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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9134637" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 86: May/Jun 2001part 1/6132 pages. A typically buff minotaur in a maze. Another of those cliches we’ve seen plenty of times, but it’s the first time this edition, so they have plenty of leeway to make them more interesting by adding class levels and templates. Will it be just a few more HD and feats from fighter ones, or a genuinely bizarre combination? Time to add another quartet of adventures to our capacious collection.Editorial: For a long time, they boasted about how few of their adventures were by official members of staff. They accepted the cream of the crop from freelancers without fear or favor, apart from when they really wanted to cover a new setting and couldn’t get anything else. But the last two issues have been dominated by adventures from staff writers that were longer than any that came before and this issue continues the turnaround by making a big deal of its full three adventures by published authors. You couldn’t have spread them out a little? Nope, we’re going to put lots of blurbs on the front cover and call it a collectible. I guess that’s a pretty clear sign that the transition from TSR to WotC is well and truly over and they’ll be using the same promotional techniques they do on their CCG’s. So this is a somewhat cynical start, but they’ve managed to produce good adventures under bad conditions before. Let’s find out if they’ve pulled it off this time, or self-indulgence and railroading will make these better stories than adventures.Letters: First letter has been captivated by the adventures in recent issues despite not converting to 3e themselves yet. The Harrowing particularly impresses them, giving plenty of ideas for a trip to the demonweb pits in his own campaign. Second is also very keen on the Harrowing, and wishes they’d release a Return to the D series adventure to go with it & the new version of the giants series. Sorry, but they have no plans to do that. Later adventures in an extended series always sell worse than the first ones. Third is mostly positive, but somewhat disappointed they’ve cut out all the non D&D stuff. It also looks like the suggestion of mini-dungeons is going to come to nothing, which is irritating. People just can’t keep it brief, no matter how often the editors tell them to. Fourth wants to see them do a big book collecting every single adventure they’ve ever done. This would be a spine-breaker so that’s probably not practical, plus they’d want to convert all the adventures to the new edition, which would also take a ton of work, but a best of? That has potential. Fifth is more general praise, but particularly for their willingness to go a bit more disturbing with the artwork. Keep it up, most people are quite capable of handling it. Sixth is also in favor of them including plenty of full-color artwork, as it makes it easier for everyone to be on the same page than simply describing what they’re seeing. Seventh is generally pleased with their new direction, but thinks they could improve things even more by putting a checklist of objectives at the end of an adventure so you can easily keep track of which ones the PC’s succeed, fail at, and miss entirely. I think that’s only an issue with the less linear adventures anyway. Most PC’s will be pretty eager to note down every bit of new treasure they find. Eighth is pleased that they’re putting a lot of the maps from the adventures on their website. They aren’t there anymore, unfortunately, like pretty much everything from previous editions. Ninth would like to see an Arthurian themed special at some point. Once again, they don’t have anything planned, but are wide open to your pitches, as knightly chivalry is a popular subgenre of fantasy. 10th is pleased by them reprinting the cover picture inside without all the promotional crap. Sometime you want to cut that kind of thing out and put it on the wall or customise your GM screen and that makes it a lot easier. 11th is from someone who was introduced to D&D through Baldur’s Gate and is a little confused by all the tabletop lore, but eager to learn. That’s a looooong story, but these days you can learn a lot of it on the internet. 12th is another newbie quite pleased by the quality of their adventures, particularly the new scaling guidelines. That change in particular seems to have a universally positive reception. 13th is by Roger Moore, reminiscing on the very silliest adventure ideas they ever came up with. Maybe some day they will turn them into complete adventures, but it will not be this edition. 14th wants them to bring back the adventures covering other real world cultures, particularly the works of David Howery. If there’s continuing demand they will try to convert a bunch of old ones to 3e and put them on the website. 15th quibbles how the multiclass armor and weapon restrictions work. You don’t forget how to use them, but spell failure chances are still a risk so you have extra incentive to invest in Still Spell. 16th complements them on the monster tokens last issue. Great, another thing missed out when they scanned the issue that I only find out about after the fact. I hate it when that happens. 17th is another person who thinks a competition building adventures around maps of mystery would be a good idea. The editors agree, so they’re going to make it so. Now all they need is some actual entrants. 18th is also very pleased by the monster tokens and wants more! Good thing they were already planning to do that anyway.19th is in favour of most of their format improvements, but still misses the shakespeare adaptions and linked adventures from previous years. Don’t you worry, they’ll do much longer adventure series before they’re through. 20th is from future game developer Will Hindmarch, praising the art of Stephen Danielle and Craig Zipse. They’re really putting a lot of regular work into making the magazine look as good as it is. 21st and finally, setting a new record, we have someone wondering if they do joke adventures for April like Dragon. It has been known to happen, but not every year. They do still have a few of them in store waiting for the right moment. After all, timing is the key to good comedy.</blockquote>

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