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Comment by fuball63 | Hacker News Reader

Two thoughts: First, these magazines are surprisingly content dense. From the few I flipped through there weren't many ads. Other beloved vintage magazines, like Skateboarder Magazine, are very ad heavy to support their industry.

Second, I feel like a magazine like this, that has good content, might actually be popular with a niche audience as a bonus with a "premium subscription" of another product. Personally I prefer physical medium still, and I'm sure diehard fans of any niche would be interested in something to hold and collect.

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Matt Colville, dungeon master and DnD 5th Edition video maker on youtube, is launching exactly the kind of magazine you're talking about. The magazines are free to his patreon subscribers (of a certain level and above) and will be for sale in the MCDM (his DnD content business) store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oid4QMMXjfs

https://www.geeknative.com/82321/arcadia-matt-colville-annou...

This would be worth checking out - I'm going to buy them to support more cool content like this.

Kobold Press has a PDF 'zine on their Patreon for 5E content as well:

https://www.patreon.com/koboldpress

The later reincarnation of Dungeon and Dragon magazines that coincided with the release of D&D 4th edition were exactly this, you could purchase a D&D Insider (iirc) subscription that included these two magazines and some online tools for things like character creation.

Sadly those both ended with 4th edition, but just yesterday Arcadia magazine was launched through Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/mcdm (I'm not involved, just a fan!)

There was some advertising, especially toward the back of the magazine, but since Dragon was published by TSR, they probably weren't relying on the ads for financial support.

I mentioned this in another comment, but another difference is the ads are super relevant because the target audience is so niche. Like, people that are interested in RPGS that buy the mag are going to be interested in product specifically related to that interest. Ads become interesting when there's actually value behind them.

I agree - I hate advertising in general, but that in niche magazines (as long as it isn't too obtrusive) servers a very useful purpose and I'm ok with it.

More than that: sometimes the main reason one buys niche and trade magazines is for the ads. Their articles are just decoration - really they're directories of currently active vendors.

I was a person who bought skateboarding magazines in my youth and unlike Playboy's which everyone knows were bought for the articles, I bought skate mags for the pictures.

I had my walls covered with cut outs from magazines and a few large print posters, infact at the time I was buying these most came with a centerfold poster.

I'm too young for the glory days of the mags, but from what I understand the ads themselves were even fun to look at, because at least they were extremely relevant... skateboarders like skate products.

I was a big fan of Gygax magazine that came out a few years back. Unfortunately it was shut down due to a trademark dispute.

http://gygaxmagazine.com/who-we-are/

Agreed, I would have a subscription in a heartbeat.

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