Check out the Stray Crows Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/...

It is Pride Month. Or Pride season, really, since in Britain these things tend to smear themselves across most of the summer according to local council schedules, corporate marketing departments, police availability and whether or not someone has remembered to book a man with a whistle and a clipboard. The history is familiar. The Pride movement is traced back to the Stonewall uprising in New York in June 1969, when the clientele of the Stonewall Inn finally got thoroughly sick of being raided, arrested and generally fucked about with by the police.

Ello lovelies. I've been doing rather a lot of talking about Stray Crows lately, in addition to the apparently more important business of actually making the bloody thing. Since interviews, podcasts, streams and mentions have ended up scattered all over the Internet, here's a convenient catch-up for anything you may have missed. RPGDrop — “I’m a Difficult Bastard: Grim Jim on 25 Years of Making Games His Way”

Adventures in Mythic Japan

/ DOWNLOAD HERE This contains explainers, suggestions and graphics you can use to write about and promote Stray Crows. You can also download the preview HERE. The Kickstarter is HERE

Hello lovelies, I am going to ask you for something rather more valuable than money. I am going to ask for your noise. On Tuesday 4 August, I launch Stray Crows, and I really need this one to work out. That is not marketing bluster. It matters to me personally, professionally and, frankly, financially. I have spent a long time making games, often in difficult circumstances, often with very little margin for error, and usually while doing several jobs at once because that is what being a small creator means.

CLICK HERE The Stray Crows Kickstarter will now start on August the 4th instead of the 1st. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, I want to avoid clashing with Gencon. All the biggest nerds with the most enthusiasm for TTRPGs as a whole are going to be there and not paying attention to little ol' me. Secondly, apparently, and against all reason, Tuesday is seen as the best day to launch a Kickstarter.

The FREE preview of Stray Crows is now available at DRIVETHRU RPG and via POSTMORTEM STUDIOS It'll walk you through some of the mechanics, ideas, background and what the content of the free books will be. If you want to hear more about the KICKSTARTER then you can also look at... Eclectic Goat's stream on the Matt Mercer Effect, where I shill (badly). Or an interview here at RPGDROP

You can find all the information on the Kickstarter page and pre-sign up to be informed when it goes live. I hope you'll all give me your backing to make something truly wonderful. Linky

DIGITAL PRINT The temple is not scenery. The vow is not flavour text. The world remembers. Sacred Marks is a rules-light, system-neutral fantasy RPG toolkit for making sacred obligation matter in play. Add sacred consequence to any fantasy RPG in one session. Add the Sacred Die to your table, define duties and taboos in minutes, and give your campaign a visible way to track favour, stain, mercy, breach, restitution, pilgrimage, and answered prayer.

THE RETURN OF THE 100 SERIES! In 100 Post-Apocalyptic Settlements, you get 100 individual settlements, usable in most post-apocalyptic games, whether an atomic aftermath or zombie outbreak. You learn about each settlement from a one-page brief, which details: What the settlement was like before the disaster.What happens there during the disaster.What it's like in the aftermath.What it's like as an established settlement.

YouTube video by Grim Jim

James “Grim” Desborough There are tabletop designers who create systems. There are designers who create worlds. Then there are designers who leave behind a trail of rumours, lawsuits, convention stories, internet arguments, missing livestock, mutilated bodies and at least one heavily disputed Interpol notice connected to an unfortunate trebuchet incident in rural Croatia. Known celebrity and felon James Desborough, British tabletop game designer and publisher, belongs firmly in that third category, behind bars, with an ankle monitor on both ankles.

We had a soft-launch before, but here's the final version! An OSR (Old School) adventure, primarily for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Kingdom is a 'high concept' adventure of torturous and fearful monstrosity, set in the bone-white chalk hills of Southern England. It brings the horror back to the underground, where the players cannot trust even their senses, and every step could be their last.

I have determined that I am unable to upset enough people, or to fulfil their deranged expectations of me by acting alone. To that end, I have undergone cellular mitosis and split into two new incarnations, each of which will head up a new studio and a new flagship product. Studio 1: Totenwerkstatt will produce games and content tailored to appeal to the far-right tradchads and techno-feudalists, as their movements around the world seem to be building toward an extinction-burst event.

Boneland's Twisted Finale - Alan Garner's Masterpiece or Mistake? – A deep dive into the conclusion of the Alderley Edge trilogy, exploring the disturbing folklore and the psychological weight of Garner’s work. The Forgotten First Crime TTRPG That Started It All – Digging into the history of the hobby to uncover the roots of crime-focused tabletop gaming and its mechanical evolution.

Originally, my long-delayed samurai/sengoku era Japan project was called 'Ronin'. It is intended to be a historically 'plausible' game set in that period, but with options to include supernatural elements or for a more horror-oriented form of solo-play. Three settings for the price of one! However, both Bushido and Sengoku are taken, and this game is a partial homage to them.

Weekly Round-up: Postmortemvideo Archive Damien Walters on Gamergate – A look back at the cultural impact and the perspectives surrounding Damien Walters within the context of the movement. Comments 101226 – Addressing the latest batch of feedback, questions, and "special" insights from the Postmortem community. Bitch Done Stole My Truck – A jokey country and western song. Berlin Blackout – Analysis of the recent infrastructure failure in Berlin and what it signals for geopolitical stability.

“I would like to present to you…” said the worthy-looking man, all grey hair, patched elbows and the threadbare spirit of the educator “…the St John’s Boy for Schools!” The Minister blinked, wetly and gave the old professor a smirk. “I think you mean School for Boys Mr Wick,” he said, with a practised indifference to the professor's title. “Oh no,” the professor smiled and swept aside the sheet, revealing a small boy in short trousers and a school blazer, skinned knees, snotty nose, an entirely unremarkable child.

Out on the frontier, the streets are straight, and the houses grow in neat little rows just waiting for someone to come along and occupy them. Mile upon mile of identical-looking boxes stretching away into infinity, curving up to the horizon. It is maddening, dizzying, and any sense of progress is difficult to find. The only thing that’s wild, the only thing that’s different, are the plants growing in the untended gardens, window boxes and parks with nobody to tame them.

The sickly sweet smell of half-rotten flesh, the jingle of bells and the curving, beaked mask are the shop signs of the Phylomancer. He stands at the street corner, bowed under the weight of the cages on his back in which his menagerie yips and yowls, barks and squeaks. Beneath the sweet stench of corruption is the sweeter tang of honey and the urinal miasma of damp leather.

Grim2025: This seems oddly prescient looking back. Now we see the use cases for 'AI' and the prevalence of bots on dating sites. I'm a friggin' genius. This was originally a concept I was going to work up to submit to Full Metal Orgasm, but it just wouldn’t turn porny or violent enough. I think it’s a good SF/Erotica story anyway,

Over ten years ago, I posted an article called 'In Defence of Rape'. An obviously baiting title referencing similar articles by Chesterton, Mencken, Orwell, Swift, and more modern pieces in outlets like The Onion or The Grauniad. What this actually was was more akin to Gaiman's 'Why Defend Icky Speech?' (it used to be OK to reference Gaiman, and his point there is solid).

This is an early draft of the first part of a story in my collection Pulp Nova. He walks, this man, in a country where people ride or take the rails. He places one foot in front of the other at a steady pace, following the trail that other men and horses have made. He steps around the piles of horseshit with a nimble step, almost a dancer, hopping from one foot to another with an assured stride and an almost childish joy.

This is the first part of a story that appears in Pulp Nova. THOCK! The machete blade bit into the succulent green of the tree and stuck fast. White rubbery goop seeped out of the trunk and gummed around the blade, already sticky. Every time he cut, Bernard had to stop, wipe the goo from the blade and start over.

I spot the little man the moment the door opens. He’s nervous. He knows that he – that anyone – shouldn’t be here. I watch intently, not even blinking, as he closes the door behind him with needless care. Nobody is going to appreciate his care, nobody is going to hear him over the thumping beat of the music. This isn’t a place that needs to be careful or quiet.

This is part one of a story, all of which is collected in Pulp Nova. An Englishman’s home is his castle. It’s a phrase that’s overused to the point of driving me to fits of rage, but there’s a kernel, a smidge, a chewy centre of truth to it. You don’t talk shit about a geezer’s home any more than you would dare raise your voice about the way a woman raises her kids.

This story (in full, not just this part) is part of the Pulp Nova collection. The wind whipped through the dusty settlement, whipping up sand and casting it down the empty streets. It settled in drifts in doorways, on steps, against the orange-blossomed hulks of old, rusty cars and the worn tarmac of the old roads. It found no eyes to sting with its radioactive grit.

You can get the whole of this story as part of the Pulp Nova collection. Upon reflection, things were not going too well for me. The Thieves’ Brotherhood does not take kindly to interlopers or independents, and I was no exception to the rule, no matter how polite and helpful I had intended to be. That was why, I thought, they had greeted me with laughter, punched me around a little and slung me into their miserable excuse for a dungeon.

I think I gave up on this story after this, but then went back to the same structure for The Dastard. “You really climbed down into that shit pit to get a madman’s map?” Bel looked at them incredulously as the story – and the second round of beers – came to an end. The Toll was quiet tonight; there was some sort of riot at the gallows round Bloxton way, and most of the regulars had gone to try their luck looting.

“Jape! Wake up, you fuckin’ spanner!” Dinn shook Jape’s inert body, desperately trying to ignore the mistweed scattered beside the bed in the vain hope that pretending Jape hadn’t smoked himself out of his gourd would mean he hadn’t. “Muh?” When awakened at stupid o’clock in the morning, Jape was not his usual, articulate self by any stretch of the imagination.

He’s late, but she doesn’t complain. It’s an old dance now, between the two of them. The late nights, the lost weekends, out on his work. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t want to know and that suits both of them just fine. He plays the role of the provider, she plays the role of the dutiful wife, they share a few words at breakfast, a few words at night, a bed, and that’s all.

A writing exercise in creating the most unlikable group of heroes possible, meeting in the most stereotypical way possible. In the eastern part of Dunlunn, where the slums meet the stinking river, there’s a pub: The Toll. The Toll is a shitty place, but it belongs to the people of the river’s end, and while they haven’t got two pennies to rub together, they’re proud of the one penny they do have.

This had been provisionally accepted for an anthology on the theme of ‘succubi’ but fell at the last hurdle. Given the currently nebulous future of erotic publishing, even though this isn’t transgressive and is more about the figurative rather than the literal succubus, I present it here for you to read if you’re so inclined. Needless to say, adult material and all that.

This is just an early draft of the first part. The whole story can be read as part of the neo-pulp collection, Pulp Nova. Genealogy, that’s the thing. People like to know where they came from, who they’re related to, what their heritage is, and what it means to be them. It’s nonsense, of course, who we came from doesn’t make our destiny, doesn’t dictate what we do.

It was raining when Jaggers arrived at The Manor. The steam carriage halted in a muddy rut, clacking and chuffing. He eased himself down, precariously balanced upon the stones so as not to dirty his shoes and turned to his driver, who seemed nonplussed to come to such a place. “Keep the boiler hot, my man, I shan’t be long.”

Another of my Pulp Nova stories, at least an early draft of the first part. You can buy these neo-pulp stories in a single book at Lulu. Deep in the devilishly decadent district of Soho, above the luminous light of the lanes and the inebriated intonations of the imaginative industry that calls it home, lies the flat of that most flirtatious and fiery fighters for freedom, Madu Bandara, also known as Mimsy Burogrove, perhaps the world’s only psychedelic detective.

This is an early first draft of the first part of this story, you can find it and the rest of my neo-pulp stories in the collection Pulp Nova, available at Lulu. Boop-dee-dee-beep-deep-woop, boop-dee-dee-beep-deep-woop. Tessa groaned and wound the sheets around her head, hoping the noise would go away, but it wouldn’t, the clamorous ring of her TeleBand just keep going and going, the greenish light of its screen flashing as it strove to get her attention.

This is an early draft of the first part. You can find all my neo-pulp stories collected in Pulp Nova via Lulu. Heat haze shimmered over the salt flats, making the surface look like water. Doctor Green took a swig from her bottle of water, grimacing at the tepid warmth of it, and she’d only been out of the car for a short while.

This was an early draft of the first part of the story. You can buy all my neo-pulp stories collected in Pulp Nova from Lulu. Ace slumped over the chipped formica of the counter and gripped another full glass of scotch in his scarred and meaty fist. He was a great bull of a man, swaying slightly in his drunken haze and running his hand through the thick beard and tangled locks of a man who’d spent a long time in space.

When I heard her scream, I knew my secret was out. With a roll of my eyes to the heavens, I pulled myself out of my seat and down the hall to where she stood. She shivered and clutched her coat as though it were the only thing she could rely on in the universe. She turned to me, wide-eyed and shaking and spoke, her voice quavering.

The plan was to just move out of cover and slot him, shoot him in the back of the head just as the unspeakable cunt deserved, but then things got complicated, just as they always do. He knew I was there. He poured himself a drink from the cabinet, whiskey over ice. If I didn’t already hate him, that would have tipped me over the edge, but compared to everything else, adulterating good drink didn’t seem significant somehow.

The frame descended from its cradle and set down upon the ground in an easy, loose-limbed stance. Unnaturally still, it was a foreboding presence, even without a controller. Sleek and deadly, its blank eyes stared out into space, and its matte surface seemed to blur its edges into the shade of the dimly lit room. “This,” said the Tech-Sergeant“, is a model M-33 teletrooper.