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# Issue Two: Histories
- URL: https://playtestmaterial.org/issue-two-histories/
- Published: 2026-09-04T16:00:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T20:18:38.000Z
- Author: Wythe Marschall
- Tags: News

It’s my great honour as guest editor to introduce the second issue of *Playtest Material*, “**Histories**.” The call for submissions for this issue will open to the public September 15 and close October 15.

## Call for Submissions

We welcome work engaging with historical memory, historiography, archival practice, nostalgia, lineage, inheritance, canon formation, and the politics of remembering and forgetting within RPG culture.

**Possible topics include, but are not limited to:**

- Histories of particular games, scenes, movements, editions, communities, or design traditions.
- Local histories of clubs, conventions, campaigns, or gaming communities.
- Labour histories of the work of making RPGs.
- The construction of RPG canons and genealogies.
- Lost, forgotten, or marginalised RPG traditions.
- RPGs as historical simulation, reconstruction, or mythmaking.
- How fictional histories function within campaigns and settings.
- Alternate history, counterfactual play, and speculative historiography.
- Material culture: books, pamphlets, maps, miniatures, character sheets, websites, and ephemera as historical artefacts.
- The relationship between RPGs and broader political, social, technological, or economic history.
- Histories of how games have depicted nonhumans and framed environmental issues.
- Critical examinations of reactionary nostalgia, invented traditions, or historical romanticism within gaming culture.

**If you are interested in submitting an article, please submit a pitch via this form:**

[**Issue 2 Pitch Submissions >**](https://forms.gle/PrRTLWJ2XN2x6DY77?ref=playtestmaterial.org)

To get a sense of the writing published in *Playtest Material*—and to help support the publication of the journal in print—please consider subscribing.

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### About the guest editor

**Wythe Marschall** (he/him, founder, Stillfleet Studio) is a writer, game designer, and anthropologist trained in the history of science. He created the sci-fi TTRPG *Stillfleet*, the underlying Grit System, and the Stillfleet Studio to blend historical materialist politics and games. Wythe is the co-developer of *Blister Critters* by Anthony Grasso, the editor of *Danse Macabre: Medieval Horror Roleplaying* by Christopher Pickett, the co-developer of *The Sometimes Kingdom RPG* with Ethan Gould, the editor of *ULTRADELVE* by Konstantine Paradias, and the cohost of the game-design podcast *Why We Roll* (with Pickett). Wythe’s latest books are the 2025 version of the early modern fantasy game *PICARO!* and *Danse Macabre*’s dungeon(-ish) setting *Unsunken: Paris Below*.