Birmy
Adventurer
2 out of 5 rating for DRAGON+ #2
This second issue of Dragon+ is light on content for actual tabletop gamers, though it's somewhat justified by the video game theme. "Where It All Started: D&D Video Games" is interesting from a historical perspective (especially as a fan of the "Gold Box" SSI-era games) though there's probably a more in-depth version that could be mined from this survey of D&D's video game past. There are redundant, if thematically appropriate, promotional articles about Sword Coast Legends, Fantasy Grounds, and the addition of strongholds to the Neverwinter MMO. I'm not quite the audience for the video and audio highlights, but their inclusion opens up the fan community a bit and takes advantage of the digital format in ways they couldn't in print (the illustrated message-board poll responses fulfill a similar function). Fiction makes a welcome return with Chris Avellone's necessarily brief short story "The Winter King," which was an easy read even on the small screen of my phone. "Gauntlet Gophers" continues the magazine's tradition of comic strips; this installment, a tie-in to the Elemental Evil campaign, is better than the first issue's. The interview with Ed Greenwood, timed to promote his Spellstorm novel, is interesting, but certainly won't contain any new information for longtime Forgotten Realms aficionados. The rest of the issue is the usual assortment of ads, links, Adventurers League updates, and an Editor's Letter discussing this issue's "cover" (the t-shirt of which you can, of course, buy through a convenient link). A smattering of pre-generated characters, including SCL characters, make up the entirety of the issue's "crunch" content for tabletop gamers. Hopefully future issues will do a better job of balancing the overt marketing aspects of the app with the more substantial content associated with earlier iterations of D&D publications called "Dragon."
This second issue of Dragon+ is light on content for actual tabletop gamers, though it's somewhat justified by the video game theme. "Where It All Started: D&D Video Games" is interesting from a historical perspective (especially as a fan of the "Gold Box" SSI-era games) though there's probably a more in-depth version that could be mined from this survey of D&D's video game past. There are redundant, if thematically appropriate, promotional articles about Sword Coast Legends, Fantasy Grounds, and the addition of strongholds to the Neverwinter MMO. I'm not quite the audience for the video and audio highlights, but their inclusion opens up the fan community a bit and takes advantage of the digital format in ways they couldn't in print (the illustrated message-board poll responses fulfill a similar function). Fiction makes a welcome return with Chris Avellone's necessarily brief short story "The Winter King," which was an easy read even on the small screen of my phone. "Gauntlet Gophers" continues the magazine's tradition of comic strips; this installment, a tie-in to the Elemental Evil campaign, is better than the first issue's. The interview with Ed Greenwood, timed to promote his Spellstorm novel, is interesting, but certainly won't contain any new information for longtime Forgotten Realms aficionados. The rest of the issue is the usual assortment of ads, links, Adventurers League updates, and an Editor's Letter discussing this issue's "cover" (the t-shirt of which you can, of course, buy through a convenient link). A smattering of pre-generated characters, including SCL characters, make up the entirety of the issue's "crunch" content for tabletop gamers. Hopefully future issues will do a better job of balancing the overt marketing aspects of the app with the more substantial content associated with earlier iterations of D&D publications called "Dragon."
