An interesting piece about the #ttrpg media landscape: https://personable.blog/media-crowdfunding/
The elephant in the room is noticed quite early on: Why is so much rpg media designer-facing rather than ordinary gamer-facing?
Everyone seems to want to be in a conversation with designers (even when it doesn't make sense) and I think that's a social media hierarchy thing. In ttrpg social circles, designers matter. Everyone else is a feckless hog who exists purely as a source of monies.
@Taskerland That's a nice blog post.
As I read it, he is not criticising designer-facing media or even crowdfunding, but rather bemoaning the lack of media outlets aimed at ordinary people who just want to know which games are worth playing.
If he is criticising anything, it would seem to be social media, that has hollowed out the media space for gaming โ as it has for all other spheres of news. Social media has replaced traditional journalism and rendered it unprofitable.
@strangequark Whilst also being completely unfit for purpose.
I don't mind industry-facing people having news outlets, but I am definitely not a fan of stuff for regular gamers being replaced by industry-facing stuff.
@Taskerland To quote my bio, "I started playing RPGs in the 1980s, when the only form of social media was White Dwarf magazine."
In the early days (first ~100 issues), it was a magazine written by gamers, for gamers. Articles, reviews, a scenario or two, fan-contributed content. There is nothing like that any more.
Early WD was such a glorious shambles. There were fantastically weird articles. It was nice reading it back to back with Imagine as well. I remember never finding Dragon half as interesting because the professionalism diminished the mentalism
@Printdevil Yes. White Dwarf was a beautiful painted cover wrapped around 36 pages of text set in a 5 point font with no margins. Some of the scenarios were genius (Albie Fiore's The Lichway is still my personal favourite) while others were just bonkers. You always had to sift through the dirt to find the gold.
It also covered whatever games were on the go without favouritism beyond what people wrote. I quite liked their Barbarian class which always seemed more interesting than the Unearthed Arcana one. Much shouting in the D&D over that.
Dragon always seemed so bland. A pabulum of gaming.
@Printdevil @strangequark @Taskerland
I don't think the US ever had White Dwarf, but Dragon Magazine sustained me back during my teenage years when actually *getting to play the game* was pretty much only a dream.
But even that eventually went through decay.
1/2
@Printdevil @strangequark @Taskerland
Even as professionally-constrained as it was, older Dragon still used to be heavy on the imaginative parts of the game, and gave tiny glimpses of what else was out there through reviews. When it became more focused on presenting new 3.5 mechanics, which were so widely considered unbalanced that they had to slap "no, we're official, honest!" onto the cover, I let my sub lapse. WotC's website was better at being Dragon than Dragon at the end.
2/2
the UK had some great gaming magazines on and off. White Dwarf obviously, but Imagine and Arcane both had great stuff from time to time.
And there was a dreadful magazine called Fantazia that they let any old gargoyle write for back in the day
<_<
>_>
Did any of you ever come across Tortured Souls by Beast Ents.? It was a UK magazine of D&D adventures in the 1980s. I owned several issues, long consigned to the dustbin by my mother who disapproved of That Kind Of Thing.
Production values were very high. As I remember, the adventures came with full-colour floorplans. I can't remember much about the content. One was a Dwarvish lair or mine or something.
I blame my mother throwing my stuff out for why I am a packrat now.
Also my packrattyness
Unsurprisingly I have most of those.
Including the box of the Dwarven Mines.
Perhaps it wasn't my mother, maybe @Printdevil stole them.
@Printdevil Next time I come over you can arrange that we play this in the FLGS.
"the palace of ever-plastic ducks"
@pteryx The first 100 issues of #WhiteDwarf are all on archive.org if you want to take a look:
https://archive.org/details/white-dwarf-magazine-001-100/White%20Dwarf%20001/
And Imagine if you look around individually
Imagine was an odd one because it was by TSR UK but its city building and maps were lovely.
@pteryx @Printdevil @strangequark @Taskerland The US was the base for, however, the most influential gaming rag you've never heard of: Alarums & Excursions. It was a giant of a 'zine in a world where most people in the scene had never heard of it, and it was where a whole lot of gaming theory (both design and praxis) was hashed out all the way ...
... get this ...
... to **today**.
@pteryx @Printdevil @strangequark @Taskerland Well the thing that stopped it from being just whining is that you had to pay for the privilege of being published. (It was an "APA" which has a certain, very quirky, model.)
It was a completely different vibe from any other publication in the gaming scene. It was like Dragon's Forum ... if Dragon's Forum had smart people interacting.
I loved APAs I was in them for *years* with some of the great and the good, and the mostly unknown. It was very BBS model in tone though.
There should be more APAs about Gargoyles.
Moreau Vazh
Strange Quark
Charnock
Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary
Dave J
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