It's Summerteeth!
Hello, you.
An internet landmine I laid for myself was in making a thing called Teeth on a site called itch, and now I have, thanks to Google, read about what happens when people get itchy teeth. Oh God.
And apologies: firstly, there’s no meandering essay this week, and last time we skipped a week due to a need to spend time in the sun with families! It’s an onerous task, but one that we pallid screenhawks must once in a while submit to. Thanks for your patience in the meantime. And we’re nevertheless back, Back, BACK! this week and all the weeks, but actually particularly next week, where we will likely be bringing forth some interesting interview subjects from the TTRPG writing community. Yes! Interviews! Real journalism, like in the olden days. Exciting stuff.
STRANGER & STRANGER is our third TEETH adventure (a “standalone”, we think, worth a couple of sessions, rather than a one-shot, as it’s bigger still than the previous games!) is almost done, and playtesting commences.
ENGLAND 1747
Fifteen years ago, something happened which shattered the small world of Dilbrook Waddle—a village of some hundred or so souls, huddled upon a sodden heath in a remote and forbidding part of northern England. What happened was this: there was a great, sourceless groan, the sky rippled with an iridescence, and all the birds fell to Earth like so many feathered rocks.
Things haven't been quite the same since.
More on that, soon.
In the meantime, we’re going to offer this newsletter which is filled with things we have collected in the past few weeks. Also, while I mentioned there is no essay this time, perhaps you can count my bloated blurb on Trophy below. We implore you to forgive us. We hope you are all doing well in these times where life is a lot.
LINKS!
I had not previous encountered “adventure battle game” Relicblade, but was recently (today, in fact) made of aware of by Mr Hewitt. The notion of creating tiny, intricate scenery slices to play this stuff on intrigues me greatly. (And would be a far cleverer approach to the hobby than my recent attempt to make an entire six by four Warhammer table. Foolish Rossignol.)
While we talk about scenery, look at the state of this. Credit to our kid for spotting that Warhammer monolith. I believe the creator is this talented chap.
Another thing that caught my eye was the first pages of Trophy Loom appearing, which are beautiful indeed. I didn’t talk about Trophy Dark back when we did our survey of the intense amount of games we played during 2020 (see the first half dozen newsletters!), because I just sort of ran out of steam for retrospecting. So why don’t I talk about it now? In a bullet point! Yes, that’s a good journalism. Trophy Dark is a narrative-heavy one-shot game of treasure seekers finding their doom in a fantasy world. It is a moth-to-a-flame tale in which you are all going to perish, and in which you play to find out how. Psychological horror is the order of the day, as you helm characters not prevailing over the darkness, but succumbing to it, coming apart, and leading each other to their ultimate demise in the terrible crevices of the universe. It has a powerful, dreamlike aura to the whole thing, and it’s both a refined and extremely raw game to actually play. Ultra-dark scenarios that go heavy on the folk-horror and hopeless fantasy faerie-tale grotesquery are central to Dark, as well as the rest of Trophy, and that’s reflected in the rules (which lean heavily on Forged In the Dark and such, but are very light indeed, predicated more on the story and character stuff then the complexity of the mechanisms). Fundamentally and crucially: if you attack a monster, you die. Yep, it’s that sort of vibe. Other approaches - particularly rituals - are provided, but these are really story devices for your downward spiral. All shall rot, etc. Gillen, who ran one of the standard scenarios (called Incursions) for us, later did a take of his own (which I think I linked before) based loosely and horribly on the supernatural terror that is Tom Bombadil, which you can watch in full over here. ANYWAY, Trophy Dark is the one shot, the pure form of the horror, while GOLD and LOOM are the forthcoming campaign rules and lore settings for wider play in this extremely evocative universe. I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on them. If you are not familiar then I suggest picking up Trophy Dark and taking a look. The other books are up for preorder, with release looming, if you’ll forgive the pun.
I am once again readily seduced by a Forged In The Dark game, this time Copperhead: “a Southern noir game about organized crime and political corruption in a fictional slice of present-day Tennessee.” Is that the first contemporary setting we’ve seen for a ruleset that might well have been designed for such things? Really? What? How odd.
Chris Bissette has done a big Birthday bundle of his diverse and excellent TTRPG stuff to fund a writing retreat to complete his novel. That’s a lot of stuff that you won’t regret getting for your birthday, even.
I do like the look of Mazes. And so do a few other people by the look of it. See that Kickstarter fly!
No no, I’m sorry: this RPG printed on a mug - “A Short Rest” - is the best RPG idea we’ve seen this month. Desperately need this, and to hope the dishwasher doesn’t chip off key rules.
Research this week leads us… actually this was one that Mr Gardiner of Failbetter Games dug up. But brooches made from human teeth might as well be Blood Cotillion inventory items.
Oh also, because the theme of the week somehow ended up being dating tanks, we have to link to this unloveable darling, the Bob Semple Tank, created in New Zealand out of, as a friend put it, “a need to build military hardware out of old wardrobes”. The reality is a startler: “The crew of eight included one gunner who had to lie on a mattress on top of the engine to fire his Bren gun.” Oof, and also yikes. Fortunately, it was never piloted in anger.
—
Love you! x