Pyramid Magazine

A general games magazine published by Steve Jackson Games, Pyramid saw a mere thirty issues in print, but still lives on the Internet. The web site, at the time of this writing, is located at www.sjgames.com/pyramid. Pyramid has a stated editorial policy of not being a 'house organ' and as such accepts articles for any reasonably popular game and especially articles useful for roleplaying games.

It is a good example of a reasonably thriving online magazine, and shows the benefits of paying for Internet content - sure, free game stuff can be found everywhere, but stuff on Pyramid's been through an editor and can be assumed to be worthwhile. Plus, it has spam-free, active newsgroups, for those so inclined.

This (superb) publication came out bimonthly from AD 1993 May until AD 1998 March/April by Steve Jackson Games. One of the main forces behind its creation was the noted author and editor Derek Pearcy, who was listed as the “architect” in the credits right up through issue #9 and served as editor for the first two issues.

The reason it finally migrated to the web was because in print form it was loosing money. While it has not reached the same levels of circulation it did while in print it has started to turn a small profit and so the 3000+ subscribers look forward to many years of useful roleplaying information and articles.

On the newsgroups that come with subscription to the magazine a culture has grown that allows discussion of some rather esoteric subjects in the two years since it ceased paper publication. Among other things the fact that some leaders of the roleplaying community will correspond with the fans on a very friendly and informal basis. Of note in this category (in early AD 2001) are Kenneth Hite, John M. Ford, David Pulver, John Kovalic, and Doc Cross. (John Wick also published a column called Playing Dirty in the magazine.)

The subscribers who read and post to the newsgroups have become known collectively as Pyramidians and even have their own peculiar traditions, like substituting the word Newark for Hell and various online writing games in the .sjgames.fnord group.

Notable Features:

• Pyramid Picks- Reviews of what is good in roleplaying
• Suppressed Transmission- High weirdness from Kenneth Hite
• Dork Tower- The comic by John Kovalic
• Murphy’s Rules- Poking fun at ourselves with the silly rules sometimes found in games
• Random Thought Table- The name of the current Editor’s Column
• Gaming News

More information can be found at:

http://www.diac.com/~michalak/
The Guide to the Pyramidians

http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/
The Offical Site

A tabletop gaming magazine, which got its start in 1993 as a bimonthly print publication. After 30 issues, it switched to an online publication, publishing new articles every week; in 2008, it became a monthly PDF publication, mostly publishing articles on a monthly theme, like cyberpunk, styles of magic, cinematic action, urban fantasy, or martial arts. 

I subscribed to Pyramid for a good long time. I have all the print issues and love them dearly, and I subscribed to their online edition for a good number of years. I rarely picked up the PDF publication -- the monthly themes meant there were many months where there just wasn't anything I cared to read. Still, their tagline -- "The Best in Gaming" -- was often spot-on accurate. They published games, adventures, variants, and supplemental information for just about every genre of roleplaying games and for just about every major game system. They published quite a lot of material for GURPS, which is owned by Steve Jackson Games, but it wasn't uncommon for several weeks to go by with no material for GURPS. Still, there was a lot of promotion of products put out by SJGames, including non-RPGs like their Illuminati trading card game (though fans of Car Wars were always deeply disappointed at how little content there was for their favorite vehicular combat simulator), but they'd also devote huge chunks of the magazine to games that were either very well-done or that had strongly seized the zeitgeist, including Magic: The Gathering, The World of Darkness, Earthdawn, Feng Shui, Over the Edge, and others. 

One of Pyramid's best points was the strong crossover factor of most of their articles -- a fantasy scenario would often include pointers on how to convert it to be played in a science fiction game, a modern military game, or a secret conspiracy game. Likewise, their many articles on historical and technological minutiae were useful to a wide variety of gamers -- an overview of 12th-century Constantinople could be used by fantasy, historical, and time travel gamers, while stats for World War II weaponry could be useful for espionage and military campaigns, as well as for just about any campaign set after WWII. Of course, Pyramid also had a reputation for publishing funny stuff, including articles about cheese magic, mutant chickens in the Wild West, vampire pigs, Lovecraftian superheroes, and who's really buried in Grant's Tomb.

If any one feature was absolutely worth paying for (aside from the comics -- John Kovalic's "Dork Tower" and David Morgan-Mar's "Irregular Webcomic!" were both wonderful), it was probably Kenneth Hite's "Suppressed Transmission" column, which ran in the online edition and focused on the weird, the esoteric, the horrific, and the Illuminated. Topics ranged from William Shakespeare, Jack the Ripper, and James Forrestal to Coca-Cola, Emperor Norton, and the Philadelphia Experiment. They were always entertaining, thought-provoking, and minutely researched.

The entire publication came to an end in December 2018, though the PDF issues can still be purchased through the Steve Jackson Games website.