Wyrd Science magazine is levelling up
John Power Jr was working as a music PR and writer when the pandemic hit and his work suddenly dried up. Faced with the prospect of nothing to do for months on end, he began thinking about making a little zine about the tabletop games he loves playing. But, he says, “I got carried away, as you do, and suddenly it was a 112-page magazine.”
Wyrd Science magazine takes tabletop gaming seriously, treating it as an artform just like music, film or literature, and seeking to understand what it can tell us about wider culture. John printed 600 copies of the first issue and sold them all in the first week, then he printed another 500 and sold them within the month. The project has exceeded all his expectations, but that’s not to say it has all been plain sailing, and in the conversation above he’s totally open about the many mistakes he has made along the way.
He has taken the time to recover from those errors, getting the magazine back on track and building up a “war chest” to protect against future problems. And now all the pieces are in place, he’s stepping up production, shifting Wyrd Science magazine to be quarterly from the next issue.
He will still be running it all himself, but he’s confident that he can get the magazine out four times per year, and he has exciting plans to help the magazine reach beyond the hardcore tabletop gamers. We spoke on an incredibly hot morning as Western Europe cooked in a heatwave, so I really appreciate him sitting in his windowless room and sweating his way through the conversation, and I hope you enjoy hearing from him.
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