From ECO MOFOS!! to ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE: An Interview with David Blandy

#016 – From Eco Mofos!! to the Islands of Weirdhope

Nov 05, 2025

When I asked the question “Do TTRPGs Have a Grimdark Problem?” at the beginning of September, I received far more comments and likes than I have ever received for any other blog post. It seems to have preoccupied or moved many people here. That is one of the reasons why this article is something of a sequel.

Unfortunately, I let more than a month go by without posting a longer blog entry, which had never happened before. I apologize for that, dear readers. Both my private and professional life were extremely busy last month. Basically, the plan is to return to a somewhat higher frequency, just as before.

But let’s now dive into our interview with game designer David Blandy (Copy/Paste’s Substack) whose work blends art, world-building, empathy, and post-human futures. Known for The World After, Lost Eons, and the award-winning ECO MOFOS!! (together with Daniel Locke's Sketchbook), Blandy now returns with ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE – An ECO MOFOS!! Game, a stand-alone seafaring follow-up that expands his unique take on OSR.

We talked about his path from contemporary art to tabletop design, the British RPG scene, the evolution of ECO MOFOS!!, and what people can expect from the new book.

Disclaimer: I (Alexander) am going to contribute a little something to David’s project. For details, see below.

*Islands of Weirdhope is a new Windwaker-meets-Waterworld OSR game by Copy/Paste Co-op. Image Source: Copy/Paste Co-op.*

The Interview

Golem Productions (G.P.): Thank you, David, for joining me at OSR Rocks!. Let’s start with the basics: who are you, and what do you do?

David Blandy (D.B.): I’m an artist and game designer. I’ve been making tabletop games for about six years now, since rediscovering role-play in the mid-2010s. I started playing with my kids as something to do off-screen, creating stories together, and then just fell down the rabbit hole.

Alongside that, I have an art practice where I explore what the world is and our place in it through installations, video, and performance. I often collaborate with others; for example, I’m part of a collective called Dying Earth Catalogue. We work in the space between art and tabletop role-play. Earlier this year, we had a big show at Bonington Gallery in Nottingham. So yes, I’m kind of enmeshed in this world now.

G.P.: Would you say TTRPGs are becoming more visible in the UK?

D.B.: Yeah, I think so. You can’t ignore that the U.S. is where tabletop role-play really happens, but it’s also global, and the UK fits into that.

We’ve got boardgame cafés or local spaces like Dice Saloon here in Brighton where people come to play tabletop games. And we’ve had that culture since the early Games Workshop days—the importers of Dungeons & Dragons—and of course Fighting Fantasy, the Steve Jackson “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.

So, it’s definitely part of our culture, but a little underground. Conventions like Dragonmeet keep growing, and it’s no longer “weird” to say you play games, though it still carries a kind of exoticness.

G.P.: You’ve described ECO MOFOS!! as an OSR game. What does OSR mean to you?

D.B.: I came to OSR through the FKR (Free Kriegsspiel Revival) community—through trying to create games with the fewest rules possible. For me, it’s a culture of play: rulings over rules, immersion instead of constantly checking the character sheet, rewarding player skill over dice rolls. Meaning comes from engagement, not mechanics.

You roll when the stakes are high—so every roll has weight. It’s about raising the tension rather than rolling to see if a door opens. In this regard, I’ve learned so much from Chris McDowell, the designer of Into the Odd, which ECO MOFOS!! is based on.

*ECO MOFOS!! with adventure zines. Image Source: Golem Productions.*

G.P.: About that game you claimed: “Not Grimdark but Weirdhope.” You coined Weirdhope as almost its antidote. In one of my recent blog posts, I asked whether TTRPGs have a grimdark problem. I argued that cruelty often masquerades as maturity. What’s your take?

D.B.: Grimdark has this glee to it, a kind of joy in turning everything up to 11. Look at Warhammer 40K: it was created as satire in the early 80s as a way of pointing out that if certain aspects of our culture continue and power keeps centralizing, you end up in a fascistic nightmare. And a game like Mörk Borg pushes that darkness so far it becomes absurd, almost comedy.

But with Lamentations of the Flame Princess you saw how “edgy” darkness could slide into exploitation. And with Warhammer 40K the satire got lost once Games Workshop became hyper-commercial. What’s left is just playing fascism. You’re playing as this force that essentially will kill the other. Some other games are just about wallowing in awfulness.

That’s where weirdhope came from. The phrase itself was a direct reaction to “grimdark”: not grim, but weird; not dark, but hopeful. It’s not light and fuzzy. It’s about change, and change is weird.

G.P.: Is “weirdhope” related to the Solarpunk genre?

D.B.: I’ve been thinking a lot about solarpunk, too. There, the world is running off of windmills and hydropower and everything’s green and everyone’s happy. It felt too settled. Everything’s already solved. I couldn’t see how we get from here to there.

You know, I read a lot of speculative fiction - Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler - stories that are optimistic, but in roundabout, nuanced ways. They never offer easy answers. There are pain and difficulty in the journey, but at the center there’s a sense of humanity that endures. We can still form community, still care, even in imperfect worlds. That can become a seed for something better.

I see that in Miyazaki too, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä. There’s darkness in those stories but also change. If we embrace nature, if we allow transformation, something new can grow out of it. Weirdhope became the messy middle ground: hopeful but uncertain, still fighting for the future. That’s where ECO MOFOS!! starts.

G.P.: From my own games that I’ve run and played in I know for sure that stories in TTRPGs can affect players emotionally. Do you think immersing yourself in “hopeful” stories is a healthier experience?

D.B.: Yes. These games create real memories—like climbing a mountain together. Yes. The memories you create in these games are real: shared experiences you look back on, like a tough hike you did together. If those stories are about connection and possibility, that’s good.

I’m not saying grimdark shouldn’t exist. But we need alternatives, spaces to imagine better futures.

Ein Bild, das Zeichnung, Anime, Cartoon, Darstellung enthält.

KI-generierte Inhalte können fehlerhaft sein. — *A group of traders arriving at an island, watched by a Ratlin. Art by Daniel Locke. Image Source: Copy/Paste Co-op.*

G.P.: On your website, one of your projects describes TTRPGs as “engines for projection, simulation, and communal myth-making.” Can you elaborate?

D.B.: It sounds academic, but it’s about empathy. When you step into another avatar, you’re seeing the world differently. Tabletop play lets you live other lives: what it’s like in zero-G, or an authoritarian world, or a communal solarpunk future.

It’s communal myth-making. We create stories together. Even silly campaigns become legends. If that can happen accidentally, imagine what happens when we play stories that allowed you to think of the world in different, more progressive ways and to enter those spaces as well. If you can imagine something, maybe you can get there. Maybe not in this generation, but it’s a journey towards the thing.

G.P.: So, finally, tell us about ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE.

D.B.: ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE takes ECO MOFOS!! out to sea. The original was terrestrial – wastes, wilderness, ruins. This one’s oceanic: sailing between archipelagos, discovering drowned cities, and facing colossal creatures.

My two main inspirations are Zelda: Wind Waker and Waterworld. That sense of freedom, ramshackle technology, mutation, discovery. I also wanted to finally bring in mecha and kaiju, I’ve always wanted them in the setting. The ocean gives space for that scale.

Rules-wise, it’s still ECO MOFOS!! at heart, but with tweaks:

a system for massive creatures (treating head, body, limbs as semi-independent units),
a simple critical-success rule (roll exactly your stat for something special),
and, of course, countless new tables—mutations, classes, shells, relics, ambergris-based magic, seafaring gear.

No motorboats though: their mechanical rhythm attracts monsters. It’s a sailing game about wind, current, and rhythm.

Ein Bild, das Text, Diagramm, Schrift enthält.

KI-generierte Inhalte können fehlerhaft sein. — *ECO MOFOS!! is a procedural game at heart, with many tools to let the GM create the setting on the fly. Screenshot by Golem Productions from ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE Quickstart Rules.*

G.P.: Why this focus on procedural generation instead of a fixed setting?

D.B.: Because when a world has official lore, someone at the table always knows more than the GM. And that breaks immersion. Procedural generation makes every group’s world unique. It also supports solo play: roll a new NPC, find out what they want, follow that thread. The story grows organically.

Still, the new book includes mini-modules – islands that kind of work like six-room dungeons or other one-shot locations inspired by myth, The Odyssey, or movies. You can scatter them in your world. Some have dormant mecha worshipped as oracles, others living mines or weird villages. They add emotional moments to the procedural process.

G.P.: I also noticed “Corpo Schemes” in the quickstart. What are they?

D.B.: They show how the corporations infect the world around them as structured events that spread consequences. Inspired by Mythic Bastionland’s omens, they give the GM motion and direction. If oil drilling happens here, something breaks there.

It makes the world feel alive and gives players something worth fighting for.

G.P.: What else can people expect from your campaign that launched yesterday on BackerKit?

D.B.: We’re actually funding two books:

ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE – the full system and seafaring toolkit (you don’t need ECO MOFOS!! to play).
Four Fathoms Deep – a companion anthology of adventures by Leo Hunt (Vaults of Vaarn), Zedeck Siew (A Perfect Wife), Chris Air (Five Million Worlds), and Alexander Jatscha-Zelt from Golem Productions (Note and Disclaimer: Yes, that is me! That guy typing this blog post here… Surprise, everyone! 😊).

Both are illustrated by Daniel Locke's Sketchbook and we’ll have extras like a GM screen, art print, and a map of a starter-region. The campaign launched yesterday and aims to deliver autumn 2026.