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 — 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
@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.
Moreau Vazh
Strange Quark
Charnock
Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary
