Exclusive Races/Classes in Dragon: Why the Angst?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah, exactly, I don't get it. If one would rather read a new class on paper, print it out. Haves and have nots? Buy a DDI sub for a month and get it. If the class did come out in a book, and you don't buy the book, are you not still a have not?

Well, in my case:

1) I don't like reading game material in digital format. I have to deal with enough electronic text in my work and my studies- I don't want it in my game time.

2) I'm averse to printing out exclusively digital game content- its a shift of costs to the individual that could more economically be paid by the publisher.

3) As I recall, DDI is still not Mac friendly, and I'm not Windows friendly. Again, I use Windows (occasionally) for work- I refuse to use it in my fun time.

4) On the original point, Dragon has always had this problem. I've got issues going back to #44, and many DMs simply wouldn't use stuff that appeared in it, regardless of quality- even after it got slapped with that "100% Official" tag.

Even though I readily used Dragon stuff in my own campaigns, in 32 years of gaming, I can count on one hand the number of times I got approval to use Dragon material in someone else's.

 

[Scribble]

Yeah I don't see it as any different then Dragon content has ever been. Shrug, people like to complain.

 

[slwoyach]

Dragon magazine didn't used to suck. From 3e on nothing in Dragon was ever balanced well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Dragon magazine didn't used to suck. From 3e on nothing in Dragon was ever balanced well.

I'd have to disagree.

While there was a lot of good stuff in the 1Ed & 2Ed days, there was just as much garbage. And while there was some power creep in the 3Ed era of Dragon, I found some stuff to be quite well done- the Feats for Soulknives in #341 were not only good & balanced, they were often drafted more efficiently than similar ones that appeared in CompPsi.

Similarly the feats & weapons that got reprinted in DCv1 were also of generally high quality, and were in accord with the Core of the game.

 

[CelticMutt]

Dragon magazine didn't used to suck. From 3e on nothing in Dragon was ever balanced well.

Might be true for 3e, but that is wrong now. It's all developed and balanced by the same people who do the hardcovers now. And frankly there's been far more stuff labeled broken from the books than from Dragon.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Dragon magazine didn't used to suck. From 3e on nothing in Dragon was ever balanced well.

I have been reading them since the late 80;s...and had a subsciption form 95-2003.

I have to say nothing in my mind has ever couaght up to the awsome sauce that was 92-96 Dragon. However starting at the begining of 3e it was ok...once they sold to pizo it seamed like the balance was on a see saw...one article would be way low power, the next balance, the next way over board. By the end of 3.5 when I would flip through those class acts at the end, some made me wonder if the writter had ever even played the game. (although to be fair those soul knife feats were better then the Comp Psi book)

Long and short is that it has ALWAYs been hit or miss, with only 1 or 2 issues a year being 'everything is useable by me' in my mind.

I do love the current dragon stuff though, in my mind it is better then 3e ever was, but still not as good as it was in 2e...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Dragon magazine didn't used to suck. From 3e on nothing in Dragon was ever balanced well.

It's hard to argue this point when many of the classes that originally appeared in Dragon prior to 3e were generally NPC classes designed around a specific theme/character type. The Plethora of Paladins for example, were meant to be NPCs as were many, many, many of those classes. If you don't have to balance it, such as the ole Duelist and Bounty Hunter, the whole arguement of 'ever balanced well' falls completely apart no?

 

[Krensky]

If I understand the question right, the people who 'blame' the internet are sort of right. Granted the internet has made it much easier to see all the people complaining about it (similar to how modern news makes the world look far more degenerate and ready to fall apart then it was in years past because now you get bad news from the world over rather just the highlights).

The real factor, I think, to the angst though is that because of the internet, and specifically places like this, make people realize that they're not getting the same cool toys because they're not a subscriber. That and most people have gotten used to the idea that PDFs on Wizard's site are free.

 

[Piratecat]

Dragon magazine didn't used to suck. From 3e on nothing in Dragon was ever balanced well.

I disagree about such a blatantly broad (and in my opinion demonstrably incorrect) statement, but mostly I'm laughing.. largely because my 1e games included the cavalier, the ninja and the anti-paladin.

 

[malraux]

I am a great fan of exclusive content. I wouldn't want to have stuff done twice, since not only does it make DDI slightly (and very slightly) less attractive of a thing to have but it means that for myself that book has a whole section that is useless since I already have the content. So it could have been filled with something else new.

This. I'm paying for a magazine, its not unreasonable to expect that magazine to have unique content. Personally, I'm not particularly excited by this particular content, but there is a fair amount of good unique content as well. For example, Grasp of the Grave is my favorite wizard power, that's a DDi only power.

As I recall, DDI is still not Mac friendly, and I'm not Windows friendly. Again, I use Windows (occasionally) for work- I refuse to use it in my fun time.

DDi has always been mac friendly, excepting the character builder. That said, virtual box allows windows apps to run almost seamlessly within the Mac OS.