Come Play Dr Grordbert’s Scientific Adventure Violence Free RPG | #daitngscams | #lovescams

Satirical in tone and tongue-in-cheek in its presentation, the absurdist science-fantasy Dr. Grordbort’s Scientific Adventure Violence is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure setting and sourcebook, first devolved by Greg Broadmore, an artist, writer, and director at Wētā Workshop of Lord of the Rings fame in Aotearoa. Full of pulpy, old-school, retro-fiction images and ideas, the text lampoons colonizers, sexists, and toxic masculinity within its pages, creating an excessive and exorbitant world that is built to destroy those who seek to destroy it. And now you can visit that world yourself.

This stand-alone, ready-to-play adventure module is available for free by distributor Exalted Funeral, and throughout the year, more supplemental materials and additional adventures will be produced. And as you might expect from a book that had its basis in prop-making, the retro-futurism rayguns depicted in the pages of the book are available in real life from Wētā Workshop.

Even Guillermo del Toro has called the ultra-violent steampunk worldbuilding of Grordbort “a dazzling ‘Uchronism’ that works both as a satire of our times and as a convex mirror for a future that never was. A violent, vibrant Neverland, witty and brilliantly realized,” in a blurb he provided for the book Dr. Grordbort Presents Victory!, published by Dark Horse.

Click through to see some of the fantastic and fantastically absurd art produced for the new version of Dr. Grordbort. And don’t forget to download the io9-exclusive adventure module at the end of the slideshow!