Once upon a time, I was really into tabletop miniature games, particularly skirmish battles.  I was also very into painting miniatures and I always loved the idea of modifying, scratch-building, and kit-bashing, though I was never especially good at that.  I gave it up more than 20 years ago, and while I don’t regret giving up the miniatures hobby and I don’t want to pick it up again, I’m sometimes wistful and nostalgic for those days.  This has become even more acute in the last eight months or so, since the death of my best friend of 30 years, who was also a gamer, a painter, and actually good at crafting & kit-bashing. 

Thanks to YouTube, I can indulge that nostalgia by watching a bunch of miniature painters and crafters, who allow me to vicariously live that hobby again.  One of my favorites is Bill Making Stuff (who I first found thanks to my friend).  Bill has spent the last few years making bead bots and rusty junk piles as he’s developed a setting called The Gutterlands (or Tapu).  When a great galactic conflict ended, everyone needed to throw away their war junk.  This world is where it all got dumped.  And now, Bill Making Stuff and fellow creator Apocrypha Now have made this skirmish battle game.

The premise is simple.  In the town of Respite, most people are miserable and desperate.  In an attempt to alleviate a little of both, they hold robot gladiator fights for fun and profit.  The rules are very simple and basic.  You can move, shoot, climb, fall, and punch your way through battles between bots.  Try to get the other bot before it gets you.

There are some factions with special abilities and weapon variations to customize your bots.  But the whole book is only like 40 pages, with lots of illustrations and an “art punk” style that means there’s really not a very high word count.  Not that there needs to be.  If you’ve been in the hobby long enough, you’ve experienced games with far, far too many rules.  With this game, you just grab a bot and go.  

I love Bill’s art.  His designs for bots and buildings, as well as the actual figures and terrain he makes are fantastic (see his YouTube channel).  I’d love to get a sketchbook, or a big, illustrated Gutterlands Sourcebook for use with whatever tabletop RPG I might enjoy (Basic Roleplaying?  Year Zero Engine?  Mutant Crawl Classics?).  I’m a sucker for having a book in my hand, so while the website and videos are cool, I’m still hoping to have a nice tome one day.  In lieu of that, I’ll enjoy this little snippet of setting and be inspired to add a bit of gross color to my games.

The art punk aesthetic of the book is not as distracting and off-putting as something like Mörk Borg, so I didn’t feel like my eyes were bleeding or my brain was about to drip out of my ears, even with the crazy colors and strange fonts.  Once in a while a font was a bit small for my old eyes, but generally the book was readable.

If you are at all crafty, there’s a handy little guide for making your own bot.  A good starting point for doing some fun scratch building at home.  There’s also a great Junk Bot Generator on the back cover in case you’re looking for some ideas. For example, I rolled up Body: Too Many Wires, Head: Spikey, Arms: Long & Thin, Hands: Calamari, Legs: Sticks, and Flavor: Holy.  What would that look like?  What would you build with those prompts?  

Check out the Gutterlands website, where you can not only read more about the setting and see more builds, but also download the rules free of charge.  And of course, check out Bill Making Stuff’s YouTube channel.  

If you like what I do, you can buy me a coffee. Check out my Facebook, YouTube, or Goodreads.  And take a look at my Patreon page, where I’m working on a novel and developing a tabletop RPG setting. I’m proud to be an affiliate of DriveThru RPG. I’m an independent author. You can also read my fiction over on Amazon. A rating & review would make a world of difference. I now have an Amazon Wishlist.