Is Dragon Magazine even *Relevant* anymore?

[Vocenoctum]

Where are the articles by James Wyatt?

dunno

Where are the articles my Monte Cook?

regular column in Dungeon.

Where are the articles by Owen Stevens?

Who?

 

[wingsandsword]

But, it didn't. Dragon has been D&D only for much much longer than it was mixed. Dragon's numbers are not at my finger tips, but it would be reasonable to assume the format has worked for them, or they'd not have continued it. Your notion that it was "better back then" isn't backed by the years of it being successful.

Um, no.

Right before 3rd Edition came out and it became only and exclusively D&D, there were articles about other TSR/WotC games, Alternity (and the Dark*Matter and Star-Drive settings), Dragonlance/SAGA 5th Age, and if you go a little further back they had articles for the Marvel Superheroes game well into the 90's.

For Dragon to do give the same support now, they would be giving articles about d20 Modern (and the Urban Arcana setting), and probably articles about Star Wars d20, and in the past they would have covered d20 Wheel of Time and d20 Cthuhlu. Instead they have only covered D&D and ignored the rest of WotC's RPG's (Polyhedron picked up this slack for a little while, but vocal whiners in the Dungeon crowd shut that down, so one less magazine for me to buy).

 

[Ranger REG]

For Dragon to do give the same support now, they would be giving articles about d20 Modern (and the Urban Arcana setting), and probably articles about Star Wars d20, and in the past they would have covered d20 Wheel of Time and d20 Cthuhlu. Instead they have only covered D&D and ignored the rest of WotC's RPG's (Polyhedron picked up this slack for a little while, but vocal whiners in the Dungeon crowd shut that down, so one less magazine for me to buy).

Unfortunately, we old readers are being outvoted in favor of "Official Dungeons & Dragons only magazine" format.

FWIW, at least Mongoose fans are happy with Signs & Portents magazine for Mongoose products.

 

[Raven Crowking]

RC-

I understand, but I think you might have missed my point. If folks read the work in question, and then choose to pan it, so be it. If they read it, and pan it, but go on to explain how to improve it, so much the better. The problem I have is when folks say they do not read the product, but yet somehow can explain what they do not like about it; that is what I want to challenge.

Specifically in the context of Dragon and Dungeon: if you have not read the magazines in the last few months, then you have no valid basis for comment (pro OR con, really) because both are quite different than they were a year ago, and *much* different than multiple years ago. I am not saying that the magazines are perfect, nor that constructive criticism is not useful. I am saying that until you read them- as they are now- then you have no means to judge.

Hey, in general, I agree with you. I just don't think that the majority of the posts in this thread necessarily fall into the "unread but panned" category. Also, in the case of many products, one can gain a cursory opinion by flipping through the pages. It won't be an informed opinion, but it won't be a completely uniformed opinion either.

What I would hate to see is Erik Mona ignoring the worthwhile content in this thread because of a mistaken belief that the thread is "bashing" Dragon. I think he's done a great job on Dungeon so far (altering it from an occasional buy to a frequent buy...I had to have the last four issues just for the Greyhawk map), and I would like to see Dragon rise to the same level of usefulness/coolness.


RC

 

[James Jacobs]

Never fear; Erik knows about this thread. He's on vacation right now in a place where I doubt he can get to the Internet easilly, though.

All of the editors here at Paizo really value reader input into the magazines. We'll watch threads that mention Dragon or Dungeon like obsessed hawks, never fear.

As for James Wyatt... we've got a three-part adventure coming up in Dungeon written by him and Andy Collins. Part one starts in issue #123.

Anyway, keep the comments coming, good and bad! Trust me, no one here is gonna ignore this thread just because of its title. Quite the opposite, in fact!

 

[Jdvn1]

Thanks for the heads-up, JJ!

 

[Rawhide]

So, I mention there are three authors I'd like to see more of in Dragon to make it more relevent (since everyone seems to agree Dungeon is already geat). In response, I'm told one writes in Dungeon regularly, one is going to co-write something in Dungeon soon, and one (who is the "Sage" of d20 Modern, writes two columns for the WotC web site and has dozens of WotC, Sword and Sorcery and Green Ronin credits to his name) no one has ever heard of.

Yep, at this rate Dragon is in deep trouble. Dungeon will go on as the prime adventure magazine, but Dragon is going to flounder, get changed, flounder some more, and get axed.

Get Monte, Owen and James to do at least one article between them each month, get some more previews and exclusive content, tie in to Wotc officialness, or lose what readers you have yet. Dungeon doesn't need the help. Dragon does.

 

[Vocenoctum]

So, I mention there are three authors I'd like to see more of in Dragon to make it more relevent (since everyone seems to agree Dungeon is already geat). In response, I'm told one writes in Dungeon regularly, one is going to co-write something in Dungeon soon, and one (who is the "Sage" of d20 Modern, writes two columns for the WotC web site and has dozens of WotC, Sword and Sorcery and Green Ronin credits to his name) no one has ever heard of.

Yep, at this rate Dragon is in deep trouble. Dungeon will go on as the prime adventure magazine, but Dragon is going to flounder, get changed, flounder some more, and get axed.

Get Monte, Owen and James to do at least one article between them each month, get some more previews and exclusive content, tie in to Wotc officialness, or lose what readers you have yet. Dungeon doesn't need the help. Dragon does.

I don't care what the authors name is, I care about the quality of the article. For the record, I can't stand Monte Cook's Dungeon series, so giving him more articles to "help" Dragon is not something I agree with.
So, keep in mind opinions are worth what you pay for them. Just because Dragon is trying to improve itself does not mean it's floundering, and your ability to see the future is not written in stone.

 

[Rawhide]

I don't care what the authors name is, I care about the quality of the article. For the record, I can't stand Monte Cook's Dungeon series, so giving him more articles to "help" Dragon is not something I agree with.
So, keep in mind opinions are worth what you pay for them.

I'm amused you give your own opinion strongly, just before noting it's pretty well worthless. Of course, your basic premise is wrong. If I give you advice for free or if you pay me $40,000 doesn't matter if it's the same advice. What you really mean is that people who manage to give advice historically so good people are willing to pay for it are likely to produce better ideas than random people. That -may- be true, but I don't believe there are any professional rpg magazine copnsultants with proven track records, except maybe Erik himself (savior of Dungeon). And he's said the thread is useful, so obviously he sees some value in what we, as a groupm, as saying.

Of course everything we say here is just people's opinions. I would argue, however, that Monte has a proven track record. Adding more articles by him (and certainly they need not be the same as his Dungeon series -- the man is a talented writer, after all) to a magazine that many believe is floundering isn't a random, screaming-in-the-darkness opinion. Monte sells a lot of work. His sales numbers are high, suggesting people like his writing. If you put writing people like in a Magazine appropriate to it, it's popularity is likely to increase. That's logic.

Now, if you've gone through and decided that articles by Monte, Owen and James are of lower quality than average, that's one thing. My very point is that these three writers produce articles that are of higher quality. This is not just my opinion. In addition to seeing them lauded regularly on many forums, these are articles I've seen stolen and copied on fan sites, and used for WotC products. Owen's dragon language article is reprinted in the Draconomicon, for example. Not a lot of Dragon material gets used in that way anymore (more's the shame).

Now, if you think WotC's idea of quality is different from yours, then likley Dragon is never going to be relevent to you. But these three authors have a lot of solid ideas and game design behind them, and I think the fact none of them have done a Dragon article for quite a while is a sign of the bigger problem.

Just because Dragon is trying to improve itself does not mean it's floundering, and your ability to see the future is not written in stone.

Yeah, the fact Dragon is on its third format in two years -does- mean its fondering. You may not realize, but Dragon has lasted so long because for many years TSR didn't care if it made money. Then WotC came along, and then Hasbro. They did care. And they decided it was a bad business proposition, and got ridof it. The people working on it lost their jobs... only to be offered new jobs by Paizo, which was created to try to publish the magazines for profit. Paizo's track record has been mixed-at-best to date.

Given proof that Paizo has trouble keeping magazines in print, and proof that it thinks Dragon needs improvement, it's not doomsaying to believe if real improvement doesn't show up, the magazine will go away.

Now, are my ideas the only possible form of improvement? No, of course not. But do far the only responses have been promises that Dungeon, which doesn,t seem to be in trouble, will get more of the good author's work.

So, yeah, I think Dragon's in biiiiiig trouble over the next two years. And if Erik doesn't see the numbers improve as they need to doing it doing it with other ideas, I hope he'll court those authors and see if he can get monthly articles out of them.

 

[Ranger REG]

Yeah, the fact Dragon is on its third format in two years -does- mean its fondering. You may not realize, but Dragon has lasted so long because for many years TSR didn't care if it made money.

Is that yet another reason why TSR financially ruined themselves?

If that's the case, they should never happened tried to circulate yet another magazine besides Dragon.

Then WotC came along, and then Hasbro. They did care. And they decided it was a bad business proposition, and got ridof it. The people working on it lost their jobs... only to be offered new jobs by Paizo, which was created to try to publish the magazines for profit. Paizo's track record has been mixed-at-best to date.

Yeah, sometimes they got it ("Campaign Classics", "Swashbuckler", etc.), and sometimes they don't. Did we put them under close scrutiny ever since they broke from WotC? After all, even though WotC gave them authority, it is now a outside third-party magazine, not an in-house periodical.

Then there is the readership who have wide range of interests. There are people that didn't like the "Campaign Classics" issue and would rather Paizo focus on Eberron. There are readers who prefer a certain convention when it comes to Greyhawk. The internet allow them to rant at rapid speed -- sometimes not always constructive -- and find other angry common voices here as well.

Forgive the memory lapse, but have their been a time we flooded criticisms of Dragon while it is under TSR and WotC business operation, since the internet became public in the 90's?