catenwolde said:
Why then has GW, the largest (perhaps only) "real company" in wargamimg, been able to keep a glossy print mag as a focal feature of their line, while D&D has not been able to? Why have several historical wargaming magazines continued on their way when small press rpg magazines tend to lose theirs?
I don't haver any answers, by the way, I'm just agreeing with the OP that it does seem strange, especially when other, smaller hobbies can support their own magazines. My father is a model railroader, which I think may be a larger hobby than rpg'ing, but on the other hand it supports multiple glossy mag's. Has the rpg hobby shrunk more than I thought? Do rpg fans expect higher production values, and thus effectively price out their own magazines?
I expect that a large portion of the answer is the Internet. In 1982, if you wanted to read about D&D or talk to like-minded individuals about it, you really only had a couple of magazines to turn to and no where else. Today, we have websites that have grown so large and influential within the community that they created, run and sponsor the RPG industry's most prestigious awards. When I can ask the creators of the original D&D and every subsequent version either here or at their personal websites directly...well, the magazines can't compete in that arena. Where they CAN compete is on higher production values, art, superior editing and (in theory) talent.
GW manages to keep a magazine on the shelf because of a couple of reasons. One, because the GW magazine acts as a painting guide and catalog of miniatures, with exclusive access to material that they don't offer in other places. Two, because it's not only the official house organ (which Dragon effectively stopped being years ago) with rules updates and so forth, but it's also well pushed by the hobby stores that sell the Warhammer lines, especially GW itself. Also, White Dwarf is published in six languages across the world, meaning that even if its sales in North America aren't as strong, it can still be more cost effective than many RPG magazines. And as best I can tell, White Dwarf has something on the odds of a 150,000 circulation rate, meaning that it still beat Dragon and failed to beat High Times.
It should also be noted that with the rising cost of paper, the differential between a magazine and a module or printed product is much smaller....effectively harming the magazine. My latest Games Mastery module from Paizo was $12.99...with 32 pages on high-gloss, acid-free paper with full color throughout and card-stock covers...with no advertisments. A typical issue of Dragon or Dungeon was on lower quality paper WITH ads and ran what? $8 or $9? While Dungeon was a good value, Dragon often was not as much, IMHO...and for a couple of dollars more, I can get a AAA module with the highest production values available from an industry leader. Games Workshop, by comparison, has no such competition.
As for Model Railroading....well,
things obviously ended poorly for them, too...and they'd been around for 39 years. Again, I think the Internet and rising paper prices are partially to blame.
