Re: WOTC pulls plug on Dragon & Dungeon mag

I'm sorry to hear that Dragon and Dungeon are getting the elbow. A lot of 
other people are too. The Dragonlance Forums have a busy thread about this 
and I'm sure that bad vibes are in a lot of other places.

Maybe if people really feel strongly that they want Dragon and Dungeon to 
contine they should get together with other fans and mount a letter writting 
campaign*. This was done when Star Trek was due to be axed and it pursuaded 
Paramount to give it a third year. However, I don't think rude comments and 
swearing will work on Wizards of the Coast. People would need to be polite 
and supply valid reasons for keepint Dragon and Dungeon.

(* = When I say letter I mean a real letter written on paper - not an email. 
Sackfulls of real mail are more likely to be noticed.)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Loki" <george.williams.iv@?????.com>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] WOTC pulls plug on Dragon & Dungeon mag


> I've gotten Dragon since issue 40, I will miss it terribly. As an 
> outspoken
> proponenet of technology I beleve that this comes from a combination f 
> short
> sightedness and a lack of understanding of the medium.

Some people like electronic formats, but I don't think they work for 
everyone. I think that WotC have made a tactical mistake. If they didn't 
want Paizo publishing Dragon/Dungeon then I think they should have bought 
both titles back and published them themselves. They could then have sold 
PDFs alongside traditional paper magazines and droped the subscription rates 
of the non-printed product to encourage people to move over to their 
paperless format. If they could have pursuaded most of the readers to adopt 
PDFs they might have gotten away with dropping the paper format. However, I 
think that killing this off to try to make way for their new project is 
going to give them bad publicity among gaming fans.

> WOTC is currently on my sh*t-list.

While I wouldn't put it quite that way myself, I would say that I no longer 
automatically trust WotC products. Back when TSR were putting 2nd edition 
things out I used to buy most core products. But then I noticed that their 
was a lot of repetition and large print in late 2nd edition stuff. The 3rd 
and 3.5 edition products seem to be going the same way. And with external 
licences for things like Ravenloft, Dragon and Dungeon being yanked (and not 
sold on to a better bidder) I'm starting to think that Hasbro have eaten the 
soul of WotC and that bringing in cash is more important than creating good 
RPG products.

> -Loki, who just finished polishing up a pitch for a Dragon article two 
> days
> ago....

If it is something generic I hope that you can sell it to Paizo's new 
magazine. If it is something Spelljammer then I hope that you can put it up 
on Beyond the Moons instead.

> On 4/20/07, gaijin99@??????????.net <gaijin99@??????????.net> wrote:
>>
>> My system of choice is GURPS, and I'm sure that it shouldn't be too hard
>> to do GURPS Spelljammer.  I've been incorporating many parts of SJ into
>> my GURPS campaigns for years, though I'll admit I haven't tried to do a
>> full conversion yet.  If anyone's interested I'll post what I have
>> converted.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that you can legally convert Spelljammer to 
GURPS as Wizards of the Coast own the copyright. Spelljammer is still being 
sold (ironically by Paizo - the Dragon and Dungeon publisher) and 
conversions of SJ to GURPS might be seen to hit WotC profits and wake up 
their lawyers. Their (WotC's) Conversion Agreement allows you to publish 3e 
conversions, but doesn't let you do anything outside of D&D. However, Beyond 
the Moons has a slightly different legal position to normal fans and might 
be able to use your stuff.

TINLA - IAMAL - YMMV

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/