Gygax Magazine #1
I ordered Gygax Magazine the day it came out. It took a few weeks to arrive - hopefully a problem experienced by few others. So forgive the lateness of this commentary.
I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this magazine.
On the upside it's attractive, it's well put together, and it looks exactly like Dragon used to look. It's got both new Order of the Stick comics and new What's New? The articles were all pretty fun to read, even if every single one was for game systems I don't play anymore, or never played. It's fun looking at ads for stuff that is actually available, not long gone decades ago. And the broad scope of the discussion means it's not just a bunch of new stuff for one version of D&D I've never played.
On the downside, there isn't a whole there for my $8.95. A lot of the articles, well, a majority it feels like, bank more on nostalgia and vague suggestions ("Try mixing fantasy and sci-fi!" "Try making magic different!" "Remember the old days? I do!"). Others coast on some light analysis I find all over the OSR community.
Honestly, as I read, I was thinking, "This should have been a blog post." If I'm going to pay money for a print magazine, I'd like it to be more meaty. Sure, these articles might have flown in the old days, but in the old days we had Dragon and Space Gamer and a few other magazines - in my parts White Dwarf was a legend, not a potential purchase. Now we have the internet, and I can find more blog posts and articles and campaign writeups and ideas than I'd have time to digest. All for free or nearly so.
For money, on a physical product, I feel like I need to get more use out of it. As it stands, only a few articles are really "pick this up and use this!" and a lot are not.
I think the magazine is a good idea. It gives new authors and established authors a chance to put out materials to the world of gamers without having to rely purely on word of mouth and website hits to get it out. And they accept submissions, although right now the page doesn't say how much they pay.
It's also, again, very attractive and I really enjoyed reading it.
But this issue feels heavy on nostalgia and light on gaming materials, and it's not a cheap hit of nostalgia, either. I find myself wanting to give it one more try mostly on the strength of its great cover art, it's resemblance to Dragon, and OOTS and WN? I haven't decided yet, I might have to wait and see. If it gets meatier, I might keep getting some issues. If not, well, it was nice to get reminded of how exciting a new issue of Dragon in the mail used to be.
Yes, but... did the writers establish their old school cred?
ReplyDeleteOh yeah. The Gygax kids got to play D&D before us, man, and it only cost $8.95 to know that. ;)
DeleteInteresting your comment about blog post and printed material: many blogs (including yours) give us much more than any magazine could do, both in style and depth!
ReplyDeleteThanks! And yeah, that's the problem right there. There is a lot of free, good stuff out there. There is also cheap good stuff out there.
DeleteI have high expectations from Gygax magazine precisely because of that, and the fact that these guys have done this before. Maybe not the Gygaxes themselves, but the masthead is covered with the names of people who's written, edited, published, and distributed magazines and/or games before. And it certainly looks like it - it just reads kind of, well, lightweight. I'm hoping issue #2 will change that.
Yeah, I'm not really sure that you can hold a print magazine to such a standard today. There is a ton of high quality stuff coming out of the internet every day. There is more usable stuff in a week on G+ than I could use in a year of actual gaming.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I glean from your review that this issue perhaps doesn't even make it up to the best standard of what we get from the web these days. Let's hope they hear that and start pushing for richer, more gameable material.
I think we have to - if they aren't worth $8.95 and charge that much, if they don't put out articles you feel you just can't get elsewhere, if they don't print useful and unique articles - what purpose does it serve?
DeleteI'd really like to look forward to each coming issue of Gygax Magazine. Right now, the nostalgic value-to-actual value ratio is a bit off, IMO.
Well, and this is going to seem like I'm biting the hand that feeds me, but quite a lot of Pyramid articles (at least 2 per issue, though some issues have an almost totality of them) feel that way to me. It's also something I really try to avoid with mine. My articles are designed to be taken, read, and immediately used on the table. Yours are, too, so I guess you're a kindred spirit.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to pay for what is basically an opinion writing. That used to work before the internet era, but nowadays, ideas are dime a dozen. I want to pay for someone else's work solving problems for me. I don't want the 1% inspiration, I want the 99% perspiration. Pyramid has enough of this to justify my subscription (and if nothing else, I need to read it to see what sort of things I want to have in it, so I can write them), and I understand that for some people, those articles that are "too fluffy" for me are the real gold, while the ones that I value are "imagination stifling" and "too mechanical". As long as the mag caters to all tastes, I'll be happy with it (most of the time, there is more than one article that alone is worth the price of the issue)
Although I bought and read a few "Dragon" mags in my day, I thought that Dungeon was the magazine with all the "crunch". But with what is available online I don't think a magazine can keep up. I can publish a module in a blog and put up some downloadable PDF maps and tokens and I have a superior product from the consumer point of view. Add to the that I didn't kill any trees and it cost me very little to "publish" and I don't see a market for magazines for our hobby.
ReplyDeleteYou expect a new born to run a marathon?
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's not like any of these guys have done it before. Shame on anyone for holding professional publications by people with an impressive claim to experience to a high standard.
DeleteDragon back in the day (go to the Internet Archive and look them up; Gygax exited around issue 104) had loads of crunchy articles. I got it for $5 on RPGNow, but even then, there's a lot of opinion, just like Peter said, so it might not have been worth that. There was the math crunching in Leomund's Tiny Hut (or whatever he's calling it), and of course an "Ecology of" article, which should be mandatory if the magazine is quarterly. Those were nice. I'm not sure of the idea of including non-D&D-esque fantasy stuff with the slower publication schedule, but maybe I'm just grousing since I don't play superhero games.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was where we got our crunch.
DeleteA lack of crunch would be okay if the ideas were more fully developed (examples made and really run with). It's the "idea for an idea" article, or the ones about how Gary Gygax was as a person, or tracking down an old Dragon magazine, or reminiscing - we have much better venues for that now. It just needs to cut down on the fluff text, even if hearing stories of the old days are fun.