Dragon Articles - Summer of 09 v Winter of 10

[Pseudopsyche]

I was just perusing the tables of contents for Dragon and for Dungeon, and I noticed a definite trend in the balance of crunch versus fluff. If you look at Dungeon 173, the most recent complete issue, we see three adventures, a few how-to columns and articles (Dungeoncraft, Ruling Skill Challenges, the Adventuring Armies article), and then four pieces that contain either half fluff or almost all fluff: Ecology of the Mithral Dragon, Eye on the Realms, Explore Fairhaven, and Campaign Workbook. It's Dragon that's almost entirely short articles chock-full of powers, with some Essentials and Role articles offering player advice.

Even the crunch articles usually have a brief fluffy introduction, but the strategy seems clear to me. The DM gets most of the fluff, since the DM has to decide what story elements to include in the campaign world. The players gets mostly crunch, which they can run by the DM, and which the DM is encouraged to incorporate into their campaign. Perhaps the idea is that crunch is easier for the DM to incorporate (and reskin), if you're going to create the expectation that DMs should say yes to including whatever players fancy from Dragon.

 

[Reigan]

People may have asked for shorter articles, doesn't mean they have to like what they got. Having said that, with the format of 4e, as it expands, more classes etc. it becomes harder to cover them all (especially as powers are class specific) unless the articles are shorter.

Personally, I would prefer articles to be at least 6 pages long.

My main gripes are the quality is poor, does nobody proof read before publishing (although they do at least try and fix the errors later) and the links don't work for the first 24 hours. Perhaps Wizards should stop firing people every 5 minutes.

 

[Tallifer]

On the other hand, I usually found it tedious flipping past/scrolling past the pages of boring fluff that preceded the few pages of good stuff in the old days. The four or five paragraphs explaining the concept which they give nowadays are enough for me.

Kord: I get him. God of war and muscle-bound fighter-types. Interesting powers though. There is a half-orc priest of Kord in our party and he has a blast roleplaying it without any need for ten pages of theology and cosmology and liturgy.


(Now I admit that I do not get wizards of evocation at all. But thank goodness they did not pad an already crappy pile of powers (save for Magical Debris and one other) with pages of flufftastic justification for their crappiness.)

Just giving another perspective.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

This time I think I'm using those words more efficiently by having them divide up and explain the meaning of each section of powers: "faction X focuses on harnessing the energies of nature," etc... So if my experience is any guide, we'll see the quality of the shorter articles improve as people learn to work in the small format.

The article I was talking about in that earlier post came out today, and one of the posters at the WotC boards seems to agree with me that authors are getting better at adapting to the shorter format. Hopefully this trend will continue (on my part, that'll require getting another Insider assignment!)

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Web Enhancements.

So remember the old web enhancements?

WotC used to release short stuff for free to supplement the game and promote new products. They were fun, useful, and I have all of them saved to a hard drive for future use...

...Annnnd when Dungeon and Dragon came out there was a fear that they were just "paid versions of the old free web enhancements".

Now, I'm not a subscriber, but this caught my attention as a red flag that perhaps, and only perhaps...I don't know enough to actually say that this IS, is this basically that fear being realized?

Are they churning out "web enhancements" as the primary product for Dungeon and Dragon?

Again, I don't know for sure...but I CAN imagine a business plan for the mags being "cancel the print ones...provide similar content to them...then transition to the old stuff we gave out for free and charge for it".


I totally admit that I speak from a position of ignorance beyond what I've read here, but what I read did raise that concern. Do people have thoughts on my being either "spot on" or "totally off" or somewhere in between?

 

[avin]

Reality: WotC is a company that responds to customer feedback.

Maybe they didn't understand completely what the feedback means.

Shorter quality doesn't mean less quality. I'm less and less compelled reading all those fluffless powers. What's the purpose of them? Just load them on my CB and I'll be satisfied.

By the way... do they really respond to customer feedback? The last mini sets have been, as far as I know, a big sucess. Getting cheap Balors and Goristros was a blast for a lot of customers. Moving back to blind, well, it doesn't seem what people seem to want on mostly boards I read...

 

[Scribble]

I hardly ever read the dragon articles, (as I primarily DM) but the dungeon ones have been great- shorter or not.

Are they churning out "web enhancements" as the primary product for Dungeon and Dragon?

I totally admit that I speak from a position of ignorance beyond what I've read here, but what I read did raise that concern. Do people have thoughts on my being either "spot on" or "totally off" or somewhere in between?

Eh something in between I'd say.

I'm fine with this though, especially if the choice is pretty much that, or they stop doing anything on the site.