I haven’t heard. I have heard scuttlebutt that they’re still trying to figure it out, and I suspect that’s the case. Magazines aren’t the revenue-generation machines they used to be. With the existence of the internet, DRAGON can’t be the social hub and font-of-all-news they were back in the 21st century. Print is expensive to produce and ship; unless you plan to go the Raggi artisanal route (which is kinda the polar opposite of what we expect from a magazine, but in this age of retro-cool maybe it could work) there are better methods for delivering that sort of stuff.
For 3e, WotC farmed out production of the magazines to a third party. This created Paizo. I suspect there’s some resistance inside WotC towards going down that path again. Still, it is in keeping with farming out the production of the Tiamat adventure series to Kobold. So while I see this as terribly unlikely, I don’t see it as beyond the realm of options they’re probably looking at.
The magazines went digital in the era of 4e, serving as loss-leaders and content generators for a digital portal that was supposed to be the hub of 4e play and a strong source of revenue. Alas, about the only part that really worked was the (admittedly indispensable) character generator. With the faceplant that was the Morningstar project, I suspect D&D’s digital future is still being hashed out. If they go digital with the magazines, there’s a very good chance they’ll be attached to whatever online offerings WotC offers behind a paywall. I see this as the most likely option, but that’s assuming WotC doesn’t just throw up their hands and walk away from any sort of digital for-pay products. Their history with that sort of thing isn’t exactly festooned with success.
Which brings me to what I consider to be the most interesting option. Assuming a fairly permissive third-party publication license, DUNGEON and DRAGON could be the methods by which WotC leads and guides that sort of thing. They could serve as a sort of Manual of Style for publishers. They could be used to showcase the sort of work they’d (officially) like to see more of. The magazines could be a vehicle for publishers and designers to get their names out there. In short, they could serve as a sort of guide and ideal and possibly even imprimatur by which WotC could lead third party publishers and their customers towards the best work.
What appeals to me about this is that, as a guide-by-carrot, it won’t shut down the likes of Raggi if they decide to publish something really out there for 5e, but could possibly mitigate some of the tide of utter dross a really open publishing license is likely to unleash. However, I’m not seeing a really good way to directly monetize that sort of thing short of selling ad space (which isn’t a bad thing, mind you, just not a recipe for financial success to date). Maybe they could go the route of digital comics and sell dead-tree collections, or maybe best-of compilations as they did in the 1e days?
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