Writer Wanted: News Hound

Paul’s taking some time off to finish writing a book, so we’re in need of a part-time freelance writer to help us with our daily news!

Who We Are

Tabletop Sentinel is a webzine/news platform covering roleplaying games, board games, miniatures, wargaming, LARP and hobby events. We’re based in the UK and launched in 2024 with a simple mission:

Connect creatives and their fans without the enshittified algorithm-driven nonsense the surveillance-capitalists keep telling us is the media

Every weekday we cover lesser known producers, product launches of worlds you’ve yet to go to and conventions in places you’ve not heard of. We combine enthusiasm for the hobby with a desire to write well and hold ourselves to a high professional standard. We fact-check claims, we push back on marketing waffle, and trust our readers' intelligence.

If our vague hand-waving doesn’t set the scene, then we’d like to point you in the direction of our inspirations: popbitch.com, theregister.com and Smash Hits for writing style. We’d like to write features the likes of which we’ve not seen since GM Magazine, but for now we’re all about irreverent, short and digestible gaming news.

What we need

We need a part-time freelance writer to pick up the daily news beat. Fifteen short, punchy stories per week: Kickstarter launches, convention announcements, product releases and the occasional demonic incursion.

You'll be sourcing stories, researching backstories, and your writing will reflect our in-house style. Whilst we might demand you cover our flavour of the month, in general you'll be sourcing the stories and have near-complete editorial control over your own work and schedule. In the future there will be more and varied work as we develop features, interviews and reviews. For now though? Three short news stories per day.

Who You Are

This might be your first gig, or you might be a seasoned professional wise in the ways of alternative media. Either way, you’ve written a thing or two you're proud of and you firmly believe you can do awesome things if you have the right team around you.

Your writing renders obtuse game lore understandable, turns scant details into authoritative prose, and has both words and punctuation in an order that fellow humans enjoy reading. If you understand SEO, excellent. If you write like you're chasing SEO, we're probably not a match.

You're knowledgeable about the hobby without coming across all Comic Book Guy. You know your D&D from your Gurps and your Land Raiders from your Dark Side Cowboys - or at least you know where to find the answers. You may have a terrible sense of humour and a proclivity for Nic Cage movies.

You'll need an excellent command of British English (the kind where ‘pants’ are underwear, ‘fanny’ means something entirely different, and it’s always spelled ‘armour’) and your own internet connected devices for writing and telecommunication (PC/laptop + camera for meetings).

How to Apply

Send us your CV, writing samples and anything else that demonstrates you're not a content mill algorithm hiding in a meat suit. Email your application to editorial@tabletopsentinel.com. The subject line is your first chance to get noticed. Be Bold!

We're looking to fill this soon, so don't wait until you've polished your portfolio - get it over to us today. We can work with your nonsense, so long as you can work with ours.

We look forward to meeting you.