Dungeon 117

[jester47]

Maybe I am just being contrary, but what is the point of doing Eberron adventures if they don't take advantage of the facets of Eberron that set it apart from other settings?!

Lightning rails, airships and warforges are what make Eberron unique. I can find generic adventures anywhere, if you are going to do adventures set in Eberron for goodness sake at least take advantage of the medium!

Where are the high flying train robberies & continent spanning adventures? Where is the swashbuckling noir pulp adventure we were promised?

Generic adventures be damned, if you are going to do it...do it right!

I agree... Where there IS Eberron in the bread I want it really Eberrony!

 

[jester47]

Whom does it hurt if those adventures are set in, say, Furyondy rather than some author-invented nation from his home campaign?

How about the Eberron DM who's thinking of running it but doesn't know where to place it? They have no clue where Furyondy is or the background flavor of it, so why include it? What does it help? Why the need to mention where it takes place at all? Why not have sidebars with suggestions for various compaign settings, including Greyhawk?

See an Eberron DM can place the Furyondy adventure werever he thinks it would fit best. Its not about finding a realm in Eberron that is analogous. Furyondy's background and flavor are superfluous. Its what in the industry is called a placeholder name. Somthing you can change easily enough that really doesn't bear on the story. Sidebars take up space, you only want to use one if its absolutly nescessary. Its eaiser to let people make thier own choices rather than try to second guess how someone might have changed a setting. If you have not noticed Roleplayers are a pretty free thinking crowd. Dungeon is better saving its breath for other things, and to a magazine, space is breath.

My informed opinion is that the majority of our adventures are useful to the majority of D&D gamers no matter what setting those players use. Our research tells us that most of our readers don't use _any_ of the official settings.

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't provide setting specific material, why would someone who uses a campaign setting use your magazine if they have to do a lot of work to convert it?

I think what he means to say here is that of the many people that do buy the mag and use it, most of them use a homebrew and just adapt the adventure to their setting. He has a BIG survey that tell him this.

You could make life so much easier for us and increase the value of your adventures by dedicating just a half a page or so in every issue. It doesn't seem like too much to ask for.

If you do that for every adventure for both FR and Eberron, thats 6 pages lost to converting the thing. Its better to let the DM use thier imagination and sidebar the "offending" FR or Eberron adventure.

Aaron.

 

[Alzrius]

Technically, any adventure that has a cleric of Pelor in it is a Greyhawk adventure

Hmm, I was never very sure if things went that far...I mean, Jozan in the Iconics novels is a cleric of Pelor, but we won't be seeing New Koratia on the Greyhawk maps, right? Nor the original Adventure Path (The Sunless Citadel through Bastion of Broken Souls) despite the same thing. It's interesting to ponder if using even the "basic D&D" pantheon makes an adventure necessarily Greyhawk by default, since there are not only no other connections, but sometimes also other things that seem to fly in the face of it being GH.

Plus, the setting has been around forever, and if you don't play Greyhawk (I suspect most players use a homebrew world), you have to convert all the proper nouns, anyway.

Which seems to be the arguement for saying that such "generic" adventures aren't truly Greyhawk, but rather they just used the Greyhawk deity names as placeholders.

And the ties between Chainmail and Greyhawk are tenuous at best (about on order with the ties between Faerun and the events of the "Double Diamond Triangle" serial Forgotten Realms novel, which took place on an entirely different continent. A "core" Chainmail hardcover that would have provided more concrete ties never came out, so I don't think your point is wholly accurate.

Not having read the Double Diamond Triangle Saga yet, I can't comment on the accuracy of the analogy (though I just got eight of the nine books, so it won't be long!), but the ties between the Sundered Empire (as it was called in Dragon #315) and Greyhawk seem few, but strong. For one thing, the drow faction of the Sundered Empire is explicitly stated to be from Greyhawk's Vault of the Drow (see Dragon #298). Likewise, the dead god Stratis is the brother of Heironeous and Hextor. We know it has the same planar setup (see Dragon #296) also. Finally, the map of the Sundered Empire matches with the one of the entire continent of Oerik. So it seems clear that the two settings, while distant, are linked quite concretely.

 

[Erik Mona]

P.S.- Erik, while you are here...don't you think it is high time to do a 3E update of Fedifensor?

Yes.

Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dragon & Dungeon

 

[Erik Mona]

>>>
Hmm, I was never very sure if things went that far...I mean, Jozan in the Iconics novels is a cleric of Pelor, but we won't be seeing New Koratia on the Greyhawk maps, right? Nor the original Adventure Path (The Sunless Citadel through Bastion of Broken Souls) despite the same thing. It's interesting to ponder if using even the "basic D&D" pantheon makes an adventure necessarily Greyhawk by default, since there are not only no other connections, but sometimes also other things that seem to fly in the face of it being GH.
>>>

A point of clarification.

I should have said "Any adventure with a cleric of Pelor *PUBLISHED BY ME WHILE I EDIT DUNGEON* is a Greyhawk adventure." I'm already using the pantheon, because it is part of the core rules. I can either make the brief background bits and city names and such conform to the setting as well, or I can choose to ignore the fact that I know Greyhawk like the back of my hand and can effortlessly make the material useful for a sizable portion of the readers, at no cost to the majority who will just convert it to their campaigns anyway (and God bless 'em for it).

It's a clear choice for me, folks. And an easy one.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dragon & Dungeon

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

It's all whining to my ears....

Hello,

My four-years-running campaign is set in the Realms, which means I tend to favor issues of Dungeon with Realms-based adventures in them.

That said, I’d be lying if I claimed my campaign didn’t benefit hugely from non-Realms adventures found in Dungeon, from which I’ve gleaned several useful NPCs’, magic items, maps and plot ideas, as well as entire (high level) adventures I’ve been sitting on for a couple years (such as The Lich Queen’s Beloved and The Storm Lord’s Keep). The low, mid and high level adventure setup has only made the magazine more useful, as my game just went Epic last week.

I’ve found that it’s simply far too easy to pick and choose bits of Dungeon adventures for use in my campaign, as well as to convert adventures set in any other world for use in my Realms campaign (this last being an almost laughably easy task, as it usually involves little more than a simple substitution of city and deity names).

There’s really no compelling reason to justify complaints to the contrary.

Thus, I don’t give a damn what world Dungeon’s adventures are set in; as it’s all useful regardless.

Thanks for all your (and your team’s) hard work, Erik!

J. Grenemyer

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Olgar's $.02 ...

I applaud Erik & his team for the work they've been doing; I really love the content & format of the current Dungeon and they plans they have for it for the future. I'm lazy, so I mix a lot of Dungeon and other published material into my campaign. Generic is great, Greyhawk is great -- even though my current campaign is set in FR, I often find it easier to adapt the Greyhawk material to fit my campaign than the dedicated FR adventures.

That said, I really liked the fact that the recent Eberron adventure included the sidebar about setting the adventure in other settings. I think that's a useful feature for every adventure -- a brief paragraph for a generic adventure about adapting it to FR and Eberron, for example, while a FR adventure might have a paragraph for adapting it to Greyhawk and Eberron.

Keep up the good work, Erik!

 

[Alzrius]

A point of clarification.

I should have said "Any adventure with a cleric of Pelor *PUBLISHED BY ME WHILE I EDIT DUNGEON* is a Greyhawk adventure."

Thanks for that Erik. As it stands, I think you're doing a fantastic job with Dungeon. I never thought I'd see the day when I preferred Dungeon to Dragon as my favorite D&D magazine, but you've made it happen. Keep up the great work, and I can't wait to see your work on Dragon also!

 

[Steel_Wind]

My .02.

On the whole Eberron thing...

I won't buy it, I don't like it and that is not going to change. That's me. Then again, I feel the same way about the Forgotten Realms too (difference is, I will buy some FR hardcovers for the crunch as its good crunch. That is not going to happen with Eberron for me).

HOWEVER, I accept that they want to grow an Eberron fan base and I am able to put up with the Eberron slew of stuff as this rollout occurs.

I will say that the warforged create a certain feel to an adventure which screams "this is a pain in the ass" to convert - even if it isn't. It's just a feel that comes from the race as the concept is so strong.

I don't like Greyhawk much - never did really. But I *am* looking forward to the 4 map issues and will enthusiastically collect those maps and be proud to own them. Why? Well...I don't really know why. Part nostalgia, part "neat gaming stuff". Do I need another reason?

And I also thought Mad God's Key was an excellent adventure. And I loved Maure Castle - even though there is not a chance at all that I will ever run it. So while I am not a Greyhawk fan, bring it on Erik - I'm still enjoying it.

My point is that while I agree with the sentiment in much of this thread, I can overlook the settings in Dungeon to adapt for us in my campaign - and do so. And often I enjoy it even when I am not converting it or running them. I'm a collector.

I also find that of all the "settings" that one can potentially employ, Greyhawk does seem to be the most easily adapted to other campigns and homebrews. That is the very best reason to set "generic" adventures in Dungeon within Greyhawk. So I'm fine with that too.

I expect that the map issues are a preface to providing some campaign world context to the new Adventure Path, which, like Adventure Path 1, is "officially" set in Greyhawk.

And that's pretty cool with me too.

I am a long time supporter of Dungeon, since #1. I liked it in the past - and I like it now without Polyhedron even more.

My only complaint is that I really DID like the layout which used the "core book" layout to the magazine. It made it seem more "official" and I really miss it. (I know - it also ate up page space. *sigh*). Bring the core book look back!

Carry on Erik. I'm with ya and I'm buying every month.

Lastly - to the poster who suggested DragonLance was "dead on the vine". *Ahem* last I checked, there was an offical hardcover from WotC for DL 3.5 and a briskly selling number of full color hardcovers from Sovereign Press. The new War of the Lance hardcover is the best gaming product I've ever bought in the past 26 years. The first DragonLance 3.5 adventure module Key of Destiny has sold out (at a time when adventures in the industry just aren't selling) and is into a second press run. DL novels continue to sell extremely well.

Fact is, DragonLance products have a very active current fan base. Of all of the message area on the Wtoc boards, DragonLance is easily the busiest and the traffic there almost equals the cumulative totals for all other "other settings" combined. That does not take into account dragonlance.com or our own website - which gets over 2 million hits a month.

If Greyhawk fans got the kind of support from WotC and Sov Press that DragonLance currently does, they'd be overjoyed.

 

[Krypter]

I'd just like to chime in that Erik's inclusion of Greyhawk elements is why I subscribed to Dungeon. Greyhawk is old-school fantasy without all the weird shiny bells-and-whistles of newer settings. I still like FR, Planescape, and Eberron, but sometimes you just want vanilla ice cream, period. Generic and Greyhawk adventures can be quickly plonked anywhere. Eberron adventures need a lot of conversion. And having pages upon pages of conversion notes would be boring and eat up valuable space.

I've played mostly in the 90s and always thought the setting was cool. If new players are introduced to Greyhawk via Dungeon, they too will like it, even if they play D&D Online.

The new greyhawk maps showing all kinds of (in)famous locations are a great idea. Keep up the good work!