THE GAMING MAGAZINE ISN’T DEAD

It merely smells a little peculiar.

All New Autopsy 001 marks the return of the Postmortem Studios gaming ’zine: a collection of articles, adaptations, experiments, retrospectives and ideas excavated from the blogs, cleaned up, expanded and stitched together into a new and alarming semblance of life.

This is a gaming magazine of the old school—not because it is devoted exclusively to armour classes, wandering monsters and advertisements for miniatures made from dangerously heavy metals, but because it provides a varied assortment of material intended to be read, argued with, adapted and stolen.

Inside you will find gritty gaming, fantasy conversion, industry reminiscence, comic-book reality-hopping and a return to one of science fiction’s most lavishly illustrated futures.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

GRITTY FATE?

FATE is often associated with capable protagonists, narrative flexibility and players having considerable influence over the story.

But can it do gritty?

This article explores that question, considering how the system might be turned towards harsher consequences, greater danger and stories in which characters cannot rely upon narrative importance to protect them from every unpleasant outcome.

For players and Games Masters interested in pushing FATE away from effortless competence and towards dirtier, harder and more precarious adventures, this is a useful place to begin cutting.

SKYRIM IN BRP

Take the exploration, danger and open-world fantasy of Skyrim and consider how it might be approached using Basic Roleplaying.

BRP provides a very different foundation from class-and-level fantasy. Characters are defined by skills rather than rigid professions, advancement emerges from use and experience, and even an accomplished adventurer may discover that an axe buried in the skull remains a persuasive argument.

Skyrim in BRP looks at bringing the familiar ingredients of wandering heroes, dangerous ruins, factions, magic and monsters into a percentile-based system suited to more grounded and potentially lethal play.

Use the ideas directly, develop them into a campaign or pilfer them for another fantasy conversion entirely.

WORKING FOR WIZARDS

The games industry is often discussed from the outside, where publishers are mysterious institutions, writers are imagined to spend their days communing with muses and every published book appears through a process only slightly less miraculous than divine revelation.

The reality involves deadlines, specifications, compromises, professional relationships and a great deal of writing performed while staring accusingly at a word count.

Working for Wizards goes behind the curtain for a personal look at professional work connected to one of the largest and best-known companies in tabletop gaming.

For aspiring writers, curious players and anyone interested in how material moves from an assignment to a finished publication, it offers a glimpse of the industry from someone who has actually been inside the sausage factory.

Do not ask what is in the sausages.

PLANETARY: INTO THE FICTIVERSE

Some worlds contain superheroes.

The world of Planetary contains the buried remains, secret histories and stolen possibilities of almost every kind of popular fiction.

It is a setting of fictional archaeology: strange phenomena, hidden wonders and powerful people who have placed themselves between humanity and the miraculous. Pulp adventure, giant monsters, secret societies, alternate realities and comic-book history can all become evidence in a much larger investigation.

Planetary: Into the Fictiverse explores the possibilities of turning that approach into role-playing material.

Rather than remaining inside a single genre, characters can investigate the ruins and consequences of many genres at once. Every impossible event hints at a hidden history. Every familiar trope may be the surviving fragment of something stranger. Every adventure can peel back another layer of the world and reveal that reality is far larger—and considerably less trustworthy—than anyone suspected.

For Games Masters interested in reality-hopping investigations, conspiratorial superheroics or campaigns assembled from the secret connective tissue of popular culture, the Fictiverse is waiting.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE TERRAN TRADE AUTHORITY?

Before computer rendering made impossible spacecraft commonplace, the Terran Trade Authority books presented an entire future history through spectacular paintings, technical descriptions and fragments of imagined fact.

They were artefacts from a future that never happened: great illustrated volumes filled with starships, alien worlds, interstellar commerce and enough evocative detail to launch a thousand private campaigns.

Whatever Happened to the Terran Trade Authority? looks back at that remarkable series, its appeal and its place in the imaginative landscape of science-fiction gaming.

For those who remember the books, it is an opportunity to revisit a formative vision of the future.

For those who do not, it may introduce an extraordinary reservoir of spacecraft, settings and ideas from an era when science-fiction illustration was expected to do more than provide wallpaper for a streaming-service menu.

A MAGAZINE TO BE DISMEMBERED

All New Autopsy 001 is not a sourcebook for one game, nor does it expect every reader to be equally interested in every article.

That is the point.

A good gaming magazine is a cabinet of curiosities. You open it for one article, become distracted by another and eventually carry some completely unrelated idea into your next campaign.

Read it from beginning to end.

Jump directly to the subject that interests you.

Disagree with the conclusions.

Convert the conversions.

Steal the useful bits and pretend you thought of them during a long bath.

This is gaming material intended to provoke more gaming—not sit untouched on a shelf awaiting the arrival of someone sufficiently reverent to appreciate its canonical purity.

All New Autopsy 001 is supplied as a PDF electronic download.

You can find this issue and the rest of the Autopsy range here.

The incision has been made.

The subject is still twitching.

Let us see what is inside.