Dungeon 140, 141 and 142 have no FR or Eberron content

[Lonely Tylenol]

I have to admit that the new adventure path has me interested in Dungeon for the first time in a long while.

To heck with FR and Eberron, more pirates!

The first scenario was none too shabby, looks to easy enough to port to other settings.

The Auld Grump
*EDIT* While Dungeon mentioning their desire to print more FR and Eberron stuff did not result in more submissions, I would be willing to bet that Savage Tide does result in more piratey submissions.

I'm currently running the Age of Worms, and I'm not reading the Savage Tide adventures on purpose on the chance that I might actually get to play in that campaign. Of course, that means that a big chunk of Dungeon is material that's useless to me as a DM. That means that I ought to demand that they stop running the adventure path so that I get my money's worth out of the magazine, right? Or, wait...

 

[Nightfall]

Um,

If i was snarky, it was just in fun. But in any case I apologize.

James,

So am I right about how you decide Dungeon mods?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

We commission the adventures in the Adventure Path, assigning them to authors we've worked with before. For the majority of the remaining adventures, we use freelancers who submit their adventures to the magazine. We get about 60 or so submissions for adventures a month, of which we choose the best two. We look for many different things in an adventure, including (but not limited to) how interesting the adventure's story is, how many cliches the adventure avoids, what kind of monsters and villians are featured, the author's rules knowledge, the quality of the map turnovers, the respect the author gives D&D traditions, new monsters/magic/spells that are fun and creative, the quality of the writing, and the overall creativity of the adventure. In order to get published, the adventure has to excell at most (if not all) of these criteria for all three of us who work on editing the magazine.

Do you provide some sort of scoring system or written feedback to indicate where a rejected adventure was weak and how the author could improve further submissions?

 

[Nightfall]

*still think the dart board method has its perks*

 

[James Jacobs]

Do you provide some sort of scoring system or written feedback to indicate where a rejected adventure was weak and how the author could improve further submissions?

Generally, no we don't. We just don't have time. If an adventure reaches the manuscript stage and we read it and decide we don't want it after all, we do take the time to provide some feedback, but for the vast majority of the submissions that we reject, we send out form rejection letters. That said, we do encourage our authors to talk among themselves on our mesageboards, and we often pop in there to provide overall advice and feedback now and then.

There's just not enough time to craft personalized feedback for everyone, alas.

 

[James Jacobs]

*still think the dart board method has its perks*

Oh... we use darts. We just don't use them to pick adventures.

 

[GVDammerung]

The dirty little secret at Dungeon . . . actually it is neither dirty or little . . . is that Greyhawk is getting a very good response from readers. FR fans can get their fix from any number of Wotc products and thus they don’t purely need FR in Dungeon. And when FR is there, FR fans tend to take it for granted - as their due. Greyhawk, on the other hand, is pleasing Greyhawk fans with no where else to go and is capturing new readers. That last point bears repeating - Greyhawk in Dungeon is capturing new readers and FR, nor anything else, is not.

Maybe, Greyhawk is capturing new readers because it has become “exotic” by some measure for being out of print since 2000's Living Greyhawk Gazateer. Maybe, Greyhawk is capturing new readers because between the APs in Dungeon and the Core Beliefs and Demonomicon in Dragon, Paizo has a one-two punch of high quality material that just happens to be founded in Greyhawk. Maybe with 3X inaugrating by some measure “dungeon-punk” FR just looks tired and old to a lost of people. Maybe FR just sucks and always has and people are finally waking up and smelling the treacle. Whatever. Greyhawk expands readership. FR does not. Business says Greyhawk wins.

Greyhawk also wins because FR fans will not stop buying Dungeon or Dragon for the lack of FR content. They will gripe but their money keeps on flowing. So, their voices are more an irritant than anything else. And every so often, just so things don’t get out of hand, FR will get thrown a bone. The rest of the time FR will just get boned. At such times, one can almost appreciate Vlad Tepes’ taste in entertainment. It is fun to watch the FR fans squeal. Squeal FR fans squeal! And can you writhe a little too? Good.

Erik! James! The FR fans are doing that thing again! Time to bone’em. I mean give’em the bone. I mean throw them a bone. Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. Boneheads.

 

[Mouseferatu]

...the quality of the map turnovers...

Urgh. That knocks my future chances down a bit.

As a cartographer, I make an excellent writer.

 

[helium3]

We commission the adventures in the Adventure Path, assigning them to authors we've worked with before. For the majority of the remaining adventures, we use freelancers who submit their adventures to the magazine. We get about 60 or so submissions for adventures a month, of which we choose the best two. We look for many different things in an adventure, including (but not limited to) how interesting the adventure's story is, how many cliches the adventure avoids, what kind of monsters and villians are featured, the author's rules knowledge, the quality of the map turnovers, the respect the author gives D&D traditions, new monsters/magic/spells that are fun and creative, the quality of the writing, and the overall creativity of the adventure. In order to get published, the adventure has to excell at most (if not all) of these criteria for all three of us who work on editing the magazine.

Thanks for the timely response.

Can you elaborate on "the quality of the map turnovers" and "the respect the author gives D&D traditions?"

 

[ericlboyd]

Oh... we use darts. We just don't use them to pick adventures.

Come on James, you can admit it: darts are used for deadline enforcement. ;-)

--Eric