In the early days of roleplaying games
– the mid-1970s to early 1980s – new releases of official
rulebooks, supplements, and adventures seemed few and far between.
Magazines served to provide a steady stream of new material to
inspire gamers: insight and direction from designers, rules questions
and clarifications, debates on game issues, gamemaster tips, and a
host of new scenarios, settings, classes, equipment, monsters, and
spells. While the pillars of print magazines that supported early
roleplaying games have crumbled in the face of advances into the
Internet Age, their descendents still provide inspiration for gamers
across the globe and offer an different outlet for designers to bring
their work to publication.
Reading Shannon Appelcline’s
Designers & Dragons 1970s history of roleplaying game
companies (and the trials that beset and often vanquished them)
reveals an interesting trend: in the earliest days of roleplaying
magazines provided the most regular flow of new content for most game
lines, including TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons. Some focused
exclusively on the publisher’s own games (“house organs”) while
others provided news and material for a range of roleplaying games.
But reading Judges Guild’s history offers yet another interesting
perspective: releasing supplemental game material in a subscription
format. While not technically a magazine, the subscription provided a
collection of setting information and adventures to fill in the
dearth of such material from official Dungeons & Dragons
publisher TSR, whose executives, according to Designers &
Dragons, apparently laughed at the idea of producing such material; they
expected players to create their own worlds and scenarios, feeling
the publisher’s role was to produce rules (at the time TSR was
focusing its efforts on revising D&D rules into the
classic trilogy of rulebooks, ultimately released in hardcover format
one each year).
The list of roleplaying game magazines
that have since come and gone seems endless. Those that somehow
managed to survive evolved into electronic editions or websites, some
with paid access similar to subscriptions. In the Internet Age the
subscription model has fallen by the wayside for print magazines,
with the exception of the comparatively small yet quality cottage
industry of fanzine publishers, some of whom I’ve discussed before,
and a rare few attempts to return to print publication (with PDF
releases) like Gygax Magazine. Blogs, websites, and PDFs have
mostly usurped the role of magazines as the periodical venues for
delivering new, often free content, sometimes from publishers and
professionals but primarily from a host of gamers themselves, with
the quality, frequency, and usefulness varying.
Magazines and their editors serve
primarily to produce quality material on a limited subject relevant
to a significant reader demographic. Editors curate the vast slush
piles of potential submissions, balancing what looks promising with
what they believe readers want, all within the constraints of the
publisher’s mandates (a topic I’ve also discussed before). The
sheer volume of game material available online today and the
seemingly infinite scope of the internet results in so much
un-curated information that individual users must pick and choose
what sites or publishers produce the most useful inspiration for
their gaming needs at the moment. The magazine and editor model
remains relevant on a very small scale – a particular blog or
website focuses on certain gaming topics or produces material
relevant to readers’ interests – but no entity exists that could
possibly curate the immense flood of gaming inspiration released to
the web (though some have valiantly tried and succeeded to some
degree, such as OSR Today). Few entities exist to curate related
websites producing specific-themed material apart from individual
users. Many bloggers share their particular tastes in this
information stream through blog lists; some even produce the kind of
regular dose of roleplaying game setting and adventure material along
the model Judges Guild pioneered (though usually for free). Overall,
however, the internet remains a vast, untamed wilderness of gaming
inspiration across the spectrum of sub-genres, quality, and formats.
Patreon has provided creators with an
internet infrastructure for soliciting paid subscriptions from
supporters and delivering periodic content (both exclusive to
subscribers or free to anyone). Like Kickstarter, Patreon relies on
word of mouth across the internet – Facebook shares, Google+
promotions – as well as the creator’s past work and reputation
for producing material that interests patrons. The service helps
connect creators with users, provides the foundation for an
interactive community, supplies a means to charge for and deliver
content, and gives creators monetary incentive to produce more
material on a frequent basis. Patreon merges some of the benefits of
Judges Guild’s subscription service providing gaming inspiration
while enabling independent individuals the means to connect with and
serve a demographic of gamers who enjoy their material.
As a consumer I turn to several venues
for regular doses of roleplaying game material. I’ve long since
abandoned roleplaying magazines in print (I only really subscribed to
Dragon and Challenge in their heydays), though I
occasionally pick up a fanzine or two as the mood and content strikes
me. My small doses of inspirational game material usually comes from
the various blogs I follow and free releases on DriveThruRPG that
pique my interest. I do not subscribe to online websites offering
content, nor do I purchase available PDF magazines (I have so many
PDFs I lose count, and generally only purchase those I intend to
print out and use). The folks in my Google+ circles share with me and
many others new developments in roleplaying games and point me toward
new material. Lately, however, I’ve turned to Patreon to find
regularly published gaming inspiration and a potential outlet for my
own gaming endeavors.
Patreon has intrigued me as a game
writer and publisher. I often face a dichotomy when working on
roleplaying game material: do I work on significant projects like
supplements and full games, releasing them infrequently as large
books, or do I focus my work on smaller, more frequently released
material that still fits within a specific theme but comes out as
periodic low-page-count “magazines” (to fall back on a familiar
but not entirely accurate term)?
More specifically I’ve debated what
to do with a large setting that’s been percolating in the back of
my head for years – the Infinite Cathedral – and what
format to use in bringing that to publication. I’ve long expected
to write all outlined chapters of the sourcebook before publishing it
as one large tome, but that requires more time than I have and, by
its very nature as a large book, isn’t by any means a product I
could bring to full publication in the near future (much as I like a
traditional, substantial sourcebook with everything needed to play
inside). But the structure I’ve outlined for the Infinite
Cathedral seems suited to serialized subscription release;
several introductory chapters of broad setting information followed
by chapters detailing various locations, monsters, adventure hooks,
and scenarios by region. I’d always expected to write locations,
adversaries, and adventures to the Infinite Cathedral setting,
but as western medieval fantasy roleplaying fare gamemasters could
easily port the individual pieces to a more open game world.
I’m looking forward to exploring the
possibilities of delivering regular roleplaying game material in a
subscription format. Several worthy successors have come to the fore
and taken up the banner strongly yet formerly carried by
professional print roleplaying periodicals: quality blogs delivering
content, a respectable handful of gaming fanzines, some PDF
magazines, and innovative Patreon projects. Hopefully the future will
enable more evolution within this aspect of the adventure gaming
field to bring more relevant, quality content into consumers’
hands.
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