Last Halloween, I posted a spruced up version of my entry to the 200 word RPG challenge, Witches in a Well. Play as a witch stuck in a well, and get ready to hurtle through the Ultracosm, and to create spells to escape your predicament. Works best with 3 to 4 players. Illustration by Karen Reding. For the full text, check out last year’s post. But if you’d like the audio version of this game, check this reading by Hypertellurians cover artist Anna Molla, who surely has a career in audiobooks waiting for her!

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It’s been a big two weeks for Mottokrosh Machinations. We started with the launch of the new Hypertellurians (M)Anvil Edition (want to know why it’s called that—check out the Q&A videos later) at Virtually Expo, this year’s online replacement for the UK Games Expo, where we had been regulars for the least few years. We’d assembled an awesome crew of people once again, tarted up our virtual stall up to eleven, hung out in virtual chat and on Discord all weekend, and organized a whole bunch of events.

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The day has come that we unleash the revised and expanded edition of Hypertellurians onto the world. Rather than repeat much of what we’ve already said in our earlier announcement, including what’s new and what’s changed in the new edition, I invite to check out the machinations page, or even the store page directly. For the first time, we will fulfill orders directly from our HQ in Berlin. While we can in theory send parcels world-wide, you can save big on postage by buying from a partner of ours that is geographically closer to you.

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Introduction An aether-faring adventure on an experimental craft to explore the wonders and mysteries of a nearby moon. The player characters join as passengers or crew, or a mixture thereof. While the adventure follows a planned trajectory, there are many events that can drastically alter the journey. This is the art-light version of the starting adventure from the Hypertellurians (M)Anvil Edition book. The book includes many more illustrations, including portraits for the main characters, and easy to reference spreads with relevant map parts to really minimize the need for page flipping at the table.

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If it seems like it’s been quiet here at Mottokrosh Machinations HQ, then that’s only because we have been busy cooking up big things. Feast your eyes on: A revised and expanded edition of Hypertellurians. We’re going to the Virtually Expo. In honor of Free RPG Day, we give away a pamphlet adventure PDF. And more! Hypertellurians (M)Anvil Edition Yes, it’s true, a revised version is coming. We’re not calling it a new edition, or anything quite as dramatic, because the rules haven’t changed.

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Or: Let’s mash up Electric Bastionland with The Bungeon. Weekends in lockdown has afforded me the opportunity to try out a lot more different games than usual. My weekly sessions are generally longer campaigns (a few months at least), but with everyone being homebound lately, it’s been relatively easy to put together one-shots on Saturdays. I’ve run games of Hypertellurians (playtesting a new adventure), overseen hexcrawls in deepest Sarkash in Mörk Borg, helped guide player characters through the treacherous floors in the Blancmange & Thistle (via Troika!

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The Mörk Borg release party in early March was a great event, where I got to meet a lot of awesome people. Among them of course the creators of the aforementioned book. They were gracious enough to let me do a short interview with them, in the middle of the festivities. 🍻 Mottokrosh: Please introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about how people may know you. Pelle: I’m Pelle Nilsson, I wrote the game Mörk Borg, and I’ve also made some other RPGs, like the Swedish Barkhäxan, a horror game that we’ll maybe translate into English some other time.

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Just before joining the Mörk Borg release party in Stockholm earlier this March, I had the pleasure to meet Dan Algstrand, a.k.a. Norse Dork, who graciously took it upon himself to be my guide not just around our corner of the city, but also through the Swedish RPG scene in general. Later that evening, I managed to corner him for a few questions. I quoted him already in my writeup of the release party, but here is the interview transcript in full.

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When I read that the creators of artpunk game Mörk Borg would have a release party in Stockholm, I decided that I would join. It’s one of my favorite games recently released, certainly one the most gorgeous ones, and its production values are through the roof (glow-in-the-dark spine, silver foil inside, different kinds of paper, …). Plus, I wanted to meet the people behind the book. What I hadn’t foreseen was the sheer number of awesome, friendly, and diverse people I would get to know.

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It may appear that things have been a little quiet here at Mottokrosh Machinations HQ, but nothing could be further from the truth. In the dark depths of the Mottokrosh mind a plethora of pursuits have been progressing. So I thought it was about high time to give you a little bit of a sneak peek. Hypertellurians We’re working on a revised edition of our flagship product, with two goals: to further improve ease of comprehension and utility at the table, and to add a starting adventure.

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