On Zines, Quests and Bondage Nuns

I bought my first fanzine in 1993. I was on one of my regular pilgrimages to the city to check out the independent record stores for cool imports with skulls and shit on the cover when I spied it. It was at a little hole in the wall outlet called ‘Rock N Roll Wearhouse’. A […]

Dark Venture-The Colour out of Space

One of the greatest advantages that the tabletop gaming hobby has over other prevalent entertainment mediums such as cinema or videogames is that of scale. In a world reigned over and mercilessly throttled by design-by-committee thinking, focus group testing and lowest-common-denominator economy as ambition – the world of chit and card remains a place where […]

WET GRANDPA- SOMETHING STIRS UPSTREAM

As the party descended further into the murky confines of the labyrinth, a T-junction splayed before them to posit a banal binary fork. In the flickering glow of their torchlight, the party bickered arbitrarily until the tell-tale yelp of the goblin commander announced a malicious presence and the PC’s reflexively reached for their side-arms. “Roll […]

Death Robot Dungeon Bastards- The LP as Game

It was only a matter of time until the parallel revivals of all things analogue collided. In an age of the digital, ephemeral and disposable, the reactionary embrace of physical media has seen both the Tabletop and Vinyl Record scenes come spiralling back into prominence as people seek to reclaim a sense of ownership and […]

Mutants & Mullets- Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland

If the neon smear aesthetic and outrageous neoliberal excess of the 1980’s are perhaps too oft romanticised it is perhaps because in truth they represent the last decade we are able to compartmentalise as a neat universal cultural touchstone. Before the arch irony of the 1990’s and the post millennial splintering of the monoculture into […]

Under the Sign of the Black Mark- MÖRK BORG’s twin basilisks speak

In its impassioned embrace of equal parts ‘return to roots’ simplicity and psychedelic predilection for unbridled esoteric weirdness, the old school renaissance (or OSR) has gifted the world of tabletop RPG’s with one of its most fertile and exciting periods in decades. As the phenomenon of role playing continues to make inroads into the mainstream, […]

Neurocity – Operating Manual for Spaceship 2020

When contemplating the unprecedented automated march of the 20th century, any fully realised overview must consider the extent to which the transformative technological leaps and evolutions of the past 100+ years were first coined, conceptualised and presaged in the pages of science fiction. In any telling, credence must surely be lent to these scribes as […]

Into the Trees- The Weirding Woods of the Storymaster’s Tales

Weekends at my grandparent’s house were always coloured by the contents of their bookshelf. Amongst the dauntingly fat spines of Leon Uris and Robert Ludlum, the alluring cover art and typography of CS Lewis and the blood and horns pulp of Henry Treece sat the worn hardback spine of a 1960’s omnibus of fairy tales […]

MÖRK BORG – Dungeons & Downtuning

“The wind from the west, from the sundered land. Rot rides it, and the stench of blood. Cursed walker, will you travel there?” The world is burning, jackbooted storm-troopers blanket the streets in gas, ancient aboriginal sites are destroyed, our collective heritage and future is siphoned from the earth and filtered into hedge-funds and the […]