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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 768147" data-attributes="member: 172">I don't hate Dragon. I do find some of the trends disturbing,. They quality was very high for the first 10 or so issues after the 3e issue, but it seems to have gone down since then.To insinuate that since I am critical of Dragon implies that I hate dragon is erroneous. I like Dragon (an in fact, if you do a quick search, you will find <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37163&" target="_blank">I praised issue #304</a>), I just seems to me that some trends threaten to make the magazine that is less and less useful, and I hope that by speaking up I will, in the end, have a more useful magazine. Jesse Decker and Matt Sernett, and the various contributers have done some good work; I know they can do it.Disclaimer, you did ask what I like, so I would ask readers to not pounce on me for being selfish or unrealistic. (Not that I think I am, BID.)<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The Return of the Annual sans advertorials - If you dig in the publishers forum, you will find a statement by Johnny Wilson that says the reason the annual went away is because people complained about it. He rather missed the point, I think. The thing people were complaining about was the fact that the d20 issue was composed almost exclusively of material reprinted from d20 products. In essence, it was an ad. The Annual needs to come back and it needs to be all new material. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Less low brow marketing - There is a thread about the latest cover, so I won't presume to repeat it here. Further, in addition to better covers, I really think Dragon could do without the sensational declarations on the cover. That's just so grocery-store. This is not the enquirer. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Less Fiction - Preferably none. If you want fantasy fiction, there are magazines out there like SF/F dedicated to this. If there is fiction, it should be game related. Dragon is a D&D magazine. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Less "Family Hostile" Content - To be fair, an editorial in the last Dungeon indicates that Paizo intends to ease up a little on this, which is good. Paizo's usual defense is "our marketing data shows that a very small portion of our audience is under 18." Okay, but do they presume that people over 18 want this sort of content. I don't, and I am far from the only person here to express such. It would be different if this was a stand alone product we were talking about here, like the BoVD. You could buy it if the content pleases you, skip it otherwise. But this is a Magazine, and I did not subrcibe to Fantasmagora or something. As I said, Paizo has promised to lighten up here; let's just hope they follow through. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Lighten up on the "Themes" - Theme issues seem to be every issue now. This has multiple problems. First off, themes often center around an upcoming product. This gives readers the impression that they are paying for a marketing hook, perhaps rightly so. One or two articles that tie into the product is okay, but that should be it. Second, if you don't like the theme and the theme is very specific, then very little of that issue would be useful to you. Again, this is a case of "this wouldn't be a problem if we weren't talking about a magazine." But we are. Third, it seems as if the theme heavy issues have the weaker/less useful article. It almost seems as if in coming up with enough articles to support an issue-wide theme, they have to dredge the bottom of the barrel for articles. I think it is a good policy to select the best articles, not the ones that fit the theme. As always, when speaking of this issue, I point back to the halfling theme issue as an example of what to do. It had a couple of nice articles on halflings, but it also had other strong articles in the issue, such as two very nice elemental articles. What I would like to see here is: keep themes light. Further, don't insist on a theme every issue. A potpourri is nice now and then. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Less "campaign specific" material - Again, to be fair, Dragon has improved here, and most articles that adress the realms or Greyhawk are fairly adaptable. That said, I don't think these articles need to be compulsory at all. Back when this was a major issue (I think it was pre-Paizo), Dragons defense was the the realms are the most played campaign. That may be true in terms of plurality, but the majority of players do not play the Realms; more play homebrews, and there are more people overall that do not play the realms. That being the case, the more generic and adaptable the material is, the better. [/list=1]</li> </ol></blockquote>

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