Motivated by Rascal News’ breakdown of how much work the team of Lin Codega, Rowan Zeoli, and Chase Carter do, I got in touch and wondered if they wanted to talk about it.
Can TTRPG news sites succeed? Oh yes, I have skin in this game.
The first thing that happened was the generous discount offer. You can use this special link to join Rascal News at $3 a month for the first three months and then pay $5 a month after that.
In this interview, we talk about the future of media, the future of Wizards of the Coast, Roll20 and actual plays. Just check out what happens when I ask about a favourite setting! Oops.
A industry interview with Rascal News
I get to talk (email, at least) to TTRPG publishers often but rarely get the chance to talk to industry experts with helicopter views of the hobby. LC is Lin Codega, RZ is Rowan Zeoli and CC is Chase Carter. I’ll let them introduce themselves!
Can you please give readers a little introduction to yourself?
LC: I’m a writer! I do journalism, mostly, and I’m currently publishing most of my work at Rascal, the outlet I co-founded with Chase Carter and Rowan Zeoli. I’m most well known in the tabletop space for breaking and then providing coverage of Wizards of the Coast’s proposed OGL update in early 2023.
RZ: I’m… so many things. But for Rascal I’m a journalist and a critic! I built my career in comedy and psychedelic journalism before moving over to covering actual plays. There’s more overlap than you’d expect.
CC: I’ve been a working journalist since 2012 in a lot of different scenes, and I started covering tabletop near the end of 2020. It’s been four weird and often trying years, but I genuinely can’t imagine doing anything else. That’s both self-aggrandizement and self-own.
Which tabletop games news story you covered was the one you were most satisfied with and why?
LC: This is a hard one! I’m never totally satisfied. I always think I could have done better, written clearer, spoken with someone else… I think a lot of my interviews are very satisfying. Those have endings, in a very obvious way. My interview with Quinns was really satisfying. I enjoy that piece a lot.
RZ: Hmmmm, seconded on the hard one. Most satisfied with is like asking which time Sisyphus was most satisfied rolling the boulder up his hill. I think some of my favorite ones I look back on are my piece for Autostraddle on different ways designers use gender and liberation ideology in their games. For Rascal, I think my favorites have been the investigation into itch.io’s handling of charity bundles, my piece dissecting the NATO wargame played by the UK Government, and the interview with the cast of Harlem Hellfighters about Blackness in tabletop and actual play (which I was nominated for a CRIT for!)
CC: Rascal has provided the opportunity to cultivate a more voice-y, bloggy approach to certain subjects, which is something I have especially loved exploring through personal or cultural pieces. Still, the most satisfying work will always be reported features: labor investigations such as my dive into Card Kingdom and Pandasaurus, or larger trend pieces such as my covering the “death” of Twitter within the tabletop industry.
Q) What has the launch of Rascal been like?
LC: Hectic! Exciting! Scary! It’s a real leap of faith in a lot of different ways. You have to simply and unflinchingly believe in a lot of different things ceaselessly; your own ability, your business acumen, your partners, your writing. And with Rascal, we’re staking a lot on the idea that people enjoy reading thoughtful, punky, interesting, and sometimes personal pieces on tabletop games and are willing to pay for the pleasure of it. It’s a huge risk, and it’s not the way that most news outlets operate, which is, generally speaking, at the whims of algorithms and ad sales. Believing in the audience has been the most important, and the most terrifying, part of this whole project.
RZ: It’s been exhausting and maybe the most rewarding experience of my career thus far. It’s forced me, more than anything, to take a look at how I relate to work and the value (or lack thereof) I assign to myself because of how “Good of a Job” I perceive myself to be doing. I’ve learned to have to trust my coworkers. Trust them with the vulnerability of how I’m actually doing, trust them with being able to support me through that when I’m not able to meet my self-imposed expectations, and trust them that we’re all working together towards a common goal. Even if on occasion our work styles conflict, we share a set of mutual ideals and priorities about how we think the world should be and what journalism’s role in that world is, and we talk through how we’re going to create new systems of care and accountability.
CC: I’ll mirror all of my partners’ sentiments but also add that Rascal’s launch has been one of the most gratifying experiences of my life—definitely within my professional tenure. We built the plane as it was leaving the runway, unsure of whether anyone would show up to support us. Instead, we’ve enjoyed surges of readers, funds and a belief in the project as more folks either find us online (discoverability is hard when you eschew traditional advertising) or throw their weight behind the growing number of worker-owned outlets that are springing from the ashes of corporate journalism. It’s just fulfilling to be part of a solution.
Why did you decide you should do it and not seek employment, or at least a gig, at an established site?
LC: After I was laid off from io9 I honestly didn’t even think about applying for jobs at other sites. Frankly speaking, there were no jobs out there. I sent out two resumes, maybe. I realized pretty quickly that I was very unlikely to get another job where I could write about tabletop games regularly, and that gutted me, on both a personal level and a professional one. As you know, there just aren’t a lot of outlets covering tabletop games out there. It’s a spare handful. And thinking about how much money the industry is making, the massive cultural capital it has, it was just deeply disappointing.
So, instead of trying to get another job at another site (unlikely, considering the state of media) or attempting to make freelancing work (bleak, for the same reasons) I just said fuck it. I have severance and a nest egg. Let’s fucking go. There’s absolutely room for more tabletop media.
RZ: I graduated into the pandemic. The last time I wasn’t a contract worker was as a barista in high school. There was never any job stability available for me. I’d been working freelance as a writer, editor, social media manager, content creator for years before I became a journalist. When Lin approached me about Rascal I was still a newly established journalist with just a little over a year under my belt.
For my beat, I was entering into a Matroyshka doll of niche field (actual play) in niche field (TTRPGs) during some of the biggest layoffs journalism has ever seen. I could only get pitches accepted for one show to one publication, and even then that was a couple hundred dollars a month. I was writing for free on a volunteer basis, applying to hundreds of jobs when Lin made that call, and I will forever be grateful they did.
CC: Funnily, I did have a second job during Rascal’s initial launch, but Dicebreaker fell victim to the corporate consolidation of media like so many other great sites and dedicated teams. I tried to do the multiple job thing that modern capitalism has forced onto the vast majority of folks, and then another tentacle of the same voracious monster cratered it. Forced to choose between hunting for nonexistent jobs and devoting my energy into building something I owned—something that would die by my own hand and not the callous ax of C-Suite executives—it was an easy decision.
What do you think the future of blog networks/digital media owners is looking like?
LC: Increasingly independent and increasingly niche. The era of venture capital-backed news is coming crashing down. It’ll take some big names along with it, but I can’t imagine for a second that VCs are going to take on media sites when the reliable ways of making money—clicks and ad sales—are becoming increasingly unreliable, if completely unstable.
RZ: I’m so-so on my nostradamus game, but I think the future of news will be much much smaller than it is now. Lin’s completely right. The old way is dying as we collapse because Succession style tech-bros sell our society and planet to the highest bidder. The future is local and niche, and I for one am happy to be writing to a couple hundred (or thousand) little weirdos who care so deeply about the world and the games we play in them. Catch me making a local paper in the apocalypse.
CC: As the resident cynic on the team, I’ll posit that Rascal cannot be the only solution. I’m so pleased to be a part of this initial wave of worker-owned, independent news, but our model is not a one-size-fits-all solution. We aren’t built to handle, for example, the needs of a mid-sized neighborhood or town. I think there’s definitely a model for local journalism that isn’t owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, but that’s for someone else to create. If they want to augment our model, or that of Defector, Aftermath, 404 Media, etc. fantastic—we’ll be there to share the skills. But digital news will not be saved by 1,000 Rascal clones, alone.
Can tabletop games, especially TTRPGs, ever generate enough monetizable news to satisfy the big publishers?
LC: No, because big publishers are never satisfied.
RZ: Enough news? Yes. Monetizable? Only if they can somehow find a way to sell tabletop games to you as a way to stir up some socio-political controversy and/or cure some type of internal deficiency. The new [redacted for legal purposes] supplement will stop the terrorists and give you eternal life.
CC: If we’re doing our job correctly, publishers will never be satisfied. My intended audience has been, at its most commercial, consumers and a buying audience who came to me for information on what to buy, what to skip, and how they might best use their limited funds to enjoy a luxury hobby. Rascal’s audience is much more concerned with design, criticism, and industry critique. I’ve never written for publishers—that’s PR’s job.
What do you think the next few years look like for Wizards of the Coast?
RZ: They’ll probably keep making D&D.
CC: Wokka wokka. Wizards and Hasbro want to pivot hard into digital deliverables: that vaunted virtual tabletop, digital copies of books and supplements, addons and gewgaws, DLC-coded “content” either rolled into a subscription or part of some battle pass-esque seasonal release. Publishing physical books is expensive and slow, and Hasbro really needs D&D to bring in the magnitude of revenue that Magic: The Gathering already does. The quickest way to achieve that is ramming their most profitable IPs (read: Baldur’s Gate 3) into as many extra products as possible.
The designers and artists at WotC will continue to design a game that they and so many players genuinely love. How will that square with corporate demands? Probably less interesting swings from D&D’s output and more reinforcing the core brand.
Who do you think the TTRPG publisher challenger brands are?
LC: Unfortunately the simple truth is that D&D makes ten times what its next competitor does. There isn’t a real corporate challenge on the horizon. And then, because TTRPGs are so deeply associated with the medieval fantasy genre, most of the bigger brands aren’t deviating from the path. The big games coming out of companies like Paizo, MCDM, Darrington Press, even Free League are, for the most part, different flavors of this genre. The challengers are really the smaller studios that are publishing singular and fascinating games; Possum Creek Games, Rowan, Rook and Decard, Good Luck Press, World Champ Game Co. and Possible Worlds Games are all working on excellent and often experimental games.
RZ: While we’re here shouting out great designers, I really like the work of Elliot Davis, Sam Leigh, Viditya Voleti, Connie Chang, Cassi Mothwin, and Caro Asercion. I’m also looking forward to reading more international work like the folks over at Jambo Editorial in Brazil.
CC: Most of your mid-tier “challenger brands” aren’t challenging D&D at all. They understand that a better use of resources is to carve your own niche within the traditional RPG experience. Companies such as Modiphius, Chaosium, Free League, and Evil Hat have built product portfolios not wholly defined by the looming d20 shadow (5E ports of popular systems notwithstanding), whether that’s different genres, extremely Swedish approaches, or recruiting a rolodex of killer independent designers under their umbrella. One of the biggest fallacies in tabletop is that you necessarily must contend with WotC.
Is Roll20 on the right course by buying One Book Shelf and Demiplane?
LC: Who knows! I’m not a huge fan of conglomeration, regardless.
CC: The right course? No, I agree with Lin: conglomeration sucks under any circumstance. But it might be the practical course, given WotC’s impending virtual tabletop. Never doubt the power of an official brand and a company that has trained its audience to respond well to officially licensed stuff. Unless that unnamed project is dead on arrival, Roll20 stands to lose a chunk of its users to sheer convenience and are likely preparing to absorb that blow.
In a few years, do you think actual plays will be as popular as they are now, and why?
RZ: I think actual play is only going to keep getting more popular as people with money keep realizing they can make high quality semi-scripted programming for a fraction of the price of traditional film and television. A medium where the writer’s room happens in front of the cameras, with minimal set design, a high level of fan engagement (when you can achieve it) and infinite narrative possibility is like catnip for media investors when they realize it’s potential. Once an actual play wins an Emmy, I think there’s no going back.
The form of AP that large studios will be willing to invest in are going look different than smaller, lower budget productions—or even what some of the most popular ones like Critical Role look like—in order to meet a larger audience’s needs (shorter run time, more familiar visual TV/film language, familiar names). But, in general, the more people who understand what actual play is without needing a series of follow up explanations, the easier it will be for more people to fund and support actual play production.
CC: We cannot rule out venture capital injections boosting actual play onto a big screen, or at least a large streaming platform. Dimension 20 will be playing in Madison Square Garden, and I have to assume there are investors’ meetings speculating on how they snag a piece of that pie. It’s the worst possible future for the medium’s breakout success, but the most likely.
What is your favourite world setting for a TTRPG?
LC: So I actually really hate settings. My favorite games have worldbuilding that is so intrinsic to the rules that they are very nearly inseparable, and in that way create the setting. So games like Blades in the Dark, Eat the Reich, Inevitable—those are the settings I really appreciate.
RZ: My favorite setting is the one that I create with other people specifically for a game we’re going to play.
CC: Yeah, yeah, I enjoy a collaborative worldbuilding game like any self-respecting artpunk. But I also enjoy settings that communicate the designer’s sensibilities, aesthetic tendencies and ideologies. Setting necessarily restricts the kinds of stories a group can tell but, by the same coin, becomes the silent first contributor—mulching the soil in which we plant our narrative seeds.
Some of my favorites are Mausritter, Cloud Empress, Heart: The City Beneath, Dragonbane, and The Electrum Archive.
Which is your favourite system or rules engine?
LC: Same as above. I like systems and engines that are specific, loud, and quietly brilliant. A bit of old school OSR vibes like Blades in the Dark, Trophy Dark, Into the Odd and story-focused systems that come from Belonging Outside Belonging, card-focused games like Hearts Blazing, and exploratory systems like Dialect.
RZ: I’m recently on a Deathmatch Island kick, but I love games that know the experience they want to provide and do it really well. Other games I think fall into that are worldbuilding games like i’m sorry, did you say street magic? and solo games like Thousand Year Old Vampire.
CC: All I want to play these days is Mothership and its derivatives. Lightweight, agile and ruled by panic—it don’t get much better. I wish more games would design around physical elements on the character sheet, a la Mausritter’s equipment slots. Finally, I play a ton of solo RPGs and will never get over how much you can accomplish with a deck of playing cards and some dice.
Which TTRPG companies, whether you see them as a potential power publisher in the future or not, are doing exciting things worthy of attention?
LC: There’s a sliding scale of what one might consider a force in the industry, but I certainly have my favorites that I keep an eye on. You wouldn’t ask me to play favorites would you?
RZ: Oh shit, I played favorites. Don’t pay attention to my answers above. I didn’t say anything. This is all off the—
CC: I’ll drop my compatriot’s cheek and guile. As I mentioned above, Free League is on the verge of some serious success, thanks in large part to their successful adaptation of three big screen franchises (ALIEN, The Walking Dead and Blade Runner) while simultaneously developing original games. They have a distinct art style, a proven track record and a fairly robust fanbase, relative to the overall hobby. There are tons of smaller publishers—call them AA or whatever terms feel useful—that deserve success but operate in a way that is largely unconcerned with hockey stick growth. That’s probably the healthiest course, and one all of us at Rascal understand.
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