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| A complete collection of Arcane magazine |
Arcane magazine was a fine British gaming magazine lasting twenty issues, published from November 1995 to June, 1997 by Future Publishing, a still operating media company with (according to Wikipedia) over fifty magazines in the fields of “video games, technology, films, music, photography, home and knowledge”. The magazine was very unusual for two different reasons: it was not published by a game company and it was not published by a small group of enthusiasts with a lot of hopes but precious little money and skills. Those elements made Arcane a truly professional entertainment magazine with backing from a publisher willing to invest significant resources in magazine production and distribution. More, it made the magazine truly independent and so quite the exception in the gaming field. We have the pleasure to interview Steve Faragher, the very first editor of Arcane.
Hello Steve thank you very much for accepting to do this interview. Could you give us some info about yourself (age, education, occupation and of course how you discovered games and especially RPGs)?
Wow, that’s a question that could invite my autobiography. I’ll be brief. I’m 54, university-educated (degree in English) and when I was 16 (1979) I joined a well-established group playing AD&D. It was an amazing campaign, completely made up by the DM who I know has since gone on to become a fantasy author, and with an incredible amount of love and work poured into it. I was hooked, and soon was running my own games with a large circle of friends. We played Traveller, Bushido, Aftermath, Call of Cthulhu, Feng Shui and many more as I grew up. Then a friend (Chris Read) and I decided we could publish some RPG materials and so we founded Chaotic Intellect. From the landing of my parent’s house, on a BBC B microcomputer we published an unofficial D&D campaign called “No Honour in Sathporte”, and then a licensed Bushido scenario called “Takishido’s Debt” with Games of Liverpool. We ran out of money before our epic Aftermath campaign was published.
Do you still game, not necessarily RPGs?
I never find the time for a full-scale RPG these days, I play board games with my family and friends; Settlers of Catan, Pandemic, Ticket To Ride, Modern Art (in fact anything by Reiner Knizia!, I’m a huge fan) and so on, and enjoy videogaming, where I’m currently starting my Battletech career.
Future Publishing seems even today an important player in the UK media scene. Why did it choose to publish a roleplaying magazine? Did you or somebody else pitch it to them or did they do some market research and decided there was enough demand to create one? If I recall correctly, the last attempt from an important publisher was GM International from Newsfield that folded after 15 issues, in October 1991.
It was all my fault ;-) I pitched the magazine to them, we did zero market research but they could see immediately how it fitted into their ‘portfolio’ of titles (hobbyist, games), and I was I guess a reasonably hot-shot young editor back then. I had been lucky to work on a magazine called Amiga Power, which had been phenomenally successful for Future and so I guess I was in credit. Future was not like other publishers - it basically rode the desktop publishing wave and in many ways was a forerunner of companies like Amazon and Uber, using new technologies to disrupt established practices. As such we broke a lot of established rules and while other publishers would definitely have done substantial market research, Future just poured money in and we launched. It was a tactic that proved successful for them, some of their magazines still going today were launched in the same way - Edge and T3 come to mind.
I have read that the magazine was distributed not just in hobby shops but in newsstands too. Were hobby shops an important factor in Arcane’s sales?
Certainly not at first, in fact hobby shops and the rpg industry were a little difficult to convince about the magazine. As you rightly pointed out they had seen others some and go, and were sceptical about our chances of making it work. Future knew newsstand and that was where we were able to put some push behind the magazine. It never performed too well on newsstand though.
In the pre social media age, how did you contact contributors such as James Wallis, Ken & Jo Walton and Andrew Rilstone to have them writing for Arcane?
Well I’m going to have to confess that I don’t entirely remember how I first met him, but long before arcane I lived in Clapham in London just along the road from James Wallis. Through him I met Andrew and Ken & Jo.
Did you reach out to contributors/writers for former magazines too?
Well we had a pretty tight-knit editorial community at Future, as we were all based in Bath it was a bit like a university campus, and so it didn’t take long to find some experienced contributors with RPG experience.
What was the print run of the magazine first issues?
I’m not sure, but I would guess it was 30-50,000.
Was the magazine distributed in the US?
Yes, though Future didn’t have the ability to push as hard in the US.
Why did GW never advertise in the magazine? Was it irritated by some comments in the News, reviews or letters?
No, not at all. Games Workshop at that point had long since moved on from being a general distributor and was only focussed on Warhammer. They had White Dwarf magazine and I think viewed any other tabletop game as likely to take away sales of their miniatures, so they saw us as competition. In a sense they were right, if White Dwarf hadn’t been on newsstand and doing so well at that time (I seem to recall it had a 50,000 circulation!) I would have had a much harder sell with Arcane.
What was the UK gaming community reaction to Arcane, apart from (I read in some letters) some skepticism on the magazine’s endurance?
Ha! We’re a funny lot, the English, and so yes, the main reaction was scepticism. The industry was delighted, in particular WOTC who were huge supporters, and I think it’s important to say that one of the great things about working in that area was that the community and the industry were often the same thing, the same people.
You left as editor of the magazine with the sixth issue, the famous “Religion & Roleplaying” one with the burning cross on the cover. Were you instructed by Future to switch roles inside the company or you asked for a new challenge? I notice that your name was still listed in the “writers & staff” masthead till issue 8, but with issue 9 it disappears.
I was ready for a new challenge. I’ve spent 33 years working, and only about 6 of those for other people directly. Let’s just say I’m not sure I’m temperamentally suited to being an employee. I’m glad you reminded me of the burning cross though, that felt like quite an achievement - to get an image that powerful onto the newsstand.
With issue 9 Arcane got on the cover the new definition of “gaming magazine” and no more “roleplaying magazine”, with an explicit reference to collectible card games. I guess it was an attempt to enlarge readership and advertising revenue – am I correct?
Well I wasn’t involved by this point and so I can’t tell you the reasons behind the decision, but actually I think that as it was a far better reflection of what the content of the magazine had been since issue 1. Board games and particularly CCGs had become a really major part of the industry, and particularly at that time all the money and development was in CCGs.
In issue 12 Paul Pettengale, second editor of he magazine, wrote about “tying up a number of foreign licensing deals”. I remember Arcane was licensed to a French company that published a French edition with another name, Backstab, and lasted quite longer than Arcane (it reached 51 issues in 2005). Were there any more projects, perhaps an Italian one?
No idea, sorry.
In issue 15 Paul Pettengale wrote that the magazine was going “from strength to strength” and “we are here to stay” but he announced he was going to edit the T3 magazine, so leaving the editorship of Arcane. From issue 16 Arcane had another editor, Dan Joyce, and the definition went back to “role playing magazine”, dropping the reference to collectible card games. I remember at the time reading a column in Backstab with somebody at Future telling it that Arcane had lot three quarters (!) of its readers and lost a major advertiser after TSR collapse. Is that true? I notice that from issue 16 onward Arcane has eight pages less (from 90 to 80).
Again no idea.
After five more issues (issue 20 was the last one) the magazine folded. Why? Did sales and advertising revenue (due to TSR epochal crisis) got so low to have Arcane shut down or was it ‘not enough’ profitable?
Sorry, don’t know.
Arcane still impresses me a lot: a quality magazine well written, extremely pleasing in graphics and artwork, professionally produced and distributed, independent and reliable. What are your memories of the experience with the magazine?
It was brilliant. I was given six months to launch it which were some of the happiest six months of my professional career. I worked with some very smart people, in particular the ridiculously talented Maryanne Booth who was my art editor and worked with me to give arcane that special feel it had, and Andy Butcher who was the soul of the magazine - a gamer through and through – but also a great and very readable writer. We were given a blank sheet of paper and told to go away and come back with a magazine. I’m very proud of what we achieved and consider it one of the best pieces of work in my career, it’s so wonderful and rare to be allowed to create something in the commercial environment that you truly have a passion and a love for.
Do you think we will ever see such a role playing focused magazine in the UK, considering that tabletop game are doing fine and Tabletop Gamesmagazine seems to be quite successful?
No, I don’t think it’s possible to attempt a mass-market magazine. Not to be funny but we gave it everything and weren’t able to make it last (those cynics were right, good for them) and that was before the internet really fractured the publishing industry. I think niche mags by dedicated enthusiasts are always possible, but no one’s going to get rich publishing them.
Thanks a lot, it was a honour and privilege having this interview.
And an unexpected honour to be asked to give it. Thank you for taking me back in time and allowing me a happy reminisce.