Too bad...

Quote from the announcement:

QuoteIt's a fact that in every fantasy roleplaying game, whether it's Pathfinder RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, or Castles & Crusades, a kobold's life is short. They're wily and quick, but they have few hit points. Sooner or later they go down — fighting.

That day has come for Kobold Quarterly magazine. After five years of publication, Shelly and I are closing the doors on the little fanzine that could.
There's a FAQ at the end of this post with more information, including details for subscribers (who will have the choice of a full refund or a larger amount in Kobold Store credit) and for writers (editors will contact you about Winter submissions).

That's the nitty gritty. But as Kobold-in-Chief, I don't want to talk about that right now. I want to talk about what Kobold Quarterly means to me.
I always hoped that Kobold Quarterly would someday be my full-time gig, but it was not to be. My sincere thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the magazine, starting with our stalwart subscribers, advertisers, authors, and artists. Thanks also to those who bought only an issue or two; for us, every sale was crucial to our continuing. The magazine may be going away, but the Open Design goal of creating new ways for people to publish their RPG ideas will continue.

This is a very sad day for me personally, and I know this comes as a disappointment to many of you. The line on small press magazines these days is, "every issue is a little miracle." We finally ran out of miracles, but it's been an absolutely stellar five and a half years with Kobold Quarterly's contributors, subscribers, and readers.

I've met Wolfgang at Gen Con, and I'm sorry to hear he's shutting down KQ, but at he's keeping up the blog and doing some adventures and other projects.

wow, that sucks.  I always assumed that it was doing pretty well.

I've been a subscriber (print + PDF) so it makes me sad.  I like Wolfgang.  I'm paid ahead, but he can keep the change.

I had a subscription back in the first (?) year, but let it falter as KQ had too much 4e content for me to remain useful. It had a very tight rope to walk upon, I guess.
A bummer for the D&D community.

Quote from: Settembrini;600574I had a subscription back in the first (?) year, but let it falter as KQ had too much 4e content for me to remain useful. It had a very tight rope to walk upon, I guess.
A bummer for the D&D community.

That was a point of contention for awhile, I know. It's a balancing act between two systems with not a ton of crossover. You cannot serve two masters.

This, too, is a sad day for me.  I enjoyed the run while it lasted.

Quote from: Settembrini;600574I had a subscription back in the first (?) year, but let it falter as KQ had too much 4e content for me to remain useful. It had a very tight rope to walk upon, I guess.

The mirrors my experience with KQ and Open Design as a whole: The split of focus between PF and 4E made me tune out entirely. Too much noise. Too much e-mail spam for stuff I had no interest in.

People sneer at White Dwarf for becoming a house organ instead of staying an independent gaming magazine covering many games.

Covering more then just one game seems to be KQ's major flaw from the responses here.

Was it the lack of focus, or was it the price point? $9 is a bit much if you're using half the content or less.

I think most people miss how much his wife Shelly did. She'd be the one sending an advertiser copy of the PDF, sending invoices, matching the invoices to the payments... and probably 17 other things.

When the second little Kobold arrived, it seems their time is more limited (not hard to believe!) and they have to re-focus.

I guess you could say that if KQ was more profitable on its own that could have continued over another project... but I think they could fix the mix of Pathfinder/4e/Age/neutral if that was the core issue.

Quote from: CRKrueger;600601Was it the lack of focus, or was it the price point? $9 is a bit much if you're using half the content or less.

My guess would be a little of column A, a little of column B.

Even with a single system focus, only a fraction of a magazine's content is going to be immediately useful. For some people that "unexpected surprise" or memetic goulash can be part of the appeal, but:

(1) If it's not, the OGL/GSL created a massive market in which you can almost certainly find a specific product focused on your immediate needs.

(2) Blogs and messageboards can provide a fairly similar random serving of memetic goulash with no cost whatsoever.

When I was a teen I always daydreamed about running a gaming magazine. But I honestly don't know what useful, unique form a magazine could take in this day and age that would attract a paying audience.

Quote from: Zachary The First;600549Too bad...

Quote from the announcement:



I've met Wolfgang at Gen Con, and I'm sorry to hear he's shutting down KQ, but at he's keeping up the blog and doing some adventures and other projects.

It's only 5 years old? Man... For some reason I feel like it's been around for much longer.

Quote from: CRKrueger;600601People sneer at White Dwarf for becoming a house organ instead of staying an independent gaming magazine covering many games.

Covering more then just one game seems to be KQ's major flaw from the responses here.

Was it the lack of focus, or was it the price point? $9 is a bit much if you're using half the content or less.

I am a magazine junkie. I read and collected RPG magazines from around the world, Casus Belli, Imagine, White Dwarf, Arcane, GMI, Valkyrie, Australian Realms, Interactive Fantasy, White Wolf (even durinmg its Inphobia phase), Pyramid, Backstab, Zauberzeit, Dragon, Dungeon (boy, do I miss Dungeon!), Drache ... but Kobold didn't grab me.

I stopped reading White Dwarf when it became a GW mail order catalog, I stopped reading Dragon when it became just a rules supplement to 3e ("2 new prestige classes, 10 new fighter feats, and 5 new elemental spells!"). I am not interested in a magazine full of stat blocks, and both 3e and 4e are very stat-block-heavy.

I have never had a problem with a multi-system magazine that had articles and modules for games that I probably didn't play. Usually those things were short (White Dwarf's features for RQ and Traveller, "Rune Rites" and "Starbase" were a page long, and often interesting for other GMs as well, like money and currency in the Traveller universe).

RQ adventures such as "The Hide of the Ancestor" could be adapted to AD&D in no time. Some of the White Dwarf modules have been republished as Dragon Warriors adventures in In from the Cold: "The Lone and Level Sands" (formerly RQ), "A Ballad of Times Past" (formerly AD&D), "Temple of the Doomed Prince" (formerly EPT), and others. It was easy, and it worked.

But 4e's focus on encounters and fighty skirmish scenarios is so different from the old way of writing modules that I have no use for any of it. I just can't see any value for my gaming in a CGI graphic throne room set piece and a bunch of strikers and minions, with hardly a backstory or roleplaying opportunity.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;601086When I was a teen I always daydreamed about running a gaming magazine. But I honestly don't know what useful, unique form a magazine could take in this day and age that would attract a paying audience.

Email mailing lists. You can really doll up an email, get enough subscribers and you can sell more advertisements than any website - marketers know list hits are far more valuable than site hits, and hey, no adblocker. Ten or eleven good quality articles, some new monsters, an adventure, maybe some art, free for subscribers twice a month. The only cost is your time after you've got a decent subscription base, and you can hook it directly to forums or websites, there are a lot of ways to play it.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;601086When I was a teen I always daydreamed about running a gaming magazine. But I honestly don't know what useful, unique form a magazine could take in this day and age that would attract a paying audience.

I don't know the secret, but for me to buy a subscription to a gaming magazine it would need to:

-have least six (preferable twelve) issues a year
-offer superior articles to what I can already get for free online
-cover more than one or two games (most of the time I don't even play D&D, so magazines dedicated to a particular game or edition are not going to attract me)
-be more than a vehicle for a publisher (i.e. I want a eutral third party to publish)
-need a solid editorial staff. Not worried about punctuation or grammar here. Thinking more about a staff that can keep quality content coming and develop a large stable of good writers to draw on. If someone submits an article, and it isn't any good, that ought to be fixed (regardless of the writer's name)

I am sure there are more considerations, but this is what I look for. Since I didn't read KQ, i have no idea how well it met these guidelines (couldn't get past the first and third point on the list).

One thing it hurts is publishing credits for up and coming writers. Blogs, podcasts et al are great and if consistent suggest professionalism, but an actual publishing credit is still significant.  Plus it was a paying gig (though their rates were not extravagant).

Maybe Open Design can pick up the slack?

I think KS would be a cool way to sell a magazine subscription.  Has anyone tried  that?  A Dungeon type mag dual statted for PF and LL/S&W would be really interesting.  Or to save space, statted for LL/S&W with PF monsters noted and linked to a compiled printout of PF stats.  Maps could be B&W in the mag, but digital for dling and projecting/roll20ing/recreating with other materials.