Stay Away From That Thing
Hello there. You are reading the TEETH newsletter, written and compiled by mild wizard Jim Rossignol and wild alchemist Marsh Davies. This is a newsletter about table-top role-playing games: our own—that we’re publishing over here—and some by other lovely people whom we link below. Want us to see your work? Get in touch!
THE PROCESS IN PROGRESS
TEETH playtesting was the thing of the week, with our usual band of adventurers riding the barge through the cordon around The Vale and into the border town of Gatlock.
In case you are new to the thing we are working on: TEETH is a game of monster hunting set in 18th century England, 1780 to be precise, in a wild tract of England where a terrible occult accident has thinned the barrier between our world and others. The setting’s main settlement is, of course, a border in more sense than one: between The Vale and the rest of England, and between this world and those other places which now trouble the characters which walk its darkened hills. Like all border towns it has a flavour that comes from straddling worlds, leaving it ultimately unlike either territory that encompasses it.
Our band of monster hunters, like all the player outfits in TEETH, have their own agendas to deal with, in their case to make or repair their fortunes rather than just to hunt monsters, but making the two ends meet is the challenge this group has set themselves.
And so, after navigating our new starting scenario, the gang found themselves in the nearby Ashyards: a brick foundry in which a creature from the depths of the Vale had set up residence, terrifying the workers and putting the local brick magnate’s nose out of joint. The pompous lady instructed our player characters to get in there and get her people back to work, but also to stay away from that thing she has hidden under a giant canvassed scaffold at the back of the yard. You can imagine how that went.
Anyway, skip this next bit if you want to avoid all spoilers pertaining to the TEETH book, but read on if you want to get a real sense of the flavour of the piece.
Once inside, and beginning to be very nosey indeed, the team decided to get under the scaffold and assess what the snooty magnate was up to. This required our Sapper, the engineer of the crew to get up into the machine they found there and assess its working. A mild challenge and time for a dice roll. Did that go badly? You can be sure of it! Making a terrible noise, the hapless sapper immediately attracted the attention of the things lurking in the factory building. Things plural, because it was not just one beast here, but multiple vulipids, one of TEETH’s unique monsters.
And here is where things get delightful. Vulpids are dogs animated by fell powers, a sort of canine golem made out of mud, clay and other detritus. A potentially challenging enemy, but wait, the real issue is how does our team make money out of their monster hunting? How does one defeat magical mud dogs and also make an extra buck? Always quick to apply lateral thinking, Olly (Skillman-Wilson of The Signal From Tolva fame) reasoned that, given they were in a brickworks, there must be a kiln. Why was this useful? Well, like everyone else on the team, Olly’s character is motivated by coin, and their particular backstory in that regard is that they are a struggling taxidermist trying to make a name for themselves by selling creatures never before stuffed by taxidermy.
The moment of clarity dawned: if Olly could lure the vulpids into a kiln then they could be defeated without destroying them, and fired, with that clay and mud turning them into instant sculpture - surely worth a fortune! This, of course, was the cliffhanger ending I chose to pause our session on, and so I’ll have to let you know if he managed it next time.
(And it is, I have to say, this kind of inspired use of what’s provided by players that truly makes TTRPG stuff worth playing for me. I had planned none of this and just improvised things based on the setting. Suddenly the players are fully engaged with it and writing their own story. I couldn’t be happier.)
Next up, Links!
No, wait, something is in the way.
AN INFORMATIVE PLUG FOR OUR THRILLING TRIO OF STANDALONE, LOW-PREP/HIGH ENTERTAINMENT ADVENTURES SET IN THE TEETH UNIVERSE:
STRANGER & STRANGER, a 63-page, campaign-length adventure in which a group of hapless bumpkins attempt to save their village from abomination, while undergoing a series of grimly amusing mutations.
BLOOD COTILLION, a 45-page one-shot in which assassins dress-up in fluttering petticoats, attempt to infiltrate a society ball and murder the cultists therein. Think: Pride & Terminate with Extreme Prejudice.
NIGHT OF THE HOGMEN, a 23-page one-shot in which an assortment of travellers are forced to flee a massive horde of monstrous pig-creatures. It's name-your-own-price, so you can dive in without onerous financial risk!
They're all low prep, rules-lite and easy to get into. Hogmen is particularly ideal for newcomers! Please do check them out, and, if you are interested in supporting our exploits, please do buy a copy!
Okay, now there are links.
LINKS
The Kickstarter for the awkward titled but utterly exquisite-looking HORIZON RISING has just 30 hours left on the clock at the time of writing, so you’ll have to be quick if you want a piece of “a battle ravaged playground of so-called deities, crushed under its own opulence, destined to drown under the relentless sea.” And just look at that old-school artwork. Incredible. What do you even call that style? A sort of eroded newsprint woodcut abstract. There’s a bunch more of it here, as well as links to their OSR setting stuff.
Fascinated by zine-length RPG The Sol Survivor, and will have to find an excuse to run it. “Inspired by Chinese Mythology, players share the role of a sun who was shot down from the sky. We tell the story of their journey to make it back to the heavens before the world is plunged into eternal darkness.”
Five days to go on the Kickstarter for Mimics, An Unnecessary Work, which I will back even in spite of Reed’s determined deprecation: “As always, everything I have put to paper should be ignored once you realize just how worthless it truly is. I am positive that your own creativity can lead to far better ideas than I’ve offered in the unnecessary work.” But just look at this stuff. And the bonus gelatinous cube pamphlet? Exquisite. It also makes me realise that I don’t believe I have ever used a mimic in anything. What sort of GM am I?
I don’t know where this splendid illustrated page of how dwarves fight humans came from. Any ideas?
Chris B is, as I write this, doing another one of his huge readthrough threads, this time of D&D 4e. I hugely recommend these, especially if you want to conceive of how people might react to your own books, and he links to the others in the thread. I am always fascinated by reactions to 4e, because it’s easily the most contentious one, and the edition the delivered a real backlash. I also ran two simultaneous campaigns with it a few years ago and had a great time.
I somehow missed this previously, but Tom Mecredy’s High Speed Low Drag is a solo-journalling RPG about the human cost of war which well be worth a look even if you don’t usually dally with this sort of thing. “Based on the award-winning Blades in the Dark, High Speed Low Drag takes the Forged in the Dark framework and revolutionises it for solo play.” That’s a hook.
It’s rare that we link to stories in the Bournemouth Echo, but research this week uncovered the story of the 18th century vampire of Dorset, William Doggett. “Workmen exhuming Doggett's body are reported to have found the workmen, exhuming his body, found his legs had been tied together with yellow silk ribbon and his body was not at all decomposed.” Did he also have some pointy teeth? Folklore says oh yes, absolutely, and I am sure he did.
—
More soon! x