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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6150779" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 324: October 2004part 1/8108 pages. So it's time for another price increase, to $6.99. Seems like they're coming more frequently these days. Funny that they tend to happen the issue AFTER a format change. Anyway, halloween has rolled around again, and that means undead and other monsters that are billed as scary, even if mechanically they're not as nasty as some others that aren't getting the same publicity. (maybe their next april issue can combine badgers, mushrooms and snakes, since all of those have truly terrifying D&D variants) Once again, let's see if there's anything new to say on this topic. Scan Quality: Slightly blurry, oversaturated blacks, unindexed. In this issue:From the editor: So the D&D movie sucked. But somehow, it's still getting a sequel. (even if the two only share one character and no actual plot threads) It's vaguely baffling to me. I suppose there's several considerations beyond short term profit at work here. One is the sheer number of D&D based books and computer games that have become bestsellers. Surely someone ought to be able to crack converting it to the big screen. Another is that as long as D&D is around, any movies based on it will enjoy a fair amount of long tail sales, even if they're known to be crap, because gamers want to rubberneck. And finally, there's doing it as a loss leader to raise the profile of gaming as a whole. D&D flourished in the 80's thanks to the people spreading negative publicity about it as much as anything. A little more of that might be just what we need to fix the ageing demographics. Well, they've got to have hope, otherwise they wouldn't be working here. <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" /> First watch: Our generic D&D book this month is Libris Mortis. Undead continue to be one of the most popular adversary types, and so a splatbook focussing on them, both as adversaries and PC's seems likely to sell. New monsters, new spells, new prestige classes, all those crunchy jubblies they know work. The forgotten realms reintroduces The Shining South for the new edition. High temperatures, high magic, and airships in the sky. They point out that Eberron did not originate these tropes. Ahh, the horrors of having to fill newbies in on the past. Speaking of which, they also release 30 years of Adventure, their latest retrospective on the history of the game. They aren't making as big a deal about it as they did for the 25th anniversary, but they're still feeding off nostalgia quite a bit. I do wonder how well things like this actually sell compared to new gamebooks. Do they get into shops that the actual rulebooks don't? Also on the nostalgia trip, we get an odd situation where the UK is getting DVD's of old kids shows before the US. He-man and the D&D cartoon are both getting these first for a change. Bloody region coding. It really has no place in the modern world where you can order stuff from any country easily. This stuff really irritates me. They also decide that computer games are now within their remit, promoting Dundjinni, a map making program. Another thing that's useful, but hardly essential, as they point out that drawing stuff by hand still works just fine. In addition, along with the usual previews on what's next in Dungeon, they add Amazing Stories to the roster. Once again they try and relaunch it, make it relevant to a modern audience by putting hot celebrities on the cover. Unfortunately, this is going to prove about as effective as your granddad trying to rap. Sigh.</blockquote>

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