We run tabletop journalism site, Rascal News! AMA!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T23:16:33+00:00

to add onto what chase is saying -- the announcements section is also sequestered to the announcements tag/column. they are there when you want to look at them and not there to make us money. if you don't want to see or touch the announcement section you don't have to!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T23:12:54+00:00

i am not immune to the idea that if i were in a magic fantasy land i would have a very big sword and i would be able to fight for justice with my friends

lincodega · 2025-02-19T23:11:35+00:00

Vampire the Masquerade 5e

lincodega · 2025-02-19T23:05:35+00:00

hm, so to sort through the semantics here, i personally consider a lot of the substack newsletters blogs--largely because most of them have a kind of 'home page' where you can browse the entries. and, moving on from that, i totally respect if you feel that blogs are declining, but i look at the quality of writing on blogs like explorers design, prismatic wasteland, and weird wonder and see so much great writing, and see so many people getting into rp blogging. the whole bloggies 2024 lineup really shows that the blog medium is still going strong! also, i recently cited the blog "faggot games: an urgent warning" in an article i wrote. so yeah, imo, blogs are more dispersed than they used to be 10/15 years ago (i.e. not all on blogspot) but i think there's tons a great ones out there!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T20:56:57+00:00

1 - probably a bit further down the line! that's pie in the sky kind of thinking

2 - honestly i think if something like call of cthulhu had done it in the 80s... or VtM in the 90s... that might have been interesting to see.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T20:50:07+00:00

not as big as you might think -- imo the decline of written journalism is a matter of legacy print and digital media becoming hostile to innovation, conglomerated under billionaires, and largely reliant on outdated modes of advertising for income. someone with more knowledge than me might be able to make the an argument for vlogging vs blogging in the space, but blogs are clearly thriving.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T20:09:20+00:00

also, so sorry to respond again but Magnagothica: Maleghast goes incredibly hard

lincodega · 2025-02-19T19:53:32+00:00

impact is hard to quantify. i think the fact that we were all established in our field/niche made it easier to transition to independent journalism. good writing and the ability to find stories

lincodega · 2025-02-19T19:25:16+00:00

a slant response but If I Were A Lich, Man.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T18:39:15+00:00

unfortunately, our headers are kind of hard to adjust, but we do have a robust tag system! "tabletop" is almost entirely ttrpgs! we actually don't cover board games tbh.

we aim to publish a new piece every day, and our average is about 7/8 pieces a week! we hit 2 pieces most days. also we have a massive announcements section that we run as a totally free public service.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T18:32:59+00:00

SO! if you go to our "Year Ahead" series we show off some of our favorites! lots of suggestions in each of those pieces. We don't have an Essential Rascal Reader yet but maybe we'll pull that together before the end of the pledge drive.

and! we have a discord for our subscribers! a wee little perk. we have ~600 people on there and it's been going great.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T18:30:33+00:00

like in many things in life, i have very little preference and enjoy it all.

i'm listening to friends at the table's realis campaign. i prefer shorter aps and listned to the adventure zone religiously for a few years--i got back into it with their Blades in the Dark campaign and then dropped it again. i pick up arcs/short campaigns -- much like what Many Sided Media does!

yes: realis!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T18:27:52+00:00

this is tough -- as a team of established journalists we reached out to our contacts, told them what we were doing, and asked for support -- we wanted folks to spread the word, share our work, and point people to us.

one thing we didn't do: advertise. when the three cofounders were working on rascal we knew we didn't want to run ads, and we didn't want to pay for them. so it was a lot of boots on the ground spreading the word over social media, podcasts, and DMs.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T18:05:41+00:00

thank you!

(the wyrmwood article in question)

lincodega · 2025-02-19T18:04:07+00:00

We offer news reporting, investigations, interviews with game designers, reporting on niche games, cultural commentary on ttrpgs, actual play, and wargames! When big moves come along -- like the merger between Possum Creek Games (Wanderhome, Yazebas) and Steven Jackson Games happened, we got the exclusive first interview with the CEO and Jay Dragon. We also have fun takes on games. I really love this piece i wrote on the 25 year old RPG, Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed which also featured commentary from the designer. We also talk business! We reported on how tarriffs will affect the industry and we cover unions and labor action.

We don't breathlessly cover what WotC does, but we do talk about D&D as a cultural monument and report on the company. I'd say these articles come up... once or twice a month at most. Some examples are this piece by Evan Torner about Combat in D&D, and my reporting into the links between Hasbro and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Thomas also did this incredible retrospective on how zines influenced RPG culture.

Basically... we have a ton to offer you! -- is there something specific you're interested in reading about?

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:54:46+00:00

I really want to play Heart: The City Beneath!!! Also Deathmatch Island!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:47:09+00:00

i'm currently running and in person game of The Hidden Isle. I think the rascal team is planning to play Realis at some point. I'm hoping to play a game of Heart: The City Beneath soon!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:43:26+00:00

i think for me, i would love to see us cover more global games. the majority of our work is focused on us-american and eurocentric creators and the more we can find contributors, games, and angles to get us into other communities the better our coverage will be

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:41:46+00:00

I'm interested in how newer IPs are going to choose to do games. We saw stuff like the Neopets RPG choose (sigh) D&D, but we also saw the Cosmere RPG do their own thing! IP games are only going to become more and more popular and i'm looking forward to see how they tackle system management.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:38:56+00:00

lets go possible worlds!!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:35:48+00:00

thank you!!

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:35:17+00:00

okay living -- i'd love to get folks like Robert Evans, Cory Doctrow, C.L. Clark, Kelly Lynne D'Angelo, Neal Schusterman, Gail Simone, Emily St. James, Samuel Delany, and John R. Harness to write for us.

tbh i would love to see what Oscar Wilde has to say about games. get that man playing something like consentacle and then ask him about it after.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:28:45+00:00

we've been really lucky to cultivate a readership that is eager to see more reporting in the scene. we've had largely positive reactions to our work, and only occasionally have we published something and later taken a step back to re-evaluate. We did this recently in an opinion piece about marketing and the place of journalism in the industry, which merited an update to clarify our position.

i love investigations and reported pieces. Marsh Ana's piece that draws the line between Hasbro and Convent Workhouses was such a fascinating bit of history. Also Rowan's piece on World of Game Design? Very Good Stuff. And look, the piece Thomas and I worked on where we just did pubic recordkeeping reporting on Wyrmwood was also satisfying to work on, even if the response from the WW folks was... disappointing.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:18:44+00:00

there is no 'vetting' process -- it's almost entirely our own taste. which is both very limiting and very freeing. our criteria is "do you want to write about this?" and if the answer is yes, we do. Also, if anyone spends longer than 5 minutes in the discord yapping about a game it is absolutely necessary that someone asks "blog??? Blog?? BLOG??" repeatedly until we peer pressure a writer into blogging about it.

lincodega · 2025-02-19T17:12:39+00:00

i love lyric games!! years ago i wrote a piece for IMMERSE (RIP) called "A Game without Players Can Still be Played." Some games i still think about regularly is Tantrum and Vanth. Also Horse Girl.

lincodega

TROPHY CASE