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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6174305" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 332: June 2005part 1/775(108) pages. Look ma, I'm an adventurer! I'm just going to glance back at the camera to pose and go raar before I try to kill the monsters, because my family would never let me live it down if I didn't bring back snaps of my heroic deeds. Once again, the zoomed in nature of covers compared to the old days makes the world the adventurers live in seem less significant and threatening, even when the danger should be a pretty big one like, say, a goddamn dragon. Maybe it will beat the adventurers after all, but I'm not making any bets, especially as the articles inside seem more focussed on creatures around them, such as cultists and kobolds. Let's see just how much familiarity has bred contempt after 29 years then.In this issue:From the Editor: After a decidedly unimpressive cover, the editorial immediately reminds us of one of the most awesome ones of the past, the dragon vs fighter jet one from 1989. One that was obviously done before the Code of Conduct, and TSR deciding it was institutionally against LARPing in all it's forms, as the associate editor talks about the spectacular convention adventure they set up that year, with visual representation of all the rooms in the dungeon. Just the thing to really open a young gamer's eyes and make them go wow. This reminds us that in some ways things were indeed better in the old days, but it's also very much a matter of perception, as it's harder to impress adults who have a wider range of experiences to draw from. Will this year's conventions have the same kind of wow factor to a new attendee? Well, that's the hope. They're certainly bigger than back in the 80's And if they're spending a fair bit of money on promotions, they might well pull it off. Just got to make sure videogames don't draw everyone away with their even larger budgets.Scale Mail: It turns out that it's not just the army that has tons of gamers filling in time there. The Navy is pretty good at that as well. And given the nature of these things, I'll wager the air force will be along to defend their geek cred as well in the near future. Second, we have a letter from someone who doesn't get to play much, so more setting and less disconnected generic crunch is definitely a more interesting read to them. Remember how many people bought the dragonlance novels but not the games. Can you afford to cut them loose from your marketing strategy?Next is another person who was initially suspicious of eberron, but won over by it's coolness, and now wants an article on pirates there. It does sound like a fun combo for an article, I'll give him that, even if they did do articles on pirates already just a year ago.Also a topic worth returning too is more Call of Cthulhu monsters. Believe me, as long as James Jacobs is in the building, you'll have no shortage of things like that coming down the pipeline, even if they aren't official conversions.While the magazine might be doing a bit more setting stuff, that does not mean WotC as a whole has changed their policy on not fragmenting the market. Nor are they going to convert Magic: the Gathering worlds to D&D, despite the potential extra money for half the extra effort in that.However, even if WotC isn't bringing them back, other people are. This also applies to those old Tom Wham games, which are now published by Steve Jackson Games. Nice to see someone didn't sign away all their rights to the magazine and wind up screwed for finances long-term.Thankfully, the humour in the april issue hits the mark this year. Hopefully they won't skip it again for several years running.And finally, we have one of those tedious little rules quibbles that pops up every now and then. No amount of perfectionism and seriousness will stop those from slipping through.</blockquote>

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