Rascal Year 2 anthology is now available
Twice makes it tradition.
We have once again collected the best writing published on Rascal News in a gorgeous physical book that you can own for yourself. Rascal Year Two is a 120-page digest of essays, criticism, and reportage produced by the team during their second year of covering the tabletop RPG hobby and its associated spaces, both off and online. We published this second volume with Heart of the Deernicorn, and you can purchase the book now via their webstore for the reasonable price of $30.
Before I continue the sales pitch, let’s scope the full cover art illustrated by Rossy Does Drawings:
Year Two splits its essays into two buckets, Mainstream and Slipstream, with introductions written by other members of the team and a general forward written by yours truly (Chase). The articles have been modified and edited slightly to fit the affordances of print and embellished with stock interior art by Roque Romero and Emil Boven . If you bought our first anthology, the Year Two should measure up to the excellent work done by Elliot Davis of moreblueberries on the Year One anthology — we remain so grateful to him for making the first book a reality.
Our biggest departure from Year One is the inclusion of a contributor essay alongside work produced by the core team. Seraphina Garcia Ramirez’s burning honesty in I Want To Fight My Friends in the Back of a Moving Truck was a caliber of work we couldn’t afford not to eternalize in print. You can also find Thomas’ coverage of RPG events in Iraq, Lin on bleeding for the thirty days of Over/Under, Caelyn’s deep dive on D&D starter sets of the ‘90s, and plenty more. It’s good to know that our stories will survive the disaster of the modern internet in some small fashion that you can actually own.
Heart of the Deernicorn ships to the US, UK, and many other parts of the world — though, sadly, not everywhere. As you might have read, EU distribution is a bit of a mess right now. We'll keep you updated!
My alma mater holds that doing something twice stamps it as tradition, and I’m so proud to solidify our practice of creating annual anthologies. Analog writing about analog games just makes sense, and hopefully you find something insightful, illuminating, and perhaps a little bit cheeky within Year Two's pages. It would make a cool gift for the RPG friends in your life and maybe even convince your group to play something new.
