Dragon Editorial: Players 1, DMs 1

[Shroomy]

I finally got a chance to read the editorial for myself and I don't see this having much, if any impact; its basically an organizational change to bring the e-magazines in line with the rest of the 4e offerings. Also, given the way that Chris Youngs describes it, I don't see split subscriptions either, at least in the near future.

 

[Scribble]

Yeah he specifically states the reason they can finally do it "for real" is that they don't have to worry about killing either of the magazines subscription base, because now you get both for the one price.

 

[Shroomy]

Yeah he specifically states the reason they can finally do it "for real" is that they don't have to worry about killing either of the magazines subscription base, because now you get both for the one price.

Exactly.

 

[chaotix42]

Well, maybe it will have an effect? So far we've seen plenty of articles with information on organizations, NPCs, monsters and locations coupled with new powers and items. Now we should be getting articles with powers & items, without the spoilerish info and flavor in the same package. If true this would be great, because then I wouldn't have to say to my players "Don't read that, this, and that - skip to page xx for the powers & stuff."

*crosses fingers*

 

[Scribble]

Yeah I'm hoping we start seeing "dual" articles... Like all the player info and some "basic" info about an organization in dragon for instance, and then NPCs and "specialized" info in dungeon.

 

[Zaukrie]

Biggest changes:

FR article from Ed Greenwood
Eberron article from someone else
More player focused articles

Anything that gets us more articles is good.

 

[chaotix42]

Yeah I'm hoping we start seeing "dual" articles... Like all the player info and some "basic" info about an organization in dragon for instance, and then NPCs and "specialized" info in dungeon.

This this this! The recent Arcane Schools articles in Dragon & Dungeon are a good example of this, IMO.

 

[Croesus]

In the end, this is a silly issue: Both Dungeon and Dragon should be views on a single composite body of game information. Anything else is a failure to make the best advantage of computing and web technology, and doomed to obsolescence.

This was my first thought when I started reading this thread. When you have two different print magazines, it makes sense to focus each on a target audience. But subscribers automatically get all the articles, so why the arbitrary split?

What I would prefer to see is articles classified according to type: adventure, side trek, bestiary, campaign, class, etc. Subscribers should be able to look for articles within those categories.

Even better (I don't know if this technology exists, but it should) imagine being able to select several articles and having the system create a single PDF file with only those articles. No more searching through several issues to find a particular article, or for each article in a series. I'm not a subscriber, but I assume each article can already be downloaded as a PDF (if not, why the heck not??) so I would think combining them into one file would be possible.

Moving online is more than just eliminating the use of paper for printing - there are so many more options available, both for WOTC and their DDI customers. Why not use them?

 

[LightPhoenix]

It's about time. One of my biggest complaints with Dragon has been all of the articles for DMs that as a player I just don't use. Since Dungeon was pretty much all DM material, having half of Dragon be DM material as well really stiffed the player.

I know that previously, it was DMs that were the core of the magazine buying audience. I wonder if that has changed and there are a significant amount of non-DM players subscribing. That would certain precipitate a change that significantly benefits players over DMs.

 

[LightPhoenix]

This was my first thought when I started reading this thread. When you have two different print magazines, it makes sense to focus each on a target audience. But subscribers automatically get all the articles, so why the arbitrary split?

My guess is that there is still a plan to come out with a print book that compiles the Dungeon and Dragon articles. That's why they want to maintain the split format. Otherwise, I completely agree - why even bother to split them, just have it as a per-article basis.