My thoughts on 4e Dragon magazine

[PeelSeel2]

I too am liking 4e Dragon so far. I bought the magazine from issue 54 to 112, and then quit. It just was not interesting anymore. I have perused it since, but it never really had those 'must have' articles. 4e Dragon so far has interesting articles. I like how they profile different fluff with mechanics. Even though I am pissed about the character generator and game table, I will still subscribe to get the Dragon and Dungeon Magazines.

 

[Greg K]

Unfortunately, the new Dragon does nothing for me. I look at it hoping that the content will change my opinion of 4e and build my interest. However, the changes to the Realms have me not interested in reading the FR material while the crunch (e.g., the Star Pact article, the Class Acts article on illusions and Law's article on magic items), reinforces everything that I dislike about 4e and the work of the current WOTC inhouse R&D staff over much of the 3e era- the last few years especialy- leading me to a more negative opinion of 4e and the R&D staff (as designers not people).

P.S. I loved the old Demonicon articles. They (along with Core Beliefs) are not only among my favorite 3e articles, but my favorite Dragon articles of all time.

 

[Arnwyn]

To make things worse, I didn't like Paizo's take on demons much, so their highly-hyped "Demonicon of Iggwilv" articles were generally just dead weight.

Fascinating.

 

[Wormwood]

I like the "new" Dragon, too. The material is interesting and varied. Fluff and mechanics so far have been good.

This + the new Dungeon.

Plus I'm really loving the PDF format (copy/pasting the information I want for my own campaign files is ++good).

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I may be part of the minority, but I always felt odd / wrong in bringing 3rd party rules and mechanics to the table. I had the attitude that if it wasn't from WotC, I probably shouldn't use it. For me, this came down to being fair to the rest of the players at the table. We (the group) agreed to play DnD 3.5 (or edition X), I should stick to the officially produced 3.5 material.

I did not have this qualm about settings or adventures as that was all flavor to the game (and had no impact on the rules / balance side of things).

With WotC publishing Dragon now, I feel like the crunchy bits are now just as valid as any other official WotC product (and thus have no qualms about using the mechanics they present). Thus, I am much more interested in Dragon now.

 

[Anthraxus]

This + the new Dungeon.

Plus I'm really loving the PDF format (copy/pasting the information I want for my own campaign files is ++good).

I feel the same way. Being able to print out just the adventure out of Dungeon I need to run, or just the section of Dragon with Warforged(for example) is nice. Or to be able to print out handouts or pics from Dungeon for their adventures without waiting for a download to come a few weeks later.

 

[El Mahdi]

Despite my critiques of Dungeon, I think Dragon is doing pretty good also. Even though I'm not switching to 3E, I've found the articles interesting and even inspiring for things in my game. Whether it's something I want to pay for, I'm undecided yet. I'm not sure if it's something that, if I lived without it, I would miss at all (or even notice it's absence). If Dungeon doesn't shape up, it may make my decision for me as to a DDI sub.

 

[Shemeska]

I subscribed to Dragon from around '99 till it ended, and Dungeon for its last two years. WotC's online version is free, yet I've stopped reading it completely at this point.

My interest waned after they stopped having James Jacobs writing the Demonomicon articles. And around that time Gleemax made it virtually impossible to log on to read anything, and the material rapidly became leftovers and advertisement filler promoting 4e, so I didn't really bother anymore.

The articles now seem to actually have some meat on them, and good for them, except I don't have much interest in the mechanics articles since I don't play or run a 4e campaign, and the FR fluff articles have been downright depressing (and let's not talk about the Zhent headless horseman...). The last article I fully read was Rob Schwalb's Yeenoghu piece, but otherwise my interest has waned to the point where they've probably lost me, even if it stays free.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Still waiting for printer friendly version.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Still waiting for printer friendly version.

Open Acrobat version, Edit, select all, copy; open MS Word, Edit, paste special, unformatted text, Print.

Boom, done.