Why Wanting-To-Be-A-Writer Is A More Popular Hobby Than Playing Dungeons and Dragons
Back in the largely pre-Internet 1980s and 1990s, the British roleplaying community had one big dream: a professional, monthly roleplaying magazine available in WH Smith (where a presence in WH Smith is a proxy for mainstream distribution beyond specialist game stores).
Many such magazines came, but every one of them went. White Dwarf started out as a roleplaying magazine, but during 1986 and 1987 it pivoted quite abruptly from a general roleplaying magazine to a Warhammer house magazine, a process that involved a move to Nottingham, the loss of most of its staff, and a now infamous contents page.
In the first half of the 80s, TSR UK published 31 issues of Imagine, but that eventually ceased, leaving us with only the US published Dragon and Dungeon magazines, which I'm pretty sure were only available in specialist shops or by subscription.
In 1986, Mersey Leisure Publishing tried with Adventurer, which I recall had some lovely content and a short story contest based on each issue's cover art (which I never dared enter), but it folded within a year.
Heavyweight publishing outfit Future Publishing launched Arcane at the end of 1996. This was what we wanted: glossy, thick, available in all good places, and of course it was cancelled after eighteen months.
Valkyrie magazine made a good run, surviving from 1994 to 2003, long enough that I actually wrote a column for it during the latter period. But I'm not sure it fulfilled the criteria of what we were looking for: it was published quarterly (and I think sometimes it was not so much quarterly as intermittently), and I don't recall it ever appearing in WH Smiths.
And these are just the attempts I remember. (Feel free to mention others in the comments of wherever I post this newsletter).
But let's get back to the clickbait premise of this article. Why am I saying that wanting-to-be-a-writer is a more popular hobby than playing Dungeons & Dragons?
Because during this entire period, from the early 1980s through to, well, now, there have been two UK writing magazines, Writing Magazine and Writers' Forum, available month in, month out, in WH Smiths.
It's why I've always pushed back against people who say I'm bound to get published sooner or later, if I just keep trying. You don't understand the odds, I tell them. You don't understand just how many people there are who've written a novel and are trying to it published. There's more people trying to get novels published than there are people who play Dungeons and Dragons.
Which might not be quite true. But it's a good line. And hey, the magazine racks don't lie, right?
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