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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5484910" data-attributes="member: 82106">I don't think the format that encounters are drawn up in has much to do with the quality of adventures. In fact I would observe that the quality of ENCOUNTERS in 4e is considerably higher than that in current Paizo products. Paizo spends more effort on non-quantifiable RP aspects of major characters and in many ways their adventures are stronger on an overall level, but they really are kind of hapless at encounter design if you ask me. Both could learn from the other. Nor do I think the encounter design template that WotC uses is perfect, it probably could be improved.As for 'the vast majority of the text in those [2 pages] is simply copy-and-paste material' we will have to disagree. Many of the monsters are unique or variants, often tweaked for the specific situation. Other material seems quite needed to me and I don't see where it is cut and pasted from anywhere. The whole format seems pretty lean to me. Even if a stat block is reproduced now and then I really would rather not have to go through and find it in order to play, and of course it is ZERO COST OR EFFORT for them to paste in those stat blocks. It ain't like there's a printing cost involved... Removing them would do nothing for anyone.Paizo did 2 magazines a month back in a different time period and a different market. This is now, that was then. We cannot assume that WotC has currently the resources to do more than they are doing. In fact I'd argue that what they are doing now is prima facia evidence that they lack the resources to do what Paizo was doing before. Remember, the current DDI magazines are really a completely different beast than the print ones were. Those print mags sold advertising, DDI doesn't. We also don't know how much WotC was subsidizing Paizo's magazines with sales of their other products, so not all those resources were necessarily coming from Paizo. Sure, the magazines are one of the selling points of DDI, but not the only one, and maybe not even the major one. In fact the Compendium and other tools are IMHO the major draw for DDI. Sure, having online exclusive game content is a nice extra benefit, and MAYBE I might not pay for DDI without it, but there's still quite a bit of decent stuff coming out in the magazines. Also, there is a sort of funny thing going on here. When LOADS of the game's content starts to be only existing behind a paywall there's the danger that it will actually drive people away from the game. In a perverse way DDI may actually turn out to be bad for D&D in the long run. There are a lot of things to consider there, and WotC may not feel that it is a smart idea to put vast amounts of content in the magazines all the time. Sure people can pay a month and grab it all, but in a weird way the whole 'Insider' thing isn't really a big invitation to more casual gamers.</blockquote>

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