It's also cool that of all the old school magazines, JTAS is one of the few magazines still available in official digital archive (Challenge is also available, and the JTAS CD-ROM includes all the JTAS segments from Challenge). Marc Miller is the absolute champion of making old school gaming content available with pretty much ALL the GDW Traveller material available and a lot (most?) of the 3rd party material also available. And for prices that beat Bundle of Holding prices... (not that he hasn't done a few Bundles of Holding in his time...).
JTAS became Challenge with issue 25. It wasn't quite the same magazine, the focus broadened beyond Traveller, but that was an improvement in my book, not a drawback. GDW was expanding at the same time, after all. They needed someplace to put support for Twilight 2000, Traveller 2300, Space 1889, etc, etc. Doing separate house organs for each of them would never have worked financially, and even late in the mag's run they were relying on articles supporting other companies' games to help with sales. Even by the early days of the internet magazine profits were starting to dip pretty badly.
Challenge, Different Worlds and Space Gamer were probably my three favorite "early" gaming mags, and I quite liked White Dwarf when I finally encountered it - up until it transitioned to being solely a GW house organ with no roleplaying material at all. Shadis was from a later era (90s) was also generally a good read, as was White Wolf magazine for most of its run.
I really, really miss the days when you had so many gaming mags you had to pick and choose between them...
Sigh. I really miss GDW. Particularly Challenge magazine.
ReplyDeleteMe too. I didn't realize what an affection I had for the coming and its employees until after it was gone.
DeletePersonally I miss JTAS more.
DeleteJTAS was a fine gaming mag, one of the best.
DeleteIt's also cool that of all the old school magazines, JTAS is one of the few magazines still available in official digital archive (Challenge is also available, and the JTAS CD-ROM includes all the JTAS segments from Challenge). Marc Miller is the absolute champion of making old school gaming content available with pretty much ALL the GDW Traveller material available and a lot (most?) of the 3rd party material also available. And for prices that beat Bundle of Holding prices... (not that he hasn't done a few Bundles of Holding in his time...).
DeleteJTAS became Challenge with issue 25. It wasn't quite the same magazine, the focus broadened beyond Traveller, but that was an improvement in my book, not a drawback. GDW was expanding at the same time, after all. They needed someplace to put support for Twilight 2000, Traveller 2300, Space 1889, etc, etc. Doing separate house organs for each of them would never have worked financially, and even late in the mag's run they were relying on articles supporting
Deleteother companies' games to help with sales. Even by the early days of the internet magazine profits were starting to dip pretty badly.
I liked Challenge a lot more than Dragon and Dungeon, or Ares.
ReplyDeleteChallenge, Different Worlds and Space Gamer were probably my three favorite "early" gaming mags, and I quite liked White Dwarf when I finally encountered it - up until it transitioned to being solely a GW house organ with no roleplaying material at all. Shadis was from a later era (90s) was also generally a good read, as was White Wolf magazine for most of its run.
DeleteI really, really miss the days when you had so many gaming mags you had to pick and choose between them...