Let’s start by introducing the mag!  If Wyrd Sciencewere a person, how would you describe them at a dinner party?
I mean, I’d love to say stunningly handsome, incredibly smart, unfailingly polite and laugh out loud funny. Perhaps that’s too much to ask… But at least the kind of person who without being obnoxious about it helps to broaden your horizons in some way and hopefully leaves you feeling a bit better about yourself.

What do you wish people could see behind the scenes of making an issue?
I’m torn. Part of me would obviously love to say the all-nighters, the blood (literally in the case of the most latest one), sweat and tears that goes into each issue, but then I’m also at the stage where frankly I’m a bit over all that nonsense and would much rather things were a lot less stressful. So I guess if the BBC were to commission a candid behind the scenes documentary on the mag what I’d absolutely love people to see would be me enjoying a cocktail, chuckling to myself as I read another new feature that’s landed on my lap requiring no editing, all whilst the phone srings off the hook with advertisers desperate to outbid each other for space in the next issue.We can dream.

What question does Wyrd Science keep trying to answer (even if imperfectly)?What games can tell us about ourselves and the world we live in.The central conceit of Wyrd Science is that games, tabletop games, are just as much a part of our culture as music, films, literature etc, and just like them they reflect the world around us, are influenced by and can in turn influence that world themselves.There’s a great example of that in our seventh issue where Dr Malcolm Craig, senior lecturer in American History at Liverpool John Moores University, wrote a great essay for us introducing his current project, using roleplaying games released during the Cold War to further our understanding of that period.I don’t think anyone would seriously dispute that films or novels set in and around the Cold War aren’t useful texts for making sense of our cultural and social histories and I genuinely believe games are just the same. There’s loads that you could write about a game like Warhammer and what its early years can tell us about 1980s Britain. Or for that matter what a game released today, say for example something like Triangle Agency with its focus on mind bending corporate cosmic horror, says about life in the workplace in the early 21st century (spoiler: it’s not good).

Who do you imagine reading Wyrd Science and where are they when they do?
Thankfully I don’t really have to imagine too hard, we’re fairly active on social media and have a pretty good, and active, relationship with our readers. So we often get to see them enjoying a new issue either in their perfectly formed reading nooks at home or in cafes. And they’re a diverse lot, which pleases me immensely. It would be very easy to make a version of Wyrd Science that leaned into nostalgia, and catered to an audience who just wanted to relive an aspect of their childhood in later years. It might even be more successful but it’s not the mag I want to make, there is -of course- an element of that to it, but I’m just as interested in what the new generation of gamers are making and playing as I am revisiting the past and thankfully so, it seems, are our readers.

What’s a small detail in the magazine that most people might miss, but means a lot to you?
It will probably be some small design choice, something like a particular typeface I’ve hunted down and used for a particular feature. In issue 4 we had a feature on how board games handle political, social, civil rights issues, and the typeface I used for the headline and pull quotes was the same one that was used on the neon sign that hung outside the Stonewall Inn. Not sure if anyone noticed that but it made me happy. When I started Wyrd Sciencethe budget meant I had to do all the layout and design for the magazine myself, something I was very much not trained to do in any way at all. But I do love learning new things and it’s become part of the job I enjoy almost more than anything else. Commissioning artists and creating briefs for them, the endless challenges that print throws at you and the joy when you come up with a solution that works, wonderful stuff. At some point I’d still love to bring a real professional designer on as I know there’s just so much more that could be done to improve the look of the magazine (and it would take away some of the absolute mind numbing fear of sending a massive job like this to print) but I would miss doing it.