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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6050947" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 299: September 2002part 1/1091 (116) pages. Ookay. They aren't even making token attempts at backdrops anymore. The perspective looks thoroughly skewed. Silver on white is damn poor contrast. And what is wrong with that guy's mouth and eyeballs!? Even the very first issue did better than this. You suck, new art director. Why are your layout choices getting worse when you've been here nearly a year now? I'm confused and irritated. Let's hope the inside format doesn't wind up dragging the contents down and making them less usable. What's the theme? Knights, you say? Is Sir-not-appearing-in-this-film finally ready to show us some action? No? Well, I guess it's good knight from me, and good knight from them then. Scan Quality: Overexposed, unindexed, ad-free scan. In this issue:Wyrms turn: Another first character story? You know, maybe you should bring First Quest back. Seems most of the members of staff would use it, and they could do more justice to those stories than cramming them in the tiny editorial space. Unsurprisingly, it's in theme, as Matthew Sernett's first character was a knightly sort, heroic and true, despite the best attempts of the diabolical DM. He eventually become jaded and drifted into playing more morally ambiguous characters, but still has a soft spot for his old idealism. Cynicism is not an inevitable thing, so don't let the game world grind you down, even when the real world does. Sounds about right as an inspirational speech for this issue. After all, it's nearly 300 issues now. How many people have stuck with it right from the beginning, through all the ups and downs? Some, but not many. The same would apply to knights in-game. Many would have died or become fat and lazy lording it up after 26 years in the saddle. Let's keep on trying to prove we've got what it takes. Scale Mail: We start with another person complaining because a regular feature was skipped for just a single issue. See, that's why that becomes a problem, and having a roster of regular features that show up regularly, but not every issue is preferable. When people think something should be there all the time, they take it for granted, and act all entitled when it's taken away. When they're never sure exactly what's coming next time, it's more exciting. The cut-out special features continue to get praise. Why they stopped doing them in the 90's is beyond me, since they always add quite a bit to the memorability of an issue. Another complaint is that they're doing too many tie-ins these days. A pretty valid one, considering more than half the issues this year have had a theme directly connected to their latest new book. They have maybe become too tied up by the day-to-day whims of WotC politics. Will that change as the new company drifts apart from their parent? The epic level issue causes a fair amount of frustration too, partly because the stuff is hard to use, and partly because too much of the issue was devoted to it. The combination of these complaints means they are having a bit of a rethink in the office. It's a great irony that trying too obviously to be commercial can actually hurt your sales. And finally, we have a request for more Paladin stuff. They obviously hope the current issue will satisfy that little itch.</blockquote>

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