Periodically have to sit with myself and remember just how absolutely bizarre the origin story of famed Biggest Competitor To Dungeons And Dragons D&D3.X At Home Pathfinder RPG is
because holy shit
I can't just say this without explanation, so! I am paraphrasing like hell here, the whole story DOES have more factors than this, but briefly, the story of "how Pathfinder was born".
For a long time, TSR and then later Wizards of the Coast had Dragon magazine and then Dungeon magazine along with it, in-house engines for RPG coverage pointed at all players (Dragon) and specifically DMs (Dungeon). Back in the day they covered more than Just D&D - my first exposure to Traveler came as a result of a Dragon article, same with Call of Cthulhu - but following the Wizards acquisition, Dragon started focusing more and more exclusively on Dungeons and Dragons, with a side splash of "Other WotC products". Eventually, Wizards made the decision "actually, we don't need these magazines; the return is way not worth the effort of keeping up writing and distribution" and axed them. Business move. Pretty standard.
They very soon saw a significant drop-off in sales, especially NEW sales. A drop-off out of line with the circulation of Dragon Magazine, but seemingly related. They tried a bunch of things, lots of different advertising, but it wasn't working: almost like a lot of people were going "oh, these are ads, whatever" and just passing them by. There was a conversion rate, but it didn't make up the sudden shortfall. In puzzled desperation, they decided "Well gee, let's... IDK, let's bring the magazines back" but they couldn't just re-up the publication, for a lot of reasons including, but not limited to "we don't have a magazine publishing staff" and "it has to look organic: we can't show that we goofed, we can't even hint that we goofed, we can't show that kind of weakness" and so they invented Paizo Press for the purpose of bringing back Dungeon and Dragon magazines.
Internally, this was a very simple "spin up a subsidiary with a specialized focus, so we don't have to micromanage in the same hierarchy" move. To the public, this was positioned as "whoah!!! LONG TIME, STORIED PUBLICATION HOUSE PAIZO PRESS (who you've totally heard of obviously you just forgot) APPROACHED US BECAUSE THEY'RE FANS OF 3'RD EDITION! THEY WANNA PUBLISH DRAGON MAGAZINE! THEY LIKE IT SO MUCH THAT THEY'RE ASKING TO BRING IT BACK AFTER ITS TRAGIC DEMISE FOR UNKNOWN REASONS THAT WE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH! MAGS BACK BABY!"
The wild part is: it worked! People cheered the return of Dragon and Dungeon, and later Polyhedron (which wouldn't last too long but was aimed at covering non-D&D d20 branded games). Before too long, Paizo started printing long-form adventure paths in Dungeon Magazine, which eventually turned into their own subscription product. I'm not gonna pie in the sky and say everything was Perfect And Good, but I will say, sustaining interest in a Lifestyle Brand is a lot easier when you have a bustling ecosystem of (technically) third-party stuff supporting and funneling towards Brand Loyalty, and Paizo was doing a very good job of that.
So, of course, Wizards shuttered them with minimal (some sources say "no") warning.
This happened during the sunsetting of 3.X, prior to the launch of 4E, give or take. The reasons given were similar to the last time: the company was healthy but it wasn't healthy ENOUGH, we're worried about the way it might transition into 4E territory, (we don't wanna give players too much extra proof they could have homebrew freedom or they might not buy our books) WE DIDN'T SAY THAT PART OUT LOUD, you're profitable but you're just not providing 175% profit growth... nnnnyeah we don't need you, you've got a long and storied history you'll be fine, g'bye Paizo.
So that's the first betrayal/sacrifice of the Edition War that I mentioned: Wizards casually forgetting that Paizo Press was NOT, in fact, outside contractors with a lengthy publication history, and that was a story they'd made up to sell to the public.
And that left Paizo Press standing there going "but. But you literally MADE us TO PUBLISH THESE MAGAZINES. We DIDN'T EXIST before... WE HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE EMPLOYED HERE WHAT THE FUCK". And while they couldn't maintain the Dragon and Dungeon licenses, they hit on the realization of... wait a minute. We have institutional knowledge of how to write and publish 3'rd edition long-form campaigns. The OGL exists; they can't take that back. We could just... keep doing that. See if there's money there in it.
And then to help support that, Paizo pivoted into "and also, we're taking hold of the game these are written for; we're supporting the adventures with a game system that'll stay in print for them, and which we can make our own balance changes to" and they've remained remarkably consistent with that to this day.
But the SECOND betrayal is that thanks to a combination of passive-aggressive Wizards posturing and the way public opinion works, this actual almost-miracle of RPG survival quickly got spun as either "We'll make OUR OWN dungeons and dragons! With blackjack! and hookers! and adventure paths!!!!" or "ho HO! Nyehehehe, since we see an upcoming edition war, let's TAKE ADVANTAGE of that edition war! We shall cripple 4'th edition... BY STEALING THIRD! NYAHAHAHA!" ...which both have some truth to them: "we'll save our company from death by doing what we're known for, just without megacorp support" and "ok, we CAN take advantage of this disgruntled audience if we're careful about it but we don't want to build a toxic foundation" (they were already seeing some of the rehab work that Privateer Press had to put in to recuperate Warmachine's reputation among game store venues) are indeed both things that happened, but much like the origin story of Paizo itself, not at all how it was spun to the public.
And so now here we are, at the end of a weird double-helix of bizarre coincidence, with Paizo and Wizards doing a sort of back-and-forth with each other of "ok, ONE of us is 'we have D&D at home' but which ONE?"
...oh yeah, and for the record, as soon as Paizo was cut loose there was no more Dragon or Dungeon magazines, not really, because the license belonged to Wizards but the institutional knowledge of how to make a magazine belonged to Paizo. I'm pretty sure this affected their sales much like it did the first time around, but I haven't got the data, because that's all mixed up in the 4'th Edition Launch And Subsequent Whirlpool Of Baffling Decisions and I don't have the energy to separate things out while in the middle of moving house.
But yeah.
YO THIS IS EXCELLENT, WHAT A FIND, CHECK IT OUT
a lot of these magazines were puff pieces and there's plenty of stuff that has absolutely not aged well but there's also some incredible gems in these pages
