Dungeon Magazine Quality Drop?

[Celebrim]

The very best way to find errors is hand the manuscript to someone that has never touched it and has no idea what it is about. Reasonably intelligent junior high students, spouses, and so forth are excellent as editors. You want someone who is going to get confused reading your work, but who is attentive enough to keep at it with a red pen even when they are confused. Those are the very best editors, and you should run it buy a few such people before you ever submit for publication. You should also read your whole manuscript outloud when looking for errors.

 

[Painfully]

So do they no longer take any unpublished author's submissions?

It's a sad thing to see the people who built the backbone of Dungeon turned away like this.

This is definitely going to change my view of Paizo if it's true.

 

[King_Stannis]

I
No more unpublished authors. (this one just bugs me)...

I totally disagree with that.

Aside from a rather small article in "Knights of the Dinner Table", I've never been published before and yet my "Critical Threat" is going to be in the next Dungeon issue, #98.

 

[Olive]

i think that there is some confusion about the unpublished authors thing. they're not taking submissions for fiction. they are taking submissions for dungeon, and as far as i know for dragon to. but not for fiction. which is fair enough i think.

 

[El Ravager]

I think that Dungeon is an awesome magazine. Even though I never read the Polyhedron that comes with it, it is still 4 or so adventures for 8 bucks. Thats pretty damn good. Even if I don't use the adventures in my game, they are still great for mining for maps, npcs, or just general ideas and inspiration. I have one issue that has seen a lot of use because I use one of the cities maps for a city in my world even though I have never used the adventure.

I don't mind a few minor errors here or there as long as it doesn't get excessive. I am sure that plenty of the NPCs I stat out have miss calculations or a number off here or there.

Plus I love the Shackled City adventure path. My players are almost done with the first adventure. I hope the next issue comes out soon.

 

[Christian Walker]

Hey fellas,

I have some experience in this area, so I thought I'd chime in. While publishing the Scrollworks zine I learned that there are two types of writers: story guys and rules guys. Sadly, it's hard to find a person that can do both jobs equally well.

The story guy can write screaming good modules and NPCs, but he's sloppy or not so good with the rules. While writing a stat block he forgets that humans get an extra feat to start with. The rules guy can write a flawless stat block, but his NPCs and modules read like stereo instructions.

On a project, it's best to have three guys: 1) Story guy who writes the module or NPCs, 2) Rules monkey who lives and dies to calculate attack routines, and 3) an editor to check story guy's grammar.

I found that Scrollworks articles that had three folks working on it were rules tight, read well, and had few errors.

That, and you really need a proofer (NOT one of the three above) to go through everything once the project has been formatted and printed. It's amazing how many mistakes happen during layout.

Finally, it's important to have lots of time for the project. The highway and publishing share one thing in common: Speed kills.

When you find errors in RPG projects, chances are one person was wearing more than one hat. i.e. Writing the scenario and doing the rules stuff.

Speaking of errors, any errors in this post are blamed on a fine product from Sweden - Absolut vodka. I love them Swedes.

Oh, visit my webpage and pick up iron rations. It's the shiznit, my nizzo.

PS: You sometimes come across people like Mike Mearls who hawg all the talent and can handle all aspects of the game design process. Bastidge.

 

[Trellian]

And anyone who can't see past a few "numbers" errors and appreciate a good story is not someone I'd roll the dice with.

I have already said I would run the adventure due to its setting and plot. I just feel that the entire point with Dungeon Magazine or any other published modules was the fact that you did not have to do any work of your own. Now I have to do many hours of work to fix the errors, and that bothers me. And if you plan to publish an adventure or critical threat filled with errors, I won't bother to use it at all. If a DM cannot learn the rules, he can use a character generator.