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With the announcement of the anthology book Claws of the Tyrant I'm wondering why not bring back Dungeon Magazine?
Write the adventures in house or by authors outside of Paizo. It's where Paizo started right? Why not go back to that? Was it not successful?
Heck even as a PDF only product I would totally subscribe to that which is how I read all my Pathfinder products.
I don't really think a magazine format provides any advantage over their current model outside of nostalgia for certain fans. The legal stuff for Dragon Magazine is probably also still tied up with D&D.
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Dungeon Magazine belongs to WotC. They ran a digital version of it monthly for all of D&D 4e, then killed it off with 5e.
Paizo's equivalent is the monthly Adventure Path releases, with their magazine-like articles in the back, just like it has been for 15ish years now. They also release Society scenarios monthly.
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Which is exactly what the monthly Adventure Paths have been for 15 years, like Keftiu said.
It's not quite the same though, because you have only one long adventure vs. several shorter adventures you had in Dungeon Magazine. As an old fan of the magazines, I still feel that the adventures contained in Dungeon hit a very sweet spot for me regarding length, scope and variety of content in a way neither the single adventures nor the Pathfinder Society Scenarios ever did. And that goes even for the years when they had the Adventure Paths in Dungeon Magazine itself (Even after all those years I would love to throw money at whoever would be willing to give Age of Worms the HC treatment Shackled City got), they still had a variety of adventures.
I trust that Paizo uses their ressources to the best possible outcome and that probably means no Dungeon or Dragon magazine. But damn if I don't still miss those. And the APs, while great in their own right, don#t really scratch the same itch.
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I could be wrong but I'm not sure he means litterly Dungeon magazine but rather the same format.
You are not wrong obviously a meant that format.
I'd have to be an idiot to say "Hey Paizo bring back Dragon magazine!" no?
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Dungeon Magazine belongs to WotC. They ran a digital version of it monthly for all of D&D 4e, then killed it off with 5e.
Paizo's equivalent is the monthly Adventure Path releases, with their magazine-like articles in the back, just like it has been for 15ish years now. They also release Society scenarios monthly.
As the proud owner of all 150 issues of Dungeon Magazine I can honestly say, the Adventure Paths are not the same thing.
As for PFS, sure some folks love it but they don't hold a candle to the adventures that Dungeon Magazine produce both before and after Paizo took over.
Heck, like I said, do it as a digital product. Get other people to write adventures for them and Paizo gets a large cut of sales. They may even discover the next James Jacobs or Erik Mona.
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Well, we’ve seen a few saying just that.
Sure, just change the name. Those magazine were beloved for a reason and still talked about by the older gamers.
Creative Director
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These hardcover anthologies are in a way me trying to bring back that format—but with a bit more flexibility. At this point, doing something identical to Dungeon magazine (a softcover ad-revenue driven adventure-focused magazine) isn't something that's viable for Paizo in this day and age. A big part of why Dragon and Dungeon stayed in print as long as they did is the brand recognition of D&D, but also that they were publishing in an era where niche magazines like that could work in the first place. These days, that sort of thing isn't really viable on a long-term basis as far as I see.
I'd be at the head of the line subscribing to a quality RPG adventure magazine, but that's not a business model Paizo is willing to risk these days.
It's been nearly 2 decades since Dungeon (and Dragon) stopped its print run, and in that time, if that model had remained viable, I'm sure that someone somewhere (maybe us at Paizo, maybe someone else) would have filled that place in the environment. I just don't think that today that sort of thing IS viable at the scale that Paizo publishes these days, or for a smaller company to keep afloat for more than a few issues, or for a bigger company to even care about trying. :(
And so that brings us back to hardcover adventure anthologies plus the Adventure Path line as the alternate. Hope folks like Claws of the Tyrant, cause I'd love to continue doing things like it in the future.
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Dungeon was absolutely fantastic; I'm just not sure the economics of the format make sense any more, at least not in print form.
I do like that Paizo is doing an adventure anthology, and will scoop it up in PDF just to support the format.
Edit: Ninja'ed by JJ.