An Open Letter to Dragon and Dungeon Readers

[Vocenoctum]

First off, I'm subscribed right now, no plans on canceling. I'll give the new format's a chance, like I do anyway.

that said, it's very disappointing that the vocal opposition to Polyhedron drummed out quality material. The quirky mini-games and assorted other material was a fine addition, and adding one more adventure like I already have doesn't automatically make it better. It's a shame that only one side (the poly supporters) could be happy with their share, whereas Dungeon-only types couldn't have anything less than No Poly.

As long as the CRPG stuff is limited to D&D, and doesn't take up too much room, it'll be nice. The Mini stuff has been present for a while, so I'm not worried about it being regular.

I don't care for Monte Cooke's Dungeon Craft, but I've been ignoring it in Dragon, I can ignore it in Dungeon now too

I'm not sure why the Wil column is important. Why not get Wil Upchurch instead?

Oh, and Kill Downer if you're hurting for room. It's too many pages, and I don't like it. I like the other comics, but Downer is just bleh!

Thanks.

 

[Buttercup]

This sounds like excellent news to me. I love CRPGs but not too many other types of computer games, so having them covered in the same magazine as D&D is an exciting and interesting development.

And the changes to Dungeon? Woohoo! The Polyhedron content never interested me, so I won't miss it. And since dropping stuff I was never going to use is getting me three adventures each month, well, I couldn't be happier.

 

[BSF]

Thanks for the update, it gives me a lot to think about.

I do hope that you are working on your subscription fulfillment. I regularly received my copy of Dragon after the local stores. I never received the November 2003 issue. But, that is not my point, so I won't rant on it.

I am not excited about the changes listed for Dragon. As it is, I don't get much use out of Dragon any longer. But, if you can make it more useful/appealing to (relatively) new gamers, than more power to you. I would love to see more articles that give players new ideas on approaching problems and characterization.

The changes for Dungeon intrigue me. I might have to give it a look.

Overall, I am really going to withhold judgement until I can see the changes. To do otherwise isn't quite fair to what you are trying to achieve. But, I will be honest in saying that my gut reaction is that I might be moving out of the target demographic for Dragon and Dungeon. That may, or may not be a bad thing. If the changes help bring in new players and help strengthen the brand, these are all good things.

 

[isidorus]

Sigh, first Darksun craziness/mess; just was not Darksun to me and now this. The computer games and minatures in Dragon do not interest me, but I am probably not the target group. Just when I was to subscribe to Dungeon, just for poly. I am going to miss it.

Good Luck with the changes.

 

[BSF]

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

I'll pipe up! From what I know of Bendris, it would be a stretch to say that his game is true D&D any longer. If I like to tinker, he likes to rebuild. One day, I might be as ambitious as he is.

Open Content is useful for the tinkerers because it allows us to tinker with our gameworlds and provide the information to our players in a consolidated, legal, format. You can put together a PDF, or even book, for your game world and not break any laws. Your players will have a single reference rather than picking through a half dozen books and two dozen magazines to see all the content.

To us tinkerers, this is a golden benefit of the OGL. But, from the standpoint of a publisher, it is not as appealing. While publishers might be excited to hear that another company is using their material in a new product, it might not be as exciting to hear that somebody like Bendris finally completed his world guide that includes content from the same publishers.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

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

That would depend on who you ask.

Seriously, I include my material on my website; this includes redistribution of OGC that I use from various sources. After a certain amount of time, I ended up with a bunch of magazines with content that I couldn't use in that capacity, and as they started stacking up, I began to regard the magazines as an unneccessary expense (particularly compared to the amount of re-usable material that was available then and continues to become available now).

Granted, there is a difference between what can be re-used and what will be re-used, but a source of material that I can't re-use at all isn't going to rate high on my must-buy list. No offense, mind you; just a simple matter of personal priorities.

Edit:
As an example, I never bought Deities & Demigods for the same reason. As of this morning, I have a copy on-order because the of the SRD update.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I'll pipe up! From what I know of Bendris, it would be a stretch to say that his game is true D&D any longer. If I like to tinker, he likes to rebuild. One day, I might be as ambitious as he is.

Yikes! I've been getting compliments all day. My stars must be in a good alignment or something...

Oh, and thanks!

To us tinkerers, this is a golden benefit of the OGL. But, from the standpoint of a publisher, it is not as appealing. While publishers might be excited to hear that another company is using their material in a new product, it might not be as exciting to hear that somebody like Bendris finally completed his world guide that includes content from the same publishers.

This is true, but to a degree, it isn't. For instance, let's look at Insanity (Unearthed Arcana). While I am using this rule, I've rewritten some of the components to more suit the specific world. In addition, the rules are cut-up and distributed throughout: The base rules in the Heroes' Lorebook, with Sanity Damage from spells included in the Spell Descriptions; Insanity, curing insanity and other odds and ends are included in the Veiled Lorebook (next release, not current); and the monsters that cause Sanity Damage have such information included in the Aedon Bestiary (again, the next release). So, to use Sanity from my rules, you'd have several things to contend with:

1. Drawing all of the information from the various locations scattered throughout the books.
2. The changes I made to the system.
3. The additions I made using other sources, such as Netherland/Bloodstone's Book of Broken Dreams.

So, while some publishers may not be too thrilled with it (and, to be honest, there are only a few products that are getting major re-use, most everything else is a Feat from here and a Spell from there...), it's a far cry from a clean copy extraction.

Other than that, BSF's got it down: Compiling everything into one source that can be used by my players and shared with my friends (and anyone else curious enough to look it over) is my primary motivation.

 

[thundershot]

I kinda expected this to happen at some point.

My major disappointment is putting miniatures and computer games in my Dragon. I buy Dragon for my D&D pen and paper game, not a computer game. I hope it doesn't take up any more space than it does now...

Dungeon.... I REALLY enjoyed the minigames. Fortunately, Fantasy Flight Games Horizon series gives me the fix for that. 3 adventures per issue now, and they pretty much have the whole book to do them? I hope that the adventures are shorter than they've been lately. I really wish they could squeeze in a d20 Modern adventure or two in there somewhere. Ah well, at least they appear online.


Chris

 

[Samothdm]

Dragon: I've really liked the magazine recently. I don't use, or read, everything in there, but there's always at least one or two things that interest me. Unfortunately, I think that most of those things are being moved to Dungeon As far as the changes, I think I'll just have to wait and see. It would be a shame to let a nearly 20 year subscription end.

Dungeon: I haven't really used it because I find that's really too much work to rework the adventures for my homebrew world. I don't use most of the standard races, and many of the "monsters" I use as PC races. I've also got funky things like monotheistic religions and such. So, I tend to do things like take Monte's Banewarrens and make all of the conversions at once and then just use that for multiple sessions. It's less overall work for me. Once in a while I introduce a sidetrek, but those usually come from Book of Challenges or from the Free Adventures on the WotC site.

I've also got piles and piles of old Basic, Expert, and 1E adventures I can go to. So, in short, I don't need that many new adventures.

Given that it seems all of the cool DM'ing content is now going to be in Dungeon, I guess I'll need to reconsider. My wife will be so pleased to have even more bookshelf space going toward shelving these things.

What about articles like "Campaign Components" that included both Player and DM content? Where would those articles go? What about the series you were doing on various cities like Paris, Baghdad, and others? I really liked those, although to be honest they could have been fleshed out a little more. But, where would those go? Or are you giving up unique content like that for just more feats, elf subraces, and the like?

Wil Wheaton: I'm sorry to see some of the negative comments about Wil here, but I expected it. Here's the thing: Wil is a cool guy. He is not Wesley Crusher. That was a character, people.

Wil is an actor and published writer who games. He knows a ton about gaming. More than you'd think. I remember coming back from Vegas and mentioning that I had just bought some little cardboard figures to use in my games. He asked me which ones, and I said, "Oh, they're just something I saw at the game store from Steve Jackson games..." and without prompting he shouted, "I LOVE Cardboard Heroes!".

The bonus about having him write in the magazine is that he's a professional writer with a great sense of humor. No, he's not a professional game designer, but he does have a lot of experience in the industry and has contact to people like Monte Cook and the guys from Wizards and Paizo (obviously). He is starting to DM a campaign for his kids.

I look forward to the articles. I'm pretty sure they're not going to be "back when I was on Star Trek...".

 

[Kenson]

I'd like to raise a goblet and toast Erik Mona for conceiving the Poly mini games and bringing us several years worth of really interesting games that showed what you could do with the d20 System. They were my favorite part of the magazine and I'll miss them (though I understand why this change is right for Paizo). Thanks for the goodness, Erik!

Hear, hear!