gamegrene.com

Howdy Ladies and Gentlemen, 27 Nov. 2004

It's been a two months since our first free issue. I thank you all for your support and your praise for that effort. In the intervening time we have picked up a few more subscribers, but not enough to be able to go to print. That target membership for printing is 100 actual (110 indicated – considering the inevitable fall out); our present subscriber list totals 75. We will continue plugging along with free issues via e-mail until we reach our goal. However, the issue made freely available for download will be an abbreviated version. We have more than 500 downloads of the first issue. Of those downloads, no more than half a dozen came from our listed subscribers. In other words there were more than 490 deadbeats out there who were more than happy to receive a free issue, but don't wish to commit themselves to a subscription. So, we're going to present to them for free download only a partial issue in the hopes that if they really want the entire thing they'll subscribe.

Howdy,

My name's Tom Cundiff. I've been a contributing writer to the Boardgamer, a wargame magazine, for the last 5 years, and an author for other magazines for the last 15. Last spring, the Boardgamer announced it was going to cease publication because its publisher had been offered a position with a major wargame company, MMP. Well, since that time I, as one of the last writers for that magazine, have received numerous requests that I either take over the Boardgamer, or begin a new magazine to take its place. It's taken a good 4 to 5 months of repeated e-mail requests to get me to make that attempt. Here then is a description of what I propose. Feel free to contact me with any questions at the e-mail address provided below, or merely to add your name to the subscribers list.

I'll admit it: I'm new to gaming. I've been a table top roleplayer for a little over 2 years, and a GM for a little over 1 year. What this means is that I've only played 3e D&D, and I've only know TSR as it is now: Owned by WoTC, owned by Hasbro. Older gamers here (I bow, I grovel) have dropped tantalizing hints about a series of somethings that went terribly wrong in the gaming world. I've heard it called the "mismanagement of TSR". It came up in discussions about the D&D movie. It comes up in discussions about how WoTC is destroying the game. What I want to know is, exactly what the heck happened? What did TSR do?

So, with new releases of three popular non-D20 systems at this year's GenCon, which would you buy if you could choose only one? You've got a heartily quirky system that hasn't been updated for 20 years (Paranoia), something as generic and unassuming as possible (GURPs), and the uber-goth better-than-you hippie system (WOD, of course).