JeffB said:
Same with the Elves, and Psionist, and Dwarf and Drow, and Underdark, and blah blah blah issues. I don’t use Psionics: majority of issue is worthless.
Just grabbing the Psionics issue off of the shelf: An article about Races of the Underdark, Instant Dungeon Tiles, 101 wondrous whereabouts, an article about DM logjams and how to resolve them, Ed Greenwood's regular FR article, an article about magic masks, a fiction piece, an underdark Bestiary, and the usuals, such as Sage Advice, Nodwick and What's New....oh, and some articles about Psionics. The majority of the issue had nothing to do with Psionics...so I don't see how it would be so useless. Including the portraits page, that's 26 pages out of 112. You may not have found much of use, but I think you'd be in the minority, there.
4) Living GH Journal has gone downhill. When it was a separate entity it was very well rounded..PR classes, campaign news, Maps, Info on the City of GH, Adventure Hooks, etc. Other than “Drow” issue, it’s been a front for more prestige classes lately. How about some articles on GH history, creation Myth, Locales, Lore, rumors, etc. Other than Alan’s article on GH magic items (which while a great article Alan, and I appreciate the work was not terribly useful if you didn’t have all those books). What’s happened to the Ghost Tower of Inverness? What’s Rary up to? Older Dragon Mags supplied this kind of info (either Gary’s stuff, or the Campaign Classics series in the early 200’s).
Well, I think that does a disservice to Erik Mona, who I think has been doing an excellent job, but to each his own. While I think it was better as a standalone magazine, I think some of the material, such as the Death Knights articles and the articles on Onwal and others have been excellent. Your mileage obviously varies.
I also think it's unfair to expect LGJ to publish material that's not on it's charter. The LG triads decide things like what Rary's up to, and what's been going on in the greater Flanaess, not the LGJ, which just reports some occasional material. What the LGJ has been doing is excellent, IMHO.
5) Silicon Sorcery. Aye…this needs to go. An excuse to put it more feats and spells, etc. How many people use this?, really? I don’t even read it.
I might use this, if it weren't so, IMHO, poorly done. Having played Asheron's Call for 2.5 years, I was confused when I read the article that not only showed little grasp of day to day life in Dereth, but was mechanically useless, from what I could tell. An article on Portal Magic would be interesting...an article on 'nerfing' or robes would be funny. These articles are generally neither useful or entertaining to me.
7) Sage Advice takes up WAY too much space per issue. Especially when the questions can be answered by reading the rulebook (remember “why does an ½ Orc get a total –2 (or whatever) to his ability scores?” Do we need a paragraph explaining that? There’s usually a question or two like that each issue..How about “read the rulebook..page XX” (or don’t even bother putting it in).
Gotta disagree with you, here. Read the 'See Invisible' spell, and try and figure it out. Read the Shilealegh spell, and then check for the long, bitter thread about it on the Rules forum. The sage at least tries to put them in perspective and give a clue about their reasoning. Sage Advice is consistently valuable to me, even if I do agree sometimes the answers seem obvious, sometimes they are deceptively not.
12) One thing the old Mags did was expand upon released product..though in recent years it seems to be more of “stuff from the cutting room floor”. How about articles like we saw about the Rod of Seven Parts box (where they gave advice on tying the box set into the various campaign settings). How about an expansion to the Sunless Citadel perhaps with a short but detailed history of the place? A 3E Perspective on Sigil? A mini-adventure that features a new critter in the MM2? More mini-campaigns (not necessarily having to do with a certain campaign world, but certain themes…Invasion, natural disasters, Political (or monster territory) uprisings, the fall of a decadent society, genocide, planes/dimensions/alternate timelines colliding, etc.etc.
This sounds an awful lot like the tie-in material we already recieve, honestly. The extra elemental material when RttToEE came out, for example. The irony is that this sounds like the themed material you earlier mentioned you didn't like. It's all in the eye of the beholder, really. If I didn't want to use Sigil or Sunless Citadel, they'd be just as useless as an article about Psions are to you.
To answer your questions, Johnny:
I think humor is like MSG...best used sparingly to add flavor. I don't dislike it, but I don't want it to overwhelm the regular content.
I like reviews, but I can see the concern some might have. I would like them, but if you were to restrict them, how about some of the stuff Dragon used to do in the day, such as reviews of non-rpgs (like Elfenland and Dragon's Gold, for example) and rpg-related computer games. Dragon used to have some great reviews a while back...but I understand it's a thorny subject. I'd like it, but I understand if it can't be put there.
Miniatures coverage: teaching me to paint is good. Showing me tricks of using minatures, clever marking schemes and things to do with miniatures are all fine. Chainmail and rules articles are not, to me. I read the Chainmail articles for the settings, but ignored the rules material and scenarios.
'non-D&D' articles I like are the historical articles, the music and film articles (even though I massively disagreed with the authors at various points, they were fun reads), and game-running articles are good, too. Anything that might enhance my game is good. Your judgement has been good so far...suprise me.
Previews of new material on one page is good. Articles are not, to me. I'll buy it or not, but I don't want three or more precious pages dedicated to redundant content. If I'm going to buy it, I don't want to read it three months earlier...if I'm not, it's of no use to me. The 'getting ready for the realms' material and the D&D movie articles were big wastes of paper for me. Others might feel differently.
