New issue of Dragon+ (April '16)

The new issue of the Dragon+ app is out in your favourite mobile app store. If you don't have the app on your phone or tablet you can access it from your computer. Most of the articles have already been released, but compiled in one convenient location. Also, it has an article on the MtG Zendikar setting (with link to the PDF) and one on Gale Force Nine's Strahd figurines. No new crunch in this one.

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[Corpsetaker]

If the magazines were "selling like mad" they wouldn't have stopped doing them at the end of 5e. They would have continued them or put them on hiatus and brought them back. After all, the current staff at WotC knows exactly how much interest there was for the magazine and how profitable it was.
My guess, it was making money, but not enough to justify the half-dozen full time staff needed to maintain the magazine.

Plus, even IF they decided to bring it back, what content would they include?
Player crunch is covered by the DMsGuild and they really don't want to bloat the game. Advice is covered by blogs. Letters to the editor don't really need to exist with Twitter and Facebook. Sage Advice is covered on the website. There's lot of adventures between the Guild/Adventurer's League and the storylines.
It's a whole lot of work for very little gain. Content for the sake of content.

I'm afraid it's not that black and white. Anyone with a bit of business sense would know that as well. 4th edition was not a popular edition and it was ending and Dragon at the time was tied to that edition so it's basically a no brainer they decided to stop the online mag.

The latest survey shows that people clearly want more content and it doesn't necessarily have all be crunch. Dragon+ at the moment is a joke and it's obvious the name was used to grab people's attention.

There is plenty of content you could put in an online version of Dragon/Dungeon. You could have a new mini adventure every issue, you could have a new area of the Forgotten Realms revealed that contains a bit of lore along with some NPCs, you could include the sage advice, upcoming product info, the unearthed arcana stuff, repeat of the Forgotten Realms part above but using other campaign settings, etc....

The problem is staff. They want to keep their staff light and spend the least amount of money on D&D as possible. Please don't get me started on Dungeon Master's Guild. You sit there and sift through all the mud and occasionally find something okay. You rarely find anything good for free and I don't know about you but I don't trust most of the stuff that is only listed at 1 euro because after a while all those little euros add up and you are stuck with material that is beyond awful.

If 5th edition truly is as popular as they claim then I would say this would sell easily.

 

[Uchawi]

This isn't Dragon magazine. It's the D&D newsletter, which just happens to share a name with the now long defunct magazine. Comparing a mailing list with a magazine will always lead to dissapointment.

Then WOTC should not continue the impression that is the successor. They should have given it a new name. Regardless, I do not find much value in it.

 

[CapnZapp]

Kinda. It's also they're answer to our requests for a physical mailing list sent to our homes, or a D&D broadstreet sold on the corner by a shabby urchin in a newsy cap.

Dragon+ is filling the gap until another company puts in a licensing request for the magazines.
Which won't happen as no one is remotely interested.
Gygax Magazine closed up shop and Kobold Quarterly is long dead. Magazines are a giant financial dead end, and it's ridiculous to expect WotC to cling to an outdated delivery format because of nostalgia.
Magazines were already a dying format when WotC attempted to bring them in-house in 2008. Paizo had been struggling to keep the magazines afloat a good decade ago.

Even in magical and wonderous land of Theoretica where magazines flourish, Dragon and Dungeon occupy a weird space. What content would go in there? The D&D team seems uninterested in waves of new crunch, and Unearthed Arcana serves the content testing function. Advertising and hype is done through social media. Finding new talent and publishing short adventures have been subsumed by the DMsGuild. Regular advice and gaming tips have long since been replaced by gaming blogs. Even letters to the editor and feedback is now replaced by tweeting at the designers directly.
Why buy a magazine when you can hit-up any of a dozen websites for equivalent content for free? Why flip through endless pages when you could search through a website for the exact adventure you need?

The real question is why you spend so much time defending Wotc, Jester?

 

[Jester David]

There is plenty of content you could put in an online version of Dragon/Dungeon. You could have a new mini adventure every issue,

You mean like the free AL adventures in Dragon+?

you could have a new area of the Forgotten Realms revealed that contains a bit of lore along with some NPCs

You mean like that Volo's Guide that was in an earlier Dragon+?

you could include the sage advice, upcoming product info, the unearthed arcana stuff,
You mean like they're already doing in Dragon+?

repeat of the Forgotten Realms part above but using other campaign settings, etc....

You mean like the description of Barovia in the last issue of Dragon+?

Please don't get me started on Dungeon Master's Guild. You sit there and sift through all the mud and occasionally find something okay. You rarely find anything good for free and I don't know about you but I don't trust most of the stuff that is only listed at 1 euro because after a while all those little euros add up and you are stuck with material that is beyond awful.

There is some amazing stuff on the DMs Guild and it really doesn't take that much work to find it. The preview box can give you a good idea of the content in a product, and you can compare a product with others from the same author. If several are selling well, you know they can reliably produce good stuff.
And lots of people (like the Unearthed Arcana plugs, the shout-outs on the D&D Round Table, these forums) do shout-outs to noteworthy products.

We price the work of D&D creators super low. Making decent content takes weeks. And people expecting it for pretty much free.
I charge super low for my DMsGuild products. $0.50. And I've been lucky enough to sell quite a few. But when you calculate my rate per word for a couple of my most profitable books (traps and diseases) it's $0.01. A quarter of the rate of En5ider and a tenth the rate for WotC. It's not even remotely worth my time from a professional sense, given the hours I put in.
But I do it because I love the game and want to share content with other DMs.

If 5th edition truly is as popular as they claim then I would say this would sell easily.

Would it?
If people were that hungry for content, wouldn't En5ider be a *huge* hit? It has just over a thousand people, one-percent of Dragon magazine at its peak.
People like D&D and they like playing D&D, but monthly purchases and subscription fees just make most people shrug. They like the occasional big purchase that feels like a treat, if they buy at all.
The magazines numbers were never huge:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Circulation&p=4136286&viewfull=1#post4136286

Assuming they could get Paizo numbers (30,000) paying $5 a month, the magazine is making $150,000 each month (minus the fees for the people handing the webstore interface). It also needs a full time editor, art director, and layout artist. Possibly more. A half-dozen people worked on the 4e magazines. Before considering the people at the back end handing the digital side, such as bandwidth and website updates.
At industry wages, half your money is gone before you even have to start paying writers for content.

That's assuming 30k people don't balk at the cost of a digital magazine with content they could get cheaper elsewhere. And, more than likely, the conversation would immediately shift and people would resume complaining that the magazine is no longer printed again.


And, realistically, if they wanted to release a digital booklet of Realmslore or some feats or a small adventure, they could do that right now on the DMs Guild. With no special set-up requires, no monthly deadlines, and no subscriptions.

 

[Jester David]

The real question is why you spend so much time defending Wotc, Jester?

Because people are being overly critical and unrealistic.

I have ZERO problems tearing into WotC when they're at fault or doing something silly. And I've ripped into them quite a few times in the past. I was extremely critical about the OGL delays, the lack of updates to the DM Basic rules, the absence of a Basic document for Out of the Abyss, and other problems. And my reviews on my website can be quite hard on their products and their flaws.

But a lot of complaints just seem unfounded, spurious, or overlooking some details. I draw umbrage to those, and feel the need to reply. I don't mind people attacking WotC or complaining, but the complaints should be justified.

Dragon Magazine is a good example, since so many people loved it, and it has fond memories (despite the fact, based on the numbers, likely only a tiny percentage subscribed). The memories of Dragon are tinged with nostalgia.
I grabbed a random issue from my shelf. A classic from the early '90s.
This issue is 120 pages.
Skipping pictures we have 1 page of letters, couple pages of editorial, 12 pages of content (in this case haunted locations, adventure hooks, three monsters, and urban locations) followed by 4 pages of reviews. 7 pages of a Voyage of the Princess Ark (that's mostly fluff with some assorted monster stats and what look like an NPC class) and 1 1/2 pages of Sage Advice, a page of novel previews, a page of RPG product previews, and a page and a half article on villains. Then four pages of Marvel-phile (Groot!!), as well as just under 3 pages of text finishing previous articles... A couple pages on villains by someone else. And then a Forums, three pages of responding. (This is super weird. I forgot these existed...) Three more pages of review, and a five pages of comics (usually 2, but Twilight Empire was running at the time.) Then like four pages of miniatures reviews.
That's 53 pages of content, under half the magazine. There was also several illustrations as well. But the majority of the magazine was either ads or features an ad.

And people were expected to pay the equivalent of $6 for that.

Now, of that content, the forums were replaced by, well, message board forums. Four of the five articles in this issue were advice and really the kind of stuff you'd see on a blog. Ditto the reviews. Dragon mirth is replaced by webcomics. And, really, the small monster article and Marvel-phille article also feel a little blog worthy,
The *only* content that hasn't been completely be replaced by other people's websites is the previews.

Which is the problem with a monster version of Dragon: it's literally taking articles and content people would otherwise give away and then paying for them. Which makes negative sense.

 

[Uller]

I would be far more interested in a Dungeon magazine, much more useful to me.

I would be willing to pay $30 a year or so for a subscription to an ezine that contains short adventures written by fans, occasional re-imaginings of classics by WotC designers and access to the Dungeon DB that we got with D&D insider.

This was such a useful resource to me. Back in the 1e-3e days I could go to my stack of Dungeons to find interesting one offs or ideas to insert into my own campaign. In 4e, I could use the Dungeon DB to find lots of adventures. Now? Not so much.

 

[Corpsetaker]

You mean like the free AL adventures in Dragon+? You mean like that Volo's Guide that was in an earlier Dragon+?

you could include the sage advice, upcoming product info, the unearthed arcana stuff, You mean like they're already doing in Dragon+? You mean like the description of Barovia in the last issue of Dragon+? There is some amazing stuff on the DMs Guild and it really doesn't take that much work to find it. The preview box can give you a good idea of the content in a product, and you can compare a product with others from the same author. If several are selling well, you know they can reliably produce good stuff. And lots of people (like the Unearthed Arcana plugs, the shout-outs on the D&D Round Table, these forums) do shout-outs to noteworthy products. We price the work of D&D creators super low. Making decent content takes weeks. And people expecting it for pretty much free. I charge super low for my DMsGuild products. $0.50. And I've been lucky enough to sell quite a few. But when you calculate my rate per word for a couple of my most profitable books (traps and diseases) it's $0.01. A quarter of the rate of En5ider and a tenth the rate for WotC. It's not even remotely worth my time from a professional sense, given the hours I put in. But I do it because I love the game and want to share content with other DMs. Would it? If people were that hungry for content, wouldn't En5ider be a *huge* hit? It has just over a thousand people, one-percent of Dragon magazine at its peak. People like D&D and they like playing D&D, but monthly purchases and subscription fees just make most people shrug. They like the occasional big purchase that feels like a treat, if they buy at all. The magazines numbers were never huge: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Circulation&p=4136286&viewfull=1#post4136286 Assuming they could get Paizo numbers (30,000) paying $5 a month, the magazine is making $150,000 each month (minus the fees for the people handing the webstore interface). It also needs a full time editor, art director, and layout artist. Possibly more. A half-dozen people worked on the 4e magazines. Before considering the people at the back end handing the digital side, such as bandwidth and website updates. At industry wages, half your money is gone before you even have to start paying writers for content. That's assuming 30k people don't balk at the cost of a digital magazine with content they could get cheaper elsewhere. And, more than likely, the conversation would immediately shift and people would resume complaining that the magazine is no longer printed again. And, realistically, if they wanted to release a digital booklet of Realmslore or some feats or a small adventure, they could do that right now on the DMs Guild. With no special set-up requires, no monthly deadlines, and no subscriptions.

Not really sure what happened here.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm of two minds here (sort of like an ettin). On one hand, I agree with [MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION] that there may not be a viable way to have a zine, whether dead-tree or e, in this day and age, and that the usual content is already out there in various forms. On the other, Dragon (and to a lesser degree, Dungeon) provided something crucial to the D&D community that WotC hasn't been able to replace. Dragon was a classic loss leader, something that in and of itself probably didn't make profit and may even have lost money, but its overall impact was positive. It provided a central spot, an Agora if you will, for everything D&D related.

In a way, I think what has replaced that aspect of Dragon is, well, EN World (and other sites). These are the new Agoras, the new hubs through which everything D&D-related passes.

 

[Kramodlog]

It was a great complaint to make… six months ago when Dragon+ launched. It certainly doesn't need to be brought up again and again after each and every new issue comes out.

It is a valid critique to make. What is the worse that could happen? They change its name? It stays the same? People are free to voice their opinion even if you do not share it.

Players are a theoretical audience.

They trully exist. And they buy stuff. It is what one of the founders of the new online store that was announced a few weeks ago said to Morrus when Morrus said that one of ENpublishing AP's didn't sale on a online store that wasn't Drivethru RPG,

 

[Jester David]

It is a valid critique to make.

It was a valid critique. It has ceased to be topical or particularly relevant. It is not constructive criticism, bringing nothing remotely useful to the discussion or review of the current issue of Dragon+. It's a good argument to make in a thread on Dragon+ in general, a "What do we think about Dragon+?" forum topic, but not very useful to this thread reviewing the new issue.

What is the worse that could happen? They change its name? It stays the same? People are free to voice their opinion even if you do not share it.

Changing the name means thinking of a new one. That is not easy and likely requires weeks of meetings and brainstorming, discussions with marketing teams and management, as well as ensuring the new name is something they can trademark and hasn't already been trademarked. Plus the design of a new logo. They need to spread the word of the name change and risk confusion.
Oh, and they need to change the name of the app in the Android and iOS app stores. Which isn't easy.

It's a whole lot of time and money and effort that really serves no useful purpose beyond stopping a bunch of gamers on message boards from whining.

They trully exist.

They exist as people, but not as consumers. Like babies and small children, who very much exist in meatspace but have limited purchasing power.

And they buy stuff.

Do they?
The thing is people at the table fall in a spectrum that ranges from casual gamers to dedicated gamers. Casuals play but don't buy the books and rely on the others (or the DM) for the books while dedicated gamers buy everything. The majority of people who play D&D are likely on the casual end, willing to play and *maybe* buy the PHB but unlikely to get more than that.

This is backed-up by the last publically released survey of the purchasing habits of industry, back in 2000:
https://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html

It makes a few points relevant to this discussion:

1. Few “General Gamers”:
The first, most notable conclusion we can draw from this information is that
the mythical “hobby gamer” who plays TRPGs, CRPGs, MWGs and TCGs comprises a
very, very small portion of the total market. A minority of gamers play more
than one category of hobby game; very few play all three. The largest
overlap, though still a minority, is with CRPGs and TRPGs.

This is an exciting conclusion, because it indicates that a company can
successfully create brand in one of the three hobby categories, and extend
that brand into the other two without significantly cannibalizing sales. In
other words, the people who buy the RPG are not likely to be the ones buying
the MWG or the TCG.

This data seems to validate the theory that young gamers, while very active,
don’t spend a lot of money. (The following data is reported by for RPG
expenditures) The big dollars come from adults...

Total spending by age:
12-17: $297
18-24: $850
25-25: $2,213

And, the longer they stay in the category, the greater their total
outlays...
Play <=1 Year: $116
Play 1-5 Years: $562
Play >5 Years: $2,502

And if they can be induced to become a DM/GM, expenditures skyrocket.
Will DM/GM: $2,048
Will not DM/GM: $401

D&D DM willingness effect on expenditures:
Will DM: $1,444 total / $21 monthly
Will not DM: $187 total / $7 monthly

So while there are 4 times as many players as DMs you can make a comparable amount of money per month from that one DM than the others. And if the average number of people willing to DM at a table is 2 (or even 1 1/2) you can make significantly more money targeting those players. And those dedicated gamers in the hobby for longer also spend significantly more.

So while by just looking at the numbers of players versus DMs it's easy to say that player-focused material should sell much better because there are so many more, this overlooks the reality that most gaming groups are centered on one or two dedicated players who DM (since they own the books and know the rules) and are responsible for purchasing material for the entire group. And thus products that benefit these gamers can sell just as many copies as player-centric books.

It is what one of the founders of the new online store that was announced a few weeks ago said to Morrus when Morrus said that one of ENpublishing AP's didn't sale on a online store that wasn't Drivethru RPG,

Link?