Dungeon/Dragon magazine subscription?

[Oryan77]

I've never read any of the Dungeon Magazines or Dragon Magazines. I'm wondering how useful they are for a DM like myself. I'm always searching the net for new ideas to help better my games, DM'ing style, and game mechanics and I always hear people talking about these magazines. I've read their websites but I'm not sure if it's worth paying for a subscription based on what their own websites say about their product.

Can you guys answer a few questions for me & tell me why I should or shouldn't buy these magazines?

1. What's the difference between the Dungeon Magazines & Dragon Magazines and what kind of info do these magazines have in them each month?

2. I assume they cover a wide range of D20 games. Is it worth my money & time reading them if I only run a 3.5 Planescape campaign with a little WOTC 3.5 Forgotten Realms setting thrown in? I'm not interested in Modern D20, Eberron, or any other campaign setting that isn't a WOTC product (don't want to spread myself too thin) so I don't want to buy a magazine that only has a tad bit of helpful info for me.

3. What PC levels are they geared to mostly? I run a slow level progression game so I won't be interested in high level (13+) anytime soon. It won't do me much good reading info for higher level games.

4. How different are these magazines each month? Would it be better for someone like me to just buy a magazine every couple of months from the bookstore instead of paying for a new one every month?

5. Are they fun to read & what kind of visuals do they have?

6. And last, what kind of information have you pulled from them and actually used in your games yourself?

I know I should just skim through one at the bookstore, I just havn't had time to go check it out...maybe I can this weekend.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Simplicity]

I've never read any of the Dungeon Magazines or Dragon Magazines. I'm wondering how useful they are for a DM like myself. I'm always searching the net for new ideas to help better my games, DM'ing style, and game mechanics and I always hear people talking about these magazines. I've read their websites but I'm not sure if it's worth paying for a subscription based on what their own websites say about their product.

Can you guys answer a few questions for me & tell me why I should or shouldn't buy these magazines?

1. What's the difference between the Dungeon Magazines & Dragon Magazines and what kind of info do these magazines have in them each month?

Dungeon basically contains pre-made adventures. It's very useful for
any DM.

Dragon contains WotC previews, prestige classes, spells, some fiction...
I'm a little less enthused about Dragon, personally, but it does occasionally
have some good "fluff" for creating your own adventures.

2. I assume they cover a wide range of D20 games. Is it worth my money & time reading them if I only run a 3.5 Planescape campaign with a little WOTC 3.5 Forgotten Realms setting thrown in? I'm not interested in Modern D20, Eberron, or any other campaign setting that isn't a WOTC product (don't want to spread myself too thin) so I don't want to buy a magazine that only has a tad bit of helpful info for me.

Currently about 1/4 of Dungeon magazine is Polyhedron, which covers other D20 games. The complete D20 coverage is going away after this coming issue, however. The two magazines are going to support only D&D very soon. If you're running planescape/FR then pretty much everything in both magazines applies to you. The last Dragon had info on the positive energy plane, I believe... The newest Dungeon coming out has a 8 or 9th level FR adventure in it.

3. What PC levels are they geared to mostly? I run a slow level progression game so I won't be interested in high level (13+) anytime soon. It won't do me much good reading info for higher level games.

They're well-balanced to be applicable at any level. Dungeon makes sure to have low level, mid level, and high level adventures (though a bit more low level adventures than high level... as you'd expect)... And each adventure has a scaling chart in it to make the adventure apply for slightly higher levels.

4. How different are these magazines each month? Would it be better for someone like me to just buy a magazine every couple of months from the bookstore instead of paying for a new one every month?

Well, the content is 100% different every month... But it's a matter of taste.
Personally, I don't have a subscription, but then again I wind up buying Dungeon every single month because the adventures in it are so interesting.

5. Are they fun to read & what kind of visuals do they have?

Both are illustrated very well, and both have some pretty good comics...
Full-color illustrations... full-color maps... glossy pages...
I think they're fun to read.

6. And last, what kind of information have you pulled from them and actually used in your games yourself?

I usually pull interesting monsters from Dragon. Other than that, I tend
not to pull much from Dragon (Though their preview articles are interesting
reads sometimes).

I have pulled entire campaigns from Dungeon... Maps of Mystery are great
starting points for developing a dungeon for my own campaign.

 

[Shemeska]

The last Dragon had info on the positive energy plane, I believe... The newest Dungeon coming out has a 8 or 9th level FR adventure in it.

No, it was a 'new' plane, the Plane of Radience. However despite the name it has nothing to do with the actual quasielemental plane of radience. I was underwhelmed with the acticle myself, but probably mostly because I'd been hoping for an article on the quasielemental plane of the same name from Planescape, not a 'new' transitive plane that was intended to be an opposite of the plane of shadow (ignoring that the opposite of the plane of shadow is essentially the prime...).

More and more I've found less of use in Dragon, though from the few issues of Dungeon that I've bought I may consider subscribing to it, even if I likely let my Dragon sub. die a merciful death when it ends. The focus of the magazine is changing, and in my opinion it's not a change for the better. I don't need yet 'more' alternate core classes, PrCs of the month, and ways to optimize a core class.

While there's been some really nice articles that I've used (Ed Bonny's article on planar dragons being the most recent one), the focus of the magazine is seeming to shift away from what I as a reader want to see. *shrugs*

 

[Pagan priest]

Well, I used to have a subscription to Dungeon mag. With the disappearance of the Polyhedron stuff I doubt if I will be buying another issue at any time in the near future. As has been mentioned, the poly section contained stuff for games other than just D&D, this included some complete mini-games. Some of them were great. While I have used several of the adventures as inspiration, I have never actually run an adventure from Dungeon.

As far as Dragon mag goes, I have been getting every issue since the late teens (as in issue #17). Some have been great, some have been okay, and some have sucked. Recently, there have been several good issues, like the Oriental Adventures update in #318.

From Dragon, I have found PrC's, monsters, templates, equipment, spells, Deities, and magic items to use.

Dragon has fiction in it. Generally useless as far as gaming goes, but some good stories have appeared over the years.

 

[scourger]

You should subscribe to Dungeon. I have for years, and I find it very useful. I liked the addition of Polyhedron, but the refocus on D&D adventures in future issues can only be a good thing. I have run entire campaigns from its pages and dreamed of many more that went unplayed for lack of time.

I know less about Dragon. I have only bought a few issues in the past. I run a core game, so new feats, prestige classes, etc. have less appeal to me.

 

[Alzrius]

1. What's the difference between the Dungeon Magazines & Dragon Magazines and what kind of info do these magazines have in them each month?

Dungeon magazine is the pre-made adventure magazine.

Dragon magazine is the supplementary rules magazine (rules meaning new spells, monsters, races, classes, magic items, etc).

2. I assume they cover a wide range of D20 games. Is it worth my money & time reading them if I only run a 3.5 Planescape campaign with a little WOTC 3.5 Forgotten Realms setting thrown in? I'm not interested in Modern D20, Eberron, or any other campaign setting that isn't a WOTC product (don't want to spread myself too thin) so I don't want to buy a magazine that only has a tad bit of helpful info for me.

Both magazines are specifically concerned with D&D only, no other d20 games, even those from WotC, are included. That means no D20 Modern, no anything from third-party publishers, etc.

In terms of specific campaigns, you'll mostly only find material about the current WotC campaigns, that is Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and now a new focus on Eberron. However, in any given magazine, they won't devote much (and sometimes not any) material to a specific world, because they know not everyone uses that, so quite a bit of material will be generic.

Specifically relating to your 3.5E PS (with a dash of FR) campaign, it's hard to say if it'll be worth it for you or not. Dragon usually does a "planes" theme issue once a year, along with some articles that are FR-based (such as Faiths of Faerun), and FR adventures (and adventures that, while not PS-specific, have a planar influence, if not location) happen irregularly in Dungeon.

However, there are plenty of other articles that and adventures in both that you could find useful. Issue #321 of Dragon (itself a planar-themed issue), had a great article on guns in D&D, which could be useful to you due to both the odd weapons on the planes, and the slow spread of smokepowder throughout the Realms due to influence from Lantan. The generic articles (and adventures) cannot be overlooked in that regard.

Dungeon did have a section called Polyhedron which often had materials for D20 Modern, but as of issue #114 (#113 is the current issue) this is being phased out.

3. What PC levels are they geared to mostly? I run a slow level progression game so I won't be interested in high level (13+) anytime soon. It won't do me much good reading info for higher level games.

The adventures in Dungeon are all over the map, with no real set of levels favored more than any other (at least, not in my opinion). The materials in Dragon, being supplementary additions, could theoretically be used at almost any level, depending on the CR of a new monster, the level of new spells, etc.

4. How different are these magazines each month? Would it be better for someone like me to just buy a magazine every couple of months from the bookstore instead of paying for a new one every month?

Dungeon, with the exception of the multipart Adventure Path saga it's been running (and, historically, a few other exceptions), has different and unrelated adventures every month. Dragon operates on a monthly theme (i.e. "the planes", "urban adventures" "dragons" etc), but even then not every article is thematically done.

5. Are they fun to read & what kind of visuals do they have?

I find both magazines very fun to read, and enjoy the artwork in them quite a bit.

6. And last, what kind of information have you pulled from them and actually used in your games yourself?

I'm bad to ask, since I haven't run a game in a few years, but there is definately something in these magazines for everyone.

 

[Wombat]

I used to have a subscription to The Dragon (and later to Dragon); the first time round it was Issues 1-14 or so; the second time round was for 2 years after the release of 3.0. I found the earlier issues, back when D&D was still a pretty new-fangled hobby, to be more useful for me as we were all still learning what the heck the game was all about; the latter ones had tons of articles that I never used because they didn't fit my style of gaming. About every 2-3 issues there was an aritcle that I liked, as well as some, but far from all, of the comics.

I have looked through Dungeon, but never bought it -- not my style, as I like to write my own adventures and use far fewer different monstrous types and far lower levels of magic than are assumed in baseline D&D, thus the adventures were far from useful for me. They are, however, great for most standard GMs.