[Fanzine Focus XXXIII] The Slasher, Issue One

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, despite the revival of the fanzine having been specifically part of the Old School Renaissance, the format has also been revived for other roleplaying games too, and sometimes in quite a clever fashion, into the bargain.

The Slasher, Issue One is a fanzine for SLA Industries, the roleplaying game set in a far future dystopia of corporate greed, commodification of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, conspiracy, and urban horror, and serial killer sensationalism. It focuses in particular upon the elements of ultraviolence, the mediatisation of murder, and serial killer sensationalism—the latter in particular--and does so in a particularly British style. For The Slasher, Issue One is not a gaming supplement per se, but rather an in-game publication about the culture and adulation of serial killers in the World of Progress. Its inspiration is The Digger, a long-running and very local to the city of Glasgow newspaper or magazine focusing on crime and corruption in the city. It is written though, in the style of a ‘Red Top’ tabloid newspaper, like The Sun or The Daily Mail, full of sensationalist writing and both embracing that sensationalism and condemning it at the same time, presented as exactly the sort of thing that the discerning citizen of Downtown would read. Highbrow this is not.

The front-page article of The Slasher, Issue One is utterly typical of the Red Top mentality. Titled ‘Loony Bin Lover’ it tells how teenage tearaway Debbie Roscoe, described in turn as ‘feckless’ and ‘thick-skulled’ (as in, ‘too thick to listen to sense’), is in love with the up-and-coming serial killer, Loony Bin, does not listen to the warnings of either her parents or her friends, and might even be pregnant (or ‘up the duff’) by him! The language and the tone captures the outrage at the idiocy and directionless of today’s youth in the World of Progress, whilst praising Loony Bin for his string of kills, and all done to sensationalise everything and anything. And it is this tone which pervades the whole issue, such as in ‘Nice to Mince Meat You’, in which the patrons of the soup kitchen, Helping Hand Hall, are complaining that they are being served bread and soup again, after the Elmersons Cognate took the place over and served their murder victims to said patrons in ‘pork-adjacent’ pies. Despite the source of the ingredients, the patrons really miss their meaty ‘treat’, and are thus treated as being thick in the article. Even serial killers cannot escape this kind of treatment, as in ‘The Big Uni Cheese Caper’ in which the Squeaky Barkers cognate of serial killers attempt a heist from a cheese factory in order to save on their packed lunches and it goes disastrously, foolishly wrong or in ‘Keep It In the Family’, which updates the latest doings of the Family Values’ cognate as broadcast on a Big Brother-style reality television show. In both cases, the serial killers are treated as figures of fun and foolishness.

Of course, at the same time, The Slasher, Issue One completely embraces the serial killer sensationalism of the World of Progress that places them on pedestals to be revered and lauded by the general public even as they commit bloody slaughter. In ‘Making Plans For Nigel’, Mr and Mrs Horton are literally mentally torturing their son Nigel in order to turn away from his desire to become an accountant and turn him into a serial killer which will make him famous—the serial killer equivalent of the stage mother. In ‘All the Goss’, the gossip column for The Slasher, the rumour is reported that old fan favourite—Socko (so called for the item of clothing he wears on his head)—has returned and is killing again, and that the number one serial killer, Halloween Jack, killed fifty SLA Industries employees during a Shift Block change (and more), and so on. Similarly, the authorities come in for a bit of a kicking, such as ‘Complete Balls-Up’, which details how a drunken mistake by Lieutenant Bergamot Balls, a Shiver commander, led to a murder spree by the Splash Damage Cognate and its subsequent escape, and in ‘Rotten To The Core!’ how the young scion of a notorious crime family is getting away with murder because of the family’s ties to SLA Industries.

There are also classified adverts and a letters page in The Slasher, Issue One, but what there is not is any game stats for SLA Industries. This is because the fanzine is an in-game resource that the players can read as much as the Game Master. Everything though, in the pages of the fanzine can be developed into something playable, enabling the players and their SLA Operatives to become involved in the stories that they have read about. Ideally, the Game Master will want to refer to Threat Analysis 1: Collateral for that and tailor the various serial killers whose exploits are described here to her campaign.

Physically, The Slasher, Issue One is perfect. With its big bold blocks of red and black it captures to a tee the look and feel of a tabloid newspaper and then goes one further with writing that salaciously emulates the sordid style of British Red Tops with its delight for a good punning headline. Then of course, the artwork. Again, perfect. 

The sizzling, soar away The Slasher, Issue One is a horrible product, idolising serial killers and acts of mass murder, as much as it is belittling the general populace. Yet it is horridly, fascinatingly funny because it is a satire on British newspaper journalism as much as it is on the horror to be found in SLA Industries’ World of Progress.