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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1h

I’ve decided my number 1 wish for 2026 (barring world peace, making some money from this mag etc), is for the Romantasy scene to really embrace mucky choose your own adventure books and then go on and reinvent TTRPGs but totally separate and with little input from the established RPG industry

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Shannon Appelcline 🌮 @shannonappelcline.bsky.social · 2h

We're now 8 days out from the launch of Designers & Dragons Origins, and I did five interviews in the last week or so. (Whew!) Here's the first, with Orkus Dorkus!

Orcusdorkus - Prepping Impossible Landscapes @orcusdorkus.bsky.social · 3h

New episode!🎉

I sit down with @shannonappelcline.bsky.social, author of Designers & Dragons and This Is Free Trader Beowulf, to talk about his 15 year journey chronicling the stories behind the classic D&D modules we love in his upcoming series, Origins. 🤘😊 #TTRPG #DND

youtu.be/YlvDDXFDLZo

Interview with Shannon Appelcline of Designers & Dragons: Origins

YouTube video by OrcusDorkus' RPG Shenanigans

youtu.be

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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 4h

Getting banned from Epstein island after my first visit because I totally missed the subtext in the email chain and turned up with Catan and a load of D&D character sheets

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 3h

1975: Harlan Ellison visits Michael Moorcock in London. The Englishman sits Ellison in front of the TV when Dr Who comes on & insists Ellison “be quiet & just watch”. By the late 1970s,Ellison is such a fan of Dr Who that he’s taunting US scifi fans with declarations of its superiority over US fare.

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 2h

John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 4h

Getting banned from Epstein island after my first visit because I totally missed the subtext in the email chain and turned up with Catan and a load of D&D character sheets

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 2h

Can’t believe fun stuff is happening just up the road and this is how we find out 😫

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Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 3h

Tired Of Reality? Press advertisement for London’s Games Workshop

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 4h

Worth reading, don’t agree with everything here, of course, but it’s still an interesting perspective

Indie Game Reading Club @indiegamereadingclub.com · 17h

Hello friends. Needed to get some ideas down and break this quarter-long dry spell at the Club.

Empty whining? A manifesto? Maybe both.

The New Novelty

Hello readers. It’s been a while. You may have noticed I haven’t put anything up for a few months. Things are good here, no worries. No medical emergencies, no family or work drama. My kid’s school…

www.indiegamereadingclub.com

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 4h

So sorry Adam, take care x

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the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 7h

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible
- among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 5h

“John, why do you keep trying to shoehorn politics into games?”

“Because the Orlok impersonating vampiric presence that currently is the shadow president of the United States is about a week away from demanding he’s called Asdrubael Vect, that’s why”

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 5h

“Ok yeah so what you have to understand is the reason the US dropped a nuclear bomb on Venezuela this weekend is because of a major misreading of a key plot point from Dan Abnett’s Horus Rising, yeah kinda sucks doesn’t it”

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 6h

Totally not terrifying that there’s a very good chance that we’ll before the end of Trump 2, magazines like Wyrd Science will be required reading to understand why and how the most powerful people in the world are trying to immanentize the eschaton

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 8h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 10h

The whole era of exploitation films and transgressive cinema seems oddly quaint these days when there’s every chance you’ve scrolled past half a dozen real life atrocities in 4K ultra HD before you’ve had your breakfast

Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 10h

A new book? from pulse? all about Italian cannibal movies? sickos.jpg

Cannibal Worlds

The definitive book about the most controversial genre ever made: Italian cannibal movies! With more than 40 exclusive interviews.

www.kickstarter.com

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 10h

A new book? from pulse? all about Italian cannibal movies? sickos.jpg

Cannibal Worlds

The definitive book about the most controversial genre ever made: Italian cannibal movies! With more than 40 exclusive interviews.

www.kickstarter.com

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1d

Because games don’t exist in isolation we’ve introduced Sidequests, the new section of the magazine where you’ll find writing on everything from bands like Castle Rat through to fantasy inspired art exhibitions by artists like Jean Jullien…

A photo of the new issue of Wyrd Science open to an interview with the band Castle Rat

A photo of the new issue of Wyrd Science open to a piece on French artist Jean Jullien’s exhibition Juju’s Castle

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 12h

€31,000 raised in a few days, brb just changing the mag’s name to Not Quite Dwarf in the hope we get a c&d from Games Workshop

Grimace talking to Ronald McDonald, both are wearing construction site hard hats & Grimace is saying ‘lotta money in this shit’

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 12h

Ah perfect, what better way to start a Sunday than with a 50 minute long glacially paced mid 70s bbc paranormal documentary. Great stuff

HALLOWEIRD @johnnymains.co.uk · 4d

Today on the BBC Archive youtubes, I have mostly been watching THE GHOST HUNTERS from 1975.

Strange goings on, indeed. Benson Herbert is a one.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTqt...

1975: Meet THE GHOST HUNTERS | Classic BBC Documentaries | BBC Archive

YouTube video by BBC Archive

www.youtube.com

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𝖂.𝕯. @icastlight.bsky.social · 1d

Love the new issue of Wyrd Science for covering Castle Rat!

It’s a great issue and you should grab it. Also because it has good coverage Possum Creek Games x Steve Jackson union.

Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1d

Because games don’t exist in isolation we’ve introduced Sidequests, the new section of the magazine where you’ll find writing on everything from bands like Castle Rat through to fantasy inspired art exhibitions by artists like Jean Jullien…

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Reposted by Wyrd Science Magazine

Perplexing Ruins @perplexingruins.bsky.social · 2d

finished up this bad boy yesterday! commission piece for @thegeoffskinner.bsky.social in their upcoming project about titans

mountain city, in fog, large winged creature in background

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1d

Much like our waistline @emielboven.itch.io’s DURF has massively expanded since 2021, find out more plus discover all kinds of other interesting stuff that might provide some distraction from the end times in this week’s super cool Gazeteer

Slay To Find Out

In this week's Gazetteer, one of our favourite post-OSR games, DURF, gets expanded, Frogs cast a spell on you and what is better than Warhammer? Warhammer and model railways, obviously.

wyrd.science

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1d

it's just a shame that most of the right is so brain poisoned now it would be hard to really delve into that without it becoming a nightmare to deal with

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1d

I do think there is some really good stuff to be written about how as a medium (artistic or otherwise) role playing games do have more of a conservative (or perhaps slightly more accurate would be libertarian) genesis than most cultural 'things'

or at least more RW ideas in the mix early on

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1d

players in the early days and pulling the game towards a more narrative form, ultimately winning out over the wargamers you could say

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 1d

of people who play DnD, certainly today, don't really know (or care tbh) about.

but even that more nuanced understanding of US RPGs roots then leaves out the perhaps equally important role that the (often female led) SF/F zine scene played

both in providing a fertile recruiting ground for

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