There is some superb coverage of tabletop in the nowadays, and some of our favourite stuff comes from Mr John Power Jr. If you have encountered Wyrd Science in either electronic or paper form, then you have seen his work. Wyrd Science is the sort of tabletop coverage we deserve, with an eye to TTRPGs that pleases both myself and Gillen enormously.
Issue 7 of Wyrd Science is out now, and it’s delightful. Below the cut I talked to Power about the new issue, but also repost the vast and rambling interview we conducted last year about how the project came to be. If you read it, and you should, there will be some tales told that you will find very familiar indeed.
If you’re a British game designer, you work beneath a cloud – both literally and figuratively. For the former, it’s really cloudy here, For the latter, it’s a small country that homes a big company. Unless you come entirely outside the standard gaming ecosystem, Games Workshop likely have touched your life. It’s there. How can you deny it? How can you escape it?
As such, when I heard about Ex Tenebris, I was intrigued.
Josh Fox and Becky Annison’s Black Armada Games have a golden run of interesting games which take and then show real mechanical understanding of what’s at their core. To choose a few examples, Lovecraft-esque Lovecraftesque was ahead of the curve on the post-modern adventure format that’s the current big thing in mystery games. Bite Marks is the pack-centric werewolf game that really understands what it means to be Alpha and to be family. And now , with Ex Tenebris, they’re doing a grim far-future RPG about investigators digging into occult incursions and xeno-conspiracies which can destroy civilization…
I would be less interested if it wasn’t them. As it is, I’m very interested.
Yes, It’s very clearly influenced by the Inquisition in Warhammer 40k, as turned into an RPG in Dark Heresy… but look again. You can forget the modern, bespoke mechanics (but why would you?) but the specifics of the setting seems to make the point all too clear – specifically, it a game set after a grimdark empire has fallen, about a civilization trying to form itself in the aftermath of this star-addled fascistic fuck-up. That’s intriguing for me – it admits the interest and the formative influence, but also – in mechanics, text and subtext – speaks of the need to move past it.
I’m also in the mood for games which assume fascism can fall, and we will then work out what to build in the ruins. That sounds like a useful theme to me.
IMPORTANT NOTE: this interview was originally for the TEETH RPG newsletter, which is very interesting and good, and you should subscribe to it. We conducted it just as the book was being distributed. I am sure we’ll talk about Deathmatch Island in detail elsewhere, since we’re very PARAGON-y over here, and there is much to talk about. Suffice to say, it’s a fascinating implementation of what we think is one of the most interesting RPG systems, and its creator, Tim Denee, is well worth getting to know.
We first became aware of Graham Walmsley’s work with Cthulhu Dark, an influential Lovecraft-in-miniature masterpiece which removed everything that distracted from investigative stories into beings beyond our ken (and perhaps even beyond our barbie), and gave it a firm underclass-looking-up-perspective.
Now, with Cosmic Dark, presently kickstarting, he’s back, turning his attention away from beings from beyond the stars, in favour of taking us all up there in an an A24ish sci-fi space-elevated genre RPG.
Jim’s note: this was actually in the last TEETH RPG newsletter, but I figured I would cross-post because the Kickstarter has now gone live and it looks fantastic. Malcolm Craig is an erudite creator and has plenty to say. If you missed this before, go read!
Malcolm Craig is a senior lecturer of American history at Liverpool John Moores, but his interest in both the Cold War and in RPGs runs much further back. Now, nearly twenty years on from his original indie releases of Cold War RPGs, he’s releasing a new edition. Having been intrigued by this prospect when we talked the Jon Handiwork a few newsletters ago, we were glad to find that Malcolm was also up for a little chat.
Jim’s note: this interview is from the TEETH Newsletter back in 2023, but with TTRPG-adjacent Citizen Sleeper 2 imminent (yes! At the end of the month) so we thought it timely to repost here on Old Men.
Who is this person? Why, it’s Gareth Damian Martin, the writer, game designer and artist that some of you will doubtless recognise from Citizen Sleeper, a game that could hardly blend our interests any more concretely: inspired by the dice-pooling magic of Blades In The Dark’s role-playing systems and combining these sleights of dicery with the satisfying solo crunch of the digital game. Not played it yet? Then do so, right after, or perhaps even before, reading this. We talk to Gareth about the connection between tabletop RPGs and digital games and their – inevitable? – slide back towards an RPG of their own, Cycles Of The Eye.
