Seems that the day of the paper RPG magazine is largely over (and was hardly particularly widespread, even in its heyday).

But is a new magazine viable in this day and age?

I wonder if you could do a general RPG magazine - that is, an RPG mag that covers role-playing games in all media.

A section on PC + console RPG games - WoW, a section on wargaming, a section on tabletop RPGs, a section on larping?, a section on genre inspirations - movies & books.

Quote from: One Horse TownSeems that the day of the paper RPG magazine is largely over (and was hardly particularly widespread, even in its heyday).

But is a new magazine viable in this day and age?

I doubt that a new magazine could get much of an audience. The internet does it better.

     --Jason

Thoughts:

- On one hand, far smaller hobbies seem to manage to support print magazines just fine.
- On the other hand, they do so by accepting that such magazines will have significantly lower production values than RPG players are, for some reason, accustomed to expecting.

I would love a printed mag, one which covers a range of diferent games and has chanmpaign ideas etc.

Quote from: One Horse TownSeems that the day of the paper RPG magazine is largely over (and was hardly particularly widespread, even in its heyday).

But is a new magazine viable in this day and age?

I wonder if you could do a general RPG magazine - that is, an RPG mag that covers role-playing games in all media.

A section on PC + console RPG games - WoW, a section on wargaming, a section on tabletop RPGs, a section on larping?, a section on genre inspirations - movies & books.

There is such huge pressure on print media in general, even successful magazines, that the climate for such a niche product would be very, very poor.  How much advertising money could such a magazine expect to generate with such a small (and clannish) target audience?  And dead trees and mailing costs are very expensive these days.

And as JADettman (welcome to theRPGSite, btw) points out, the Internet does such a better job at distributing material to such niche markets at such a low cost, it would be quite hard to justify paper.


TGA

Quote from: WarthurThoughts:

- On one hand, far smaller hobbies seem to manage to support print magazines just fine.

Very true.

Quote- On the other hand, they do so by accepting that such magazines will have significantly lower production values than RPG players are, for some reason, accustomed to expecting.

Yeah. As i've said in other threads, high art production values don't sell or unsell me on a product, so i don't mind b&w periodicals. Lots of folk do mind though.

Taking onboard the comment about the internet giving this sort of service now. What about the viability of offering a monthly RPG digest via something like RPGnow or other pdf distributor? Would folk pay, for example $2.99, for a monthly pdf mag with the sort of articles mentioned above?

I think it's possible but would be tough.  Here are some (untested) ideas which might make work.

1.  A complete game in every issue, like S&T or Dungeon/Polyhedron at the beginning of the D20 era.

2. Cool stuff that is systemless to attract a wide audience.  It's tough to come up with enough really cool stuff without rules though.

3.  Inserts such as maps, tokens of characters/items, and chits/cards.  This is an advantage of print over pdf.  However, this means either bagging (more cost plus prevents glancing through at store) or embedding the items into the mag (mroe cost).

I dunno--Polymancer is still in print, right?  Or was until recently?

Quote from: One Horse TownSeems that the day of the paper RPG magazine is largely over (and was hardly particularly widespread, even in its heyday).

But is a new magazine viable in this day and age?

I wonder if you could do a general RPG magazine - that is, an RPG mag that covers role-playing games in all media.

A section on PC + console RPG games - WoW, a section on wargaming, a section on tabletop RPGs, a section on larping?, a section on genre inspirations - movies & books.

There are a lot of smaller circulation magazines out there none as slick as Dragon, Dungeon, old Pyramid, Challenger, etc. Most of these are fanzines and are primarily distributed as photocopies.

There has been a few internet only mags (The Starfrontiersmen comes to mind) that have been as slick as anything Dragon has done. But they are for the most part internet only, a labor of love, and short run.

Knights of the Dinner Table the magazine.  Just got issue #138 in my mailbox last week.  Full of gaming and other geeky goodness.  Still going strong and picking up steam, I'd say.  

You can download a free pdf of issue #132 here.  I strongly recommend you do.

Kobold Quarterly seems to be growing, though they do give you the PDF for paper subscriptions, and have a PDF only subscription.

Polymancer is in a couple of stores around here.

Then there is Pathfinder.

I agree that the heyday of magazines is over, and it is getting more and more expensive to do a print magazine, but if there is enough demand, someone will print them.

I just hope that when the last magazine is shipped that something wiz bang and nice like the kindle (advanced a couple of years) is in my hands.

I'm pretty sure that those magazines around now have survived because they have some extra pull or prestige (be it from history, or some other force).  You can't just put up any old magazine with all the same junk you can find on 20000 free internet sites and hope to sell it as a magazine anymore.

You need some kind of very special hook if you have any hope at all of success.

RPGPundit

Few niches are more obscure than old school minis gaming. Ergo, a full-color bi-monthly magazine, in print and PDF, that caters to that niche would be ridiculous, right?

Well, after 10 issues Battlegames is still going strong.

There are things the internet is good at: news, news, news.

There are things at which the internet sucks: delivering a sustained, typo-free argument, composed in actual English, over more than two paragraphs.

I think a mag that would play to the strengths of the medium might do reasonably well.

"Push" is trying, but the indie scene is too small and entrenched.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityFew niches are more obscure than old school minis gaming. Ergo, a full-color bi-monthly magazine, in print and PDF, that caters to that niche would be ridiculous, right?

There's something to be said for that, and certainly Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated seem to be still treading water, but in the case of old-school minis gaming there is a huge visual element that is largely missing from RPGs.  A huge part of the historical minis hobby is painting, basing, etc so the full color photos of minis is attractive to many potential buyers.  I am not sure that the same is exactly true of RPG mags.

This is not to say that it would be impossible to make a successful traditional paper mag for the RPG market, but I do think that it would be easy, and would require investment and overhead that would be better spent on projects with better chances of profit.  Let's put it this way, if I had money to invest in a gaming product, a paper magazine would be low on my list.

But if someone does it, more power to 'em!


TGA

Quote from: One Horse TownSeems that the day of the paper RPG magazine is largely over (and was hardly particularly widespread, even in its heyday).

But is a new magazine viable in this day and age?

I wonder if you could do a general RPG magazine - that is, an RPG mag that covers role-playing games in all media.

A section on PC + console RPG games - WoW, a section on wargaming, a section on tabletop RPGs, a section on larping?, a section on genre inspirations - movies & books.

I would LOVE it if such a magazine was available for sale again.

 -OR-

.....Even better - I'd love to work on such a magazine.


- Ed C.