Slay To Find Out

Hello! Obligatory plug for the new issue which seems to be being rather well received by those who've read it so far. If you'd like to join their esteemed ranks then head over to our site and grab a copy today (for anyone waiting for PDF copies, it should be up on DriveThruRPG and Itch early next week).

It's also been great seeing quite a few people put in second orders picking up back issues, so a reminder that for the rest of October at least you can still grab a bundle of issues 3-6 and our few remaining Johan Nohr & Łukasz Kowalczuk t-shirts at a knock down price (more merch coming soon, scarves even!).

One last thing on this, in an attempt to keep the lights on here we are going to try something totally new for us next week, that is paying to advertise the magazine. To try and make this feel a little less awful we'd like to include a few comments from real humans who've enjoyed what we do, so if you have a pithy one liner you don't mind us using fire it over to me and we'll include what we can. Thanks!

Ok, that's certainly enough self promotion for one newsletter, I'm off to try and secure image rights to use the Portland Frog Wizard as our mascot and I'll leave you to read on for news of a fancy new edition of one of our favourite lighter dungeon crawlers plus a roundup of other great stuff to check out, from AD&D's horrific trade in baby beavers through to the frankly beautiful coming together of Warhammer and model railways.

Till next week, stay wyrd...

John x

Currently crowdfunding and worth a look...

DURF Expanded

Emiel Boven's rules lite, OSR adjacent RPG DURF has been around in various forms for a few years now, as I type this I'm looking at the rather nice Collected Edition that LFOSR published way back in 2021. DURF Expanded though is a whole other beast taking the Collected Edition's 32 pages and, well, expanding that to a much more robust 200+.

Looking at the free to download Core Rules it would, thankfully, appear that those extra pages haven't made the game incomprehensibly different and DURF is still very much the game we've enjoyed in the past, a simple 3 stat post-OSR Gold for XP RPG, with a streamlined inventory system and a somewhat more whimsical, if still deadly, take on dungeon crawling.

What all those extra pages do seem to bring to the table is a big old bestiary filled with over 100 monsters, several grimoires worth of spells and magic items to help explore the dark, procedures for both wilderness and dungeon exploration and a chunky set of appendices containing everything from optional character classes to guides to dungeon creation and random encounters.

Accompanying the core rules is a, presently, 60+ page adventure zine containing, presently, 3 adventures for low level heroes that will see you explore a long dead's wizard's home, brave a forbidden temple and battle rats and magical hangovers in a long abandoned brewery. More will be added as stretch goals along with an even bigger bestiary and solo rules should it raise enough (I suspect it will).

We have to say the post-OSR scene is starting to get a little crowded of late as several games that have existed as zines for a few years, such as Cairn, Mausritter etc, have all evolved into fancier more fleshed out editions. But with its lighter tone, thanks in no small part to Emiel's gorgeous illustrations, and clear set of procedures we think there's still, just, space enough for DURF to carve out its own corner of the scene.

DURF, on Kickstarter now until November 2nd

Back it now!

Previously in The Gazetteer...

Coinpusher : Galactic Surge - Relive the fun of shoving coins into an old end of pier arcade machine without needing to leave the house. On Kickstarter until October 11

Art & System - Tim Hutchings heads up this new project from Central Michigan University to preserve tabletop game history. On BackerKit until October 30

All the gaming stuff that's kept us staring into the black mirror this week...

Roleplaying Games

++ We'd planned to speak to Clayton from Explorers Design about his experience being an Ennie judge, but he's clearly got bored of waiting for us to send over questions as he's done his own three part debrief. Well worth digging into, especially if like us you have opinions about award ceremonies (and the Ennies in particular).

++ It's another banger post from the Blog of Forlorn Encystment, this time looking at AD&D's rather grisly trade in animal parts (something that I admit is one of my favourite things in the Forbidden Lands bestiary) and enslaving baby beavers (amongst other critters).

++ What Would The Smart Party Do? celebrate 200 episodes! Join Baz & Gaz for a trip down memory lane.

++ Over at Rascal Thomas Manuel speaks to Shannon Appelcline about his forthcoming massive 4 volume history of every D&D product released in the game's first few editions. Keep your eyes peeled for more on this here.

++ Bud Baird, who sadly passed away earlier this year, has been posthumously awarded the Greg Stafford Memorial Award for Gloranthan Fandom.

Boardgames

++ Charlie Theel comes through correct with a new philosophy and board games piece looking at the appeal of those hard to beat games.

++ Dan Thurot in conversation with Amabel Holland about the mysterious City of Six Moons. Great stuff as ever.

++ We're guessing something leaked that shouldn't have, hence the somewhat half arsed announcement that there's a new Warhammer Quest game on the way. I'd still love to do a kind of oral history of the last iteration Cursed City to really dig into what on earth happened there but anyway, generally speaking being Quest enjoyers ourselves this is something to look forward to.

++ An interesting piece up on Boardgamewire that gives an idea of how precarious the board game business can be, where companies might only ever be one dud away from collapse.

Wargames

++ If you're in Manchester or thereabouts on Saturday then you might fancy popping in to check out the second annual Games Workshop Research Day which runs all day from 9:30 until 20:30. Split into three parts, the morning will be dedicated to talks about Games Workshop’s games, the afternoon will be a ‘playable exhibition’ in which presentations will be paired with games, and the day will conclude with a social evening of live Blood Bowl action.

++ What happens when you combine model railways and Warhammer? Good times, obviously.

++ Some more heart warming stuff from the world of grim darkness.

Art, music, books, films, tv, weird shit, just all the other stuff we like...

++ One of my favourite genres of reporting here from the BBC where they take a break from fluffing billionaires to actually looking at what deeply weird sociopaths they are. Reminds me of this CLASSIC by Douglas Rushkoff that ran in The Guardian from 2o22 which featured such amazing details as the dude wondering if he can make his private security team wear shock collars in the hope they wont skin him alive 30 seconds into the apocalypse.

++ For reasons I can't fathom no one told me they released a documentary film about the incomparable Tura Satana this summer. One for this weekend then...

++ We've featured graphic designer John Hicks work a couple of times here but I was particularly taken by this post he put up this week on the process behind designing the flyer for the upcoming Ambient Witney event.

++ Something is rotten in the state of publishing, and no it's not just the smell of garlic mayonnaise flavoured ink...

++ A nice visit to the vault this week where we exhumed Hypnogoria's 3 part series on Usborne's seminal World of the Unknown books.

++ No notes, perfect.

Let's drift into the weekend with Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe's Suddenly I'll admit I slept on their collaborative album, Luminal, when it was released earlier this year but with the release last week of its (2nd) sister album, the ambient Liminal, I've gone back to it and, well, it's rather nice.