A jewel of a game that combines comprehension of the development of the British scientific romance in the wake of WW2 with sensibility of Nigel Kneale’s critique (in works such Quatermass and the Pit) of humanity’s predisposition to fascistic behaviour.

The Wordplay system (based on that written by Graham Spearing) is easy to use and fun to apply in play and the art (by Jonny Gray) and visual design (by Stephanie McAlea) is very evocative of the themes of the game. The chapters on the psychology and behaviour of the Scarabs (by Paul Mitchener) are particularly fine.

An in-depth depiction of the seedy and dishonest world of bookselling that is as accurate as it is entertaining. Beware the marginalia.

Maps the narrative drive (via Investigative Abilities) and pulp theatrics (via General Abilities) of the inheritors of Lovecraft with verve and precision, and communicates the existential atmosphere of He Who Lies Dreaming via supporting materials of great variety and thematic depth. A very fine game indeed.

An almost-perfect equilibrium between historical accuracy and random happenstance.

A rich and reusable resource not only for DayTrippers but for any player of old-school science fiction RPGs.

The advice for GMs contains some real gems – the advice for incorporating unconscious cues from players into the game as you’re playing is particularly great – and the random tables for generating planetary and environmental phenomena at the rear of the book are wonderful. You can roll your own set of random elements as soon as an approach has been mooted.

A well-founded and loving attempt to map the works of writers like Philip K Dick, Robert Anton Wilson and Hunter S Thompson into an old-school science fiction RPG.

The attachment of a fixed-future setting to an open-ended, single-shot setup for the missions may seem incongruous to some forms of modern RPG theory but it’s easy enough to elide aspects of one in favour of the other, according to personal taste. The game’s toolkit system – character classes and dice lay alongside a resolution system derived from Norwegian roleplaying games such as Archipelago and Itras By – suits improvisation on the part of a GM and freewheeling moments of inventiveness on the part of players.

Most impressive is the way in which we’re talking actual gonzo here (as in the marriage of terror and humour to produce an atmosphere of surreal conspiracy) as opposed to “gonzo” the way a lot of role-players use it, to mean all over the shop without a unifying theme. Well worth the investment.

Excellent distillation of the principles and flavour of Planescape and the Black Hack into random tables and other easy-understood materials capable of producing a game with the atmosphere of Thor: Ragnarok or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser within minutes.

Here is a near-future world (barely distinguishable from our own) rendered as an incessant scenario owned by multinational corporations: games, flash-fiction and live action roleplay provide means by which those playing or reading the contents of Resistor might re-represent themselves to be a more truthful version of themselves.

“Many cyberpunks defy binaries too,” says the introduction, “taking on complex identities that aren’t easily checked off in those info forms like M/F or Black/White or Straight/Gay or American/Other. Cyberpunks are also liminal, existing partially out of body somewhere in digital spaces, expressing those parts of their identities through words, sounds and images only interacted with on a screen.”

It's the way the zine situates a series of collectively-imagined spaces inside the privately-owned theatre of the mobile phone, the internet chat room and the shopping mall that take it far closer to the attitude and sensibility of Cyberpunk than many traditionally-focused roleplaying games. Recommended.

A richly-textured and persuasively-rendered version of the works of fabulists and critics such as Charles Perrault, Angela Carter and Hélène Cixous.

The game marries the doom-laden exploration and threatening atmospherics of the gothic fairy-tale (a faint echo of the snares and traps and player ingenuity of old-school dungeoneering here) to a stripped-back version of the single shot-improv-playbook style of the Apocalypse World engine (a touch of the deterritorialization-through-collective-effort of indie gaming here).

Well-researched, well-designed and well worth a small portion of the filthy lucre Bluebeard and his landowning descendants have handed down to us.

One of the most enchanting and innovative roleplaying games ever made.

Players draw from a deck of eight Resolution cards to resolve actions on one another’s behalf. (These were designed by Matthijs Holter, the guy that did Archipelago.)

Each person playing also draws one card per session from a deck of Chance cards. These contain a variety of improvisational prompts communicate the disjunctive elisions and dreamlike combinations of surrealist narrative.

The greater part of the book describes the City that is inspired by these creative implications, including human-spider hybrids, ox-headed boys, sailors’ alleys and opium dens. Free-wheeling, atmospheric and fun.

It's true that the first version of the 'zine was a little cranky: getting the pages to load & align conveniently was an issue, particularly the double-page spreads. The updated version is more responsive.

I haven't played Pendragon since the Saxons arrived but this made me think about going back, way back. (I was born up the road from where the opening scenario is set.) It's lovely to see such care & attention lavished on a fanzine.

These are uniformly excellent - well conceived, expertly drawn & easy to use.