As for Shadis (or any other magazine) only being maintained as a parent company advertising venue, or a loss-leader to attract new players, or as a tax dodge, or whatever, remember, for a number of years Shadis was the only product that Alderac put out, and it had to sustain itself. Same with White Wolf magazine, which was around for a number of years before Vampire came out.
Good points that i'd somehow never really thought about. 'Course, it *is* possible for a start-up to rely on venture capital for multiple years, but i do concur that it is *highly* unlikely in the case of Shadis or White Wolf (or, pretty much anything with the potential returns of RPG publishing)--and if you have 1st- or 2nd-hand knowledge, i'll certainly defer to you.
Assuming you're correct, that simply adds to the list of gaming magazines that were both self-sustaining and very generalist. I liked early White Wolf, and pretty much teh whole run of Shadis, [subscription to the latter, the former turned into InPhobia before i had a chance] precisely for the breadth of topics, and found them more useful then than i do Dragon today (despite being a solely-D&D gamer when i read White Wolf).
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woodelf <*>
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If I take a lamp and shine it towards the wall, a bright spot will appear. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God, But the light is not the goal of the search, it is the result of the search. -- G'kar _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
