Dragon Editorial: Players 1, DMs 1

[Scribble]

It would be kind of neat if they could sort of re-design the site so that information/tools for DMs are in one area and all flow together, and information/tools for players are all in another.

Not to prevent anyone from accessing things, but to collect the various tools in more logical easy to use ways.

 

[CubeKnight]

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?

It is possible. We're currently working on something similar where I work at.

 

[Echohawk]

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.

The answeris "very much so" for one of my gaming groups (just the 4e one), but only because Dragon and the Character Builder are part of the same package. Three of my players have subscribed to the DDI purely to get access to the excellent Character Builder. These are not people who would ever have subscribed to Dragon in print. Nor, in truth, do they currently read Dragon articles, unless a power or a feat that pops up in the CB comes from one of those articles.

if Dragon becomes clearly more player-centric, I can definitely see these folks reading more magazine articles, and thus getting more value for their current DDI subscription. If the eventual plan is to move to a tiered pricing structure for DDI, where the tools (Character Builder/Campaign Tools) and the other content (Dragon/Dungeon/Compendium) are sold separately, now is a good time to get DDI subscribers who are primarily players hooked on the other content. Keeping up the current tight integration between the digital content and the tools will also help.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I would settle for links in the Compendium to articles in the magasines and the option to search titles in the mags in the Compendium.