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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6045772" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 298: August 2002part 3/10At the table: Well well. So this is where Paizo are created to take over the magazines. I was wondering. This is definitely one of those cases where they try to sell as a positive something that must have been tremendously worrying and stressful for all involved. Spinning off the magazine side of WotC into it's own company, so their successes and failures are now all their own puts them in a rather more precarious financial position. Which I suspect might have been the point. Given the rise of the internet, and the way the OGL has worked out for them, the idea of wanting to licence out the risky parts of the operation, keeping only the most profitable in-house does make sense. Of course, the interesting thing is that if that was their intention, it kinda backfired, given Paizo's success with Dragon, and the way they kept the 3e fanbase afterwards when WotC didn't. If this hadn't happened we wouldn't have Pathfinder as we know it, and whatever group did try to keep 3e going wouldn't have the legitimacy gained from years of monthly content and having once been part of the official WotC umbrella. Looking back, I can definitely say that this is one of those forks in history where things could have gone very differently if a few people in the right position had made different decisions. This is one of those cases where there was almost definitely some serious behind the scenes political stuff going on, and I'd be very interested to find out about that - what led up to this decision, how long it took, who was for and who was against it. Because after all, it shouldn't just be about the articles, but how they got there as well. Flesh for Lolth: In which Robin Laws goes completely over the top in his description of drow society, making the degree of unpleasantness in the old Drow of the Underdark book and various FR novels seem tame. They aren't just evil, they're Eeeevil from before birth, with killing and eating the other foetuses sharing their mother's womb standard procedure! They need to make sacrifices equal to 1% of their city's population a week to keep Lolth happy! (which means they're always on the lookout for new supplies of slaves and traitors) Treachery is essential to advance in their society! (but it has to be the right sort of treachery) If they do manage to live long enough to die of natural causes, this is shameful, not respected. The whole thing goes through grimdark and out the other end to become funny, and I'm not absolutely certain if he's in on the joke and trolling the other magazine staff and readers or not. Funny how the cultural differences of 10 years ago can sometimes be more jarring than those of 30 years ago, because you don't expect them.</blockquote>

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