[Poly] What's happening to Polyhedron/Dungeon?

[Holy Bovine]

I meant that 1 in 10 play them and most of the other poly fans just enjoy reading them, so how useful are they?

If you enjoy (and I mean 'you' as in the universal 'you' not you in particular) enjoy reading the Poly articles then you have gotten value and therefore "use" out of them.

 

[Gundark]

yeah!!!

Yeah i one adventure a issue thing was wearing very thin with me. That why I stopped buying star wars gamer. I like the other changes too!

 

[JeffB]

Right. Very true. You know, when I state my opinion, I'm not "throwing that statement around" -- I'm just stating my opinion. You have no reason to think it's any less well-considered than yours.

Poor choice of wording on my part, I apologize. I was not singleing you out, just that I've seen many people say this before as some sort of blanket-statement about the magazine, when it obviously is one of those "IMO" type things

That why I stopped buying star wars gamer

Heh..EVERYONE stopped buying Star Wars Gamer

 

[Katowice]

Right, only back then, Star Wars had it's own magazine, d20 Modern didn't exist, d20 Cthulu didn't exist, nor did Wheel of Time, Spycraft, etc., etc. There're a lot more d20 products that could be touched upon now, plus you have Living Greyhawk Journal.

Despite the fact that that was what Poly was before it was merged with Dungeon and was on the verge of financial collapse.

I think I must have read the fact that neither magazine could survive on it own at least 20 times in print in the last year.

I guess its one of those facts that no one believes.

 

[Sholari]

So you're saying they couldn't read cost/revenue anaylsis that told them their costs were going to overrun their revenues unless they could dramatically increase their subscriber base? Seems like a fairly simple formula: cost<revenue=out of business.

I don't think they actually had to go out of business to prove this but to each their own.

A couple of points:

1) We've never seen any of the numbers or evidence to prove Dungeon was on it's last leg, only a claim. Lots of people make claims that when you look at the details are not entirely accurate. No offense to Paizo, I've just seen a lot of good managers make bad assumptions by not looking at the data.

2) There is more than one solution to any problem. Did they first identify what the cause for the problem was in the first place? Did they survey the people who dropped subscriptions to find out why they were leaving? Maybe force bundling wasn't the appropriate solution? There is certainly a large number of other solutions.

3) If 50/50 bundling was the optimal solution, it seems to have not fixed the problem, otherwise Erik wouldn't have made the changes he did.

 

[Graf]

Thanks for keeping us so well informed Erik!

Since it seems like there's a lot of complaining going on I wanted to weigh in on the "Dungeon/Poly is a tremendous resource" side. I've also found that, if you're willing to look, there are plenty of great mechanics for any D20 game (including D&D) in Poly. (Some of the issues, like those with Grewhawk Journal or the Gith invasion you didn't even have to look very hard).

From the adventure path stuff to supporting the partially abandoned worlds like Grewhawk and Forgotten realms with adventures I think the magazine is really doing a lot for members of the community that have been left behind by WotC.

Poly really can be extremely useful for D&D games as.well.
Just something that turned up recently: We have smokepowder pistol weilding gnome gunman in a Spelljammer game who just claimed the gun-fu feat from an old issue of Poly. You could just have easily done it with a knife thrower or a similar character concept. The same game is probably going to use stuff from the Iron Lords of Jupiter.
Poly's tremendous and I don't think it's really as "out there and weird" as some 'Dungeon only' camp seem to think.

 

[dpmcalister]

Poly's never been the same since the UK version was forceably merged with the US version. No disrespect to Erik Mona he can only work within the boundaries that have been set, but sorry, it's just not as good.

 

[diaglo]

So you're saying they couldn't read cost/revenue anaylsis that told them their costs were going to overrun their revenues unless they could dramatically increase their subscriber base? Seems like a fairly simple formula: cost<revenue=out of business.

I don't think they actually had to go out of business to prove this but to each their own.

markets change.

sure they can make an educated guess. that's what we do all the time in science. but it still doesn't make it fact.

the data are what the data are. but only after testing can you interpret them.

 

[BenBrown]

markets change.

sure they can make an educated guess. that's what we do all the time in science. but it still doesn't make it fact.

the data are what the data are. but only after testing can you interpret them.

presumably, then, they paizo doesn't feel enough confidence to "test" dungeon & polyhedron as seperate entities yet.

Again, how many are willing to see dungeon/polyhedron fold just to prove that they were right?

 

[The_Gneech]

...supporting the partially abandoned worlds like Grewhawk and Forgotten realms with adventures...

Forgotten Realms is partially abandoned?

I wonder what a system with the company's support would look like!

-The Gneech