August 6, 2024

A Sort Of Seaweed Exoskeleton

Welcome to the TEETH newsletter! This is a regularly irregular transmission about our adventures in the very secret land of Tabletop Roleplaying-Games. We have published a whole series of our own TTRPGs! That series is expanding. In this regular publication we also look at other RPGs, play stuff, interview people. It’s a whole lot of newsletter.

What’s within is written and compiled by swirling algae, Jim Rossignol, and thickening kelp, Marsh Davies. Come and join us over on the TEETH Discord! Free tooth emojis for everyone.

And hey, if you can wish to support us and also get a fantastic 320-page RPG, you can BUY OUR BOOK. If you aren’t already a member of that rather cool and highly exclusive club. There’s a whole range of TEETH RPGs to go along with that.

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1. Hello, you.

2. Links!

3. Other Things

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Hello, you.

No big feature this week as we’re buried in work and, frankly, a little tired. Recently we’ve been playing through some games we’ve highlighted in the past, such as CBR+PNK and Trophy Gold. And speaking of CBR+PNK we think it’s more than worth noting that Mr Melo’s astounding design, which you can get ahold of here, won the design and layout category at the ENnies, for which our own book, TEETH, was nominated. It’s hard to feel anything but pride, especially to be nominated alongside these astounding books. If you enjoy the sort of RPGs we tend to play and make, and you like things with a strong whiff of cyberpunk, then I strong recommend picking the physical package of CBR+PNK up. The adventure pamphlets we’ve been exploring are some of my favourite material in games.

It was also a privilege to be recognised with a nomination for our first proper publication, and let me say that we are just getting started. We have another two books planned so far, one of which is well under way, and other of which will surprise you, because it has already surprised us.

And speaking of surprises, there will be plenty more in our forthcoming TTRPG, occult pirate adventure GOLD TEETH, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be teasing the book with some of our absurd concepts. As mentioned previously, one of our themes is colonisation, but of the body as well as of the world, and we have a number of horrible, living augmentations that our pirates will be able to make use of, including this, The Kelp Tendra, a sort of seaweed exoskeleton. Marsh, as ever, has knocked this particular design out of the park. And there’s more of this sort of thing to come.

And as always, we appreciate your support.  If you fancy or chat, or just want to lurk, then please come and join us over on the Teeth Discord.

Love,

Marsh & Jim

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LINKS

• THING OF THE WEEK: Stonetop creator Jason Lutes has created a new “GM resource” type book, Perilous Void, which is a content-generation manual, filled with tables and the like, for use with sci-fi RPGs. The previous “Perilous” book, Perilous Wilds, which was more skewed towards overland Dungeon World scenarios, nevertheless did great numbers on a revised edition for people looking for general fantasy encounter tables and so forth, and is a fine resource. I would strongly recommend these kinds of books to  GMs generally. We try to pack a lot of this sort of stuff into our TEETH games, as do many other RPGs, but having a book like this relevant to a scenario you are playing to immediately support the moments when you need to improvise and invent, is crucial. I rarely even use this “in the moment” now, either, having browsed them previously, I am often able to summon up something that it looks like I improvised, but actually stored away and then only adapted to fit later. Hell, I am planning to write an article about these shortcuts in GMing and ended up spilling a load of it out right there. But anyway, you might want to back Perilous Void. I certainly did.

• As the proud owner of an absurdly tall stack of 90s Rifts books there is no way that I can really justify this Savage Worlds reprint of the books, but it nevertheless calls to me. There is no universe in which I get Rifts back to the table, I fear, but the idea of a Savage Worlds remaster - an attempt to modernise the awkward and creaky Rifts Palladium ruleset which was bad even by the standards of the early 90s - nevertheless sits right with me. I really like the Savage Worlds ruleset in a lot of ways, but even that is feeling a little trad now when compared with the indie RPGs we tend to play now.

• I was intrigued by this essay (and analysis with graphs!) of what Zinequest is doing for the indie RPG scene. “Zine Quest projects are the food trucks of tabletop RPGs. The small size of projects submitted to the event places them within the reach of first-time developers through low upfront costs. Kickstarter handles much of the marketing. This allows less-well-connected game designers to get a start. And, because Zine Quest puts almost no restrictions on the nature of the games included, there’s room to experiment with niche, risky ideas that big game companies with an eye on mass appeal wouldn’t often invest in.”

• Our friends at Failbetter have announced a TTRPG of their much-beloved narrative setting of The Subterranean Smoke, Fallen London. This is a fairly big deal, as it’s been something that has been discussed regularly in the fifteen years since Fallen London first appeared. “Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game is slated for release in late 2025 along with a supplement, Fallen London: Secrets of the Neath. In addition, players will be able to complete their tools for gameplay with the Fallen London Dice Pack and Fallen London Gamemaster Screen. Gameplay will consist of proprietary game mechanics currently in development by Magpie Games.” Magpie an amazing match up for Failbetter, and we’re intrigued to find out a little more. We’ll get to on August 23rd, at 16:00 EDT/21:00 BST as beloved GM Jonny Chiodini introduces it in more detail on their Youtube channel.

• I finished Vajra Chandrasekera’s debut novel The Saint Of Bright Doors, over the weekend, and it was a struggle not to immediately start working on something inspired by its extraordinary South Asian contemporary fantasy setting. Occasionally you read a book and find that you can’t understand how it won so many awards, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case here. If there isn’t a wave of TTRPGs directly citing this a year from now I will eat my hat.

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Other Things

Seeing the ENnies winners come in made me pick up my copy of Eat The Reich over the weekend, as it rightfully secured a number of wins in different categories, notably best art in cover and interior categories, as well as best short form adventure. I think Eat The Reich shows off what fucking wizards its creators are, but it also benefits from being a slimmish volume: being able to illustrate every page of a book to that degree was obviously a joy for Will Kirby, and the rest of the thing showcases the cartwheeling chaos that Howitt is extremely capable in designing. Even the pun-led title (did the pun come first, I wonder?) speaks of the sort of experience this book is trying to inspire here: over-saturated, fast-burning. I am all for more of these kinds of books that I can run quickly, and excitedly, with a very easy buy-in from everyone involved, while having more heft about them than the zines that do so much work across the hobby. Colourful, ludicrous, funny. It’s potent stuff.

Perhaps what was most thrilling about seeing Eat The Reich do so well, though, was not just what it said about RRD’s capacity to create books of a flavour and production value that is at the top of what is possible in TTRPGs, but what it highlights about the hobby more broadly: increasing ambition amid multiplying diversity. Yes, 5e-but-cooler Shadowdark still picked up the big prize, but Outgunned (an action heist game that I have to admit I know nothing about) came in second, and with CBR+PNK, Break!! and Eat The Reich all picking up prizes, this feels the indie press era is growing in confidence as well as showcasing some extraordinary ability. The judges’ spotlight makes that even starker, too, with games like Chew (FitD food crime drama based on the Image comics series of the same name) getting some acknowledgement.

Hell, perhaps there is scope for a game of The Ludocrats after all, eh Gillen?

But then again, perhaps not.

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More soon! x