State of the Rascal: March 2026

It’s been about six months since the last update, so we felt like it was time for another peek into what’s happening inside Rascal HQ:

Finances: We’re at 2,500 paying subscribers! Overall, the last six months were up and down. We were trending downwards regarding paid members, but our $1 sale in December was extremely popular. More than 200 people signed up, which was delightful to see. Sadly, most haven't been able to renew — a lot of them citing economic pressures, which given the state of everything makes a lot of sense. It’s not a decline, but it’s not growth. As far as we can tell, Rascal will need to buckle down for a mostly flat year, growth-wise. 

(If we survive our third year, we’ll have outlasted more than 95% of new media sites. That makes it a huge milestone, despite the fact that I made that statistic up. It’s just a big deal, and if that requires tightening our belts, so be it.)

Coverage: A couple of changes here, too. With Rowan stepping back from all editorial work, our reporting on actual play is almost entirely gone. Our miniatures coverage was also simply not being read enough and not reaching enough people, so we’re also cutting our focus on that. It’s a tough call, but going forward, Caelyn will spend most of her time covering RPGs alongside the rest of the team, only writing about war games when something really catches her eye. On the plus side, this means that we’ll have more bandwidth to write about what people come to the site to read!

Conventions: Like a lot of people, we’re probably not in a position to attend most conventions this year due to worries about the safety of our staff as well as budget constraints. We’ll have to be very picky. We were making plans for Essen Spiele this year, but that’s also up in the air now. At the very least, don’t expect to see us at Gen Con or PAX Unplugged. UK Games Expo remains a strong maybe, but stay tuned. 

Investigations: There’s been a lot of internal conversations and introspection after our reporting on the contractual disputes over Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast. The biggest concrete thing we’re implementing is that, from now on, we’ll be bringing in an experienced external editor to provide oversight for our longer investigations and ensure that these stories receive the specific attention that they need. We’re also reviewing internal guidelines around paywalls and pullquotes.

Site design: We’ve had requests for a couple of features — dark mode and gift links are the main ones. Gift links are a feature that Ghost, our website platform, is working on. Dark mode and other quality of life tweaks we can implement from our end. Hiring a professional to implement these as part of a broader website refresh was the plan, but that will have to wait till our finances stabilize a bit more. For now, it’s on the to-do list and will require one of us to find time outside of regular editorial duties to sit and work on it.

Collectivizing: One of the big things that’s been happening in the background is that we’ve been talking to other media sites about how to share resources and costs amongst each other. We’re very excited about this! It’s not just a question of finances. Every independent media outlet currently has to figure stuff out on their own and learn from their own mistakes, but what if we could just learn from other people’s mistakes? A lot of people are working quietly to make this happen, and there’s a real chance it could make a huge difference in what resources we have available to us going forward.

[Chase, here! I’ve been spearheading this effort over the last few months and hopefully will have more to share later this year. If you follow the newsletters, the fruits of this collectivising show in cross-promotional recommendations and highlighting the work of our peers. Beyond that, our goals revolve around leveraging our collective weight at purchasing health and media insurance, legal checks, and administrative resources such as bookkeeping, taxes, and HR needs. All the boring stuff that allows blogs to happen more seamlessly!]

Best Of Year Two anthology: Just like last year, we will be bringing out a physical book collecting our best stories. We’re late on announcing this, but it’s in the works. It’s taking longer because we’ve had to change publishers. Elliot Davis’ moreblueberries did a great job, and we’re really thankful for his work in bringing out the first one. Once the cover art for Year Two is ready, we’ll let you all know so stay tuned! Also, unlike last year, it’ll be available in the UK and Europe from day one. 

And that's it! Thank you for reading, folks. We had a cool February, launching a whole bunch of new things, including the crossword and the Rascal Reading Club and the Over/Under Diaries. If you haven't checked those out, please do!

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