I guess that's true, though D&D was from very early on somewhat visible (references in the movie "ET", mid-eighties tv commercials, etc.).  I guess what I'm trying to get at is that maybe the brand "acceptance" is no higher than it used to be.  Whether correctly or incorrectly, the game is still seen as something that socially maladjusted teenage boys do in basements for 16 hours at a time.  Also, I think the "geek elitism" that always accompanied the hobby has to some extent been accentuated.  This was brought home to me very clearly when I went to a high school D&D friend's wedding last summer (he married "late", at 38 years old).  He now plays 3.x with a group of younger folks (one of whom is now his wife), who all attended, and when it came up in conversation that I was an "old school D&Der", the reaction I got was exactly the opposite of what I expected...  When I asked what kinds of characters they were playing, one young woman said, "I'm a ranger/master thrower, but you don't have the new books so you wouldn't know what that is," (with a definite judgmental tone in her voice).  They didn't think it was cool I had played AD&D, they thought it was quaint and obsolete.  Happens I did know what a master thrower was, but I didn't tell her that.

The point I'm belaboring is that if the people in the hobby keep an "in-group" mentality, maybe the brand isn't all that desirable, because new players are reluctant to break into the hobby due to the attitude and "elitism".  Hence marketing to 11-year-olds, perhaps..

ATOM wrote:And it sure beats a discussion of the sugar/sweetner content of Coke.
Artifical sweetners gave lab animals brain tumors....think on that Diet Coke fans!

What I heard was, to get that result the rats had to be fed the equivalent amount of sweetener in 800 cans of soda daily
--that's a little over 33 cases a day.  

I don't know any one who could drink 800 cans/day!! [/i]

FormCritic wrote:Also, I don't know what a master thrower is.  

Mark  

Obviously it's like a thrower but ....better

(possibly a rare potter prestige class!)

I just got a notice to renew my Dungeon subscription from Paizo today!!

What a bunch of nobs

Huh, interesting to see the diversity of responses here.  Personally, I grieved Dragon when Gygax was kicked out of TSR in 1985.  I let my subscription run out and that was that.

I guess "end of an era" is an entirely subjective thing.

Xaxaxe wrote:I used to go to ICv2 all the time, but just realized it had been something like a year since I had last visited. So what do I see upon my arrival this morning ... ?

An amazing example of corporate double-speak from WotC. There is, quite literally, not a single real answer in this so-called Q&A:

I wish I could be a marketing person, too

My God, I honestly don't think it's possible that Wizards could be handling the Dragon/Dungeon thing any worse than they are ... this entire thing is really going to come back and haunt them.

+++++

Oh, BTW, Liz: "13 million eyeballs," my ass. How many of those, I wonder, are people like me, who visit Wizards about once a month (and only if some 1e-related material is updated or mentioned)?

Better yet, how many of those supposed 13 million are just there for the message boards?

I read that, X. As I said on the Dragonsfoot boards, I've crapped better loads than that pile......

Mike B.

FormCritic wrote:I corresponded with the public relations guy from Paizo the other day.  He has a positive spin for it all, but the gist of it is that Paizo did not have a choice.

Yeah, I still feel bad about railing against Paizo in my original post; at that point, it was unclear as to just how much WotC was pulling the strings. The jointly-issued press release made it seem like more of a mutual decision ...

Anyway, apologies again to any Paizo fans I might have offended; for the record, I still consider Paizo to be a nice place to order gaming items. I'm much less sold on the gigantic monthly whatcha-ma-call-ems that they plan on doing now that Dragon and Dungeon are gone ... I honestly don't see how that plan is doomed to anything other than failure inside of 12 months.

But that's probably a subject for another day ...

Mars wrote:Does anyone know what the subscription rates for Dragon or Dungeon are at?  I'm guessing that they must be seriously down to consider a move like this but I don't have any sense of what kind of numbers they are dealing in these days.

Unless there's something I'm not seeing, it's no longer possible to get a traditional subscription to either magazine.

The Paizo site mentions that "month-to-month" subscriptions are available, with a 35-percent discount. Frankly, I'm not entirely certain what that means (for instance, would you have to renew every month?).