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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6156657" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 326: December 2004part 1/876 (108) pages. A proper scene with stuff happening on the cover instead of one character posing! And they've scaled back on all the promotional blurbs so you can see it clearly! What there is looks pretty promising too. Wenches · Tricks · Wandering Monsters · Ale · Traps. That's a proper old school set of themes that I can instantly see the links between. Let's put a little more grime back in our dungeoneering, and see who stays heroic, and who flunks out because they just can't take fighting oozes with a hangover after a night in the local festhall. Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan. In this issue:From the editor: Unsurprisingly, the editorial reminds us that going back to the dungeon was the tagline for 3rd edition, and it should be the default adventure type for most D&D parties. It's the easiest type of adventure to run, and presents the most obvious physical challenges to the players, which makes coming to a decision far easier than a city, where you can go anywhere, talk to anyone, and have no idea who the good and bad guys are. (and even if you do, you can't just barge in and kill them) D&D is not just a straight world simulator, it has a very specific and distinct slant to it's design that pushes you towards tactical site-based scenarios, thanks to it's movement, resource tracking and combat systems. The World of Darkness doesn't give costs for 10 foot poles or torches, or track exactly how much everything weighs, and so people don't worry so much about their inventory when playing it. Runequest makes even non-cleric characters take their religion and culture more seriously than D&D ones. And truly generic point buy games make people obsess over character building to the point where they can actually spend more time creating their character than playing it. <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" /> If you don't want dungeon-crawling to play any part in your game, you have plenty of better options, instead of trying to fight the system like so many 2e settings did. Scale Mail: No surprise that the format changes provoke tons of letters, both positive and negative. First up is someone bemoaning the departure of Gary. That was his choice they're afraid, insomuch declining health can be considered a choice. Mind you, given the sheer volume of forum posts he managed right up to a week before he died, many of which were on similar topics, it may have just been being tired of fitting his stories into the one page format instead of being free to ramble. Similarly, the removal of a regular monthly dose of realmslore causes much distress to it's many fanatics. If it's no longer popular enough to merit an appearance every month that's because you at WotC have actively worked to downplay settings in favor of genericness. The audience has fought you every step of the way on this one, and it's only the fact that they're divided amongst themselves that let you win. We have another letter from someone who was a reluctant convert to 3.5, but liked it when they did bite the bullet. Releasing new editions too soon is a problem even if their contents are good, it seems. We also have a letter from someone who doesn't get to play, so they mainly buy the magazine for the fiction and setting stuff. They have to remember to cater to that crowd as well, and they do forget sometimes. The format changes continue to attract huge amounts of controversy, with another 4 for and 3 against. What they've gained in readability, they've sacrificed in flavour, and there are plenty of people who don't like the new layout or columns at all. Still, at least this shows lots of people still care. The question is if it'll increase or decrease their readership overall, as that's the only metric that really matters in the end.</blockquote>

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