe they're not one-dimensional beings only there to be
slain. Maybe they just want to fucking hang out and get some
gardening done! That's where Goblins & Gardens takes place.
Each tarot card then is a work of collage art, combining
drawings from old D&D manuals with photos from gardening
books, I think most gamers, myself included, would have
trouble taking a pair of scissors to their collection but that
doesn't seem to have phased you...
I actually really enjoy it. Sometimes I'll cut monsters out and just
let them run loose on my desk or wherever. I've got little
monsters running around all over the place and I love it. Most
of these books I'm cutting up are in real awful condition anyways.
20 Wyrd Science
Make our
garden grow(l)...
It makes it a lot less expensive for me but it also means they
come charged with so much of other people's magic.
Truthfully, when I found the first 30 book set of the Gardening
Encyclopedias on eBay they were in near perfect condition. My
partner was pleading with me not to cut them up. So I promised
them I would try and do it all digitally first. And I did! But it looked
so dull and flat and fake. I think I barely made it through one
card before I went for the X-Acto knife.
When designing the cards did you approach each one with a
pre-set idea or was it more of an intuitive approach?
Very rarely did I go into a card with preset intentions. I stopped
doing that pretty early on because it always meant that I was
fighting with the card by the end. To some degree, all of the
cards were designed on the fly.
Like I said I have a lot of loose ends floating around. Some of
those cards basically made themselves because I would set
something on top of something else just to move it and then
later on notice how perfectly they would fit together.
Sometimes I would turn a page, see something for the first
time, and know right away what card it was going to be. The
Magician, The Tower and The World all happened that way.
Strength too. It happened a lot and it was always magical.
One interpretation of the Tarot's major arcana is that it represents the
fool's journey through life, is there a narrative hidden in your deck?
There's a line in the Goblins & Gardens guidebook that talks
about this a bit. It goes: "To journey through the cards is to
read narrative in the art-form. It is to wander." And that's a bit
cryptic but it also gets at the general idea for the deck.
You can find all sorts of narratives in Goblins & Gardens.
Generally speaking the narrative that we present is one of re-
wilding and rediscovered autonomy for the monsters but beyond
that it's up to the individual to wander through the cards and
discover their own narrative. And one really beautiful way to do
that is with friends. That's some of what we were getting at with
the other line about how "the journey is more shared than singular."
The Fool is just one consideration in this deck.
What about The Hanged Man or The Lovers.
What's their story?
Is there any one card from the deck that
particularly resonates for you?
It's probably 'The World'. It was one of the
last cards that I made but I knew what it
was going to be pretty early on. That
image of that succubus or demon lady.
Whoever she is. She looks so hurt and so
sad but STILL she's in this extremely
vulnerable position. She is viewed by us
in that pose FOREVER.
Like how much has this one monster
had to endure through the ages? It's
painful. The harm inflicted on other
people is the most brutal part about
being human. It's crushing.
Later, I found that other picture of the Earth "upside down" and
viewed from "behind" with all of the sea trenches scraped
across the ocean floor like old wounds that had scarred over.
The two elements were just magnetized to each other. Maybe
it's less that this card resonates with me and more that it just
cuts right through me. It's the card that I cried the most about.
And how do you personally use the cards?
I use tarot cards for all sorts of things. For fun, for journaling, for
self-reflection, for writing RPGs, for playing RPGs. Sometimes I'll
just shuffle a deck and not even draw a card.
Since you designed the Tarot deck we've seen your art crop
up on several other RPG titles, is this working with people you
knew before you did the deck or you met afterwards?
It's a combination of both. I've met some really wonderful
people who've commissioned me for some collage artwork and
I love it.
There's a project called Goblin Archives that everyone should
check out. He does a lot of guides for indie RPG creators but
also produces his own content that's really rad too. I did some
work for him and he's truly wonderful. He was very kind and
really excited about my art.
I'd love to continue to do more collage artwork commissions
but if I maintain any longterm success I'd like to
transition into other media. Collage
is fun but I've got plenty of other
irons in the fire. I love simple line
drawings with black ink.
So what are you working on now?
I've always got a lot going on! In the
immediate future I'm gonna continue
to come up with content for my
Patreon so it can free up more time
for me to keep making art. Money
sucks.
Apart from that we've started working
on a series of zines we'd like to put out.
Stuff like: An Intro to Tarot, An Expanded
Guidebook for G&G, a hack of 'A Quiet
Year', and beyond that we've got a few
of our own RPG ideas kicking around that
we're really excited about too.
The Goblin & Gardens Tarot Deck
is available to purchase now
from goblinsandgardens.com
www.wyrdscience.online 21
GOING UNDERGROUND: MAZES AND MONSTERS
Is 1982’s infamous anti-D&D movie Mazes and Monsters a hysterical anti-RPG screed
or a curious forgotten gem?
On the 40th anniversary of its original release you’ll get a chance to decide again for
yourself as the film that launched Tom Hanks onto our screens gets its first Blu-ray
edition. We spoke to David Hughes from Plumeria Pictures to find out more…
It's a little surprising just how few movies there are about roleplaying.
We're not talking about fantasy films based on RPGs or about
games that magically come to life to threaten or thrill the players
(Jumanji, obviously, but also give 2016’s little seen Beyond The
Gates a go), but movies actually about the act of roleplaying.
One of the handful that does engage with the hobby is Steven
Hilliard Stern's Mazes and Monsters - a low budget TV movie
made at the height of the Satanic Panic and one that takes a
somewhat negative approach to the subject.
The film is about some players of the eponymous D&D-like (but
not really) game that Tom Hanks’ character gets a little too
deeply involved in, fracturing his sense of fantasy and reality
and sending him into a psychogenic fugue. Of course, with a
mental illness of that kind, anything could have set him off. It’s
actually quite sensitively handled in the film, much to my
surprise when I rewatched it for the first time in decades.
What appealed to you about the film and made you want to
re-release it?

Today, it’s probably best known for gifting the world with Tom
Hanks’ first feature lead role. Here he plays Robbie Wheeling, a
Interview: Will Salmon gifted student just starting life at a new university and who
Photos courtesy of Plumeria Pictures loves nothing more than an intense session of Dungeons &
Dra-, sorry, Mazes and Monsters with his buds. But when one of
his crew, Jay-Jay, suggests taking things to the next level and
getting out of the dungeon and into the real world (So, LARPing
then), Robbie begins to lose his grip on reality and becomes a
danger to both himself and those around him.
I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since shortly before it
was popularised in the early ‘80s, so it was a natural fit for me.
But the truth is, I saw that the rights were available, for a price I
could make work, and could immediately picture an amazing
Blu-ray cover by Paul Shipper, an artist I’ve been dying to
commission for a Plumeria cover since I launched the label in
lockdown.
So you’re a long time gamer?

Based on the book of the same name by Rona Jaffe - a
typically misinformed screed from the era that blamed the
tragic death of Michigan State University student James Dallas
Egbert III, in part, on his interest in roleplaying games - Mazes
and Monsters is undeniably goofy, horribly biased against its
subject matter, but also still a lot of fun to watch. And while it's
generally considered to be little more than b-movie fluff,
certain aspects of the film have aged rather well.
The film turns 40 this year and is getting a brand new anniversary
Blu-ray, released by UK label Plumeria Pictures. It's a good
chance to reassess a feature that offers a fascinating, naive,
but still often quite charming, look at the roleplaying hobby
less than a decade on from Dungeons & Dragon’s first release.
We spoke to label founder David Hughes to find out more...
How would you sum up the plot of Mazes and Monsters for
those who haven’t seen the film yet?
It’s a 1982 made-for-TV relic of the pre-“satanic panic” period
when D&D was starting to be looked at as harmful to kids,
largely a result of American evangelicals needing a boogeyman
to keep congregations in their thrall. If it wasn’t D&D it would
be heavy metal music (in fact it was); anything demon-adjacent
was considered dangerous.
Oh my gosh, yes – I was a very early adopter! I started out
playing wargames in the local church hall, and one day I was
introduced to a radical new game that didn’t have miniatures
(at the time, anyway) but was played with pencils and paper
and dice. And I’m still part of a group now!
Although in between there was a gap of about 30 years when I
didn’t play anything but Call of Cthulhu, which is my real
passion. I’m also a big board-game fan, my current favourites
being Nemesis, Living Forest and perennials like Settlers of
Catan.
It’s quite surprising to see Tom Hanks in the film! What do you
think of this early performance?
It gets a lot of stick but actually if you approach it fairly, it’s not
bad. It’s more than an early-career curiosity; it’s actually a very
Hanksian performance, if that makes sense. You can draw a
direct line from there to some of his later, more celebrated
roles: all the ingredients for what makes him him are there.
You mentioned this a moment ago - and I agree - it’s pretty
rare to see a film like this from the period focus on mental
health issues. Is Mazes and Monsters ahead of its time in some
ways, do you think?

Laughable now, of course, but a genuine problem for a lot of It does seem as though it handles mental illness more
D&D players in the 1980s. sensitively than some of its contemporaries, which were quite

22 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 23


quick to turn people suffering from mental illness into monsters
or freaks. If, say, someone from Psychotherapy Today were to
look at the film, I think they’d treat it quite kindly, because it
doesn’t demonise the victim and even if it resolves in a way
that may not be best from a therapeutic perspective – essentially,
enabling the sufferer’s delusions – it is an approach that could
work in the short term, while you gently coax the sufferer back
to reality.
The film is a relic of the Satanic Panic era and has been the
subject of derision over the years for its attitudes towards
roleplaying. Is that fair? Or do you think it’s ripe for reappraisal?
Empire critic Dan Jolin called it “laughably clueless,” which it is.
But I think people will give the film a lot more credit than they
expect to; certainly that’s been the experience of everyone
who’s watched it prior to release. I wouldn’t go as far as to say
it's “ripe for reappraisal”, but it’s certainly worth a second look
with an open mind.
Have you read the book by Rona Jaffe that it’s based on?
I did, years ago. In those days we read everything we could get
our hands on that was even tangentially D&D related, as there
was so little published. Once you’d read everything on Gary
Gygax’s reading list you were hungry for more.
24 Wyrd Science
Did you learn much about the production of the movie while
preparing the Blu-ray release?
There’s a great deep dive into the film in the booklet accompanying
the release, a more sober accompaniment to the shenanigans of
the RPG podcasters – including the How We Roll crew, plus
Scott Dorward and YouTuber Seth Skorkowsky – on the
commentary track.
Was it difficult getting the rights to release the film?
It was fairly easy to get the rights; what was trickier was remastering
the print supplied, which was pretty poor quality. We sent it to
ITV’s restoration bay and they did a great job of ironing out the
many problems you get when working with an 1980s made-
for-TV movie shot on videotape.
I’m sure some people will complain that it’s imperfect, but for
the 40th anniversary we would rather have something out
there that’s the best available than not have it available at all.
It’s not like it’s ever going to look amazing in 4K.
The Blu-ray has a very entertaining commentary track. What
can you tell us about the guests on that?
It features fantasy author Seth Skorkowsky, Scott Dorward, Joe
Trier and Eoghan Falvey of the How We Roll podcast and GM
and writer Veronica Escamilla-Brady and it’s hilarious!
I expected everyone to have seen the film before they
recorded it, but to my surprise half of them went in cold –
which made it all the more fun as they were reacting in real
time as the film unfolds.
So what’s coming up next on the label that you can talk about?
Nothing I can talk about yet, but we do have a few films in the
pipeline and we’re building the label one small-time release at
a time. Every release is a 1,000 copy limited edition and they’re
currently sold only via our website so building the brand is a
slow process.
Having said that, the more titles you release, the more people
you reach, so hopefully our diverse slate will find new fans.
Mazes and Monsters 40th Anniversary Edition
Is out now released by Plumeria Pictures
plumeriapics.co.uk
www.wyrdscience.online 25
 “I WILL SHOW
YOU FEAR IN
A HANDFUL
OF GAMES…”
Horror! It’s one of the top genres for roleplaying games,
trailing only behind fantasy (and perhaps science-fiction).

But most know about the genre primarily through the two
heaviest hitters: Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu (1981) and
White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade (1991).

Not only is the horror roleplaying genre much larger than

that, but it also has many more influences than just Lovecraft
and Lestat.

So join us, cowering behind the settee, as RPG historian

Shannon Appelcline takes us on a terrifying tour of
roleplaying games’ decades long dalliance with the dark......

Art (opposite): Pontus Björlin

26 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 27

 Dark Shadows: 1974-1986
H H
orror has, in fact, been a part of roleplaying
games from the very start. You might think that
J.R.R. Tolkien was the biggest influence on the
original Dungeons & Dragons (1974) — and certainly Gary
Gygax included Tolkien-influenced elements, from
hobbits to treants in that first edition. But according to
Gygax’s later writings, that was just to catch the attention
of the Tolkien fans who had multiplied in the United States
in the ’60s and early ’70s. In truth, Gygax was much more
influenced by a darker, more horrific shade of fantasy:
sword & sorcery.
It’s right there in the infamous “Appendix N” of the original
Dungeon Masters Guide (1979), a list of “Inspirational and
Educational Readings”. Dark fantasy heroes like Conan,
Elric, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser all make the list, alongside
their serpent-men foes, their soul-stealing swords and
their manipulative wizards and lost loves. It wasn’t
straight-up horror, but it was definitely horrific fantasy.
Besides influencing the earliest games of Gary Gygax, and
thus the design of Dungeons & Dragons itself, these sword
& sorcery influences also made their presence felt in early
D&D publications thanks in large part to two TSR designers
who loved pulp stories: Tom Moldvay and David “Zeb” Cook.
Two tropes of sword & sorcery, lost civilizations and
primordial cultures, can be readily found in supplements
they wrote such as X1: The Isle of Dread (1981) and B4: The
Lost City (1982). However it is two other adventures that
stand out for their more explicit horror content: Tom
Moldvay’s X2: Castle Amber (1981) drew directly upon the
Averoigne stories of weird fantasy author Clark Ashton
Smith, revealing a haunted family full of secrets; and Zeb
Cook’s I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City (1981) detailed a
claustrophobic city inspired by Conan author Robert
Howard’s Red Nails and in doing so debuted one of the
more horrific early D&D monsters, the aboleth.
D&D could have delved even deeper into horror literature,
as Appendix N also referenced writers such as August
Derleth, H.P. Lovecraft, and Manly Wade Wellman. Of
these, Lovecraft is known to have had the greatest effect
on the game’s development, thanks in large part to Rob
Kuntz, the co-GM of Gary Gygax’s early Castle Greyhawk
games. Kuntz included a variety of Lovecraftian elements
28 Wyrd Science
in his Lake Geneva D&D games, imagining Elder Priests of
Cthulhoid gods and their Temple to the Latter Day Old
Ones, as well as a Lost City of the Elders and an off-world
adventure location of Fomalhaut — which was the source
of much of Greyhawk’s eldritch horror.
Kuntz brought these Lovecraftian interests to published
D&D with an article on Lovecraftian gods that appeared in
The Dragon #12 (1978) which then was integrated into the
original Deities & Demigods (1981) book - before a legal
skirmish with
Chaosium, who
had licensed the
rights to
Lovecraft by that
time, led TSR to
step back.
That would just
be the first retreat
from D&D’s pulp
and sword &
sorcery origins; a
second followed
the publication
of the epic-
fantasy story of
Dragonlance
(1984-1986). Its
extreme success would lead D&D back to the high
fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien as the game rapidly approached
its second edition (1989).
Sword & sorcery made some final appearances at TSR
around the time that Dragonlance was being published,
most notably in Zeb Cook’s Conan Role-Playing Game
(1985) and the Lankhmar: City of Adventure (1985) setting,
but by then the War of the Lance was rising and TSR
would be swept in a different direction.
That left a gap that the UK stepped right into when
Games Workshop produced Warhammer Fantasy Role-
Play (1986), an entirely dark fantasy roleplaying game, full
of decay, depravity, and corruption. In the meantime
though Lovecraftian competitor Chaosium had already
debuted the first true horror game of the industry.
The Call of the Horror RPG: 1981-1989
orror roleplaying proper started with Dark
Worlds, a 19th-century roleplaying game by Kurt
Lortz that mixed Gothic and Lovecraftian
themes. Well, that was the theory at least. Chaosium had
secured a license to publish Lovecraft related material from
Arkham House, the company founded by August Derleth
and Donald Wandrei to manage Lovecraft’s literary estate,
and in turn had received the Dark Worlds manuscript, but
then rejected it as unsatisfactory.
So, what to do
with that
Lovecraft
license? Enter
Sandy Petersen,
who’d suggested
his own
Lovecraftian
game to
Chaosium while
Kurtz was
working on Dark
Worlds. With the
first project a
failure, Petersen
got his chance.
The result was
Call of Cthulhu
(1981), likely the
most influential horror roleplaying game in our hobby’s
history, released in November 1981. As the name suggests,
Call of Cthulhu was firmly based on the cosmic-horror
stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Using Chaosium’s Basic
Roleplaying roleplaying system, debuted in RuneQuest
(1978) and Stormbringer (1981), players investigated the
horrors of Lovecraft’s mythos in the 1920s… and upon
finding it promptly went insane or were devoured by the
monstrosities (or sometimes, both).
It created a foundation for horror roleplaying that remains
a strong influence today, forty years later, with Lovecraft
inspired games now become a whole sub-genre of horror
gaming unto themselves. Moreso, it created a model for
horror roleplaying that was focused on investigation,
where the characters were weak in the face of horror, but
persevered nonetheless, no matter what the cost.
After Call of Cthulhu broke the dark ceiling, more horror
roleplaying games appeared, but they tended to be
lighter, and they definitely didn’t try and compete with
Call of Cthulhu on its Cthulhoid home terrain.
Tri Tac Games’ Stalking the Night Fantastic (1983), the next
major release, centered on investigation like Call of
Cthulhu, but it did so from a campier point of view, that
of the Bureau 13 agency, who searched for supernatural
events (and some science-fiction events too) and was
ultimately based on Kolchak the Night Stalker, the most
notable supernatural investigation TV show prior to The
X-Files.
A year later Pacesetter entered the horror game, and they
could have had a tremendous influence on the industry
given the star power of a company made up of ex-TSR
employees. Nonetheless, they shied away from direct
competition with Call of Cthulhu and instead took
Hammer Horror as their inspiration when they designed
the first edition of Chill: Adventures Into the Unknown
(1984). Similarly, It Came from the Late, Late Show (1989)
from Stellar Games picked B-Movies as its foundation.
Meanwhile, TSR went beyond their pulp inspirations to
take one major stab at horror before embracing epic
fantasy in the late ’80s. The result was the other great
horror release of the ’80s. I6: Ravenloft (1983), by Tracy
and Laura Hickman was founded on the simple question
of how to turn a vampire into a something more than
just another monster to kill in a dungeon room. In
answering this question, the Hickmans leaned heavily
upon Gothic horror, with their Strahd von Zarovich based
not just on Dracula, but also (probably) on Lord Byron, a
real-life predatory abuser. If H.P. Lovecraft and his cosmic
horror offered the first major thread for horror in RPGs,
then Bram Stoker and the Gothic horror of Ravenloft
offered the second.
When ill-informed parents began panicking about
roleplaying games in the ’80s, it seems obvious that they
would have been worried about these games of cosmic
and Gothic horror, or even by a dark fantasy RPG such as
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. But, that wasn’t the case
at all. Instead, it was vanilla D&D that got all the
attention, and that’s a story of horror all its own.
www.wyrdscience.online 29
 The Satanic Panic: 1979-1997
T
he moral panic against roleplaying games is in
large part the story of the horror roleplaying
game that didn’t bark. It was an attack made
primarily upon Dungeons & Dragons as a horror roleplaying
game, even as it was shedding its own horrific trimmings
and just as other games that might have been more
vulnerable to moral panic, such as Call of Cthulhu or
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing, were appearing.
The irony is that the sword & sorcery themes of D&D’s
earliest days could have made it equally vulnerable.
Witness the sacrificial scene on the cover of Eldritch
Wizardry (1976), which could easily evoke Satanism, or the
less prurient but equally fiendish scene found on the
cover of the original D3: Vault of the Drow (1978).
Those pieces of art could have created genuine concern
over the horrific content of D&D, but by the time D&D
came under strong attack in the ’80s, they were already
fading into the past, with the Cthulhus and Warhammers
picking up the horror baton. The mob didn’t care: the
Satanic panic was the height of ignorance, the result of a
few high-profile incidents that brought Dungeons & Dragons
into the public eye, and thus made it the perfect target.
After a series of failed lawsuits, Pulling formed the group
Bothered Against Dungeons & Dragons (BADD)
to attack a game she delusionally thought taught
“demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy” and more
It all started with the 1979 disappearance of college-
student James Dallas Egbert III, a disappearance that was
incorrectly blamed on Dungeons & Dragons. The game
was not relevant to the case, but that didn’t stop author
Rona Jaffe from repeating the suggestion in her fictionalised
novel of the case Mazes and Monsters (1981), which soon
became a movie starring Tom Hanks as the pseudonymous
college student. It was D&D’s first mass-media exposure,
and it was decidedly negative.
Meanwhile, claims of Satanic ritual abuse had become
the modern-day equivalent of witchcraft accusations.
Hundreds of schools were hit with unfounded
accusations of Satanism. Religious right organizations
30 Wyrd Science
began attacking D&D as early as 1980, with evangelists The notorious, and of course
joining in by 1981. wildly inaccurate, booklet that
Patricia Pulling’s organisation -
It all came to roleplaying’s door when Patricia Pulling Bothered About Dungeons &
claimed her son’s 1982 suicide was the result of a Dragons - produced to ‘inform’
Dungeons & Dragons curse. After a series of failed those in authority of the
lawsuits, Pulling formed the group Bothered Against dangers that the roleplaying
Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) to attack a game she game supposedly posed...
delusionally thought taught “demonology, witchcraft,
voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy” and more. D&D thus
found itself labeled as a Satanic game just as it was
stepping away from its modest, early focus on dark
fantasy. The hysteria-fueled controversy over the game
made headlines and even appeared on 60 Minutes.
TSR was most famously attacked in fundamentalist Christian,
and cartoonist, Jack Chick’s Dark Dungeons (1984) which
also insisted on the existence of D&D curses, but the assaults
would continue into the ’90s in unreliable books such as
Mike Warnke’s Schemes of Satan (1991) and Joan Robie’s
The Truth about Dungeons & Dragons (1992), both of which
went back to D&D’s supposed original sin and spread the
lie that James Dallas Egbert III, who had committed suicide
in 1980, had left behind a note praising Satan. (He did not.)
Though the early press generated by Egbert and Jaffe is
generally believed to have contributed to D&D’s meteoric
success in the ’80s, by the end of the decade TSR executives
had decided that the moral panic was dangerous to their
business. The result was D&D shedding much of its primordial
horror in the second edition of AD&D (1989), which eliminated
demons, devils, assassins, and other darker elements.
They would largely be absent until the 1997 purchase of
TSR by Wizards of the Coast; as it happens that was also
the year that Pulling died, bringing the by-then faltering
BADD to an end.
Meanwhile, even moreso than in the ’80s, there were new
games in the ’90s that carried the dark torch.
www.wyrdscience.online 31
 We Have Become Death: 1990-2004
H I
orror in the ’90s began with a small-press RPG
from Stellar Games called NightLife (1990). It
called itself “splatterpunk”, reflecting the gory,
counterculture fiction of the ’80s, which featured authors
such as Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite. This was a new,
darker style of horror that would foreshadow what was
to come in the decade, but another element made NightLife
even more unique: players took on the roles not of monster
hunters, but of the monsters themselves. Unfortunately,
NightLife was held back by its small-press status, but
that doesn’t mean it didn’t influence what came next.
That of course was Mark Rein-Hagen’s Vampire: The
Masquerade (1991), a game that the White Wolf crew
conceptualized on the way to Gen Con ’90 — and
continued with even after they saw NightLife, because
they felt like they could offer a more serious take on the
material. The result was Gothic, like Ravenloft, and urban
fantasy, like NightLife, but it was something more: it was
personal horror, where the players were repelled not by
what they faced, but what they were.
The touchstone for Vampire: The Masquerade has long
been Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, which told similar
tales of angst and self-doubt interwoven with vampiric
politics. Though Vampire at one time might have become
a licensed Anne Rice RPG, Rein-Hagen actually waited
until late in the development process to read the books.
Thus, Vampire encompassed many more horror tropes.
The moody and sexy movie The Lost Boys was one of the
earliest inspirations, but Vampire also was influenced by
much more archetypical horror, from the classic novel
Dracula and the silent movie Nosferatu to Brian Lumley’s
Necroscope books and other contemporary movies such
as Near Dark. These influences combined with the game’s
personal horror to evoke new, darker themes, which was
supported by expressive short fiction and by moody art
by Tim Bradstreet and others.
Vampire: The Masquerade of course opened the door to
an entire World of Darkness, which walked the line
between urban fantasy and horror. Some games such as
Mage: The Ascension (1993) played on the fantasy side of
the line, but the World offered up one game that was
even darker horror than the politic games of Vampire,
Wraith: The Oblivion (1994), a meditation on death that
32 Wyrd Science
pushed the personal horror envelope through Rein-Hagen’s
deliberate intent to make the players uncomfortable.
The World of Darkness was dominant in a way that no
other horror roleplaying release ever had been, not even
Call of Cthulhu or Ravenloft. It was so dominant that
when TSR faltered in the late ’90s, it was the World of
Darkness that ever so briefly stepped up to outsell
Dungeons & Dragons for a month or more. It even spawned
a short-lived, little-loved TV show, Kindred: The Embraced
(1996).The World of Darkness continued triumphantly through
about a dozen linked horror and fantasy games, and only
finally faltered when White Wolf rebooted the series in
2004, to try and catch the newest horror trends.
But more than just achieving personal success, the World
of Darkness also influenced an entire generation or horror
games, darkening the whole industry along the way.
The Industry Goes Dark: 1990-1998
t wasn’t just roleplaying. All of media was
darkening in the 1990s. Comic books were entering
the Iron Age, with four-color heroes being replaced
by killers such as X-Force and Lobo. The hopeful future of
Star Trek: The Next Generation was revealed to have
shadows in which the politics and infighting of Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine occurred. Bands like Nine Inch Nails
reigned over MTV and by the end of the decade,
newcomers like Oz and The Sopranos would herald a
new, grimmer, sort of television.
Even traditional TSR succumbed
when it rebooted the Hickman
Ravenloft adventures as
Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990),
a fantasy/horror setting that was
heavy on mood and that elevated
all the lycanthropes and undead
of the D&D pantheon to positions
of power (and terror). It was
successful enough to spawn over
50 supplements across the
decade, including two later
editions (1994, 1997) and even a
Victorian sub-setting called
Masque of the Red Death and
Other Tales (1994).
However, there was a real
paradigm shift after the
publication of Vampire: The
Masquerade. Horror roleplaying
games began to move away from
traditional horror tropes, which
had been demystified by their ubiquitous depiction in
movies, and instead pioneered new ground. The result
was often deeply evocative, thanks both to the new
tropes and the new styles of theming through artwork and
fiction that had been established by White Wolf.
This was the time of Mike Nystul’s The Whispering Vault
(1993),where guardians protected reality from rogue gods;
of C.J. Carella’s WitchCraft (1996),which offered a neo-
paganist take on modern-day magic; and of Greg Stolze
and John Tynes’ Unknown Armies (1998), which embraced
obsession and madness in the face of occult menaces.
In fact, many of the new horror games of the ’90s found
their new horror themes in occultism, with one of the
most notable examples being Kult, a Swedish roleplaying
game (1991) translated into English (1993) by Metropolis
Ltd. Using a foundation of Gnosticism and Kabbalism,
Kult imagined a world where reality was just an illusion
meant to hold man prisoner. It was one of the few
roleplaying games to ever match the notoriety of D&D: it
was questionably connected to a murder in Sweden and
as a result was brought up in the Parliament of Sweden
as part of an attempt to ban
funding to youth groups
associated with roleplaying.
The darkening of the industry
can perhaps be best revealed by
how older games were
reimagined. Chill returned in a
second edition (1990) from
Mayfair Games, replacing the
Hammer Horror of the original
with splatterpunk and the campy
artwork with dark and moody
pieces. Similarly, Pagan
Publishing’s Delta Green (1996)
supplement reimagined Call of
Cthulhu with more modern
sensibilities, bringing it into the
present and interweaving the
Cthulhu Mythos with
government conspiracies: a
uniquely modern-day sort of
horror.
The darkening of the industry even leaked out into other
genres. Though the cyberpunk movement was responsible
for much of the darkening of ’90s science-fiction
roleplaying games, Fading Suns (1996), created by White
Wolf alumni, offered a different horror and occult-tinged
take on science-fiction. It would lay the groundwork for
science-fiction RPGs to move away from the bright,
nostalgia-infused space operas that had been the
industry’s earliest entrants to the field.
If there was a decade where horror reached its zenith in
the roleplaying industry, it was the ’90s.
www.wyrdscience.online 33

The Fourfold Path: 1999-Present
O
nce upon a time, horror was a small corner of
the industry mainly ruled over by Call of
Cthulhu, but the ’90s showed that there was
room for as many horror games as there were types of
horror. As a result, the roleplaying mainstream has
embraced horror in the 21st century.
That’s often meant reiterations of old releases, with Call
of Cthulhu, Chill, Unknown Armies, Ravenloft, and the whole
World of Darkness being just a few of the classic horror
titles that have seen dramatic reinventions. It’s also
resulted in licensed horror RPGs such as Buffy (2002) and
Angel (2003) from Eden Studios. There was even innovation
in the mainstream, such as when Eden got out in front of
the zombie trend with All Flesh Must Be Eaten (1999).
34 Wyrd Science
futures implicit in the Mythos with
its time traveling protagonists
returning to our time to stop The
Great Old One’s victory on earth.
However, the mainstream didn’t
necessarily publish the darkest
horrors of the ’00s and ’10s. Those
might have come from three new
subcategories of roleplaying
publishing, all of which emerged
in the 21st century thanks to lower
barriers of entry to publication
courtesy of PDF, PoD and
crowdfunding.
The first of those subcategories
was the OSR, that sub-genre of
roleplaying focused primarily on
recreating old-school designs. For
many that meant going back to
the sword & sorcery inspirations
that helped to create the
industry. Dark and weird
fantasy can thus be found
Kult had briefly demonstrated
across the OSR, with
Lamentations of the Flame
the dark horror that was
Princess (2010) being the lurking in foreign countries;
biggest example. Gory and
horrific art have mixed with now that horror burst past
those countries’ borders
Symbaroum art by Martin Grip, © Free League Publishing
dark game elements, most
prominently in Geoffrey
McKinney’s Carcosa (2011), advertised as being for adults
only.
Chaosium wasn’t the only one reinventing Call of
Cthulhu. Much of the industry joined in — in large part The second new subcategory of roleplaying was
because Chaosium was deeply weakened as the new international publications, which had never succeeded in
century dawned and so was no longer able to maintain the English-language world prior to the outreach now
their exclusivity of the concept. Cubicle 7’s World War allowed by crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter.
Cthulhu (2013) contrasted the horror of the mythos with Back in the ’90s, Kult had briefly demonstrated the dark
the horrors of war, a theme that was shared by horror that was lurking in foreign countries; now, that
Modiphius’ Achtung! Cthulhu (2013). horror burst past those countries’ borders, with Sweden
again taking the lead.
Pelgrane’s Trail of Cthulhu (2008) reinvented the idea of
investigation, while the Delta Green RPG (2016) presented Järnringen mixed body horror and cosmic horror in their
a new set of mechanics for the innovative setting. science-fiction Coriolis (2008), influenced by films such
CthulhuTech (2007) mixed horror with science-fiction, as Event Horizon; they then played on the horror of the
and most recently Evil Hat’s Fate of Cthulhu (2020) unknown in Symbaroum (2014), a dark fantasy.
doubled-down on the corruption and the apocalyptic Järnringen’s successor, Fria Lingen, has similarly focused
on dark settings, continuing to
publish Symbaroum and most
recently including straight horror
in games such as the licensed
ALIEN (2019) and the Nordic horror
Vaesen (2020). Even Kult has made
a comeback as Kult: Divinity Lost
(2018) from newcomer Helmgast.
However, the deepest and darkest
horror of the 21st century may
well have come from the third
new subcategory of roleplaying
publication: indie games,
published by independent
creators without the support or
(more notably) constraints of
mainstream publishers. They were
horror from the start, when Ron
Edwards published Sorcerer (1998),
a game of black magic that asked
“What do you want and what
would do to get it?” Many
others followed such as: Dread
(2005), a game that created
fear through its innovative
Jenga mechanism; Don’t Rest
Your Head (2006), which
introduced a new world of
horror in the Mad City; and
Bluebird’s Bride (2017), a
feminine horror fairy tale. Fate
of Cthulhu came from this same stream of indie design.
Many of the most interesting horror indies have been
deconstructive. De Profundis (2001) reimagined
Lovecraftian horror as an actual letter writing game;
while My Life with Master (2003) focused on the role of
the humble horror henchman. Monsterhearts (2012) and
moreso Monsterhearts 2 (2017) reconfigured horror tropes
to explore LGBT adolescence.
Even if horror games may have reached their height in
the ’90s, when the whole industry descended into
darkness, they have since discovered their breadth, with
horror games become omnipresent, covering a wider
scope of body, cosmic, mythic, personal, and psychological
horror than could have ever been imagined forty years
ago, when Call of Cthulhu first hit the shelves.
www.wyrdscience.online 35
 Few names send a shiver down the spine of a bold, or foolhardy, adventurer quite like that of Ravenloft. Ever since this
mist shrouded domain of dread debuted in 1983, its windswept moors, eerie castles and dark rulers have fired our imaginations.
But what of its inspirations? Connoisseur of the dark, Jack Shear, goes in search of Ravenloft’s literary roots.
Art (opposite): © 2022 Enric Torres Prat. Used with permission.
Ravenloft art (subsequent pages): Clyde Caldwell © Wizards Of The Coast
s far back as I can remember, I’ve always been
A drawn to Gothic imagery and themes. My first
comic books were about vampires and haunted
castles, my favorite novels all belonged to the Gothic
canon, and the movies that thrilled me featured imperiled
women fleeing from terrifying houses and the villains
lurking within them. When I first found Ravenloft, I knew
I had discovered a setting for my roleplaying games that
would give me the space to explore all the elements of
Gothic horror that I had fallen in love with. As I delved
into the setting, I realized that it was steeped in the
Gothic literature and films that I adore. Its creators clearly
conversant with the Gothic’s long literary history.
Gothic literature began with the publication of Horace
Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Walpole did not
set out to create a new genre or mode of writing, but
the premise of his novel—a medieval principality is
usurped by an unjust ruler until the ghost of a former
prince grows large enough to sunder the titular castle—
set the blueprint for similar fictions that followed.
Walpole’s literary heirs indulged in stories that emphasized
the barbarity of the past, the irrational power of overwrought
emotions, and the possibility of the supernatural.
By the 1890s, these “Gothic” fictions had become wildly
popular, even if they were looked upon with worry by
cultural commentators afraid that they would instill the
wrong messages in the youths and middle-class women
who were their primary audience. Works such as Ann
Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew
Lewis’s The Monk (1796) solidified the Gothic’s literary
conventions, inspiring both similarly themed tales and
outright imitations.
The Gothic’s history is one of peaks and valleys. In the
early years of the nineteenth century, its popularity was
eclipsed by a newfound interest in more staid historical
fiction. Yet, by the end of the century, the Gothic was
back in full force, introducing the world to some of the
famous monsters that continue to dominate the global
cultural imagination.
36 Wyrd Science
Even if you haven’t read the texts from which they
emerged, you know the basic story of Dracula, Mister
Hyde, and Frankenstein’s monster. The Gothic has
achieved a form of omnipresent artistic influence that
renders it both ubiquitous and also sometimes invisible
despite its prodigious reach.
The Gothic endures. It’s survival is rooted in its innate
adaptability. The Gothic method of transforming current
cultural anxieties into fictive terrors, combined with the
metaphoric flexibility of its monstrosities, is capable of
keeping the mode fresh and modern. Consider Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) as a stark example of the
Gothic’s process of reinvention. Shelley moved in a circle
synonymous with Romanticism; she was married to
Percy Bysshe Shelley and began writing her most well-
known novel while visiting with Lord Byron.
Romanticism, with its emphasis on the “spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings,” was deeply inspired by the
Gothic mode. But as Shelley began work on what would
become Frankenstein, she fed Romanticism’s focus on
individual genius and the importance of emotional
bonds back into the Gothic, simultaneously initiating a
new, hitherto unknown kind of tale and revitalizing the
Gothic by hybridizing it with an outside influence.
The Gothic exceeds formal boundaries, which has been a
key element of its continuance. Though it began as a
form of prose fiction, the Gothic has attached itself to
stage drama, film, and television, as surely as the
archetypal vampire latches on to the neck of his victim.
Of course, the Gothic has also exerted its baleful
influence on the world of games as well. Ravenloft is our
case in point—as one of the strongest inheritors of the
Gothic’s mantle, the setting both reiterates and
reinterprets familiar figures, imagery, and themes drawn
from the Gothic tradition.
Join me then, won’t you, on a brief tour of the allusions,
references, and points of inspiration to be found in
Ravenloft’s dreadful domains.
www.wyrdscience.online 37
 Barovia
arovia is where Ravenloft began. In I6: Ravenloft
B (1983), the original module penned by Tracy and
Laura Hickman, Barovia is a thinly sketched
setting—essentially a shadowy Ruritania that borrows
liberally from the depiction of Transylvania in Bram Stoker’s
Dracula (1897) and the cinematic adaptations it inspired. The
aesthetic conceits that flavor Barovia come straight from
central casting and the studio backlot: Barovia is a land of
ominous forests, its villages are full of superstitious
peasants, it is inundated with fog, haunted by untrustworthy
“gypsies” and a lonesome Gothic castle is perched “atop a
natural pillar of stone.”
In this first Ravenloft adventure, Barovia is simply a pretext
to introduce the characters to Count Strahd von Zarovich.
Strahd may hold the honor of being Dungeons & Dragons’
most obvious pastiche; Strahd is D&D’s Dracula. “Strahd”
rhymes with “Vlad,” and his pseudo-Slavic patronymic
gives his full name a suitably Eastern European flair. Of
course, it goes without saying that, like Dracula, Strahd is
a vampire.
However, as his stats in I6 attest, Strahd is more than an
average bloodsucker, he is also a potent magic-user.
Strahd’s arcane abilities have a precedent in Stoker’s
story. The novel notes that Dracula’s family received
tutelage in black magic: “The Draculas were, says Arminius,
a great and noble race, though now and again were scions
who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with
the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance,
amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the
devil claims the tenth scholar as his due.”
Strahd’s resemblance to Dracula isn’t simply a question
of ability, it’s also a matter of theme. The Hickmans
conceived of Strahd as the antidote for the kind of
faceless villainy that dominated early D&D adventures—a
horde of goblins here, a tribe of lizardmen there, and a
gelatinous cube waiting in the hall.
Like Dracula, Strahd personifies the metaphoric sexual
menace that radiates from the idea of a predatory undead
creature who seduces and destroys his prey. Strahd’s
possible goals in I6, randomly determined by drawing a
card, roughly correspond to Dracula’s aims in Stoker’s tale:
38 Wyrd Science
the possibilities lean toward an acquisitive desire for power
or the claiming of a woman against her will. In Dracula,
both Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker are the vampire’s
targets; in Ravenloft, Strahd might repeat Dracula’s richly
symbolic conquest of woman-hood by setting his
lascivious sights on Ireena Kolyana.
Though Strahd attempts to win Ireena’s love in I6, the
more recent Curse of Strahd (2015) makes the rapaciousness
of Strahd’s dark love central to the adventure as a corrective
measure. As Tracy Hickman states in the introduction,
“The vampire we so often see today exemplifies the polar
opposite of the original archetype: the lie that it's okay to
enter into a romance with an abusive monster because if
you love it enough, it will change. When Laura and I got a
call from Christopher Perkins about revisiting Ravenloft,
we hoped we could bring the message of the vampire
folktale back to its original cautionary roots.”
As Hickman notes, Strahd’s predatory nature isn’t solely
borrowed from Dracula. In their research into the origins
of vampire fiction, the Hickmans found Lord Ruthven, the
vampiric rake of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). Lord
Ruthven’s combination of charm and arrogance were
inspired by the antics of Lord Byron. John Polidori,
Byron’s doctor, had a first-row seat from which to view
the Romantic poet’s life of debauchery —elements
inherited by Strahd that have only become more
pronounced over Ravenloft’s many iterations. In Curse of
Strahd, for example, Strahd’s endgame is not limited to
turning Ireena into a vampire; he might choose any man
or woman as his plaything.
The Realm of Terror (1990) box set expanded Strahd’s
tragic backstory, presenting him as both villain and
victim. Due to his treachery and an unenviable fall from
grace, he is cursed to continually seek the love of his life—
Tatyana, who is herself doomed to die and be
reincarnated over and over again as the eternal object of
desire for an immortal monster. Interestingly, this
element of Strahd’s backstory has fed back into the
Dracula mythology. The Dracula of Francis Ford
Coppola's silver- screen adaptation of Stoker’s novel is
similarly afflicted by a mad desire to reclaim the love that
he has “crossed oceans of time” to find once more.
www.wyrdscience.online 39
 Borca
T
he publication of Realm of Terror not only
expanded on Strahd von Zarovich’s personal
history, it also expanded the scope of the
Ravenloft setting as a whole. Ravenloft was no longer
focused just on Barovia—it was now its own demiplane
of domains, each the playground and prison of a central
villain referred to as a Darklord.
Included among these domains is Borca, an Italianate
land of scheming nobles, intrigues, and, above all,
poisonings. The domain’s name reveals its primary
inspiration: “Borca” is intentionally similar to “Borgia,” an
allusion to the infamous family of Spanish-Aragonese
nobles noted for their nepotistic accumulation of political
power and Ivana Boritsi, Borca’s Darklord, is modeled
after Lucrezia Borgia.
Although the historical record cannot confirm the
rumors that swirled around Lucrezia, rival contemporary
factions painted her as a femme fatale who indulged in
incest, and murder. The most persistent accusation
against Lucrezia was that she secreted deadly toxins
inside a poison ring to dispatch both enemies and lovers
who had lost her favor.
Ivana Boritsi takes the “poisonous woman” archetype
one step further: she permanently envenomed her body
to take revenge against a faithless lover and her rival for
his attention. Poison is literally part of her being, and her
kiss is deadly.
40 Wyrd Science
However, this has not slowed her ardor; Ivana is
notorious for taking lovers to her bed, even though her
affections are invariably fatal.
The version of Ivana Boritsi presented in Van Richten’s
Guide to Ravenloft (2021) downplays her role as a “black
widow” luring men to their doom. Her backstory still
involves the inciting event of an unfaithful lover, but in
this depiction she is a poisoner who murdered her own
family to clear the way for her rise to power. This
alternative Ivana connects to a different branch of Gothic
anxiety obsessed with the fear of monstrous women.
Ivana is a symbolic double of the “gardens of evil” she
maintains in Borca. It is from these gardens that she gathers
the raw materials to craft her poisons and cultivate
botanical monsters. The revision of her character places
Ivana even more firmly into a particular archetype of
feminine monstrosity by emphasizing metaphors that
associate the deadly fecundity of nature with the
seductive allure of beautiful women.
Like Beatrice in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s
Daughter (1844) she is a hybrid of feminine charm and
nature’s wrath. Like the venereal woman in Joris-Karl
Huysmans’s Á rebours (1884), she represents the excesses
of earthy pleasure turning ever to decay. And like the title
character in Hanns Heinz Ewer’s Alraune (1911), she is a
dangerous hedonist shaped by the tainted soil from
which she grew.
Dementlieu
D ementlieu is the domain of Dominic d’Honaire, a
mesmerist and beguiler patterned after the
villainous Svengali in George du Maurier’s novel
Trilby (1894). Like Svengali, d’Honaire uses his hypnotic
abilities to exploit others, enrich himself, and rise in
prominence and prestige.
However, unlike Svengali, who largely only uses his
power to turn a tone-deaf laundress into a diva of the
stage, Dominic d’Honaire exerts his pernicious influence
over Marcel Guignol, lord-governor of Dementlieu.
Besides their uncanny mesmeric ability, Svengali and
d’Honaire share a sense of terroir; since Svengali’s
stomping grounds are nineteenth century Paris, the
domain of Dementlieu is depicted as a land of French
urbanity, complete with fashion, style, and genteel
refinement. Indeed, Marcel Guignol’s name is itself a play
on the gory Grand Guignol theater of Paris.
Dementlieu was given an extreme makeover in the pages
of Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. In its new iteration,
Dementlieu is a realm of social-climbers—everyone is
pretending to be someone or something they’re not.
Dominic d’Honaire has been replaced by Saidra
d’Honaire, a woman who died at a masquerade ball
when her rags-to-riches Cinderella story was interrupted
by a devastating plague.
Saidra re-emerges as a villain inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s
The Masque of the Red Death (1842). Saidra entertains the
populace of Dementlieu by hosting the Grand Masquerade—
a gala event at which she unmasks those who pose as
nobles and assume positions of unearned status. When
she is not fulfilling her role as perpetual hostess, Saidra
stalks the streets of Dementlieu as “the Red Death,” a
spirit who punishes pompous frauds.
Falkovnia
S urprisingly, Barovia isn’t the only land inspired by
Dracula. Strahd has always been a mirror image
of Dracula as a vampire, but the writers of Realm
of Terror presented Vlad Drakov, the tyrannical Darklord
of Falkovnia, as an encapsulation of Vlad Tepes—the
historical Dracula who inspired Stoker’s novel.
Falkovnia is a military dictatorship; though there are
elements of Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany in the
description of Falkovnia, the most dominant elements in
the domain refer to Vlad Tepes.
Like Tepes, Drakov is a warlord, but in contrast to his
historical antecedent he is doomed to see his military
ambitions stymied time after time.
Most importantly, Drakov shares a grisly predilection
attributed to Tepes in the German propaganda of his era:
both men have a fetish for impaling their enemies on
sharp wooden stakes.
As with Dominic d’Honaire, Vlad Drakov received
substantial changes and a gender-swap in Van Richten’s
Guide to Ravenloft. The new Darklord, Vladeska Drakov,
finds herself weathering an endless zombie siege—though
she, like the two Vlads before her, believes in the strength
of martial law and favors “impalings as punishment for
even the slightest crimes.”
Drakov shares a grisly
predilection attributed to
Tepes in the German
propaganda of his era:
both men have a fetish for
impaling their enemies on
sharp wooden stakes
www.wyrdscience.online 41
 Ghastria
T
he domain of Ghastria focuses with a laser-like
intensity on one aspect of Oscar Wilde’s The
Picture of Dorian Gray (1890): the eventual
boredom that troubles an aesthete’s jaded palette.
Once exposed to the philosophy of hedonism by Sir
Henry, Dorian Gray indulges in one aesthetic pleasure
after another— burning out on each in turn until finally he
succumbs to ennui.
This scene is replicated in Stezen D’Polarno’s plight in
Ghastria; the food grown in the domain is flavorless, leaving
the decadent gourmand utterly unfulfilled. Additionally,
d’Polarno’s name may be a reference to “polari,” slang used
in gay subcultures, perhaps a subtle nod to the transgressive
sexual subtext of Wilde’s novel. “Ghastria” is, of course,
also a terrible double pun that refers to both the ghastly
nature of the domain and the gastric horrors that await
there.
Har’Akir
ar’Akir, Ravenloft’s approximation of pharaonic
H Egypt, springs from a more general movement in
the Gothic rather than a specific work.
Nineteenth-century Europe was gripped by
Egyptomania—a powerful fascination with all things
ancient and Egyptian.
This mania filtered into the fiction of the era; tales of
exploration and adventure amid the sands held the
interest of the reading public. Ever adaptable, the Gothic
assimilated Egyptomania into its textual corpus and
produced a number of works, such as Guy Boothby’s
Pharos the Egyptian (1899), Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of the
Seven Stars (1903), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897),
that paired tales of terror with aesthetics and setting
elements drawn from an imagined Egypt.
Har’Akir performs the same feat and both the domain
and its Darklord, Anhktepot, also owe a large debt to
Universal’s The Mummy (1932). Both Anhktepot and
Imhotep are priests punished for their sacrilege, cursed to
suffer immortality as mummies.
42 Wyrd Science
Lamordia
L amordia’s Darklord, Victor Mordenheim, is
Ravenloft’s version of Victor Frankenstein. Both
men are scientists who animate dead flesh, giving
figurative birth to monsters. Additionally, they are
thematically united in that their monsters’ ire falls on the
women in their lives.
Elizabeth in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is killed by
Frankenstein’s creation, but her character is split into two
in Mordenheim’s backstory—and both meet tragic ends.
Elise, Mordenheim’s wife, is left in a comatose state by his
creature and Eva, his adopted daughter, was presumably
thrown off a cliff.
Furthermore the name of Mordenheim’s creature, Adam,
is a direct reference to a line from Shelley’s novel, spoken
by Frankenstein’s tragic creation: “Remember that I am
thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the
fallen angel.”
“Remember that I am thy
creature; I ought to be thy
Adam, but I am rather
the fallen angel.”
Markovia
L ike Lamordia, Markovia is the domain of a Darklord
who transgresses against the natural order.
Rather than spark life into base matter, Frantisek
Markov creates mongrel folk by performing horrible
experiments on the animals who live in his domain.
As a monstrous vivisectionist, Markov is a fairly
straightforward adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The Island of
Doctor Moreau (1896). Like Moreau, Frantisek is a similarly
disturbed scientist worshiped as a god by his hideous
creations. Realm of Terror introduces one noteworthy
embellishment to Wells; original—here Markov’s body has
become as bestial as those of his creations.
www.wyrdscience.online 43
 Nova Vaasa
ova Vaasa’s Darklord, Sir Hiregaard, is based
N on Henry Jekyll from Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).
Like Jekyll, Sir Hiregaard transforms into a brute named
Malken who, as with Edward Hyde, “has terrorized many
poor young women and murdered the men who crossed
him.”
Hiregaard is novel as a Darklord; unlike most of his peers
in Ravenloft, he actively struggles against his malignant
character traits and hopes to free himself from the
bifurcation the indulges and enables his evilest impulses.
Oddly, this re-imagining of Stevenson’s characters is
missing the scientific aspect—Hiregaard inherited a curse
after his father strangled his mother in an Othello-esque
scenario, not as an imbiber of transformative potions—
and the domain he rules over is inspired by Tsarist
Russia.
Valachan
he initial presentation of Valachan in Realm of
T Terror was, frankly, a mess. The domain’s original
Darklord, Baron Urik von Kharkov, had a
pointlessly convoluted backstory; he was a panther given
the form of man, who then later became undead, making
him a hybrid of werecat and vampire.
Art: Clyde Caldwell © Wizards Of The Coast
As such he’s a wild mix of unrelated themes and imagery
culled from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Jacques
Tournier’s Cat People (1942) that just doesn’t work.
Like the vampire tales it spawned, In Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, Kharkov’s rule of
Valachan was usurped by Chakuna, a huntress who will
the Gothic always rises from the grave stalk anyone who trespasses on her domain for sport.
—and in Ravenloft, the dead never rest easy. Chakuna was clearly inspired by Richard Connell’s The
Most Dangerous Game (1924), though General Zaroff ’s
Cossack menace has been replaced by vague
Mesoamerican trappings.
44 Wyrd Science
Out of the Mists
y way of conclusion, I want to note that the
B references, allusions, and inspirational departure
points noted above are only the elements that I
have observed and been able to trace in Ravenloft’s
expansive product line.
I can virtually guarantee that there are Gothic tangents in
the setting that I have missed. The setting is now the
work of several hands, each with their own set of
influences and their own perspective on the Gothic.
Nevertheless, even if this article is but an incomplete
record of Ravenloft’s intersection with the Gothic
tradition, the sheer weight of the characterizations,
imagery, and motifs borrowed from the mode and
reinterpreted as the raw material from which to create
“Gothic Dungeons & Dragons” illustrate how the setting
not just draws upon the genre but actively participates in
the Gothic’s continual resurrection.
From the pages of I6: Ravenloft to the most recent Van
Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, Ravenloft has been a site
where the Gothic is revived in all its terrible glory.
Some genres emerge onto the literary scene, only to falter
and become an artifact of the past, never to be revisited
in a meaningful way. Similarly, some roleplaying settings
have their day in the sun before inevitably fading until
dimly remembered.
But the Gothic, and Ravenloft, are different. Like the vampire
tales it spawned, the Gothic always rises from the grave—
and in Ravenloft, the dead never rest easy.
Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft
is out now published by Wizards of the Coast
All previous editions of Ravenloft are
currently available via DriveThruRPG.com
www.wyrdscience.online 45
 THIS
SEPTIC
ISLE
Troubled by trolls and vexed by vaettir John Power Jr. leaves
Vaesen’s Mythic North behind and heads to more familiar
surroundings to speak to Graeme Davis, author of the game’s
new Mythic Britain & Ireland supplement....
Art (throughout): Johan Egerkrans (© Free League Publishing)
I
t has been a long, hard journey for our mismatched
band of disgraced priests, back street doctors and
dilettante artists. Summoned from the cosmopolitan
university town of Uppsala out to this windswept village
on the Danish coast it’s fair to say we have not received a
friendly welcome from the locals, suspicious as they are
of our city ways.
Our, let’s say, specialist expertise has been called upon by
an engineering company hoping to drain these ancient
moors and make them fit for modern purpose. Unfortunately
for them their machines are mysteriously breaking down
their workers scared off, and just beneath the surface
dark secrets and wicked misdeeds are inexorably clawing
their way into the light.
Welcome, to the ‘Mythic North’.
Released in 2020, ‘Nordic Horror’ roleplaying-game Vaesen
is set in a ‘mythical nineteenth-century Scandinavia’, a
land where the hidden realm of the titular vaesen -trolls,
lindworms, church grims and the like- butts up and
against our own increasingly secular society. A land where
despite industrialisation and scientific discovery giving
46 Wyrd Science
birth to our new world, the old refuses to go quietly,
leading -as the saying goes- to a great variety of morbid
symptoms to appear.
Based upon the book of the same name by author and
artist Johan Egerkrans -a handsomely illustrated field
guide to the myriad creatures of Scandinavian folklore-
Vaesen makes use of Free League’s own, now familiar,
Year Zero engine to create a game of both folk and very
human horror.
In Vaesen players are members of The Society for Studies
of the Invisibles and Protection of Mankind (henceforth
The Society), a secretive organisation dedicated to
protecting humanity from the more esoteric dangers of
the world and, on occasion, vice versa. Gifted with ‘The
Sight’, our heroes are those rare few who, through accident
of birth or trauma, are able to perceive the unseen world
of spirits and the supernatural, that which normal folk
might just catch a glimpse of out in the corner of their eyes.
From their well appointed base in Uppsala players must
sally forth out into the icy hinterlands, those places
where newly built roads give way to dirt tracks, old traditions
www.wyrdscience.online 47
and beliefs die hard and secrets, and indeed bodies, rarely
stay buried for long.
Whilst Vaesen’s antiquarian setting and themes of occult
detection may bring to mind Call of Cthulhu, Vaesen’s
mysteries tend to operate on a smaller, more human
scale, one where grand cosmic nihilism gives way to often
pettier concerns, more M.R. James than H.P. Lovecraft.
Insane cults and world ending plots are replaced by jilted
lovers nursing cold hatreds and petty industrialists
whose greed has brought them into conflict with the
otherworld. Where Lovecraft’s antagonists are in many
began the process of sanitising them for a modern audience,
tales where no woodsman appears in the nick of time to
save Red Riding Hood from the big bad wolf.
Whilst the supernatural lies at the heart of each Vaesen
mystery, the solution is rarely as obvious as charging in
with guns blazing, cold iron and holy water at the ready.
Instead this is a game of puzzle solving and detection,
overcoming local suspicions and misaligned motives,
teasing out the all too human shortcomings that have
invariably led to conflict between the two worlds.
Whilst Britain was at the height of its power, this was
after all the seat of the empire upon which the sun
famously never set, the Isles themselves were riven by
tensions, between the classes, between town and
country and most notably between the four nations that
then made up the United Kingdom, with calls for
independence -notably in Ireland- becoming
increasingly loud and in many cases violent.
Indeed one of our favourite sidebars in the book is titled
‘Fenian Fairies’ and speculates how the interaction between
those fighting for Irish independence and the denizens of
originally presented a shortlist of around 20 creatures,
and talked them over with Johan, whose art is so much a
part of what makes Vaesen special. Between us, we
whittled my list down to those that offered the best
game potential combined with the best visual potential.’
The final selection then ranges from the barrow haunting
Banshee of Ireland to the Knockers, inhabitants of the tin
mines of Cornwall, and the seal like Selkies that populate
Scotland’s coasts. Much like the original book’s vaesen
this diverse cast of creatures goes from the playful and
mischievous to the bloodcurdling and cruel, though few

ways unknowable, Vaesen’s are often all too familiar, and
as a result their misdeeds and dilemmas have the potential
to hit all the harder.
Still, for all it eschews world ending horrors Vaesen can
still be a surprisingly dark game. Whilst at first glance
Egerkrans illustrations may give the book the feel of a
collection of children’s fairy tales, linger over the illustrations
of Ash Tree Wives, Mylings and The Neck and the horror
beneath the surface soon becomes visible. In that though
Vaesen is true to its roots, the original folk tales and fairy
stories of Northern Europe from before the Brothers Grimm
H
aving sent us scurrying to the Baltic Sea and
back, Vaesen has spread its wings with Mythic
Britain & Ireland. Rolling across the dark waters
from Scandinavia like a gloomy sea fret, this brand new
sourcebook covers the Atlantic Archipelago and its
inhabitants, supernatural and otherwise. It is, it has to be
said, a perfect fit. Britain and Ireland are lands steeped in
folklore as rich as that of Scandinavia, countries where
mysterious prehistoric monuments stand on gloomy
plains and the past habitually haunts the present.
To bring this Mythic Britain & Ireland to life Free League
approached veteran games designer Graeme Davis, or
rather, as he explains, he approached them. ‘I'm a lifelong
folklore geek and I had been toying with the idea of a
folklore based RPG for some time, but the closest I got to
doing it was GURPS Faerie in 2003.’ Davis explains.
‘When I first saw Vaesen, I realised that it was the game
I'd been wanting to make all along, only set in Scandinavia.
It clearly needed a supplement on Britain and Ireland,
and I wanted to be the one to write it. Luckily, Free League
liked my pitch!”
Remaining in the late 19th century, Vaesen’s Britain and
Ireland -populated by men like Stephenson and Brunel-
is perhaps an even more apt location for a game where,
as Davis points out, ‘the upheaval of industrialisation,
and the way that both mortal and supernatural folk
respond to it, is a major theme of the setting.’
‘Being set in the 19th century, there are built-in themes of
tensions between classes and cultures, between urban
and rural areas, and between industry and tradition,’
Davis explains and the book begins with a lengthy
introduction to the United Kingdom of Victoria’s time,
and its increasing divisions.
the mercurial otherworld might play out, probably not in are as outright horrific as Davis’s favourite, the nuckelavee,
the mortals’ favour Davis suggests. It’s understandable which he describes as ‘a demonic, centaur-like creature
that a topic that over a century on is still unresolved has from Orkney. It is so bizarre and frightening, and so unlike
generally been left to the discretion of the games master anything else I've ever seen from anywhere else in
but it’s certainly an area ripe for exploration. folklore.’
Completing this gazetteer of the Isles, Davis takes us on a
tour of its major cities, the people -historical and fictional- the nuckelavee, “a demonic,
whom we might encounter and the locations we might
find them in, from the leather upholstered private clubs centaur-like creature from
of London to the dockyards of Belfast and onto more
esoteric realms such as the otherworlds of Celtic myth. Orkney. It is so bizarre and
Much like our original Uppsalans, British characters are frightening, and so unlike
members of their own occult order, in this case the
Apollonian Society, whose London townhouse comes anything else I've ever seen”
complete with that essential feature, a ghostly
manservant. Davis ties the Apollonians into much of
Britain’s storied magical history and you will not be
surprised to find such well established figures as John
Dee and Edmund Spenser appear alongside the, perhaps,
lesser known likes of 17th century antiquarian John
Aubrey and William Stukely, famous -in the real world at
least- for his 18th century investigations of Stonehenge
and Avebury.
Davis’s love and knowledge of Britain’s secret history
shines through it all but fun as that all is, and apart from
the digression into Victorian Britain’s baffling monetary
system it is all fun, it’s the 14 new vaesen culled from the
folklore of the Isles that are the book’s star attraction,
each one brought to life once more by Vaesen’s original
artist Johan Egerkrans.
With a wealth of folkloric beings to choose from narrowing
down the selection seems like a difficult job, something
Davis readily admits. ‘It was a tough choice,’ he says. ‘I
Another challenge Mythic Britain & Ireland presented
Davis was in not just narrowing down the selection but
pinning down the essential qualities of creatures that by
their very nature defy simple classification. ‘Given that
there's almost no part of Britain and Ireland where twenty
miles' travel doesn't land you in a place with a different
accent and culture, there are bound to be differences in
the details of folklore,’ he explains and points to the iron
clawed hag, a creature he admits to having ‘a soft spot
for’ and whose mutable nature means that ‘there are just
so many different ways of looking at them and using
them in stories.’
To reflect this diversity most of the vaesen featured in the
book come complete with a list of notable regional
variations. So, for example, in the case of Scotland’s
seductive, if very much murderous Glaistig, Davis
provides details of other beings that occupy similar
folkloric niches elsewhere across the isles, such as the
Irish baobhan Sith and Manx leanan sidhe.
‘In general these differences are minor, but
still interesting for a game, where the
players might be faced with something
they don't know, about a creature that
is otherwise familiar,’ Davis says,
adding that whilst ‘there are
differences between northern and
southern England, Welsh folklore
is very much its own thing,
while there are significant
similarities between
Scotland and Ireland -
perhaps because they were
both Gaelic-speaking nations
originally, while the Welsh
language is Brythonic and closer
to Breton and Cornish.’
For those who wish to explore the
mist shrouded folklore of the British isles further Davis
has included bibliography and particularly recommends
Katherine Briggs’s A Dictionary of Fairies. ‘I first picked it
up in the mid-70s, and I've not found a better reference
since then. It's exhaustive in scope, with enough detail to
provide ideas for mysteries and encounters which the GM
can then supplement with their own research online,’ he
explains, ‘It’s harder to find than it once was, but worth
looking for.’
50 Wyrd Science
Of course a bestiary of banshees, boggarts and black
dogs is all well and good but they need a good mystery to
be placed within and Mythic Britain & Ireland ends with
three such scenarios that take us from rural Gloucestershire,
to a mining village in Wales and back to the smog filled
streets of London. Filled with superstitious locals, high
minded interlopers, zealous priests and decadent artists,
bar your investigators ending up in a burning wicker man
they tick all the folk horror boxes you might expect, and
its clear Davis “gets” Vaesen and what differentiates it
from its more tentacular peers.
‘The cosmic horror of Call of Cthulhu, to me at least, has
alway been largely about the futility of human endeavor
in the face of vast, uncaring, incomprehensible powers in
a vast, uncaring, incomprehensible universe.,’ he says.
‘You can never win, but you can try not to lose - at least,
not today. In Vaesen, it is far more possible to right
wrongs and make peace with the supernatural. Faerie
thinking and morality may be different from those of
mortals, but they are not so entirely alien as
the entities of the Cthulhu Mythos.’
“Faerie thinking and
morality may be
different from those of
mortals, but they are
not so entirely alien as
the entities of the
Cthulhu Mythos”
On the subject of the game’s taxonomy though Davis
sees Vaesen as more of ‘a folk investigation game’ than an
outright horror one. ‘Historically, folklore and fairytales
have included some very dark themes indeed, and they
were only cleaned up fairly recently, by the Victorians in
the 19th century and by Disney in the 20th and 21st
centuries,’ he explains.
‘Certainly you can have horror elements if you want, and
for some creatures that is about the only option, but you
can also have pure fairytales with only a little darkness in
them. No one has to include horror in a game if they
don't want to.’
‘There's a difference between portraying horror, or the
potential for horror, and being an edgelord for its own
sake - or so I've always believed,’ he goes on, adding
‘there must always be a dialogue between GM and
players over what the limits are and which topics are
particularly upsetting for each specific player.’
Likewise as well as setting expectations at the start of
play Davis advises that he ‘would never advocate for loss
of agency on the part of the player characters, because
the whole point of a roleplaying games is collaborative
storytelling and group problem-solving. But there is a
significant difference between challenging the players
and robbing them of all agency.’
Whilst the book is now out and in people’s hands, Davis’s
work with Vaesen seems far from done. A good beast is
hard to keep down and he has already started to publish
those creatures left on the cutting room floor via the Free
League Workshop on DriveThruRPG, and indeed look
beyond our shores, collaborating with Polish writer Paweł
Marszałek on some adaptations of Slavic vaesen.
Indeed whilst Britain and Ireland’s mythology may share
some DNA with Scandinavia, Mythic Britain & Ireland
shows how the world of Vaesen can be expanded
beyond the cold, foggy north of Europe and the game
itself develop. As the world grows smaller who knows
what may have hitched a lift with looted relics back to
the heart of Empire, or indeed where our intrepid
investigators may find themselves heading next.
With folklore to be found wherever we have built our
homes, and human weaknesses universal, perhaps a globe
trotting campaign to rival the iconic Masks of Nyarlathotep
could be next, with it’s own spin of course, Around The
World in 80 Vaesen anyone?
Vaesen - Mythic Britain & Ireland is out now
available from Free League Publishing
Frialigan.se
Keep up date with the latest from Graeme Davis
& his new indie RPG studio The Rookery
on Twitter @RookeryP
www.wyrdscience.online 51
 FLAMES
OF FEAR!
Inspired by horror anthologies like Creepshow and Are You Afraid of
the Dark? Campfire is a new game made for telling your own spooky
stories, Samantha Nelson speaks to Adam Vass and Will Jobst to find
out more...
Art (opposite & next pages) from Campfire: Trevor Henderson
T
he ‘90s Nickelodeon horror anthology television show
Are You Afraid of the Dark? featured a group of kids
called the Midnight Society who would gather around
a campfire each week to submit scary stories for their peer’s
approval . Whilst their tales would be the focus of each
episode the show would periodically return to the campfire
to see how that particular story was being received.
That frame device is also key to Campfire, a storytelling
game designed by Adam Vass and Will Jobst that also
draws inspiration from other horror anthologies such as
George A. Romero and Stephen King 1982 film Creepshow
and R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series.
‘By framing it as Creepshow or Are You Afraid of the Dark?
we’re reaching out to an audience we think would really
love and appreciate this style of game but maybe haven’t
been made aware of it because so much of roleplaying
culture is wrapped around fantasy stuff,’ Vass said. ‘They
might not want to engage with roleplaying because of what
their perception of it is. This is an invitation saying “this is
not as far off from what you like as you might think.” We
always want to encourage different kinds of people to
come to the table and see what it’s like.’
52 Wyrd Science
Vass and Jobst’s goal then was to make their take on the
horror anthology, Campfire, as accessible as possible to
new players. The game doesn’t require any advanced
preparation and a session is designed to last 90 minutes
to two hours.
‘This won’t take you all weekend,’ Vass explains. ‘You
don’t have to learn calculus. You just get to tell scary stories.’
Designed for two to five players, Campfire centers around
a set of eight 15-card story decks that each represent a
different sub-genre of horror. Jobst and Vass each wrote
one deck and the rest were penned by other tabletop
horror writers such as Dread creator Epidiah Ravachol
and Bakto’s Terrifying Cuisine writer Giuliano Roverto.
‘We made a dream team list, and luckily we got pretty
much everyone that we’d hoped for to say yes,’ Vass said.
‘We let each of them do their thing. There was very little
oversight in terms of what they were allowed to do or
what they wanted to write about so we ended up with
this really eclectic mix of different sub-genres of horror
and everyone getting to fully lean into their favorite
weird, scary stuff.’
www.wyrdscience.online 53
Each deck has its title card with both evocative art and
text explaining the basic plot, inspirations, content
warnings and text to read out loud to start things off. For
instance, in the case of Banana Chan’s Flutter, the texts
sets the scene as a glamping trip gone wrong, that it
touches on films like Midsommar and The Ritual and that
it involves both death cults and body horror.
‘A big thing for us was making it feel like stepping into a
movie theater where you don’t quite know what you
want to watch but you want to watch something,’ Jobst
said. ‘You have all these story cards with basically
their movie poster back on the table
face up. It’s meant for you to just
pick up and play.’
Players are encouraged to
use safety tools to
ensure everyone
remains comfortable
with the horror level.
The X-Card, for
example, can be
pointed to anytime a
player isn’t
comfortable with
how the game is
going and wants to
change scenes. They
can also draw lines
ahead of time, subjects
that they don’t want
broached at all, or veils, those
topics that can be implied but
not directly addressed.
Players then get to choose and customize their embers —
people, places and things that are suggested for each
story which can be anything from a contraband
switchblade to a college campus. Instead of controlling
individual characters, players will affect the fates of these
embers.
‘Not having a personal character lets you make bad
things happen to them with less emotional friction,’
Jobst explained.
Players then take turns acting as the narrator, flipping a
card from the deck to read aloud and then building up a
scene based on the prompts on the card, the embers, in
play and the story that has been developed so far.
Each player also receives a set number of coins which
they can use to impact the story. The narrator can
auction a coin, asking for suggestions and then rewarding
their favorite pick. Players can also pay coins to add
challenges or to give a request to the narrator. They can
place a coin on an ember to effectively take control of it
for when they have a good idea, or take a coin off an
ember to shift the focus somewhere else.
‘I think the coin system does a good job
of keeping people engaged, Vass
said. ‘If you don’t have coins in
your hand, you want them. If
you do have coins in your
hand, they’re a physical
reminder that you have
power and you have
the ability to change
circumstances.
Whether you have
that power or you
want that power, it’s
keeping you attuned
to the game. It’s
making you actively
listen and keeping
your brain turning
looking for that next
thing that’s going to shock
or scare people.’
Vass and Jobst also explain that the
coins help establish a shared responsibility
over the story. Part of the goal was to eliminate the
complications that can be found in other TTRPGs
without game masters where people can hesitate to
participate for fear of stepping on someone else’s toes or
one player might take too much control of the narrative.
‘Will and I really like playing GMless or shared GM games
together, it gives everyone the opportunity to push and
pull and you end up with that completely unexpected
result at the end that everyone contributed to,’ Vass said.
‘Our goal with Campfire specifically was to mechanise
that, to allow other players that sense of satisfaction at
the end when you have some awful horror reveal that no
one necessarily planted but everyone fostered together.
That feels like a group hug. We all did this. Not any one of
us could have done this on our own.’
In play three campfire cards are shuffled into the deck
and when they’re drawn players step out of the story and
monitor the state of the fire like the members of
Nickleodeon’s Midnight Society. When it’s blazing, they
add kindling to the embers in the form of complications.
When it reaches an inferno, they start making predictions
for how the story will end.
‘Those breaks in the structure of
play allow you as players to
zoom out and say “I really like
what’s going on with this
character” or “I wish we
would bring in this
element a little more,”’
Vass said.
‘It allows for this
meta-play that’s
normally absent in
storytelling games.
We are the writers, the
audience and the
actors. It’s offering
moments for you to
purely be in the audience
and say “yes, this rips,” or
“this is really scary.”’
The last card is the ashes, where
the players share an epilogue after
voting on whether the outcome is
better than expected or worse than they could
have imagined. If your choice of outcome doesn’t win,
Vass said that’s just part of the horror experience.
‘A lot of horror deals with the loss of control,’ he
explained. ‘The characters are not in control of their
circumstances and we as the audience are not in control
of what happens to the characters. Not everything is
going to go your way. I think that shared ownership can
mitigate the disappointment that the idea that you had
didn’t win because it’s all in service to the story. I find
when things I contribute didn’t win by the end of the
story I really don’t care because the end rips. Everyone
works together with the goal of making the coolest thing.’
While it’s easy to explain the rules, you’ll definitely want
to read the book, if just to meet the Camp Keeper, the
Campfire’s goofy slash creepy mascot designed by the
game’s artist Trevor Henderson, who also wrote one of
the game’s story decks. The character proved so popular
during development that Vass and Jobst ended up
getting a friend play him in a recorded Tales from the
Crypt-style introduction meant to be played to immerse
yourself before each game session.
‘It was a great team effort,’ Vass said.
‘It was a reflection of that
collaborative mentality. All of
us have ideas but the Camp
Keeper has a life of his own
that’s beyond all of our
input.’
Each of the game’s
writers submitted
multiple different ideas
for story deck and
Jobst said he still
thinks of some of the
ones they turned down,
such as a tale that took
place on a sunken ship,
and how they might be
able to use them in the
future.
‘Will and I have talked about doing
booster packs, theming a few stories
together and doing decks in that way,’ Vass
said. We’ve also talked about doing something
that’s more targeted for online play like the movie Host or
Unfriended, blurring that line between play and the venue
that you’re in. Part of the design is that it can be
expanded infinitely.’
Campfire is out now
published by World Champ Game Co.
and is available from worldchamp.io

54 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 55

 MIND
GAMES
Sanity, and its loss, has been a key feature of many
roleplaying games, especially those that deal with horror.
Stuart Martyn examines how depictions of mental health,
and the mechanics associated have changed over the years.
Art: Emiel Boven
M
any horror, and horror-adjacent, games
feature mechanics that track a character’s
mental state. Over the last forty years,
these mechanics have changed and been
refined, moving away from more dated conceptions of
insanity and simpler mechanics into more nuanced,
complex and thematic examinations of mental health
and what it means to lose it.
The loss of sanity is the subversion of the power fantasy
inherent in most roleplaying games, replacing a character’s
customary progression with a downward spiral. It is, in
part, a solution to the intrinsic problem of all horror RPGs;
the medium is defined by choice, freedom and power
whereas horror is about the loss of choice, freedom and
power. The heroes in horror stories are usually unsung,
their victories, if they win at all, often pyrrhic, fleeting or
inconsequential. For those lucky enough to find any
meaning or heroism in what they do, they must give of
themselves for others. They die in the dark so that others
may live in the light.
Any discussion of sanity mechanics must begin with Call
of Cthulhu. Based upon the fictional universe created by
56 Wyrd Science
H. P. Lovecraft, the ur-example of cosmic horror, the
game’s sanity mechanic reflects the deteriorating mental
state of Lovecraftian protagonists. Characters start with a
set sanity value and lose it, point by point, as they
encounter horrors beyond mortal imagining. The
enemies in Call of Cthulhu often cannot be meaningly
fought and even when they are defeated this seldom
matters; what is dead can never die and the stars will soon
be right.
In addition, the monsters you face aren’t dangerous
simply because they might kill you. Each and every one is
physical evidence that everything you know is wrong,
they are unreality given form. The universe is infinitely
more strange and cruel than you ever imagined and you
are nothing. In Call of Cthulhu and its derivatives,
improving their understanding of the occult often
reduces a character’s maximum possible sanity rating
and reading books with these truths can drive them mad.
While most editions do have some ways to restore lost
sanity, these are generally small; this is a game about
losing your mind and, in many ways, it treats sanity as a
secondary health pool. Losing too many points at once
www.wyrdscience.online 57
generally triggers a panic response. As sanity points
dwindle, characters may start to “go mad”. Players are
encouraged to portray real mental illnesses such as
schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and, should a character’s
sanity ever hit zero, the character is no longer playable.
They are irrevocably insane.
Unfortunately, this system is largely built on outdated
concepts of mental health and feeds into stereotypes
about neurodivergent people being dangerous, out of
control or otherwise disconnected from reality. In
addition, this game and many others impose conditions
real, debunked and/or misunderstood upon the characters.
Game mechanics that randomly give characters mental
illnesses, or that push players into depicting neurodivergence
they may have no experience of, can too easily lead to a
shallow or derogatory portrayal, or one that undermines
the intended tone through bathos.
It can be argued that the Lovecraftian protagonist is not
simply going insane. Instead they are gaining insight into
the true nature of reality, perceiving and experiencing real
things others cannot. This is the model used by Cthulhu
Dark and while the distinction may seem subtle, it is, if
anything, more true to the cosmic horror genre.
An optional rule in more recent editions of Call of
Cthulhu gives those with low sanity values moments of
insight into the horrible truth of the universe. This is a
direction ripe for further exploration in tabletop RPGs.
One of the best examples of this is the video game
Bloodborne; when characters reach sufficient insight,
enemies change appearances, use new attacks and some
creatures, previously invisible, can at last be perceived.
W
hile sanity mechanics began with cosmic
horror, it is not their only place within
RPGs; in many ways personal horror
games are an even better fit to explore
those themes. In most World of Darkness games
characters are no longer human and gradually devolve
into some flavour of monster. While usually not directly
analogous to sanity, there is often considerable overlap.
The titular bloodsuckers in Vampire: The Masquerade had
to watch their Humanity, but even human beings could
become (less literal) monsters in the World of Darkness
setting as they slid down some form of morality track,
picking up troubling behaviours and literal psychological
disorders on the way.
58 Wyrd Science
It is difficult to discuss sanity mechanics and Vampire:
The Masquerade without mentioning the Malkavian Clan.
The clan’s unique gimmick is a prophetic insight that is,
to an outside observer, indistinguishable from madness.
It manifests differently in each, often bearing a resemblance
to real neurodivergence, such as sociopathy or borderline
personality disorder.
Malkavians occupy the societal role of seers and jesters,
known for their pranks. Well-written Malkavians often
make the most compelling characters in the Masquerade
setting. They have also, inevitably, been the worst. Too
many players approach the clan’s unique curse and
propensity towards satire through wacky, random antics
or lurid excess, taking refuge in audacity. Too often the
Malkavian – and by extension mental health – is a joke or
grounded in stereotypes.
Well-writtenMalkaviansoftenmake
themost compellingcharactersin
theMasquerade setting.Theyhave
also,inevitably,beentheworst
With morality and sanity bundled together in Vampire
and most of its spinoffs, immoral acts lead to mental
illness, which is an unfortunate, unrealistic implication
and an uninspired way to model a character growing
increasingly divorced from their human self. Newer
editions have moved away from this by removing or
reworking these mechanics entirely. In the Chronicles of
Darkness, Morality was replaced by Integrity, which is lost
through traumatic events rather than immoral acts, and
instead of gaining permanent ‘derangements’ – a dated
term – characters acquire Conditions. None of these are
named for real diagnoses and can be removed by meeting
particular criteria or after a period of time. Vampire: The
Requiem’s most recent edition has Humanity loss impose
similar temporary conditions as well as mechanical
penalties entirely divorced from mental health.
Requiem also introduced touchstones, significant
relationships that help to shield characters from Humanity
loss. Often speaking to a touchstone is what resolves a
negative condition. This system, in addition to being a,
somewhat, realistic take on support systems, grounds a
character in the setting and gives players something
more than a number on a tracker to lose if their
character’s Humanity plummets. This system has been
used by other games since, including the Call of Cthulhu
offshoot Delta Green, a Lovecraftian conspiracy thriller.
While a pure sanity system is usually reserved for horror
games, plenty of games that straddle genres or dip a toe
into horror – for example Eclipse Phase, Red Markets,
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play and Dark Heresy – include
sanity tracks and similar systems. Generally these are less
severe than the examples above, with more ways to mitigate,
prevent and recover from sanity damage, or they model
something subtly different such as corruption from dark
supernatural forces more diabolical than the distant,
uncaring horror of Lovecraft. It’s often an inelegant system,
with sanity mechanics an extra burden for characters
rather than the thematic or mechanical heart of the game,
though there are certainly exceptions. The One Ring, set
in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, uses a corruption mechanic that
hews closely to the nature of evil in the source material.
There are, however, games where declining mental health
is the central point, not an accidental byproduct, genre
convention or a way to model helplessness. One of the
most powerful, and viscerally disturbing, is Horse Girl. In
this solo journalling RPG – “dedicated to all those who
have had their lives irreparably ruined by the choices they
made while under sound mind” – players portray a
lovesick woman whose controlling partner intends to
transform them surgically and mentally into a horse. The
game’s sanity track is fully externalised in the form of a
tower of wooden blocks, the player removing pieces as
they explore the game’s disturbing prompts. They
surrender to the transformation if the tower falls. It is a
profound experience, not to be undertaken lightly, and
plumbs depths of uncomfortable detail that perhaps only
a solo game could allow. It would be difficult to explore a
game quite so dark as this with someone else, navigating
your shared comfort level, and by playing alone you
mirror the reality of the titular character. There is nobody
there to help her, warn her or pull her back from the
brink.
In Changeling: the Lost, another game in the World of
Darkness series, players take on the role of human beings
abducted by fae, spirited away to another dimension
where they were enslaved and magically transformed.
One might have served as a living candle, another may
have been a literal ornament and now resembles a
marble statue. All playable characters have since escaped
back to the human world, their bodies and minds forever
changed by the experience.This game’s sanity track –
Clarity – measures both the literal mental health of the
changeling and their ability to differentiate between the
magical and mundane worlds they are stuck between.
While Changeling is not solely about mental health –
characters will face supernatural threats, navigate
politics, and face the push and pull of the mortal and fae
sides of their nature – it is a keystone of the game.
In Changeling’s first edition, characters gradually lost
Clarity in a system modeled on the Humanity mechanics
of Vampire. Though less severe and more reversible than
Vampire’s ruleset, it shared many of its shortcomings. In
the game’s second edition, a player’s Clarity is a health
track almost identical to their physical health. Characters
can slide into a comatose dream or die if their psyche is
injured enough. It is possible to heal Clarity damage
through a variety of means, particularly by spending time
with the people and places that matter to the character
(as with Requiem’s touchstones). This speaks to the more
hopeful themes at the heart of the game and is a more
respectful and realistic portrayal of what people with
poor mental health can do to improve it. Unlike the slow
but inevitable degeneration of a vampire or a
Lovecraftian protagonist, a changeling can live and
thrive. While they will always carry the physical and
mental scars of their durance, they can and will recover
and find definition elsewhere, for who they choose to be
and not what they were made to be. Changelings are not
framed as victims, but as survivors.
O
ne of the more complicated and nuanced
takes on sanity mechanics can be found in
Unknown Armies. Instead of one sanity track,
characters have five ‘shock gauges’; Self,
Isolation, Helplessness, Unnatural and Violence. When
characters encounter traumatic circumstances that fall
under one of these categories – for example being
imprisoned for Isolation, or talking to a corpse for
Unnatural – they roll a stress check and mark either a
failed or hardened notch depending on success or failure.
Hardened notches gradually make a character immune to
that particular shock. This is not without its downsides,
however, as characters are desensitised and if a character
has enough hardened notches they accrue mechanical
www.wyrdscience.online 59
penalties. In the first edition they were described as
sociopaths. Second edition changed the terminology, as
sociopathy isn’t something a person can acquire. Accruing
multiple failed notches can cause a character to manifest
mental illness, terminology which survived the transition
to second edition.
The second edition keyed the five shock gauges to ten
new core skills, with a character’s ‘open’ and crossed off
notches providing bonuses to a specific skill. Someone
with little-to-no experience of violence may find
connecting with people easier while someone
accustomed to it is better in combat situations. The
system encourages players to think about how their
experiences have shaped the character in a way the more
abstracted points systems of most other games do not.
The same mechanics that punish can also empower a
character. A hardened character can laugh off something
terrifying; they’ve seen worse. The fact that violence is
listed as a potential cause of trauma is another thing that
sets the game apart from most RPGs, which revel in
action with entire chapters full of special attacks and
abilities. Unknown Armies famously prefixes its combat
rules with a list of ways to deescalate and avoid a fight.
Unknown Armies may use the language of insanity but in
truth the system is modeling something different. This is
not an inescapable descent into inhumanity, supernatural
corruption or opening oneself up to a wider, more
terrifying cosmos. It’s trauma. Some people become
desensitised when exposed to enough, others flinch at
every slammed door. It’s no accident that, instead of
sociopathy, Unknown Armies’ second edition labels a
hardened person Burned Out.
It’s no accident that, instead
of sociopathy, Unknown Armies’
second edition labels a
hardened person Burned Out
In this, Unknown Armies was a forerunner for the shift
from sanity mechanics to stress mechanics, which are
becoming more and more prevalent both within and
outside the horror genre. They’re far more accessible –
you may not have had your mind broken by an eldritch
60 Wyrd Science
creature from beyond the stars but you’ve probably felt
worn out and overextended – and less likely to
unintentionally replicate harmful stereotypes and
prejudices.
In Blades in the Dark, the stress track is arguably the
central mechanic. Player characters – criminals and
scoundrels – take stress to push themselves, to trigger
flashbacks and perform incredible feats while on the job
as well as indulge in vices to reduce their stress level
between missions. It’s an engaging gameplay loop and if
players fill their stress bar, which is usually in their hands,
they receive a Trauma. The downward spiral is far from
inevitable, and much more easily mitigated by players,
but it’s there for those willing to push their luck. The
given traumas are vague – Ruthless, Cold, Haunted –
rather than modeled on specific diagnoses. The rulebook
also notes that the degree of their impact is down to the
player. By roleplaying them a player can earn extra
experience but there is no punishment for ignoring them.
Once they have four Traumas a character is retired, with
the circumstances up to the player. It’s far more likely the
character will literally retire or go to prison than an
asylum.
While Lovecraftian games seem unlikely to lose their
laundry lists of disorders and spiraling insanity anytime
soon, they are nonetheless innovating and iterating. Trail
of Cthulhu has different modes of play for more gritty or
pulpier rules, which alter the severity of its sanity
mechanics, baked into the rules. The most recent
editions of Unknown Armies and Call of Cthulhu removed
many specified mental illnesses and neurodivergence in
favour of nonspecific compulsions, phobias and
delusions. Many games introduced bonds that
mechanically encourage players to think about their
character’s support network and provide a touch of
realism and stakes to their struggle with demons both
literal and figurative.
40 years on from Call of Cthulhu introducing SAN points
to our character sheets more and more systems are
diversifying in terms of what they model and how –
whether it’s sanity, stress or supernatural corruption -
and in recent years there has been an intentional move
away from ableist tropes and simple mechanics in favour
of more nuanced systems that better complement core
themes and treat mental health both a little more
realistically and respectfully.
www.wyrdscience.online 61
 >>DARK
FUTURE
Increasingly sci-fi RPGs are leaving behind space heroics in
favour of something much more unsettling. We speak to the
writers behind three of our favourite, recent games, Mothership,
The Wretched and ALIEN, to find out what this dark age of
space exploration means to them.
Text: John Power Jr. (with thanks to Linda Codega)
Art (opposite): Rob Turpin
he dark, gloomy forests of the wilderness are
T filled with dreadful terrors, dilapidated mansions
haunted by revenants and subterranean dungeons
are dark, claustrophobic places but space... Space is truly
terrifying. Space doesn’t want to kill you, it just does,
without thought and without malice. It will boil your
blood, make your eyeballs explode and you don’t even
want to know what it’ll do to your lungs.
And that’s just our space, the regular old, heavily irradiated
vacuum that lurks at the edge of the, oh so thin, strip of
air that barely blankets our planet. Start to throw in acid
blooded aliens, reality warping monoliths and the like into
the mix and yes, if you want to experience true horror then
space is the place.
Whilst fantasy has traditionally ruled the roost as far as RPGs
are concerned, science fiction’s history in gaming is nearly
as storied. Considering the role basements have played in
the history of our games it’s no surprise that so many of
the first RPGs were centred on chthonic spaces but still it
wasn’t long before game designers looked to the stars for
inspiration. As early as 1976, James M. Ward’s Metamorphosis
Alpha, saw us swapping cave systems for a vast mutant
62 Wyrd Science
filled generation starship whilst 1977’s Traveller introduced
us to the joys of owning our own Beowulf Class Free
Trader, opening up all kinds of interstellar adventures.
Still, for much of sci-fi roleplaying’s history the emphasis
has been more on space heroics than emulating sweaty
claustrophobic fear. In recent years though, as perhaps
our own hopes for a golden future amongst the stars
have receded, space bound RPGs have taken on a much
darker, certainly less optimistic feel.
What that says about 21st century society i’ll leave up to
you to decide but still the new wave of sci-fi RPGs have
openly embraced the chill of horror. To investigate
further we spoke to the people behind three of our
favourite sci-fi games of recent years, Mothership, The
Wretched and ALIEN to see what horror means to them
and whether RPGs can indeed be a vehicle for fear.
In many ways Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic ALIEN remains
the template for sci-fi horror, so it’s no surprise that Free
League’s official RPG based upon the franchise, and
released in 2019, has proven so popular with those who
are looking to move away from fighting dragons, and
www.wyrdscience.online 63

indeed exploring dungeons, and experience the myriad
horrors that a life amongst the stars can provide.
In Scott’s film the crew of the doomed freighter Nostromo
are just the disposable tools of an amoral corporation,
the Nostromo itself a claustrophobic warren that was
designed to more resemble the cramped conditions of a
WW2 submarine than the well lit and airy likes of the
Starship Enterprise. In the RPG players take on similar
roles, often playing blue collar scrubs, operating far from
home under and with their worst nightmares just a
distress beacon away.
But what is horror? And if it’s so terrible why do we enjoy
immersing ourselves in it? And how should we get the
most out of our games?
For Andrew E.C. Gaska, setting writer for the ALIEN RPG,
horror is ‘an assault on the body and mind. It’s a manipulation
of memory and a mutilation of form. A horror story is
64 Wyrd Science
ALIEN art by Martin Grip, © Free League Publishing
more than what’s presented to us on film or page or told
to us around the campfire—its what we infer is there but
isn't. It’s the filled-in blanks we create in our mind.’
With their tight corridors, narrow access tubes and
distinct lack of lighting, the cramped conditions that
ALIEN players generally find themselves in then provide
the perfect setting for horror stories.
‘There's a shadow and strange noises coming from around
the corner,’ Gaska explains. ‘What it might be could turn
out to be far scarier than what it actually is, and we won't
know until we get there and put ourselves at risk. But
finding out what's there is almost a relief, even if it is
what we feared from the beginning. Even if it is our end.’
That sense of catharsis that horror can provide is one
explanation for why we like to scare ourselves, though for
Chris Bissette, author of The Wretched, horror stories can
also be a dark mirror of self discovery.
‘To me, a horror story is something that tells us something
about ourselves - either personally, as a society, or as a
species,’ they explain. ‘By peeling back the skin and showing
us the truth of what's inside us, making us face the things
about ourselves that we either don't understand or don't
want to acknowledge, effective horror leaves us with a
new perspective on things, and makes us question ourselves
on a deep and personal level.’
n recent years few games have done as much to
I raise the profile of sci-fi RPGs, and put horror at
the heart of them, as Mothership which introduced
itself as a game where players must try to “survive in the
most inhospitable environment in the universe: outer space!”
For Sean McCoy, Mothership’s lead writer and creator,
horror picks up ‘where agency ends. With Mothership we
say the players can either survive the ordeal, solve the
mystery, or save the day. But they can’t do all three.
Survive, solve, or save, pick two, or one in most cases. So
when your back is up against the wall, when you’re out of
options, where do you find yourself? Are you out there
trying to escort victims to safety? Or are you buried in
tomes, trying to untangle the riddle that’s been plaguing
you? Or are you just trying your best to stay alive? That’s
the direction we take: in a situation with only bad
choices, what do you choose?’
Bad choices make good drama, especially so in Mothership
which takes many of its cues from old school roleplaying.
These are games where character creation is quick, games
are deadlier and death often an opportunity for good
roleplaying rather a cause for despair. ‘Even when you are
doomed your actions matter,’ explains McCoy. ‘I think
that’s the kernel of hope that lies at the bottom of great
horror stories. It’s not just doom for doom’s sake. It’s
what do you do when all hope is lost?’
Mechanically representing the effect that all this has on a
character has always been one of the harder aspects of
horror RPGs and trying to gamify mental health is something
that many designers are increasingly wary of. How then
can you represent the effect on a person of facing their
greatest fears, of being pushed beyond endurance, especially
when reducing player agency, what most agree is a key
component of horror, is more and more frowned upon.
For Mothership this means replacing sanity with stress as
McCoy explains. ‘In Mothership failure means you’ll gain
stress, or take damage. Whittling away at your two
precious resources, your mental stability and your health.
Injuries and panic can further the spiral into terror,
pushing your characters to the break. And that’s where
the game gets good: we’re asking how you would operate
on the worst day of your life? And it’s up to you to answer.”
“we’re asking how you would operate
on the worst day of your life?
And it’s up to you to answer”
Like Mothership, ALIEN too replaces sanity loss with a
stress mechanic to represent the experience of pushing
yourself through what is inevitably a highly abnormal
situation. In ALIEN players accrue stress dice as they’re
under attack or facing unexpected situations, those
stress dice actually make your character perform better,
but they also come with the increased chance of
suffering Panic, at which point things will start to go
wrong, very quickly.
‘The biggest threat in the ALIEN RPG is the stress mechanic,’
explains Gaska, which considering the presence of
xenomorphs says something. ‘The more bad things
happen, the more stress you accumulate, the more stress
you accumulate, the more bad things happen, the more
likely it is you will panic and do something really stupid
that could get you and your teammates killed. You know,
just like real life.’
In Bissette’s solo RPG The Wretched killing your team
mates is at least one thing you don’t need to worry
about, seeing as they’re already dead. Here you play the
last surviving crew member of the titular spaceship that
has already ravaged by some kind of alien terror. Now
you’re alone and, whatever it is, it’s hunting you through
the ship all whilst you try to restore power and somehow
escape. It’s a captivating, at times bleak, game which uses
a Jenga tower to simulate both the increasing tension
and the diminishing chance of survival as the game
develops.
As games go playing The Wretched can be an incredibly
nerve jangling experience, as you record your final audio
log and try to prise free one last block from the teetering
tower it can be a visceral experience. Still, Bissette is less
www.wyrdscience.online 65

sure if any game mechanics can really capture the
essence of horror and its effects. ‘Even in a game like The
Wretched, which uses the Jenga tower to create rising
tension, the horror comes from the player and their own
personal responses to the prompts. Jenga in itself isn't
inherently scary.’
Indeed, whether any of this can, or even should, translate
to fear amongst the players rather than characters is even
harder to pin down.
‘Fear in games - especially tabletop games - is a tricky
thing to convey, because there's a wall between what
makes my character afraid and what makes me afraid,’
says Bissette. ‘Lots of horror is about loss of agency and
that's hard, though not impossible, to do safely in games.
I think the most effective horror games are the ones with
few mechanisms and rules, where you're more easily able
to blur that line between character and player.’
‘In The Wretched, you're destined to fail,’ they go on. ‘The
game is all about trying to survive against overwhelming
odds, and the horror that comes from the slow realisation
that you weren't ever going to succeed.’
66 Wyrd Science
“The game is all about trying to
survive against overwhelming odds,
and the horror that comes from the
slow realisation that you weren't
ever going to succeed”
For Gaska, ‘Fear is where rules come into play,’ and like
Bissette sees that, ‘many players find themselves
divorced from their characters. They are unable to get
into their shoes and experience the fear they would feel
when confronted with a xenomorph. Rules for fear, like
the Stress mechanic, can help players find that focus that
they need to keep their character in sync with the
universe they inhabit.’
‘As for maintaining that, well, that's when tone comes in,”
says Gaska. ‘That's where its up to the GM to set the mood,
using light, sounds, music, whispered oration… It’s also
about subverting expectations—if everyone is expecting
the alien to be around the corner, give them the cat
instead. Then when their defences are down, have the
alien spring on them from the ceiling.’
Safety tools are an increasingly important part of RPGs,
and this is especially the case with horror games, but as
much as they offer us an opportunity to excise subjects
from a game that may make us uncomfortable, Bissette
also views pre-game dialogue as providing an opportunity
for us to explore areas that may make us uncomfortable
in a safe space.
‘It's helpful to ask the players to do a lot of heavy lifting in
terms of the fiction of the game, letting them fill in the
blanks about what this specific horror embodies itself as,’
they explain. ‘It's hard to do effective horror in a dungeon
crawling adventure game where monsters are defined by
numbers and abilities and can be killed by the swords
that all characters wield. It's much easier in a game like
Trophy Dark or Quietus, where you ask the players to tell
you what their own personal horror looks like and then
use that to drive the fiction in a really organic, natural way.’
‘The best horror games look a lot like a group of people
telling stories around the campfire, tapping in to a shared
storytelling tradition that dates back millennia,’ Bissette
adds. ‘Often you find the real horror happens after the
game, or story, or movie, or whatever, is over, when the
player is on their own with their thoughts, digesting what
just happened.’
“Often the real horror happens after
the game is over, when the player is
on their own with their thoughts
digesting what just happened”
Still, much as Mothership bills itself as a ‘Sci-Fi Horror
RPG’ McCoy doesn’t believe that actual fear is necessarily
something we need to focus on. ‘The amount of immersion
and dedication and safety tools required to really take
people to a place where they’re afraid, it’s just not something
most groups can do week in and week out,’ he says.
‘Horror can also be a setting, a backdrop. The players
themselves don’t need to be actively afraid in order to
play a horror game, that’s too high a standard. In terms of
heart rate rising, sweat palms, that kind of reaction, I
think it’s nice to have but it’s not something we aim at,’
he adds. ‘We aim for building that tension, but I think part
of the amazing thing about roleplaying games is the
distance you can have.’
‘If you want to enjoy a night cracking jokes with your
friends as your group gets slaughtered by an invisible
creature like in The Haunting of Ypsilon-14, that’s great!
That’s the game working. If you want to put on some
music, only talk in character, banish screens from the
table, and really steer into the curve, I think that can
work too. But Mothership is all about finding out what
works for your table specifically.’
nd, of course, for all the darkness, horror also
A comes with the chance of salvation, McCoy’s
‘kernel of hope’ and the greater the horror the
greater the feeling of victory when, or of course if, you do
make it through the night, reach the escape pod, take off
and nuke the site from orbit.
‘There is always a chance of survival, no matter how
small,’ concludes Gaska. ‘The mouse isn't going to run
through the maze if there's no cheese at the far end.
Watching play-throughs on the internet, it seems that
one or two PCs always make it out of each cinematic
adventure I’ve written. Sometimes they are the most
clever, sometimes it's just dumb luck on their side. Sometimes
they even make it just because they betrayed everyone
else, but there's usually someone who makes it.’
‘Playing the game, you know that most of you aren't
getting out of there alive, and that's ok. That’s the cheese
that drives you through the maze.’
The new ALIEN scenario Heart of Darkness
is out this autumn via Free League Publishing
pre-order from frialigan.se
The Mothership 1st Edition Boxed Set
is out this November
pre-order from mothershiprpg.com
The Wretched is out now
published by Loot The Room
loottheroom.uk
www.wyrdscience.online 67
 THE IMPORTANCE
OF POWERFUL
DEATHS
Luke Frostick heads to the horror filled city of Spire and
talks to its creators, the multiple award winning game
design studio Rowan, Rook & Decard.
Art (throughout) from Heart: The City Beneath: Felix Miall
S
pire is a game about ill-fated dark elf
revolutionaries fighting a hopeless war against
an authoritarian Aelfir (high-elf) government in
a towering city, the Spire of the title, that is
filled with cults, monsters and occult magic. Having
taken us beneath the city with the multiple ENNIE award
winning Heart, we now have Sin, a new sourcebook that
introduces both new lore and mechanics for the city’s
forces of religion, crime, order and more.
The company behind Spire, Heart and Sin is Rowan, Rook
& Decard, a small but dedicated team of artists and game
designers. At the core of the company are three friends,
who met at university in Norwich and have since managed
that rare thing, to turn their passion for games into a
living. Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor, the creative leads,
and Mary (Maz) Hamilton who is responsible for the
business side of things.
“There is an underpinning of love and trust and that we
have each other's best interests at heart,” Howitt tells me
while explaining how the company works, a sentiment
that all three of them express to me in different ways
throughout our conversations.
68 Wyrd Science
It is an important dynamic and one they all recognise as
potentially risky. Going into business on such a creative
project can, and has, fractured friendships in the past.
However, by embracing creative freedom, keeping their
first principles in mind, building a loyal community and,
importantly, producing good games, they have not just
survived but thrived.
Spire is a world in which a subjugated Drow population
try to undermine the corrupt, beautiful and strange
Aelfir’s rule. It is a world of occult societies, illegal
religions and wild beautiful magic that Howitt tells me
was inspired by Warhammer and “the grand irony” of the
40K universe.
Whilst powered by its own innovative system, one that
encourages narrative through gameplay and short, exciting
misadventures, Spire began life as a spy-craft focused
hack of Dark Heresy (the late ‘00s Warhammer 40,000
RPG). From there the game went through numerous
iterations eventually coming to emphasise acts of rebellion
rather than spying and with Games Workshop’s IP out of
bounds and both Howitt and Taylor frustrated with Dark
Heresy’s system, Spire had become very much its own thing.
www.wyrdscience.online 69
“It is an evolution of what I wanted Dark Heresy to be, a
dark, fascinating, kind of sexy game,” explains Howitt.
Not so much of a Warhammer-head, outside of the world
of games Taylor’s principle inspiration is from horror
films, especially rural folk horror along the lines
of Midsommar, though he does also admit to being
partial to the Saw franchise. “It is garbage torture-porn,
but you are not going to get a better bottle episode for a
horror game,” he explains.
And it is horror that runs through both Heart and Spire.
This is a universe full of monsters and body horror and a
game where the players are constantly aware that their
quest for justice is probably going to have hideous
consequences for themselves, the people around them,
or as likely both.
An important background to their work is an extensive
zombie LARP that the three of them ran whilst at
university. Howitt mentions it to me, but it is Hamilton
who helps me see how it fits into Spire. Describing the
biggest game they organised, which saw them rent out
an abandoned shopping centre for it, Hamilton tells me
that the innovation was to encourage good deaths,
“Everybody dies in these games, but did you die well? Did
you die in a way that made you feel powerful?” It’s an idea
that still informs Spire’s philosophy where death is highly
likely, but how you go is what matters.
“Everybody dies in these games,
but did you die well? Did you die in a
way that made you feel powerful?”
In Spire failure is no bad thing. In fact, it is at the core of
Spire: The Resistance, the system that powers the game.
As the players roll failures or successes with consequence,
they accrue stress, not damage. Eventually, that stress
will metastasise into a tangible outcome.
If you take fallout as the result falling of a building, you
might break a leg. If you receive a critical fallout while
pissing off the Duke, she might drop an insta-kill cannon
shell on you and everybody near you but the game then
asks, what will you do with those last few seconds before
the shell impacts?
70 Wyrd Science
Taylor explains that through failure manifesting not as a
number, but as a narrative event, you create more interesting
stories. Questions like, “What do I do now that I've broken
a leg because I've fallen off a building?” drive the story forward.
He expands this suggesting that you can not only fail
forward but also sideways. “Failing forward means you’ve
broken your leg, but you’ve saved the day. But what if
you’ve broken your leg and your problem isn’t the fight at
the top of the ravine but the crocodile at the bottom and
you are on your own and you’re neck-deep in mud?” The
resistance system was developed to give players and DMs
a way of creating stories like this with simple dice rolls.
The engine that drives the creation of Spire is the
relationship between Taylor and Howitt. Though their
roles blur, generally speaking Taylor handles rules and
Howitt is focused on world-building. You get a glimpse
into that partnership when you listen to their podcast Hearty
Dice Friends, where they bat around design ideas whilst
attempting to make something like a finished game.
I ask them how representative the podcast is of their real
process and they both agree that it looks similar, though
Taylor admits that there is a more performative side to
the podcast and that their actual process is more chaotic.
The way that Taylor thinks about game design is to
consider the way the rules feel, the concept behind them
and then try to express that in dice. He doesn’t worry
about probability curves and balance. “It has always been
about how it felt to roll those dice physically; to take them
and roll them and to see what the outcomes are.”
Taylor also thinks a lot about the balance and tension
between rules and free storytelling and believes that “less
rules allow a story, but more rules generate it.” Whilst he
tends to lean towards rules-lite systems where he is
more comfortable, he sees his job as to try and find a
balance between these two contradictory points.
But Spire is not just a set of mechanics, it is also a setting.
When it comes to their world-building the point most
emphasised was that there is no single truth, possibly
another hangover from Warhammer 40,000 which is
famously lore-deep but has no official canon.
The books explicitly do not answer key questions about
the Spire and leave filling in the details up to the players.
“Once every few months somebody asks me how
tall Spire is and [I say], ‘as tall as you need it to be, on you
go.’ ” says Howitt, though Taylor cheekily lets slip that
there is a canon that they keep at the back of their heads,
but, “We're not going to tell you it.”
With the new books adding to the setting I ask them if by
adding their creative authority to areas previously left
empty, they are unintentionally building canon. “I guess
by default we are,” admits Taylor, “though we can not and
do not want to control people’s interpretations. If a canon
starts forming, whatever.”
Howitt has a similar view: “I think it is possible people are
shutting things down, but there is enough room for people
to say ‘oh my Spire is different.’ ”
The other key aspect of their world-building is that it all
takes place in the present tense. “We focus on what is
happening now because that is what happens in games. I
don’t care what the gods did 1000 years ago,” says Howitt.
The game is built for short, punchy campaigns. Moreover,
it is about finding gaps in the aelfir system that can be
exploited by our brave revolutionaries. By setting the
game’s lore firmly in the present, it emphasises these two
key elements.
A
n important guide to their writing as well as
their business strategy is their company manifesto,
Hamilton points out. Just as “no dead levels”
informs their design philosophy, “everyone gets paid” does
their business strategy and Taylor emphasises to me that
Rowan, Rook & Decard is an accredited living wage employer.
Hamilton tells me that they all touch base regularly to
make sure their mission statement and initial values still
apply and refer back to them when making day-to-day
decisions. Hamilton describes those values as “corporate
tools,” but “most corporations use them as a sticky plaster
over gaping wounds. If you actually use them in the way
that they are intended to be as guides to behaviour and
action, they become something quite powerful.”
Hamilton has an impressive background in the media
and helps run the company in addition to their regular
work. “The way I have tried to describe my role before is, I
think about all the stuff that would get in the way of Grant
and Chris doing what they are best at.”
I ask about the state of the company and Hamilton tells
me it is going well though they also explain that growth
is not necessarily the aim of the company. “We’ve always
talked about the idea of sustainability, not growth. Grant
and Chris want to make books about elves for the rest of
their lives. What do we need to build so they can do that?”
“Grant and Chris want to make
books about elves for the rest of
their lives. What do we need to
build so they can do that?”
Refreshingly, all three mention mental health during our
conversations and Hamilton clarifies how the company
was set up to accommodate the group’s mental health,
neuro-divergency and disability needs. “We work in a
way that is congruent with those things rather than trying
to fight against them.”
But Rowan, Rook & Decard is not just the work of three
friends anymore and the latest book Sin has an expansive
range of contributors. The new writers worked most
closely with Howitt who explains “We treat them the way
we want to be treated. The person doing the brief says,
‘right here are two pages of notes and here are some things
you have to hit and here are some vibes. Go and come back
when you’ve done it. Any questions, let me know.’ ”
Howitt explains that they were looking for writers who,
“Get the joke, get the cruelty. They get the hope and
excitement in it.”
One person who clearly gets it is Basheer Ghouse. His
section in Sin expands on the forces of order: The jackbooted
city guard, fanatical paladins, courts, prisons, army and
everything keeping the Spire in line. Ghouse says that in
particular he drew inspiration from the British Raj and
found that he could use real-world politics like American
policing to find the satire of Spire.
He expanded Order by looking at the areas of Spire that
he thought would be interesting. Moreover, he thought
about what sort of systems of government would be
needed to have created the Spire of the core book. Then it
was the process of expanding the ideas and finding the
www.wyrdscience.online 71

ways players could interact with them. “Once I had those,
I filled it in with NPCs specific plot hooks and stuff like that.”
Ghouse also breaks new ground, introducing the High Elf
Gnoll War, with the lack of existing lore giving him more
room to improvise. I ask him if he felt nervous writing in
somebody else’s world and he admits that he felt some
trepidation writing for an existing fanbase but that “as
long as you pick one of the more fucked up things and
expand it, you are in pretty good standing in Spire.”
The crime section of the book was written by JP Bradley,
who explains that in Spire crime doesn’t necessarily
make a person bad; it is the exploitation that crime
enables that makes a person villainous. Once this core
idea was in place his direction for crime, who his villains
were and what to focus on became clear.
For example he explains that early on he decided to not
include material about sex workers. “I felt like using sex
workers as the victims of crime has a corrosive effect on
their safety… you could definitely write something about it,
something nuanced, but I was not the person to do that.
So I drew a red line under it.”
Instead, for him, crime was, “about cops and robbers” and
he drew inspiration from, “the rich tradition of British
gangland crime and US mafia.” His inspiration for the North
Docks of Spire is drawn from his hometown of Manchester
and “the pubs I used to drink in, the old men at the bar, the
shady guys who would hang out in the alleyways.”
His vision of Spire is something,
“monolithic, a bit J.G. Ballard…
like a massive brutal cathedral”
Adrian Stone is Spire’s artist and his vision of the city is of
something “monolithic, a bit J.G. Ballard… like a massive
brutal cathedral.”
The genre that Stone’s art best fits into is sci-fi, which, he
tells me, sometimes doesn’t match the high horror-
fantasy of Spire and he appreciates that whilst his style
might not always match what Howitt and Taylor are
looking for they have given him the freedom to create the
art that he wants.
72 Wyrd Science
Drawing inspiration from artists like Mike Mignola and
Amedeo Modigliani, Stone’s work consists of bold
angular figures and architecture that loom darkly against
backgrounds of primary colours. He wanted it to look like
it was a collage and that, although he works digitally, it
could all have been made with a pair of scissors and card.
“I like that kind of high contrast, highly graphic style,” he says.
His art has developed from Spire to Sin. “The style hasn’t
changed as much as the composition,” he explains, with
more dynamic character perspectives that bring a bit more
three-dimensionality to his work. He is excited about the
future of Spire and thinks, “it can get way darker.”
A sometimes under-appreciated part of a book is the
layout which, for Spire, Mina Mcjanda, is responsible. A
sophisticated game designer in her own right Mcjanda
has worked on a huge range of publications and with her
own UFO press recently added to Rowan, Rook & Decard
as an imprint, she has become the company’s latest full
time member,
Mcjanda got her start designing layouts as a cost-saving
measure for her own games but enjoyed the process of
designing books and started taking commissions. She
looks at game-books as reference manuals and sees her
job is to guide readers through the book and to create
markers in their minds.
Mcjanda wanted the main book to be unified and easy to
navigate. However, she found there were extra pages that
gave her a bit of space to be more creative without
cluttering the text. A list of pubs in the North Docks, or
the page of potentially useful similes that are amongst
some of the most characterful in the book.
The other important role of layout and design is to
establish a game’s tone, in the case of Spire one of
“decaying elegance”. To that end she incorporated a lot of
1920s design elements like the headers, font and filigree,
that she then puts distressed textures and stains on top
of, creating an effect where “the sidebars are very
geometric and fancy at the top but they become ragged
and torn at the bottom.”
At the same time Mcjanda wanted the book to show the
point of view of the player characters. Not the people
who are writing the book but those “who are drawing
graffiti in the margins.”
I
’ve GMed Heart and, players willing, I’d like to run
a Spire campaign soon. As I’m far from an
experienced GM I wanted some tips on running the
game from those behind it.
Bradley tells me that Spire swings and I’m going to see
things changing under me, keeps it simple and “expect
the unexpected” he advises. Taylor recommends that I
should listen to my players, that they will tell me what I
want out of the game. “If you’ve got a player who wants to
fight everything, give them something to fight.”
Howitt echos this advice telling me to look at my players'
domains and build the game around those. He adds that
is important to give the players opportunities to change
the Spire and Mcjanda has similar advice. She tells me
that it is worth building a couple of little shadowy
organisations covering a few different domains, then
setting them up “like a Rube Goldberg machine.”
She also advises me to take the problems my players may
face and mix them up, “from the mundane to high-
concept spy and cult business, […] the weird, the grand
politics and street-level politics into a nice tasty soup.”
Finally, Ghouse encourages me to think about how
the Spire itself is a fucked-up, friction-heavy system that
“doesn’t work and kind of hates itself. Lean into how
messed up this thing is, even if overthrowing it isn’t viable
for your PCs, you can do a lot of damage based on the
dysfunction of the system.”
I hope to see my players do a lot of damage to the Spire,
encounter all the strange things it has to offer and die
powerfully in the process.
Sin - A Spire Sourcebook is out now
from Rowan, Rook & Decard
rowanrookanddecard.com
 IN THE DARKEST
RECESSES OF
OURSELVES
If the magic in your games has become just a bit too safe then
The Book of Gaub is here to put the sinister back into your
sorcery. Walton Wood speaks to Paolo Greco to find out more
about this blasphemous tome...
Art: Charlie Ferguson-Avery (p.77), Enoch Duncan (p.78)
T
he Book of Gaub is a singular object and experience.
It’s both deeply personal to its creators but still
accessible to any gamer or reader who might be
inclined towards the esoteric and macabre. It carefully
delineates its themes and tone, but its content is versatile
enough to be used in any game that accommodates arcane
horror and trauma. It concerns itself with the dark and
terrible, but it gathers those aspects in an object that is
physically beautiful without deviating from the prose’s tone.
‘It’s my most ambitious project so far,’ said Paolo Greco,
the publisher and one of the creative minds behind The
Book of Gaub. ‘Having recovered from a bout of a few
years of crippling mental health problems I finally felt I
could tackle my crowdfunding campaign for a fancy
hardcover of the quality I always wanted to publish.’
The Book of Gaub is the thirteenth spellbook published
by Greco’s publishing company Lost Pages and its first
horror book. This grimoire resulted from Greco’s
spontaneous collaboration with writers Charlie
Ferguson-Avery, Evoro, The Furtive Goblin, Isaak Hill,
John “Unlawful Games” Gregory, Rowan A., and Jack
Shear; Ferguson-Avery and Rowan A. also contributed art
74 Wyrd Science
alongside Enoch Duncan, Jonathan Newell, and Trevor
Henderson.
‘Initially I did not know any of the writers, and treated them
as an egregore of sorts,’ Greco said, referring to the occult
idea of a psychic manifestation or thought-form. ‘I saw
the members of the writing collective as distinct aspects
of a single entity.’
Their collaboration produced 49 system-agnostic and
level-less spells, each entry replete with a description of
the ritual, its effects, and some evocative microfiction; 49
bits of paraphernalia tainted by Gaubian magic; 100
catastrophes resulting from the (mis)use of profane sorcery;
20 monsters; 19 adventure hooks; supplementary materials
that cover rules for level-less sorcery and a table of 10
places you can find Gaub spells; and scads of monochrome
illustrations and illuminations of objects, entities, and
things far stranger. The tone is consistently grim and
horrific, but the prose is punctuated with wry gallows
humor, which keeps the mood from becoming overbearing.
The book orients all its material around the seven-
fingered hand of Gaub, an image that adorns the book’s
www.wyrdscience.online 75
cover and recurs throughout the text and images. The
hand suggests Gaub as a person (or at least a person-like
entity), but the hand could also be an anthropomorphisation
or a metaphor of supernatural forces, with each finger
representing a distinct strain of dark magic. Greco has a
background in real-world magic, which they describe (in
the 1 December 2021 episode of The Lost Bay Podcast) as
a technology for exercising human agency on the natural
world; the hand, in this instance, emblematizes the use
of suprahuman powers toward human ends.
The hand of Gaub provides plenty of fuel for fevered
imaginations and nightmares alike, and this arises from
the fact that, as is the case with much high-quality weird
horror, it is ultimately only faintly illuminated, variously
depicted, and amorphously defined — exactly as the
creative team intended.
‘We do not want to explain what Gaub is,’ Greco said. ‘It’s
not only a metaphor, as the Hand can actually appear in
the game. It’s not only a mood, even if the horror in the
book is all relatable, visceral, written after peering in the
darkest recesses of ourselves, where the slimy blackness
of trauma lies and festers. And it is definitely a quality:
during development we framed discussions about
whether something “is Gaub enough” or “could be more
Gaub”. Needless to say, we made things as Gaub as possible.’
Whatever Gaub may be (or may be interpreted as), it
began in informal collaboration and existed ephemerally
in blogs, social media posts, and other digital spaces.
Most of the book’s writing was done before Greco became
involved, but thanks to their extensive experience writing
spells for RPGs, they revised the prose with an eye toward
maintaining consistency and reducing uncertainty about
the spells’ effects since only scant formal mechanics are
provided.
Making the spells system-agnostic provided an opportunity
for Greco to refine each one to fit their vision for this
grimoire. Whereas many games lean heavily on arithmetic
and mechanics in their spell descriptions, Greco wanted
Gaub’s spells to feel, to both readers and players, like
real-world magic. In practice, spells produce effects, but
for the caster it’s primarily experienced narratively
through ritual.
‘Like a real world grimoire, the book instructs the reader
in what to do,’ Greco said. ‘For example, the spells instruct
76 Wyrd Science
the reader to “draw your sigil on the floor” rather than
“the caster must draw their sigil on the floor”. This not
only makes the book closer to a real grimoire, but also
changes the stance of the book to make it way more
personal: you can cast those horrible spells, if you want.
Diegesis is a very strong tool in a black magic grimoire, as
it speaks straight to the reader, and their morality. From
the first page the book is clear that the central question
is: how badly do you want power?’
“From the first page the book is
clear that the central question is:
how badly do you want power?”
That power is organized into seven categories; all of the
spells and the paraphernalia, along with most of the
monsters and many of the catastrophes, align with one
of the seven fingers. The Finger Trailing Letters involves
language and communication. The Finger that Points the
Way affects travel, navigation, and place. The Finger on
the Pulse influences the body, health, vitality, disease,
and physical harm. The Finger Under the Floorboards
touches on the creation, inhabitation, and distortion of
space. The Finger Gnawed to the Bone deals in egress and
ingress from/into the body and its inhabitation and
distortion. The Finger that is Not There manipulates and
erases memory and belief. The Finger Catching a Tear is
primarily about evoking and affecting emotion.
Spells all invariably leverage their respective elements for
decidedly malicious ends. They bear titles like ‘Occulcated
Speech’, ‘Abattoire’, ‘Fractal Flensing’, ‘Cartulary Nightmare’,
and ‘Panchymagogue’ to name just a few.
‘The writers browsed weird dictionaries full of desuete
and half-forgotten words, and picked the best,’ Greco
said. ‘This is a time-honoured practice in spell naming for
RPGs, and I can say it helps! It adds a hint of forgotten
knowledge that fuels the book's strong occult mood.’
But some overlap among the themes certainly exists,
especially with paraphernalia, catastrophes, and
monsters, which are all aspects of Gaub, and all are
designed and presented for use in the reader’s system of
choice. Like the spells, monsters are mechanically
generic; their small stat blocks follow general OSR
conventions, making them easy to implement and adapt
in most games. These formal mechanics are extremely
lean, though; the entries are dominated by the monsters’
descriptions, motivations, behaviors, and omens of their
presence. The beasts present adversity but also advantage;
each profile also includes a practical, though characteristically
grim, use that players can put the monster, its body, or its
remains to.
Complementing all of this printed content is a digital
soundtrack comprising seven tracks, one devoted to
each of the fingers. All are as darkly atmospheric and
evocative as the writing and images contained in the
book itself.
‘The soundtrack was done by Zoey after the book,’ Greco
said. ‘I have no idea how she managed to pull it together,
or how she captured the essence of each finger. It was a
whole lot of work: for example the Gnawed finger
involved recording her noisily eating eggs and throwing
meat against walls. She also went out and hand sampled
rusty gate noises from local cemeteries and took like
century old interviews from asylums and put them
through mixers for whispers.’
When asked about how the collective characterizations
of the fingers fit together to form a cohesive whole, Greco
demurred, preferring to leave that—as with all things
Gaub—to the readers’ and players’ imaginations. They did,
however, offer some thoughts.
“The spells are almost all pretty
horrible and, while they clearly
are tools to accomplish
something specific, I feel
sometimes revenge and pain are
their only true purposes”
‘I can only offer my personal opinion, without any
authority: each of the Fingers is tied to specific trauma
and anxiety, and each writer contributed some,’ Greco
said. ‘The spells are almost all pretty horrible and,
while they clearly are tools to accomplish something
specific, I feel sometimes revenge and pain are their only
true purposes.’
Needless to say, the creative team deftly brings the Gaub
to the table, and Greco certainly didn’t skimp on the
book. In print, The Book of Gaub is more than just a
physical vehicle for delivering its gameable content; it’s
an A5-size work of art.
The standard edition is bound in cloth that shifts from
purple to blue depending on the viewer’s orientation. I’ve
personally had moments when I’ve left the book sitting
out on the table, caught a glimpse of it out of the corner
of my eye, and asked myself, ‘What the hell is that? I don’t
own any books that color.’ It’s an uncanny experience
that is frankly quite Gaub.
Of course, the book’s cover readily reveals its identity
thanks to the seven-fingered hand with a screaming skull
superimposed on the palm. The design incorporates two
distinctly human characteristics—the hand and the face—
in a defamiliarised and twisted presentation. The image
is both silk-screened and debossed into the cover; the
Finger that is Not There isn’t printed, but its form is
debossed, cleverly preserving its presence-in-absence.
The wonders of Gaub certainly don’t end at its exterior.
The Doves Type and IM Fell faces on thick ivory paper
look, and feel, rich and refined. But Greco did more than
just arrange words on paper according to standard
conventions and practices: the book’s main body text is
arranged in a single column whilst entries’ headings and
subheadings are presented in the top and outside of the
margins, respectively.
Greco’s approach and
work are directly inspired
by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson,
the artist, bookbinder
and publisher best
known for his work at
Doves Press and for
coining the name of the
Arts and Craft Movement
within the decorative
and fine arts.
The Book of Gaub’s primary Roman typeface is a recreation your coffee table so you can share
of the one whose development Cobden-Sanderson its bespoke craft and
oversaw for his press, and Greco also adopted Cobden- unspeakable horrors with all
Sanderson’s approach to applying that typeface to the your friends and houseguests.
page in an artistic, elegant fashion.
The Book of Gaub is written
‘I tackle layout half as a purely geometrical composition, and organized in way that’s
pursuing beauty, going for balance or dynamism or easy to read piecemeal, but
whatever else the content requires, and half as a user it’s concise enough that, if
interface, pursuing ease of use, going for better learning you’re feeling particularly
or ease of browsing or whatever else the user requires,’ masochistic, you could read
Greco said. ‘The user interface work is quite standard it from start to finish in just a
interaction design, while the composition is merely “take few hours. But the art, prose,
your glasses off and look at the elements on the page as and playable content are deep
shapes, and make it pretty”.’ and inspired enough to be re-
read and contemplated for
One of the most striking features is the silhouettes of the much, much longer than that.
fingers framing the page numbers. Within each major
section—spells, paraphernalia, etc.—the relevant finger is Just make sure you do so with
printed darker than the others (with the Finger that is Not the lights on. And don’t
There appearing when appropriate) to aid in quick worry—that cobweb in the
navigation and reference. Complementing this visual corner of the room is
marker, the book includes a general table of contents probably just a cobweb.
with a categorized spell list, an alphabetized spell index
and a general index of spells and monsters. Probably.

The end result is a book that is quite useable at the table,

and it will compel you to use it. It will also compel you to The Book of Gaub
read just one more entry even though it’s already past is out now and is available
midnight—the worst possible time to be pondering from lostpages.co.uk
profane artifacts, hideous beasts, and other manifestations
of Gaub. And you’ll certainly to feel the urge to leave it on
 Away from horrors of a supernatural nature Brazilian artist and
designer Guilherme Gontijo brings us Blurred Lines, a solo
RPG based on the gruesome Italian giallo movies of the 1960s.
John Power Jr. investigates...
Art (throughout): Guilherme Gontijo
P
roviding us with a completely different take on
the horror roleplaying experience is Blurred Lines
- the latest title from Brazilian artist and game
designer Guilherme Gontijo. Inspired by the Italian giallo
movies that first came to prominence in the 1960s, Blurred
Lines takes us away from the terror of the supernatural
and into a world where the horrors are all too human.
A solo journalling RPG, Blurred Lines sees you slip off your
socks and slide on your finest Italian leather loafers as
you take on the role of a crime photographer, who is
hunting, and in turn being hunted by, a serial killer who,
at the start of the game, has just claimed their fourth
victim.
Befitting the genre the killer’s MO is particularly grisly,
garroting their victims with a fishing line, before
extracting their left eye for good measure and it’s a race
against time to uncover their identity before you too end
up, laid out in similar cyclopean fashion, on the mortuary
slab. But what, I wondered, was it about dark Italian
cinema of the 1960s that so inspired this 33 year old
graphic designer from Brasília?
80 Wyrd Science
‘Italian Cinema was pretty present all my life.’ he explains,
his father a fan of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. As
for giallo itself, a lurid sub-genre of Italian cinema that
focuses on the brutal misdeeds of serial killers and the
tortured psyches of those hunting them, Gontijo’s route
in was, as for many, the legendary director Dario
Argento’s Suspiria.
‘I was already a fan of the creative use of colors to set the
psychological moods of the characters, mostly because
of Kubrick, so when I saw Suspiria it felt more like an art
movie than an horror one. It was love at first sight. The
initial shot on the airport, the noisy creepy soundtrack,
the geometric visuals. It was all there. Since that day I've
watched as many giallo movies as possible.’
Another more direct inspiration for Blurred Lines also
comes from Gontijo’s love for Italian cinema, in the shape
of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 classic, Blow-Up. As he
explains the story of a fashion photographer who,
‘accidentally captures a clue to the identity of a serial
killer on the background of one of his photos and
becomes obsessed by it.’
www.wyrdscience.online 81
Blurred Lines then opts for the slow-burn
approach, the drama ratcheting up each
turn as the clock, or in the game’s case it’s
Killer Track, ticks down.
‘This process of progression
and unveiling is The Horror,’ he
explains. ‘A monster, a slasher
killer or a not-so-loving
neighborhood are just the
climax of this discovery path.
When we see the dangers
we're dealing with, we can
comprehend them and
therefore contain them.
Staying in the dark (even in
daylight) is a major part of
what makes the horror
genre scary.’
Whilst the game does
include optional rules for
adding supernatural
elements, the game’s
main focus is on more mundane horrors which makes it
stand out in a gaming sea of terrifying tentacles and
maleficent magic. As Gontijo tells me, ‘I think most horror
games confound horror with the aesthetic of horror.
Basically it's the difference between "scary" and "jump
scare". Horror, in my humble opinion, is most effectively
sustained when we don't know what we're dealing with.’
So far, so tense, and a solo RPG is just the format to really
immerse yourself in this high stakes game of gatto-e-
topo. Utilising a deck of cards, a D10 and a wonderfully
tactile mechanic that sees you scribble clues on post-it
notes that you apply to a city map, Blurred Lines will
soon have you speeding through the streets on your
moped, photographing crime scenes and dealing with
everything that the game’s prompts throw at you from
celebrity car crashes to disturbing animal masked assailants.
‘Every time you visit a place you
have to roll against a challenge,’
Gontijo explains. ‘If you win, the
book will ask you certain
questions and move you closer to
the killer's identity. If you lose,
however, the book will tell you
82 Wyrd Science
what happened and move
the killer closer to your
character. When you take
a picture you glue a post-
it on the map with three
rows representing the
Foreground, Midground and
Background of the picture.
Then during the game you need
to revisit the locations to re-examine the photos, and
clarify your memory.’
Playing roleplaying games by oneself, especially late at night
when you’re alone in the house, can be a powerful
experience, especially with horror games, a responsibility on
the part of the games designer that Gontijo clearly understands.
‘Games, and especially solitaire ones, can allow players to
explore the dark,’ Gontijo says. ‘Because of that authors
can help players enjoy the goosebumps without breaking
down in tears and trauma. Most of the bad experiences
that people have had with horror could have been
avoided just by letting them know beforehand what they
were getting into. You can't recommend The Cell to people
only by saying is about Jenifer Lopez going inside a serial
killer's mind or worse: only saying its for mature audiences.
They need to know before entering the experience there
are several triggering graphical scenes regarding sexual
violence, kidnapping, claustrophobia, torture, prejudice
and violence against children. This is utterly important
and when authors don't do it they are being irresponsible.’
“Most of the bad experiences
that people have had with horror
could HAVE been avoided just by
letting them know beforehand
what they were getting into”
For those who do want to immerse themselves even
deeper into the Blurred Lines experience though, Gontijo
has provided several options. There’s a beautifully
designed deck of cards to go with the game, a brief
videography of giallo films that he recommends checking
out and he has curated a playlist of music featuring the
likes of Ennio Morricone, Riz Ortolani and
Bruno Nicolai to get you in a suitably
stylish, if tense, mood. We might take a
pass on his suggestion to wear a leather
glove on one hand though, there is after
all a fine line.
I
f Blurred Lines plot and mechanics
take their inspiration from giallo films,
then so to does the game’s look, this is a very stylish
looking zine. A graphic designer by trade, Gontijo has
drawn on the aesthetic cues of Italian cinema and the
book is filled with spot illustrations, collages and fake
movie posters, I’m not sure what the Italian for
gesamtkunstwerk is but it surely applies here.
‘As with all design projects, everything started to take
shape at the research phase,’ he explains. ‘I collated a lot
of famous shots from films, giallo posters, Italian book
covers, modernist logos, portraits of Italian actress and
more such as the Thomas de La Rue deck of cards on a
Pinterest board. I started noticing collage and raw image
manipulation were a big thing back then. And that seemed
like a good place to start.’
This wasn’t all just a case of style over substance though
and the goal was more than just to look good. ‘The book
takes you in and out the game’s universe every other spread,’
he tells me. ‘Sometimes you're looking into fake posters of
fake movies to inspire your investigations, sometimes you're
reading about dice roll and poker card mechanics.’
Gontijo’s talents as a graphic designer has seen his work
on several other Wyrd Science favourites in recent months,
such as Nate Treme’s Haunted Almanac and Leo Hunt’s
Vaults of Vaarn, both released by Portuguese publisher
Games Omnivorous, but for the moment he’s still focused
on getting more of his own games out into the wild.
‘Working with Games Omnivorous is amazing, but I'm
also, slowly, working on two solo skirmish wargames.
I've been reading and playing a lot of solo war/board
games to gather some mechanical references for those
two new experiences.’
Much like Blurred Lines it appears that these two works-
in-progress both take a path less trod and he describes
one asa ‘pocket skirmish wargame’, whilst whilst the
other, intriguingly is ‘a golf game.’ Apart from Tolkien’s
brief suggestion that it was the hobbit Bandobras
"Bullroarer" Took’s decapitation of the goblin
Golfimbul that inspired the game we’ve yet to see
much crossover between the world of fantasy and
the so-called ‘sport of kings’, so we’ll look forward to
that...
Still, for Gontijo, and his fellow South American
designers, there remains an uncertain path between
having an idea for a game and actually getting it to
market. In our previous issue Brazilian games designer
Diogo Noguiera introduced us to the vibrant RPGLATAM
scene that Gontijo himself is a key part of. In the 12
months since we’ve seen several higher profile releases
from the community, Noguiera himself scooping an
ENNIE for his Old School Essential’s adventure, Halls of
the Blood King, and British publisher Soulmuppet running
a successful Kickstarter to publish five zines by Latin
American writers.
It’s noticeable though that both of these required
European publishers and Gontijo still sees a long way to
go. ‘It probably will be an unpopular opinion,’ he explains
‘but I don't think things are progressing enough actually.
Most of RPGLATAM Kickstarter campaigns we saw only
happened because of generous publishers offering
themselves as the medium for that.’
‘Sure, more of us are known now, but I can't help thinking
we're celebrating a few initial steps in really long marathon,’
he concludes. ‘Kickstarter still doesn't
allow us South American residents to
run our own campaigns. Unlike the
world up north, we still can't wake
up with an idea and simply see if
there's enough financial interest in
it to make it real. For us, it's still a
huge challenge to publish a game.’
Still, whilst many challenges remain the
invention, and success, of the self-published Blurred Lines
shows it can be done, and we certainly wouldn’t bet
against Gontijo going the distance.
Blurred Lines is out now
available from DriveThruRPG
Keep up to date with Gontijo
on Twitter @gontijodesign
www.wyrdscience.online 83
Boardgames & horror
ROLL &
FRIGHT
Dan Thurot goes in search of cardboard chills and questions
whether board games can truly deliver a terrifying experience.
Art: Łukasz Kowalczuk
T
he massacre poses some distinct problems
for my long-term plans. Most of the
park’s guests—those who, like me, had
always harbored an interest in the
archaeological—have been reduced to
quivering rabbits in the face of the ancient
evil we awakened with some ill-timed recitations from an
excavated tablet. Now two more have been reduced to
even less.
An ordinary body would grow weary with exertion. The
being who stalks us only grows more vigorous with each
kill. The other guests, those I’d painstakingly herded
toward the exit, now scatter in three directions. So much
for that. He rears up before me: impossibly muscled,
speckled with vitreous matter, soundless. I’m already
bleeding from his last assault. The shield I’ve fashioned
from the lid of a garbage can feels flimsy, offering no
more protection than a flattened soda can. With my free
hand,I prepare to swing my baseball bat into Inkanyamba’s
skull, praying that this time he’ll feel the impact.
I am not afraid.
84 Wyrd Science
This is Final Girl, the solitaire horror board game by Evan
Derrick and A.J. Porfirio, based loosely on the latter’s
Hostage Negotiator. It’s the sort of game we might
describe as “visceral.” Blood-spatters watermark the
cards. Helpless victims cower across the map. My pool of
health is located directly next to Inkanyamba’s, and it’s
pathetically shallow by comparison. Whether I’m fighting
a warrior out of time, a killer stitched into a pig mask or
an insane puppeteer, that’s the one constant. Every time I
play, my first thought is, “How the hell am I going to kill
that thing?”
I am not afraid, even though everything about this
situation screams that I should be. A teenage girl has
been pitted against a horror beyond comprehension. The
odds aren’t in her favor. This will likely end poorly. But I
am not afraid.
This is one of the big conundrums facing board game
designers, especially those who hope to transpose the
emotions we often associate with other artistic mediums
into their own craft. The reality is that board games tend
to excel at building and exploring models rather than
www.wyrdscience.online 85
eliciting dramatic emotions. Humor? Sometimes. Usually
when a board game leans into its ability to model
collapse, whether the physical tumblings of Rita Modl’s
Men at Work or the panicked squawks of Vlaada Chvátil’s
Space Alert. Hope and dread? To some degree. There’s
certainly some tension when a plan comes together only
to be threatened right before completion. But these are
mere flickers compared to the existential ponderings
prompted by films like Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner
2049 or Martin Scorsese’s Silence. Once the game is
finished, so are the emotions. Romance? I haven’t found
any. Sorrow? Forget about it. The last time I shed tears
over a board game was when my dad played an Arsonist
on my Colossus of Catan in Klaus Teuber’s card game version
of Catan released in 1996. I was born in 1986. I’ll let you do
the math on that one. (Confession: The aforementioned
event took place in 2020. It was a rough year.)
And then there’s that most primal of our emotions: Fear.
Can a board game make us afraid? Not just apprehensive
or grossed out, but afraid? One of my favorite horror
memories comes from the first time I watched The Ring.
I know, I know. My only defense is that I was a newcomer
to the genre. I sat and watched
the whole thing with my dad
and barely moved the entire
time. When it was over, I
There was a particular play of Corey Konieczka’s
Battlestar Galactica. Hidden roles are fantastic at upping
the stakes; surprisingly so are longer playtimes. It probably
doesn’t hurt that That Guy was also playing. You know:
That Guy. Everybody has one. The Guy who rubbed me
the wrong way. The Guy who made me want to win at all
costs. It would be one thing if he were merely irritating.
Nah. He was irritating and shrewd. There was a method
to his abrasiveness, like a rock in the toe of your boot.
Except the rock knows what it’s doing.
We went back and forth for two hours. Nettling at each
other. Testing the limits of one another’s lies and
evasions. I was a Cylon, the game’s version of a traitor,
and it was my task to scuttle the ark that carried
humanity’s last survivors. With That Guy breathing down
my neck, the scrutiny was too much. I wasn’t a person
playing a board game. I was a saboteur, certain my shift
supervisor knew about the bomb beneath my coat when
I requested access to the fighter bay.
Turns out, we were both Cylons. While I was squirming
under That Guy’s gaze, he was squirming under mine. I
was That Guy too. Like the inspectors in Chesterton’s
Thursday, we were so preoccupied with our respective
identities that we couldn’t recognize the ally behind the
disguise. The Galactica prevailed that day.
blackout glasses. That touch was physical, and unwelcome
despite being consensual, and persuaded me to sell the
game soon after.
Of course, there are countless board games that use horror
as an aesthetic. But if we’re talking about horror as a
feeling, a sense of lingering dread or impending terror,
that’s where we flounder. The problem, I think, is how the
medium forces uncertainty into an awkward duel with
certainty. There’s tremendous uncertainty in what your
opponents will do. Which action they’ll take, the priorities
they assign to their goals, whether they’ll prove disruptive
or ignore you entirely.
At the same time, conventional wisdom holds that the
rules must be certain. Because games are things that
must be taught and understood before they can be
experienced, we can’t be playing one thing one moment
and another the next. The floor will never drop from
beneath our feet. The ceiling will never cave in. We’ll
never be confronted with something utterly unexpected.
There simply isn’t room for that sort of experience.
Or so I once thought. Years ago, I watched a group of boys
play a terrifying variant of UNO. It worked like this: Assume
the rules of UNO. Now everybody at the table jots down
an extra rule on a piece of paper, which they hide from
everybody else. That rule can be anything that would impact
Here’s the thing. Every medium has its strengths.
Television does serialization. Movies drop us into a
perspective. Books excel at inner thoughts. And board
games do rules and models. When I watched that group
dissect and reshape UNO, the result occupied some
liminal space between board game and role-playing. The
strictness of the former, the fluidity of the latter.
More and more, board games are figuring out how to
break the rules, or at least how to bend them. Hidden
roles and soft role-playing elements are a part of that. So
are legacy games and anything that plays with our
expectations of consistency. There’s nothing quite as
entrancing as sitting down to play a game, asking how
you win, and having the host go, “Well, about that…”
Sure, it isn’t the same as a limp-haired ghost forcing her
way out of my computer monitor. But it’s a start. More
than a start; it’s the redefining of an entire medium. We
can hardly go half a year without another title forcing us
to reexamine what’s possible in board games. I still
haven’t been scared silly. But I have had tension
stretched to the breaking point when my secret mission
is on the verge of discovery. I’ve realised that I’ve been
holding my breath for fear of someone realising a fortified
position isn’t as secure as it
seems. I’ve grown confused and
flustered when everybody at the

walked upstairs and there
was a little girl seated in
front of my glowing
computer
monitor, her dark
hair wet and limp
over her face. I
freaked. My younger
sister, who had me brush
her hair at night, didn’t
understand why I was
yelping at her. My heart felt
like someone had placed it
between hammer and
anvil. A board game has
never managed that.
But every so often the
grave blesses us with
the faintest chill.
I
don’t remember who pointed out that one of play. Perhaps talking means you draw two cards. Or playing table seemed to be operating
horror’s most basic tenets is the discomfort of a card with your left hand means you can openly play from information I didn’t
having your personal space violated, but plenty two cards instead of one. Or, heck, let’s go for it: You’re have.
of board games lean into that one. It’s the same allowed to secret up to three other cards under a blue
predatory thrill that gives schoolyard tag its wildness. card—but if discovered cheating with more cards, or In other
There are plenty of examples. Nearly any game with concealing cards under any other color other than blue, words, board
hidden movement is a ripe contender: Fury of Dracula, you now draw ten. Oh, and now make the rules enforceable games are
with its cat-and-monster evasions. Specter Ops, the best not only by the person who wrote them, but by anybody wholly capable of
“rogue on the run from corporate goons” simulator ever else who’s figured out the rules. Also, cheating is legal. But horror. But that horror
designed. getting caught cheating means you draw cards. But but! will be on its own terms, in its
If you call somebody out for cheating when they weren’t, own shape, with its own set of
More recently, Mind MGMT, impressionistic paranoia in a then you’re the one stuck drawing cards. limitations and possibilities.
box, an effect heightened by the game’s insistence that it The fun part is that we’re still
isn’t a game at all, but an activation kit for psychic agents. Sounds like a big mess, right? Exactly. I don’t believe I’ve discovering what those
One time, my wife shouted aloud when the space ever seen a group more paranoid than those boys were. possibilities will look like.
monster pounced on her in Escape from the Aliens in Every move was jittery. Every opened mouth made
Outer Space, even though nothing had physically touched someone jump. Even a game as straightforward as UNO For board games, the
her. Another time, a sickly shiver coursed my spine when became an object of broken minds and plaintive wails. It future looks like it’ll
a clammy hand guided my fingers across Nyctophobia’s was more cosmically horrifying than any game with be dark in all the
board, my eyes literally blind thanks to the game’s Lovecraftian monsters. right ways.

86 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 87

 A FIELD OF
HORROR
In his latest game, The Silver Bayonet, award winning game
designer Joseph McCullough takes us back in time to the
Napoleonic era, but as John Power Jr. finds out this isn’t your
father’s historical wargame...
Art (throughout) from The Silver Bayonet: Brainbug Design
Model photos: North Star Military Figures
he battlefield is more often a place of horror
T rather than honour and especially so in The Silver
Bayonet, the new wargame from one of the scene’s
most acclaimed designers, Joseph McCullough.
Fusing together Napoleonic-era black powder skirmishes
with the gothic and supernatural, The Silver Bayonet presents
a Europe at war, on both the physical and spiritual planes.
Whilst the great powers of the era vie for supremacy across
the continent, the bloodshed of war has attracted the
attention of the Harvestmen, demonic forces that feed off
the pain and suffering and who in turn are unleashing occult
horrors onto the battlefields.
To combat this new threat each of the major European
powers have created their own occult focused special forces,
and that is where the game kicks in as each player must
assemble a small unit tasked with scouring the battlefields of
Europe to secure esoteric knowledge and weapons that
might be used against both the supernatural and, of course,
their rival nations.
Played with only around 8 models aside The Silver Bayonet is
a fast paced skirmish game, and one that’s both easy to get
88 Wyrd Science
into and quick to play. In fact the most involved, if still
entertaining, part of the game is the initial creation of your
squad. Once you’ve created your commanding officer each
nation has access to a range of troops from the more
familiar, such as grenadiers and guards, through to occult
specialists and even werebears in the case of the Imperial
Russian forces. Each troop can then be further kitted out
with specialist weapons, all the better for handling some of
the more unusual enemies they may find themselves up
against.
With his much acclaimed titles like Frostgrave and Rangers of
Shadow Deep McCullough pushed narrative play back to the
forefront of wargaming and The Silver Bayonet continues
that tradition with scenarios that lean into telling dramatic
stories, a solid campaign system and rules for solo and co-
operative play.
Rather than all out assaults the scenarios included here see
rival units tasked with investigating ruined monasteries,
trying to relieve trolls of their treasure or hunting down
changelings. Ah yes, the monsters, nothing quite upsets a
well laid out battle-plan like suddenly finding yourself
surrounded by a group of murderous, animated scarecrows
www.wyrdscience.online 89
or at the business end of a vampire’s bite. Sharpe may have
had to put up with his fair share of nonsense from both the
French and his commanding officers, but as far a I can recall
he never had to put down a werewolf.
Whilst many of the scenarios feature specific monsters, they’re
just as likely to be attracted to the scene by the bloodshed,
and a bad dice roll or two, and one of The Silver Bayonet’s
best features is how these rampaging horrors are incorporated
into the game. Whilst the monstrous interlopers actions are,
on the whole, automated each player also has a limited pool
of ‘monster dice’ with which to modify their behaviour, change
their targets and potentially throw a blood drenched spanner
in your opponent’s works.
The resulting chaos keeps both players on their toes and
makes for great action on the table as cold iron and silver
shot desperately ring out and your troops begin to collect
their fair share of scars and stories to, hopefully, carry
through to the next game.
Intrigued, we cornered McCullough and, holy symbol in hand,
compelled him to answer our questions about the game...
Also, it’s a time of chaos and a time when there are still a lot “Jenkins! Chap with
of shadowy corners, even in Europe, where monsters could the wings there.
hide. Five rounds rapid.”
WS: I've generally thought of historical and fantasy wargamers
as operating in two quite distinct camps, have you had
much feedback from people who have used The Silver
Bayonet as a way of dipping their toes in the other world?
JM: I think that used to be true and there are still large
groups that are only interested in one or the other, but I
think increasingly, gamers are just after cool games and enjoy
the variety of hopping around genres.
Part of the reason for making the game was to give people a
‘comfortable’ gateway from one to the other. From what I
have heard, there are probably more people who have
followed me from fantasy and are painting a few historicals
for the first time, but there are definitely some players that
have used it as an excuse to add a few werewolves and
vampires to their historical collections.
WS: Talking of blurring these two worlds together we love
the miniatures that North Star have produced for the game ,
I never knew I needed tricorne hatted goblins in my life...

JM: I have been incredibly fortunate to have so many skilled

Wyrd Science: You've made acclaimed fantasy and science
fiction wargames, so horror seems like a logical next step,
but why Napoleonic horror?
Joseph McCullough: The uniforms! I’ve always been attracted
to the colour, flair, and variety of Napoleonic uniforms.
Of course, this was only intensified by working for Osprey
and having all those books of gorgeous artwork of those
uniforms around me all the time. I wanted an excuse to paint
some miniatures of those soldiers without committing to big
armies. The period just works great for gothic horror. Because
most firearms are still single shot, soldiers have limited firepower
and often it comes down to hand-to-hand combat.
people working to make my games more attractive and
appealing. The artists, the designers, and of course the figure
sculptors.
North Star has been a huge support to my games over the
years, and they have really done it again with these
miniatures. The goblins are amazing, and I suspect there are
people who would love to just run a unit of them!
WS: Rather than just adapt the mechanics from your ‘grave
games you created a new system for The Silver Bayonet,
what was it you wanted this game to do, or not do, that you
felt required that?
JM: First off, I wanted The Silver Bayonet to be slightly less
chaotic and more predictable than my ‘Grave games. While
many would probably still put it on the more ‘swingy’ side of
gaming, the use of 2d10 as opposed to d20 does bring the
bell curve into play.
Plus, the use of two dice allowed me to introduce a new
system for manipulating those dice.
Since the figures in The Silver Bayonet don’t generally have
‘spells’ or ‘powers’ in the same way that my more fantastical
games do, I knew I would need to introduce other mechanics
to give players meaningful decisions to make throughout the
game.
The use of those two different d10s allowed me to create the
Fate Pool system, which makes players really think about
when and how to use these bonus dice.
WS: Had you personally had much experience of playing, or
designing, proper historical wargames before you worked
on TSB?
JM: I’ve certainly played a few historical wargames in my time
and worked with a load more when I was working in marketing
for Osprey, so I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of the field.
That said, traditionally, most historical wargames are ‘big
battle’ games and thus mechanically perhaps had less in
common with what I tried to create than other fantasy/sci-fi
skirmish games.
WS: It's fair to say that your games have been key in shifting
wargaming back towards a more narrative experience and
encouraging more skirmish sized games in recent years.
What do you think of the state of the wargaming scene at
the moment?
JM: I think wargaming is in the strongest position it has ever
been in with a resurgent Games Workshop, the entry of
Fantasy Flight/Atomic Mass, the rise of mid-level companies
like Warlord, Mantic and Osprey Games, and more
independents than ever before. This means you can find a
game for almost any genre or style you want.
That said, I think we gamers also need to be careful. It is very
easy to get overwhelmed by the huge amount of product
that is being released and get caught in a cycle of always
chasing the next shiny thing. It is important to really
understand what drives your unique enjoyment in the hobby
and make sure to focus your time and money on that.
For me, that has always been narrative. I like to use games to
create stories – so I paint miniatures and craft scenarios to

90 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 91

help me tell those stories. The further I drift from that idea,
the more dissatisfied I become with my hobby. I’ve bought
too many large box sets, and too many armies, that I have
never painted, and never will, because I got caught up in the
moment. It’s okay to take it slow, and generally, the deeper
you dive, the more enjoyment you will find.
We just all need to remember that ‘owning’ a bunch of
miniatures or games doesn’t really do much for happiness. It
is using those items in ways that are specifically fun to you
that brings them value.
WS: Over the past couple of years we've seen a lot of
roleplaying game designers either get back into wargames
or dip their toes in for the first time, has there been
anything from that kind of crossover between the two
scenes that's caught your eye?
JM: In some ways, I’ve always seen RPGs and Wargames as
more like two ends of a spectrum than two distinct hobbies,
and I’ve always loved games, like Savage Worlds for example,
that could be used in both ways.
I really enjoyed the recent Mech Warrior: Destiny which is the
latest attempt to take the long-lived, pretty hardcore
wargame, Battletech, and make it into an RPG. I think it did a
good job taking it into role-playing, but keeping a lot of the
elements that people love about Battletech.
WS: Whether it’s established wargame designers or those
completely new to it, it feels like people are more willing to
experiment at the moment. Where do you see things
moving over the next year or so?
JM: I think there was a time, not too long ago, when
wargaming had gone a bit stale and had fallen behind RPGs
and board games in terms of mechanical elegance and
experimentation, but I think it has been catching up over the
last five or six years. What I’m really interested in seeing is
how people can move away from the idea of ‘wargaming’
and more towards ‘miniature gaming’, by which I mean, how
can we take the strengths of wargaming such as the ability
to move figures around a completely open table with
infinitely variable terrain, and use them to tell other types of
dramatic stories.
While I love combat-action, I also love swashbuckling
acrobatics, investigations, horror, exploration… how can
miniatures games include more of these elements?
92 Wyrd Science
WS: With the move back to a more narrative
style of wargaming we often talk about what we can adapt
and pick up from RPGs, but what would you suggest RPG
designers look at in the opposite direction for inspiration?
JM: For those RPGs where combat is still a big factor, I think
it is definitely worth looking at modern wargames – as these
are the games that have focused on how to make combat
interesting.
Often the mechanics that work for other aspects of roleplaying
can become a bit lifeless when it comes to fighting. It’s all about
giving players important choices each turn and about limiting
resources, but without getting too bogged down in details.
WS: The Silver Bayonet features a solid set of rules and
scenarios for solo play, something we're seeing a lot more of
in all kind of tabletop games these days, is that something
you enjoy working on?
JM: It's been one of the major focuses of my efforts over the
last three or four years. This is most obvious in my game
Rangers of Shadow Deep which is designed to be played
either solo or co-operatively. It takes me back to my earliest
days of gaming, when I was a kid playing with toy soldiers in
my room by myself.
It certainly comes with a unique set of challenges. Unlike
writing scenarios for a competitive wargame, the idea of
‘balance’ means something completely different, and
something less solid. Instead of ensuring that a scenario is
‘fair’, I am trying to ensure that the scenario is ‘fun’ with just
the right level of challenge for the player.
I’m pretty sure
they cut the
werewolf scene
from Sharpe’s
Waterloo
But what is the ‘right level of challenge’? Not everyone is
going to agree, and of course, if you like to include a heavy
dose of randomness in scenarios, as I do, how can you
maintain that ‘balance’. There are no hard answers here, but
that is one of the reasons I let the narrative be my guide.
Some scenarios should be more challenging than others, but
as long as the story is interesting, it generally works out.
WS: As a concept, Napoleonic era warfare with
supernatural elements is a fairly flexible and you provide
plenty of advice on creating new monsters and scenarios,
but are there any plans for more official expansions?
JM: Yes, there are. In fact I have already written one and
there is another being worked on by someone else… I don’t
know if I’m allowed to say any more than that at the
moment!
WS: Finally, beyond The Silver Bayonet what’s next for you?
I’ve always got several projects on the go at once. I am nearly
finished a book called Grave Mutations which is basically just
a big d1000 mutation table that can be used for Frostgrave or
with a little work with Ghost Archipelago, Rangers of Shadow
Deep, and Stargrave. It’s really just a bit of fun to see if I could
write 1,000 different mutations, and there are no specific
rules for how to use it in any of those games, but I think
players will get a real kick out of it. Its something I plan to
self-publish. I’m also working on the next Rangers of Shadow
Deep book, which is the final part to an adventure trilogy
called The Rescue.
Finally, I’ve got more stuff coming for both Frostgrave and
Stargrave. The next book out for Stargrave is called Hope
Eternal and it is basically one giant solo or co-operative
campaign, including prisoner rescues, train heists, battles
against irradiated bugs and deadly sea creatures, and a final,
desperate strike against two of the major pirate fleets that
have been terrorizing the galaxy!
The Silver Bayonet is out now
Available from Osprey Publishing
ospreypublishing.com
www.wyrdscience.online 93
 HIT POINTS: WARGAMES HIT POINTS: WARGAMES

HIT POINTS
Heads roll and
Sláine did, indeed,
not think it
too many

Your one-stop guide to what we’re reading, playing,

pushing around the table and watching at the
moment!

WARGAMES
Slaine - Kiss My Axe Starter Set
Warcry - Heart of Ghur

ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
Traveller / 2300AD

SlÁINE - KISS MY AXE STARTER SET

RuneQuest Starter Set
Death In Space
Orbital Blues Warlord Games

BOARD / CARD GAMES

Tales From The Loop
Having brought the mean streets of Mega City One to the world of
miniature wargaming, Warlord have again plundered the pages of
2000AD for their latest skirmish game, this time traveling back to gods that like to meddle in the mortal affairs. Each side tends to and if that was unsuccessful you roll a final dice pool equivalent to
Elector Counts the mythic Celtic past and the none more bloody world of Sláine field just a handful of models, and whilst all sides (Sláine’s Earth their Resist stat with every shield result lowering the damage. The
Mac Roth. For those who didn’t grow up eagerly awaiting each new Tribes, the wicked Drunes led by the Lord Weird Slough Feg and result is you can end up with several combat rounds that result in

VIDEO GAMES
Total War: Warhammer III
issue of the ‘Galaxy’s Greatest Comic’, your man Sláine was a Celtic
tribesman who, exiled from his tribe at a young age for bedding
the chief’s daughter, spent his formative years as a bit of a rogue
the deep sea Fomorians) have access to regular warriors the focus
is very much on the larger than life heroes from the comic.
little damage, which for a Sláine game can feel oddly bloodless.

The Starter Set itself comes with 9 models, including Sláine in both
before returning to save his tribe, becoming the first High King, Of note is the game’s initiative system, with players pulling tokens his regular and hulked out ‘warp spasm’ forms, plus some huts and

SOLO GAMES
The Broken Cask
then the living representation of the Horned God, and finally
enjoying all manner of time traveling capers. With over 40 years
worth of stories to cram in there you’ll forgive us if we skipped over
from a bag, and having the ability to push for more actions but o
course the key part of the game is combat and here that’s built
around a dice pool system, with specially marked dice each bearing
a rather nice ‘weirdstone’. This is fine for getting your head around
the game but you’ll soon need to add to that, luckily they’re fairly
priced and if you’re a fan of Simon Bisley’s art the Balor and Slough
Bucket of Biolts some of it, still if you haven’t read it just put this magazine down, go 3 Hit icons, 2 Shield icons and 1 Special icon. When models are in Feg models especially look like they’ve just stepped out of the pages
Be A Crow get yourself the collected edition of The Horned God and we’ll range and the axes start swinging you roll a number of the dice of The Horned God. The scenarios, certainly those focused on the
Routefinder International pick up afterwards. equivalent to each of their Fight stats. So, for example, the big man Starter Set are more narrative driven and the game comes with a slim
Secrets of the Verdant Isles himself Sláine gets a mighty 5 dice whilst a lowly Drune Skull Sword yet entirely workable, and fun, system for running campaigns with
Right, all done? So you get the idea, Celtic goddess worshiping just 2. Various weapons and special abilities can modify that but several players as you fight for territory and the favour of your gods.

BOOKS
Slaying The Dragon
tribes facing off against evil sea demons and worshippers of giant
cosmic death worms, all served up with lots, and I mean lots, of
violence. The perfect setting for a game of toy soldiers really, so
Game Wizards the question is how well does Slaine - The Miniatures Game
Vampire Cinema - The First One Hundred Years capture all of that? As it happens reasonably well.
generally you’re tallying up the attacker’s hits, comparing those to
the number of shields rolled by the defender and if there’s more
hits and shields an equal amount of damage is done.
Or almost, the dice pool mechanic is nice, it always feels good to
chuck a handful of dice around and it gives you the feeling that
As wargames go it certainly has its quirks, but plenty of charm too and
when your hero is salmon leaping over undead Drunes, lopping off
heads left, right and centre they’re easy enough to forgive. Whilst
unlikely to become anyone’s main wargaming focus, once you’ve got a
handle on it most games pass in a fairly breezy 60 minutes or less, so

FILM / TV The game is based on the system used in Warlord’s aforementioned

Judge Dredd game with just minor tweaks from its veteran
designers, Andy Chambers and Gav Thorpe, to represent a world
with less high-explosive rounds, more double handed axes and
your big hero is a force to be reckoned with. But, once you’ve
gone through all that, calculated the various modifiers in play, the
defender gets to roll another pool of dice, this time equal to their
it all makes for a great alternative to pull out as and when you fancy
something different. If you’re a fan of the comics or just looking to
add a new a wargame to your collection that’s both easy on the
Evade stat with any Special icons showing up negating all damage wallet and the clock then Sláine is well worth a look. (Eoin Ryan)

94 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 95

HIT POINTS: WARGAMES
WARCRY - HEART OF GHUR
Games Workshop
Warcry is the lesser-known stepchild of
the Games Workshop universe. While its
main games recreated epic battles
between huge armies, Warcry focusses
down on small skirmishes. It’s a smart
rule set that retains the random dice-
offs common to the companies’
games but adds an extra tactical
dimension in scenario setup. Players
draw cards to determine the terrain,
their objectives and some special
flavour rules. This rewards creative strategy
over how the bigger games often come
down to how well the factions in play
manage against each other.
Warcry: Heart of Ghur is essentially a
second edition of the game after several
big box releases on the old rule set. Like
them it contains complex kits for two well-
matched warbands of chaos warriors and a
ton of plastic scenery, all of which you’ll
need to assemble yourself. Unlike previous
box sets this edition shifts the action into
the bestial realm of Ghur, so the terrain
consists of bamboo platforms, monstrous
skeletal remains and dangerous Gnarloak
trees rather than chaotic machines or
ancient ruins. Two rulebooks, dice, tokens
and a double-sided board on which to set
up your scenery round out the box contents.
The core of the system involves rolling six
dice and pooling them into those that show
the same number. These doubles, triples
and quads can then be spent to activate
special abilities for your models. You’ll need
to time them for best effect as you make
tactical plans for your models, factoring
terrain and the offensive and defensive
options available. When you attack it’s a
simple matter of comparing the model’s
strength against it’s targets toughness,
rolling a fistful of dice and see which hit.
Damage is a fixed number. These model on
96 Wyrd Science
model effects give the game an intimate
quality, recounting the battles of individual
fighters in thrilling detail. Sure, the dice can
dictate the victor but it’s the tales that
you’ll remember.
You won’t just be watching armies ponderously
clash on the tabletop, either. Turns in Warcry
are fast and lively, with characters climbing
all over the multi-level scenery, grabbing
objectives, even entering and exiting the field.
The ability to move models independently
gives you a lot of tactical freedom to
explore, meaning that unexpected decisions
by your opponent can be as shocking and
as fateful as the fall of the dice. Sometimes
the scenario will also populate the board
with third-party enemies or other surprises.
While most of the rules remain the same,
veteran players will enjoy the new addition
of reactions. It’s a simple enough concept,
borrowed from miniatures games with a
more simulationist bent, allowing fighters to
take an action early in response to what
enemy models do, such as a counterattack.
These increase the tactical options available
to players as well as making the back and
forth between them more dynamic. They
also enrich the unfolding story of your
game with extra detail.
This narrative aspect is leveraged to the full
in the game’s campaign system. Because
Warcry is relatively short for a miniatures’
game, taking an hour or so, an extended
run of clashes between players a realistic
possibility. Victories let you buy small
upgrades to your forces but it’s all about
accumulating glory points or fulfilling the
goal of the campaign arc. The system has
been extensively extended in this edition,
adding short-term quests, new arcs and,
best of all, encampments that you have to
maintain and defend between battles.
There are a number of campaign options in
the rules, from multi-player to a specific
face-off between the two warbands that
come in the box.
All of this makes Warcry: Heart of Ghur a
great self-contained option if you’re
interested in miniatures gaming, although
Games Workshop’s very detailed models
may be off-putting to some due to the
high prices and extensive assembly time. If
you’ve already bought into their universe
then you’ll find lots of other models can be
used with the game, their Warcry stats
freely available through the Warhammer
community website. These factions have
also been rebalanced for this new edition.
So whether you’re ready to get bitten by
the Games Workshop bug, or to take your
Warhammer in a new direction, this is a
great time and set with which to start.
(Matt Thrower)
Traveller / 2300 AD
Mongoose
Anytime a successful “space scoundrels
adventure in a beat up ship” story takes the
high ground in pop culture, there’s always a
rumor that it originated from the creator’s
long running game of Traveller. (The one
exception being The Expanse, which the
creators have explicitly stated began as a
homebrew d20 Modern game). Traveller
did a lot to cement how the typical science
fiction game framed their stories. In the
same way that early Dungeons & Dragons
focused on the cycle of exploration,
combat and cashing in loot in town,
Traveller took the Han Solo route. Players
took on jobs and dangerous cargo,
explored strange new planets to sell
futuristic widgets, and tried to stay one
step ahead of their creditors. You think
Jabba the Hutt is rough? Try paying off a
space mortgage to a galaxy wide bank.
Traveller also turned the minigame of
character creation into an actual game. This
is where the old school joke of dying in
character creation comes from. Rolling up
characters offered a risk and reward from
one of the first lifepath systems. A
character’s skills, abilities and equipment
HIT POINTS: ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
came from their previous experiences in life
in the military or drifting around the galaxy.
The more terms the character served, the
more times they had to roll to see if they
survived the experience. This meant
Traveller characters usually started as the
middle aged Harrison Fords to the fresh
faced hopeful Mark Hammils of D&D. Even if
you couldn’t find other kids to play
Traveller, there was still some lonely fun to
be had with those three little black books
deciding to see if this recent awesome
character could survive one more celestial
craps roll.
Mongoose Publishing has kept the fires of
Traveller burning with a modern edition
since 2008, though the game has come in
multiple forms including GURPS, d20 and
even a recent “Fifth Edition” from original
creator Marc Miller.(Those curious about
the original books can find them on Miller’s
website in a massive digital download).
Traveller remains on the harder end of the
sci-fi scale focusing on the same hexcrawl
expiration and space buck making of the
original. Mongoose did add a few modern
touches. Failed survival rolls during
character creation now lead to the mishap
table which provides enemies and story
points to haunt the character in the
present. It also encourages players to come
into the game already connected by
offering extra skill points if they connect
their backstories ahead of time. This makes
sense, given that the lifepath system can
often feel like early levels on fast forward.
The company recently released an updated
core book for 2022 that includes errata and
a few rules from the 2016 edition that
brought the game into the full color core
book era. It also brings back one of the
other minigames beloved by Traveller fans:
ship creation. Players looking to jump into
adventure could always pick up a Type-S
scout ship and go, but there’s something
that scratched the LEGO part of the brain
trying to fit just the right amount of
equipment in a certain tonnage. Most of
this experience had been exiled to the High
Guard ship book, but it returns here with
just enough to whet the whistle of budding
engineers waiting for the updated version
of that book to come out later this year.
This book is a great choice for players that
have never had the Traveller experience,
but for those who already picked up the
last core book, take a moment to see how
important building a ship is to the table.
Mongoose also returns to a curious chapter
in Traveller history. The original publisher,
Game Designer’s Workshop, was home to
two successful RPGs in the 80s: Traveller
and the military apocalypse game
Twilight:2000. It tried to spin off a third line
tying these two vastly different games
together with Traveller: 2300 which
eventually became 2300 AD. The game tells
the story of the middle era between the
established hits. The world nearly ended
after the limited nuclear exchange of
Twilight: 2000 but survived long enough for
mankind to launch a new space race. The
settlements are split between the
Americans, the French and the Chinese and
the tech level takes a click or two beyond
Traveller’s harder outlook.
This new edition comes as a boxed
expansion to the modern Traveller rules set,
featuring a players guide, setting guide and
equipment guide, though you will need the
core rules to play. While Traveller tends to
encourage settings focused on the little
guy scraping by in the big space empire,
2300 AD offers something a bit more like
The Expanse. National factions, giant
corporations and even philosophical
debates between how to conquer space
mix intrigues and twists to the standard
Traveller formula.If worrying about engines
that can poison characters and the finer
ethical points of genetic adaptation to
space sound like a great counterpoint to
the usual space adventures, this setting
may be for you. (Rob Wieland)
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HIT POINTS: ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
RUNEQUEST - STARTER SET
(Chaosium)
Having set the gold standard for modern-
day starter sets with Call of Cthulhu’s 7th
edition one, Chaosium look to repeat the
trick for their even more venerable game
RuneQuest. First released in 1978 it’s fair to
say that RuneQuest has had a rather
convoluted history, even by RPG standards.
Over the years it’s gained new owners, new
rulesets and even gone under various
different names along the way. The latest
edition, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in
Glorantha, released in 2018, saw the game
return to its original home and with a set of
rules based on Chaosium’s percentile
based Basic Roleplaying System and more
specifically RuneQuest’s own 2nd edition.
Of course the game’s publication history is
nothing compared to the in-universe
history of its setting Glorantha which its
creator, Greg Stafford, began working on
back in 1966. This is a Bonze Age world
steeped in magic and mythology, with a
rich history covering thousands of year
that’s breadth, depth and attention to
detail has both seen it accrue a devoted
fanbase down the years but can also make
it appear incredibly inaccessible to the
newcomer, which despite being long
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enough in the tooth myself I am. Still I do
like a game in a box and love to get stuck
into a fantasy world, so, ideally, this new
Starter Set should be the perfect gateway
to both RuneQuest’s setting and system.
So, first of all let’s just say that you certainly
get a lot of bang for your buck here and at
least in terms of actual content Chaosium
have been incredibly generous here,
perhaps to a fault. Packed tightly inside the
box you’ll find four large booklets covering
the rules, the world, a solo choose your
own adventure style game -something that
also featured in the excellent Call of Cthulhu
Starter Set- and finally a set of adventures.
Completing the set you’ll get a set of rather
fetching bronze’ish polyhedral dice, maps,
some reference sheets and 14, yes that’s
fourteen, pre-generated characters.
What you don’t get includes character
creation, advanced combat, equipment and
a more complete magic system. Which is all
fair enough as what you do is already a lot,
and at first glance perhaps even a little
overwhelming, a situation not helped by
the first book you read, kicking things off
with an eye watering Ability Results Table.
Depending on your prior gaming experience
that alone may have you running back to the
comfort of something significantly less
involved. There’s no way around it, RuneQuest
is, and feels, like a big traditional roleplaying
game, even here in what is supposed to be
a somewhat slimmed down system. A lot
has happened in RPG design since
RuneQuest first hit the shelves and on first
glance I suspect that the designers have
found many of those developments not to
their tastes.
This is a game that likes to get lost in the
weeds, especially when it comes to combat
and you start dealing with strike ranks,
parries, hit locations and so on and so forth.
This is not to say it’s bad, at all, I’ve enjoyed
many a crunchy game in my time but with
the trend, certainly within indie RPGs, for
streamlining and paring systems down it
can be a lot to take in.
Still for most I imagine the appeal of
RuneQuest is less to do with it’s system
than Glorantha itself and it’s book 2, where
we learn more about Greg Stafford’s
lovingly created setting. This is a world of
mythology and magic writ large, where the
gods -the oh so many gods- and their cults
play an active part in the life of everyone’s
lives. There’s a lot to learn and confronted
by page after page of fairly dry text it can
at time feel like homework but struggle
through it you begin to see why so many
people love it and with the detailed guide
to the city of Jonstown there’s something
for experienced players here too. Whether
you can find enough people wholly new to
the game to also wade through all of this
may be another thing altogether though.
It’s clear that Chaosium had a much harder
task of their hands here than with Call of
Cthulhu, whose setting -our world- is much
easier to understand and premise -there
are unknowable things out there who want
to eat reality- requires much less buy in. As
it is they’ve probably done about as good a
job as they could. Throughout both reading
and then playing through this starter set
the feeling I constantly got is that RuneQuest
demands a lot of its players, but for those
willing to roll up their sleeves there are
definitely rewards to be had.
I suspect for many this will be both an
introduction and farewell to RuneQuest.
When people cry about how hard it is to
learn systems other than D&D, it’s games
like this that they’re talking about. Still fair
play to Chaosium, they’ve priced this set
keenly enough so that if you’re even vaguely
curious about RuneQuest then it’s hard not
to recommend just giving it a go, if you like
your games a bit chewier then you just
might find yourself joining the venerable
strike ranks of the Gloranthaphiles.
(Eoin Ryan)
Death in space
Stockholm Kartell
The universe is dying, the stars are going out one by one and
something is bleeding through from the void. Dry your eyes though
as it’ll still probably outlive your characters as they scramble, scrounge
and scavenge their way around the Tenebris System in this new sci-
fi RPG from Christian Plogfors and Carl Niblaeus of the Stockholm
Kartell crew. Yes, the Swedes are back at it with what it wouldn’t be
unfair to at least consider being the bastard child of MÖRK BORG
and Mothership, a rules light, atmosphere heavy romp around a
tired, broken down and war-torn solar system.
The rules are simple enough, you have four stats, Body, Dexterity,
Savvy and Tech that start off within a range of - to + 3, when you
want to do something and the result is uncertain, you roll a d20,
modify the result by a relevant stat and 12+ (or simply the higher
number in an opposed roll) is a success. Roll under and you suffer a
complication and start to build up Void Points, one of the game’s
funky little features that can be used to push rolls but also result in
strange mutations altering both body and mind in various distinctly
Cronenbergian ways. Alongside that the game has rules for building
your base and both space travel and combat that whilst taking up
just a couple of pages are certainly as involved as anything you’ll find
in, let’s say, Spelljammer.
The rest of the book though is where the special sauce lies. First of all
it looks stunning, filled with evocative artwork and graphic design touches
that perfectly set the tone. Beyond that though they do a great job of
painting a setting that is familiar enough to jump right into but just
wrong enough, in lots of little ways, to make it both interesting and spark
the imagination. Entropy’s never looked so good. (John Power Jr.)
HIT POINTS: ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
ORBITAL BLUES
Soulmuppet Publishing
There’s no shortage of Sci-fi games these days but where so many have
doubled down on the truly terrifying nature of space, Orbital Blues takes us
down a less trodden path. Not that this is any kind of utopian future, of
course, rather Orbital Blues bills itself as a ‘Space Western RPG’, and
deposits us in a galaxy filled with anachronistic touches. Media like
Firefly and Cowboy Beebop are the touchstones here, so if you like your
protagonists to be outsiders up against a relentless capitalist system, and
your spaceships to look like junk and probably come with a cassette
player then this might be both the future, and game, for you.
Mechanically Orbital Blues takes its cues from Soulmuppet’s fantasy title
Best Left Buried, possibly best described as OSR adjacent but with story
game leanings. PCs have three main stats, Muscle, Grit and Savvy, which
start between 0 and 2 and, generally, when you need to achieve something
you add your relevant stat to 2D6 and try to roll over 8. So far, so simple.
Where the game really leans into its theme is with Troubles, the cloud of
trauma you’re carrying around, and Blues, points that you accumulate as
your sad space cowboy life gets you down, but can be spent as a kind
of antidepressant power up when confronting the source of your woes.
Games then revolve around the relentless treadmill taking on jobs, both
legal and less so, to clear debts and getting mixed up with crime
syndicates, corrupt authorities and other so called marks and goons, all
whilst trying to not let this uncaring universe grind you down. Which, in its
mirroring of the real world, is possibly a more horrific experience than
any Giger’esque Alien though made somewhat more enjoyable thanks
to the work of the game’s artist Josh Clark, whose retro sci-fi art sets
the game’s vibe and manages to make this mean old universe one that
you’ll still be keen to spend time in. (John Power Jr.)
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HIT POINTS: BOARD GAMES
TALES FROM THE LOOP:
THE BOARDGAME
Free League Publishing
The art of Simon Stålenhag has already
spawned a hit role-playing game and TV
show, so Tales from the Loop: The Board
Game feels something of an inevitability.
Players take the role of kids in an alternative
sci-fi 80s, working together to uncover a
mystery while juggling schoolwork and
chores. You get six actions per turn to split
between a variety of ways to move around
and investigate rumours. But try to keep
one spare to make it home each day if you
want to stay in favour with your parents.
Aside from a standard dice-based
resolution system with help and item
bonuses to overcome problems, the game
has a clever tweak to help it stand out. You
pick a scenario, which only reveals a single
diary card to start things off. The layers of
the mystery must be unpicked one by one
before you even know the final victory
condition. And of course, there are plenty
of ways to lose along the way.
While this works well, giving players a real
sense of digging through the layers of a
puzzle, one clue at a time, it does limit
replay value. The game includes seven and
100 Wyrd Science
there are a couple of cheap scenario
expansions. Some players may find the lack
of a clear goal at the start frustrating, but
the payoff is impressive.
As each layer is uncovered it combines with
the schoolwork and chore cards to create
an engaging and varied narrative. To find
this out, however, you’ll need to decipher
the atrocious rulebook. It’s not so much
that things aren’t well explained as the fact
that details of the game seem to be
missing. You can piece it together from
player aids and common sense, but this is
simply not something a game should have
to ask of its players.
In addition, some of the mechanics that are
laid out feel very clunky. Movement uses a
combined grid overlaid onto a point to
point system, which is innovative and
creates interesting strategies but is hard to
parse in practice. The robot antagonists
have a fiddly reaction and hacking system
that means digging in the box to locate and
flip behaviour cards depending on
environmental factors.
Once you’re past that and into the meat of
planning and executing your turn, the game
becomes much more engaging. There’s a
constant tension between the demands of
your humdrum school-kid life and mystery-
solving. You must also balance the known
scenario goals with investigating rumours.
These add to the narrative and there’s a fun
risk mechanic where you can either jump in
blindly or use an action to scout the rumour
first, so you know more about what you’re
up against.
Despite its successes and the good service
it provides to franchise fans, the game feels
underdeveloped as a whole. A better
rulebook would improve things, but a lower
administrative overhead is likely too much
to ask. As it is, too often Tales from the
Loop feels like a throwback to the board
games of the eighties, and not always in a
good way. (Matt Thrower)
ELECTOR COUNTS
Cubicle 7
Arriving somewhat out of the left field is
Elector Counts a new standalone card
game set in the old Warhammer Fantasy
world. Well we say new but the game is in
fact a reskin of an old Doctor Who game by
Martin Wallace that Cubicle 7 first published
nearly a decade ago. Anyway it’s been
given a fresh lick of mud and now appears
as an in-universe Gwent style game that
has apparently been ‘banned in inns and
taverns from Middenheim to Nuln!’
Here you play one of the titular nobles
vying for control of the Empire. From your
seat of power you must raise armies, claim
territory, make alliances, viciously break
those alliances, lay siege to your opponents’
land and generally do all sorts of awful
things in the pursuit of temporal power.
Each player starts with one of the 4 city
starting locations, a starting amount of
coins and a handful of cards that come in 4
flavours - Location cards you play to
increase your domain, Attacker cards with
which to conquer your opponent’s land,
Defender cards with which to garrison
yours and Support cars that have myriad
uses, from raising more money and revealing
your opponents hidden cards to insta-
killing your opponents troops.
Each turn you can take any number of
actions, such as playing new Locations,
reinforcing them with Defenders or drafting
new cards, with just the stipulation that you
must have three cards in your hand at the
end of your turn to pass to the next player.
Defender cards are placed face down on a
Location so as to conceal their strength
and, unless revealed via a Support Card are
only turned over when someone commits
their forces to attack at which point the
cards’ Strength points from all the cards in
involved are tallied to resolve the winner of
HIT POINTS: CARD GAMES
that particular combat. If the defending
side wins they gain a Fortification token,
whilst if the attacking side has removed all
defenders they get to place a Siege token
on the location.
The game either ends when one player has
5 Siege Tokens and 5 Fortification Tokens in
play, or the End Game card is pulled from
the deck at which point play continues
without players drafting new cards and
ends when no more actions can be
performed. At which point each player
determines the value of the land they
control with the winner decided accordingly.
The more land you own the more revenue
you have but also the more stretched your
defences can become, potentially setting
you up for a dramatic fall in the end game as
your opponents pile in on you.
It’s a relatively fast paced game, certainly by
Warhammer standards, and once we’d got
the hang of it most of our games tended to
last around the 30-40 minute mark, with
plenty of twists to keep all involved in the
game up to the final count. And speaking of
Warhammer standards, the art on the cards,
depicting the various soldiers, wizards, siege
weapons and arcane devices, is, as you’d
expect, wonderful and brings the Old World
to life in all its pustulant glory. Whilst turning
over a card to reveal your forces doesn’t
have quite the same impact as pushing a fully
painted army of miniatures across the table it
does come with the bonus that the entire
game here costs less than an average Citadel
niniatures hero.
The only real downer is that there isn’t more
in-universe info on the cards themselves.
Cubicle 7 have drawn on some reasonably
deep cuts to fill out the deck and the
thematic impact of deploying a Gavius
Klugge to counter an opponents witch or
triumphantly leading Wurlitzer’s Company of
Foot into a Thriving Trading Town is
somewhat diminished by having no idea of
who they are and their relative importance
within the setting.
Still that, of course, doesn’t affect gameplay
one iota and I guess that’s is what all those
wikis with their terabutes of trivia are for, so
whether you have an encyclopedic knowledge
of Warhammer minutia or not, Elector Counts
remains a fun way to scratch that Old World
itch. Which now we mention it is something
you should probably think about seeing an
apothecary about... (Si Tolley)
www.wyrdscience.online 101
HIT POINTS: VIDEO GAMES HIT POINTS: VIDEO GAMES
of the High Elves and Lizardmen, whilst the third installment pushes
the scope eastwards, towards the fringes of the know Warhammer
Fantasy world. While the Empire, High Elves, and Lizardmen all have
long histories on the tabletop and backstories to go with them, our
two new good-guy races, Kislev and Cathay, were only ever
explored in a more minor capacity.

This time around the Daemons of Chaos are the stars of the show,
and horror-filled armies and corruption take centrestage. This all
starts with the Lost God prologue, a narrative intro into Total War's
mechanics that harks back to the Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play
books, while also channeling narrative strategy games like
Frostpunk. You play as the Ungol prince, Yuri, as he leads an
expedition into the frozen Chaos Wastes in search of Kislev's
absent bear god, Ursun. It's a great little tutorial campaign about
Yuri's ambitions and the corrupting influence of Chaos.

More importantly, it sets up the campaign's central premise: Ursun

is dying. The first daemon prince, Be'lakor, has trapped the bear
god in the Forge of Souls, and the only way to gain ingress is to
defeat the four chosen princes of the Chaos gods by diving
headfirst into their domains. Each of the eight playable factions
have their own, often questionable, plans for the poor bear. Kislev
wants to save its patron god whilst Cathay needs some info that
only he knows, meanwhile at the other end of the scale, you have
the Ogres who want to eat him, and the Seducers of Slaanesh who release, the most popular mod lets you disable the Chaos Rifts entirely. This fifth Daemons of Chaos faction centers around a prince who
basically want to get off to his death throes. hasn't decided which god to align with yet, meaning he can recruit
But in faction terms, Creative Assembly have done a great job with units from all four of the rosters, and equip special wargear to

Total war WarhaMmer III

Creative Assembly
It's been almost six years since Total War: Warhammer recreated
Games Workshop's "World That Was" and it's hard to imagine a
more perfect combo. Creative Assembly's long-running Total War
series built its reputation on heat-of-the-moment battles, strategic
campaigns, and a drive for authenticity in both setting and
historical period. It's unsurprising that this methodology translates
so well to Warhammer Fantasy.
Since its inception in the 1980s, its world, lore, races, and rosters
have been fleshed out in both army compendiums and roleplay
books to the point that it has its own complete history. Still, there's
always been potential for further development, and that's the
territory where Total War: Warhammer 3 plants its flag.
The first game explored the game’s traditional setting, the Old
World of the Empire, the second game took us to the New World
As Ursun roars, rifts open across the campaign map, allowing you to
access the Chaos realms and fight your way into the heart of each.
However, every domain has its own unique challenge. In Khorne's
realm you have to sate the blood god's taste for violence by
defeating other armies, Slaanesh offers you ever more extravagant
bribes, and Tzeentch, The Changer of Ways, literally changes the
way through his domain with a puzzling portal network. If you can
overcome each trial, you get to take part in a final battle against
their champion.
Back on the home-front, though, the rifts are corrupting your
provinces and spewing out Chaos armies to raze your settlements.
Since the rifts open periodically throughout the campaign,
balancing expansion and defense is the central challenge, as you
quickly switch focus between enemies within and without. It's a
structure that works brilliantly for a single playthrough, but
unfortunately doesn't offer much replayability. The Chaos Realms
are wonderfully realized in a visual sense, but the repetitive
challenges, and the fact that the Chaos Rifts interrupt your
campaign makes them quite frustrating, especially if you prefer an
open strategy experience. It's no wonder that since the game's
each of the game's races. If you can stick a bear to it, Kislev has, with
polar bear cavalry, bear warsleds, and bear-pulled cannons. They
even have a giant magical bear that's formed from the earth, with
trees sticking out of it. As ever, CA's single-entity monsters are on
point. Cathay, on the other hand, is more like if you took a standard
Three Kingdoms' army but added a dragon, Terracotta giants, and a
fleet of floating artillery lanterns. Despite their flashier units, both
factions focus on ranged superiority, and it feels pretty epic to stand
your ground and unload all guns against a charging horde of daemons.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the amount of tactical variation in
the daemonic factions' playstyles. Tzeentch is all about overwhelming
firepower, with massed ranged infantry and magic for days. Slaanesh
is the epitome of glass cannon, squishy as hell, but incredibly fast
and great at flanking. Plague god Nurgle’s forces are a slow,
inexorable tide with massive unit health pools and regeneration
that lets them soak up missile fire. And Khorne focuses on blending
infantry and getting aggressive. The daemonic rosters in general are
a real treat, as you induct more and more weird-looking
monstrosities into your ranks. It's one of the reasons that the
Daemon Prince faction is so good.
change how he performs on the battlefield. If you can't decide
which Chaos faction to choose, this acts as a taster campaign,
letting you combine the strengths of different daemons into the
ultimate army. Though each daemon faction is fun in terms of its
specific playstyle, this is definitely a better alternative to playing
four fairly repetitive campaigns.
Total War: Warhammer 3 is absolutely a worthy sequel in terms of
units and factions, but as it stands, the Realms of Chaos campaign
structure kills replayability, which is one of the central appeals of
the series as a whole. It also isn't helped by the fact that its current
map features territory from previous games, like the Empire,
Norsca, and the World's Edge Mountains, and that regions like
Cathay are squashed, and have little room for expansion.
That said, I have no doubt that the Immortal Empires campaign,
which combines all previous maps, will solve those issues and
provide a platform that supports the game for years to come. If
you're in two minds about whether to pick up Total War:
Warhammer 3 yet, it might be better to hold off until that campaign
is released in Q3 alongside the first Lord pack DLC. (Sean Martin)

102 Wyrd Science www.wyrdscience.online 103

HIT POINTS: SOLO GAMES
As the years go by, more and more designers are realising and exploring the potential of solo RPGs
and finding them a rich soil for fun, engaging, and oftentimes emotional experiences. My last round-up
of reviews – which I wrote nearly a year ago, how time flies! – spoke of the pandemic and Zine Quest
and their effect on the solo RPG landscape and this year has been much the same.
Albeit that Kickstarter did a last minute, barely explained, and still utterly baffling rug-pull on hundreds
of designers and moved the whole Zine Quest event to August forcing the indie RPG community to
come together under the banner of ZiMo or Zine Month just a few days before the event was due to
start.
Fun times.
But let’s put all of that behind us and instead focus on some fun games! (Anna Blackwell)
The Broken Cask
by Derek A. Kamal
It baffles me still that even in our little niche, there are solo RPGs out there that I might never have
heard of and The Broken Cask is one of them. I’d never seen it mentioned anywhere until Amazon
suggested it and I’m glad it did, though not for the right reasons. The Broken Cask is a solitaire inn-
keeping game, similar to the ones the indie video-game scene has been serving up quite frequently in
the last half decade. You play as the innkeeper, randomly generated or made up as you see fit, and
you deal with all manner of “wacky” events like a depressed giant stepping on your inn or hosting ye
olde job faire. All while building up your inn, hiring workers, and sending mercenaries out on quests and
while there’s enough in here to be enjoyable to the right sort of person it rings hollow to me.
Most of the events are difficult to weave into your own narrative and the results of every event often
boil down to stat increases or decreases, earning some cash, or gaining a piece of loot. Some events
do create interesting story beats but they are few and far between and with very little guidance it’s
easy to find yourself scratching your head or worse, giving up entirely as I did after a few hours of
learning and set-up and trying to play.
Bucket of Bolts
by Jack Harrison
Quick disclaimer – and I promise to be fully objective in this round-up – Jack and I are both part of a
game design collective known as Rainy Day Games and so interact quite frequently. But I’d be remiss if
I was to leave Bucket of Bolts from this list as Jack’s previous game Artefact is what got me into solo
RPGs in the first place and Bucket of Bolts builds upon that system beautifully.
In Bucket of Bolts you play as a spaceship as it is passes through the eons, going from one captain to
another and it is a wonderful experience. Much like its predecessor, it deals with feelings of
abandonment and loss and yet can leave you with such hope and a ship that you become incredibly
attached to. The journey of your ship from factory fresh to meteor dented, laser burned, retrofitted,
and emotionally damaged is exactly the kind of emotionality that makes solo RPGs so meaningful.
With rules that are easily explained and evocative, it is so easy to write whole stories around the
prompts that Bucket of Bolts provides.
104 Wyrd Science
HIT POINTS: SOLO GAMES
Be Like A Crow
by Tim Roberts
As it says in the title, this solo RPG is all about being “like a crow”. Not only can you play as the
eponymous crow but you can even be a jackdaw, magpie, blackbird, or raven as you explore various
settings, interacting with randomly generated characters, items, and places as you journal about your
corvid’s life. The book has event tables and hex-maps for modern day adventures, fantasy, steampunk,
cyberpunk, gothic horror, and even a conspiracy centred around the Tower of London and its famous
corvids.
You start off as a fledgling and grow up as you complete randomly generated Objectives which are
quite varied depending on the setting.
For such a silly seeming game, it actually has quite a lot of heart and plenty to do to keep even the
most casual corvidae fan interested. The only downside are that the pre-made maps are a bit sparse
but it does encourage the creation of your own so it can be forgiven.
Definitely one to check out if you want to tell a very different type of story.
Route Finder Intercontinental
by Aeronautique Games
Less of a solo RPG and more of a book-based-solo-boardgame that looks like your typical zine but
requires some… persuasion of the staples to release the all important Route Map and various roll tables.
The premise is that you are a solo pilot (or team/ rivals if you’re playing the multiplayer modes) trying
to prove the routes between places like London and Cairo, Hong Kong and Hanoi, Rome and Athens.
As you play, you’ll have to upgrade and repair your plane, deal with random events, find funding from
sponsors, and make it to your destination alive. It’s all D6 based and as a solo game, opens itself up to
roleplaying even if the designers never take it into that territory.
Secrets of the Verdant Isles
by Craig Campbell
Wondrous is a word that doesn’t get applied to enough games in my opinion but Secrets of the
Verdant Isles is exactly that. In this solo journaling RPG, you end up on the eponymous Verdant Isles
and must learn to survive while exploring this truly wondrous place.
As you search out from your initial shipwreck, finding items like spyglasses, fin shoes, or wine; and
critters like Nimblethim the Whumple that will help you in the game’s various skill checks, you will come
across the island’s inhabitants whom you spend much of the game glimpsing then getting to know via
tables that make your islands inhabitants unique.
On top of this there are 80+ detailed events that give the world a sense of magic and surreality and
each have their own skill checks that, if bested, provide some benefit to your character.
If exploration is your jam then Secrets of the Verdant Isles is an amazing little game full of beautiful art
that will let you explore for many hours.
www.wyrdscience.online 105
Hit Points: NON-FICTION
GAME WIZARDS
Jon Peterson / MIT Press
Game Wizards, the latest book from RPG
historian Jon Peterson, begins with a standoff.
It’s 1985 and in a board meeting attended
by the main shareholders of TSR, the original
publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary
Gygax is about to discover he’s lost control
of both the company and game he created.
Having given us this brief glimpse of the
story’s dramatic conclusion Peterson takes
us right back to beginning, the tail end of
the sixties and the first fateful meeting of
the game wizards of the title, Gygax and
Dave Arneson, who would both lay claim to
be being the inventor of D&D.
Few can compete with Peterson's encyclopedic
knowledge of D&D, and role-playing games
in general, as seen in books such as Playing
at the World and The Elusive Shift, and in
his usual, meticulous, manner this is a
wonderfully deep dive into what he calls
the ‘Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons’, first
between Gygax and Arneson and then
Gygax and his corporate partners, the Blume
family and, ultimately, Lorraine Williams.
106 Wyrd Science
From the beginning it’s fair to say that Arneson
and Gygax’s relationship is tricky. If you had
friends who were dating with similar vibes,
you’d be silently willing them to chill out
and break up. Despite this they, initially,
have a fruitful creative partnership but that
soon sours and barely two years from D&D's
commercial release Arneson walks away
from TSR before Gygax can demote him,
ostensibly for not coming into the office,
from Director of Research to a job in shipping.
TSR, of course, continues with D&D
releasing a raft of new books as the decade
progresses and the acrimony between an
embittered, exiled Arneson and Gygax
takes on main character energy throughout
the book. Still there are lots of fascinating
details to discover outside of their spat,
from the origin of the terms “role playing
game” and “dungeon master” and seeing
beloved publications -such as the first ever
Players Handbook- emerge, to learning
some of Gygax’s more flavoursome insults -
“jealous orks” and “a two faced shaft
master” are just two recorded for posterity
here- and there are peeks behind the scenes
with Peterson making liberal use of the
TSR's in-house publication, Random Events,
and lots of original illustrations, documents
and pictures further fleshing out the story.
As you'd expect from Peterson the research
is thorough but moreover this is a true page
turner as each chapter covers a year marked
by turbulent exchanges, be they with
lawyers or competitors, personality clashes
within the company and, towards the end
of the seventies, rapid expansion, huge
influxes of cash and the start of some truly
wild spending that would eventually lead to
quixotic projects like exhuming a sunken
ship from Lake Geneva or even attempting
to sponsor the US Olympic bobsled team.
Throughout the book are plenty of show
stopping moments to enjoy as the
roleplaying game industry seems, at least at
first, to inexorably grow and each year is
punctuated by rival conventions and
releases. The ceremony where Arneson
plays Kanye to Gygax’s Taylor Swift,
snatching an award from right out under his
nose being a particularly notable incident.
As the 70s gives way to the 80s we also get
to experience the “satanic panic” from the
inside. After the disappearance of a student
from Michigan State University is blamed on
D&D and the story goes nationwide the
game suddenly has a notoriety like never
before. Initially this provides a huge boost
to sales but soon televangelists are
declaring D&D to be the devil’s work and
anti-occult organisations are campaigning
against the game. It’s fascinating to see
how this affected the company with Gygax,
perhaps not too reluctantly, becoming a
public figure to answer the game’s detractors.
The picture Peterson paints is of a dysfunctional
company, one that is often out of its depth,
and the fact that D&D survives and thrives
to this day is testament to the many
passionate staff, who despite the machinations
and chaos behind the scenes, generously
shared their imaginations and creativity with
us. In truth neither Gygax, Arneson nor the
Blumes come out of the story particularly
covered in glory. Still, without the initial vision
and drive of these Game Wizards the world
would indeed be a drearier place, and it all
makes for an enthralling story at any rate.
Last year I had a chance to speak to
Peterson (see Wyrd Science Issue 2) and
asked him what he’d gleaned from all his
research. “The success of games depends
on the communities that play and nurture
them - and the origins of games do too,"
he told me. "No matter how novel an idea
is, or how successful it becomes, ideas
emerge from communities, and success just
means that a community is ready for the
idea. Game designers who forget that tend
to lose their way. If you are fortunate
enough to know real success, don't ever
believe it was all you.” (Mira Manga)
SLAYING THE DRAGON:
A SECRET HISTORY OF
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
Ben Riggs / St. Martin’s Press
Dungeons & Dragons and TSR, the company
that created it, are inseparably baked into the
history of roleplaying games. The minds that
worked there built the most famous system
and some of the most memorable RPG
settings, so how is it that TSR was able to
go bust, not once but twice?
That’s the question that Ben Riggs answers
in his new book Slaying the Dragon. Riggs is
extremely well placed to tell the story. He is
a geek native and also a Wisconsinite with a
long history in games journalism. Indeed, the
genesis of the book was,that whilst researching
a series of articles on the history of D&D, he
came to understand that the story he had
been told, and always believed, about the fall
of TSR was not even close to the full picture.
The classic version of the TSR collapse is
that it was “death in single combat” with
Hit Points: NON-FICTION
rivals Wizards of the Coast, who would go on
to buy TSR after it went bust. Slaying the
Dragon tells a far more complex story though,
one of heroically poor business choices that
collided with a dramatic crash in the market.
The basis of the book is an extensive series
of interviews Riggs conducted with former
TSR staff. Crucially though Riggs speaks to
many of those on the business side of TSR,
those whose stories had, to date, been ignored.
The book rattles through the early days of
both the company and D&D, the golden
age of TSR, the running of TSR by the
Blume twins, and the trials of the satanic
panic. It’s clear that whilst the game itself
was well received, the company was being
mismanaged by Gygax and the Blumes
eventually leading to the company being
acquired by Lorraine Williams. It is this, less
commonly studied, ‘Williams era’ at TSR that
the majority of the book is focused on.
Beyond completeness, the inclusion of the
Gygax era in the book serves to counter
the perception in the collective geek
imagination that Gygax was a saint and
Williams a villain. Both characterisations are
false according to Riggs.
While Riggs hedges by referring to Gygax
as an ‘unreliable narrator,’ he lays out the
many inconstancies between the facts
behind TSR’s initial decline and Gygax’s
ousting and the way that he would tell the
story later in life. Riggs makes the case that,
contrary to Gygax’s later claim that he was
not responsible for TSR’s first collapse, he
was aware of and party to some of the
poor business practices under the Blumes’
management. Moreover, he had the chance
to prevent Williams’ takeover of TSR before
he was forced out but passed it by. Riggs
laments that Williams and Gygax were
unable to develop a working relationship.
Williams gets, correctly, blamed for the
ultimate end of TSR, but it is also true that
she also saved it, kept it going for twelve
years and was, in many ways, the better boss.
Editor John Ratlif is quoted in the book
saying “I never met a single person who
was under both [administrations] who didn’t
prefer being under her.”
One of the major charges made against
Williams -especially by Gygax- was that she
“held gamers in contempt.” And while the
book shows that she didn’t understand D&D,
Riggs argues that the products published
under her were, “undeniably awesome in
berth, depth and production value.”
Unfortunately, while TSR may have been
making good games, the business was still
in trouble. Though the company didn’t
indulge in some of the ridiculous mistakes
of the previous era, (I.e buying out a
relative’s embroidery company) many of
the errors documented in the book are
infuriating: losing key novelists over contract
disputes, falling out with DC, insisting on pushing
Buck Rodger’s products to name a few.
The biggest issue was the loan system that
TSR had with Random House. It allowed
large sums of debt to build up within the
company that, when a decline in the TTRPG
publishing market began, meant that they
quickly ran out of cash. Things got so bad
that they ended up having to sell their
office to their printers to cover their debt.
Ultimately the book shows that there was
no single cause of TSR’s failure, but a build-
up of mistakes and short-term thinking that
when combined would sink the company.
Slaying the Dragon is a needed retrospective
on the second era of TSR and a balanced
reevaluation of Williams. It is unfortunate
that Riggs was unable to get an interview
with her and acknowledges that without
that the story will never be fully told. That
limitation aside, it is a fascinating story of a
game, a business and the people behind
both. (Luke Frostick)
www.wyrdscience.online 107
Hit Points: NON-FICTION
Vampire Cinema - The
FirstOneHundredYears
Christopher Frayling / Reel Art Press
As much of this magazine has shown, few
creatures of the night have taken root in
popular culture quite like the vampire. To
mark a century since F.W. Murnau’s gothic
masterpiece, Nosferatu, first brought the
count to the silver screen, cultural historian
Christopher Frayling has produced a lavish
book that tracks our fanged friends’ rise to
international stardom, from their origins in
the muddy fields of Eastern Europe all the
way to the, hopefully not too, bright lights
of Hollywood.
Of course the vampire had existed in folklore
long before Murnau’s, very, thinly disguised
adaptation of Dracula, made a star of both
its lead, Max Schrek, and established the
vampire as a box office draw, and Frayling
traces its bloody journey from the rural
folktales of the eastern fringes of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, into the salons of
108 Wyrd Science
Parisian haute societé via diplomatic
dispatches before dramatically entering
popular culture.
Frayling explores how books like John
Polidori’s The Vampyre introduced us to an
aristocratic, abusive, seductive and often
sexual character, setting the template for
the vampire as we know him, in Frayling’s
words, ‘a sophisticated urban figure, rather
than a yokel’ and started a craze for
vampire fiction that would culminate in
Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula. First published
in 1897, Frayling describes Dracula as a
‘synthesis of the various vampiric themes
and motifs which had been resurrected,
interred and resurrected again over a
seventy-five year period’ and its success,
not least when adapted for theatre at
Stoker’s own Lyceum Theatre, set the stage
for the vampire to become 20th century
horror cinema’s leading man.
Whilst the image of the urbane Count may
have stuck, the bloody meat of Frayling’s
book -an incredible visual archive of movie
and television stills, production shots,
Hit Points: NON-FICTION
posters and prints, many aptly unearthed
for the first time in years - shows just how
malleable a monster the vampire actually is.
Having warmed us up with Max Shrek’s
unnervingly feral Count Orlock, the suave
top hat and tails of Bela Lugosi and
Christopher Lee’s magisterial performance
in Hammer’s Dracula, the vampire would
explode across screens in the 1960s and
70s as they became the subject of everything
from straight up horror to psychedelic
experiments, action thrillers, comedies,
blaxploitation films. erotic movies -
especially, it must be noted, those featuring
lesbian vampires- and so much more.
Each decade has given us its own, multiple,
takes on the vampire, reflecting (or not) our
current culture and its concerns; as Frayling
points out ‘By the late 1980s, the point of
Bram Stoker’s original story had been
inverted, with the Count becoming the
liberator and his victims the forces of
orthodoxy and repression’ and he takes us
right up to date as we bear witness to the
genius as Buffy (the television version at
least) and Twilight’s lovelorn glittery
vampires provide us with the ultimate
transition from ‘soul-less fiend to lost soul
to soul mate’. Frayling even finds space for
the subject of one of this year’s weirdest
memes, Marvel’s Morbius, though what that
last one says about our current culture I’ll
leave for future historians to ponder.
So, villain, victim, hero, anti-hero, lech, liche
and lover, the vampire has occupied many
roles, often at the same time, and as we
career through the 21st century our love
affair with Frayling’s ‘pallid saigneurs’ shows
no sign of abetting. Vampire Cinema - The
First One Hundred Years then is a worthy,
well researched, tribute to these much-
loved monsters in what ever shape they
choose to take; a visual feast filled with
stunning imagery and fascinating stories of
the Count’s cinematic exploits you could
do a lot worse than invite this book into
your house this halloween. (John Power Jr.)
All images taken from Vampire Cinema - The First One Hundred Years [Reel Art Press] © mptvimages.com
www.wyrdscience.online 109
HIT POINTS: FILM/TV
Will Salmon returns will all the latest from the worlds of film
and TV and, aptly for our horror themed issue, brings with him
news from this year’s FrightFest film festival...
At the time of writing I’m just back from 2022’s FrightFest - London’s
annual horror spectacular. FF is always a delight - a chance to meet
and hang out with horror fans, mingle with actors and directors and
fully immerse yourself in the good, the mad, the weird and, yes,
sometimes the bad films that make up the bloody heart of the genre.
There are so many films shown each year at FrightFest (almost 80
this year alone!) that it’s always a bit of a Choose Your Own Adventure
festival with no two people seeing the same lineup. For my money,
though, 2022 was a strong year, with my favourite by far being Something
In The Dirt, the new feature from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.
Two loners living in a beaten-up apartment block in LA find evidence
of the supernatural and set about documenting it, in the process
falling down a never-ending series of obsessive rabbit holes that
may mean nothing, or everything. A palpable sense of madness,
paranoia and - just possibly - divine revelation bleeds from every
frame of this brilliant, singularly strange film. At the same time, it
works as a dark comedy about two damaged men desperately
searching for meaning in their lives. A massive return to form for
the directors after the so-so Synchronic, it will baffle many, but
those who get into it will be fully besotted. On general release in
November it comes highly recommended to fans of Grant Morrison,
Twin Peaks and The Leftovers.
One of the biggest draws at the festival was Dark Glasses (AKA
Occhiali neri), the latest from octogenarian giallo auteur Dario
110 Wyrd Science
Something In The Dirt, XYZ Films
Argento. He's on familiar territory here with the shlocky tale of sex
worker Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli), who is first blinded then stalked by a
maniac. The results are a bizarre mix of slasher flick and melodrama
as Diana gets a pet dog, befriends a small child and is attacked by
river snakes. Honestly, it’s not very good, but there are enough
glimmers of Argento's past glories (unsurprising, as the first draft of
the film was scripted decades ago) that it made for an entertaining
90 minutes. Argento himself was present for the screening, receiving
a loud and lengthy ovation that you suspect was more for his
undeniable contributions to cinema than for this particular movie.
I also enjoyed another slightly warped take on the slasher flick,
Travis Stevens' A Wounded Fawn. Art dealer Meredith (Sarah Lind)
is tentatively stepping back into the dating world and meets Bruce
(Josh Ruben), unaware that he has a dark and deadly secret. The
two head out to his cabin in the woods where things proceed to
get very strange indeed. Stevens' film is a grab bag of horror
cliches, but it looks incredible with a delicious filmic grain and
superb use of light and colour. There are echoes of both Fresh and
Alex Garland's Men and while some may find its bonkers second
half frustrating, Lind is excellent.
Finally, not at FrightFest, but doing the rounds of the UK's art
cinemas currently and soon on home release, is Welsh-language
horror The Feast (AKA Gwledd). The debut feature of sometime
Doctor Who director Lee Haven Jones mixes eco-horror with social
satire as young Cadi (Annes Elwy) helps out at a dinner party for a
wealthy family who intend to exploit the land around their starkly
modernist house. A slow burner, for sure, but it's worth a go for its
doomy atmosphere and deliriously unsettling final third.
I LIKE LOWER DECKS TOO, Y’KNOW
It’s been a weird year for the many-headed hydra that is modern
Star Trek. I used to love Discovery (particularly around season two)
but have come to find its current far future incarnation increasingly
irksome. Look, I’m an emotional man - hearing a Mitski song is liable
to make me burst into spontaneous tears in the supermarket - but
even I’m sick of this crew hugging and heart-to-heart-ing their way
through every cosmic crisis. Picard's second season, meanwhile,
started strong but seemed to collapse in on itself as the weight of
its insanely tangled (and, you suspect, heavily rewritten on the fly)
plot became too heavy to bear.
Thank goodness, then, for Strange New Worlds. Finally, someone
had the bright idea of making a series that was unembarrassed to
actually look and feel like Star Trek. The new adventures of Captain
Christopher Pike (Anson Mount, radiating Hot Dad charisma) have
somehow felt both reassuringly familiar (the show is not shy on
resorting to tried and true Trek tropes) but also modern with a nice
mix of episodic adventures and serialised character arcs. This is a
cast and a crew that you want to hang out with, but at the same
time the show isn’t afraid to get dark and dangerous when it needs
to. Above all, it's fun and optimistic - you know, like Star Trek was
meant to be! - and we need that more than ever right now.
FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT
I saw a tweet recently that made me laugh but also highlighted
something I think is kinda true. A user called @dan_ofthesouth (who
I don’t know or follow) posted “TV without fuck around episodes
isn’t Real TV”.
This was in response to some recent discourse about Breaking
Bad's "Fly" episode, in which drug kingpin Walt and his partner in
crime Jesse spend an hour trying to swat a fly. Not a lot else
HIT POINTS: FILM/TV
happens, but it's funny, beautifully directed by Rian Johnson
(director of the best Star Wars film, you may recall) and gives us
some nice insights into the show’s two leads. At the time, of course,
a lot of fans hated it for not moving the big cartel plot along.
This got me thinking about fuck around episodes (as they shall
henceforth be known) from genre TV. The SF or horror equivalents
of "Fly", the shows that hit pause on the big arcs and took time out
to do something a bit different. Here are a few of my favourites.
"Gotta Light?" from Twin Peaks The Return. The present day
storyline inches along for the first 10 minutes before giving way to
an incendiary Nine Inch Nails performance. It then jumps back in
time to 1945 for an extended, wordless interpretation of the
detonation of the first atomic bomb, before transporting you to
another reality entirely (the White Lodge?) and then to 1956 and a
possible origin story for the show's main villain. Utterly mesmerising
and terrifying stuff that’s as far away from cherry pie and black
coffee as it’s possible to get.
Doctor Who's "Love & Monsters". Controversial among fans this
one. The Doctor's barely in it. Peter Kay plays an alien that looks
rubbery even by this show's standards and it features two
outrageously filthy gags (the blow job one is nothing when you
realise what Jackie is implying at one point). But it's also a
beautifully judged depiction of fandom and how a small group of
outsiders find a home in each other.
Of course The X-Files did a lot of wild episodes, but the pinnacle is
surely "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" - a baffling, hilarious
deconstruction of the show itself. Mulder and Scully investigate an
apparent alien abduction, but with its multiple points of view and
puzzlebox structure it becomes impossible to work out what - if
any - of what we're watching is "real". It's also straight up hilarious,
like Thomas Pynchon writing an episode of mid-90s network
television.
Anyway, those are my faves (see also the episode of Farscape
when everyone gets stoned and just about every episode of
Community). I love when TV shows are playful like this. Spending
extended periods of time in a fictional world, pushing at the edges
of its reality or getting to just hang out with the characters is one of
the advantages that TV has over film. It’s the opposite of the "really,
we're making a 20 hour movie" bilge that producers like to trot out
from time to time. What are some of your faves?
Will Salmon is a freelance entertainment journalist
Find him on Twitter at @evilrobotbill
www.wyrdscience.online 111
APPENDIX M
Mira Manga comes out from behind the
back of the sofa as we catch up with the
adventures of our own bard-on-the-run.
So, that was Wyrd Science’s horror edition!
If you’re a scaredy cat like me I hope you
made it all the way through. Friends see me
coming and wistfully close the Aliens book
and pop Cthulhu back on the shelf to
choose something fluffier. At my games
club’s Secret Santa while everyone else
received Grimdark gifts I ended up with the
My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria RPG. And
honestly that’s just fine by me!
Life is, however, sometimes stranger than
fiction, and lately I have found myself acting
as a puzzle consultant for a horror game.
Wander backwards through the mysts of
time with me, as I work out exactly how I
got here.
During endless school summer holidays I
remember how my brother, our cousins,
and I would mob my aunt, Kristan. While the
other adults walked ahead, we’d travel
through another world that she would
imagine into being for us. “You’re in a
castle,” she would say. “You see a magical
fountain with a queen drinking from it and
there are exits to the north and west.”
112 Wyrd Science
She would make up encounters, puzzles
and riddles which we vied to solve as we’d
become completely absorbed by her
quests. Her career as an architect clearly
helping her navigate the sprawling
adventures she created for us. She held the
floor plan in her head and would guide us
through with the skill of a veteran dungeon
master.
I was thirsty for more, and that thirst was
slaked when we got hold of some text
adventures for our ZX Spectrum home
computer. Precious cassette tapes of The
Hobbit, Jacaranda Jim and The Knight’s
Quest were the gateway games that would
prime me to eventually discover actual
tabletop RPGs.
Adventure games have remained a part of
my life ever since and I was delighted to
discover that Roberta Williams, legendary
designer of games such as King’s Quest,
Phantasmagoria and Black Cauldron among
others, has emerged from retirement to
announce Colossal Caves 3D, a game
based on iconic early text adventure,
Colossal Cave Adventure.
Colossal Cave Adventure is one of the most
influential and important games ever
written. It directly influenced the next wave
of text-based adventure games and
without it we wouldn’t have all the
adventure and RPG computer games that
are so beloved today. I can’t wait to once
more stroll into Roberta’s vamped up
dungeons and bask in the nostalgia.
Around the same time, Ron Gilbert the
creator of the beloved Monkey Island
adventure series was teasing followers with
cryptic tweets before picking April Fool’s
Day to announce the release of a brand
new sequel after a thirty year absence from
the franchise. It was my gleeful tweeting
about these topics, Ron Gilbert and I
sharing a joke about lasagne and the
Twitter algorithm that prompted Fossil
Games to make contact with me. They
specialise in delivering weird and wonderful
pixel art games taking inspiration from
classic 80’s horror movies. For some reason,
they believe I am qualified to contribute
creatively to their oeuvre. Their first two
releases Camp Sunshine and Sunshine
Manor are cult favourites and fans eagerly
await the next release…no pressure then, as
I rack my brains for suitably terrifying
puzzles to appease their craven desires.
Luckily I recently acquired a new flatmate,
specifically Fiona of the ‘What Am I Rolling’
podcast, in which she runs a brand new
group of players through a one-shot
adventure, tests out a different RPG game
style or system twice a month. As well as
sharing her boundless knowledge of horror
games with me, she took me to visit Leyline
Press, publishers of indie roleplaying games
and sci-fi & fantasy adventure modules.
Founders Panny and Aled turned out to be
two wonderfully enthusiastic game
designers who presented me with
Andromeda, their creepy module for the
sci-fi horror roleplaying game Mothership.
Andromeda is a fluorescent fold out zine
and comes with a UV torch which is pretty
essential for ease of reading and makes you
feel like Mulder and/or Scully as you study
details of a union dispute that descends
into terrible chaos and symbiotic horror
shenanigans. I’m ready to channel Ridley
Scott and run it for unwitting friends who
won’t believe that their meek and mild
friend will be able to put them through
Event Horizon levels of distress. The things
I’ll do to match the current Wyrd Science
vibes are quite frankly worryingly co-
dependent but hey, have you ever met a
bard before? We’re all people pleasers
here…
Good nightmares my friends, until next
time!
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