Insight Into A Complicated Monster
a creaking, ancient, low-ceilinged place
You are reading the TEETH newsletter, written and compiled by artful dodger Jim Rossignol and enterprising urchin 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!
Our latest release is STRANGER & STRANGER, a 63-page, cleverly designed and artfully illustrated campaign-length adventure based around the perilous tribulations of a gang of mutated villagers, an abomination, and a rather convincing stranger. Low prep and highly entertaining. Please do check it out, and, if you are interested in supporting our exploits, please do buy a copy!
Welcome back! We have tuned the dial to space year 2022 and the future unfolds, a bit sticky and soiled and on fire, but a future nonetheless. Things have been heads-down here at Teeth Towers, with Marsh and myself continuing to work on the many things that need to be completed for the full Teeth book. We’ll talk about that in a moment.
NOSTALGIA RAMPANT
First though, I have again been thinking about dungeons, largely because of this massive dump of Dungeon Magazine archives, which I am fairly sure is a kick in the teeth for someone, somewhere’s copyright claims, but hey ho, it got me musing and that’s all that matters for this newsletter. (Look at this dungeon set inside a giant floating crystal: now that’s good fantasy RPG content. It even has a phase spider called Boris!)
I’ve written before about dungeons and their pendulous, formal place within tabletop game design, and I am sure I have mentioned that I rarely run dungeons because I rarely use pre-prepared stuff, and don’t often work with a grid on the table. However, a little way back I did do so, in a blip for my normal theatre of the mind presentation which lasted for precisely two campaigns. The appearance of Dungeon reminded me of that period and I wanted to record it here: this was a time when I ran D&D 4e for two groups of people, for one of whom roleplaying was secondary, but boardgames were primary. This meant that we ran D&D more as a boardgame than an RPG, and, actually, it worked pretty well, with fun little tactical encounters in forests and on bridges, and on chasm edges above lava pits. I quickly got bored, of course, and so I began to play with the format, and that experimentation really sang when we fought our way across an entire city, with a scrolling tileset, as if it were a videogame. I wish I had a photo of us playing that, I am sure I took some, but it was probably on an old pre-cloud storage phone. Anyway, we used the tilesets pictured below - some official D&D guff paired with a bunch of other maps, of which I have an entire bag, which I feel like I am unlikely to ever use again - to create a scene where tiles were gradually moved as the city collapsed and the players had to fight their way forward or die. A scrolling static map! I was pleased with that, and I still am. Perhaps it points a way towards some actual RPG reminiscent of The Eternal Cylinder, or something.
Look at this stuff! Secret riches. I should try this is again, just for laffs. And perhaps for Hot Newsletter Content.
A REVAMPED CHAIN
But the Dungeon Magazine dump was also interesting because it reminded me that I had only ever seen a single copy Dungeon magazine in real life, even though, during the late 80s and early 90s, I saw it advertised every month. Whirling down the nostalgia plughole, I found myself pulling some Dragon magazine stuff from the shelves. Here are three from different eras. “Use a computer!” No, I don’t think I will.
And yeah, now we’re getting into the Rossignol Treasure Trove. And look, an advert for a Dungeon magazine that I can now go and read!
I’ll probably come back to this Dragon magazine stuff, because it’s a cache of old loveliness, and I was very much Made By And For Magazines. As a youth I was in luck that our tiny, shitty newsagents in a Kent village randomly stocked Dragon one time, I saw it, and got them to order it in for many years to follow. Between this and the rental VHS tape collection they had in that shop (a creaking, ancient, low-ceilinged place in a very old village building) we are really looking at some of the formative materials of a life. I note, via Google Maps, that the place is now a revamped chain store, because of course it is. And I bet it doesn’t stock Dragon (or Dungeon) any more.
TEETH TEETH TEETH
The project rumbles onwards like a giant cart filled with the canines of the dead, and with quite a lot of work being poured into making Teeth work not just as a campaign setting but as a monster-hunting version of the Forged In The Dark ruleset. Here’s some of the stuff we’ve worked on over the break:
A guide to life in the 18th century, because people don’t really know that much about that century, and are over-exposed to 19th centure tropes, generally. I am sure Marsh will want to talk more about this himself, as he wrote it, but we feel like it’s a necessary pointer for those tackling the era in role-play. (Marsh is, of course, a scholar of history as well as an artist and writer generally, which is a treat.)
How the phases of the game exemplify the setting. This is a big one, obviously, and we’ve battled back and forth over a setting called the “Wilderness” setting, which is intended to both convey the sense of perilous travelling across bleak landscape, but also give the players something more to do, as well as providing an economy of horses and supplies, and - who knew! - it’s quite tricky to get right. It’s almost as if large rulebooks are difficult to produce.
Hunting monsters! Obviously this is a big one for a monster-hunting RPG, so I am intensely keen to get it right. But I do need to leave players with both that “cut straight to the action” instant-RPG that Forged In The Dark does better than anything, while balancing the interestingness of monsters as challenges with leaving the game open to do lots of other stuff as you play. There’s also the matter of, yes, a bestiary, and the unique abilities of horrible creatures in a game where you can resist any harm… A fine balance to strike.
Anyway, more on that soon, and perhaps Marsh and I will have some bandwidth to throw out some other stuff this year! Exciting times ahead. And those exciting times include this week’s packed links section - hooray!
LINKS
Gord Games’ D&D 5e tutorial adventure is really worth taking a look at. I have another tutorial adventure planned for my own kids, but this one, aimed at that specific audience, is surely worth considering for those wanting to introduce friends and young relatives to the dragon game (and therefore our hobby generally.)
Extremely our cup of crime drama is Family Of Blades, a streamlined Forged In The Dark ruleset telling the story of “a team of criminals who became a family, broke up, and have now been thrust back together for one last job.” The ruleset is strongly reminiscent of action movie screenwriting, with a “bond” mechanic that ties people together, and it even reference The A-Team, and what stronger recommendation could there be than that? This initial release is Early Access, so expect to see more from A.C. Luke as this develops!
If you’re looking to play Troika!, and you should be, because it is so bizarre and wonderful, then perhaps a sale of Troika! campaigns might assist you in your surrealisms? I love including the !.
I love the presentation of Oz Browning’s OSR ruleset, OZR. Look at that thing! I’m planning on picking up a physical version from Rook’s Press.
While you’re over there, and I recommending being over there, because Rook’s Press is packed with things you should buy yourself, have a look at From The Mud. Again, presentation to die (and live again) for.
“The Goblin Pulls Out A Gun” is as good a name for a “GMless opposed dice pool system” as we’re going to see this month.
The Best Selling Family RPGs of 2021, as defined by Geek Native. They are quick to observe that “family” is a pretty tricky thing to define, but it’s a good and useful list, nonetheless, and reminding me that I really should play Wanderhome.
Comrade Chris does some more book readthroughs. I am really enjoying these and feel like picking some of the nonsense that fills my shelves up for similar treatment. Oh look, here comes one now…
This is more of a question than anything, but has Jakub Rebelka ever illustrated a TTRPG? Because - realised as I scrolled through a Tumblr of his astonishing work - I would really like to read it. (Or write it, but that’s another kettle of illustrated prose entirely.)
Research this week takes us into the early 20th century via this biography of monstrous poet demagogue playwright bombardier, Gabriele d'Annunzio. I barely knew anything about him other than his role as a precursor for Mussolini, but The Pike, a biography of the man by Lucy Hughes-Hallett provides astounding, terrifying insight into a complicated monster. It’s breathtaking to see anyone pack quite so much eloquence and debauchery into a single life, but also eerie to watch fascism rise under the pen of a talented poet, particularly now. A disturbing read, and thoroughly recommended.
More soon! x
I felt a HUGE pang of nostalgia when I set my eyes on that SF Alpha Dawn box cover. It's my "Madeleine" if that reference makes sense to you. Thanks for digging it out.