Playtest Material publishes critical writing on tabletop roleplaying games. We welcome submissions from designers, players, scholars, organisers, critics, artists, and first-time writers alike. We are particularly interested in work which is well researched and attentive to the specific qualities of roleplaying games as a medium.

We’re open to essays, reviews, interviews, experimental criticism, and hybrid forms (such as annotated transcripts). We are less interested in consumer recommendation, ranking, or “good/bad” evaluation than in criticism which explores how games function and how they are understood.

Send submissions and pitches to editor@playtestmaterial.org

Please submit pieces as .docx, .odt, or as a Google Doc link (make sure you give viewing access).

• Essays and criticism: approximately 1,500–5,000 words
• Reviews: approximately 800–2,000 words
• Experimental or hybrid forms: flexible
• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please inform us immediately if work is accepted elsewhere
• We are currently accepting previously published work, but this may change in the future
• Please include a short biography (50–100 words) with your submission
• Refer to our style guide for details about referencing, house style, etc.

We strongly encourage pitches, partial drafts, and exploratory proposals, especially for unusual or experimental formats. We can get back to you and help you flesh out and structure your proposals.

Contributors will be contacted directly regarding acceptance, editing, and publication timelines.

We do not charge a reading fee for submissions.

We are currently not in a position to pay contributors a flat fee for accepted pieces. However, we are seeking sponsors to enable this.

In the meantime, guest editors and contributors will receive a royalty payment from sales of the journal, with an exact percentage dependent on how many individual contributors we publish.

Issue One: An RPG Is Like…

Possible approaches may include:

• Comparative criticism between RPGs and other media forms
• RPG design theory informed by methodologies from fields such as film studies, theatre studies, anthropology, sociology, architecture, literary criticism, musicology, or art history
• Analysis of adaptation and remediation: what happens when RPGs become podcasts, streamed performances, novels, videogames, films, or vice versa
• Reviews or critical essays on RPGs which consciously draw upon multiple media forms and aesthetics
• Reflections on explaining roleplaying games through analogy to other artistic forms or cultural practices
• Accounts of where such comparisons succeed or distort the medium
• Experimental or hybrid critical forms which themselves blur boundaries between criticism, play, fiction, and design documentation