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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5310477" data-attributes="member: 27780"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqfv0_dragon-issue-200-statement-of-ownership_videogames#.UKaJL46Rn8s" target="_blank">Our statement of ownership</a> occupies a fairly prominent place on the contents page. It shows this hasn't been a great year for them, numbers-wise. With an average of 86k, but a last issue result just over 80k, they've shed readers about as badly as they did in 86-87, with a higher proportion of losses being from the newsstands than the subscriptions. This means that despite the big celebrations this issue, they're probably actually running on a tighter budget than they used to. Oh well, got to speculate to accumulate. I suspect they're hoping this'll win some people back, and maybe even draw in a few new readers with it's spiffy attention grabbing cover. Good luck to them. Letters: A complaint about Allen Varney's reviews in issue 197. It became a little too much soapboxing about wider issues, and not enough about the product at hand. This is a very interesting topic indeed. A review cannot help but have aspects of the reviewer's personality bleed through into it. (I'm sure you could figure out a good deal about me through proper analysis of this writing, and even more from the video stuff, since so much of communication is tone as well as actual words.) Indeed, to completely do otherwise would negate the opinion part that makes a review valuable. Similarly, products don't just spring into existence from a vaccum. Knowledge of the people producing them, the fashions of the time and place they were made, these are important in making an informed judgement about a product. Likewise, knowledge of a reviewer will help you know if their opinions are likely to be in accord with yours, so you can make an informed purchase. Nevertheless, Allen concludes that he might have gone a bit too far, and he'll try to avoid repeating that mistake. A letter from someone who's uncovered their old character sheet, and wants to know what their old magic items do. However, they can't seem to find descriptions of them in any official products. This is because your DM was liberally stealing from mythology, giving you overpowered literary items that haven't got official incarnations yet. Monty haulism like this is perfectly normal in young games. Speaking of young games, our next letter is from someone who has recently had two tweenage girls join the group, with the real possibility of a third coming along soon. This has seriously cramped the style of the older people in the group. Oh suck it up and get to teaching them to roleplay properly. The sooner you do, the sooner they'll cease to be a problem. We were all amateurs at some point. A letter by someone interested in getting into PbM due to their recent article. A move approximately akin to getting into britpop in 1997 fashion-wise. Oh well, I'm sure someone, somewhere is still doing it the old fashioned snail mail way.</blockquote>

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