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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gothmog" data-source="post: 4874951" data-attributes="member: 317">I'll probably get yelled at for this, but I was actually glad the print versions of Dungeon and Dragon got cancelled, and WotC took them over again.  IMO, Paizo had royally dropped the ball with Dragon and Dungeon, and even though I was a subscriber, I got ZERO use out of them.  In particular, I hated adventure paths- a huge segment of each magazine got locked into long adventures in Dungeon that  I'd never run, because I simply don't like the concept of a railroaded single plotline through an entire campaign.  I tend to use story arcs and inter-related events, but not back to back linked adventures such as the APs tended to assume.As for Dragon, sometimes some ok articles were printed, but keeping track of the issues of Dragon I wanted to use something out of vs. the ones I didn't want to use made using Dragon a hassle.  Dragon was also sorely lacking starting in about 2002 or 2003- it was just a neverending series of spells, prestige classes, feats, and crunch for the most part, with little quality inspring stuff in there.  IMO, the glory days of both Dragon and Dungeon had been from 1983-1995 or so.  Yes, I even liked the 2e stuff!  While it was a pain to keep up with the magazines during play, we used a TON of stuff out of them, and they actually inspired me to design, world-build, and incorporate what they had in them.  I was a little saddened to see the print versions die out of nostalgia, but I knew their time had come and gone.  I knew WotC was going to reboot both magazines in digital form, but I honestly didn't expect much- it sounded like a horrible idea to me.  Plus I prefer to read a book or magazine in paper form (and I still do).Boy was I wrong.  Dragon is the best its ever been right now.  The new fluff for 4e is great, and much more mythic and mysterious in feel than the over-the-top schlock of 3e (fiendish dire vampiric half-illithid west highland terriers anyone?)  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  Tons of useful info per issue, lots of inspiring articles and ideas to build into your world, and the most solid new mechanics Dragon has ever had make Dragon a must have for a 4e player or DM.  Dungeon is getting better, and some of the individual adventures have been superb (I especially like Ari's adventures), but I still hate the APs- they are a monumental waste of space.  I want the glory days of Dungeon offering 4-5 short to moderate length adventures for a variety of levels again, not some 50+ page linear plotwagon each issue.  Hopefully this will be remedied at some point in the future, but even in its current form, I like Dungeon much more now that during the Paizo era.  Plus having the content from each available in the DDI, Character Builder, and Compendium makes it a million times more accessible and useful that the magazines ever were in the past.  And if I want to have one article to use at the table, its easy enough to print off.  While I still don't like reading articles on the screen, I can print off double-sided color copies of each magazine at the university I work at for free (one of the perks of being a professor). <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />So, despite my initial reservations, Wizards converted me.  The best thing to ever happen to Dragon and Dungeon was to go digital.  Great job WotC! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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