Dragon Roots: A Magazine For Gamers, By Gamers

Announcing Dragon Roots: A Magazine For Gamers By Gamers.

I got tired of fighting the system to get WOTC to bring Dragon and Dungeon magazine back in a printed format. I did my best to sign a petition to show mine, and others, displeasure. A few ENWorlders and myself have had enough. The end of bowing down too corporate need and uncaring decisions is at an end. Let WOTC have their digital initiative and green brains. Content Publishing is proud to present Dragon Roots: A Magazine For Gamers By Gamers.

Gamers just like you write each issue. Each article has as much content as possible stuffed into as many pages as we can make cheap for you to purchase. We don’t have 28 pages of ads and we don’t have 28 pages of previews. What we do have is a firm understanding of what gamers like you want. If you don’t agree, submit an article and we will print it, and then you can’t disagree.

Full details can be found at www.dragonroots.net .

Please sign up for our newsletter so we can send you future news about our Premiere Issue #0, subscriptions and more. Don’t let the price shy you away from this great find. I’m positive we can lower that price before we go into subscriptions. Even as I write this we are trying to find a better deal to print the Premiere issue #0.

We at Dragon Roots have been on the ENWorld boards for years, so we know the controversy surrounding the digital initiative versus the magazine in the mail. As strongly as we feel about the magazine coming in the mail each month, we know some of you feel just as strong about wanting a PDF. Because of this, we will also offer each issue as a PDF. As a special bonus we are also considering offering a copy of the PDF with the subscription in the mail; more on that later.

I would like to give special thanks to The Source Comics and Games who are advertising for us at GenCon this year. They are promoting the magazine with no gain or advertising asked for on their part.

The flyer you can get from them isn’t anything fancy, everything has a price, but please feel free to stop by and at least say hi to them at the merchant tables. Even if you don’t purchase anything from them, which I am not asking of you and they are not asking of you as well (although, since they are handing out these for free, I do feel compelled to promote them) please pick up a flyer so I can see how many we can go through for future promotions at future Cons.

Well, I think that says it all. Please feel free to post here with any comments, concerns or questions. I would be happy to answer any and all that come here.

EDIT: We wish Paizo (Path Finder) and WOTC all the best in the future. We take a few good natured jabs at them, but as you can see on our web-site, we also promote them and other magazines, like Kobold Quarterly, The Crusader, Path Finder and Knights of the Dinner Table.

DM-Rocco said:

Please feel free to post here with any comments, concerns or questions. I would be happy to answer any and all that come here.

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Well, I wish you the best of luck. The gaming magazine business is a tough one to get into. But we can always use a good gaming magazine!

However, knocking another gaming company in your marketing materials is not a good idea. Sell us on YOUR strengths, not someone else's supposed weaknesses. And claiming that another company's mistakes are part of the very reason for your startup, even worse.

And, just a personal pet peeve which is probably silly . . . I hate the "for gamers, by gamers" tag line . . . do you know how many failed gaming businesses (FLGS, magazines, publishers) have used that tired old saying? One of my local game stores is run "by gamers, for gamers" and they are so terrible I doubt they'll be around in a year.

Dire Bare said:

Well, I wish you the best of luck. The gaming magazine business is a tough one to get into. But we can always use a good gaming magazine!

However, knocking another gaming company in your marketing materials is not a good idea. Sell us on YOUR strengths, not someone else's supposed weaknesses. And claiming that another company's mistakes are part of the very reason for your startup, even worse.

And, just a personal pet peeve which is probably silly . . . I hate the "for gamers, by gamers" tag line . . . do you know how many failed gaming businesses (FLGS, magazines, publishers) have used that tired old saying? One of my local game stores is run "by gamers, for gamers" and they are so terrible I doubt they'll be around in a year.

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Thanks for your interest in this post and our marketing strategy. I’m sorry you feel that the tag line, “for gamers by gamers,” is tired and old. However, it is the truth, we can not pretend to be otherwise. All of us have either posted articles on ENWorld in the past and/or have written articles for Dragon and Dungeon, but have never submitted them for one reason or another. We are not industry professions, so if you want to read articles by Eric Mona, you will have to check out Path Finder or interviews in Kobold Quarterly. If you want something fresh and new, here we are.

As to slander against other magazine companies, you take it wrong. We are neither vindictive nor do we wish Paizo or WOTC ill. It is simply our response to their digital initiative. In fact, if you check out our web-site, we wish both companies well in the future and even have links to their wed-sites on all of our pages. We also have web-sites on all of our pages to other magazines like Kobold Quarterly, The Crusader, Path Finder and Knights of the Dinner Table. If we weren’t in it for the love of the game, we wouldn’t have posted links to the competition. I know you will hate to hear it, but it is for gamers by gamers.

We also feature many links to many other sites, hopefully proving that we mean no harm to others, other than a quick friendly jab and good natured ribbing.

Even though you think ill of the sub-title, I would ask that you explore the front page of the web-site and review the article excerpts for our Premiere Issue #0. Also, in the future, we will be releasing more in-depth portions of the articles for skeptics’ like (no offense meant) you. That way you can judge the quality of the writing before you even pick up the first issue.

I hope to see you on our mailing list.

It's going to be hard to compete with Kobold Quarterly and Pathfinder.

amaril said:

It's going to be hard to compete with Kobold Quarterly and Pathfinder.

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Well, Pathfinder has two advantages on us. One, they have resources, two, they already are well known. Nothing I can do about that.

Kobold Quarterly, well, that is another matter. At the heart, I think Wolfgang and I do think alike in what makes a good article and what makes a good magazine. I can’t compete with his industry contacts, but I do have really good layout skills, a fresh creative approach to writing quality articles and many D&D savvy friends who enjoy not only writing material but they are hidden treasures too.

Actually, Wolfgang was very receptive to our efforts and gave us a ton of great advice. He is actually our first subscriber, before we even have a subscription ready to go. So, while I think it is an unfair advantage because of his industry contacts, we look forward to a little friendly competition between our two magazines.

Dragon Roots is just that, getting back to the roots or early days of previous gaming magazines. We are focusing on content, we hope that will be enough of an edge.

amaril said:

It's going to be hard to compete with Kobold Quarterly and Pathfinder.

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Well to be fair, it is kind of hard for me to believe a $20 a month 96 page magazine is a good thing. I have a subscription to Business 2.0 and it is 104 page and it cost me about 80 cents per issue. I think the price is going to be the deciding factor in in Pathfinder.

lmpjr007 said:

Well to be fair, it is kind of hard for me to believe a $20 a month 96 page magazine is a good thing. I have a subscription to Business 2.0 and it is 104 page and it cost me about 80 cents per issue. I think the price is going to be the deciding factor in in Pathfinder.

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$14 a month if you subscribe, and keep in mind that it's 96 pages with no advertisements, just pure adventure content with complementary articles such as new monsters, deities, etc. related to the campaign.

Well, you now have my e-mail address. Good luck! I hope this works/succeeds.

You are pretty much starting up for the same reasons Judges Guild did (other than Dragon and Dungeon being cancelled), so hopefully you'll do better than they did.

I also love the "100% UNOFFICIAL CONTENT">

Treebore said:

Well, you now have my e-mail address. Good luck! I hope this works/succeeds.

You are pretty much starting up for the same reasons Judges Guild did (other than Dragon and Dungeon being cancelled), so hopefully you'll do better than they did.

I also love the "100% UNOFFICIAL CONTENT">

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Thanks, that was my idea

I think the following will be slow at first, just because we are unknowns outside of ENWorld. However, I am sure the following will grow.

This whole 4th thing kind of stinks though. Half of the articles in issue #0 don't require rules, but the other half does. So we will have to make a choice about that soon.

Good Luck to you Project!

I love printed products but shipping costs for a small magazine from USA to Ireland would be very expensive.
So I would settle, as I do with KQ, for the PDF version of your magazine.
Just my 2cent.