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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9154769" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 87: Jul/Aug 2001part 1/6125 (144) pages. These headlines are getting increasingly large and tabloidish in an attempt to catch the attention of newsstand browsers, making the artwork increasingly obscured. Not that the artwork is particularly impressive, as it’s just a single static figure staring at the camera with no real backdrop or implied narrative. But since the issue itself is a massive one (and would be even bigger if I had the bonus CD, but those kind of extras are irksomely frequently missing these days) they still have plenty of opportunities to make it up to me inside. Let’s see if any of these adventures will be making my all-time classic list. Editorial: A couple of issues ago, Chris was complaining about how exhausting it was being editor of multiple magazines at once. Looks like he finally reached his limit, because he’s scaling back his day-to-day involvement with Dungeon to focus on the Star Wars department full time. You’ll barely know he’s gone though, because he’s being replaced by the junior Chris, Mr Thomasson and he’s learnt his craft well watching his boss over the past 3 years. Then again, they said something pretty similar when Dave Gross left Dragon at about the same time, and things got noticeably more boring and less setting friendly after he left, so as usual, I feel quite justified in taking these words with a grain of salt. We shall continue to see just how closely intertwined the destinies of the magazines are and how much difference an editor makes when they’re getting the same mandates from higher up in the company. Letters: First letter is very pleased to see Tracy Hickman finally do an adventure in here. Time travel is tough to do and it could have wound up a lot messier than it is. There are still some mistakes in it, as the second letter points out. Remember that Krynn has multiple time travel devices, as seen in the novels and don’t get them mixed up. Third picks apart Scarlet fever. Turns out one of those nitpicks is a misinterpretation of what the numbers are referring to, but the others are entirely valid. Don’t ever expect James Jacobs adventures to go easy on your players, and if they can’t handle it, they should learn how to git gud with their next set of characters. Fourth would very much like to see the return of solo adventures, as 3e could do with a few of those. The editorial response is cautious, but doesn’t rule it out entirely. Fifth is a lengthy list of the adventures they’d most like to see converted to 3e. They’ll definitely take that into account if they ever get any space between handling all the new ones needed to keep the magazine going. Sixth praises Tracy Hickman & Thomas Harlan, but wonders if God would actually let the true cross be destroyed. This presumes a deity that is both omniscient and omnibenevolent, which raises the question of why all the other various forms of suffering in the world still exist. Ultimately, you can choose the answer in your own campaign. Seventh wishes they did more player versions of maps. Getting them to draw their own as you describe it is really becoming a lost art these days it seems. Afraid not. They can’t expect everything handed to them on a plate even in these more lenient times. Eighth was taken aback by the monster tokens, but after further thought can definitely see their value. It’s less hassle than painting and storing tons of minis and if you don’t have enough for a scenario you can just print some more out.Ninth was not so keen on the tokens, or a whole load of the other changes they’ve made recently for that matter. More high level adventures and at least a few more cliche monsters would be good this early in the edition. 10th is annoyed about them removing stat blocks from standard mooks. They only have so much page count. If the art of basic looking up references is being lost along with mapmaking the next generation of gamers are a sorry crop indeed. 11th complains that the scale of the tokens is wrong for most of their maps. Yeah, that one’s a bit harder to justify. Still, you can scale things in a good desktop program so even that’s solvable with a bit of technical knowhow.12th is pleased by the maps of Greyhawk cities they’ve released so far, but wants the rest. They’re doing their best in the LG Journal, but as we saw, they won’t manage to complete that project. Some can be found in older edition books, but many will never get fully fleshed out unless you do it yourself.13th is annoyed about the very uneven distribution of adventures so far. How are groups supposed to get to high level like that. Some adventures for previous editions would be nice as well. Sorry, they’re sticking with the latest model, and while they would like more variety of levels, they can only publish what they get. It’ll still take quite a while for the slush pile to reach the levels it did in the 2e years. 14th is particularly pleased by Lord of the Scarlet Tide and also wonders how you become a regular artist for them. Just send a portfolio of examples (copies, not originals, for your own sake) or a website link and if they like what they see, they’ll be in touch. If you’re good at working to spec and making deadlines, your odds of repeat work go up dramatically.15th is the more common question of how you become a writer and wonders how many submissions they’re getting at the moment. They’re averaging around 30-40 a week at the moment, which if you crunch the math means slightly less than 1 in 50 of them get all the way through to being published. Even if it is good enough, don’t be surprised if you have a year or two’s wait between it being accepted and actually appearing in the magazine, because finding the right artwork and formatting is another big pain in the ass.16th and finally (these letter pages are long ones lately) complains that they’re doing too many site-based adventures and not enough story focussed ones. It is kinda the tagline of the edition, plus they want to avoid railroads, so their standards for accepting event based adventures are somewhat higher at the moment, but they do have some in the bag coming in future issues.</blockquote>

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