Secret Passages: The First Three

Secret Passages, spearheaded by James Hoare, is a magazine that bills itself as “A celebration of classic tabletop gaming”. It defines its scope fairly broadly – in fact, it’s had at least one article on LARP, so strictly speaking it doesn’t even confine itself to tabletop games – though the centre of gravity lies towards RPGs and wargames, with some boardgame and gamebook coverage. The particular lens it views gaming through is based part on subcultural history, part on personal reminiscence, though with a welcome willingness to acknowledge where some of the older games discussed haven’t dated so brilliantly. Each issue is funded via a Kickstarter (for that is how you fund these things these days), though so far each Kickstarter has included a “four issue subscription” option if you want to trust that James will be able to get the next four issues out; I backed the one for issue 3 and picked up issues 1 and 2 at the same time, so anyone who took the four issue subscription option at…