Dungeon Magazine Quality Drop?

[Trellian]

I was just wondering if more than me feels that many modules in Dungeon Magazine of lately are not very well designed. What I mean is that they contain lots and lots of errors, errors that shouldn't be there. Let me take Pandemonium in the Veins for example.

1: Skill points. To many errors to mention. Many NPCs receive more or less skill points than they should.

2: Feats. Jacobus Flugg, pg 37. Dex 11, Dodge? Come on!
3: AC. Kang Manjing, pg 60, Dex 13, Ac 10?? He should have had 11!
4: Logical errors:
4a: Severus Tulero (pg 46) is a snake-headed yuan-ti with spell-like abilities! MM says no!
4b: Cage Match pg 52. Squirt and Jeb Hurk have 20 and 12 fame points. According to page 43, they are new gladiators. How can they get as much as 20 fame points in, how many days? 3-4 at the most when the Arena Rules (pg 59) clearly states that the maximum fame points per match is 2. They would have to fight at least 3-4 matches a day.

Alignment Errors
4a: Mountain Morasso (pg 46) is Lawfull Good and tries to lie to the heroes in order to fix a fight with them. Lawful people do not lie.
4b: Alfonse Drellus (pg 42) is a bloodthirsty maniac who hates his daughter and tries to have her and the PCs killed. Neutral? At least Chaotic Neutral, if not evil.

It seems to me that this adventure was designed on a hurry, and I am really nervous to see what the adventures are like when they start coming out once a month. I still plan on using Pandemonium in the Veins, but I had to do a lot of unnecessary work for it to be correct.

 

[Bagpuss]

Alignment Errors
4a: Mountain Morasso (pg 46) is Lawfull Good and tries to lie to the heroes in order to fix a fight with them. Lawful people do not lie.

I'd argue that Lawful people can lie, but I agree I doubt a lawful good person would be fixing a fight or lying to achieve that aim.

 

[herald]

Alignment Errors
4a: Mountain Morasso (pg 46) is Lawfull Good and tries to lie to the heroes in order to fix a fight with them. Lawful people do not lie.
4b: Alfonse Drellus (pg 42) is a bloodthirsty maniac who hates his daughter and tries to have her and the PCs killed. Neutral? At least Chaotic Neutral, if not evil.

[/B]

I doubt that anyone can argue the point on the statistical points you bring up, but you lose points in your arguement on the alignment issue.

I myself feel that Lawful Good people can and do lie. Being Lawful Good doen't make you a Paladin. Nor does it make you very pious. It simply means that you believe in the rule of Law and you try to act in a way that benfits all. If you feel that lying is needed to get what you want in that mindset, then you will do it.

 

[Azure Trance]

Maybe they need to up quality control (editing). Though I'd like to ask, around what issue do you think Dungeon started to get lax?

 

[diaglo]

did you try the d20 publisher's forum?

or email paizo publishing directly?

 

[diaglo]

Maybe they need to up quality control (editing). Though I'd like to ask, around what issue do you think Dungeon started to get lax?

after issue 84 for certain.

but i'd also argue as early as issue 36.

 

[Azure Trance]

but i'd also argue as early as issue 36.

ack.

 

[Kriskrafts]

Re: Re: Dungeon Magazine Quality Drop?

I myself feel that Lawful Good people can and do lie. Being Lawful Good doen't make you a Paladin. Nor does it make you very pious. It simply means that you believe in the rule of Law and you try to act in a way that benfits all. If you feel that lying is needed to get what you want in that mindset, then you will do it.

I agree. I have a wizard from a Japanese-based society who I consider to be Lawful Good, but he will also use his high intelligence to put together convincing lies to get the party out of difficult situations that would otherwise result in violence and death.

Now, back to the original topic. A few minor errors in one or two modules do not necessarily mean a lack of quality. The magazine is a great value for the price (especially at the long-term subscription price).

 

[Trellian]

OK, i concede the fact that LG people can lie.

But somehow I feel that Paizo publishing taking over wasn't necessarily a good thing. The president of the company has an adventure published as well! I think Paizo are just a bunch of friends who wants to see their modules published... Chris Perkins' adventure in the next issue will of course be of a different standard, though. I feel that a good thing to do when creating NPCs will be to use a character generator. Then you won't do these mistakes. The adventure is in itself quite good, I was just being a little annoyed by all the errors.

I cannot speak for other modules, since Pandemonium of the Veins is the first one I will be running since Paizo took over. I had to boost the NPCs to match my players level, and thats how I discovered the errors. When browsing through the other adventures I hardly look closely on the stats, so who know how many more mistakes there will be. This adventure is very NPC heavy, but nevertheless...

 

[Harlock]

Not to hijack your thread, but the error rife pages of RPG books of late is not limited to Dungeon Magazine alone. I see glaring errors in almost every book I have, be they mechanical, grammatical, or plain old oversights. It's just lazy editing in some cases, or writers that make so many mistakes that editors are cross-eyed trying to find them all and then miss a few. To me a few errors are what I have come to expect from my RPG books as of late. It's not that I want to, I'd really rather not have to correct things, but I've given up on expecting more. Bad, apathetic me.