Narutaki, my roommate, and I ventured to downtown Brooklyn to see the unboxing of a new table top roleplaying game magazine called Gygax Magazine (named after Gary Gygax who was one of the co-founders of Dungeons and Dragons). We trekked on down to the Brooklyn Strategist to see the event. I had never been to the store before so it was nice to see another gaming store in the area.

If nothing else Narutaki learned that not all stereotypes are baseless slander. The Brooklyn Strategist was hardly a huge shop so when the place was packed with people you had to get pretty close to most of the attendees. So we got very clear proof that the archetypical unwashed slightly balding guy was out in full force. Not everyone was like that but the gamer smell was strong. I want to go back to that store when it is not as crowed to get a better impression of what the place is like normally.

But during the event we were able to pick up the first issue of the Gygax Magazine which is a pen and paper roleplaying game magazine. While the name would imply a wholly Dungeons and Dragons themed magazine it is a general pen and paper roleplaying game magazine with a D&D slant. Some of the content was purposely generic swamp town write-up to the very specific like modified Pathfinder feats.

I really liked the Cosmology of Role-Playing Games article. It tried to create a galactic map of American pen and paper roleplaying games from 1974 until today. It states up front that it is clearly incomplete. Any complete guide would be a monumental undertaking but overall it seems fairly comprehensive and at least touches up some of the smaller independent titles. I think they could have broken down the groupings a little better as opposed to sort of throwing very disparate games of the same wave in with each other. But at the same time creating very distinct blood lines might have overcomplicated an already pretty monumental article. So I liked what I saw. I just wanted more. That said I think anyone other than hardcore tabletop players will find one or two titles on the list they would probably want to look into on name alone. Stars Without Number and Gumshoe seemed interesting to me.

Random thought: A modified Traveler could be used to run an awesome Legend of the Galactic Heroes game.

Leomund’s Secure Shelter is pretty much the rules lawyer section of the magazine. I will also say that the Keeping Magic Magical is pretty much my philosophy to a tee. The Banshee section was quite good at laying out different ways of playing a classic monster that would work in almost any fantasy setting.

I would have liked a few more sci-fi, horror, historical, or other style of RPG articles but it is the first issue. They did have a Godlike article which is a historical superheroes so it was hardly all fantasy all the time.

As always What’s New with Phil & Dixie is a classic strip and always enjoyable.

I liked the magazine a lot and I hope they can continue creating compelling content in the future.

As I have just started playing Dungeons & Dragons, this new quarterly Gygax Magazine promising insights into the game and others got me curious. It is also available digitally which might be how I’d read it in the future.

The first issue is a mix of history delving, anecdotes, and ways to add new experiences to your current games.

Some of the shorter articles felt as though they had a lot more to say but get cut off before they could. I understand space restrictions of course, but in the future it might be better to structure the article to be short as opposed to just cutting it off at its limit.

It was fun reading about other DM experiences in “Still Playing After All These Years” as well as the piece about the storytelling of Gary Gyax from his son’s perspective “The Gygax Family Storyteller.”

I found the piece about running a campaign for your toddler rather fascinating! Before reading it I didn’t imagine it really possible for that age group but it sounds pretty fun from the writer’s experience.

The comics in the back are a fun extra. I really loved the one from Girl Genius creators What’s New with Phil & Dixie.

I liked this magazine even though I’m a newbie player.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

Continue reading →