An Open Letter to Dragon and Dungeon Readers

[Chroma]

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.

The question I'd pose to that is what harm would arise from including or designating things Open Content? Considering the short shelf-life of magazines I can't see it reducing sales, but only increasing them and adding more ideas and information to the great OGC pot. Is there concern that authors don't want to release their ideas as OGC? I'm not well versed on the structure of the writer's agreement for Dungeon (or Dragon), but what rights are retained by the author after submission? If an author wanted their ideas released as OGC would you refuse them? I'm just curious as to why you wouldn't want to include OGC.

As an aside: The mini-games as OGC would've been great, as now they are dead/dormant with no real chance to become anything more, and there were some fantastic ideas in there!

 

[scourger]

changes to Dungeon

Good luck with the changes to Dungeon, folks! You can't miss by focusing on publishing core modules, so I look forward to that. I'll keep subscribing. I will miss the mini-games, but the peak of that feature was Omega World for me. So, I don't feel like I'll be missing too much. 3 adventures per issue and a 4-part poster map of Greyhawk sounds great.

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

This is Good News!

Keith and Erik,

Thanks for coming here an telling us whats coming.

When my wife saw my Dungeon re-subscription letter a few months back she asked if I was going to renew. I told her no, Dungeon just wasn't any use to me anymore. Maybe one adventure I could use and never played any of the mini-games. When the group gets together we have time for one game, the best.

Now however, I am re-subscribing to Dungeon and renewing my Dragon when it comes up.

Thanks Paizo.

Son of Thunder

 

[EricNoah]

Hey Keith, good to see you around!

There have apparently been some changes to the leadership of the mags and at Paizo over the past several months. Guess I haven't been paying enough attention! Could one of you just run down who does what, and maybe who to contact with what kind of issue/problem?

 

[SJ]

bring on the changes

These mags have both changed *ALOT* since my subscriptions started way back in the day. They are infinitely better. There have been a few issues of each title I thought weren't so great, but I've never regretted subbing to both of them, even during the lean years when I didn't play a game of anything, much less D&D.

If you are a gaming fan, any genre, but particulary D&D, you gotta be pretty hardcore with some unique requirements not to read the flagship magazine of your industry. But hey, to each his indomitable own.

As to the changes, I love 'em. BRING IT ON. New crunch. New fluff. Articles by the gaming geek-savant. Ecology articles (one of my all-time faves), player and rule advice. Good stuff.

Frankly, I'll miss the mini-games. I only ever used one of them, but it was always interesting reading to see other designers' work in a genre. And I'll miss Poly, I play several RPGA games. But more adventures is fine by me.

I would say that over the years I have much preferred the fact the D/D TRIED to change, improve, and progress than if they just stayed with the exact same stuff they had back in issue #48 (or whatever). And even back then people wrote, "why change? I don't like the changes to your magazine!"

Keep rollin' Keith, Matt, Erik, and all the Paizo crew.

 

[Ranger REG]

Well, at least I can finally save $7 a month for something more practical, now that Paizo have finally made their decision about Dungeon.

No Poly, no money.

 

[JoeBlank]

Sounds like you were right about losing some subscribers by dropping Poly, but gaining more than enough to make up for it.

What is selling me is the open, honest attitude I see from the people who make the magazines. That, and the rebirth of Amazing tells me Paizo is a company headed in the right direction.

Dragon - will renew (there was never any doubt)
Dungeon - will subscribe (never have before)
Amazing Stories - will give it a look, and consider a subscription

Any consideration to discounts for subscriptions to two or more magazines? While I am happy to spend my hard-earned money, I am seeing some of the features I like from Dragon shifted over to Dungeon. Some kind of package deal would help with that.

 

[gunter uxbridge]

hmmmm....

*scratches head*

I check for traps.

 

[Ranger REG]

hmmmm....

*scratches head*

I check for traps.

Hehehe.

If only I could leave such a parting gift for Dungeon readers...

 

[Henry]

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

I'll add my voice as another who feels that Open content is the only way to share or get any content available electronically, because then 3rd parties can work to release for free or for charge electronic versions of said information for instance lookup and reference. I've never published any gaming material before, and the SRD's and the open content releases in PCGen are ENORMOUSLY invaluable to my game preparation efforts.