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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5485514" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996part 1/8124 pages. So, here we are then. At least they realised fairly quickly that the red triangle was a dumb idea and are pretending it was never a long-term plan in the first place. In it's place, we have a tilted logo, a whole bunch more promotional blurbs scattered across the cover, and a completely blank print of the cover image a few ages inside. Now they have one less page to worry about filling with actual content. And a whole bunch of new regular columns, one of which is misspelled on the contents page. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Only a few pages in, and I'm already finding good reasons to be amusingly bitchy. This looks like it will be worryingly easy pickings. In this issue:The wyrm's turn: The editorial gets renamed and moved ahead of the contents page. Because what they have to say is just too important to wait. Yes, this year heralds big format changes. The last two issues had a few of these, but now they hit in full force. (the price also goes up a full dollar, to $4.95) It's time for the magazine to start focussing seriously on gaming. Computer game reviews are out, the old comics are out, there'll be less stuff on games other than D&D, (apart from CCG's) and the visuals are seriously altered. Welcome to the last gasp of TSR, before they collapse under the weight of their bad company policies and financial mismanagement. So it's out with the old, in with the ……. older? as they promise to give plenty of coverage to dead campaign worlds and bring back regular deliveries of specific NPC's. Y'know, I never much liked those back in the day. Guess that's probably going to be another sticking point. They say they're going to bring back miniatures, but they've changed their mind several times recently so who knows. And it's all change in the comics department, of which I'm still not sure what to think. So as with last month, this already seems like more bad news than good news, but we'll have to see for sure. Letters becomes D-Mail for some reason. Probably trying to get down with the modern lingo and new developments in technology. Me'n ma homies are delvin this dungeon, an any punk-ass mutha<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />a who gets in the way is gonna get capped. Word up. What's in this mailbag, dudes? A request for more Drizzt books. Yeah, we're not going to let this one get away, when he's one of their biggest sellers. He will write until he drops! Ahahahahaha!A letter wondering how much they can get for old issues of the magazine. A lot more than shops will offer you, that's for sure. You might even be able to get more than you paid for the really early stuff. So don't settle for less. We've had letters asking how you get published by the magazine, or TSR as a whole recently. Now they ask how you can get them to publish your novels. Generally, you don't. They tell you what to write about if you want to be published, not the other way around. Look at poor Bob Salvadore. I'm sure he'd love to give them stuff set in a universe of his own invention, but you know what would happen if he did? Do you want to find out? Do you really? A letter pointing out that you can trade old cars for new, and so they ought to do the same for the new Dark Sun campaign setting. I do wonder why everyone is suddenly getting all worked up about this one when the Realms, Ravenloft, Greyhawk and Mystara all made huge changes when they updated and didn't get anything like this fuss. It's not as if they were less popular than Athas. Or were they just not publishing it. After all, greyhawk & mystara died soon after being updated, so sales must not have been great. Another development. They've been doing 12 issues a year for the past 16 years. Now it seems they've decided to push their limits a little further, and do a dragon annual every year as well. Which brings the total to 13. Unlucky for some? Quite possibly. More work for me? Definitely. A LorR Collectible card game? I'm not that surprised really. The bandwagon jumping continues.</blockquote>

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