As I browsed DTRPG site looking for some printable board games or mini-games I stumble upon this publication. Since I wanted to learn a more about games in general and considering the company behind the magazine was Avalon, a name I consistently see over and over again the games I browsed (including many of them in my wishlist), I decided to give the magazine a chance (it is one Dollar anyways).
There are two documents included in the product, one of the PDFs has 13 pages and the other one 52, I thought they were different but they (at least) start the same, the 13 page PDF looks lik a cut down version of he 52 page version but I do not know really the reason of such an attached document, perhaps a mistake in the moment of uploading the product.
In the first pages reading the magazine I learned about a company called Metagaming that dominated the niche of micro games in the late 80’s and early 90’s (something I totally ignored so the investment in the magazine started paying from the first pages).
The Map of the Month section is a promising one, the map is reproduced for printing a the one seen in the section is unusable due to the prominent non related text over it.
Advancing the magazine I found some comics sponsored by ComStar games, probably from their own intelectual property I clicked on the link to see their games offer but the site is dead. I can see the magazine has a varied content up to these pages and after the comics I found a serialized novel.
Adding fiction to the formula is a great move to bring variety however I had rather prefered a stand alone story than a serialized novel and with two pages per issue, this novel probably will take long long time to fold, easy pass, not interested in
starting something I could eventually never end to read.
Next comes a section called Multiverse that seems some sort of scenario for a game called S&G (what does S&G stands for?) which I deduce is a war game from the company but unless you are very interested in this game this seve-page game report looked as some sort of “fill in” pages. The publisher assumes the reader knows the game and plays it but as a newcomer I did not find any use of this section so I passed it. I think they could keep in mind that every magazine is first magazine for someone and at least have made a brief explanation about the game so the newcomers could catch up with what they are going to read in the section.
Next there is a section called “Paper Make It” talking about some sort of mapping software.
The Review section talks about an obscure (at least to me) game system that is also available in DTRPG. The magazine does not review anything mainstream so after reading almost half of the publication I think the name is misleading, “Game Geek” is too ambitious for this magazine “Avalon Game Geek” or “DTRPG Game Geek” could have been a better choice to resemble the nature of the magazine.
In the other hand you can find some interesting information about things other mainstrain magazines does not cover as it is the Decoder Ring Theater podcast.
Although the magazine is perhaps 80% promotion for the Avalon games the price $1 is more than fair if we take into consideration the large expansion (apparently exclusive from the magazine) for the Battle Axe game and the discount coupon for the Arcanum game.
All in all, the magazine feels more like a newsletter than an actual magazine but still is a nice reading for a low price and if you love, play and buy Avalon games, this magazine is a source for games you would want to consider.
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