Rascal invites you to celebrate another anniversary
Welcome to our Terrible Twos >:]
February not only heralds an impending end to winter, but also Rascal’s birthday. On February 20, the team will be celebrating two full years of fiercely independent tabletop journalism. But the celebration will last all month because we think we’ve earned it. Read on for more information about how you can join the festivities.
Rascal looks a lot different than it did this time last year. Caelyn and Thomas continued to wear their fulltime roles, while Rowan and Lin’s eased into a smaller but no less potent presence on the team. We added Khee Hoon Chan as a regular voice, who proved an immediate boon to how we cover the industry. Meanwhile, I (Chase) have watched, teary-eyed, as this little website thrived beyond my hopes in its second year. We’ve got a lot of road ahead of us, but, damn, if the past 24 months don’t look great in the rearview mirror.
We will have a larger and more robust discussion about the State of the Rascal near the end of February, and I’ll briefly mention some major points further down. But let’s start with the biggest headline: like last year, we’re offering a discount on our basic subscription level. Using that link — or the button below — you can snag a monthly subscription at the Friendly NPC level for 20% off the first six months. That’ll unlock all of our paid articles, access to the members-only Discord channel, commenting privileges, and admission to all the other cool projects we’ve got percolating for less than $5 a month. The discount is only available for February, so get while the getting’s good!
How We’re Celebrating
“Four bucks is also kind of five bucks,” says newly minted wisdom. And it’s worth affirming how much every individual $5 pledge (or $6, or $15) means to us. Rascal is, and always will be, ad-free and worker-owned — a principled line that requires cutting off all the traditional models of funding allowed to corporate-captured media. Now, we welcome any benefactor with a no-strings, 5-to-7-figure sum burning a hole in their pocket. Until then, all of you collectively power this journalistic engine, and every kind-of-five-bucks directly empowers us to not only maintain Rascal’s current mission but also expand it into new projects. Necessary and entertaining projects.
You’ve already seen one: Rascal Reading Club. Thomas is chuffed with the vibrant response to his solo podcast project, and he can’t wait to publish the first reader response episode later this month. If you’ve hankered for a deep dive into interesting RPG core books, this is a good way to scratch the itch. We also maintain an ever-growing list of whip-smart freelance writers whom we want to host on the site. Expect about one piece a month for the rest of the year, but that number will always grow alongside the website’s general health. A long term Rascal mission is to foster exciting critics and reporters in the tabletop space.
Thomas also crafted a crossword puzzle that may or may not become a regular feature on the site. We’re big fans of the ol’ physical model, with its classifieds and comics and brain noodlers. We’d love to emulate more broadsheet features, so let us know if you enjoy the crossword!
Thomas Manuel
Then, Lin will be launching a daily Over/Under diary series in February, which catalogues their experience inside the internet-bound megadungeon/LARP via a diary format. We founded Rascal to provide a home for written work that couldn’t survive anywhere else, and these longform, first-person missives fit that remit to a T (or an O/U, in this case). Chase and Thomas plan to record a special episode of the podcast wherein they will recommend games to each other, purchase them on-camera, and read through for some live reactions. Consider it shopping therapy for two friends with divergent tastes while also investing some money back into the RPG scene.
But it’s not just new stuff. We want to share the old with you, too. We will drop the paywall on one article per day throughout all of February, both to give free readers (hello, you lovely lurkers!) a taste of what paid membership offers and to begin the process of gradually raising the paywalls on all our old work. We believe in paying working journalists for their labor, but we also respect the obligation tackled by internet archivists. You can now read two previous members-only articles on Daggerheart, one full of Lin’s thoughts on the RPG’s fruitful frictions, the other based on my criticism of seeing it played in a convention demo environment. See all of our recently-freed work on this tag!
Beyond that, after two years, we’re ready for some deep housekeeping and redesigning the site to fold in long-requested features such as dark(er) mode, those sexy fadeout paywall previews, and cleaner page navigation across the board. It looks to be a chunky project, and we will share more with ya’ll as details are available.
Finally, your money funds our convention appearances. We’re planning on sending Rascals to Spiel Essen for the first time! Even intranational travel can prove a significant expense of time and funds, but we love meeting readers in person and seeing the hobby fill a public space over a long weekend. Unfortunately, the US proves every day more inhospitable to marginalized groups and vulnerable folks, and thus we can’t chisel our plans in stone. Europe, though? Get ready for Rascals Do Germany later this year.
These reflections often include a loose theme for the year, a polestar by which the Rascal crew guide their efforts. It was necessarily survival in the first year, followed by sustainability in 2025. This year finds us facing new challenges within the newsroom and without the world. So, doggedness is the theme — a dedication to chewing through whatever hardships arise, through spite if necessary. The website is vital and precious to every member of the team, and we want to protect the professional home we’ve built together. Plus, the image of a dogged journalist — a newshound, if you will — is too romantic to pass up.
A sincere thanks to everyone who read this far. It is a daily joy to cover the tabletop industry and hobby for an ever-growing mass of readers who care enough to read our words, to engage with our ideas, to question our assumptions and authority, and to keep us employed doing it. This birthday celebrates you as much as any other part of the website. Here’s to year three. Here’s to twelve more months of news, impressions, interviews, shitposts, blogs, and soapbox rants. Here’s to Rascal, and to you — our readers. Our stakeholders. Our lifeblood.
