It used to be that you could subscribe to a magazine based on your favorite tabletop game, a glossy pamphlet filled with adventures, monsters, and new scenarios to try out with your friends. But after the digital reboot of Dragon was wound down in July 2022, that left Games Workshop’s White Dwarf to more or less carry the torch alone for periodical-loving fans looking for playable content. Horizons, a new publication tailored to devotees of tabletop role-play, could help change that. The first issue is out this October, and Polygon sat down with co-founders Hannah Rose and Clara Daly to learn more.
The pair met while working together on Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, the Critical Role setting book from the troupe’s Darrington Press imprint, and immediately hit it off. Both have excellent bona fides in the TTRPG space. Daly, a trained artist, has become a major contributor of environmental and landscape art for Campaign 3. Meanwhile, Rose is best known as an editor and for her work on Dungeons & Dragons, including hits like Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, and The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Rose and Daly’s goal is simple: to help creators bring more adventures to life, and to help them reach eager fans.
Each quarterly issue will include four main articles, with three of those being tailored for D&D’s 5th edition and the fourth article focusing on a non-D&D franchise. Take, for instance, “Draco Ex Astris,” written by space plasma physicist Imogen Gingell.
“Her day job is a PhD astronomy researcher at the University of South Hampton,” explained Rose. “She pitched an article about Star Dragons. This article provides lore, and stat blocks, and lair actions for Star Dragons through their lifecycle from proto-stellar wyrmlings, to sequence-star dragons who take their place in the orders of the cosmos, to giant star worms who eventually perish in a fiery conflagration that will dramatically change the area around them for better or worse.”
Another D&D-compatible piece will include options for rune-powered science-fantasy modes of transportation titled “Next Stop: Adventure,” penned by Erin Roberts. It includes the notion of something called a Lorerider, who is able to exchange a well-told story for a ticket to ride that could last a day, a month, or a year depending on how hot that goss really is. These are just a handful of the amazing stories already in the works since the duo announced the project.
“We are not telling authors what to write,” Rose explained. “I invite people to pitch their own ideas and then put together issues based on […] what ideas we think will be really cool for us to develop based on providing a variety of content. That variety means there’s something in each issue for everyone, no matter what campaign they’re running, no matter where they are in the campaign, [and] no matter what those campaign themes are.”
“Whether you’re starting that brand new campaign, or when you’re just doing that one-shot for level five characters, we’re going to have a spread [of options],” Daly added. “No matter where your campaign is, you can do a pick-up and a drop-in.”
Rose and Daly stressed that Horizons will be paying top dollar for its content with an eye toward creating sustainability for creators in the TTRPG space.
“That’s something that we knew [we wanted to do] from the beginning,” Rose said. “We are starting our own company from scratch, we’re very small, but I have been quite active and vocal in my time in the industry about compensating people. […] People should be making more than minimum wage for the time they put in!”
Obviously Horizons’ D&D-compatible content is expected to be a big draw, but the magazine’s other material should also have wide appeal. The first issue will feature content for Pathfinder authored by award-winning game designer Rue Dickey, while material for Critical Role’s new Candela Obscura is also in the pipeline.
Most importantly, everything included in the publication will have been playtested multiple times.
“We go through two stages of playtesting, which really allows us to know that this content is going to be balanced, that it’s going to be easily useful at the table,” Rose said. “I am a big advocate for not leaving [game masters] hanging, [of] not having plot holes where they have to scramble to fill things in and answer questions that the content should be answering for them.”
Horizons’ first issue is available starting Oct. 9. Fans can also support the project on Patreon.
