Dragon/Dungeon cancellation: The industry reacts (New Monte Cook commentary)

Mark CMG said:

This needs its own thread, I think.

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ShinHakkaider said:

Sorry, didnt mean to derail. I just thought it was something that needed saying though.

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Mike Mearls said:

To be blunt, I think there's a sort of script here that has to be worked out before anything constructive can happen.

1. People overreact in a way that is only possible in a culture that so thoroughly disconnects people from hunger, violence, and real survival issues. I mean, when someone posts that losing Dragon is like being raped, I guess I choose to be happy that we're all well fed and safe enough to see that as an issue on the rape level, and that rape (for most people) has become more of a vague concept or plot point in a TV show than a reality. The alternative is to pretty much give up on western civilization, because consumer impulses have taken on a sickening life of their own.

2. People who used to work at WotC trot out their pet theories as to why anything happens here. ("You see, WotC would slip $100 bills into every copy of the PH only if D&D sales were falling.")

3. A few smartasses poke the people in group 1 because, hey, this is still the Internet.

4. A lot of sane people, the staggering majority of fans, either stop reading or make a few cogent comments and then duck out. These people are probably mad or sad that the magazines are gone, but a dialog with them is pretty much impossible with the "rape" victims hanging around, waiting to shriek about the cruel injustices of a hard world.

WotC isn't so dumb as to think that no one would care that Dragon and Dungeon were going away. If anything, the opposite is true. Everyone pretty much expected Scott Rouse et al to be burned in effigy.

Like I said above, I think the big issue for me is that it makes clear the gap between D&D R&D and gamers. It's a bridgeable gap, as Magic shows us, and it's something that should be changed. Interestingly enough, I think that what happened Thursday might end up being a big step toward solving that.

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Zaukrie said:

His point was about WotC and their general lack of interaction with the RP crowd. A point I agree with, we just don't see much from them, even on their forums.

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This bit of news is depressing, but not unexpected.

I felt about DRAGON as a parent would feel about an offspring that had gone it's own way after growing up in a manner you weren't too fond of.

My creation has died, but it has not been anything like what I created since about #50 or #60, or thereabouts. I loved dearly what it was, but not what it had become. Tim Kask

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Probably because of recent events, I've been nostalgic about Dragon and so have been having a good time going through old issues of the magazine on the Dragon Magazine Archive CD Rom when I need a quick break from work. It's better than Desktop Tower Defense, which I'm tired of.

Going through issues from the time about when I started to read (around 1980 or so) is an interesting exercise. First of all, I do get the gut reaction of "man, this makes me want to play old school again." But when I think about that rationally, I realize that what I want is to recapture the newness of it. As I look at an article about pit traps or magical fountains and think it's amazing and innovative, I realize that today the article is neither. But it was then, and that's what I want to experience. Magical fountains with miscellaneous random effects are really kind of stupid, but at the time--coming across one for the first time--they were amazing and interesting. I can so easily conjure forth the same image that my twelve year old mind would have imagined of adventurers coming into a room with a mysterious fountain. It's an intriguing image, but one that really can't be duplicated. I can't be twelve years old again, no matter how much I want it. If I ran an adventure today and tried to invoke that same image, the best I could hope for is a vague notion of nostalgia in my players and myself. That sort of "oh, this is what adventures were like when we first started" feeling when everyone agrees to play in an "old school" adventure. (Which is really like role playing that you're role playing--pretending that it's 1982 and you're all teenagers playing D&D.) So really, no, I don't want to play 1st edition again.

Speaking of which, the second thing that strikes me is the reminder that people who claim the game was simpler then are just thoroughly whacked. You don't have to read too many Leomund's Tiny Hut or Sage Advice columns to realize that. While the basics of game were simpler (no skills, no feats, etc.) the corner case special rules, the general rules hidden in spell descriptions, and the numerous subsystems and exceptions are overwhelming. But you know what? They're kind of overwhelming in an intriguing way. Somehow, it all comes across as some kind of arcane science that no one person can ever master but you can try. That's not appealing to me today, but it appealed to me then.

I also am struck by the quaintness of the old issues. I don't mean just the primitive layout and graphics, or the clunky writing style and poor proofreading, or even the articles without context or preamble. I've been in the game industry a long time, and I know that stuff used to be the standard. It doesn't bother me (again, it's in a strange way, sort of appealing in a nostalgic way). It's the sort of "we're all in this together," approach of most of the articles. The feeling that "we're all gamers and pretty much think the same way about things, but here's some ideas we had for our games" runs throughout the magazine. Only Gary's From the Sorcerer's Scroll has any air of authority or superiority. Everything else has a much more a "by gamers for gamers" style. Maybe it's that so many are written from an intimate, first-person perspective: "Almost every dragon I've ever placed in my world can speak, and most of them can cast spells." Further, despite the fact that it's full of contradictions, it all builds on itself. For example, you wouldn't want to have implemented all the rules suggested in the various articles about keeping Magic Users under control (or they'd never get a single spell off), but they all came from the same sort of undercurrent that most people thought MUs were too powerful. There's a feeling that back then, without email and messageboards and market research, the people working on the game were somehow in better touch with their audience than they are today. I don't know that that's true, but the impression is there.

So really, when I say "quaintness," I don't mean that to be derogatory at all. Today, it seems like material created does not have the same awareness of itself or, more importantly, what's come before it. I can't help but think that "game history" is something that we're losing. Now, to be fair, there was simply a lot less game history in the early 80s than today--twenty some years less, but you still get the feeling that when someone today writes about balors or frost brands or feather fall, they have no idea where those things originally came from. And maybe it doesn't matter. But maybe it does.

What does this all leave me with? Sadly, a vague sort of dissatisfaction. I think, though, that while we need to recognize that nostalgia colors our perceptions that things in the past were better than today, and likely better than they really were, there are lessons to be learned. Some of what we miss can't necessarily be fully recaptured, but it's also true that it should be preserved for those who actually are new to the game. In other words, while old and jaded players may think that magic fountains are boring, a new player won't. We need to let them have that same experience we had, even if it was 20 years ago (or more). Further, we need to develop more a sense of unity as a community of hobbyists. We all have a lot more in common than we have differences, regardless what you would think after hanging around most gaming sites online.

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Glyfair said:

Monte recently posted some thoughts about Dragon on his blog. Since the specific article can't be easily linked, I've reproduced it below.

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