[Dragon] Stop it with the fiction

[Henry]

I'll be honest -- I have skipped the fiction section of Dragon Magazine for the past two years.

Why? Because so many of the stories started as tie-ins to books that I never intend to read, and started featuring the same plots over and over again. For some reason, the fiction of dragon magazines of the 1980's caught my eye more (I remember with fondness the stories of the Little girl who was to the master of the four winds, or the two wizards who had omnipotent power over things far away, but very little power over things near (so they made a mutual protection pact - from billions of light years away), the hilarious story of the Peasant that started his own dragon meat company, and so many others that were novel (no pun intended) in concept and execution.

What do I want to see? Either another "crunchy bits" article, or fiction that breaks the mold.

 

[Zaukrie]

Personally, I prefer fiction written as articles that we can use. The monster hunters ecology articles were perfect examples of how fiction can be both crunchy and story based at the same time. While I really enjoyed the Fool Wolf stories, I don't really like most of the fiction for some reason, and I wouldn't miss it.

 

[Emiricol]

[Irrelevant Post]

Oh, man I remember that dragon meat story! That was fantastic!

[/Irrelevant Post]

 

[bolen]

As a long time subscriber of dragon (I started back on issue 77) I must say I have never read a fiction story. I would drop that and replace it with more "crunchy bits", maybe start a comic (I loved wormy) I would also like a more serious comic. Or maybe allow other D20 companies write articles. Anything would be more interesting then more poor fiction.

 

[bolen]

The return of monster ecology would be great. I'd even buy a seperate book on that.

 

[Richards]

Zaukrie, bolen - Just a quick aside here, and then I'll get back on subject. As the author of the aforementioned Monster Hunter "Ecology" articles, let me just say that I really appreciate your comments. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Dragon has started printing "Ecology" articles again, the most recent being "The Ecology of the Mummy" and "The Ecology of the Troll." Unfortunately - and bringing the discussion back to the fiction for a bit - the new format for "Ecology" articles does not include fiction (actually, that's not entirely true; you can still have a couple of "intro" paragraphs of fiction, but that's about it).

Sadly, it looks like the days of the Monster Hunters are now behind us. I, too, have often fantasized that it would be cool to do a Monster Hunters book. I've even toyed with the idea of updating all of the Monster Hunters "Ecology" articles to Third Edition. However, there are two problems with that: WotC currently does not accept printed product suggestions from freelancers, and many of the relevant monsters - osquips, jermlaine, etc. - are not Open Game Content, so I couldn't have a different company produce such a book. Even sadder, I have a couple of new Monster Hunters stories in the old "Ecology as fiction with footnotes" format (hmm, tripping over the alliteration there, aren't I? ) axed when Dragon switched to its "fictionless Ecology" format, that will probably never see the light of day. Oh well.

But, getting back to the subject of this thread, I'm of two minds about fiction in Dragon. On the one hand, if the story doesn't interest me, many times I'll just skip right past it and not really miss it. On the other hand, I've read some really good fiction in Dragon over the years. I liked the latest story, mostly because I've been reading (and enjoying) the Sembia series, and Dave Gross' short story filled in a gap about that variant vampire that had been kind of bugging me. (Plus, I got to tease him about the two instances of bad language. )

I'm somewhat of the mind that the fiction doesn't really belong there - as many have already pointed out, there are other magazines devoted to fantasy fiction - but I have to admit to having enjoyed many of the stories I've read there, and wouldn't have read had they not been there. So, I guess I'm pretty much okay with the status quo as far as fiction in Dragon goes (non-"Ecology" fiction, that is ).

Johnathan

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I don't mind the occasional short story, preferrably set in a D&D setting or with a close-to-D&D theme.

Skip the teasers, though.

Related: Why is WOTC dropping the Dragon/Dungeon websites and message boards? I understand them not wanting to pay for anything to Paizo, but somehow I'd think the value added to WOTC sales is more than the cost of maintaining those items on the website.

 

[Alzrius]

Related: Why is WOTC dropping the Dragon/Dungeon websites and message boards? I understand them not wanting to pay for anything to Paizo, but somehow I'd think the value added to WOTC sales is more than the cost of maintaining those items on the website.

Apparently not.

WotC has had a policy recently of shucking off unnecessaries to help save costs. I suppose it makes sense that if they aren't the ones publishing the magazines, they won't want to host the message boards for them also. When those boards get resurrected at Paizo, they probably will glance in on them more or less as often as they patrol these boards for relevant threads, I'd guess. The content of the magazines still reflects on D&D ultimately, and that's WotC.

 

[Greybar]

Backing up to the original topic...

So I resubscribed to Dragon a little over a year ago, having not had a subscription since maybe ... oh ... issue 150?

I always skip the fiction when reading it the first time, and I usually never make it back. About two weeks ago I was looking for something to read when I was feeling a little unwell and about to hop in a nice hot bath. So I actually bothered to read one of the fiction pieces. It was a teaser for a book, but it was essentially self-contained. Not bad.

Haven't had much reason to go read any other ones, though. I remember reading them more once upon a time (i.e. circa Dragon 100 or somesuch).

My vote nowadays would be to replace that space with more RPG articles or gaming-comics. Yes, I loved Wormy too.

Perhaps I'll change my mind after reading more fiction, but I have to get around to it first...

John

 

[Zaukrie]

Don't want to hijack, but now that I know the author of those articles has read my post, I want to say that I didn't say enough strong words about them. Thanks for writing them. I remember Monte or Anthony stating early on that they didn't want to write non-crunchy "story" books any more, because the kind of people who bought rule books to read weren't their target audience any more. I didn't know how that would translate to Dragon. Now that I know, I really miss them.