Hooks & Rumours #1

The Gazetteer is dead, long live Hooks & Rumours! I'll be honest I'm still trying to figure out what Wyrd Science's online presence should look like in 2026 but whilst that drags on I wanted to get back to doing my favourite part of the Gazetteer, rounding up the most interesting stuff that we've been distracted by each week. Plus it gave me an excuse to design a new logo, which I must say for once I'm vaguely happy with. Anyway, expect the usual mix of gaming and non-gaming stuff, after all, man cannot live on dice alone.

One last thing, Wyrd Science issue 9 is due out in September and we want you to be in it. After a couple of false starts for the first time there will be a letters page, so if there's something you've read in Wyrd Science that you want to comment on, or you just want to rant about the state of tabletop games then email letters@wyrd.science before Aug 9. Space is obviously limited so try to be brief (I know... pots, kettles etc) and we can't guarantee publication but we'll let you know if we can include yours.

Right, that's it, I hope you enjoy this first Hooks & Rumours selection and we'll see you next week.

John x

Stack x Wyrd Science

We'll start this off with some old fashioned self-promo. Stack is a wonderful subscription service based on a simple premise, you give them money and each month they send you a different indie magazine. It could be about art, music, sandwiches, who knows, but it's great way to dip your toes into the incredibly diverse world of indie mags and find something new. Stack also host a regular podcast and last month invited us on to talk Wyrd Science. It was the hottest day of the year so I sound even more flustered than usual but I got to talk about subcultures, magazines and try to explain what Warhammer is to the uninitiated, which is always nice.

How Games Workshop Changed the World

If you'd like to listen to someone clearly much better at this podcast business than I, then the always great value Jordan Sorcery is this week's Untitled History Podcast guest. Jordan joins host Gareth Edwards to talk about Games Workshop, how it grew to become the high street gaming behemoth it is today and the impact that the company's had, not just on the gaming world but also culturally and economically. Very relevant to our interests here, especially their discussion on actually piecing together a coherent narrative from often conflicting histories.

Hookland Fragments Volume 1

For over a decade now David Southwell has been engaged in a remarkable act of subcreation. Post by post on social media he's shared with the world the haunted county of Hookland, a corner of England where the landscape is a "thin green lid atop apocalypse shelters", cryptids roam free and the chants of UFO cultists and witch covens never quite drowns out the hum of the pylons. Earlier this year David gave a talk at the London Fortean Society on Hookland's roots in a childhood spent moving from one home to another whilst marinating in the high strangeness of 1970s' Britain and he's now published that talk, along with additional material, in this slim but very highly recommended volume.

Ian Miller x Make Ready x Tolkien

I've gone on about Ian Miller many times over the years, and with good reason. One of the most important artists of the past 50 years, Ian -alongside the likes of John Blanche- created a unique British fantasy aesthetic in the 1970s and 80s that still resonates today. Anyway, he's just recently worked with Make-Ready on two limited edition, fine art prints. The first, of his illustration of the Battle of Helm's Deep, originally published in 1979 in David Day's Tolkien Bestiary. The second, meanwhile, is a newer work, a privately commissioned take on The Balrog from around 10 years ago. Needless to say both are fantastic, the production quality is great (you can catch me raving about that here) and, bought unframed, are remarkably good value.

RPG Trader

It's no secret that TTRPGs have a marketplace problem with both the two main storefronts, DriveThruRPG and Itch, having numerous problems, especially when it comes to discoverability. Enter new kid on the block RPG Trader who have just launched and are focused, for now, on working with the indie scene. We're still to get WS up on there, I might try and have a crack at that later this afternoon, but right now we're hearing good things about it from those who have made the effort and there's some great bundles available to entice you over there.

Stephan Gladieu - Human Detritus

Back in the early 2020s French photographer Stephan Gladieu travelled to Kinshasa to shoot Congolese art collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle. Under the direction of visual artist Eddy Ekete the collective were reappropriating the vast amounts of trash the west dumps on the region, transforming our detritus into an incredible collection of masks and costumes. For whatever reason I was reminded of these the other day and they've still lost none of their power. If you take absolutely nothing else away from these photos then at least clock that your Cyberpunk characters can do a lot better than moping around in an old leather trench coat.

Kieron Gillen's 101 Greatest RPGs Ever (89-80)

It would be weird to start a new newsletter, or indeed anything without crowbarring something by Kieron Gillen into it. As it happens we didn't have to work too hard to do so as he's just published another ten entries in his list of the Greatest RPGs Ever (some caveats apply) which this time features a surprisingly low entry for Paranoia (though I'm guessing that might just be the Red Clearance edition).

The Archivist - OST

The Archivist, Tim Plester and Rob Curry documentary film tracing a year in the life of folklorist David 'Doc Rowe' is one of the best things we've watched this year. A beautiful and moving meditation of the passing of time and the value of community, tradition and place, the film is still touring the festival circuit ahead of wider distribution but the excellent soundtrack composed by Chlöe Herington (VÄLVĒ, Cardiacs, Swell Maps) has just gone up for pre-order over on Weird Walk's site.

Dungeons & Dragons x World of Warcraft

Looks like someone got a little too excited last night and jumped the gun, accidentally revealing ahead of GenCon that DnD are about to officially team up with World of Warcraft, in what could be the first of many such Universes Beyond style collabs. Irrespective of whether this or any future team-ups will be any good or not, it is interesting to speculate what other 'universes' could get the Big Ampersand treatment, especially as many of Hasbro's own heavy hitters (Transformers, G.I. Joe etc) already have their own (remarkably low key) RPGs currently being published by Renegade Game Studios.

Explorers Design - Public Domain Art Resources

Want to make your indie TTRPG project look good but can't afford an artist? Well, there's always AI though we'd suggest that's the quickest way to kneecap both your project and career. A much better option would be to mine the vast seams of public domain art that's out there, all of which can be used as is or, even better, as the building blocks for a collaging/photobashing project. Still, you do have to find it first, luckily Clayton from Explorers Design has provided this invaluable guide to hunting down the good stuff. So, there's really no excuse now.

The Thoughtlessness of Deathbringer's...

Deathbringer, for those of you blissfully unaware, is a new RPG based on current OSR-adjacent darling Shadowdark, written by YouTuber Professor DM and which is currently making absolutely vast sums of money over on Backerkit. For many reasons it's proved to be a, let's say, divisive game mainly due to its imagery, the somewhat tedious way it's been marketed and the varying reputations of some of those involved, a lot of which is covered in these two posts by Lizzie Magnolia.

With no exposure to the game beyond what we've seen promoted, we're reserving some judgement, but what has interested me about it is the seeming disconnect between the art and the copy. The game makes an unashamed grab for the corner of the old school market that believes that there is a manly way to roll dice. This is couched in all the usual nods to the uncorrupted gaming traditions of the 1970s and 80s, and yet the art direction screams advert for a forgettable late nineties console game. Which makes some sense when you think that the majority of the "old school" scene is today probably made up of people who first played DnD in the 1990s and I'm left wondering if this might be a sign of an aesthetic shift in, at least one segment of the OSR. Done well there's actually a lot of interesting design cues we can take from that era, and indeed outside of tabletop games it's one that's been on trend for a while now. Done badly though...

Quinns - The Future isn't Games, it's Play

An interesting talk given by Quintin Smith at this year's Guadalindie conference about his approach to game journalism, what the industry is missing and all the things it is doing wrong. Now if someone could give us some money maybe we could have a crack at this journalism malarkey.

Around the Worlds in Eighty Blogs

Back in May Prismatic Wasteland hosted a blogjam on the topic of randomness in TTRPGs. A nice round 80 folks chipped in, and all 80 of their posts have now been rounded up here. Working your way through them should keep you going for a while and hopefully introduce you to a few new blogs to boot.

Netherwilds - Return The Goat

Finally if you've enjoyed the likes of Castle Rat and Earth Tongue returning heavy metal to the fantasy realms of late but yearn for something a little earthier, then David Monks' new band Netherwilds could be just the ticket. Dubbed peasant metal the band's debut album is out this October but you can get in a pitchfork waving mood now with the rabble rousing, and excellently titled, Return the Goat.

If you liked this newsletter then we think you'll love our magazine. Wyrd Science issue 8 is out now filled with everything from Trench Crusade cosplay and Warhammer 40K train sets to interviews with the people behind games such as Dolmenwood, Doomsong, The Old King's Crown and Bunnies & Burrows, plus we take a deep dive into the history of RPG zines, meet up with the legendary Lee Gold, celebrate aggro kids' comics from the 1970s, weird fiction, from the 1920s and neopagan festivals from today. It's great!