Our Mission
Playtest Material is a not-for-profit critical journal dedicated to roleplaying games. We publish essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental writing on all aspects of tabletop roleplaying.
We believe that roleplaying games benefit from sustained critical attention. Our aim is not to define a single canon or theory, but to support an ongoing conversation about how games are understood.
With this in mind, we curate themed issues each quarter, working with guest editors and contributors to produce carefully selected collections of work.
From theorising the tactile experience of rolling dice, to local histories of conventions, to comparative critique between war games and war films, to overviews of the tabletop industry, we are interested in thoughtful and ambitious writing in all its forms.
We welcome submissions from first-time and experienced writers alike. If you can write well and have an interesting viewpoint, we want to hear from you. While we publish scholarly work, we are not a strictly academic journal, we value any form of writing that engages seriously with games as a cultural medium.
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Editorial Queries
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