Question: Is a year-long D&DI subscription worth it?

[Obryn]

For anyone having this problem: get the rss feed. I have mine set up in Google Reader and look it up in the mornings (M/W/F) to have all their new stuff dropped into my lap for me.

Nice!

+rep

Doesn't help with back-issues, but what can ya do?

It's just a horrible, horrible website design. It should NOT be this difficult to navigate to issues of Dragon/Dungeon and download the complete issues or individual articles.

-O

 

[MrMyth]

I will take your word for it and switch it in that post.

justanobody - I think munchkin is actually the word you are looking for (much more than CoDzilla, which refers more to the characters created by powergamers, rather than the powergamers themselves.) People aren't objecting to it because it is the wrong word, but because you seem to be throwing it about without any real support. Your earlier post implied that everyone who likes having expanded options is doing so because they have to make the best characters available - rather than, say, enjoying the use of a diverse range of options to make a variety of interesting characters.

Look, feel free to not like the online magazines. I wouldn't expect you to, given that you seem to have the built in outlook that anything related to 4E is terrible and useless. But please don't claim this makes you a better player than other gamers, or that everyone who does purchase additional D&D books or uses the online content is somehow a munchkin or a powergamer. It is bad enough to see your constant posts attacking anything 4E without seeing you actively attacking and insulting the players themselves.

 

[Scribble]

Is it worth it? Let me work it...

It's completely worth it. When they up the price after they add the extra tools... I'm not sure. Depends on how much they up it I guess.

I love Dragon, might find some use for Dungeon, and if all else fails I'll have 12 months' worth stockpiled for future games.

Dungeon in my opinion =

New monsters/npcs/items added to the compendium each month
New maps to steal and repurpose
New Ideas to steal from
New things to gank... (I used the "heavy catapult" from the sea reavers adventure and modified the basic structure to make a rock slinger...)

So even though I hardly ever use a dungeon adventure (in the history of my running games) there's plenty of stuff worth what I'm paying for it...

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Yeah I do the same, I don't use Dungeon to run adventures but I steal stuff a plenty from it.

 

[Phaezen]

Nice!

+rep

Doesn't help with back-issues, but what can ya do?

It's just a horrible, horrible website design. It should NOT be this difficult to navigate to issues of Dragon/Dungeon and download the complete issues or individual articles.

-O

Oddly enough, I find the site very usable, considering the amount of information avaiable on it, from the main page:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page

It takes 4 clicks to get to any dungeon or dragon article. 3 for the current issues, 2 for very recent articles. The main trick I suppose is knowing what you are looking for and working from the tabs on the lefthand side of the page.

For back issues of the magazines, click on the plus next to either the Dungeon or Dragon tabs on the left, click on issue archives, click on theissue and then the article you want.

There are gaming websites that are a lot more difficult to navigate. Try finding a specific article in the archives of the gw website for example.

Phaezen

Your milage may vary ofcourse.

 

[Obryn]

It takes 4 clicks to get to any dungeon or dragon article. 3 for the current issues, 2 for very recent articles. The main trick I suppose is knowing what you are looking for and working from the tabs on the lefthand side of the page.

For back issues of the magazines, click on the plus next to either the Dungeon or Dragon tabs on the left, click on issue archives, click on theissue and then the article you want.

There are gaming websites that are a lot more difficult to navigate. Try finding a specific article in the archives of the gw website for example.

Phaezen

Your milage may vary ofcourse.

It's not the number of clicks it takes. It's a combination of several things...

(1) Links both on the sidebar and on top of the scroller
(2) Very small text for higher-resolution screens
(3) Download links embedded in images
(4) Poor location of archived information, and non-intuitive location of back-issues of the magazines
(5) Poor organization of topics in the various columns
(6) Messy, cluttered interface, with non-obvious image links

It's not the number of clicks, it's the organization. A more direct tree-like design would really, really clean it up.

-O

 

[Jack99]

There was an actual term I swore I saw somewhere, but best I could come up with was "munchkin" because it was like a rules lawyer, but wasn't trying to find loopholes in the rules to play, but loopholes in the character building.

That dumb kobold god thingy that wasn't meant to be played, but could be made. But people took that concept and actually play with the "broken" characters.

Isn't there a term for that? Does ENWorld have a glossary of common terms around here?

No, munchkin is, by what you mean, the word you are looking for. My point was just that, the fact that a person wants all that is published does not make him a munchkin, which was what you were saying.

CoDzilla is the term you're looking for I think.

CoDzilla is short for cleric-or-druid-zilla and refers to how broken those two classes were in 3.x.

 

[doctorhook]

It's not the number of clicks it takes. It's a combination of several things...

(1) Links both on the sidebar and on top of the scroller
(2) Very small text for higher-resolution screens
(3) Download links embedded in images
(4) Poor location of archived information, and non-intuitive location of back-issues of the magazines
(5) Poor organization of topics in the various columns
(6) Messy, cluttered interface, with non-obvious image links

It's not the number of clicks, it's the organization. A more direct tree-like design would really, really clean it up.

-O

I've heard folks say that WotC's website isn't very well laid-out, and I guess I can see what they mean. That said, I'm not sure what to compare it to; can you link me a page with a better layout, which presents a similar breadth of content? Just so I can how much better it could be, I mean.

 

[Obryn]

I've heard folks say that WotC's website isn't very well laid-out, and I guess I can see what they mean. That said, I'm not sure what to compare it to; can you link me a page with a better layout, which presents a similar breadth of content? Just so I can how much better it could be, I mean.

Um, the very site you're on - right now - has a much better flow & organization through the non-forum pages.

Outside that, I think that most PC manufacturers do a pretty decent job. I find Dell's site very easy to navigate, for example - it's very simple to find Support, drivers, products, and so on.

Amazon's interface is so smooth it's just about flawless, but it's a different kind of beast.

Basically, most professional sites on the Web are much easier to navigate. I surf around a lot, and none of them give me the headache that wizards/dnd does.

-O

 

[Ethalias]

I subscribe (less than a year only because of cashflow) and it's so worth it. It's telling, I think, that no one who has subscribed has said it's not worth it at time of posting (i.e. no disappointed subscribers).

The character builder has already proved invaluable. I'm starting some new players off (who have created characters once before in 3rd edition and played a couple of games) and they loved how quick it was this time around to start one up. Although a large part of me loves flipping through books and taking my time on a character, having something narrow the choices and crunch the math for the less dedicated players has increased the chances of me getting a campaign off the ground. Which has got to be what it's all about!

I enjoy my thrice-weekly injection of D&D newness as well, so for me it was a no brainer.

*EDIT* OK so the website might not be the best, but for me, it's the books in the library that matter, not the colour of the walls or the number of doors I have to go through to get to it..