DUNGEON: A suggestion

[Emirikol]

Erik:

Thanks for the hard work. It's appreciated, even though we all don't know how to show it.

I was wondering why DRAGON doesn't include a sample character with each of the Prestige Classes they present in the magazine and realized that this might be fertile ground for DUNGEON.

Instead of re-writing the article, you could include a character as a side-bar listing OPTION to insert into a scenario. I think this could add a lot of potential content pages to each adventure without having to increase the size of the magazine or change the scenario much.

Would this work?

One other suggestion might be to have a half-page area where a DM could write-in the typical changes that he would make for his campaign. For example: Setting: ____ Gods:____ Fit into the Major Plot: ____ Character names:_____ other?


Anybody else got any DUNGEON-related ideas to help get more content into the magazine (without using the "Poly.." word)?

Jay H





..

 

[Umbran]

Add pages of content without making the thing longer?

Note that you cannot assume that a person who has Dungeon also has the Dragon from which the class comes. That means some significant amounts of reprinting, which seems a bit wasteful.

 

[Erik Mona]

Thanks for the kind words, Jay.

I generally try to avoid reprinting stuff from Dragon in my magazine. It's not fair to assume that my readers have that old material, and reprinting stuff a good chunk of my readers already have isn't always the best use of the space.

The notes idea is an interesting one, but I think I'd rather see it as some kind of pdf you could download from our site and print out on index-card sheets of paper. That way, you could fill in all of the info yourself, and keep a little reference catalogue of Dungeon adventures you'd like to run in the future. The cards could have a space for issue number to help you grab the correct magazine from your collection.

Back in the day, I used to write in my magazines and modules. My copy of Queen of the Spiders, one of the most valuable superadventures in the history of D&D, has the hit point totals of about half of the bad guys crossed out in pencil. Between then and now, however, I've become a bibliophile who can't imagine defacing his books or magazines. Based on several threads and letters, however, a lot of readers would prefer to be able to scribble notes in the magazine's margins and perhaps put big "X" marks over the faces of enemies slain by the party.

There's a basic emotional value to that sort of thing, to be sure.

My ears are always open to people with suggestions for how we might improve the magazine. Thanks for starting this thread. I hope lots of other folks will pop in with their suggestions, too.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine

 

[Erik Mona]

Double (post) your pleasure.

 

[Emirikol]

The notes idea is an interesting one, but I think I'd rather see it as some kind of pdf you could download from our site and print out on index-card sheets of paper. That way, you could fill in all of the info yourself, and keep a little reference catalogue of Dungeon adventures you'd like to run in the future. The cards could have a space for issue number to help you grab the correct magazine from your collection.

See, now that I could definatley go for. More stuff on the website would be great. I've heard people recommend moving the discussions over there too, but I don't think they'd get the exposure.

Good to see the Dragon article BTW. Nice working of Vathris, Sulm and Itar in there. At first, I thought you said Su-Feng and I had to read it again (through margarita-soaked eye-redness at that)...imagine that can-o'worms...

jh

 

[Wurm1234]

See, now that I could definatley go for. More stuff on the website would be great. I've heard people recommend moving the discussions over there too, but I don't think they'd get the exposure.

Since we're talking about more things we'd like to see on the website, I'd like to enter my vote for pdf versions of the maps from the magazines. Put it in a subscriber's only section of the site, if necessary or password protect them with a word from the magazines. Frankly, I don't understand the reluctance, and would appreciate more explanation of that. In any event, my vote for a way to significantly improve the paizo site would be to make the maps available for download.

 

[Beretta]

I too would like to second Emirikol's comments.

Also, I just wanted to ask:

What happened to the Monster Tokens? They were fantastic! It was good to get tokens with the nice MM illustrations on them. I would be overjoyed if they made a comeback as they were a valuable addition to my campaign.

Is there any chance of them reappearing in future issues of Dungeon?

Edit: there have been a number of comments about downloads from the Paizo site. If the monster tokens are not viable to include with the magazine, could the tokens for the creatures appearing in that issue's scenarios be made into a pdf available for download instead?

 

[Simplicity]

I have a few recommendations:
1) The new format of Light/Sounds/Auras/Reaction should go away... It's a big waste of space. Is it convenient for when someone casts 'detect magic'? Sure, but I don't really need the adventures to be that convenient. Convenience isn't what I look for in adventures. Content is what I look for. Having these descriptions, just cuts down on the number of interesting areas you can fit in the magazine.

2) At the very least, when the Light/Sound/Aura/Reaction entry is "None"... Leave it out.

3) Come up with an graphic to represent the levels 1-20. Use these graphics to represent the starting level of the adventure. Replace the current High/Med./Low graphics with these graphics. Unless I'm generating statistics about the distribution of Dungeon adventures, I really don't need to know whether the adventure is for High, Medium, or Low level parties. It would be useful to know the non-scaled level, however.

4) Given, (3), remove most of the intro text that comes before the Preparation heading. All of the adventures have Scaling the adventure sidebars. Don't bother to refer to it. It speaks for itself.

5) Remove ALL of the Preparation Heading. DMs are expected to have the core rulebooks, and if any other sources are used, the material is almost always included in the adventure.

 

[kamosa]

It's taken me a while to get my head around the changes at Dungeon. I'm just used to it being a resourse for adventures. I have to admit I think this focus on changing it to the GM magazine vs focusing on adventures hasn't really grabbed my interest. However, since that isn't the focus of the thread, I'll try to throw out some ideas that might add to the GM tools focus of the new format.


1) Forms for the GM: We all have a set of forms that we use to help us get organized as GM. Party quick stats references, NPC quick references, Monster summaries. Maybe they could have a page that has handy forms for the GM to try and get organized.

2) GM situation walk throughs: We've all had situations where we wondered how other GM's would respond if faced with the same things. We could have a section where GM's send in interesting game situations and the next month the best solution letters are published.

3) GM soft skill workshops: There is a lot of things GM's do to keep a group going. We could have a monthly column on how to get a group, go through character creation, how to get everyone to show up regularly, communicating in a way that keeps people interested. There are lots of soft skills.

4) 25 quick plots: I heard somewhere that Dungeon gets hundreds of proposals every month. Only a few every deserve to be expanded out to a full module. Maybe some of those proposals that were decent could be put in as a one paragraph summary. I know when I am trying to start an adventure, getting the core idea is often the biggest stumbling block. Maybe the 25 quick ideas would start the juices flowing. They could be thematic and wouldn't even need to be genre specific.

 

[diaglo]

The notes idea is an interesting one, but I think I'd rather see it as some kind of pdf you could download from our site and print out on index-card sheets of paper. That way, you could fill in all of the info yourself, and keep a little reference catalogue of Dungeon adventures you'd like to run in the future. The cards could have a space for issue number to help you grab the correct magazine from your collection.

i've been doing this for years. i have the stats for all of the NPCs from issues 1-82 on 3x5 cards. plus notes for possible adventures to follow the one being used.

Back in the day, I used to write in my magazines and modules. My copy of Queen of the Spiders, one of the most valuable superadventures in the history of D&D, has the hit point totals of about half of the bad guys crossed out in pencil. Between then and now, however, I've become a bibliophile who can't imagine defacing his books or magazines. Based on several threads and letters, however, a lot of readers would prefer to be able to scribble notes in the magazine's margins and perhaps put big "X" marks over the faces of enemies slain by the party.

There's a basic emotional value to that sort of thing, to be sure.

i look back on my stuff as well loved. many of my original books have my chicken scratch all over them. i buy as many copies as i can find to have unblemished ones...but they aren't the same. they didn't go thru the real adventures, sessions or scenarios the marked up copies did. i use a DM's log too...have for the last 25 years. maybe you can offer (edit in) hints in the adventures as to what the DM should make notes of....