D&D 5E What is ARCADIA?

ARCADIA has joined the ranks of online D&D magazines; this one is from Matt Colville's company, MCDM. The e-zine is being launched today or tomorrow (it should appear on MCDM's store for $7 at some point), and the first issue contains new rules for mounts, an adventure, a sorcerer subclass, and a pair of celestial villains. Take a peek!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Are they a new thing, or the same as the Eberron living spells?

"New" as in they came from Eberron.

I still think of the 1E adventures with the multicolor covers as "the new ones."

So very old ...

 

[Yenrak]

I did the 5$ patreon tier for it & don't regret it after looking over the mount stuff & skimming through a few areas. @AdmundfortGeographer did a nice little summary earlier that I agree with. The mount stuff is definitely interesting & I might use or draw from them for magebred mounts if I ever run o5e again. With the rest of the system so stripped down for simplicity there isn't much room for them to build mount rules around but they did a good job of it. Right now I'm most interested in seeing what areas of rules & crunch they carve into over the next few issues because it looks like arcadia will be filling a niche sorely lacking in 5e.

Back when I ran 3.5 & earlier I didn't use or allow everything from dragon, but it was an option to consider or starting point that gm & player could use to cook up something fitting together often enough to be a big help. It seems like this will fill a similar useful niche & the price is low enough I won't feel bad if an occasional issue doesn't seem useful to me.

Good points. I'm in. Just subscribed.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I’ve been a Patreon supporter of MCDM. Subscribers are hopefully aware that Arcadia is going to only have a run of 3 issues then MCDM is going to pause to see how well or even if it worked.

They want it sustaining through subscriptions plus single issue sales in their store. If it looks like the work they are putting in pays off, we can likely expect issue #4 and beyond.

 

[Morrus]

I’ve been a Patreon supporter of MCDM. Subscribers are hopefully aware that Arcadia is going to only have a run of 3 issues then MCDM is going to pause to see how well or even if it worked.

Looking at their patreon numbers, I think that question has been very clearly answered.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Oh man, I hope that’s the case. The supporters have jumped over 5,000 since Arcadia launched.

I know Matt wants to be able to pay the authors, artists, and rest of the staff “very well”, as he has said on his live streams.

 

[Morrus]

Oh man, I hope that’s the case. The supporters have jumped over 5,000 since Arcadia launched.

For the record that’s an astonishing number of patrons for an RPG e-magazine. We’ve got a fifth of that number on EN5ider, and we consider ourselves to be doing pretty darn well! I suspect the experiment has well and truly paid off.

 

[darjr]

Yea, paid off so well that may be patreon is costing them money? I wonder. How much do they charge?

 

[Morrus]

Yea, paid off so well that may be patreon is costing them money? I wonder. How much do they charge?

About 5% depending on the plan. Similar to Kickstarter. There’s no way you can have so many patrons that it starts costing you money instead.

 

[darjr]

About 5% depending on the plan. Similar to Kickstarter. There’s no way you can have so many patrons that it starts costing you money instead.

If that 5% starts costing more than if you hosted it yourself? It would have to be a lot of patrons, but I’m willing to bet there is a threshold.

 

[tetrasodium]

If that 5% starts costing more than if you hosted it yourself? It would have to be a lot of patrons, but I’m willing to bet there is a threshold.

credit card processing fees are a thing as are rather strict PCI compliance requirements for online purchases Those fees tend to be higher when you aren't physically doing a swipe/chip+pin transaction in person