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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Owen K.C. Stephens" data-source="post: 505410" data-attributes="member: 3190">I suspect it's impossible for the people at Paizo to tell you that positive feedback "carries more weight" than negative, and actually I'm not even sure it should. If one person tells you an article was great, and 113 tell you it was worse than having a dead skunk mailed to them, which opinion should they listen to?I haven't had anything published in Dragon in a year or so (since the d20 special in fact - the big article on animals in the WOT that so few people seemed to like), and I don't have anything under consideration right now, so I feel only mildly biased in my opinions, and I want to make sure those biases are out in the open. I like the people at Paizo, I consider some of them friends, and I certainly plan on selling them more stuff in the future. So feel free to keep that in mind when reading the following comments.Magazine publishing is a brutal business. TSR had Dragon as a way to increase sales of D&D products, so it didn't really matter if it made a profit by itself. WotC moved away from that thinking and pushed for the magazines to make money on their own. The periodical staff did some heroic late-night work trying to figure out what players wanted, how to increase circulation, cut costs, and raise advertising money.I read some of the comments they get to work with, and it’s a tough act pull off. Most people tend to scream for D&D-only content, but with lots of variety, but make sure it meets my immediate gaming needs, but don't just write articles that tie in to new products.That means different things to different people. If the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook just came out, is an article on real-world castles too tied- in to it, or not D&D enough? All the staff can do is guess, and use the best articles they've got. (And that's another thing, these magazines are writer-driven. Don't like the articles they have? Write some of your own. And I don't mean that in a put-up or shut-up way, I acknowledge you can have a legit opinion on writing without being a good writer. I'm just saying if no one writes an interesting article about D&D that doesn't involve feats, spells or prestige class, Dragon can't publish one.)Now, things are even more profit driven, I suspect, and with good reason. Paizo -isn't- WotC, and they must make money on the magazines alone, since they don't have any other products. And yeah, that probably means they have to raise prices while cutting services. Inflation is real folks, and no matter how good a deal you got on the magazine before because its parent company -could- lose money on it, Paizo can't. WotC isn't willing top publish the thing anymore. I suspect the massive support D&D receives from 3rd party publishers means they don't -have- to have Dragon anymore, so they're not going to leap in and save it if Paizo goes under. So Paizo has to make money to justify keeping the things in print.And let's talk about value. My copy of Dragon 301 is 114 pages long. Just to be ridiculously conservative, let's say only ½ of that is game material. that's 57 pages. Assuming 12 issue a year, that's 684 pages of game material. What does a subscription cost? Let's round it up to $40. you find me a game book with 684 pages of game material for $40.Okay, maybe you can't use all the game material (heck, if circulation is only 10,000 copies, I'd be amazed if anyone could find a single article 10,000 gamers would agree was useful). Of course, I find most game books aren't 100% useful, but let's ignore that. If I think of Dragon as a game book, I'd like to get around 200 pages out of that price, if production values and such are good. So if 1 in 3 articles is good, I get 228 pages, which is like getting a hardback that's 1005 good material.Oh, and they have those counters. At 1 sheet per issue, that's 12 sheets of counters. Yeah, I've paid $12 for about that much before. Okay, that's a bonus.Oh, and there's the art. I've paid -more- than $40 for fantasy art books with less quality art than I find in the interior of Dragon. (I -love- the illos on pages 30, 32 and 41 of issue 301. I could start a whole campaign based on those illos.)And if its not worth it to you after all that, then vote with your dollars and don't buy it. But look hard at the value before you do that. because on top of everything elves, Dragon does give me Sage Advise and Dungeoncraft, and a lot of other things I can't get anywhere else.No one at Paizo is happy about axing the annual, I'm sure. But if you work on something and get mostly negative feedback, it doesn't make sense to do it again. Johnny is annoyed because subscribers were overwhelmingly negative about the d20 special, but it sold well on newsstands. But newsstands aren't where most of his money comes from, so he has to listen to subscribers. The time and effort that would have been spent on getting out an issue 13 can now be spent on improving the core magazine (and it is a -big- deal to try to put out 2 issues in the same month. It doubles everyone's workload for a chunk of the year, and Johnny likes his employees too much to do that to them if the product they sweat over isn't well received).Okay, some of you are upset that you subscribed for 13 issues and now get 12. I get that. Of course, I've had magazines get cancelled, and been told there's no way to get my money back. That happens sometimes. That's the risk you take for getting 47% off the cover price. So, in my opinion, just decide if the magazine is still worth it to you, and renew or not. You want to talk mark-up? When WotC published the magazine, I got copies free, as a courtesy. When Paizo took over, they didn’t offer to send me stuff for free anymore. I immediately coughed up the money for subscriptions to everything. In my opinion, I'd be a sucker not to.The people at Paizo may make decisions you don't like. I'm not suggesting they're perfect, or that people shouldn't feel free to voice their opinion. heck, my opinion is no more valuable than anyone else’s. But I don't believe Johnny, Jesse, or anyone else is trying to pu8ll one over on the fans, or cheat consumers, or bluff their way out of some secret reason to cancel the annual. It was a business decision, based on income and resources. Things like this happen when you change publishers.My $.02Owen K.C. StephensPS: I just don’t get not feeling the d20 Special was a good idea. This is an aside, unrelated to the above rant, but what part of that magazine isn’t relevant to D&D?Deep Ones? No conversion needed.Spectral hunters? No conversion needed.Ryan Dancey on D20? Explains where all this d20 stuff came from. No game stats, true, but -ll- about our game.All’s fair? It’s about adapting thing to D&D.Pattern Weavers? Okay, you need WoT for their magic, but if you just give them 1st level Wiz/Sor spells instead you have easy, ready-to use NPCs complete with illos. But my names on that one, so I may be biased.Beasts of the WoT? Change the word “Defense” to “AC”, and they’re D&D animals. Beasts in many cases. Great for druids, wilderness encounters.., again, I may be biased.Gfirswt look, Dragonstar? ‘Sheen were popular, but spellware enhancements aren’t?Back talon Ss’ressen? They -are- for D&D!Black Riders? Yep, D&D.Firearms in Freeport? Well, Freeport isn’t a GURPS book, so this must be D&D.Mini adventure review? Well, those are D&D mini adventures, and I certainly appreciated knowing how good they were )or weren’t). But some poeple don’t like reviews. But these certainly were D&D reviews.I mean it’s not like the magazine was about Star Wars and Spycraft!Oh well, but my other $.02</blockquote>

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