Wyrd Science Magazine

A horse rider with spear and an incredibly badass conical goblin helmet

A woman in some kind of blank faced habit with the top of her head on fire, she looks like she’s manipulated genetic lines for 10,000 years to make sure you were born and you turned out to be a soft as shit dickhead

A load of couriers all wearing face mask sat around a yurt at the feet of a dude in a gold suit sat on a throne with his own face a pitiless void

A dude on a horse, the horse has fucking antlers and somehow that’s not the gnarliest thing here, again his helmeted head reveals a terrifying Stygian abyss where his face should be

Seen a couple of clips the past week from some 1995 Kyrgyzstan documentary The Universe of Manas and had to check out the whole thing. Just absolutely fucking unreal levels of drip here

youtu.be/jgJZCaOI5KE?...

well worth giving it a go, just stunning visuals throughout

If you've never come across Once Upon A Time, the ground-breaking narrative card game I designed with Andrew Rilstone and Richard Lambert, this is an amazing bargain for a really good cause and I recommend you get on it.

probably not the best choice of word as it blends various different genres of film making but then I didn't expect more than 5 people to see this post

a man in a white suit stands in a room ALT: a man in a white suit stands in a room

Well…

Ha, I really need to delete that jpg off my hard drive. For some reason it’s always the version I ever grab, thankfully we’d fixed that before the actual release

A little study for lunch

oh I love it

The cover to Wyrd Science issue 2, it features a linocut illustration by Mat Pringle that pays homage to the DnD B/X box set cover replacing the people in the illustration with characters from Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Wanderhome

Ah just saw that WS2 is only five sales off going Gold on @drivethrurpg.com. Great issue that still holds up with features on DnD B/X, the OSR, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Wanderhome, Warhammer Soulbound & lots more. Get it cheap in our 6 issue megabundle here

legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/4991...

A horse rider with spear and an incredibly badass conical goblin helmet

A woman in some kind of blank faced habit with the top of her head on fire, she looks like she’s manipulated genetic lines for 10,000 years to make sure you were born and you turned out to be a soft as shit dickhead

A load of couriers all wearing face mask sat around a yurt at the feet of a dude in a gold suit sat on a throne with his own face a pitiless void

A dude on a horse, the horse has fucking antlers and somehow that’s not the gnarliest thing here, again his helmeted head reveals a terrifying Stygian abyss where his face should be

Seen a couple of clips the past week from some 1995 Kyrgyzstan documentary The Universe of Manas and had to check out the whole thing. Just absolutely fucking unreal levels of drip here

youtu.be/jgJZCaOI5KE?...

A wizard pondering his orb which is a mesh ball with a chicken in it, i don’t know, make of this information what you will

Digital spring cleaning and found this, thought you all might enjoy it without any context before I bin it

The fun thing about this is I’ve been struggling for over 2 months now to read a rather dense philosophy book on games and as far as I can see 90%, at least, of academic game studies appear to be focused on defining what a game is & no one seems particularly keen to state we have a definitive answer

Kieron says that I should run Rifts. I probably won’t but if I did it would go like this. - Old Men Running The World Just two RPGs dominated my imagination from 1987 to 1996: TSR’s D&D and Palladium’s Rifts. A few years ago I did go back and run a couple of D&D

Something or someone prompted me to post, again, about ultimate 1990s #TTRPG, Rifts.

MAGIC BY ALAN GARNER (Author of:- The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. Elidor (published by Colins) will be in Puffins next year.) When you write to me some of you ask if I use real spells in books, and the answer is: yes, with bits left out-which doesn't mean that I believe the spells will do anything, but I'd hate to feel responsible for the conjuring of the demon Nambroth in sitting-rooms up and down the land. here's a spell (complete) to prove it: Does magic work? Of course it does and here's a spell (complete to prove it: "Lest fleas and bugs should plague you in the night, use this exorcism: Manstula correbo, budigofma, tarantula, calpe, Thymmula, dinari golba, caduna, trepon. When going to bed chant these verses nine times over, and at each repetition quaff three cups of good wine.' I don't see how that could fail. But for me written words are the greatest magic. Just think. I sit here and say 'annatoed gozzer'. And because I make some marks on a piece of paper you will think of this annatoed gozzer weeks, months or years later, and tens, hundreds or thousands of miles away. Annatoed gozzers don't live long, but this one will: it will last longer than any of us. That's real magic. Then there's the Dorset Ooser. That was lost years and years ago, but it must be somewhere still, and if everybody who reads this shouts 'Where is the Dorset Ooser?' it may be found again. That would be as good as magic. If you do find it, please send it to me, so that I can return it to the owner. I'm talking about the Dorset Ooser: please don't send an annatoed gozzer. Editor's note: Alan Garner says that he has published proof that there really is an annatoed gozzer and a Dorset Ooser.

Alan Garner on magic, Oosers and the lifespan of an annatoed gozzer which, yes Alan, we are indeed still thinking about more than 60 years after you wrote this

There's some very useful context in this (excellent) reporting on the Ryan Dancey blowup.

(1/4) We have become aware of a fraudulent website - ospreypress (dot) com - that is misrepresenting itself as Osprey Publishing. This site is not affiliated with us in any way.

That’s m’boy

As also seen on my parka

Author copies of ‘Fairies: A History’ have arrived! Publication date in the UK is 20 March www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b... 📚🧚

you'd be amazed at just how many things Brits can lose given a chance

I thought estate agents' enthusiastic embrace of genAI was the most telling union of new tech and industry but of course the PR Biz is here to show them how it's really done (badly & lazily)

MAGIC BY ALAN GARNER (Author of:- The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. Elidor (published by Colins) will be in Puffins next year.) When you write to me some of you ask if I use real spells in books, and the answer is: yes, with bits left out-which doesn't mean that I believe the spells will do anything, but I'd hate to feel responsible for the conjuring of the demon Nambroth in sitting-rooms up and down the land. here's a spell (complete) to prove it: Does magic work? Of course it does and here's a spell (complete to prove it: "Lest fleas and bugs should plague you in the night, use this exorcism: Manstula correbo, budigofma, tarantula, calpe, Thymmula, dinari golba, caduna, trepon. When going to bed chant these verses nine times over, and at each repetition quaff three cups of good wine.' I don't see how that could fail. But for me written words are the greatest magic. Just think. I sit here and say 'annatoed gozzer'. And because I make some marks on a piece of paper you will think of this annatoed gozzer weeks, months or years later, and tens, hundreds or thousands of miles away. Annatoed gozzers don't live long, but this one will: it will last longer than any of us. That's real magic. Then there's the Dorset Ooser. That was lost years and years ago, but it must be somewhere still, and if everybody who reads this shouts 'Where is the Dorset Ooser?' it may be found again. That would be as good as magic. If you do find it, please send it to me, so that I can return it to the owner. I'm talking about the Dorset Ooser: please don't send an annatoed gozzer. Editor's note: Alan Garner says that he has published proof that there really is an annatoed gozzer and a Dorset Ooser.

Alan Garner on magic, Oosers and the lifespan of an annatoed gozzer which, yes Alan, we are indeed still thinking about more than 60 years after you wrote this

The Ghost In The Shell Game

The press release does stress it’s an immersive RPG (& a bespoke system not 5e with a thin coat of paint) so we’ll have to see what it looks like

Anyway you can sign up here for more info as and when it’s available…

mailchi.mp/manticgames....

The proposed cover for The Ghost in the Shell RPG with, I presume, Motoko Kusanagi plugged into a load of wires

Interesting news, @manticgames.bsky.social have just announced they’re releasing a The Ghost in the Shell: Tabletop Roleplaying Game this year

They’re more known for their wargames and alongside Zak Barouh (Animon) the game is being designed by Alessio Calvatore (Warhammer, Mordheim etc) but…

Wyrd Science - Store the magazine for people who should roll better...

No mega rush there, at current rates that will take about 3/4 months to go but then again I still get emails every month from people asking after issues 1 & 2, so forewarned is +2 on your initiative roll or something as I can’t see us reprinting it anytime soon

But that’s available here (for now)

A copy of Wyrd Science issue 7 lying flat on a wooden table.

A heads up, from next week Wyrd Science 7 will no longer be available as the starting issue for a subscription, so if for whatever reason that’s important for you to know, now you do

wyrd-science.subsail.com/subscribe/

ALSO as of today we finally have less than 100 copies of WS3 in our warehouse

Would be good though I do first need to ‘homage’ the January 1997 issue of Select that came in a cereal box, might need to get a few more advertisers first though

ebay.us/m/Q4oi5x

excellent start, now we just need someone with strong opinions of your capitalisation of LARP and we're off to the races!

I've said it before but with our new more regular schedule I truly hope that the tabletop game community can put aside its usual agreeable nature & help revive one of the most beautiful traditions of old 80s White Dwarfs & start long running, snail paced beefs via the medium of our letter page

a red and yellow illustration of an excited beholder receiving some post

if you would like to have a rant/considered conversation about something Wyrd Science, tabletop games in general or the world, and have it featured in the next issue of Wyrd Science, then you have 2 weeks left to get your diatribes in...

send your green inked emails to letters@wyrd.science

Tol Eressëa, the Jersey of Valinor