We Are Compelled To Summon Them Into Being
This is the TEETH newsletter, 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 now! And we shall play many others, and then write about those experiences right here.
This newsletter is written and compiled by unexpected downtime Jim Rossignol and scheduled maintenance Marsh Davies.
Hello, you.
Links!
Other matters.
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Hello, you
We had a meeting this week, the two of us, and the subject was this: what exactly are we going to do in 2024? We’ve quite a few ideas, of course, an entire list in fact, but there are a couple that are now howling to us across the void of non-existence and we must — we are compelled to — summon them into being. Hell, if you have been paying close attention to our themes, and the period we set the game in, you might be able to guess at least one of them ahead of time.
What are they? Well that’s a hot secret for another newsletter! But for now let’s just say that it builds on the theme we’ve already established for the TEETH games. We’ve got new and weirder TEETH coming, and we think you will like what we have planned.
Meanwhile, we’re going to be heading into 2024 looking at stuff that we’re enjoying, and talking about what we’ve been playing, but also looking at what we’re excited to play in the coming months. I’ve talked a bit about that below.
Our regular Monday night group is just wrapping up a short Mothership campaign — just in time to miss the now imminent arrival of the much-longed-for box set — and I will have some thoughts on that once we’re done. Perhaps to coincide with the arrival of that physical 1e unboxing! That would certainly be convenient subject matter for a newsletter.
We’re also planning a Blades In The Dark campaign. The TTRPG that started it all, for us, is beckoning once again towards a stabby, sneaky, twisty-turny outing. And we have some very specific parameters for that, too, which is namely that the GM (that’s Jim!) isn’t allowed to prepare anything at all. We’re just going to see what the players want to do to advance their crew, and play to find out what happens. Everything will come from dice rolls and player narratives. It’ll also be the first time we don’t initiate the campaign using the Blades starting scenario (having done so twice before) so that alone will be interesting.
I shall probably see the end of Chris Gardiner’s Conan campaign in the coming weeks, too, and that might provoke me to talk 2D20. It’s certainly been an entertaining dance with a system we’d not played before, and wanted to check out.
In the meantime, we’ve got some other features in the offing, too, with some unexpected interviews. And, of course, more about those future Teeth things! Stay subscribed! (You know, like “stay tuned” but for email.)
Oh, and also while we are all here: there will be some books of the full game on sale soon, just took slightly longer to organise than expected. Will notify on here, of course.
Marsh & Jim
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Community-building addendum: we have some Bluesky invites and we're only really on that platform currently. If you're a reader and want to get on there, please let us know via teethrpgitch@gmail.com
Limited availability, obviously!
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LINKS
Thing Of The Week/Month (?) is Ash McAllan’s City Of Red Waters. An alternative setting for Blades In The Dark, endorsed by Evil Hat and John Harper, City Of Red Waters is a tempting combination of the standard ruleset with new Crews and setting. Being a new setting means there’s a full round of new factions, a new map, and a city detailed in 50 pages of PDF. It also has some new rules that, delightfully, pulls in the under-explored vampire playbook from the original volume!
Look, we’re not a Forged In The Dark fan-letter, no way! Nor are we a Forged In The Dark fan archaeology letter, but this came across our desk this week and we do love that system and often get a bit giddy about the adaptations thereof. It looks like there was never a fully fleshed release of a fine-looking Western FiTD hack — perhaps no surprise given what Old Dog Games ended up making with Deathmatch Island, as we mention downthread — but it feels like there could have been. Also it would be frivolous of me to come up with punny titles for the superbly-named Blood Red Clouds In The Western Sky, but as a big fan of Cormac McRiskystandard, I can’t help thinking that I’d have called it Blades Meridian. (Ignore me, and go have a look at the Playbooks from a years-old hack. Imagine the full book of this!)
I must not be tempted by this incredible-looking minis game, but look at the tiny little models! It’s so small!
As my web of boardgame and TTRPG friends expands, I find myself in the market for more narrative-y boardgame stuff, which leads me to be very interested in stuff like War Story: Occupied France. “Your team of covert operatives is all that stands between the infamous German officer Heidenreich and the systematic destruction of French Resistance forces in Morette. Through three replayable story missions, you must exploit the specialties of your chosen agents to uncover information, enlist allies, and obtain weaponry.” It sounds great! And it also made me consider that I have never played an RPG set in a real war, not even WW2, which sounds amazingly unlikely, but there it is.
I’ve not read this yet, but I am extremely into the premise and aesthetic of The Lost Bay, and other folks are saying good things. “A suburban horror tabletop RPG set in alternate 90s.” It’s all about the vibes.
Comrade Gillen, because this is very much his department, pointed us towards the Kickstarter for Jukebox: The Karaoke Musical Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Nope, I could hardly imagine how it would work either, but it’s worth checking out to see what they’re planning.
A touch of theory from Quinn Murphy, with an effort to providing terminology for separating whether we are into a specific game from whether it’s actually good at delivering on its premise. The bit on Economy is something I am very interested in: “how much cognitive load a game incurs in fulfilling its promise. How many different rules and procedures does the game have? How complex are its rules? How much do we have to keep in working memory during play?” That last bit is striking, as a Forged player and author, because the Forged games are all very procedure heavy, but how much we have to keep in memory becomes low once the learning part has been achieved. I can remember us all reading the rules and saying “oh, how will this work?” and then once we’d internalised the action role sequence - which is, in fairness, a lot of steps for a single action, there was rarely occasion to slow things down by looking stuff up. That becomes an important factor for me when actually getting on with running a game.
Research this time brought us to the most incredible name for a war that we’re aware of. Also this map:
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FIVE THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO
Deathmatch Island
Deathmatch Island is absolutely top of our general list, partly because the book just looks so very much Our Sort Of Thing, but also partly because I have played AGON and was fascinated by its rules, and Deathmatch Island is built on the Paragon system, with a big nod to Arkane's lost gem, Deathloop as well as that Squid Game thing. I've not personally run a Paragon game with my group, and so backing the Kickstarter for this gave me the excuse to do so, in a zeitgeisty fashion that we don't often embody.
Mythic Bastionland
The early PDF of Mythic Bastionland that appeared last year lit up my various chat threads with interest, and it seems that was not an isolated event, with the Kickstarter becoming absolutely incendiary. The “dreamlike” setting of knights and hex-crawling is definitely on the menu once the book arrives. (Which should be later this year!)
Dolmenwood
To be frank, we’re considerably more like to get Mythic Bastionland to the table than Dolmenwood, but we’re super excited about the books themselves. Just look at it! Some PDFs that have already landed made me very pleased to have backed the KS. And we’re not going to count this one out, because we’ve got another crew getting involved in our sessions who might be diverted from some trad D&D to something a little more… colourful.
The Dagger Isles
No idea when this coming out, but as one of our crew asked whether The City Of Red Waters was the Blades expansion, I had to point out that, no, it’s not. It’s an alternative setting: the expansion, The Dagger Isles, set in another part of the existing Blades map, is still in the works. I don’t have my ear close enough to the trail to know anything much more about it than what Evil Hat have already said, and I am ignorant of how far off it is, but it’s going to be a Must Have for my regular crew.
As The Sun Forever Sets
Evil Hat are also publishing this Martian Invasion Victorian hex-crawl based on FiTD rules. Playing a group of period characters trying to survive the alien invasion before the microbes get them is about my favourite concept for a game in the past few years, so it’s a delight that it’s being brought in house and given the full treatment. I will absolutely running this when it arrives! Riley, if you’re reading this, we hope you will grace the newsletter with an interview to discuss your work.
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PSA: Another Good Book Recommendation
I occasionally recommend books on here and I just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s City Of Last Chances, which came out in 2022 and already has a sequel, which came out just recently. It’s an original fantasy setting with a revolutionary flavour, which I picked up entirely on a whim. It has shades of Blades In The Dark to it, for sure, but that’s not why I am recommending it, I am recommending it because I had a total blast, and it’s unexpectedly become one of my favour books. Inspiring stuff, go take a look.
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More soon x