Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Kobold Quarterly, it's no Dragon

I have had an on-again, off-again relationship with Dragon magazine since the early 80s. I would subscribe for a couple of years, let my subscription lapse, forget about it for a few years, then notice a glossy new issue at my FLGS and re-subscribe. I held a subscription when WotC pulled the license from Paizo and went digital. That's when we parted company for good. I don't like to read stuff online and I wasn't switching to 4e anyway, so Dragon had nothing more to offer me. I still like a little light gaming read when I'm in the bathroom or lying in bed late at night, so I picked up Kobold Quarterly 10 last week to give it a look. It's certainly not as colourful or well-illustrated as Dragon and being a quarterly, rather than a monthly publication means it would never be able to satisfy all my light reading needs, but I felt I'd give it a try. Sadly, I found, upon perusal, that KQ is trying to be all things to all people. It covers D&D 3.x and 4 as well as Pathfinder. From what I can tell, the decision to include 4e is a recent one and not a very popular one either. Given that WotC already has a house organ for 4e, I can understand 3.x fans would be upset that KQ has decided to include articles for the new edition. In any case, I gave them a try, but I have no desire to pay for 4e content. Kobold Quarterly will not become my new Dragon.

-Rognar-

2 comments:

Aaron E. Steele said...

I leafed through the pages last time I was in The Sentry Box. I had a similar reaction, I didn't find anything compelling in it.

I miss the old days, when The Dragon was a true fan-magazine.

The old Dragon magazine had reviews of products from competing game publishers, and had fan mail, humor, short stories ...

It was a glorious mish-mash of amateur and professional work, which, while uneven, was a fun read.

Obiri said...

I never subscribed to Dragon although I had picked up the occasional mag.

I've read a couple of the new Kobold Quarterly and it wasn't bad but I didn't find it great either. Most have at least one interesting article but there seems to be a lot of filler or other things I am not interested in to make it worth purchasing.