Dragon Articles - Summer of 09 v Winter of 10

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I present two examples

Channel Divinity from August 09: Bahamut
Channel Divinity from January 10: Kord

Bahamut is a 10 page article that presents a wide variety of crunchy bits (powers, feats, a paragon path, and an epic destiny) and a good bit of fluff (many backgrounds, how one might become a follower, the duties of a follower). This article is a fantastic resource for any player who might wish to play a champion of Bahamut or a DM looking for ideas.

The Kord article presents 14 powers over 3 pages.

Am I missing something here. The Bahamut article is a prime example of what Dragon can do. It broadens the game for both player and DM, provides both crunch (for the number crunchers, which I am) and great RP hooks (for the RPers, which I am). In every way the article presents what it is to be called to Bahamut

• The Backgrounds provide interesting hooks for a player
• The Four Virtues provide guidance to how a player might play such a character
• The PP points to the war between Bahamut and Tiamat
• The ED provides a great hook for an epic game (restoring a god)

The Kord article can barely be mentioned. It has nothing to offer save numbers. Who in their right mind things this is an article at all? The purpose, in my mind, is to simply add filler to the compendium. The article offers no insight into Kord, his followers, the ideals of the god.

The change from Bahamut style articles to Kord style articles is a crime. Mechanics are important, but an RPG is more then just mechanics. If I was teaching an RPG class at college, I'd ask the writer of the Kord article to submit a complete article.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes, you are missing something - they decided that Dragon and Dungeon needed shorter articles to provide more variety. I suspect that was based on feedback.

If you really don't care about Bahamut or running Scales of War, a large section of the respective Dragon & Dungeon issues that month were irrelevant.

I personally liked the long articles. I can accept shorter adventures, especially if this improves the story/combat ratio. I also don't mind occassionally short, focused articles. But the long articles also provided good content and I liked them. A better mix would be appreciated.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I would like a mix of longer articles (and that Bahamut one is a great example of something that is now lacking) and some short class- or item-based articles.

I am happy with short adventures or even single encounters or delves simply because I think WotC has done a terrible job with its adventures in Dungeon and also the hard copy versions. However, the shorter stuff is normally quite good.

 

[Riley]

I really liked the longer articles. I don't bother to read these 2-3page things that are not much more than a small set of powerz.

Heck, I hardly bother to go to wizards.com/ddi since the change in format.

It's not a protest thing; it's just a lack of interest. Good thing for them that I still have a few months left prepaid on my subscription. Maybe they'll improve in the meantime.

 

[Wik]

Hell, I have a DDI sub, and I usually have to remind myself to check out the dragon/dungeon material, I find it sucks so bad. Mostly, I just use my sub for the CB.

 

[avin]

Another DDI subscriber against shorter articles here.

All the good fluffers were laid off and crunch reins sovereign? Why wasting space with crunch you could just add to CB and Compendium?

 

[TerraDave]

In theory I prefer shorter articles, both to allow for more variety and the limited time I have to look at them.

But 14 powers for a DDI subsrcriber--who of course has all the powers in the compendium--at this stage of the game is a little pointless.

 

[deadsmurf]

In a perfect world, there would be about half the magazine with these short 1-4 page articles with powers, items etc
And then about half of it to longer more in depth articles (which works out to about 2 or 3 articles a month I guess)

Dungeon is getting it about right, format-wise right now, though I would still like Monster-articles, like the ones that used to regularly appear in Dragon.

 

[Nai_Calus]

Yeah, these new crunch-only flavorless articles are utterly pointless and useless. Just stuff them in the Compendium/CB and note what got added each month. They don't even qualify as articles, just bland lists of crunch.

CD: Bahamut was good; CD: Raven Queen was good, and I hate the RQ. Those were useful articles that helped flesh out characters devoted to them.

This new format? This is useless. This tells me nothing. Hell, unless it presents must-have powers that are actually worth taking over other options, it's doubly useless. And it's annoying, because it strongly hints that we'll never see any real meat for the gods that didn't get good coverage before the change. We know more about the Raven Queen and her followers than you can shake a stick at, same with Bahamut. We still know jack-all about the rest and at this point it seems unlikely we ever will.

(I haven't read the Kord article since I've been mooching off a friend for the rare articles these days I want to read, but it sounds exactly like the Traveler article, which was also complete crap.)

You know, since the change I don't think there's been a single thing in Dragon I wanted to use. Little anemic dabs of fluff. Bland crunch, none of which I've felt a need or even desire to use. Despite their 'something for everyone each month' they claimed, this month doesn't have anything that applies to any of my current characters. Derp?

I really wish they'd drop this and go back to the old longer articles. I don't mind a month with nothing that applies to my current characters if it has good longer articles with nice fluff I can enjoy just plain reading, or even use to inspire a new character.

This? Meh. I have the coupon from the holiday PHB set for 12 bucks off a year's sub, and I can't even bring myself to use it, and I have a serious CB addiction. But since I haven't been interested in even the crunch in Dragon lately I have this 'meh, who cares, I'll sub for a month when PHB3 comes out to get the content for that and whatever I missed in the meantime' attitude.

I want the fluff back. Fluff is good. Fluff is enjoyable. That Warlock article in 381 was good, because it was nice and fluffy. Bland crunchfests? Meh. I'll get it later. No need to read it now.

 

[ExploderWizard]

All the good fluffers were laid off and crunch reins sovereign?

Dude you broke me!

The economic downturn even hits the pron industry.