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There are two distinct halves to Asher’s Ridge. The first is the paranormal happenings within the eponymous Asher’s Ridge, an outwardly mundane town that’s haunted by a history of inexplicable events. The other half is a television series bearing the same name, with players serving as writers for individual episodes — or a full-length series. This televised format is more than just flavor text, as the framing is baked into the core of the game.

Employees at the UK-based tabletop RPG publisher Rowan, Rook and Decard (RRD) have successfully unionized their workplace under the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) Games Worker Union. Management at the company responsible for the upcoming Hollows and Children of Time RPG, which includes co-founders Maz Hamilton and Grant Howitt, voluntarily recognized the IWGB’s purview and made it a first of its kind union within the UK.

Rascal Radio — 4 min read Photo credit: Bruno Guerrero / Unsplash Listen to the latest episode in your podcast player of choice! You might have seen our recent article laying out the potentially dire financial straits facing the website. In this special episode of the podcast, Chase and Thomas tackle the reasons why and what you, dear listeners, can do to support us through this (hopefully) brief economic blip.

Dan Ayoub, head of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise at Wizards of the Coast (WotC), told a crowd of Gen Con attendees that one of his big goals for 2027 was to “bring everyone back to the table.” It was one of several grand, sweeping statements delivered during the July 30 vision keynote that felt positive, but vague; a sort of bullish optimism that implied moving beyond past mistakes that Ayoub chose not to define.

This is a community submitted press release. Our Announcements section is free to post to and free to submit too, please help us keep this valuable industry resource available by subscribing to Rascal. Set in the world of Astromythos, Lair of the Spider Lord is a 5e adventure in which living Stars and black holes vie for control of the universe.

announcements — 3 min read Sun Rot: Work together in a race against time to escape a dying sun. This is a community submitted press release. Our Announcements section is free to post to and free to submit too, please help us keep this valuable industry resource available by subscribing to Rascal. A bell tolls. A rot fills the air. An oracle appears and tasks you with a race against time to escape the dying sun. Welcome to Sun Rot.

features — 12 min read Cover of Path Apparatus. Credit: M.G. McWhorter / Possible Worlds Games Path Apparatus, an upcoming book by Cameron Kunzelman and M.G. McWhorter, is a bit of an anomaly: it’s equal parts treatise and supplement. The subject is lifepath systems, a way of transforming the character creation process into play, normally accomplished  with dice rolls introducing errant elements into characters’ life experiences.

This is a community submitted press release. Our Announcements section is free to post to and free to submit too, please help us keep this valuable industry resource available by subscribing to Rascal. Being heroes is a corporate job. There is a list of goals to reach, boxes to check, treasure and cash to pocket, status to elevate. Heroism is performative, all-consuming. But we, as good Italians, grew up with the poems of Cesare Pavese and his “Working Wearies”.

In the roleplaying world, “freeform” is a wriggly word. If you casually try to pin its meaning down, it’ll slip out of your grasp. Part of this is because, as Lizzie Stark wrote in an influential 2014 article, freeform “has several specific regional meanings.” Stark’s article is part of a long tradition of piecing together the squiggly history of what is a pretty common term in RPG circles.

news — 5 min read Credit: gencon.com The biggest news out of Gen Con was probably that Universes Beyond, the bell that tolled for Magic: the Gathering, now tolls for D&D. A World of Warcraft season is coming at the end of this year with a Star Wars season in late 2027.