What a lovely magazine. This is the inaugural issue of Wyrd Science, billed as session zero of what promise to be a quarterly magazine. It is quite thick and square-bound for a magazine though. Does that make it a journal? Maybe. I dunno. They’re British, they use funny words for stuff. Anyway, this appeared as a PDF at the start of 2021 and physical copies showed up in the States a bit after that. As of this writing, a second issue has appeared.

Lovely really is a good word to describe it. It boasts a clean, spacious design while being packed with interesting articles, interviews and features. I know there isn’t a ton of competition these days, but it is the best looking RPG-focused magazine on the shelves. You can probably go back at least a decade and it’d still be true — Wyrd Science is mature and assured in a way that latter-day Dragon Magazine could never attain.

A magazine like this is an indicator of the health of the hobby at large, I think. Especially the non-D&D portion, which Wyrd Science seems particularly focused. Especially as Wyrd Science is about games, not for games (no new rules or adventures or what not, like Knock). Not only did the folks who made it believe there was enough material to put in front of a large enough audience to merit publication at that moment in time, they believe that will be just as true in the coming months and years as well. More so, even. To put out a magazine like this is a hopeful, optimistic statement about tabletop RPGs. I support that wholeheartedly, and you should too!