WizarDru said:Dumb Question: Is it supposed to be useful for non-D&D players? Other than D&D mini players, that is?
That depends on what you mean by "supposed to." Do the current publishers make any claim that it is for RPers other than D&D players? No. Has it had any real support for non-D&D players for, oh, 5 years? No. Do i think there are any RPers out there under the misapprehension that Dragon is a general RPing mag? No. Do i think that the flagship RPG magazine, the only one with any mainstream exposure, and, really, pretty much the only print RPG mag, should have some value to RPers in general, not just D&D players? Yes. Do i think it can be done? Yes--i have 16+ years of Dragon magazines to prove it. Not to mention several years of Arcane, Shadis, Familiar, White Wolf, and others. Now, admittedly, things have changed in the last decade, due to the 'Web, among other things, so print magazines (Dragon or otherwise) are not anywhere near the only medium for shared culture among RPers. And this sort of factionalization seems to have occurred at an accelerating pace in everything, not just RPGs--look at the number of specialized sports magazines or cable channels compared to 15, or even just 5, years ago.
Nonetheless, i think it is vital for the health of not only the RPG hobby as a whole, but that of the D&D-playing segment of that hobby, that there is real crossover between D&D- and other RPers. And i think that it is partly the responsibility of the owner of the lion's share of the market to see to this. Look at it this way: most RPers will start with D&D, due to brand awareness and availability and popularity. Some fair portion of those won't like D&D for reasons that are part of D&D in particular, but not of RPGs in general. Would you rather those people, when they get sick of D&D, stop RPing altogether, or switch to a different RPG? Which do you think is better for the RPG market as a whole? It seems to me that there are enough commonalities among players of RPGs that they all feed into similar markets, even if they're not playing the same RPG.
Anyway, even very crunch-heavy D&D3E articles can be highly useful to RPers who play other systems, or even genres. But the less fluff is in the article, the less likely it is to appeal to someone who plays another system--if all the article is doing is providing game stats, well, that's exactly the part someone will have to alter or toss or ignore to use it in their system of choice. Moreover, the sort of crunch that has apparently become the most popular is the least-useful to other gamers. I can use cool new spells in any system that has magic, and even a lot that don't. Cool new feats, however, are much less likely to be useful, even as inspiration. A cool new prestige class, with a neat background and so on, might be very useable in another system, setting, and/or genre. But something that is almost-purely a mechanical artifact (like the Mystic Theurge) is pretty much useless outside of the context of the mechanics it is designed for.
