INTRO
It will likely come as no surprise to someone who would be reading this blog that much of what we would consider modern TTRPG design discourse and thought lives and dies in the ephemerality of the Internet. Back when I was but a wee D&D 3.5 CharOp board denizen, The Forge and the G+ chatrooms fermented the thoughts and feelings and games and grudges that my generation of game designers would come to know - or not, as the case may be, as in some ways many of those designers became influential enough that their games are now grandparents or great-grandparents many times over and we may have never seen the originals that spawned them. Before them, there were tales of the fan-zines that kept the RPG hobby alive - people circulating handmade periodicals, or in some lucky cases a game would be tied to a big enough publisher that it could have its own tie-in magazine that fans could write in to.
While people say that what you put on the Internet is forever, we are finding that more and more that is not the case - websites will die, archival efforts like The Internet Archive are under constant attack, people may scrub their online presence after a scandal. Consider the fact that much of Magic The Gathering's official web releases - including literal YEARS worth of lore - only still exist because someone backed it all up: WOTC didn't see a point in maintaining it since it didn't turn a profit. (Shoutouts to all the original members of The Vorthos Cast, who all ended up getting jobs with WOTC because they proved they knew what the hell they were talking about and proved the value of a lot of that stuff.) Physical books and magazines though, those are much harder to purge. Sometimes they too exist as transformations of the original work - maybe a publication will bundle a bunch of blog posts together and reformat them with new art and layout, maybe someone takes the opportunity to do some Lucasing to their old work to make it more accurate or palatable to a modern audience. Sometimes, the people who contribute work to these publications become personæ non grata and while the work they did may have been good or even foundational, their presence in the work becomes a blight upon its name such that modern designers don't even know who they were. All of these things, even the changed ones, become markers of the time they are written in and sometimes can provide just as much context about the ecology of the gaming hobby as they do about the games they're being written about in the first place. To that end, I'd like to take the time to shout out some currently running publications - and as always, I'm not making any money off of this, I'm just shilling for a cause I think is good: keeping good records to help future generations.
There are a few things I need to make clear here before we get too deep in here: mainly, that the more I started poking around and asking for help on this, the more people kept coming up with additional entries which has made this a much more in depth post than I first expected. I've tried to keep this as short and punchy as I could, but I'm going to have to split this into three separate posts. This post is going to focus on print zines for more that one game/category. The next post I'll be putting out (later this week, so I don't spam you all) will be focused on magazines that are dedicated to a specific game. The final post will be about digital-only zines that if the world was right and just would have print versions to go along with them.
Shoutout to everyone who told me about their favorites, and especially to all the Bretonnians folks in the UK for shouting out some publications that hadn't made their way across my desk yet. There are games I'd never even heard of that still have robust, thriving communities out there, and I think that rules.
TUMULUS
Tumulus is the paid counterpart to the extremely prolific and extremely free blog "Skeleton Code Machine" as well as the (presumably) free community game design presentations given at local libraries by Exeunt Press. If you're unfamiliar with "Skeleton Code Machine" I...I don't know how, honestly. Your friend and mine John Exeuntpress writes posts like he's haunted by that Alec Baldwin scene from Glengarry Glen Ross - Always. Be. Posting. More importantly, not only is he extremely consistent in addition to maintaining a terrifying output schedule, he's also got this quarterly zine that lets him explore some weird and wacky stuff - some of it (in his own words) is greatest hits posts from "Skeleton Code Machine," but each volume contains a few exercises to build your own games, a few theory articles, and a few ready-to-go games - and not all of it is home grown Exeunt Press originals! Each volume has about eight chapters, excluding the introduction or any full spread art, and guest contributors so far include Strega Wolf, M. Allen Hall, Jesse Ross, Hinokodo, Nate Whittington, Junk Food Games, Binary Star and Charlotte Laskowski. If you get a lot out of "Skeleton Code Machine," this one's a no brainer. Also, if you do a subscription for four volumes over the year, it costs you right around $5 a month up front, give or take, which is a pretty appropriate amount of money for a subscription these days I think.
MEAT CASTLE GAME WARE ANNUAL
Christian Sorrell has their fingers in a lot of (meat) pies. In addition to being fairly prolific in the Mothership scene, they've also got pretty regular MÖRK BORG and Cairn content that pops up as well a fantasy tactics game going that they're slowly building on. They also show up pretty regularly contributing to other peoples' projects. What we're here for today, however, is the "Meat Castle Game Ware Annual" series, which collects all of the freebie newsletter games they put out over the course of a year - currently, there are two volumes out: #1 has content from the games mentioned above, plus some microgames and some setting-agnostic content. #2 has more standalone content - a few games, a little Mothership, but lots more musings on games. No word on if/when the next one of these drops, but you can keep up with Christian's newsletter here.
KNOCK!
I'm glad that publishing groups like The Merry Mushmen exist - for one thing, they're responsible for rounding up years and years and YEARS of blog posts, giving them some good ol' spitshine and fancy new art and layout and presenting them to the masses by way of the KNOCK! series (currently on Issue #5 with #6 theoretically in progress). But beyond that, they've really made a name for being a good indie publisher for OSR content. They don't do a lot of publishing, but they've got a pretty rock solid line of Old-School Essentials books, they've got The Black Sword Hack, and finally they have one other zine I hadn't noticed until just now as I was writing this which will get covered in the next entry in this series.
The one key note here, though, is that these are somewhat premium products. Obviously, all the blog posts still exist from their original creators (as long as their websites are still up, of course) and you can go read them, but getting these nice versions can be costly - particularly if you're in the United States, like myself. That said, if you grab a bundle deal (or get them through a crowdfunder) so you're getting everything all at once, you can avoid a lot of the pain of importing them from France. Or you could live in a country that knows how tariffs work and you could avoid all that!
WYRD SCIENCE
Another excellent publication from across the pond, Wyrd Science is about twice the size of the first two zines mentioned and contains interviews with game designers, authors of novels for Warhammer 40k, comic book creators, and community organizers, plus game reviews and more. Unlike most of the other publications on this list, Wyrd Science leans much more heavily into representing the culture side of tabletop rather than just providing gameable content, and I think that's super valuable to have in print: for one, I can read two pages way faster than I can listen to a 30 minute interview; and for two, niche culture magazines like this are a truly dying breed. Perhaps I may be overly taken by the ritual of reading a magazine to learn about a thing you like, but as someone who has absolutely fallen into the passive media absorption brainrot of letting reviews and interviews in podcast form just constantly wash over me, I retain so very little - whereas when I read an interview, I'm actively engaging with it, I'm seeing what pictures the editor wanted to put with it, I'm consuming it as a whole experience.
Yes I DO have ADHD, why do you ask?
One final note: by the time this goes out, the Wyrd Science website version's days are numbered. That's not to say they're going away, but per this article (which, again, to prove my point, may not exist the next time you try to click it) outlines the financial untenability of maintaining their own separate website. This is a thing I empathize quite a lot with as someone who does next to none of what Wyrd Science does but have still paid an arm and a leg for a website over the past few years in website hosting nonsense. When I had last polled the internet for help on this, Hinokodo had helpfully provided a step-by-step guide to hosting your own site which I certainly need to do - if you're out there Mr. Wyrd Science, if you still want to have a site I hope that helps you out. One way or the other though, Wyrd Science has stated they'll still be around and that the most recent funding push for Volume #7 of Wyrd Science has re-energized him into making sure the zine survives. These are limited print runs and again, if you live in a country whose leadership has yet to look up the word tariff in the dictionary it can be a little dicey getting them over here - but it's worth it.
RASCAL NEWS
Look. I support paying journalists a living wage. You support paying journalists a living wage. We both know that Rascal was founded to be able to provide unbiased reporting on the tabletop games industry and beyond. We've both got the subscription, right? But what if you have a friend who hates journalism and needs to be shown the light, or at the very least lightly concussed with a small book until they learn the error of their ways? What if you just wanted a tailored Rascal experience that was all gas, no breaks, just the bangers? Then you'd better be one of the like four people who sees this link to the IPR website because Rascal - Year One is sold out pretty much everywhere.
More to the point - similar to but contrasted against Wyrd Science, Rascal - Year One is a zine covering tabletop culture broadly - not just RPGs, but also how each of the writers themselves engage with the portion of the fandom that best suits their interests. I'm not gonna belabor the point considering how difficult this has become to get in print - but if you can, do, and if you can't, clamor loudly and give Rascal your subscription money so they can pay for another print run.
THE INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS REVIEW
Probably the newest of newcomers in this particular list, the International Players Review literally just funded their books naught but a few weeks before this blog was written. They generated a lot of buzz, but I'm gonna be honest, I don't know where to find much information about these folks - they're flying pretty far under the radar! Some digging does reveal the Bluesky account for Golden Achiever (credited as "Graphic Designer" on the Backerkit page but does also seem to be in charge of the Itch page and a Patreon) I do find it fun that these zines are straight up intended to be evoking the nostalgic zines of yesteryear rather than channeling them perhaps on a more stylistic, internal level like Tumulus has, but I'll be honest, my interest was piqued! Particularly excellent was noting that, in going through the descriptions of #1-3, #3 contains an interview with Lee Gold, whom is ultimately responsible for this kind of zine existing in the first place and only just retired this year after roughly five decades of this. Excited to see what comes of these folks.
SECRET PASSAGES
SPEAKING of zines intending to invoke yesteryear, Secret Passages does this too but coming about it from the reverse side of things - it's not that the zines themselves are evoking the past, it's the writers who were there in the first place! Self described as "an Old School RPG and Oldhammer" publication, this thing has folks from all over the history of the industry (though, understandably, skewed on the English side of the hobby) sharing stories both about the hobby as it was and how certain things today have arcs that can be traced all the way back then, but also just all kinds of fun little gaming apocrypha that can get lost over time as the oral tradition of the hobby fades - hence, put it in a zine! Job done.
They've just launched a Kickstarter for Issue #3 of the zine, which is slightly curious to me - not in and of itself to use a crowdfunder to get a print run, of course, but rather that it appears that they're using it to offer multi-volume subscriptions, meaning if you back high enough during one Kickstarter, you don't need to back the next one. I would think that the Kickstarter fees alone might eat you up rather than just sourcing subscriptions as normal, but I suspect I also have no idea what I'm talking about. Legitimately very interested to hear about this kind of funding model, I don't think I've seen anyone do it like this before.
Either way, Kickstarter tells me that this project is based out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, so unless there's a Geordie audiobook add on pledge level AM NOT BUYIN' AN AM GAN'N HYEM. (Shoutout to all two of my Tyneside pals, whomst I have just lost with that bit.) (Also that's a lie, I can't say no to something with Lukasz Kowalczuk art on the front.)
PRISMATIC WASTELAND
Hello, Warren. You're reading this because I posted it in your Discord. You probably saw this title and said "Well, I didn't write a magazine, so I'm probably not in this. That's a shame, I really wish more people would say nice things about that book I wrote." Well JOKE'S ON YOU, Birdman. It's your blog's 5th birthday and you're getting a mention in here too.
To any of you unfamiliar with the Prismatic Wasteland blog, what began five years ago as a way to chat about an Ultraviolet Grasslands game and review some games has expanded into a blog that's also includes all kinds of theory posts, event coverage, ready-to-run game content and more. After putting out a few games including the excellent Barkeep on the Borderlands, Warren joined the fight against Internet enshittification, collected all the hits from the blog from 2021-2024, spruced 'em up real nice and got the cool cats over at Games Omnivorous to publish it. Well worth the read.
GLAIVE
Glaive is one I'm very excited to learn about, and it looks like I'm not the only one: The Weekly Scroll just interviewed the magazine's editor CJ Somavia. Glaive is a lifestyle magazine a la Thrasher - not just about TTRPGs, but about all kinds of related game culture. As someone who already lives in the middle of the Venn Diagram of lovers of dungeon synth, chiptunes, TTRPGs, wargames, and the late 90s era of gaming, this is unfortunately laser targeted at me and now I'm gonna have to figure out how to go beat someone up and get a copy of the first volume since it's 1.exclusively a physical magazine and 2. starting to pop off. Very excited to see where this one goes.
UNDER THE DICE
In a similar vein as Glaive, Under The Dice is put out by the folks who run the Hive Scum podcast. This is, in my opinion, peak fanzine - almost no information about it online, only the amount of web presence that is necessary to get information out there, and otherwise it's getting around by word of mouth. I literally cannot tell you how much of the zine skews towards TTRPG content versus wargaming content, but I can tell you that the Glaive interview with these folks is up online to view, so I encourage you to check that out. And hey, UTD, if you see this? If you restock your zines, I'll buy 'em!
OUTRO
Sweet Jiminy Jesus. This project quickly spiraled out of control. Thankfully the other two posts that will follow this one are functionally almost done since I cut a lot of it out of this one, but still. Again, thanks to everyone who helped me expand the search beyond what I already knew. If you're someone like me who craves physical media, please show these folks some love. Stay tuned for the next post, which is all zines/zine-adjacent objects which are all dedicated to specific games.
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