An Open Letter to Dragon and Dungeon Readers

Erik Mona: For Your Eyes Only.

In the midst of this highly emotional discussion, I have forgotten to thank you. Poly was the reason I started buying Dungeon since 2002 because I wanted to be more than just a mere D&D gamers. I want to see and believe that the very fundamental rules engine for D&D Third Edition can be used in other genres besides fantasy. Because of your effort as an editor of the mini-games, I have never had such enjoyment as playing PULP HEROES, V IS FOR VICTORY, and MECHA CRUSADE. I have enjoyed the re-imagination of GAMMA WORLD (you dubbed it OMEGA WORLD) and SPELLJAMMER (without the complex information of phlogiston and crystal shells). Without your effort, GeneTech (the fourth d20 Modern campaign model) would not have been made public.

And through it all, you have endured an inconceivable amount of hate mails and abusive threats. Sometimes I feel like I should take your place in all of the abuses. But you have managed through it all.

For that, I thank you for believing in leaping forward and promoting d20 and d20 Modern. You have embraced the always-evolving change that is the d20 System. I'm sure that the minority of Wizards of the Coast RPG fanbase -- the ones that do believe in change -- feel the same way as I do.

Thanks for making that leap of faith.

Mahalo,
Ranger REG

Suggestion

Make Ares a weekly webzine, in the style of Pyramid (Steve Jackson Games). Fresh content, a comic or two, plus news of the d20 industry. Be sure to include a subscriber only discussion forum. Keep it barebones graphics wise and focus on content. And since I'm talking about a d20 Pyramid D), make playtest files available to subscribers and hold discussions thereon.

Where Dragon and Dungeon are concerned, more on setting and how character and setting interact would be nice. An Ultimate Accountant PR-C is nice, but would be much better if we knew what role the UAPR-C filled in a setting.

When will the change happen?

Quick question. When (which month) will these new style Dragon and Dungeon Magazines come out?

Let us remember that they promised Dragon would be a D&D ONLY magazine. The only drawback is that now it includes a minis game that holds almost no interest from most RP gamers because they could always get that level of combat in a D&D game without new rules, and it will still include the luke warm fiction that nobody I know would want to read. Adding Poly to Dragon will only serve to upset even more readers/subscribers than in Dungeon.

Paizo has lost touch with with the attractiveness behind the original release of Dungeon. Adventures. That's it. Plain and simple, and every DM's necessity. The addition of Will Wheaton in Dungeon makes no sense to me at all. He could be the funniest guy on the planet, but he still doesn't belong in Dungeon. Adventures belong in Dungeon.

If anybody can draw a line of reasoning that explains Will Wheaton's inclusion in Dungeon, feel free to enlighten me. Really! I want to hear any reasonable explanation outside of the fact he was an actor, or went to trekkie cons (those are hardly reasons to include him in Dungeon!).

Articles in Dungoen might sound cool, but articles are what I look for in Dragon. I don't flip through my archive of Dungeons to find an article, and I don't want to start. I suppose that makes me a Dungeon purist, but that is the magazine that I fell in love with since issue #1, and that's the Dungeon I want to subscribe to again if Paizo let's me.

What I think they should do, is bring back the special issues. No, not the annuals--those were nothing but billboards. I'm talking about the, "Best of" issues. Every two-three years they should collect the best articles and reprint them in a special issue. A, "Best of Polyhedron" would no doubt include the best minigames and satisfy many of their fans at least a little bit. A new "Best of Dragon" could collect the best articles of 3rd edition up to the release of Eberron, and a "Best of Dungeon" could collect the adventure path in a single special issue.

I don't want any of the Poly fans to think the rest of us are rejoicing over their pain. If Paizo only replaced Poly with articles and Will Wheaton, then I'm pretty sure I'm still not going to be happy about it, and still might hold back my subscription. I want more adventures, or else I'll keep my wallet closed.

I would love to see a new messageboard (modeled after EN World?) that supports everything Poly would/should/could have done. In fact, if Poly became a serious web-project, I know that Paizo could find MANY MANY volunteers here on EN World and from other messageboards.

A big "thumb's up" on the proposed changes to Dungeon (all theoretical at this point, of course ).

I personally like the idea of it becoming more than just adventures (even though this will be its core) and more of a DM's magazine. Dungeoncraft-style articles will suit me just fine.

I started subscribing to Dungeon with the Shackled City adventure path and have been very pleased. At this rate, I plan to get getting the magazine for quite some time to come.

Thanks!

*shrug* They've just changed it to Dragon: The PH magazine and Dungeon: The DMG magazine. Kinda lame.

That's fine with me. I'm just glad they don't have a Monster Manual Magazine yet, or a d20 modern one, because I would buy them in a second. I was going to say it'd be nice to have the monster annuals back, but with the MM3 coming out in sept, we kinda already DO have an annual monster manual.


Chris (who feels better about the changes since the EN WORLD magazine should take care of what used to be in Poly)

Painfully said:

Paizo has lost touch with with the attractiveness behind the original release of Dungeon. Adventures.
..
Articles in Dungoen might sound cool, but articles are what I look for in Dragon. I don't flip through my archive of Dungeons to find an article, and I don't want to start.
..
What I think they should do, is bring back the special issues. No, not the annuals--those were nothing but billboards. I'm talking about the, "Best of" issues.

Click to expand...

The original release of each of the magazines was not in touch with the future of RPGamers' tastes (how could it be?). If you've been reading DUNGEON's forum since it's conception you'll see regular mail about people wanting it to be a DM's magazine. They've also not lost touch with 'attractiveness' if it's been made clear to them by the vast majority of gamers that they only want to pay for what they want, and not what they don't want. I think that's the point of this whole deal isn't it?

You make a good point about 'articles' in DUngeon. Perhaps they should focus on more 'chart&quick-flip' sorts of articles instead of a bunch of filler. It's been clear forever that DM's don't like to have to sort through 'filler' to run a scenario, the same is probably true of any type of 'DM-Aide' articles. It will be interesting to see how this whole deal turns out. Will the articles be useful like DMG-style 'helper-applications' or will they be 10 page articles on the ecology of the Flumph (sorry Roger Moore) which are like trying to convert "DUNE" to a role-playing game

"The Best of" concept is a bad one. If you really want people paying for more of something they already have, have them pay for the SAME ADVENTURES a second time. I'd rather just have them put a 'list' on their website allowing people to VOTE on what adventures were the best (graded according to several criteria and then averaged of course...). Hey, these 5 adventures were the best according to 89 people that say so. Here are the issues, here is the 'back issue order form if you don't already have them... Grading the adventures is something that I did on my Complete Dungeon Index according to what the "Readers" wrote in the Forum/Jail-Mail sections. They had talked about it before, but were expecting people to just write-in. Well, simple 'polls' with 5 or so criteria and an average will be the best way.

Game on!

jh







..

tetsujin28 said:

*shrug* They've just changed it to Dragon: The PH magazine and Dungeon: The DMG magazine. Kinda lame.

Click to expand...

Not to Wormwood: the Happy Subscriber.

The proposed changes sound fine, and I eagerly await them.

RIP Polyhedron. It was good while it lasted.

Sorry, but I haven't bought Dragon since before Paizo took over and I won't start now. Dungeon is useless to me (as I only bought it for the Poly bits), so that's some more lost sales.

In fact, at my local club, only 1 of us (and there's 17) buy either of the magazines on an even semi-regular basis. Might say something there...