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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5654342" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon magazine annual 1997part 8/8Afterword: A little earlier this issue, we got our first bit of writing by Gary in over 10 years. Now we get to see the first bit of direct communication by our new boss, Peter Adkison. This really is a very special issue, far more than last year's. And no surprise that he seems pretty excited to be here. Quite a bit of this is repeated from issue 242's editorial, but we get a bit more info on how these plans are to be implemented. The new Marvel Superheroes game is going to be diceless and use a version of the SAGA System, while Greyhawk's first new adventure will involve putting the old gang back together IC after their embarrassing demise at the hand of Vecna a few years ago. Whether they're getting older people in to write for the line as well is not certain yet. Rather than releasing a whole new world, they're going to try a mini-series, and see how that does. And of course, there's the desire to do more electronic stuff. Once again, I know a few of their plans won't pan out, but that just keeps this interesting as a record of their historical progress. While pretty breezy, Peter doesn't seem to have a particularly distinctive writing style as of yet, which means I doubt we'll be seeing comedy gold moments from him like we did from Gary. Still, it's better than Lorraine's disdainful detachment by a long shot. This annual is far better than the first one, in terms of organisation of articles, quality of individual articles, and of course, it's quality of special guests.  They've been promising change since the start of the year, but sticking mostly to formula. This shows them really making their formula work for them and proving that when they have the articles it can be great. Now I just hope they still have a decent number of freelancers sending stuff in. After all, relying on staff writers is a quick way to push things too far in the formulaic direction. So things might get better next year, or they might get more average. At least it seems unlikely that they'll get worse, with all the extra self-examination they're putting in.</blockquote>

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