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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6143890" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 322: August 2004part 1/880(108) pages. Last issue, they chased the rainbow. This time, it's back down into the darkness, which most D&D monsters can see through, but you puny humans still have good reason to fear. That's a strong yet flexible theme, and I certainly hope they can fill it with some truly scary boogeymen. Let's see what happens when we turn out the lights tonight, and how easy it'll be to write about it. Scan Quality: Moderate, lots of adjacent page bleedover, unindexed, ad-free scan. In this issue:Wyrms Turn: One mistake 3e definitely made was making darkvision default for entire swathes of monster types. It puts humans in a position that simply isn't borne out by our real world capabilities, especially when you include all the near-human races that do have some form of low-light sight. We have better night and distance vision than a whole swathe of animal types, even if our colour perception isn't the greatest. Of course, IRL humans are also one of THE toughest and smartest creatures in the world, rather than an average which most monsters exceed handily, but that doesn't fit the plucky underdog image we somehow still instinctively project ourselves into. I certainly haven't been afraid of the dark in a long time. Will this issue bring back any of that, or will it only demystify it further? Scale Mail: Our first letter is a request for chromatic dragon PC progressions to mirror the metallic ones. Since they're quite keen on sequel articles these days, I can see that happening fairly soon. Since they've been making hints about big changes for a while now, people are obviously curious, and maybe a bit worried. They're planning on moving their regulars around so Dragon is more player-oriented, while Dungeon gets the DM-specific columns, among other things. Whether that'll increase overall sales, we shall have to see. They try to prime us for the change a little more by including another letter from a person who was pleased by the 3.5 changes. Hopefully these ones will be to the positive as well. We also get reassurance that many people do want more unusual topics covered in the magazine. You never know when something that's currently niche is going to take off and become a huge hit spawning it's own imitators and subgenres. And even if it isn't a hit this time, at least you produced something different and interesting. As they do every year or two, we have someone asking how they break into the RPG industry and make a living from it. Getting writing or artwork gigs isn't that hard if you're persistent and respond well to editors. Getting enough to live on as your primary job is another matter altogether. Remember, there's all sorts of other behind the scenes jobs you can take. See if your talents lie in any of those areas if you don't absolutely have to be a creator to make your life worth living. Another fairly common request is for their best bits of art to be made into a poster. You might just get your wish this time, presuming your favourites are the same as theirs. And finally, we have a request for a setting where monsters are common and integrated into general society. That's much harder than it seems, especially when they have superhuman mental stats and at-will mind reading/control powers that make dealing with them as equals completely impossible. Lifespans and breeding rates would also cause serious long-term instabilities and logistical problems. But that doesn't mean there can't be specific monster nations, and indeed, they're putting a fair few in Eberron. All their official settings have to have humans as the most dominant/frequent race overall because that's what people buy. If you want otherwise, you have to do it yourself.</blockquote>

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