Tag: storytelling

What I Learned Playing Pacifist D&D

The city of Betz is known for the beauty of its people, the quality of goods for sale in its many bazaars, and The Temple- a complex of gambling tables and gaming dens. Elsewhere in the world, there is war. Betz is an international safe zone, free from the tethers of allegiances.

This does not mean it is without violence. Between crime factions, the loosely webbed network of thieves, and the easily bribed city guards, there are plenty of fights to get into.

The world of Dungeons & Dragons is often a brutal one. Many games involve massive amounts of violence meted out indiscriminately and in creative ways against nondescript monsters. What would a player do without their trusty sword or stable of spells to protect them? A few weeks ago, I found out during a 5th Edition D&D adventure with pacifism as one of the rules.

For this adventure, I did not think removing the threat of violence would serve our purpose. I wanted to see how players solved typical D&D problems nonviolently, not pick daisies for several hours. The city I created, is as violent as one can expect from a seaside city of sin with a multi tiered power struggle in the city government and underworld.

The first thing I realized when creating a Pacifist adventure was that players must have a well developed background, morals, and ethical reasoning. I left this largely up to them, and a good chunk of the beginning of our session was spent fleshing out the level 5 characters before dropping them into the scenario.

Developing the Characters

Engaging your party in a setting that appears low-action can be difficult. This requires utilizing unexpected skills, and encouraging players to solve problems in creative ways. I also kept interactions with characters’ backstories more than incidental.

Our adventure began in an empty jail cell. The window was too tiny to let anyone out. However, the party soon discovered the door was unlocked!

The point of this was to get players thinking about their characters and their relationship to non violence. They will never be immersed if they are not faced with hard decisions. In this case, players knew they had been arrested. Are they law-abiding? Was it unfair? Would they wait out their sentence, or try to escape?

In this session, some of the players immediately attracted the interest of the guards by exiting the room and making a lot of noise. Another quandary: do they fight or return to their cell? This situation called for some pretty immediate morality decisions that could define the character for the rest of the game.

Keep the action rolling

In prep, I had built up a pretty intense political drama. However, my characters (some of them with very low intelligence and wisdom scores) did not ask too many questions. They wanted to do things and make rolls. At one point, one of the players began chanting “Please let’s roll initiative” under their breath.

Which is something to keep in mind: even without axes smashing through heads, your players crave action. In this case, it was goofy action like rolling a monster up in a rug, but the adventure could easily have turned into a macabre exploration of the underbelly of a gambling town by a few principled thugs.

Some players love hearing your narrative description of the ins and outs of a city’s history, but others just want to kick down some doors! This means focus on rolling when characters have to talk their way out of a situation, or figure out a problem, even when outside of Initiative.

Challenges

5th Edition’s simplified skills turned out to be a hindrance to the play style of my group. The groupings are very broad, which makes non violent skill use difficult to specialize within a roll. You have to be creative in how skills are presented, getting specific about what is covered by each skill set.

Ask your players to describe how they are using a roll. For instance, “investigate” in the Dark Bazaar becomes “questioning shopkeepers while pretending to look for a love potion,” while another character “rifles through unattended wares for clues.”

Being specific about the physicality of their actions is important, too. “Searching” a room should mean rifling through the objects on a table, or feeling the wall for hidden doors, but not both. Doing both will take time and must be done each in its turn. This ensures the action keeps rolling and remains engaging.

Graph it Out

I am a confident storyteller, but collaborating at the table can be another game entirely. The biggest thing I learned was to have lots of objects and detailed Non Player Characters available for players to interact with. This means a lot of prep on behalf of the GM, or a lot of tables at hand to quickly come up with random set pieces. The most rewarding thing about this adventure was having a player pick up on a random detail I had placed and run with it in an unexpected way.

Josephine Maria is the founder of PanopLit and has been playing tabletop RPGs for 22 years.

This is not the Gay Future I Imagined

Several months ago, I posted about imagining gay futures through science fiction. That vision also includes more gay content in all settings, not excluding roleplaying games. While we may be having more LGBTQ+ media representation these days, much of it paints us in the same tired light as an American 1940s cautionary tale.

I touched on Star Trek: Discovery in the previous post, which features a male/male couple (with on screen kissing!!!). [Spoiler alert] One half of the couple dies. After the traumatic murder at the hands of a Manchurian candidate of the most bizarre variety (who we’re then supposed to forgive completely), the Emperor is introduced when the Discovery is thrown into an alternate universe.

The return of Michelle Yeoh was triumphant, especially when her character is triumphantly revealed to be bisexual when she decides to have a mixed gender threesome in the middle of a Starfleet mission. However, this triumvairing (I tried?!) ends when the Emperor pulls a weapon on the two she just made love to and coerces information out of them. The extreme use of force, and implied brutality of the character it cruelly offset by the revelation of their bisexuality.

Instead of fleshing out a more complex personality (which we were granted flashes of during her development with main character Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green), the Emperor seems without real motive and instead follows their gut down a disastrous path. Every possible shortcut is taken to show them as bad, including painting their bisexual tendencies in an amoral light when they jeopardize the mission to follow their own fancies.

Depicting bisexuality as an accessory to a lack of morality is not exclusive to science fiction. Games published Wizards of the Coast made waves when they rereleased the notorious adventure, “Curse of Strahd”, including LGBTQ+ subtext. Many reporting outlets picked up the story that the adventures for Dungeons & Dragons‘ 5th edition would be more gay, more diverse, more queer. But that’s proven, and continues to be, problematic.

Taylor of Riverhouse games threw a quote from Curse up on twitter and commented on the depictions of bisexuals in media:

Don’t get me wrong. Complex LGBTQ+ villains of all identities are really important. I want to see them. Other genres are already giving us these. For instance, the terribly sexist show Versailles features one of the most well depicted homosexual relationships and complex bad guys I have perhaps ever seen on television in Philippe and the Chevalier (also named Philippe).

Varied depictions are also not completely absent from Fantasy. The wildly successful A Song of Ice and Fire adaptation, Game of Thrones, wisely decided not to remove the complicated love affair of Lord (KING) Renly and Loras Tyrell. I think we’ve come far enough to where we should not longer have to grasp at straws. I think Wizards of the Coast and other games publishers can make our future roleplaying a hell of a lot more postively queer.

Private Rooms: Gender, RPGs, & MUDs

CN: Author describes nonconsensual sexual experience that happened virtually while they were underage.

While browsing my usual internet sources, I found myself on Panoplit.org. On there, the founder posed a series of questions near the end of her article “What Do I Write About?”. One thing she asked really stuck with me and I felt compelled to respond. After receiving a reply, I felt encouraged to tell a story.

My first experience playing an RPG (unless you count Rogue on the computer…does that count?) was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I bought it while perusing the computer software section at Barnes & Nobles (does anyone else remember when B&N stores used to have a software section?).

My sister and I always loved games and eagerly cracked it open at home. We found something unlike any other game we had ever seen. There were figures, books, pictures, maps, and numbers. So many numbers, yet also so much freedom. “Make your own adventures” the guidebook said. So we did. She took the role of Dungeon Master and I took Slinker the thief (no girls in this game, unless you count the drow in the Monster Manual). I don my sneaky black cloak and enter the gates of a broken castle, my eyes set on finding treasure and adventure. I meet my first monster three steps in: a horrible gargoyle! Slash slash went my dagger! …nothing. Bite bite went the Gargoyle.

Game Over.

We switch sides. She took the Cleric (also not a girl). She met her first monster: a Gnoll. Bash bash and she won. Roll for treasure: 100. On a d100. Three diamonds, netting her 3,000 gp in the first room. I was so jealous.

Fast forward a few years.

I’m now a freshman in high school. I still love RPGs. My sister and I have played 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons with her friend’s dad as DM. Final Fantasy VIII takes up much of my time outside of school, but I have also discovered text based RPGs called MUDs, Multi-User Dungeons. I spend many of my study periods in the compute lab “studying”. I created a male cleric and it took me some time to get out of the training areas.

I made a few mistakes and got bored of the character once I figured out the game better. I made a new character, and pause when it asks for the character’s gender. For the first time, the question strikes me as odd. For the cleric, I had just typed in ‘m’ because I guess I was used to male heroes. Or maybe because I was afraid? I don’t know. This time I pressed the ‘f’ key. A strange feeling goes through my body: almost like a mixture between fear and relief, I can’t really explain it.

I begin to play my female bard. I spend my study periods questing, getting better equipment and levelling up. I learn how to use the ‘charm’ spell to force NPC to type things into chat. It is hilarious. The other players are friendly and helpful. A few of them are very friendly. Much more friendly than they were to my cleric.

This goes on for a couple months until I was a regular. People cheered when I came online, and I cheered for them. We chatted a lot. I began to private chat with some of them. Some of the private chats became much more personal. I do not give out personal information.

One of my game friends wanted to show me an area of the game I have not seen before. The admins have made a section with apartments that players can purchase with gold. They have a lockable door, and players can use these apartments to sleep when they log off or to safely drop off items that they don’t want to carry around. I thought it was cool he had so much gold. He took me to his apartment. He has customized it with a beautiful description. I told him I think it is so cool. He gave me a flower. I said thank you. He locked the door. He used local chat to say he is happy we could have some alone time. I agreed. We chatted a little more. He asked me a lot of questions about if I liked parts of his apartment. He gave me a cookie item from a Valentine’s day event.

I am young and inexperienced and I do not know what is going on until he emotes to kiss me. I stared at the screen. I had never been kissed before, irl or in a game. I am nervous, but also really curious. I saw no harm in emoting kissing back. Then the emotes traveled south. I was confused and a little scared. I thought I understood what is going on because I have watched movies and heard stories from friends’ older siblings. I feel awkward. This is someone who has been very friendly to me. I feel bad and do not want him to feel the same awkwardness. I feel like this is somehow my fault.

I emote back some kind of response based on what I think an experienced girl would do in this situation. He does not respond for a bit. I sat there staring at the rated R material on my screen in the high school computer lab. He responded by asking how old I was. I type 16 (this is a lie). He was silent again for a time. Then he unlocked the door, said he was sorry, and left. We did not have private chats anymore. I did not tell anyone.

I went back to playing my cleric for a little. People were friendly, but not overly so. There were very few private chats. There were no invitations back to private apartments.

This was only the first experience of many to come. Over the next years, I join other online RPGs, but I begin to see a pattern. Whenever I am a boy, I can hide in the crowd unnoticed. Whenever I am a girl, there always seems to be a group of boys trying to stick their parts into mine. I do not “send pics”. I use the block or mute button when it is available. I stay off of voice chat.

Now I play D&D 5e with a group who is very open to players and characters who do not conform to binary gender expectations. I think I am lucky. But that is a story for another time.

Artemis V. is a writer, designer, and avid tabletop gamer.

“The Quest to be myself in a Magical World”

I first rolled the dice at age 15. My friends and I were teens with big dreams, so we each rolled characters who were idealized versions of ourselves. My friend Brent, who wanted all to view him as a gentle giant, rolled the half-orc Grobath, a barbarian with a gruff exterior but a heart of gold. Josh, the charismatic smart aleck, became the charming rogue Jack Wylder. Ben, who prided himself on his vast stores of knowledge, rolled the elf wizard Leewon. I—filled with fury, and always feeling like an outsider—created the half-elf sorceress Ceridwen.

As I neared thirty, finally coming to terms with my gender and sexuality, a powerful wave of nostalgia engulfed me. I wanted to make up for the dice-slinging adolescence I’d lost while living as a confused, angry girl. However, I now faced the dilemma of rolling a character who felt like me—a gay trans man—in a medieval-style world of hijinks, mishaps, and magical transformations.

Playing a transsexual character in the world of Dungeons and Dragons is quite like wearing a sign that reads, “Use me as a Plot Device!” You risk being discovered and exposed for what you “really” are. There’s also a good chance you’ll become the butt of hackneyed jokes. Worst of all, you risk losing whatever magical or physical changes you’ve accomplished to make your body more comfortable. Do you take a potion every morning to keep your manly physique? Well, now your supply has been stolen, and your party must catch the thief; all the while, you’re jogging around in the womanly curves you thought you’d finally escaped.

However, the thought of playing a male character who has never shared my struggles with gender did not appeal to me, either. A gay man who is not transgender might approach the world in a fundamentally different way than I do. Absent might be that maelstrom of confusion that kept me so long from realizing not only that I am a man but one that likes other men as well. I knew that, in order to solve this issue, I would have to travel back to my past as that furious young girl to discover how I could be myself in the world of D&D.

Ceridwen did fulfill some emotional needs for me, after all. I was an angry kid, and she had explosive fire spells in her arsenal and cast fireball every chance she got. As a Charisma-based caster, she had the ability to make others bend to her will, something I’d always felt inadequate in as a nerdy young pipsqueak. She was a half-elf, too—an eternal outsider in both human and elf societies. It bothered me deeply, however, that Ceridwen was apparently heart-stoppingly gorgeous. That’s typically what happens when you have an astronomical Charisma score. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, but I’d always experienced the most powerful dysphoria in relation to prettiness. It’s hard enough dealing with beauty as a young girl, and I can guarantee it’s no easier when you throw gender dysphoria into the mix.

As I tried to envision Ceridwen as a half-elf male, I realized playing such a character would present precisely that confusing, complicated relationship to masculinity I know so well. Now, I have no patience for thinly-veiled allegories; in other words, I would never posit that half-elves are the transgender people of this world—just writing that makes me want to fireball something. Nevertheless, certain details about how this half-elf would relate to human masculinity feel quite similar to how I relate. Corvus, as I’ve decided to call him, is slightly smaller than your average human guy. He’s somewhat delicate-looking, and his beard took far too long to grow in properly. In the elf village where he grew up, Corvus was too loud, too awkward, too hairy and smelly, but in the face of burly human men, he can’t help but wonder, “How could I ever be considered one of them?”

Thankfully Corvus, like myself and Ceridwen before him, wears his outsider status as a badge of honor. Traditional society is simply too small to contain him. He is charismatic in a witty sense, can talk his way out of anything, and is handsome in his own way.  The elves and humans of that world may treat him with disdain, but that only fuels Corvus’ desire to become more skilled and powerful than ever before. He is, unapologetically, himself—and thus he allows me to be myself as well.

Jonathan Smith is a Cajun Ravenclaw living in Texas who loves craft beer, shrimp tacos, and reading nonfiction.

D&D’s Trouble with Trans Characters

I was drawn to 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons when a friend told me the Player’s Handbook explicitly mentioned the possibility of creating a trans or nonbinary player characters. He said it encourages players to think outside the box when it comes to gender, and remarks that “you don’t need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender.”

“You could play a female character who presents herself as a man,” the Player’s Handbook told me, “or a man who feels trapped in a female body.”

“Finally!” I said to myself. “I can play a nonbinary hermit who grew up not understanding gender. Or even better: a badass orc who happens to be trans.”

I got into roleplaying games at the height of my own gender dysphoria, in the midst of coming to terms with my newly adopted identity as a nonbinary person. Playing Dungeons & Dragons (and, eventually, dozens of other roleplaying games) gave me an outlet to be other people, of any gender, without having to worry about the stress I had associated with my own pronouns, presentation, and identity.

Games became an escape for me, and an important outlet for trying things out: I tested out my friends’ reactions to they/them pronouns by having a nonbinary NPC in the campaign I ran. I created characters based on the future I wanted to see for myself: nonbinary characters who were masculine, nonbinary characters who were feminine, nonbinary characters who were interchangeably both or vehemently neither.

I never needed to defend myself, when it came to a character’s gender, but in the rare case I thought I might — I played, for a while, with some work friends who didn’t know that I was trans — I felt justified and supported by the section of the Player’s Handbook that told me I was allowed to make my character whatever gender I liked.

When I didn’t have the time or mental energy to play the game myself, I turned to actual play streams, like Critical Role or Rooster Teeth’s Heroes & Halfwits, to get my fix of gaming when I was feeling down.

But it was during one of these streamed games, as one DM led his group through the 5e adaptation of Gary Gygax’s classic and notoriously punishing 1978 module, “The Tomb of Horrors”, that I started to question just how welcoming Dungeons & Dragons really is for trans and nonbinary players and player characters.

In their playthrough of “Tomb of Horrors”, one of the characters entered a room and was told, in a pull-aside by the GM, that his Lawful Good male Dragonborn character was now a Chaotic Evil female. This was followed by a rather inappropriate set of descriptions about the character’s brand new breasts and his lack of a penis, and several distasteful jokes as the situation was revealed to the rest of the cast.

I thought I must have misunderstood what was happening. I had to pause the video and confirm with a friend who had also watched. Yes, that’s right: adapted for 5th edition in 2017 in the collection Tales from the Yawning Portal, “Tomb of Horrors” includes a room that, upon entry, “reverses” your character’s physical sex and alignment — whatever “reverse” means, with regards to sex.

I couldn’t help but think: what does “reverse sex” mean for a trans character? What would one of my characters do, in that situation? A trans character forced back into a body that makes them dysphoric? A nonbinary character for whom there isn’t, exactly, a “reverse” or “opposite” sex? Is it defined by what sex the character was assigned at birth? These weren’t the kinds of stories or problems I wanted to explore with my trans characters, or the kind I wanted to encourage my players to tell.

In a terrible wave of understanding, I realized this: Tomb of Horrors was updated for 5e mechanics, but it wasn’t updated for 5e sensibilities.

Or maybe that 5e wasn’t as welcoming to trans characters as it pretended to be.

This isn’t to say, of course, that there isn’t a place for trans and nonbinary characters in 5e. At the end of the day, it’s up to the DM to create a welcoming environment for trans players and characters. Certainly, more and more trans and queer people are making spaces for themselves in gaming with or without the assistance of inclusive rule books. And maybe a different DM would have run the Tomb of Horrors module in a way that wouldn’t have been quite so… well, horrifying.

But for a system that had been sold to me as one that would finally be inclusive not only of women and people of color, as much of D&D had never been, but of trans and nonbinary people like me, it felt like a serious misstep and an inexplicable oversight for Wizards of the Coast to not understand the harm they might do by including a “gender-bender” trope in an official module. The fact that the game I had lauded widely to friends for its inclusivity had failed to take into consideration the experiences of trans players shouldn’t have surprised me, but it hurt nonetheless.

At the end of the day, we can fit trans players and trans characters into any game system, and there are plenty out there that welcome us with open arms. But in a world that’s so often hostile to us, it would be nice for game designers to remember that trans people have to create new spaces for themselves every day, and we’d love for our escapist hobby to not make it harder than it needs to be.

Christine Prevas is a writer, graduate student, perpetual GM, and host of the delightfully queer actual play podcast The Unexplored Places.

What Do I Write About?

Since launching our submissions, I’ve had more than one person approach me to say “I love this, but what do I write about?” I tried my best to explain that I want to see lists and resources and personal essays and critiques, but maybe there is another way. To explain, I’ll write about myself.

I began playing Dungeons & Dragons with my mother and my brothers. After that we played Alternity until the game “lost the battle” (my mother’s words) to the Star Wars RPG. I remember listening to the CD introduction that came with 3rd Edition as a family and a 10 person game at my father’s where we all died and my wolf survived us, dragging our bodies out of the cave and to an Elven temple.

One of the scariest things I’ve ever done was entering the GenCon costume contest in 1999. I won for the youth category. I think there were 3 of us. I passed out on the convention center floor while we played a board game past 10 PM. I was 9 years old.

In middle or high school my brothers and I discovered Call of Cthulhu, which changed our lives forever. Kenneth Hite answered a historical question I asked on Twitter so that I could finish my then-stalled (now published) novel, and I am unreasonably grateful.

My first game outside my family happened when I went away to college. It began with the DM describing a Player Character crawling out of a vagina he had cast onto a wall, and ended when another player (a girl) told me I “just wasn’t very good at role playing.” After that, I launched Babes in Armor and started a Twitter account. It’s been nearly a decade.

In college, some Very Bad things happened to me. More than once. I failed out and moved back in with my mother in Milwaukee. While struggling to find some direction, I interned at two non profits focusing on rights for women in the workplace and nervously pitched to FemPop. I wrote a regular (always late) television recap for them and reviewed games and went to C2E2.

I returned to school a year after dropping out of college. Eventually I took a class where we created a world together and played in it as a Creative Writing project. We used the World of Darkness rules, and I excitedly went to an RPG talk that featured creators who worked on all sorts of games and only Will Hindmarch gave me his card.

I wrote a truly terrible application to Monica Valentinelli for the Conan RPG (I had and continue to have no games writing experience), and she turned it down in an unbelievably gracious way. Uncanny later published her essay, “We Have Always Been Here, Motherfucker” and it changed my life, again.

At some point I wrote, terribly, about my negative experiences at a local game convention for FemHype and it helped heal me a little to have a space to talk, and I will never get over the generosity I’ve received from outlets on the internet. There are so many bad experiences I’ve had gaming (like the comic book shop owner who played CoC with us after hours and called me “whore” for an entire session, in character). There are also so many good. The last time I played with my older brother was at a demo game for Matt Forbeck’s Shotguns and Sorcery, and it is still one of my favorite gaming memories.

There are things I have questions about. Did other people discover their sexuality way too young on text-based RPG forums? Was it just as uncomfortable? What resources changed the game for you? What RPG made you realize there was more to roleplaying than D&D?

In the end, I could write and write about myself, but I would rather read about you.

Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG Makes its Goal in 24 Hours

The Kickstarter for the highly anticipated Storybrewers release Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG has made 10 times its goal in 24 hours. But the funding is still going, so swoop in there to get your PDF or physical copy! The pair that make up Storybrewers are located in Australia, but the books will be shipped world wide.

While the game itself looks as inventive as it is immersive, the stretch goals and donor rewards are pretty spectacular. Another excited component are the play aids specially designed from involvement on the Kickstarter, and a beautiful physical book.

It is extremely cheering to me that a heavily narrative based RPG has enjoyed such immediate success, and I look forward to picking up my copy. While you’re dropping money on the campaign, don’t forget to check out Storybrewers’ other releases, like Alas for the Awful Sea, a dark RPG set in rural UK.

Upping the Ante: Candace Thomas and Designing Big Bads

Earlier this month, Blizzard senior game designer Candace Thomas commented on how they create the boss monsters we love to team up on:

No one likes an easy boss. We want to feel challenged, and, ultimately, accomplished when we win. In video games this can mean a successful mashing of the buttons or pulling out that special item at just the right time, but good boss design extends to tabletop roleplaying games, too.

The Classic TPK

AD&D on extra hard is a staple at many gaming conventions, and gamers who started playing with their dads or cool uncles may remember the DM doing everything in their power to murder their party in as stylish a way as possible. Struggling to impress an older relative you look up to as a child is very different from the motivation most adults have for playing.

Winning means different things to different players, and part of the beauty of tabletop roleplaying games over video games is that you can tailor challenges to your players. Their love of loot may have gotten them into this, or their love of loot may be sated after conquering the dragon guarding its horde. No matter their motivation, destroying them completely is not fun for anyone, as you’ll quickly see when your players meta game against you.

Stem the CritFails

Major combat sequences still need to be a challenge, but look for ways of tripping up your players beyond impossible dice odds. Did the rogue rush forward without taking all of their surroundings into account? Did the bard fail their charisma check, but fail to notice?

Once they’ve had a few setbacks, let them win. Leave it to the “odds” if you must, no one has to know if you fudged the roll so they only pass out until being stabilized in the next round, and didn’t visit the land of the dead. That being said, if the Paladin’s greatword makes short work of the fleshy boss, maybe they’ll be defeated only to rise again, the puppet of a far more powerful, and perhaps less corporeal monster.

What are your favorite ways to help your players win while still maintaining your edge as a DM?

Please also submit your article, review, and essay ideas to us!

Submissions are Open!

Who We Publish

PanopLit is seeking nonbinary, bigendered, femme, queer, and women writers with experience playing tabletop roleplaying games. If you fit within the LGBTQA+ spectrum, or have a unique viewpoint on RPG culture or games, we want to hear from you!

What We Publish

Our vision for PanopLit is one that includes tabletop gamers who are often excluded from larger conversations about RPGs and tabletop history. We want current resources to make your games easier, more fun, and more diverse, and we want your stories, critiques, and suggestions to make tabletop culture more inclusive.

Reviews, Tips, and Lists

PanopLit publishes short articles (300-500 words) in list or heading format. These should be focused on current resources, innovative tips, and items of interest for Game Masters and Players.

Essays

A long term goal for PanopLit is preserving stories from gamers who may not have been recorded in previous RPG histories. We want critiques and essays on your experiences as a gamer and mechanics in games. The minimum word count for essays in 500 words.

If you have been gaming for longer than 10 years, please contact us for an interview.

How to Submit

Email info@panoplit.org with “Submission:” before the title of your article or essay in the subject line.

In the body of your email include your pronouns (and/or how you identify), any social media or website links you would like included if you are published, and a one sentence bio about yourself. Attach your article to the email in .rtf or .doc format.

Press Release and Promotional Articles

We will publish press releases and promotional articles you write about your game, artwork, or other RPG related content that you create and sell, but will not pay a writer’s fee for this content. A link to this type of content will also be put out on the PanopLit Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts.

Payment

PanopLit pays $20 for lists of RPG resources, reviews, and articles that range from 300-500 words. Essays or critiques over 500 words that are chosen to be published will receive $30. This can be paid out via Paypal or check.

Advertise with Us!

Advertising opportunities are available in the form of ads on the website, featured articles, and posts on the PanopLit social media network. Email info@panoplit.org to tell us about your project and get rates.

New Things Coming for PanopLit

In an effort to elevate as many voices in the RPG community as possible, PanopLit will begin accepting submissions (paid!) for short form essays (around 500 words), lists, and reviews. I will also be accepting write ups by creators of their adventures, games, or other RPG-centered products.

As part of this effort, the website will be undergoing a face lift. Please bear with us while we redesign and get ready to accept submissions! Submissions will open February 1st, and remain open unless we are overrun with articles.

PanopLit is currently paid out of pocket, so advertising options and donation pages will appear soon, as well, to support our content creators.

Looking forward to reading your work soon!