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So, you thought that getting a steady stream of new Dungeon and Dragon articles full of 4E content every month is a cool part of being a DDI subscriber? Well, here's what the latest Dragon Magazine says:
"In years past, when we found ourselves at the lonely crossroads between game editions, the magazines simply went from one edition to the next with nary a breath in between. This time is different. As we turn our attention to the next D&D® rules set, we’re putting Dragon® and Dungeon® on hiatus. The D&D magazines are going dark beginning in January. In other words, the December issues (#221 of Dungeon and #430 of Dragon) will be the last issues you see for a while."
BOYCOTT!!! =)
Well, since wotc jacked the people involved in the mags in the first place back for 4e, and something wonderful came of it, I have nothing but high hopes and expectations for them jacking the rest of the people involved now.
An interesting development...
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Given their magazine changes in the last few years I'm not surprised. WOTC leaves me with such a sour stomach that I am really not interested in their products any more. I stopped buying during 3rd edition once they announced 4th edition. I left Dragon magazine behind once it went online. I haven't bought any products from them since these moments and I doubt their new version of D&D will change that. I'm am tired of buying the same ole products slapped under a new cover and with some edition rule changes. Farewell WOTC for alienating another customer. This is just a shame because I really loved Greyhawk...it was the best part of D&D to me....but that was primarily a TSR product anyway. Perhaps someday I'll find a new game to play using Greyhawk.
That is sad news :(
It is sad news, but the sadness started for me back when they went web only. It makes me very curious as to what D&DNext, the edition made to unite all the divided gamers out there, is even going to have for regular, accessible support.
RPGs have always been a niche hobby, and times have certainly moved on from the eighties, but I don't think WotC/Hasbro really gets how much having a monthly magazine with awesome van-art on the cover every month popularized the hobby.
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@Eileen: do as I did; start a cool Greyhawk Campaign with all the nifty stuff Gary Gygax dreamed up (which I adapted to part homebrew, part canon) and just use the Pathfinder ruleset :-)
I wonder what the relaunch will entail. Given the latest module, I wonder whether they'll start releasing material for all editions (or if that was just because next wasn't yet finished).
might be with the announcement that DnD Next was coming out, online membership took a nose dive. So it might be a hiatus until they can pull strong support from the Next edition crowd.
Alternatively, magazines are hurting nowadays (even electronic ones)...even electronic ones. They may be shelving it for good but want to leave an option open with starting it back up, or possibly even selling it.
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That is sad news :(It is sad news, but the sadness started for me back when they went web only. It makes me very curious as to what D&DNext, the edition made to unite all the divided gamers out there, is even going to have for regular, accessible support.
RPGs have always been a niche hobby, and times have certainly moved on from the eighties, but I don't think WotC/Hasbro really gets how much having a monthly magazine with awesome van-art on the cover every month popularized the hobby.
It's 2013. Paper is dead. The concept of a periodical publication is dead outside of academia, and even there its days are numbered. Video game magazines are folding, specialized publications are barely making it through every month, Kobold Quarterly died a sad death after a valiant attempt to become Dragon Reloaded. People don't learn about cool hobbies from periodical stands anymore, they learn about them from social media and blogs.
It's 2013. Paper is dead. The concept of a periodical publication is dead outside of academia, and even there its days are numbered. Video game magazines are folding, specialized publications are barely making it through every month, Kobold Quarterly died a sad death after a valiant attempt to become Dragon Reloaded. People don't learn about cool hobbies from periodical stands anymore, they learn about them from social media and blogs.That is sad news :(It is sad news, but the sadness started for me back when they went web only. It makes me very curious as to what D&DNext, the edition made to unite all the divided gamers out there, is even going to have for regular, accessible support.
RPGs have always been a niche hobby, and times have certainly moved on from the eighties, but I don't think WotC/Hasbro really gets how much having a monthly magazine with awesome van-art on the cover every month popularized the hobby.
Indeed, Gorb, and by canceling (excuse me, "temporarily hiatus-ing") their subscriber only, e-zines, WotC/Hasbro has displayed a singular misunderstanding of how the market works. They don't even have a "pick it up and read it casually" item for your tablet anymore, never mind a dead tree copy.
I'm talking less about the lack of a paper magazine than the lack of accessibility.
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So, they aren't gonna publish new articles. How about access to the articles from the past? Do you still have to pay for that?
If they shut down the servers, you lose access to what you paid for. If they keep up the servers and you still have to pay full price, you're getting ripped off. Either way, bad move. You'd have to download all the articles you'd might want to keep, and/or Wizards/Hasbro has to return the money people paid in advance.
On a positive note, I'd like to thank the people at Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro who worked so hard to kill Dungeon, Dragon and Dungeons & Dragons. Thank you for giving Paizo the opportunity to create Pathfinder. I really appreciate the work and effort you put into it. Thank you!
Well, since wotc jacked the people involved in the mags in the first place back for 4e, and something wonderful came of it, I have nothing but high hopes and expectations for them jacking the rest of the people involved now.
They're not "jacking" anyone. Dragon and Dungeon are edited internally, often using freelancers to generate article content. The people who used to work on the online magazine content will now be working on other content for D&D Next.
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So, they aren't gonna publish new articles. How about access to the articles from the past? Do you still have to pay for that?
Those articles are still available. Yes, you still have to pay for access to those articles.
If they shut down the servers,
They're not "shutting down" any servers. They're stopping production of new magazine content. All of the existing magazine content from both Dragon and Dungeon plus the Compendium, Character Builder, Adventure Tools, and other digital apps are still available.
you lose access to what you paid for. If they keep up the servers and you still have to pay full price, you're getting ripped off.
No you're not. In fact, your subscription is worth more now, at this very moment, than it was at any point in the past. Your subscription gives you access to more content this month than it did last month. And last month it gave you access to more content than the month before that. All this means is that the value of your subscription will stop increasing after December, because the amount of content it provides you with will remain static.
Either way, bad move.
For whom, exactly?
You'd have to download all the articles you'd might want to keep, and/or Wizards/Hasbro has to return the money people paid in advance.
Neither of these things is true.
On a positive note, I'd like to thank the people at Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro who worked so hard to kill Dungeon, Dragon and Dungeons & Dragons. Thank you for giving Paizo the opportunity to create Pathfinder. I really appreciate the work and effort you put into it. Thank you!
Oh. You're one of those.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Going away implies they still exist. Dragon and Dungeon have been gone for many years, notwithstanding the use of those labels for website articles by WotC.
It is a shame that subscription based periodicals isn't a successful business model. Someone should give Paizo a heads up before they waste more time and money getting Pathfinder up to isse #100...
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Going away implies they still exist. Dragon and Dungeon have been gone for many years, notwithstanding the use of those labels for website articles by WotC.
It is a shame that subscription based periodicals isn't a successful business model. Someone should give Paizo a heads up before they waste more time and money getting Pathfinder up to isse #100...
Pathfinder APs are 600 pages books divided into 6 smaller books so that you can spread steady revenue across the year and juggle author workload better. They're not really periodicals, despite being periodicals. You don't get them next to Hustler and Guns Monthly.
Hustler and Guns Monthly are going the way of dodo bird, and so is anything that shares the shelf with them ... which would have been Dragon, if it continued to exist in print.
Wait, am I arguing semantics with a lawyer? Yes, I am. Damn. Oh, but I am a lawyer tooooooooooooooooooooooo*gets eaten by a singularity that appears as a result of two lawyers arguing*
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It's 2013. Paper is dead. The concept of a periodical publication is dead outside of academia, and even there its days are numbered. Video game magazines are folding, specialized publications are barely making it through every month, Kobold Quarterly died a sad death after a valiant attempt to become Dragon Reloaded. People don't learn about cool hobbies from periodical stands anymore, they learn about them from social media and blogs.That is sad news :(It is sad news, but the sadness started for me back when they went web only. It makes me very curious as to what D&DNext, the edition made to unite all the divided gamers out there, is even going to have for regular, accessible support.
RPGs have always been a niche hobby, and times have certainly moved on from the eighties, but I don't think WotC/Hasbro really gets how much having a monthly magazine with awesome van-art on the cover every month popularized the hobby.
I like my dinosaur way: evolution slow and steady, maybe with a couple too much dead branches, but sparking inspiration even at wrong turns.
These new social mammalians mutate too fast, even discarding choices before having effectively perused them.
Going away implies they still exist. Dragon and Dungeon have been gone for many years, notwithstanding the use of those labels for website articles by WotC.
It is a shame that subscription based periodicals isn't a successful business model. Someone should give Paizo a heads up before they waste more time and money getting Pathfinder up to isse #100...
Pathfinder APs are 600 pages books divided into 6 smaller books so that you can spread steady revenue across the year and juggle author workload better. They're not really periodicals, despite being periodicals. You don't get them next to Hustler and Guns Monthly.
Hustler and Guns Monthly are going the way of dodo bird, and so is anything that shares the shelf with them ... which would have been Dragon, if it continued to exist in print.
Maybe Juggs can be on its own shelf.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Pathfinder APs are 600 pages books divided into 6 smaller books so that you can spread steady revenue across the year and juggle author workload better. They're not really periodicals, despite being periodicals. You don't get them next to Hustler and Guns Monthly.Hustler and Guns Monthly are going the way of dodo bird, and so is anything that shares the shelf with them ... which would have been Dragon, if it continued to exist in print.
I know that Paizo has made a lot out of the fact that Pathfinder is not a magazine (I imagine to be in conformity with whatever non-competition provision was in their original license with WotC when they published Dragon and Dungeon), but I have a hard time finding much substance in that claim. I suspect that Dungeon and Dragon have more in common with the small number of periodicals that are continuing to be published in dead tree format, and that they could have bucked the trend when combined with simple innovations such as a pdf copy and automatic monthly subscription charge.
Alas, we will never know.
What we do know, and can say with certainty, is that the digital successors were a failure. Given a choice between the hypothetical failure of the magazines and the actual failure of the electronic version, I know what I would choose.
Imho, if it doesn't have advertisements (and not just for other products by the same company), it ain't a magazine.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Maybe Juggs can be on its own shelf.Going away implies they still exist. Dragon and Dungeon have been gone for many years, notwithstanding the use of those labels for website articles by WotC.
It is a shame that subscription based periodicals isn't a successful business model. Someone should give Paizo a heads up before they waste more time and money getting Pathfinder up to isse #100...
Pathfinder APs are 600 pages books divided into 6 smaller books so that you can spread steady revenue across the year and juggle author workload better. They're not really periodicals, despite being periodicals. You don't get them next to Hustler and Guns Monthly.
Hustler and Guns Monthly are going the way of dodo bird, and so is anything that shares the shelf with them ... which would have been Dragon, if it continued to exist in print.
Having their own rack seems more appropriate...
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Imho, if it doesn't have advertisements (and not just for other products by the same company), it ain't a magazine.
I miss the ads! :-(
Oh well, I'm old and bitter and still have a surprising amount of anger towards WotC with regards to the original cancellation of the magazines.
Time to turn the other cheek and celebrate the death of the imposters! (That is what people mean when the say "turn the other cheek," right?)
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Pathfinder APs are 600 pages books divided into 6 smaller books so that you can spread steady revenue across the year and juggle author workload better. They're not really periodicals, despite being periodicals. You don't get them next to Hustler and Guns Monthly.Hustler and Guns Monthly are going the way of dodo bird, and so is anything that shares the shelf with them ... which would have been Dragon, if it continued to exist in print.
I know that Paizo has made a lot out of the fact that Pathfinder is not a magazine (I imagine to be in conformity with whatever non-competition provision was in their original license with WotC when they published Dragon and Dungeon), but I have a hard time finding much substance in that claim. I suspect that Dungeon and Dragon have more in common with the small number of periodicals that are continuing to be published in dead tree format, and that they could have bucked the trend when combined with simple innovations such as a pdf copy and automatic monthly subscription charge.
Alas, we will never know.
What we do know, and can say with certainty, is that the digital successors were a failure. Given a choice between the hypothetical failure of the magazines and the actual failure of the electronic version, I know what I would choose.
Tell you what, if Dungeon & Dragon were operating under a *shock* FREE *horror* model with WotC casually giving away the PDF link and maybe doing a short run of dead tree edition for all those "answering machines are actually sphinx spirits encased in a plastic phylactery" people, that *could* have worked. It's not like they would lose a lot of money on handing it out for free, Magic the Gathering my rear.
Alas, INCOMETIZE EVERYTHING and bury the magazines in some doomed-to-die digital subscription service. WotC, forever the greatest enemy of itself.
Time to turn the other cheek and celebrate the death of the imposters! (That is what people mean when the say "turn the other cheek," right?)
That's how I always interpreted it.
(I sometimes buy '80s issues of said magazines just for the old-timey rpg advertisements.)
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Tell you what, if Dungeon & Dragon were operating under a *shock* FREE *horror* model with WotC casually giving away the PDF link and maybe doing a short run of dead tree edition for all those "answering machines are actually sphinx spirits encased in a plastic phylactery" people, that *could* have worked. It's not like they would lose a lot of money on handing it out for free, Magic the Gathering my rear.
Why couldn't they have evolved to become like Pathfinder?* Is it so hard to imagine a universe** in which Dragon and Dungeon are combined into a single 60 page periodical with a continuing adventure path and some back end material? Maybe replacing the fiction with comics (damn, that would be awesome)? Sure, that product is no longer technically a magazine, but who cares - at least it would still exist in some format.
*Well, you know, other than WotC's gross incompetence.
**Said universe also contains a competent WotC.
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Tell you what, if Dungeon & Dragon were operating under a *shock* FREE *horror* model with WotC casually giving away the PDF link and maybe doing a short run of dead tree edition for all those "answering machines are actually sphinx spirits encased in a plastic phylactery" people, that *could* have worked. It's not like they would lose a lot of money on handing it out for free, Magic the Gathering my rear.
Why couldn't they have evolved to become like Pathfinder?* Is it so hard to imagine a universe** in which Dragon and Dungeon are combined into a single 60 page periodical with a continuing adventure path and some back end material? Maybe replacing the fiction with comics (damn, that would be awesome)? Sure, that product is no longer technically a magazine, but who cares - at least it would still exist in some format.
*Well, you know, other than WotC's gross incompetence.
**Said universe also contains a competent WotC.
Perhaps it's because WotC dismantled their periodicals department and starting it from the scratch all over again was not something they were interested in. After all, they already jettisoned it once.
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I think the reason 32 page adventures. Cost $13 and 96 page AP cost &23 is because they are not making money on advertisements. I use to love buying both dragon magazine and dungeon magazine but they were never more that 8 or 9 dollars each. I picked up a few $13 adventures and the first few APs but they are too expensive for me to justify buying every month.
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Dungeon and Dragon kinda had an out of body experience 6 years ago, and magic jarred into the Pathfinder Adventure Path books.
Near as I can tell.
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Sadly, people who like reading pixels are robbing people like me (who love the smell of ink and paper) from physical publications...
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Pathfinder APs are 600 pages books divided into 6 smaller books so that you can spread steady revenue across the year and juggle author workload better. They're not really periodicals, despite being periodicals. You don't get them next to Hustler and Guns Monthly.Hustler and Guns Monthly are going the way of dodo bird, and so is anything that shares the shelf with them ... which would have been Dragon, if it continued to exist in print.
I know that Paizo has made a lot out of the fact that Pathfinder is not a magazine (I imagine to be in conformity with whatever non-competition provision was in their original license with WotC when they published Dragon and Dungeon), but I have a hard time finding much substance in that claim. I suspect that Dungeon and Dragon have more in common with the small number of periodicals that are continuing to be published in dead tree format, and that they could have bucked the trend when combined with simple innovations such as a pdf copy and automatic monthly subscription charge.
Alas, we will never know.
What we do know, and can say with certainty, is that the digital successors were a failure. Given a choice between the hypothetical failure of the magazines and the actual failure of the electronic version, I know what I would choose.
Per Lisa's stories on the subject, periodicals work differently than the rest of the book trade. Pathfinder not being a periodical is a very real thing that has a very defined meaning. At least that is my interpretation of Lisa's, and other industry professional's, stories and seminars on the subject.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Per Lisa's stories on the subject, periodicals work differently than the rest of the book trade. Pathfinder not being a periodical is a very real thing that has a very defined meaning. At least that is my interpretation of Lisa's, and other industry professional's, stories and seminars on the subject.
Yeah, I've heard that too, and understand that periodicals have their own nutty universe involving how/when they are paid, returned, distributed, etc. However, looking at it from the customer's point of view, very little has changed for me between now and back when Dragon/Dungeon were published. I make a scheduled payment, I receive a physical product. Dragon and Dungeon moving to digital format did not save or improve them, and had they continued to be published in a physical format, they might've migrated to a different product type (from an inside baseball perspective) that is substantially the same as Pathfinder today.
Or, to put it another way, the statement at the time of "Dragon/Dungeon can only continue to exist as digitial products" has been proven incorrect in at least one way - they did not continue to exist as digital products. Had they continued to exist as physical products, they might've been reborn as a different product type to avoid the things that suck about magazines.
Edit: But, to be fair, mostly I'm still pissed off about the cancellation. I doubt WotC stopped publishing the magazines to annoy/piss off their customers, and I imagine that there was overwhelming evidence that the magazines were/are a dead end. All I really know is that I have a shelf containing all my 3e and 3.5 Dragon and Dungeon magazines, and I look upon it with fondness and sadness. Logic and evidence be damned.