Just imagine you too could be gazing lovingly at the new issue of @wyrdscience.bsky.social before settling in to spend a lazy weekend reading about fighting men, fantasy, folklore, fairy tales, fungus and more Go on, a better life away from your screens is (temporarily) possible shop.wyrd.science

It's here! Issue 8 of @wyrdscience.bsky.social magazine, packed full of all sorts of gaming goodness. Particularly looking forward to reading the interview with the legendary Lee Gold. And there's an ad for Cold City and Hot War from @handiworkgames.bsky.social, by heavens!

And here’s part 2 because there really is so bloody much in this issue even trying to speedrun it took over 4 minutes. Please do consider sharing, buying a copy, supporting independent media and print press! Because my god we need it… shop.wyrd.science

I'll tell you what one of the most under-appreciated RPGs of the 2000-2010 indie era is: Covenant by Matt Machell. A genuinely great game about what happens when everything you believe in is proved to be a lie.

Gone down a bit of a rabbit hole in the archives of Jackie. So on 19th April 1980, one 13-year-old reader wrote movingly to the Cathy & Claire agony aunt page about her fear of nuclear war.

I just want to make it 100% clear that as a historian of the nuclear age, I find this genuinely fascinating and exciting. There shouldn't be any smirking or dismissiveness about these sources - they are valuable, interesting, and deserve to be taken seriously.

I never knew - until this morning - that Robert C. O'Brien's post-apocalyptic novel Z for Zacharia was serialised from February to April 1976 in the popular British girls magazine Jackie. Every day is indeed a school day.

That is the correct face to make while holding The Price of Freedom 😅

The absolute best Holmes, accompanied by two great - but very different - Watsons.

Our best seller at Conpulsion! (And available in print to Cold City Hot War backers very soon in the pledge manager)

Didn't know this was going to be on @geeknative.bsky.social - a little background and overview of me and @handiworkgames.bsky.social's The Bunker Game!

"Apocalypse World, Schmapocalypse World! I'll tell you what the greatest RPG ever created is...."

No Bushido Blade? For shame.

Great to see the latest couple of things I have - at least in part - written for @handiworkgames.bsky.social in print at @conpulsion.bsky.social

Look at this arm waving pillock!

For DOOMSDAY MACHINES this week, a post that has in some sense been in the making for something like a decade. It is a very close look at the "war plan," QUICK STRIKE, featured in the formerly classified 1958 film "The Power of Decision," produced for the USAF. doomsdaymachines.net/p/a-long-loo...

If you're even vaguely thinking about selling your games at a convention, you absolutely need to read this entire thread from @handiworkgames.bsky.social, based on Jon's vast and valuable experience with this stuff. He really, really knows what he's talking about.

If you are in the area this weekend and interested in games of all kinds, then get to the convivial happening that is @conpulsion.bsky.social!

I have found the bowler hat and have been practising my idiosyncratic rendition of 'Mein Herr'.

Wild counterfactual: if Democrats were in power during WW2

I've decided to run the #HotWar RPG at a convention for the first time in [waves vaguely at the late 2000's]. In Bradford, no less, at the mini-con convened by @breakfastruins.bsky.social!

I was just about to comment that I @wellerstein.bsky.social must have been sagging under the weight of emails and DMs over the past 24 hours.

The sheer thirst for destruction and the revelling in killing by this bellend never ceases to amaze and horrify. He's just a 15 year old boy wanking off to the explosions in 1980s straight to video action movies.

1) 'Gaming America's Cold War' is a final-year undergrad module I'm putting together. The first workshop will be 'What is a game? What is Cold War?'. I keep circling back to Greg Costikyan's essay 'I Have No Words & I Must Design' as an intro to what games are. www.costik.com/nowords2002....

🚨🎓Funded #PhD opportunity: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship - ‘𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝗿’, with Imperial War Museums (IWM) & University of Glasgow @glasgow.ac.uk. Supervised by Tim Peacock, Matt Barr & Ian Kikuchi. Apply by Friday 22 May, 5pm. October 2026 start. Details in next post.

This. Exactly this.

I can't believe a right-wing clown is saying that Trump is as close to the Antichrist as we're likely to get, while most mainstream institutions are silent or (at best) mealy-mouthed. "Somebody better stop the demon Mammon from destroying the world..." YOU ARE THOSE SOMEBODIES. Do something!

On one hand, these are great (would you expect anything less from @paulbourne.bsky.social. On the other hand, I wrote a game about fascism after a nuclear apocalypse, I've spent my academic career studying nuclear history, and I feel very, very uncomfortable right now.

Today I have mostly been channelling the spirit of @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social as I write a couple of paragraphs on parlour games for the 'where did these RPG things come from?' section of the book.

We're starting a new Game Studies Master's program at Charles University, Prague, and the applications are now open. It's a 2-year Master's that was designed by our team at the Prague Game Production Studies research group. study.fsv.cuni.cz/study-progra... 1/2

This weekend is @conpulsion.bsky.social 2026, and I'll be doing my usual schtick of talking about RPG history in the Cabaret Bar! Sat, 11.30: World War III: The twentieth century’s most important war? Sun, 3.30: Better Dead Than Red: RPGs and the invasion of America conpulsion.org

Example 3472 of "Malcolm writes something in a game that contains a rather vague description, then @paulbourne.bsky.social creates something that makes Malcolm go 'That's it!'"

Not just a great magazine but a proven antidote to algorithmic slop It would be great to shift, let’s say, around 1000 more copies of this over the next 2 weeks so we can hire more people and make even better magazines in future (or just not lose money for once & be able to make any more at all 🤷‍♂️)

The Birks o’ Aberfeldy is one of my absolute favourite short walks in Scotland.

You should order it - quality writing, art, and design. I eagerly await my copy arriving into my lightly sweating palms.

what if we put issue 8 of Wyrd Science on sale? What if this got more likes & shares than our stupid jokes? featuring Dolmenwood, Blades In The Dark, Doomsong, Kamping Kitbash, Lee Gold, The Old King's Crown, weird fiction, aggro comics, dungeon synth & lots more shop.wyrd.science/products/wyr...

Scathing review from Pope Leo in L'Osservatore Romano coming in late June 2026.

When I started in academia, there are certain things I never thought I'd say to postgraduate students. Foremost amongst these is "Why yes, RPGNet posts from 1997 to 1999 are a totally relevant source for your project!" How things change.

A selection of in-world propaganda posters I made for Hot War. #HotWar #HandiworkGames

Repost for the weekday crowd - it's me, musing about armed masculinity in 1980s RPGs on @historygamesnet.bsky.social

Have an idea you want to write about? Find out more about how to pitch for our Analogue theme here: www.historicalgames.net/call-for-con...

Pleasure to write this for the @historygamesnet.bsky.social. And all from a frivolous thread from months back!

Oh hell! That's what students keep asking me about, and then getting annoyed when I answer "What?" This explains why all my dissertation supervisees ever have failed. Balls.

Crazy to see what started out as a 'fun' (for varying values of that word) teaching tool for a nuclear history course ending up actually available as a game.

1) Fun facts about academic article publishing! The image shows the stats for my article on the Twilight 2000 RPG in the Journal of American Studies. The article is open access. And these figures are absolutely remarkable compared to anything else I have ever published. doi.org/10.1017/S002...

Another day, more dismal news for colleagues across UK higher education. The end point of all of this is a vastly diminshed, hollowed out sector where we're back to only the wealthy and privileged having access to quality education.

I'll keep saying it until I am blue in the face: Remember Tomorrow by the great @gregorhutton.bsky.social is the best - and indeed, the only - RPG that is true to literary cyberpunk. Hill I will die on, etc.

This is an excellent game and wonderful combination of setting and system. Admittedly, I am very, very, very biased and definitely not an impartial observer.

I am so excited to get the re-imagined versions of both games in my hands! It's been great to revise them with the @handiworkgames.bsky.social crew.

I have to say that @paulbourne.bsky.social really is the nightmare man.