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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8737247" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 57: Jan/Feb 1996part 1/580 pages. Brown, brown and more brown. Don't you necromancers ever clean your skeletons before you animate them?! No respect for the dead. Well, this cover leaves me distinctly unimpressed. I recall the composition and color balance of the Dragon covers also went downhill this year, so I'm not surprised Dungeon is following suit, since they're all being done on the same equipment. Let's see if the contents are a little higher contrast. Straight away, the table of contents disproves that with more low contrast gimmickery, as the contents are threaded through a mini dungeon map. While not a terrible idea, this does slow down figuring out what is where in what order. This feels like putting trying to be cool and modern over functionality. Letters: First letter is positive about all the adventures from last issue except Grave Circumstances, which he's still more diplomatic in his negativity about than I was. You can get some use out of even the worst adventures if you take them apart and use the pieces in other ways. Second is Chris Perkins, who in contrast praises Grave Circumstances highly, which definitely increases my trepidation about the type of adventures he'll encourage when he's in the editor's seat in the future.Third is James Wyatt, who likes the idea of Dark Sun, but is also dubious about the quality of adventures & supplements they're publishing for it, and really wishes that Dungeon would go monthly so they can do more big themed adventures without alienating the part of the readerbase that isn't a fan of that specific setting. Fourth is by somewhat less prolific adventure writer John Baichtal, who is also very critical of Grave Circumstances for being an obvious promotional piece that wasn't held to the same writing and editing standards he as a freelance writer is. The other regular writers last issue were also not up to previous standards and it fell to the newbies to keep it from being a complete loss. Fifth is generally positive, but wants more adventures set in unusual terrains. Surely you have enough forests & jungles by now? Sixth defends Planescape & Ravenloft from the generic fantasy purists. Fantasy is supposed to be fantastical. If you limit yourselves to the same few spells and nonhuman races in every setting you're missing the point. The adventures in here could stand to be a lot weirder. Seventh is Allen Varney, who's also critical of Grave Circumstances for having the PC's kill the final member of an endangered species. That's not very eco-friendly. Such are the inherent tragedies of D&D. Hopefully it'll nag at their consciences and they won't act the same way in real life. Eighth is another one baffled by steamboats in Ravenloft, suggesting a distinctly silly solution as to how it happened. I don't think the place really needs more gnomes. Ninth wants more high level adventures, which is a common request, but the number of submissions just don't match the demand. If you think you've got the math skills to put together a good one, the inbox is wide open. Finally, another letter full of suggestions. Many of them are things that Dragon or Polyhedron already do, so they aren't going to step on their toes and do them as well, but the idea of a trap column seems to be increasingly gathering momentum. As with the high level adventures, it's now just a matter of making supply match demand.</blockquote>

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