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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5468304" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995part 1/8124 pages. The budget cuts continue, with the degree of shading and definition on the cover art taking a real drop. Turn up the contrast too much, and convincingness takes a hike. The red triangle continues to look like it's poorly superimposed on the rest of the image as well. On the inside, we have messy disrupted lines being worrisomely common. Not sure if that was in the original magazine, or a result of careless scanning, but either way, it's another downwards step for the magazine. The issues will continue to mount up until the company changeover, it seems. Let's see how much worse they can get. In this issue:Letters: A letter from someone who who is profoundly peeved by the new Dark Sun boxed set. All my stuff is invalidated! Now now, most of the rules stuff is still perfectly functional, particularly the splatbooks. And to be frank, it's only excess entitlement that makes you think you should get a break on new editions. A letter complaining about the recent absence of Dragonlance stuff. This is met with cryptic teasering. We have big stuff planned. Stay tuned next year. That's right. Work them all up to let them down again. <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=";)" /> A request for an anthology of stories from the magazine. They give the usual noncommittal response. Make us think it's profitable, and we'll consider it. No change there then. A request that they review more of their own books. That's a perilous path to tread, as it opens up accusations of house organism very easily. Oh, if only there were another big gaming magazine by another company that does these things for them to recommend. That would be more healthy for the whole gaming community. A bold statement that the semi-regular columns are the best thing in the magazine, and the writer intends to send in submissions for them. The response to that is long and in-depth and digresses into talk about how much Dragon, Dungeon and the rest of TSR share staff. Perhaps that may in itself be part of the problem. Editorial: Oh dear. Another bemoaning of nerd bitchiness. Oh what a surprise, that a group renowned for their lack of social skills wouldn't get along well even amongst themselves. Not that I'm in any position to point fingers. The fact that I'm pretty odd and dysfunctional should be fairly apparent to most of you by now, particularly if you're a Tangency regular. Of course, the fact that I don't even fit into an obvious geek mold, (moving from Genetic engineering/general transhumanism to conceptual hyperspacial physics modelling to combinatoric math and it's applications in musical harmony. ) makes me hesitant to engage in tribalism, because when you're in a group of one most of the time, it's both pointless and suicidal trying to pick on other people. So, um, yeah, Geek solidarity! Except for the sports statistics nerds. And the furries. And the people who actually read their religious texts and spoil it for the honest down to earth fanatics by pointing out what they actually say on various matters. <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=";)" /> And definitely the pedophiles who hack other people's websites and hide their dirty pictures encrypted in there. Wait, I think that one does go beyond the boundaries of reasonable inclusiveness. Let's move on. A more interesting point raised by this editorial is that of microcelebrity. This is something that has been massively increased by the internet, but even in those days, the D&D writers and staff had the experience of working at a job for most of the year (and not even a particularly brilliantly paying one at that) and then being treated like stars by the people who buy the books when they do meet them. It shows that the tendency to assign greater weight and authority to people who communicate with you through some artificial medium is pretty inherent in human nature, even when they hold no official position, qualification or mandate beyond their own skills and what they are willing to claim. Indeed, it's something I've experienced personally a few times. It leaves me very curious as to how much of our society is a perceptual construct based on peer pressure and what we can convince others of. How do you leverage the belief of others into something you can make a living from? It's the real big question of the internet age, and a problem I'd rather like to solve, as it would make my life a lot more pleasant.</blockquote>

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