GAMING FRONTIERS: A $20 magazine! Are they nuts?

[TalonComics]

First off, let me just start by saying this is nothing personal but I think some of you are being overly harsh to these guys putting out Gaming Frontiers. One of the best ways to show you don't have interest in a product is not to buy it. That doesn't mean go out and continuously bust their balls over it though.

There aren't many companies doing an independant product of this nature. The ones that are have been plagued by considerable lateness and don't come anywhere near the quality Gaming Frontiers has.

I'm not saying Gaming Frontiers is the greatest D20 book ever but I just don't see the need to bash them or anyone who purchases it. there's a lot of D20 product out now. Buy what you can afford. Buy what you like. Read the reviews.

For the record: Gaming Frontiers is 15.25 each issue through my store not 20 bucks each.

~Derek

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

I'm not trying to bash them, I just don't understand their business plan... Sure, GF's a decent (but hardly essential) product, but not one worth anywhere near what they (or even Derek) are charging for it. I also don't see it as being much more than a string of free teaser ads for the companies contributing... most of which will have limited appeal to those who don't partake of their particular game or supplement.

I think United Playtest's energies (time & money) would be far better spent producing actual d20 game materials rather than publishing a mish-mash of other companies left-overs. It's impossible for them to overcome the perception ("stigma") that GF is a magazine because it IS a magazine: A $20 magazine! If they aren't selling tons of ad space (which they aren't), then how are they making a profit? I doubt it's through sales... I'm not saying this out of maliciousness, I certainly wish them good luck and hope I'm wrong, but I just think it's glaringly obvious the whole venture is ill-advised and ill-fated from the get-go, because the public will never accept a $20 magazine no matter what you call it.

 

[GF Jeff]

Here's the full content from Volume 2, which is out in stores now.

Inner Circle Games: 3 new exclusive monsters from their Violet Dawn campaign setting

Goodman Games: 6 pages of all new, Gaming Frontiers exclusive material for use with the Dinosaur Planet campaign setting, including new psychic powers for dinos and new psychic weapons

United Playtest: Jacob's Haunt, a new adventure written by me (Jeff Carter) for Gaming Frontiers, weighs in at about 15 1/2 pages

Troll Lord Games: An excerpt from The Canting Crew by Gary Gygax (including a prestige class)

Mystic Eye Games: 5 new monsters from the sea

Thunderhead Games: 10 new magic items meants specifically for monsters

Oone Roleplaying Games: New material detailing The Shadows Academy of Nath Rex from their adventure "The Twenty Sides of The Evil"

Mongoose Publishing: Excerpt from the upcoming Judge Dredd, and all new material for use with the Slayer's Guide to Amazons, including all new equipment, weapons, a prestige class and a whole new tribe

Privateer Press: New fiction and a new detailed gun shop for the "Exploring Corvis" Gaming Frontiers exclusive section

Atlas Games: New material from Nyambe, African Adventures (6 monsters left out of the book)

Bard's Productions: New material from their Common Ground series - this is an article called "Instant Guard Posts" that allows you to create guard posts...instantly!

Skeleton Key Games: "The Forsaken of Glimm" - a huge article detailing a new tribe of orcs (all new material)

AEG: A Gaming Frontiers exclusive Shadowforce Archer Spycraft Solo Serial - an adventure you can play all by yourself! Plus an exclusive look at The Cleaner, a prestige class that won't see the light of day in AEG products for a long, long time.

A new "Role of History" from Andrew Hind detailing William de Sonnac and the Knights Templar

A new "On the Homefront" article from freelancer Bryan Fagan, detailing possibilities for Afterlife for your characters

New Freeport fiction from Green Ronin

A brand new short story from Knight of the Black Rose author James Lowder

Interviews with Privateer Press and Gary Gygax

An industry column from Mac Golden (formerly of Troll Lord Games)

Plus, my Shootin' From The Hip rant, a smattering of new reviews, Tony Mosely cartoons, the "Gear" section and an artist gallery featuring Volume 1 cover artist Patrick Keith.


Jeffrey S. Carter
Head Writer / Assistant Editor
Gaming Frontiers
www.gamingfrontiers.com

 

[King_Stannis]

This almost seems like an extension of that “future of the gaming industry” thread, and I’m glad to see john nephew here battling for his side. I have seen the original GF digest at my FLGS and flipped through it knowing the price ahead of time. My verdict – no, not worth the money. I was holding a $12 magazine (my perceived value) that I just might have bought at that price. $20 was too high a price. I understand about the advertising and full color issue, but it doesn’t change the fact that I thought the digest was overpriced by about $8. My advice to GF, put a few more ads in and take out the color. The color is great for sourcebooks and rulebooks and even some adventures, but not necessary for this. And the advertisements, while annoying when they reach “Dragon” proportions, can be stomached in smaller doses. No, it’s not scientific, but I’m telling you that the full color added almost no value to it for me, and the (lack of) advertisements added marginal value. The content was okay, and could get better with exposure. I wanted to help out the little guy, but for $20 I could pick up any number of sourcebooks/adventures that I can use in my campaign in the near future.

 

[Saphirahn]

I'm sorry but I just realy couldent sit still any longer and JohnNephew is the only one realy seeming to stand up for GF. GF Jeff is stating facts and Talon is providing a source to get it for a little less but generally the fact seems to remain that everyone wants to think of it as a Magazine, a $20 magazine.

I'm not trying to bash them, I just don't understand their business plan...

I'm sorry Kap... but to use your own logic it would seem like that was a contridiction.. GF does something that Dragon and Dungeon magazine will never do. Admitantly it is pricy I wont argue but its battling an invisible foe that shouldent exist.

Dungeon and Dragon Magazines are on the average 1/3 Advertisements. It takes a Single Dungeon and a Single Dragon to = a Gaming fronteirs in terms of size and type of material. but 1/3 of that is useless other than to be an FYI and many times its not something exclusivly D20. they are computer game or stuff like that. so it in trueth would take 2 Dragons and a Dungeon Magazine to equal one Gaming Fronteirs. Hmmm.. each of the WotC Mags are $6 x 3 = 18 vs your $20 of Gaming Fronteirs.

I wont stop their however. GF does something else Dragon and Dungeon cant do and can potentially save you alot of money. it provides you with a Taste of D20 Companies that short of buying their material at $8-$25 a pop you can get a glimps of the kind of flavor they are able to generate. IF you like the Magic items that Thunderhead created in GF 1 & 2 then checkout Bluffside or Interludes. if not at least you saw a sampling of their writing. same goes for all the other publishers that provided material to GF. In terms of Potentially Usefull stuff GF has Dragon and Dungeon beat. Yes its $20... maybe they can work on that by cutting some or all the color and maybe setting the format to be more fixed on terms of page count so they can bring the costs down to about $15-$16 a book which we'd all prolly like better than $20 but as it was pointed out earlier GF is providing minimal waste of space advertising and are attempting to cater to the D20 community by giving people usefull, interesting and more enjoyable or usefull stuff for your dollar.

Dragon and Dungeon will never realy cater to the D20 Publishing market at large. so where else can you go to find out and get a strong sampling of other D20 publishers without having to risk your hard earned dollars on buying each and every one of them.

I am able to look at the material in GF and read through the monsters or Items or Pclasses that they have created and decide for myself if I think they've got a good grasp of D20. is their writing style clear on both a astetic and mechanical level. just from GF 1 I know their are some publishers I wont persue further likly. at the same time others I will cause I liked what they had to offer their.

I suspect I'm starting to ramble here but GF is not a magazine. its a D20 Sourcebook on D20. to think otherwise is only selling yourself short.

 

[drnuncheon]

I'm one of those people that keeps looking at GF and putting it back on the shelf.

I don't want to get down on GF Jeff - 'specially as we share a name - but the $20 tag does discourage impulse buys. If I see a $6 magazine with a couple of articles in it that might be useful, I'll pick it up, probably along with another book. If I see a $20 product with a couple of articles in it that might be useful, I balk, because I'd be picking that up instead of another book. For $20 I want the bulk of the material to be useful to me.

For the record, here's some stuff that would increase the perceived value of GF for me. Since I have no illusions about being their sole target audience I will merely spout them off for reference and discussion.

1. Less fiction. I can buy an entire book's worth for $6-7, and if I pick my author right, it will probably be better. (Debates about the merits - or lack thereof - of gaming fiction, line up here.) I also don't think that anyone is going to pick up GF and say 'Wow! Freeport fiction!'. Now if I picked it up and said 'Wow! An article on notable pirates in Freeport!' that would be a different story.

2. Fewer reviews. This will probably be hotly debated, but I'm going to guess that as a quarterly magazine, GF doesn't come out often enough to provide timely reviews - it could be months between a product's appearance on the shelf and the review in GF. By that time, I've probably either bought it or decided not to. Of course, I'm online, and therefore have access to several reviews, usually within a week of a product's launch. They may be more valuable to folks that don't frequent EN World.

3. I'm not sure how much control you have over this, but...more exclusive content rather than excerpts. If I've got Minions, then the article with 4 monsters from Minions isn't useful. If it had 4 monsters that they didn't put in the book, though...anyway, that one's relative, as plenty of folks would like to see previews and such.

Hopefully this is useful feedback. Based on what you posted, Volume 2 looks like a better deal on this front than Volume 1, although I haven't yet seen it in my FLGS. I will definitely give it a look when I do.

J

 

[DungeonKeeperUK]

Just for info heres some stats from a review of GF1 from 3rd Edition.org, GF2 has even more pages adn less adverts...
FULL REVIEW

The following notes outline the differences between Dragon and Gaming Frontiers in regards to content and pricing.

Dragon Issue 280 contains 132 pages, including the covers. 41 of those pages are full page ads. That leaves 91 pages of content. For sake of simplicity, I counted pages that had small ads on them as content. At a cover price of $5.99, you are paying 7 cents per page of content.

Gaming Frontiers, Volume I contains 144 pages, including the covers. It only has 7 full page ads, and 2 blank pages on the inside of the covers, leaving 135 pages of content. At a cover price of $17.95, you are paying 13 cents per page of content.

That means that GF is not quite double the cost of Dragon per page of content. However, as a general d20 product, GF is right in line with other publications. For example, Defenders of the Faith is 96 pages, black and white, and sells for $19.95.

Gaming Frontiers is 144 pages, 100% color, and sells for $2 less. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Now I should say I have got some stuff in GF under Thunderhead, before people say I'm biased... but I do however like the format, I don't actually buy many published supplements just for the fact I never seem to use enough of it to justify, but GF gives the diversity of material that I like..
Andrew

 

[Mystic Eye]

I think United Playtest's energies (time & money) would be far better spent producing actual d20 game materials rather than publishing a mish-mash of other companies left-overs.

The above is not accurate. The content provided is generally original material made for going inot GF and not left overs. It may be a piece that helps to promote something, (In some cases a direct promo) but it is original from the majority of the publishers. I Just wanted to correct that theory.

Now, I would agree that what I am about to do is not a perfect apples to apples comparison but I think the folks saying GF lacks value for its price point may be looking at things in the wrong way.

The points in a nut shell are:
It looks and feels like a magazine
It is to high priced at $17.95
You can't use all the material in it as it varies widely.
It does not need to be in color.
References to it being maybe a 7-12 dollar book in value or has no real value.

OK, Lets look at this now:

GF 2:
MSRP: $17.95
160 some odd pages
Full color, high quality layout.
Content: New monsters, classes, adventures, etc.
A real chance to see what other products may have to offer ( The spycraft class for instance)


The d20 magic of Rokugan: A fine book BTW:
MSRP: $24.95
96 pages
B&W Interior, high quality layout
Content: Magic for a very specific setting. Great stuff but if you are not playing OA or Rokugan you will not likley use it all.

By the estimations here this should be a $5 dollar book and has little to no value (if you view it as you view GF)


Arms & Armor: Fantastic book IMHO:
MSRP: $24.95
96 Pages
Full color, high quality Interior
Contet: Tons of weapon and armor stuff. Will you use all of it. Probably not.

Therefore, this should be a 12 dollar book and has no value at its $24.95. The color added no value at all.(these are not my thoughts BTW I am using the assumptions folks established here.)It is also done on a high gloss interior stock like GF.

Quintessential fighter:
MSRP: $19.95
128 pages
B&W interior, High quality layout
Content: A varied set of rules for fighting classes. New Prcs, items, feats, and rules, adventure ideas, etc.

By the assumptions here this book should be around 5-6 dollars when compared to GF2.

The only differences between GF2 and these books is that it "looks" like a magazine and has a less focused set of material. Oh, and a lower price point for its production values.

Even taking that into account, GF has as much if not more, statistically, than these other books. I chose these three because they all sold extremely well and are great books.
Taking the only two real negatives presented (Looks like a magazine, large variety of material means it will not all appeal to everyone) and then comparing it to these hot selling, well worth it, titles (that all three of these publishers provided material to GF 2 for) GF is still a good value.


The magaizine stigma is unfortunate because people are skewing their perceived value on that basis and not product itself.
If you take what is important in a standard reivew:
Price value( usually based on price per page+ content)
Production value and layout
Content quality
Artwork

This book gets generally good marks for all of these and has a value that warrants its price.
I think it is much better than a magazine!

 

[Ashtal]

I see this as being very comparable with the Rifter, and with the old Amber magazine. Rifter especially - it's material you can use, but in a variety of genres. But if you can't get past the whole "it's a magazine" thing, then look at it from a different magazine perspective. Four issues at $18 each is $72 for lots of material, color, verses Dragon's 12 issues at $6 each which also comes to $72. This is comparable. The only difference is that one has a cross-genre/publisher focus while the other is focused solely on WotC interests.

Neither is good or bad; it simply what it is. And as a consumer, you have to decide what you want. I'm sure if the Game Frontier's folks wanted to be publishing something like the format of Dragon or Dungeon, they would be. If it doesn't suit your needs, then it's not for you. But they are publishing in this format, they see value in it, and I'll leave it between them and their sales figures as to whether or not their strategy is working for them, based on their goals.

 

[King_Stannis]

Arms & Armor: Fantastic book IMHO:
MSRP: $24.95
96 Pages
Full color, high quality Interior
Contet: Tons of weapon and armor stuff. Will you use all of it. Probably not.

Therefore, this should be a 12 dollar book and has no value at its $24.95. The color added no value at all.(these are not my thoughts BTW I am using the assumptions folks established here.)It is also done on a high gloss interior stock like GF...

i actually agree with your (tongue in cheek) assessment here. i've held this book in my hands 2 separate times, and both times have deemed that cost does not equal the value. i gave the same examination to GF and came to the same conclusion.

if these boards are in any way a representation of the gaming community at large, then i'd say GF is in trouble. enough different people have come forward to say that the price is too high to lead me to believe that many gamers would share that opinion.

The arguments justifying the price and content, while noble, I think are doomed to fail. Whatever the reality, the perception is that: A) it is a magazine; B) it is an overpriced magazine with high production values but not enough “bang for the buck”. No amount of explaining, I think, will sway people too far from those views. It seems that everyone shared pretty much the same thoughts upon seeing GF.

It would appear that GF must find a way to either A) overcome that perception or B) find a way to lower the price of the magazine. I wish them luck.