I liked your review. You were very fair in your review.

But just as people on Twitter calling D&D 4e a “tactical miniatures game with no roleplaying” gets your goat (and I’ve seen you go at this, just as I’ve gone at that same stuff), people ghettoizing roleplaying content that isn’t edition specific by calling it “useless” gets my goat.

Something “useless” means it could have no bearing on your game in any possible world (I do philosophy, remember) – if the monster article gives you an idea for monster weaponry as flavor, then I think it’s definitively useful for a 4e player. After all, monster damage is based on level and a whacky formula, so porting these weapons essentially involves you changing flavor. You don’t need stats for that, just a cool picture and a pencil on a pre-printed monster stat block.

It’s something that’s less useful than loads of new 4e monsters, admittedly, but it’s decidedly not useless (for any reasonable definition of the term, at least). If we’re being honest, I rarely use mechanical content from 3rd party sources (KQ included) because this content isn’t integrated into the DDI Suite – So I’m looking exclusively for flavor or cool ideas that I can use as a GM. I know the 4e rules well enough to improv or fake the mechanics I need at the table for virtually all GM-oriented stuff.

Now, whether this affects your buying patterns as a consumer is a different matter. If it’s one of only two or so things that you dislike about the magazine, then we’re doing well. I’d encourage you to pick up the next issue (there’s a 4e feature written by me that I’m curious to see if you like), as well as some of the 4e specific sourcebooks coming out (which I edited).

So it’s unfair to compare non-rpg related media in this discussion, because I don’t actively consume that entertainment as a means of getting rpg content, unlike a gaming magazine, whose sole reason for existing is for such content. And if I’m going to pay for it, then all I want out of it is the stuff that is written for me and the game I’m playing.

But Neal, it’s not about ignoring content. It’s about first getting to the content that the magazine is providing for the edition I play, and then getting to the other stuff if it calls my attention. Look at the weapons article. Kick ass stuff, unfortunately the mechanical natures of 3.5 vs. 4 make it useless to me. It’s the reality of publishing (and purchasing) a multi-edition magazine. I don’t have time to sit and fiddle and convert, I just don’t.

I doubt that the average person playing Pathfinder is going to pay Wizard’s for a subscription to the new Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Why? It’s all 4e content. Just like I wouldn’t buy a strictly 3.x magazine, I’d rather spend my money on 4e stuff that I know I can use immediately at my game.

I felt that I was very fair in my review of Kobold Quarterly. In fact, my overall impressions were quite positive I think. My complaints were few. The GM article was mislabeled in the cover. There’s no denying that. And believe me, my issue with the table of contents, and asking for a clearer labeling of the edition an article was meant for, came from what I said it was. A desire to find and use the magazine’s 4e stuff without me needing to convert it. There was no intent of fanning any flame of edition wars, because I tend to not participate in any of that bullshit, both in and out of my blog.

“I’m not sure if I agree with your thinking that people calling for clearer labels for the articles are coming from people looking to stir the flames of edtion wars.”

Not to pull a Joseph Goodman on you, but you don’t have the information to meaningfully disagree with me on this point. You haven’t seen the message board comments, KQ-specific blog comments, e-mails, letters to the editor, and so on. I believe that you believe you just want things to be easier to read – but your later comment about useless content suggests it’s not quite as a simple as that even for you.

“As far as the useless content for me, well, it is.”

Bullshit. Do you find movies useless? They don’t come with ready-made stats to port directly into your game. How about novels and short stories? Songs? Video Games? Anime?

Given that I’ve seen you post in some form or fashion about most (all?) of these things inspiring you (not once complaining about the lack of mechanical information inherent in them or their degree of portability), I think it’s irrational to call 3e content useless. You’re paying a lot more for these things (barring songs, possibly) than you are for KQ – and, if we can be honest, most of these non-gaming bits of inspiration are substantially less portable than other-edition RPG content. Intellectually speaking, it’s hyperbole and insulting to call some types of content good for inspiration and ghettoize others simply because of mechanical edition.

And this isn’t an attack on you in particular, newbie – it’s just that the only reason anyone ever cites for wanting graphics in the Table of Contents is so that they can more easily ignore content from the edition they don’t like. It’s like they’re afraid accidentally reading wrongly-themed magazine material is like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc.

It’s never, ever couched in positive terms (“I just want to know how much content is for my game” is eschewed in favor of “I want to know how much of the magazine is useless to me”). Those two statements mean radically-different things.

So yeah, I may well get outvoted by everyone else at the magazine, but I don’t think we should actively assist casual readers in ignoring vast swathes of a magazine we’re quite proud of. I don’t believe something has to be 100 percent portable from the page to the game to be “useful” (even edition appropriate articles need major tweaking to work at MY table).

Readers can spend money however they want, of course. But readers being free to spend their money however they want doesn’t presuppose that they are rational agents in the market – and the edition purity arguments bring that into stark relief.

As far as the useless content for me, well, it is. A 3e trap unless it comes with a coversion for 4e, is useless for me. Not because it may be a bad article or trap, but because if I’m looking through a magazine I’d want to just have to lift the article and paste it on my game directly, without having to convert it myself. So yeah, 3e content that I’m paying for is ultimately useless to me, because I’m not going to bother converting it myself.

I do think the magazine is a well put together one though, and said as much in my review.

I play 4e exclusively. I got sick of the 3.5 rules well before it was fashionable to do so online, and new iterations of the rules don’t address any of my concerns with them or make me want to play a game using them again.

But the demand for the labels usually comes from people who are mono-system guys, or people who spend an unhealthy amount of time complaining about the edition split online (or defending their favorite iteration of the edition split, or discussing the edition split on Twitter, &c).

Though I admit to being biased since I help produce the magazine, I like our content a lot. Even though I’ll never use the mechanics in, well, any of the non-4e articles, I find a lot to enjoy in pretty much all the articles that is completely unrelated to mechanical content.

I love reading reviews of the magazine I spend so much time producing (and I don’t work nearly as hard as the other editors), but I’m not terribly sympathetic to the desire to further ghettoize material so that it’s easier for some readers to write off content because it’s “useless to them.” I routinely go back and read my 2e Dragon Magazines when I need inspiration for my 4e game – and like to think that KQ encourages gamers to find something useful in everything, no matter what system the material was written for.

There actually is a good balance in the magazine because the Edition-Neutral content, added unto to Edition-Hybrid and Edition-Specific content, brings the material for every game system to more or less the same amount.

Have you looked at Level Up magazine by Goodman Games? I have bought the first two issues of this and as it is all 4E stuff I think I will get a lot more out of it.