The Origins of the RPG Crate

The RPG crate subscription model concept is not new, but the feasibility of applying it to RPGs has become easier than ever thanks to consolidated shipping and web technology. With the proliferation of crate services, including RPG Crate, DungeonCrate, and Mythoard, it's worth noting that the model has been tried before by a variety of publishers, going back as far as 30 years ago. And it all begins with Judges Guild.

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[h=3]Judges Guild Gets Started[/h]
RPG "crates" are a specialized form of a subscription box services for gamers. Wikipedia explains the nature of these services:

A subscription box is a recurring, physical delivery of niche-oriented products packaged as an experience and designed to offer additional value on top of the actual retail products contained in a box. Subscription boxes are a marketing strategy and a method of product distribution...The subscription box industry is nascent, so there exists minimal data. It is estimated that there are 400 to 600 different kinds of subscription boxes in the United States alone and more overseas. Subscriptions vary in both cost and frequency, making them more accessible to a greater range of customers with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Subscription boxes tend to range from $10 to $100...Products are limited only to what can be shipped and downloaded. Despite this, some products, such as smaller and lighter products, are better suited for subscription boxes than others.
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The nature of subscription services, and RPG-style crates specifically, have their roots as far back as Judges Guild. Shannon Appelcline explains in Designers & Dragons -- The 70s:

Judges Guild chose a subscription model because they weren’t sure what reception their products would receive in the marketplace. Subscribers gave them a great alternative: a certain audience, and one that would continue buying their products over time. The idea of sending out games to readers on a regular schedule, as Judges Guild did, was pretty innovative. Paizo is an example of a modern company that’s done a great job of organizing their product lines into subscriptions that they can regularly sell to consumers, but they’re also a rarity. Judges Guild was doing it about 30 years earlier.
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The subscription service was sent in a plain envelope containing loose leaf sheets and the occasional stapled booklet. The very first package even included some miniature accessories:

The Initial Package was most notable for Bill Owen’s Dungeon Tac Cards (1976), one of the first D&D references of any sort. These combat action cards are similar to those used much more recently by Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (2008) and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition (2009). They contain info for lots of weapons and even new combat tactics like “jump” and “punch.” The Initial Package also included more City State maps, some larger combat reference charts, and the creatively named Initial Guidelines Booklet I (1976). This 16-page booklet featured actual background information for running games set in the City State including: encounters; lists of inns, taverns, and temples; crime and punishment tables; and more. Finally, the Initial Package also contained a Judges Guild Journal, which mainly featured news and notes from the Guild.
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Judges Guild also produced the Dungeoneer, a monthly magazine produced by Jennell Jaquays:

The first issue of The Dungeoneer was released in June of 1976 — at the same time as TSR’s The Dragon. It was mainly drawn and written by Jaquays, with some contributions from other FDS members. Its most original feature was probably the fact that it promised to include a dungeon in every issue — a pretty revolutionary idea when you could still count the dungeons published by TSR, Wee Warriors, and others on one hand. Copies of it were blindly mailed to fans who had written in to other gaming magazines, and soon some of those people wrote back asking for subscriptions.
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If this sounds familiar, it's because Paizo would latch on to this concept years later. But before Paizo there's another noteworthy contribution to the subscription model, and it took place in a fanzine known as The Oracle.
[h=3]The Oracle Speaks[/h]The idea of providing an adventure with the magazine had already been a part of Dragon Magazine's model, going back as far as 1978 with issue #21, Don Turnbull's two-page "Hall of Mystery" with a map and a key listing the monsters therein. In 1979, Dragon Magazine published the winner of an adventure contest in issue #32:

This month we finally have the winner of the International Dungeon Design Contest! After repeated evaluations of the many excellent finalists (including evaluations by the TSR design department), a winner has been selected: The Fell Pass by Karl Merris.
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Dragon Magazine's readers took note. One of them was Christopher Bigelow, who was just fifteen when he decided to launch a fanzine after getting a taste for publishing magazines as part of his Eagle Scout project. With a loan from his father, Bigelow decided to launch The Oracle in 1982. As part of the subscription, Bigelow offered an adventure :

After I submitted it, the lawyers at TSR questioned my offer of a “TSR dungeon module” as a subscription premium, and I had to confirm that I’d arranged a local wholesale source. Then for some reason TSR wanted me to change “a TSR module” to “a module produced by TSR Hobbies, Inc.” As I interacted by phone and mail with the professionals at TSR, it felt strange to think that adults were making their livings from our gaming scene. With my offer of a free TSR module, I was expecting thousands of people to subscribe, but only about three hundred did. I felt a little deflated, but the Dragon advertising lady sounded impressed when I told her the results. Looking at my ad, I’m surprised to see that, in those days, a TSR dungeon module had a cover price of only $5.50. Assuming I was given the standard discount of forty percent, my cost was likely $3.30 per module. For each person who sent me $10.00 for a one-year subscription of eight issues, I was left with about $6.00 after I bought and shipped his or her TSR module.
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The Oracle originally was to include a series of adventures:

I remember having grand designs for the main feature of issue one, “Justice Be Done,” my first adventure of many that I planned for a campaign based on the town of Elcaro (“Oracle” spelled backwards), which was ruled by Lord Arocel at the foot of the Leraco Hills (both names anagrams of “Oracle”). I loved my concept for this first adventure, which was based on the movie Escape from New York. Once I started actually writing the adventure under pressure, however, I was surprised by how difficult it was to achieve my creative vision for it.
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Sensing that the magazine was skewing heavily towards reviews, Bigelow changed course:

Only five pages contained material that people could actually use in their gaming. I’d wanted to create another Elcaro dungeon adventure, but reviews were so much easier to write than original material. Instead, I announced a dungeon contest with over $100 in cash prizes.
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"The Dungeons of Kroom" appeared in the issue #4 with plans to serialize two additional levels. Issue #5 detailed the second level but the missing third level went unfinished until Timothy Hutchings launched a Kickstarter to revive and complete the magazine's ambitions , finally giving us the third level of "The Dungeons of Kroom."
[h=3]The Golem Gives it a Shot[/h]Just as Judge's Guild would produce a series of supplements, Paizo's approach would lead to the creation of the Adventure Path. This method had been tested in Dungeon magazine, encouraging readers to collect several magazines in a series to tell a full story. When Paizo separated from Wizards of the Coast and lost its Dungeon magazine publishing license, they made some changes, as described by Appelcline in Designers & Dragons - The 00s :

First, Paizo was careful not to call Pathfinder Adventure Path a magazine, despite its appearance as a monthly, numbered volume. It certainly was more coherent than a magazine — with everything directed toward that singular story. It was also printed on higher-quality paper than most magazines and was squarebound. Finally, it was a lot more expensive than most magazines; where Dungeon had been $7.99 before its last issue, Pathfinder Adventure Path was $19.99 for each issue. The semantic change was likely a major factor in making this price increase acceptable. Second, Pathfinder Adventure Path — like Paizo’s Compleat Encounters and GameMastery Modules — was based on the OGL, not the d20 System Trademark License. This was probably the right thing to do after the loss of trust that came with the d20 bust. However, in 2007 it was still pretty rare for a publisher to publish actual D&D supplements without marking them as d20. Of course, this proved to be another canny move for Paizo, as it made sure that their new line wouldn’t be affected by Wizard’s inevitable revocation of the d20 license.
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Paizo's popular Adventure Paths continue today, a model they have honed and perfected over years, with over twenty Paths published to date:

Pathfinder Adventure Path is the premiere resource for your tabletop roleplaying campaign! Each 96-page volume belongs to a 6-part series of interconnected adventures that together comprise a fully developed campaign of sweeping scale and epic challenges. In Pathfinder Adventure Paths, players will meet nuanced characters and visit fantastic locations within the world of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting. Each installment is forged by some of the best authors and artists in fantasy gaming. What's more, every Pathfinder Adventure Path volume includes an NPC gallery, several new monsters, detailed support articles, and a new chapter of Pathfinder's Journal short fiction that fits in the the theme of the Adventure Path.
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[h=3]The Future of Crates[/h]As Mythoard's recent travails demonstrate, the RPG crate industry faces many of the same challenges Bigelow struggled with in publishing The Oracle. In future installments we'll interview several of these crate publishers to look at what the future holds for a model that has proved intermittently popular with gamers for decades.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

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[talien]

It's a fair point that I muddled a bit in the article. I consider adventures to be a separate product from magazines, even though they are technically both printed material. RPG crate services do this as well -- they include printed adventures, which Dragon Magazine did originally as full inserts. This is why I included Paizo's adventure paths in the mix, in the sense that subscribers 1) only have a general idea of what the subscription service provides, and 2) it's other RPG material besides a magazine.


That said, the advantage of a RPG crate over a magazine subscription is its ability to provide "other stuff." I have a series of interviews I'll be publishing next that goes into all this and hopefully clarifies.


Thanks for the feedback!

 

[talien]

Which this article does not actually cover. But I guess your columnist will get to that.

I consider adventures to be a separate product from magazines, even though they are technically both printed material. RPG crate services do this as well -- they include printed adventures, which Dragon Magazine did originally as full inserts. This is why I included Paizo's adventure paths in the mix, in the sense that subscribers 1) only have a general idea of what the subscription service provides, and 2) it's other RPG material besides a magazine.


That said, the advantage of a RPG crate over a magazine subscription is its ability to provide "other stuff." I have a series of interviews I'll be publishing next that goes into all this and hopefully clarifies.


Thanks for the feedback!