An Open Letter to Dragon and Dungeon Readers

shady

Explorer
Dungeon - that's it. I have £5 more per month to spend on stuff from other publishers. Poly's been on life support for a while anyhow, I guess it's good to finally have positive confirmation of death. Hmmph.

Dragon - at risk. I collect the miniatures but use them for RPG, I have no interest in the miniatures game(s). The computer coverage in recent Dragon issues has been weak and I don't see it adding value. And this coming attractions thing sounds like I'd be paying for the same kind of material Sword and Sorcery are willing to hand out for free. I'll carry on buying but as I say, at risk.

Time for a revival of Fantasy Gamer, I think.
 

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Cymex666

First Post
and there was much rejoicing!

Hurray!!! No more Poly! Now that Paizo is changing the format of Dungeon, I can't wait to see how the magazine will change.
 

atra2

Explorer
Add some skills crunch to Dragon!

Sernett said:
We'd love it if you'd take a look at the first couple of issues and let us know what you think of the new format: what works and what doesn't. That goes for anyone who hasn't checked out Dragon in a while or who has been dissatisfied with what we've been doing. We made these changes to the magazines with our consumers desires in mind, and we want to hear from you about the new magazines.

I haven't subscribed to either Dragon or Dungeon in years. I still have my
collection of dragon #70-250 or so, and Dungeon #1-60 or so.

Class Acts is the most attractive thing about the new Dragon.

I do advise you though, the next time you print multiclassing progressions,
that whoever wrote up a cleric/ranger 10/10 with the cleric level first, losing
out on all the ranger skill points (even under 3.0), shouldn't be allowed to
write Class Acts.

Now, I just happened to review the new SRD posting, with many Epic Feats
all in one place and this struck me:

Complete Divine has feats requiring 4 ranks of a skill, (based on ENworld
threads, haven't seen the book) and the SRD has Epic feats requiring 24,
27, 30, whatever ranks of a skill.

How about some cool feats requiring 10 or 15 ranks of a skill? Yeah, there
are tons of Prestige Classes that do that, but not feats!

If I stuff 15 wasted points into Jump (wasted, because by that time I have a
Flying magic item or mount) then I want a feat that requires 15 ranks of
Jump and gives me something cool!

Right now, D&D skills have the following breakpoints:

1 rank: some trained only stuff
5 ranks: synergies
max ranks: concentration and tumble and other stuff you can't live without

and misc ranks: prestige classes.

Let's give reasons to have 10, 15, 13, whatever ranks of a skill besides
prestige classes and (occasionally) the skill DC chart for that skill.

I want to see new crunch tasks I can accomplish, or feats I can gain without
going in to a prestige class, for all skills at all ranks.

You can start with 3-5 feats an issue and work from there. I know it's a
big task :)

Given that some Dragon rules ended up in Complete Divine (Radiant Servant
of Pelor anyone?) how about giving us some early previews of skill-based
feats, whatever, that will make it into Complete Expert or whatever the
3.5 Complete "Rogues and other skill users" book is?
 

Sernett

First Post
shady said:
Dragon - . . . And this coming attractions thing sounds like I'd be paying for the same kind of material Sword and Sorcery are willing to hand out for free. I'll carry on buying but as I say, at risk.

The quarterly catalog of Wizards products is just that, once every three issues. Also, it's going to be printed on extra pages added to the magazine. Essentially, it's a freebie. Issue #323, our September issue and the first of the new Dragon issues, will have the first quarterly catalog, so you can check out that issue to see if it's something that bothers you or that you find useful.
 

shady

Explorer
Sernett said:
The quarterly catalog of Wizards products is just that, once every three issues. Also, it's going to be printed on extra pages added to the magazine. Essentially, it's a freebie. Issue #323, our September issue and the first of the new Dragon issues, will have the first quarterly catalog, so you can check out that issue to see if it's something that bothers you or that you find useful.
Actually, Matthew, I hadn't read your correction before I posted. I quite like Dragon right now and it doesn't look like a drastic set of changes, given the context. So maybe (a fair bit) less risk than I thought.

But no more fiction please.

And why can't Dragon provide running news updates for WotC campaign settings, like the Traveller News Service that GDW used to run for Traveller? That's a suggestion, not a complaint.
 

SmokeDoctorlove

First Post
How about reposting all the material Wotc had on the old Dragon Site (Like Dungeon craft because my harddrive crashed and I lost my copy) Sure I have most of the Issues with it but it was far nicer to have it all in one place.

You can't tell me you are doing better if I get less content that I can use (Almost all of the last Dragon was useless to me; Darksun be damned!), and you manage to support the product less on your website then they did.

I like the idea of splitting up DM and Players stuff between the two, but be very careful, Dungeon has been the best it has ever been. I have bought every one that came out from just before the 3E release to now.
 

Erik Mona

Adventurer
JeffB said:
How much emphasis in Dungeon will there be on Realms, Greyhawk, and Eberron specific adventures Keith? or Matt ? or Erik?

Well, insofar as I'm concerned, "Greyhawk" and "core D&D" are pretty much the same thing. If there's no reason _not_ to set an adventure in the core world, I'll put it there. We've got three Eberron adventures in the next five issues, and something really big planned for Eberron next year. There's a Realms adventure in #113 (which we're working on now), and I think it's a really good one. Ed Greenwood was good enough to supply some additional details on the city of Marsember, for which we're grateful. I've got it in mind to do a really special Forgotten Realms "event" next year, but I'm weighing a couple options for what that should be.

For the most part, generic D&D and Greyhawk adventures will be the same thing. This is fundamentally no different from how the magazine's been run since the advent of 3rd Edition, but since I'm blessed (cursed?) with an obsession with the campaign setting, I suspect the adventures will "fit" in a little better without becoming so "Greyhawky" that they'll be unusable by the average "home campaign setting" DM (which makes up, I believe, the bulk of our readers).

Since people have to convert the proper nouns in a "generic" adventure anyway, we might as well make those proper nouns usable to a large number of our readers.

Does that answer the question?

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine
 

Bendris Noulg

First Post
My primary reason for letting my subscriptions drop (shortly before the BoVD issues, although I picked up the BoVD issues at the game shop) is due to the lack of participation in Open Gaming. I still look through them (heavily looked over the Dark Sun issues, for instance), but over all, the lack of OGC makes both magazines basically useless to me (and thus I don't buy them).

Any odds of that changing in the future, or will Drag/Dung continue to be mostly exclusive closed-content?
 

Numion

First Post
Excellent news for Dungeon. Great to have the magazine "back in shape". It's been a while since I've bought it, but now it seems I'll start again!
 

Erik Mona

Adventurer
Bendris Noulg said:
Any odds of that changing in the future, or will Drag/Dung continue to be mostly exclusive closed-content?

I don't intend to run a lot (or any) open content in Dungeon. The requests for more open content seem to me to be useful only to publishers and freelancers, who make up a tiny portion of our audience.

Out of curiosity, why does the absence of open game content make the magazine "useless" to you, Bendris? Do you not play D&D?

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine
 

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