The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow

Happy Giant Pumpkin Day to all who celebrate. Very short newsletter this week as it's been a stupidly hectic week and we're off to the woods now for a weekend of playing games, casting spells, reading the new issue of the wonderful Fiddler's Green which just arrived and generally getting up to the kind of antics that even American college students in an occult slasher film would consider a bit on the nose.

If, and that's a big if, we make it back to the city in one piece there's going to be a few changes to this newsletter, and what in corporate speak we might call our online offering over the coming weeks, but I'll leave that till then.

Apart from that though I guess our big news is that those of you who have wanted to read the new issue of Wyrd Science but don't like the idea of trees being killed can rejoice as it is finally up on both Itch and DriveThruRPG.

For everyone else the print edition is still up on our site and I have to say looking lovely. Thanks to everyone that's bought a copy already and dropped us a line about it, I genuinely think this is all round the best issue we've done, so far, and it seems most of you agree. Which is nice. Lets make another shall we...

Right, I'll leave it there for now. Couple of seasonably appropriate arty/comic book things for you to check out below (weirdly it's felt like a very slim week for game stuff, but maybe that's just me) and I hope you get all the tricks and/or treats that you deserve this weekend. So until, hopefully, next week... Stay wyrd

John x

Currently crowdfunding and worth a look...

Seconds to Midnight: Book One

Whilst caped crusaders have long dominated comics, for me the platonic ideal of the form is the slightly grotty horror anthology, think Tales from the Crypt or Eerie, comics whose ghoulish hosts would introduce fiendish tales of murder, magic and maleficence.

So what better day then than Halloween to give a spooky shout out to artist Frederik Hornung's Seconds to Midnight anthology, which has just a couple of days left to run on Kickstarter. We stumbled across Frederik's art last year and we've been head over heels in love ever since, especially his retro comic styled Warhammer 40,000 art. Beautiful colours, heavy on the textures, gloriously pulp, what's not to love there.

Seconds to Midnight then is a 40 page anthology collecting together 4 years worth of horror shorts that Frederik has written and illustrated, a love letter to old school style stories filled with demons, witches, revenants, people getting their comeuppance and all that good stuff all done in Frederik's distinctive style, just perfect for a spot of pre-code inspired horror grot.

Seconds to Midnight, on Kickstarter now until Nov 2

Back it now!

The Spectral Vision of Gothic Romance

Sticking with the spooky theme (and because I got bored trying to find a game to write about and was becoming endlessly depressed by all the slop I was wading through) we have to tip the latest book from art curator Thomas Negovan's Century Guild, The Spectral Vision of Gothic Romance.

Dedicated to "exploring witchcraft & the occult through vintage paperback cover art" this latest book is focused on the kind of wonderful art that in the middle years of the twentieth century graced the covers of any self respecting gothic romance novel.

Think beautifully rendered tableaus of young women in diaphanous gowns legging it from terrifying looking castles whose inhabitants only ever seem to be able to keep one light on at a time, these "painted covers spoke of emotional courage, forbidden knowledge, and the thrill of choosing one's own fate." That fate being to catch a death of a cold I'd guess considering how most these women are dressed but still a wonderful addition to any book shelf.

The Spectral Vision, on Kickstarter until Nov 14

Back it now!

Previously in The Gazetteer...

Cannibal Worlds - A glossy coffee table book that gets stuck into the strange 70s genre of Italian Cannibal movies, not for the feint of stomach... On Kickstarter until November 2.

DURF Expanded - Much like our waistline Emiel Boven's post-OSR dungeon delver DURF has vastly expanded since 2021 whilst losing none of its lightness of touch. On Kickstarter until November 2.

Pendragon Classic - To mark its 40th anniversary Chaosium are bringing back the original 1985 box set of Greg Stafford's storied game of Arthurian adventures. On Kickstarter until November 4.

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

Roleplaying Games

++ Feels a bit obvious to keep linking to Gillen and Rossignol's excellent Old Men Running the World blog but then they keep delivering the goods, and Kieron was on fine form this week looking at what it is that excites him about RUNNING a game these days.

++ Another regular to this part of the newsletter, Idle Cartulary dug into the fascinating sounding Spine solo-RPG this week, a game that takes MORK BORG's auto destruction to new heights and which we'd love to try out.

++ Now, this is just a wild story from start to finish...

++ Excellent feature up on Wargamer on the work that publisher M87 are doing to translate MÖRK BORG into Ukrainian.

Boardgames

++ Industry veteran, and now Wyrd Science columnist, James Wallis delivered a fascinating talk last week at the Norwich Games Festival on what to do once you've designed a game. Well worth watching...

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

++ Look we’re well into the stuff The Skateroom does anyway (their gallery is just round the corner from our office here in BXL) but damn they've nailed it this Halloween, with a new range of Iron Maiden decks, all available for just 72 hours starting today...

++ The AA School in London are hosting a wonderful looking exhibition, The Word for World, which showcases the maps that author Ursula K Le Guin would draw before she would start each new book. The exhibition runs until Dec 6th and to accompany it Silver Press have also published a book.

AA School

Architectural Association School of Architecture’s website homepage is the online entrance into the AA; to its courses from Foundation to PhD for undergraduate and postgraduate students; its open public programme; to application; to what’s on and what’s new in central London, Dorset and global school venues.

++ Affinity, the graphic design software of choice for the indie game community has had a major evolution this week, with the three existing apps now combined into one, free to download, package. Obvious caveat that if you're not the customer you're probably the product apply, and with Affinity now owned by AI-happy Canva there's plenty of reason to be cautious but still well worth checking out.

Keeping it local, let's end this week with Run Free from Belgian stars Soulwax, whose new album All Systems Are Lying dropped last week and is at least temporarily making me feel young again...

Seconds to Midnight: Book One

The Spectral Vision of Gothic Romance

Roleplaying Games

Boardgames

Made it this far, you obviously like reading, why not buy a magazine and do it in style...