Dungeon #99 - Is the end near?

[Iron_Chef]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thanks Johnny, Erik & Chris

I think Paizo can handle it without too much difficulty...

I wish I shared your optimism about Paizo management. I really do.

IMO, they refuse to deliver the D&D content most fans want, and they can't even deliver their mags on time to my FLGS (coming two weeks AFTER they've hit the stands at Barnes & Noble, and that's about a week and a half AFTER the first subscribers got their copy). Considering my FLGS is only about an hour away from their offices, this is really pathetic. My FLGS refers to Paizo as "buttheads" and tells everybody to go buy the mags elsewhere as they can't count on them to deliver properly. This delay is even worse than when WoTC was publishing them!

One more rant: Subscriber only content makes me angry. If I'm paying full price at the store, I damn well better be getting every last bit of content there is to be had. Another misguided Paizo strategy that aliennates the readership. Down with subscriber only content!

 

[hellbender]

I will chime in with non-subscribers who despise subscriber only content. I dropped my subscriptions after repeatedly receiving my magazines looking like they had been through a warzone and having to buy them at my flgs anyway. Now, I am penalized for paying more than subscribers?

Polyhedron does nothing for me, but I don't mind the magazine being hooked up if it is for the better. A polyectomy wouldn't bother me a bit, but I can survive with it. I admit I did like the Gamma World and Spelljammer games, and am still reading through the newest issue, which does look good, however, three mini-games out of all those issues doesn't really sway me to supporting Polyhedron.

The price doesn't bother me except that the content has been slipping lately and that is the bottom line, Paizo better start moving fast, this is way too small of a market to have newsstand sales drop for very long. At local venues, I am seeing more and more lingering copies of Dungeon, telling me that discontent is becoming a growing trend.


hellbender

 

[Marion Poliquin]

My two cents:

Never had any interest in Polyhedron.

I stopped buying since the flip flopping began.

 

[El Ravager]

I am a Dungeon fan who doesn't mind Poly. For me, if I simply ripped the Poly section out of the mag, the content of Dungeon is still worth the cover price so I continue to buy. I find no use for the mini games - I barely find enough time to buy all the full RPGs that my friends and I play. The only time I really felt Poly was useful and worth reading was the Poly issue attatched to Dungeon 98. It had a variety of short articles that supported games I already played (The d20 modern NPCs in the article Gun Fu, the Starwars article and the ship and bank map). That issue of Poly is an example of the kind of d20 content that I would actually use. I can see mini games being published now and then, but I would rather see articles supporting d20 games. Kinda like Dragon Magazinebut for d20 Modern, SW d20 and LG.

As for Dungeon, I do not find the content slipping at all. Yes issue 99 sucked. Alot. And to make matters worse, it had the most useless Poly ever. Every mag has bad issues and issue 99 seems to be, in my opinion, the exception, not the rule. I like the Adventure Path adventures they are doing and I have not gotten it yet, but I hear issue 100 is good.

I don't look at Poly as wasted space that could have been Dungeon, the only thing I look at is are the pages of Dungeon worth my money? As long as that answer continues to be 'yes' I will keep buying Dungeon.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thanks Johnny, Erik & Chris

With your position as a contributor (some might consider you an "insider") to the magazines, you are naturally biased and your comments clearly self-serving (perhaps you'd like these features to remain so you can get paid for contributing/"innovating" to them).

Just a few inaccuracies to clear up. First of all I have never had anything more than a letter to the editor appear in Dungeon. I also currently have nothing in the works to publish in Dungeon. Dragon has published my material 3 times in the past, but there hasn't been anything from me in Dungeon aside from the aforementioned letter. Second of all, I don't work for Paizo, I haven't had any conversations with Paizo about their business strategy. I've been with Dungeon since issue 17 - far before anyone could consider me an "industry insider." That and that alone is why I have a strong opinion about the magazine and its future. How long have you been part of its readership?

I would also like to point out that with the work I'm currently doing with WotC RPG R&D on actual hardback D&D books in a freelance capacity and the work I've been consistantly doing for Bastion Press for the past year, keeping Dungeon around as a venue to "get paid" for contributing is really the least of my considerations.

If the RPGA was truly financially viable and not a misguided drain on corporate resources...

If this were true, Hasbro would have chopped it off years ago. 'Nuff said.

 

[rounser]

I think this proves the point I was just making. Its always about ME!

If the buying habits of the crunch-hungry masses who drove Dungeon and modules in general to the wall didn't compromise in their spending patterns, maybe it's poetic justice that an unwanted intrusion of d20 crunch into the last true home of adventure "fluff" see a similar fate, even if it does risk bringing the whole ship down with it?

 

[Iron_Chef]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thanks Johnny, Erik & Chris

How long have you been part of its readership?

First, I resent the sly insinuation that that newer readers opinions are not as valid as "old schoolers" who have been with it from the get-go. That said, I've been reading Dungeon about as long as you. One of the first ones I bought was back in 1988 or '89 and had "Wards of Witching Ways" in it, about the two crazy old wizards in their island fortress tormenting the shipwrecked PCs for fun and sport. Might have been issue #16 for all I can remember. Maybe it was #18, or #22. Not going to be bothered to go hunt for it at this late hour. That was back when you got a good adventure or two every issue; no glitz, no non-D&D content, just good ol' fantasy adventures. Course, we still got plenty of unusable, awful crap, too. After all, that was the reign of terror of Lorraine Williams/T$R and the heyday of "Angry Mom Syndrome," so "edgy" wasn't exactly on the corporate menu. But plenty of great adventures still got through, more then than now, IMO.

I've seen your name before in Dragon #296... the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook support piece on new stronghold enhancements, right? Great article, but you left out all the price breakdown info for the fortified inn/trading post, Drekken's Rest I think it was called. Probably a goof on WoTC's part; they were always screwing up and leaving out important bits of articles if they didn't just cut or change them on purpose without telling anybody (ask Sean K). Anyway, I'd very much appreciate that missing info if you'd care to post it here. It might make me less curmudgeonly toward your posts, LOL. No promises, though.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree, though as a writer, I suspect you'd prefer that a "forum for innovation in game design" like Poly remain, if not for you, then for other writers to tinker with new ideas or so called "advancements" in game design. As a writer, I would, too. As a gamer, however, I don't want your chocolate in my peanut butter... I resent the inclusion of material I cannot use, and worse, have no desire to ever use, let alone bother to read except glance at in shock, surprise and dismay, like Hijinx.

Regarding your other point about Hasbro forcing WoTC into cutting off the RPGA if it was unprofitable, I don't agree. I think they've been misled by WoTC with faulty logic and fuzzy math into thinking the RPGA has value as a recruitment tool to help grow/sustain the hobby. Corporations with deep pockets support bone-headed, money-losing propositions like this all the time if they think it has some strategic long-term value towards garnering future profits. I don't think it does, and I think it is a waste of time and resources. Neither one of us being party to the insides of WoTC/Hasbro corporate matters, we'll have to chalk it up to a draw. You believe one thing, I believe another. Neither of us can be sure we're right, and (gasp!) we could both be wrong. Though, of course, I rarely am... at least in my own mind.

 

[Numion]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Thanks Johnny, Erik & Chris

IMO, we got along fine without Star Wars or d20 Modern (or Hijinx) for decades. I don't care about d20 outside of D&D. All I want is D&D content and not have to pay for other games I can't use. Force-feeding us Poly, LGJ, Star Wars and Modern content is not innovative. Clearly these products in Dungeon are on life support, and I say pull the plug! It is the pigheaded refusal of Paizo to cancel these features that is killing Dungeon, not the refusal of the readerbase to accept content they don't want.

Amen, bro!

I guess Dungeon staff listened to us when people everywhere said that the mag is the best value for money in d20 business before the whole Poly thing .. and saw an opporunity to optimize that value to their advantage (they thought that they'd get away with a lesser value / $ if the original value was so good), by selling us some crap on the side and charging more.

It seems that the plan has backfired

 

[WizarDru]

I'm trying to figure out what 'most D&D gamers want', and finding that I have no idea. I know what most D&D gamers I know personally want...and we don't all agree, there. I look at ENWorld, and I see many of use don't agree here, either. I look at USEnet, and see that no one seems to agree there, either. So I'm not sure that quantifying such an item is so straightforward, or that Paizo is failing to meet that requirement. Quick: do 'most fans' prefer fiction in Dragon magazine or not? There you go.

Unless we assume both WotC and Paizo to be lying (and quite frankly, I've been listening to Erik Mona since many of the posters on this thread), Dungeon was on it's deathbed. Dungeon has never been a high-margin magazine, and at times only existed to help push the D&D brand. Like it or not, Cat Fancy probably has a wider circulation than Dungeon, and probably proves more profitable. The same is true of New York or Philadelphia magazines. Owing to that, it's more likely that Paizo is willing to inconvience two different readerships (both of whom have individual desires that are not necessarily communal), rather than not have either.

The contention that Dungeon needs more space so that it can have more modules, so that the percentage of sucky modules will decrease seems to miss the point, to me. If you think that only one module per issue is usable, then you don't demand more pages so they can have two out of six that are usable, you ask for the other modules to be of higher quality. However, you have to face the idea that maybe not everyone agrees on the quality of said modules, and that further, Paizo is limited by what material is submitted to them. Unlike most magazines, Dungeon solicits far less material, and pulls much more from the slush pile. Perhaps changing that policy will change the quality issue...but I'm not sure that it would be for the better, or that I would be happy if they did. One of Dungeon's charms, to me, is that joe-dungeon master can submit a module and it might get printed. When you consider that many of the folks who are currently published got their start that way (some of whom rose to editor), I think it should stay that way.

 

[BryonD]

Unless we assume both WotC and Paizo to be lying (and quite frankly, I've been listening to Erik Mona since many of the posters on this thread), Dungeon was on it's deathbed. Dungeon has never been a high-margin magazine, and at times only existed to help push the D&D brand.

I still don't believe this.

I recall numerous comments back around the dawn of 3E stating that Dungeon was one of the few things doing well.

Now everybody swears that wasn't true. Fine, somebody was wrong, I do not know who.

But I still have one of those quotes from Ryan Dancy because it was part of a bigger discussion of the transistion from TSR to WotC. And I have always found Ryan to be about as honest as they come.

My thinking is that the Pazio guys have attempted to leverage the Dungeon appeal to build their idea of a general gaming magazine. Now they are dumbfounded that the Dungeon appeal doesn't just magically jump over to non-Dungeon things simply through bundling. Then they make it worse by taking our non-interest in non-Dungeon material as a personal insult and responding from an emotional stance.