WizarDru
Adventurer
This is a continuation of a digression in the Goodbye Johnny Wilson thread.
I recall issues full of things I couldn't use, such as Jester NPC classes, the umpteenth article about falling damage, reviews of novels that I wasn't planning on reading and so on.
Dragon isn't being insular, they're using common sense and good business acumen. This isn't a not-for-profit, it's a magazine that is still a 'de-facto' house organ. It wasn't as necessary for it to make money in the past, as it's goal was to promote the game (although this attitude is simply indemic of other problems back in the old TSR days). These are different times, and Dragon is targetting their core market and serving them.
I mean, how many active players of Blue Planet do you think are out there? Of Hol? Sengoku? Dark Matter? Fuzion? Castle Falkenstein? Harn? How many of them would subscribe to Dragon for a single article every couple of issues? Dragon has, throughout it's history, struggled with which content to present to it's readership. Many readers are polarized against or for certain content, such as stories, comics and reviews. The suggestion that adding more content that potentially has no appeal to a large part of it's membership is going to help the magazine seems foolish to me. Dragon isn't there to bolster up the market...it's that kind of thinking that sunk TSR in the first place. For many years, D&D WAS the market. The fact that no non-D&D magazine has managed to thrive in the past 20 years says to me that this is still true.
Plus, this all ignores the fact that the web allows fans to provide more in-depth coverage of settings and systems than a magazine could afford. Go to Canonfire, Dragon's Foot, City of Doors, The Kargatane (while still active), RKK's site, columbia games, Jeff Dee's site or a host of others. Gamers who want to play will find a way, be it online or in person. I left D&D for 15 years, but I didn't leave gaming. The single biggest impact on my gaming was having children, not Dragon's change of format. It took D&D 3e to bring me and many gamers back. If gamers leave the hobby again, I doubt that there is much of anything that Dragon can do to prevent it. CRPGs, consoles and online gaming are more of a threat to the continuance of pen-and-paper gaming than ignorance of the available options.
The fact of the matter is that Dragon nearly got closed down, along with Dungeon and Polyhedron...so apparently your contention that it will survive purely by brand-name alone is wrong. Dragon needs to feed it's core market if it is to survive, and the RPG magazine business (hell, the whole of the RPG business) doesn't offer huge margins to begin with. Just ask many of the published authors here...they'll be quick to tell you that one doesn't become an RPG author or game designer to strike it rich.
Consequently, I think that the concept that WotC/Paizo are somehow morally bound to grow the market for everyone is flawed. What they need to do is grow their own customer base, and that will grow the market as a whole. Neither of them are bound to do the smaller company's advertising and promotion for them, nor prop-up weaker publishers merely out of the goodness of their hearts...in fact, I recall the furor of the d20 annual put out instead of the Dragon annual. Folks didn't like Godlike material in their Dragon annual...they certainly aren't going to enjoy getting Traveller, Lords of Creation or BESM material in there, instead.
As Alzrius says: "Ah, Bliss." Your cost benefit analysis makes the assumption that I don't have a use for most of the material in Dragon, or that I can only find a page or two that I can use without translation. Currently, I find most of the issue useful. It's true for you, but I would argue that it isn't for the readership as a whole. Further, there are plenty of articles, such as the World-building and Dungeoncraft articles that are still present.woodelf said:
I recall issues full of things I couldn't use, such as Jester NPC classes, the umpteenth article about falling damage, reviews of novels that I wasn't planning on reading and so on.
Well, we can ignore the question of why it's Dragon's responsiblity to shore up the rest of the non-D&D market, for the moment. Do you honestly think that "it is more likely now than ever that a D&D player might not be aware of other RPGs"? Any person who plays D&D with any enthusiasm has been to a gameshop, comic shop or even Waldenbooks or Borders and seen at least two other RPGs. I was at Border's yesterday, and they had LotR, Spycraft, Everquest, Farscape, Warcraft, Wraith, Vampire and Call of Cthulu all right there. Anyone who buys Dragon can see ads for other RPGs...and isn't it incumbent upon them to get their name before the single largest market segment of gamers (i.e. D&D players)?woodelf said:
Dragon isn't being insular, they're using common sense and good business acumen. This isn't a not-for-profit, it's a magazine that is still a 'de-facto' house organ. It wasn't as necessary for it to make money in the past, as it's goal was to promote the game (although this attitude is simply indemic of other problems back in the old TSR days). These are different times, and Dragon is targetting their core market and serving them.
I mean, how many active players of Blue Planet do you think are out there? Of Hol? Sengoku? Dark Matter? Fuzion? Castle Falkenstein? Harn? How many of them would subscribe to Dragon for a single article every couple of issues? Dragon has, throughout it's history, struggled with which content to present to it's readership. Many readers are polarized against or for certain content, such as stories, comics and reviews. The suggestion that adding more content that potentially has no appeal to a large part of it's membership is going to help the magazine seems foolish to me. Dragon isn't there to bolster up the market...it's that kind of thinking that sunk TSR in the first place. For many years, D&D WAS the market. The fact that no non-D&D magazine has managed to thrive in the past 20 years says to me that this is still true.
Plus, this all ignores the fact that the web allows fans to provide more in-depth coverage of settings and systems than a magazine could afford. Go to Canonfire, Dragon's Foot, City of Doors, The Kargatane (while still active), RKK's site, columbia games, Jeff Dee's site or a host of others. Gamers who want to play will find a way, be it online or in person. I left D&D for 15 years, but I didn't leave gaming. The single biggest impact on my gaming was having children, not Dragon's change of format. It took D&D 3e to bring me and many gamers back. If gamers leave the hobby again, I doubt that there is much of anything that Dragon can do to prevent it. CRPGs, consoles and online gaming are more of a threat to the continuance of pen-and-paper gaming than ignorance of the available options.
Like I mentioned above, I think you see an opportunity where none exists. Pyramid was the last serious attempt that I know of to do a magazine that supported all of those non-d20 games...and it failed, eventually going to an online subscription format. I've never heard of Arcane before you mentioned it, quite honestly, and after a quick google (and finding a French magic magazine by the same name), all I can tell is that it used to be published by Future Publishing in the UK.....so it wasn't even that big of a distribution in the overall market, and is no longer being published?woodelf said:
The fact of the matter is that Dragon nearly got closed down, along with Dungeon and Polyhedron...so apparently your contention that it will survive purely by brand-name alone is wrong. Dragon needs to feed it's core market if it is to survive, and the RPG magazine business (hell, the whole of the RPG business) doesn't offer huge margins to begin with. Just ask many of the published authors here...they'll be quick to tell you that one doesn't become an RPG author or game designer to strike it rich.
Consequently, I think that the concept that WotC/Paizo are somehow morally bound to grow the market for everyone is flawed. What they need to do is grow their own customer base, and that will grow the market as a whole. Neither of them are bound to do the smaller company's advertising and promotion for them, nor prop-up weaker publishers merely out of the goodness of their hearts...in fact, I recall the furor of the d20 annual put out instead of the Dragon annual. Folks didn't like Godlike material in their Dragon annual...they certainly aren't going to enjoy getting Traveller, Lords of Creation or BESM material in there, instead.
Accursed copy-and-pasting! Grrr.woodelf said:
