Gaming Frontiers subscription Q&A

We have received numerous emails with repeat questions concerning our subscription offer and our product. So I thought I would offer a quick Q&A and try to save myself from all that typing. Please excuse me if I

Q: Can I still get the $20 in free product with the subscription?
OR
Have you got 100 subscribers yet?

A: Amazingly, no. I believe most people are seeing the over 1000 views of the original post and saying “that deal can’t be good anymore.” Well, not true!! You CAN still get the $20 in free stuff if you subscribe now. But, I promise that offer won’t stay around much longer.

Q: Can I still get the 10 promotional products or are they all gone?

A: Generally the same answer as before. We had 100 copies of each of those books allocated to us. There are some left but they are going fast. Once the first wave of products are gone I plan to put together another list of 10 or so books to go along with our next subscription promotion. I already have a couple of companies lined up for that. Don’t worry, if you already subscribed and are thinking “Man, I wonder what he’s giving away with the next batch”. The new set of promotional products will be available for purchase by our existing subscribers at a discount. I will continue to support my subscribers and offer them deals though out the length of your subscription. Discounted product, giveaways, etc.

Q: When do I get my stuff?

A: The first of the subscriptions will be shipped by the second week of October. Gaming Frontiers Volume 3 is here, now. All of your $20 in free product has been ordered and half of it has been delivered. The promotional product should be here within the next two weeks.

Q: I haven’t received an email confirmation for my order. What’s up with that?

A: We had such a tremendous response we fell a little behind processing orders. If you haven’t received a confirmation it is possible that you did not supply an email or supplied an incorrect email. If you paid by check, money order or paypal we haven’t processed those orders yet but never fear we have your subscription information and your products will ship along with everyone else’s. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to email me rob@unitedplaytest.com

Q: What is Gaming Frontiers?

A: This question continues to astound me. But I guess there are plenty of people out there that don’t know who we are or get what we’re doing. Take Dragon magazine, Dungeon magazine, Paladium’s Rifter, Realms of Fantasy magazine and roll them all up into one d20 sourcebook. Each volume has original, stand-alone content that was contributed by various (sometimes as many as 20) different d20 publishers. Adventures, monsters, magic items, new OGC content, columns, interviews, art gallery, etc. Some of the content is written exclusively for us which is way cool. With so many publishers and products out there GF is a great way to check out the market before spending your hard-earned money. Find out about about a book you didn’t know about or get a taste of a setting before buying the big $20 or $30 setting book. We’ve had content from various setting already: Oathbound, Freeport, Dragonstar, The Hunt: Rise of Evil, The Iron Kingdoms, Sovereign Stone, Bluffside, Deadlands, Interstellar journeys, Validus Populia, Spycrafty, etc.144 pages for $19.95. Over 120 pages guaranteed to be original-brand-new-never-seen-before-anywhere-else content. You just can’t beat it. Especially with the subscription deal we’ve got going right now. So go subscribe. You won’t regret it.


I’m sure there are more questions I wanted to addres here but now they escape me. I’ll post them as I think of them.

Sincerely,
Robert J. Williams, President
United Playtest, Inc.
www.gamingfrontiers.com
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Thanks for the Q&A, Robert!

If you don't mind, I have one question of my own (and I know the answer has been given somewhere already, but I don't remember what it was or where):

When I received a copy of GF #3, I discovered that the volume's pages were a different type of paper and all in B&W. Why did this happen again? I can deal with volumes with B&W pages, but when we were treated to sweet, full-color pages with the previous editions, I just plain got spoiled! :p

Also, I've noticed that the paper-quality has made the volume easier to get creases, warped pages, and the like. I baby all of my products when I handle them, but upon a simple opening and flipping of the pages, I found that I inadvertantly creased the covers of the book. :(

Like I said, I know this has been addressed before, but I missed it.

BTW: Great job with the content of the mag!
 
Last edited:

Black and White

The transition from color to black and white is a long story but I'll try to keep it brief.

We originally planned on Gaming Frontiers to be a color magazine priced somewhere between $6 and $8. We quickly discovered that we couldn't afford to produce color at those prices unless you sell thousands of dollars of advertising or 10's of thousands of copies neither of which we could do. So we made GF into a sourcebook but kept a lot of the magazine feel. We priced the book less than a color sourcebook of the same size since we expected people to view us as an over-priced magazine. Our price $17.95. Color books of the same size $25-$30 or more.

Well, I consider GF Volume 1 and 2 a great experiment that failed. We really tried to create a new product concept and succeeded in that but ran into a lot of opposition along the way. My personal favorite is a forum discussion I had with a number of people online who were blasting our book. Turns out half of them had never even seen GF :) We made great looking books for a great price with great content but we just can't keep it up. The cost of the book versus sales numbers don't warrant us continuing in that format. Don't get me wrong, we've sold a lot of books and we're happy with our success but we would need to sell A LOT more to keep producing in color. So we have moved more towards a sourcebook in content. You'll notice there isn't an editorial or any reviews. And very few excerpts. We don't even have fiction this time around. The majority of the book is just great, brand new crunchy d20 goodness.

I hope you all like it because I like producing it for you.

Rob
 

Re: Black and White

GamingFrontiersRob said:
The transition from color to black and white is a long story but I'll try to keep it brief.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to give the explanation again -- I can't believe I missed it the first time. :)

My personal favorite is a forum discussion I had with a number of people online who were blasting our book. Turns out half of them had never even seen GF :)

Don't you just love it when people blast a product that they've yet to actually see? (Re: BoVD)

:rolleyes:

We made great looking books for a great price with great content but we just can't keep it up. The cost of the book versus sales numbers don't warrant us continuing in that format.

Well, like I said above, I understand the color/price problem, but do you think you could please go back to the paper you were using before, or at least something that isn't so easy to damage?

B&W images on that paper would be great, and I would really love to not be so worried about hurting the book. :(

So we have moved more towards a sourcebook in content. You'll notice there isn't an editorial or any reviews. And very few excerpts. We don't even have fiction this time around. The majority of the book is just great, brand new crunchy d20 goodness.

Well, that is a real shame. I, for one, loved the editorials and was disappointed when I didn't see one for the third volume of GF. An additional source for reviews of products would be great (and was), IMHO. And as for fiction -- I would really love to see the return of short fiction, for exactly the same reasons you listed in one of your previous editorials. But hey, I know you can't possibly please everyone all the time.

I hope you all like it because I like producing it for you.

Rob

Even with the sweeping content changes and the loss of color (though I still BEG you to change the paper), I do enjoy reading the GF volumes and wish you the best of luck in continuing them.

Thanks again for the answers to my post above.

:)
 
Last edited:

Hi Rob. I'm contemplating subscribing, and have a few questions for you. I apologize in advance if these questions have been addressed elsewhere, and I missed the answers...

1) What level of subscription do I need to commit to for the freebies? Your "secure order form" defaults to 4 issues at regular price.

4 Volumes $80.00

retail price
8 Volumes $125.00

Save more than 20%
off retail price
12 Volumes $175.00

Save more than 25%
off retail price

2) If I subscribe ( at any level? ) Will I get the preview issue too? I bought issues one and two from my LGS... PS- your web page
"But I'm not going to the conventions! How can I get a copy?"
needs to be updated - It still states that subscriptions have been suspended...

3) Volume 1 included a map and description of plans for "Project: World X", which I thought was a neat idea, but I missed a mention of this in Vol 2. Is this idea dead?

4) I'm not sure I understand what the "FREE $20 of d20!! " is all about either. I assuming you can use it to buy vol 1 or vol 2 if you had missed it. What if I own both already? If this refers to something else, can you explain it in detail please?

Also ! Bonus for you:
Misc. Ramblings...

I LOVE Fiction and short stories. But not in my sourcebooks, unless they are directly tied to some new game material, either crunch OR fluff...

I greatly dislike "excerpts" or outakes of upcoming or recent products. Let's face it, most d20 dorks fanatic enough to buy your mag at this price are probably likely to own most of these products anyway, so what I end up with is duplicated info. I'd much much rather see an article or piece that is COMPLIMENTARY ( Like Vol2's Amazon article ) to the product in question. PS: The Nyambe piece is not an "outake" if it "...won't be found in the final product ) I know you don't run too many non-exclusive "excerpts" but just wanted to mention this.

I Love the "graveyard" feature, keep it up!

I will also the lament of the glossy paper and full color. Here's to hoping it may return someday as your distribution increases...

Best of Luck to you,

Joe

edited to add question 4...
 
Last edited:

GF #3 is out now? Damn, I got to get a copy - I have an article in there - bonus Herbalism stuff for Occult Lore - and I want to see how it looks :) And I want to see all the other cool stuff too.

Chris
 

Mindcrime said:
GF #3 is out now? Damn, I got to get a copy - I have an article in there - bonus Herbalism stuff for Occult Lore - and I want to see how it looks :) And I want to see all the other cool stuff too.

Chris

Hmm... I thought they offered authors a free copy.

I haven't read the entire mag yet, MC, but I'll be sure to look for your article -- it is always cool to see someone you know in print. :)
 

Mindcrime said:
GF #3 is out now? Damn, I got to get a copy - I have an article in there - bonus Herbalism stuff for Occult Lore - and I want to see how it looks :) And I want to see all the other cool stuff too.

Chris

It may have been unclear from his posting, but I hear tell that GF#3 is not in stores yet (it's an October release), but it *is* printed, and there are some advance copies out there. (Maybe subscription copies are in the mail, too?) I actually got my paws on it, and it looks sweet (including the new herbs article!).

On the topic of paper: The new issue is using "offset" paper, rather than the kind of finished paper that gets used for high-quality color printing. You can see a similar difference in our Nyambe book, where the first sixteen pages are in 70# matte, for the color section, and the remainder is 50# offset; they actually are the same thickness, but the 70# is of course heavier...and also more expensive. I've looked into the option of using 70# matte with just black ink printing on some books, and it looked like the manufacturing cost that resulted was about 15%-20% higher.
 

Whoah it's out already? Man are you just lightning-fast or am I making a wrong assumption? I mean, I only turned in the fourth illo. like, yesterday? Was I doing pics for issue 4, or are you just a wildly quick layout kinda guy? :P
 

Gaming Frontiers Volume 3 can be summed up in one word: sweet. The change to black and white just makes it less harsh to go back to your other d20 sourcebooks when you're done reading it.

Call me biased, just don't forget to call me for dinner.

Jeffrey S. Carter

"I run the old guy through with my sword."
"You can't do that."
"I thought you said we could do anything we wanted in this game!"
"I lied."
 
Last edited:

Remove ads

Top