Me is Risen
Two of my favorite Dragon and Dungeon contributors, Dave Noonan and Jesse Decker, recently started a fascinating series of Dungeons & Dragons design and development journals on the official D&D site. This week's installment surveys important nonfiction resources for crafting D&D material as suggested by the readers of the site. Lots of interesting suggestions the further you go down the list, but the "part 1" in the title makes me hope that we'll be seeing more obscure suggestions than "The Power of Myth" or "The Prince" as the series progresses.
The format of Jesse and Dave's article reminded me of a book I briefly browsed yesterday in a trashy Portland bookstore. The title was something like "Mondo-Outrageous Questions: Answers Inside!!!!!11!!1!", so of course I had to pick it up. The first question I noticed in my random sample seemed relatively straightforward and obvious: "Why does the rest of the world hate America?"
Instead of getting to the meat of things, the book provided a sampling of witless "common man" opinions that read like viewer mail on the O'Reilly Factor. More to the point, they read like tightly edited message board posts, which I strongly suspect they were.
I immediately skipped past these truisms, guesses, and disagreements with the premise of the question to get to the summation by the book's authors, which is what I had come for in the first place. The fact that I often had to flip a couple of pages while doing so made me think: "So I'm supposed to pay money for this? It's probably still sitting out online somewhere."
In short, it felt like a ripoff, and it was a ripoff. I put the book back on the shelf.
The same editorial approach that worked for this week's free internet D&D design column doesn't work in the printed medium. When there is a monetary exchange involved, people expect a little more effort for their cash, and they are right to do so.
One of the constant struggles of my day job is to ensure that the magazines I edit remain relevant and worthwhile in an era choked with free online content. The answer lies in the difference between something you read online and something you read that you had to pay for.
In order to earn the customer's dollar, the editor must give him something the Internet can't, or at least doesn't accomplish very often. In our case, it's got to be something people don't just read and enjoy, but something they want to keep. That's extremely rare in the magazine world, but in our case I dare say the majority of our regular readers keep their Dragons and Dungeons alongside their other gaming material. Not many other magazines have the same status. National Geographic, certainly. Perhaps Popular Mechanics? And then there's stuff like Playboy.
But most people don't keep Cosmopolitan or Time or Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly or Harpers or Atlantic Monthly or whatever.
But they do keep their Dragons and their Dungeons. Pinpointing why they do so is the key to understanding what makes the magazines tick, and how to make them financially successful.
The format of Jesse and Dave's article reminded me of a book I briefly browsed yesterday in a trashy Portland bookstore. The title was something like "Mondo-Outrageous Questions: Answers Inside!!!!!11!!1!", so of course I had to pick it up. The first question I noticed in my random sample seemed relatively straightforward and obvious: "Why does the rest of the world hate America?"
Instead of getting to the meat of things, the book provided a sampling of witless "common man" opinions that read like viewer mail on the O'Reilly Factor. More to the point, they read like tightly edited message board posts, which I strongly suspect they were.
I immediately skipped past these truisms, guesses, and disagreements with the premise of the question to get to the summation by the book's authors, which is what I had come for in the first place. The fact that I often had to flip a couple of pages while doing so made me think: "So I'm supposed to pay money for this? It's probably still sitting out online somewhere."
In short, it felt like a ripoff, and it was a ripoff. I put the book back on the shelf.
The same editorial approach that worked for this week's free internet D&D design column doesn't work in the printed medium. When there is a monetary exchange involved, people expect a little more effort for their cash, and they are right to do so.
One of the constant struggles of my day job is to ensure that the magazines I edit remain relevant and worthwhile in an era choked with free online content. The answer lies in the difference between something you read online and something you read that you had to pay for.
In order to earn the customer's dollar, the editor must give him something the Internet can't, or at least doesn't accomplish very often. In our case, it's got to be something people don't just read and enjoy, but something they want to keep. That's extremely rare in the magazine world, but in our case I dare say the majority of our regular readers keep their Dragons and Dungeons alongside their other gaming material. Not many other magazines have the same status. National Geographic, certainly. Perhaps Popular Mechanics? And then there's stuff like Playboy.
But most people don't keep Cosmopolitan or Time or Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly or Harpers or Atlantic Monthly or whatever.
But they do keep their Dragons and their Dungeons. Pinpointing why they do so is the key to understanding what makes the magazines tick, and how to make them financially successful.
5 Comments:
Well, the reason I keep mine is because the material therein is, unlike other magazines, not meant to be read once. They are designed to be used over and over again.
A good exapmle is the latest Dungeon. There is no adventures in it I can immediately use; however, who knows down the track?
In fact, for an online game I recently started, I am using a converted 2nd edition adventure from issue 79 of Dungeon.
This is why Dragon and Dungeon sit on many game shelves and are not thrown out like so many others.
That's both interesting and true, Erik.
I don't keep Entertainment Weekly more than a few weeks after getting it, but I would never even think of getting rid of my back issues of Dungeon or Dragon. Dungeon, in particular, ages extremely well.
I've also often found, over the past five years, that Dragon or Dungeon always seems to come out with an issue with material I need, just when I needed it. Cool Elementals? Sigil Planar Factions? Stats for Fraz Urb'Luu? It's all good.
Let's just say my subscriptions aren't lagging any time soon.
(side note: Dungeon Compendium and Shackled City...AWESOME WORK).
Shackled City is, without a doubt, one of the finest campaigns I have ever had the pleasure of running. My players are sweating every little detail, and greatly enjoying the experience.
http://www.fief.org/ShackledCity/
A Short History of Progress by Ron White really caught my attention. Assuming it's not by the comedian, it sounds extremely ambitious, if it is then I am sure it will be extremely entertaining.
Interestingly (or perhaps not) there's a parralel between boosting the profitability of a magazine by making it something the consumer wants to keep with the industry I've recently fled (though I'm coming back to it seemingly via writing) - videogames. Basically, a huge amount of the money made by game retailers is on second hand games that have been traded back to the shop by gamers that have completed them or just got bored. It's the retailers, not the publishers who get this cash, ergo, it's bad. The obviuos answer to this, seemingly flying speedily over the heads of the creative geniui in charge of major game companies, is to make games that engage the player for a long time,hopefully until your next game comes out,which they'll buy rather than feeding the retailler by buying some other companies second-hand game. This would require said game-company honchos to actually care about the quality of their product; an obstacle that seems impassible and also one that Dungeon and Dragon don't seem to have to worry about.
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