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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6062919" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 302: December 2002part 1/10119 (120) pages. Finally, a decent cover for the first time in half a year, even if the colour scheme is a bit XTREEEME!!!!! and pretty much the opposite of christmassey. Like certain previous december issues, they've decided to go with the general theme of magic, which always gives them tons of leeway to pick articles. Hopefully that means they'll give some new freelancers a chance to prove themselves and add new ideas to the pot. The game does need regular stirring up, it seems. Scan Quality: Colours somewhat oversaturated, indexed. In this issue:Wyrms turn: To warm up for the issue, we build anticipation. Sometimes, the anticipation turns out more exciting than the main event. Jesse certainly finds that the case with D&D combat. While it can be exciting sometimes, once the battle has got underway, you soon burn through the big trump card abilities and get an idea of how the conflict is going to go. This is one area where system really matters hugely, with the amount of tactical options you have (and are readily usable without causing the user headaches) varies quite a lot. Plus there's the question of overall swinginess, how unpredictable the dice are and how much a single action can change the overall course of a battle. So there is a decent amount to think about here. Does the build-up to a battle being more exciting than the battle itself mean the system is a problem, and in need of overhaul? Or is it an inevitability when you run a game with a fair amount of actual roleplaying between fights? Opinions?Scale Mail: Issue 300 gets four letters devoted to it, three of them negative. So with votes running a 1 positive, 2 outraged and 1 who simply found it tremendously underwhelming in it's attempts at controversy, they're left a bit unhappy. I do agree with the editors that the material wasn't actually that more gruesome than any other, it was merely hype. THAT WAS THE PROBLEM!!! Really, they deserve all the criticism they get for that issue, even if not all of it is entirely accurate, simply because it was that annoying. The mummy ecology gets some real world historical elaboration. After all, they were so popular around this time that Mummy: the Resurrection got a players guide covering other cultures after originally being intended as a one book thing. Any mention of them will get the attention of the obsessives, who love to correct you if you get it wrong. And finally, we have a letter that mirrors one of my observations, that the current format for covers neither looks as good on average, or has as much variety as the stuff from around 83-95. They just take things so much more seriously, and that's not always a good thing. In any case this is another case where they don't plan to change in the near future. They think giving us the hard sell on the covers, and keeping the badass gurning will work better than a larger scale clean image. This makes me a sad kitty. Apple have proved that you can still sell very well with minimalist packaging. Marketing people need to remember that elegance is more important than quantity.</blockquote>

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