The New Tabletop Games Journalism

February 21, 2024 7:44 AM

Rascal News is a new venture in tabletop games journalism. Building on the 00s' New Games Journalism for videogames, the editors/authors are Lin Codega, Rowan Zeoli, and Chase Carter. A recent interview with Kimi Hughes discusses "How Has Actual Play Changed Game Design?"

Some sources and inspirations:

• Gen Con's Ennies
• Elizsabeth De Kleer's Vice Writing on D&D in prisons and Critical Distance's Best writing on games and prison
• The Forge, especially "System Does Matter"
• Jay Dragon's Game Design and writing
• Discussions of race in D&D like this one on "playable orcs"

posted by anotherpanacea (9 comments total)

I've got a buddy who's an indie TTRPG/board game designer, focusing on making games for a diverse 21st century player base; He hasn't quit his day job, but has had some success with small crowdfunding campaigns (having base goals around $5-7K USD) to publish his creations over the last few years. According to him, the founders of Rascal are pretty much the only TT games journalists who have shined a spotlight on his work at all, and credits them with helping make those campaigns a success. That makes them an A+ outfit in my book.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:10 AM on February 21 [5 favorites]

The interview seems to be for subscribers only, so I'm missing some connection--does it discuss The Forge's Actual Play sub-forum? If so, it's nice to see it acknowledged. I knew Ron a little 'irl' before Sorcerer, The Forge, etc. and then later mostly appreciated the booth he ran at Gen Con. But the way The Forge tried to make actual play reports central to discussions of gaming was something I liked about that too.

I was more into rec.games.frp.advocacy than The Forge--and pretty tired by the time The Forge came around--but much like "GNS" owed something to the rgfa "Threefold," I suspect the Actual Play forum was another minor debt owed to session reports that were common and appreciated in rgfa too. I mean, I realize session / campaign reports are much older than that and common in a wide range of venues. But making a point of getting people to talk about actual game sessions rather than abstract terminology--because you have the problem of people wanting to theorize gaming--is a good specific solution to that specific problem.

It's also pretty understandable that actual plays have a large audience and 'meta' discussions a relatively small audience.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:27 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]

It's bit buried in that fourth link, but Codega is responsible for the best OGL fiasco coverage last year.
posted by HeroZero at 9:30 AM on February 21

Oh, if Codega's invovled in this, I'm going to give it another chance.
posted by ursus_comiter at 9:49 AM on February 21

Lin Codega and the OGL fiasco, previously on MetaFilter
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:52 AM on February 21

This seems great! Looks like they've also got an interview with Rep. Zooey Zephyr behind the paywall.

I love the crazy stuff going on the TTRPG zine space the last couple-few years - my biggest problem is finding the time and people to play things with... I've been toying with the idea of doing some kind of a zine club where each month we do a one shot with some interesting-looking zine and then write up a review of some sort. I honestly can't think of actually getting through my backlog otherwise... (but I also dream about finding a couple-few people to play a year long Mothership campaign with.)
posted by kaibutsu at 12:05 PM on February 21 [1 favorite]

I am very glad to see this exists, but I worry that the audience it thinks is there is not there, at least not in sufficient size to make this project financially viable. Indie RPGs are a fraction of a fraction of the games industry, and there's an old joke about everything being based around one $20 bill that gets passed around so much that it looks like an economy. I hope I'm wrong.
posted by Hogshead at 2:45 PM on February 21 [1 favorite]

I am very glad to see this exists, but I worry that the audience it thinks is there is not there, at least not in sufficient size to make this project financially viable.

Yeah, I worry about this too, but I've picked up more zines and small-press TTRPG books in the last few years than ever before, because the quality is soooooo much higher than 'official' published books. If they include an unbiased, non-algorithmic review section on their site, I'll probably subscribe for a few bucks? All of the best tools I have and games I want to play right now, are put out by smaller publishers, or completely independent ones. For every dud, there's just such an amaaaaazing zine or independently published book out there. Some of the indie stuff is leagues better than a Hasbro product.

This goddamn masterpiece? Oh my god, it's so much better than the official monster manual; it's a little bit of legwork to get things converted to 5e (it works best in OSR rulesets, but I use it very regularly in 5e; because most of the time, most of a monster's stat block isn't used in 5e) but it is honestly the single most used book I have at this point. It has menu items for how to cook up the monsters you've just dispatched (to which alone, just cooking up some beastie or whatever can have a random table result that just careens everyone off into a whole mini-arc of a story). The random tables are thoughtful tools to make adventures fun, interesting, worlds feel lived in and unexpected, not just actual random tables of mechanical things that happen. I've run entire evenings off a single page in this book, and a few dice rolls, to which everyone has at least reported having a good time, this thing costs more at list than the monster manual does, but it's so far beyond the MM in terms of density, utility and quality of content. I swear to gods, you pick up a copy of Shadowdark (increase HP a little bit) and a copy of the Monster Overhaul, and a reason for your players to go from point A to point B, you've got weeks of games ready to basically go.

I mean, c'mon, look at this shit! Psychedellic heavy metal Oregon Trail caravan game that oozes moebius and prog rock out of every page? Where has this been all my life? I can't claim ownership of this, but my buddy said "So the vibe of this book is each player smoking the last little bit of a roach, holding it in, looking around and saying 'will you look the fuck at that?' every scene." This book in particular is so weird, and so gorgeous that I'm happy just to flip through it (and fully realize I'll probably never play this one?), but it's also just a system agnostic way to run a caravan in this world; it's kind of designed for OSR adjacent systems, but you could slap this right over 5e if you're more comfortable. It is so deeply weird, and strange and like Heavy Metal™ in just the right ways. You don't want to play this!?

The amount of people who want to play TTRPGs in general seem to be growing, or at least growing in certain demographics. The current pipeline I've seen more than once is folks who have played Baldur's Gate 3 (and therefore, functionally have a working grasp on the rules of pretty-much-5e); and join in on a 5e campaign or one shot. After that, when folks realize that 5e is like 'pretty dang' on the crunch scale if you're playing with most of the rules and optional rules in the core books, and that it can be far less 'homework' to play indies, OSR or other modern TTRPGs they're basically down for whatever. Once they experience 'lighter' rules games, they're hooked.

With TV getting worse and worse it seems every month, I just find myself playing more TTRPGs to tell the stories that I don't feel like I'm seeing on screens (so, if you're in SE Portland hit me up, lets do something, or hell yes I'm probably down to join/run a game; i just stare at screens enough and don't really want to play online).
posted by furnace.heart at 4:03 PM on February 21 [8 favorites]

Thanks for the shoutout. I'm glad The Monster Overhaul is getting some good use out there. :)
posted by Skerples at 3:34 PM on February 23 [3 favorites]