Into the Dreamtlands, Alone We Go
New Solo Game, Terminal Progress, Faster, Podcaster! Kill! Kill!, Come Dmeet Me
Welcome back to the newsletter! I am one successful letter in December away from having be on this properly for a year. Interesting journey all things considered. This was kinda the closest look you could get to seeing Terminal develop from a germ to a soon-to-be-realised game (more on that later). I also floated ideas or projects here that didn’t come to fruition. And probably shared more on my life than is necessarily advisable (I don’t care, but I worry that I should). Anyway what does this month have in store:
An Illustrator’s Guide to the Dreamtlands
Terminal Progress
The launch of Game Soup, a design and chat podcast
Fear the Taste of Blood on Zine Club
Nameless, Aimless, a Rogue Anthem for Orbital Blues
Transgender Deathmatch Legend…II?
Dragonmeet Approach
An Illustrator's Guide to the Dreamtlands
I released a new game this week! It's a solo journaling and sketching game about a traveller venturing into a surreal dreamscape-made-physical and documenting the denizens they encounter there as they journey to the Thinking Heart at the centre of the Dreamtlands.
I first started work on this game in...2021?? Maybe? I had it about half written then ended up more involved in other project. I decided to dust it off as I thought it could be a fun thing to have at Dragonmeet. It was interesting to come back to after so low. It's almost like half the book was written by different people. To me at least. I don't think that comes through in the text. Though maybe I'm not the best judge of that.
The game is illustrated by the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky and played with a deck of cards, which affect the details of scenes and are used for determining details of the creatures you'll sketch.
Terminal Progress
I did a delayed Kickstarter update the other week. Short story; virtually all the techno-fables and most of the art are in, layout is close to completion and current estimate for the digital release is early December.
Also! Minerva McJanda (Voidheart Symphony, Rhapsody of Blood) read an advance copy of the book and was kind enough to provide a testimonial for the back cover. Here's what she had to say:
"Terminal is a salt-encrusted love letter to The Matrix and its technognostic brethren, pitting pirate hackers against a controlling computer – and also against the cycle of uprising, crash and reset that traps their world. The game's setting – from the free pirate city of the real world to the virtual palaces of the Terminal's inhabitants – jumps off the page with vivid art and writing, and the system is laser-focused on who your crew really are and what they'll sacrifice to get the ending they want."
New Transgender Deathmatch Legend
This past week I've been working on something exciting for next year; a sequel/new edition for Transgender Deathmatch Legend. It'll features revised rules, multiple new hexcrawls scenarios, expanded gameplay modes and possibly some personal essays.
I've got the revisions nailed down and have started work on the new scenarios. I’m looking at doing this as an A4 landscape book where I fit each crawl and the hex legend on a double page spread. It’s exciting. Here’s the crawl from Enough Gore to Settle the Score; which involves your protagonist taking on “Fairplay” Flash Allen and the Unlimited after they broke into your apartment, trashed it and stole your belongings.
(Did some slight redesign on the icons for Weapon Pick Up and Challenges, as well as adding some new varieties of hex)
Game Soup
I’ve started a podcast with Chloe Montgomery of Biscuit Fund Games (hi Chloe I know you’re subscribed to the newsletter). It’s a game design podcast where we usually take two random words and mash them together to create a game, sometimes we also deliver some pre-baked goods. We make a lot of laboured kitchen show puns and I get a little camper with each episode.
There’s five episode out now. You can check them out via Spotify or wherever else you get your pods (you can find the RSS feed on podcast.ratwave.uk)
(Also just to be clear this doesn’t affect my plans to return to This is Your Lifepath for a season 2. I had a lot of fun with that show but it takes a lot of work so I’ve been hoping to gain some more stability before I embark on a second season. I’ve started some initial planning (mainly thinking of guests I want, feel free to shoot me ideas in the comments) and had some light in the tunnel recently so hopefully this is sliding down the ladder come next year?)
Fear the Taste of Blood on RPG Zine Club
I mentioned this last month but here’s a reminder as we’re in November now. Fear the Taste of Blood is this months story game for RPG Zine Club, grab it with either a Story Game Membership or an All the Zines Membership. Fear the Taste of Blood is my asymmetric game of classic movie monsters, inspired by films like Dracula and the Wolfman, played with a deck of played cards and dice.
It’s based on the rules of Beyond the Rift and Anyone Can Wear the Mask and Jeff Stormer, the designer of ACWtM, recently did a very kind tweet about the game.
"GODDAMN, Fear the Taste of Blood by @RatWaveGH KICKS FUCKING ASS. Just a raucous grindhouse delight, dripping with blood and guts and absolute JOY. I am BEAMING with how much I loved playing this game, is the thing. Fuck.” - @PartyOfOnePod
Orbital Blues Rogue Anthems: Nameless, Aimless
My friends at SoulMuppet Publishing are Kickstarting Orbital Blues: Afterburn the first hardcover expansion to OB featuring “a dazzling array of space ship classes, additional rules and guidance for your campaigns, and a sprawling new sandbox adventure in RED SHIFT RIDERS, the biggest for Orbital Blues yet.”
The Kickstarter is also raising funds for a box set of pamphlet adventures (in a VHS box) from various guest writers. Including me, Kayla, the giant rat who makes all of the rules!
My adventure is called Nameless, Aimless and concerns two warring gangs on a boom town turned bust town built out of an asteroid built. It used to have a corporately sanctioned name, now they just call it Nameless. The gangs are stuck in a dead lock, trampling the dwindling working folks caught between, which seems the perfect situation for some strangers to knock the whole thing over.
It’s me doing Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars in a retro-futurist space western setting.
SoulMuppet have been sponsoring some actual plays and the Boys from the Baltic Star took a trip to Nameless. You can watch the VoD here.
(This was the first time I’ve watched an AP of something I wrote which I haven’t been on. It was interesting and made me happy with how the setting I wrote turned out.)
Dragonmeet
Coming up in Saturday December 2nd at Novotel Hammersmith is Dragonmeet. I'll be there to meet that big old dragon and sling some games. I'm sharing a stall with Laurie/12 Pins Press, Kristen/Yanahn, and Luke/Aether Corps. I mentioned up letter I'll have An Illustrator's Guide to the Dreamtlands. I'll also have:
Transgender Deathmatch Legend
The Story of a Story (first time in print)
Follow Me in the Night; a Cursed Radio
To Embrace a Swamp Creature (revised print edition)
The Infinite Dancefloor
Thirty Foes OR Once again, we are defeated
And maybe more!! Plus I've got some surprise freebies for people who buy two or more books. Come say hi if you'll be at Dragonmeet. I promise I won't spend the whole time complaining about how poor the Novotel coffee is. (Ok but you do need to know it’s really not good and it’s not even cheap shit coffee and ok I’ll drop it)
(I had half of this written earlier in the week and then remembered like 3 more things I did this month. I guess the newsletter is useful for not letting me fall into “wah I did nothing” despair.)
Ok yeah this has gone long so see ya bye thanks
Kayla!