1 year later

What's it like running MurkMail?

This is MurkMail’s 365th day since our first article released. Madness.

Since then we’ve released a ttrpg article every week without fail (plus some extras along the way). That’s over 52 pieces of free, handcrafted ttrpg content that we’ve pushed out the nest in the hope they’ll fly.

~which I think warrants some self-indulgence~

We’ve run a weekly ttrpg newsletter (blog? who knows, we write things) for a year now and we’re going to pull back the curtain a bit on what that’s like.

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Creation

There’s two of us. Luke the writer, and Lyndsay the editor + manager.

Luke is always drafting ideas for articles. Since most of our articles are theoretical and technical ideas, you can imagine the size of the prototype graveyard ~let their sacrifices never be forgotten~

Image Credit: Bloodborne (FromSoftware). This would be the entrance to the prototype graveyard.

He tries to keep things concise. You peeps seem to like a speedy read. Long ideas don’t make it to game tables and we want our ideas to see some usage.

If an idea holds merit, Luke drafts it up (plus makes visuals like maps and diagrams) and tries to get the draft as agreeable as possible to other humans.

He consistently fails at this, so Lyndsay works editorial witchcraft and fixes things up.

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Spreading the word

We started this newsletter with 60 subscribers. We now have over 1.7k subscribers. That’s 28x ⚔️✨

You lot have done a fab job of bringing in new cultists, wait, I mean readers. All exalt Murk, the greatest of the Mails. Feel free to keep recruiting, wait, sharing 😏

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Love and hate

MurkMail (and by extension Murkdice) is building a lovely little ttrpg community full of great people [join us on the discord]. The most enthusiastic of you even come to book club (just ask on the discord).

Every now and then, we do get some negativity thrown our way. Whether it be harsh critique of our ideas or viewpoints, or those simply frustrated about how we share our work (Reddit can be rough).

I wondered if after a year it would feel less impactful? But so far, it doesn’t. Harsh words still sting (though kind critique is something we welcome). That’s why your lovely comments and messages mean so much to us. They make all the hard work worth while and assure us we’re building a budding clan of ttrpg enthusiasts.

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The future?

Murkdice is a young ttrpg outfit, and young at a very turbulent time in the industry. We’re determined to make it through though.

This year, we’re going to be turning it up a notch. Keep an eye on us 👀

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In the meantime, if you need more MurkMail - join MurkMail Premium (get a 7-day free trial). Get an extra newsletter every two weeks with Luke’s less filtered thoughts and raw designs, a chunk of prose and a d6 table for you to use in your games.