Re: [DL] Game Mags (Goff)

["John Goff" <JohnGoff@deadlands.com>]

> Speaking of which, what happened to Shadis and/or AEG's magazine plans?
> Just fell through to lack of money?  I'm getting damned tired of finding a
> good magazine that covers stuff besides D&D, and then having it die.
> Shadis, Challenge, Adventures Unlimitied, White Wolf, etc.  Even targeted
> fanzines like RedCap or Kage have a hard time.  It's really too bad.
>

Well...this brings up a couple of interesting points. :-)

The foremost of which is my personal opinion on why diverse game magazines
seem to have such a hard time (at least in the U.S. market).

I believe the reason the multi-game magazines fail is tied predominantly to
their very charter. By trying to cover virtually every (or at least a lot
of) the systems out there, they guarantee that they're very seldom going to
have enough content to justify any one customer buying the product. For
example, while one issue of Shadis had something I was interested in, the
very next one might not. Hence, sales are unpredictable, because the
subscriber-to-newstand ratio gets skewed in favor of the newstand purchase.

In the long run, they can't sustain. Or at least, IMHO.

Now--before someone points out this as an argument against the combined
books, I _don't_ think it applies.

Material that is suitable for the Weird West also has a place in HOE (and LC
once that hits the shelves), as the Weird West represents the foundations of
those other two games. Many HOE games use arcane backgrounds from the Weird
West and much of the history to the setting (and again LC) is tied to events
touched off in the orange books.

By doing a Weird West article, we're not automatically excluding the HOE
players, nor are we even requiring them to do any major "conversions" as is
the case with other systems.

And, to beat the combined format horse yet again, that sort of book lets us
cover all the points that deserve it, but may not fill a full sourcebook.
For example, since nearly the onset, we've had cries for a book on the
non-arcane background/non-gunfighter character types. Personally, I doubt a
muckraker sourcebook would sell too many copies, but it would make for an
interesting article. :-)

The same applies for time periods other than the Old West or the
Post-Apocalypse. I'd love to explore the roaring 20s, WWI and WWII, the 50s,
and so on in the DL universe, but I don't know that we could ever dedicate a
full sourcebook to doing so. However, I can fit that into a combined book.
Same for other countries, like England, Prussia, or even whole continents
like Africa or Australia.

Whoops...sorry, I got off on a tangent. :-)

> John, do you know what the sales numbers were for Shadis?  How long were
> they riding the ragged edge, or were they a losing prop. the whole time?
>

This I don't know, nor can I even guess. Sorry. :-/

I do know that there were issues with getting payment for ads and that had
those been up-to-date the mag probably would have lasted a little longer,
although whether that would have saved it is up in the air.
John