Rant About Recent Dungeon Magazines

[Simplicity]

Okay. Now I'm mad. Paizo has virtually ruined my favorite
magazine. Have you guys seen the latest few issues?
I picked up one Dungeon 101 yesterday... One 13th level Forgotten Realms adventure... And that's it. What?!?! How useless is that?

If I wanted one adventure for $7, I'd just go out and buy a module!

Needless to say, this one went unpurchased. My favorite magazine. Right there on the shelf. And I couldn't bring myself to buy it.

Then there was Dungeon 99:
Critical Threat (4 pages)
Adventure: Quadripartite (22 pages)
Critical Threat (6 pages)
Map of Mystery

One 22 page adventure, huh? What a deal!
I realize that these are the off weeks for Dungeon, where Polyhedron takes over more of the magazine (not even half), but one adventure?!?! Come on!

For comparison, lets look at some older Dungeons (at random):

Dungeon 87:
Adventure: Raiders of Galath's Roost (36 pages)
Adventure: Cradle of Madness (28 pages)
Adventure: Glacier Season (34 pages)
Adventure: Valley of the Snails (20 pages)
Adventure: The Shalm's Dark Song (14 pages)
Plus a bonus TWO adventures on a CD-ROM!
Tinderbox & Gorgoldand's Gauntlet

Hmmmm... Which Dungeon is better... 1 adventure at 20 pages or 7 adventures around 20 pages each... Hmmmm... Well, the Dungeon 99 DOES say that it's one 20-page adventure is 5 adventures in one... Somehow, I don't think it's that good though...

Here's another one...

Dungeon 84:
Adventure: The Harrowing (44 pages)
Adventure: Demonclaw (12 pages)
Adventure: The Dying of the Light (28 pages)
Adventure: Dungeon of the Fire Opal (20 pages)
Adventure: Armistice (18 pages)

5 adventures! That must have been nice to have... Surely they can't all have been so much longer... Well, you're right. When Polyhedron got tacked on, we lost an adventure or two.

Dungeon 92:
Adventure: Interlopers of Ruun-Khazai (32 pages)
Critical Threat: Lord Flame (2 pages)
Adventure: The Swarm (20 pages)
Side Trek: Return of the Blessed Damozel (4 pages)
Adventure: The Razing of Redshore (34 pages)

3 adventures here, but at least they're long adventures.... Probably closer to 4 adventures normally.

Look, I know it's been said "Dungeon won't survive without Polyhedron." Fine. You need both, then have both. Considering the current quality of Dungeon, I don't think it's going to survive with Polyhedron either.

Go fricken black and white if you have to... but don't release Dungeon magazines with ONE adventure in them. Especially when the adventure isn't any larger that a typical adventure in any of the older editions of the magazine.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Here we go...YET AGAIN.

You're about a week off from this discussion...and about a month of from the first.

 

[Crothian]

Here we go...YET AGAIN.

You're about a week off from this discussion...and about a month of from the first.

Old discussions don't die, they just come back again and again and again.

But I feel your pain. I don't get dungeon anymore. That seems to be the best way I have to show trhem my disappointment.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Old discussions don't die, they just come back again and again and again.

But I feel your pain. I don't get dungeon anymore. That seems to be the best way I have to show trhem my disappointment.

True. Too true...I do understand the dislike of what is happening to Dungeon, I really do, its just that I'm on the other side of things. I like Poly...but only the even numbered ones so I can get my Star Wars content. As I've said again and again, Paizo is stuck in a Catch-22 with Dungeon-Poly...and its nearly impossible to satisfy one half of the readers without really driving the other half of the readers crazy.

 

[Blasphemonkey]

Hey, if you miss the old Dungeon, why not reminisce? Come stop by, have a cup of tea and talk about some of your favorite adventures found in Dungeon (3rd Edition only though).

I just posted my new thread, and now found this one right below it. So I couldn't resist.

The monkey wants you to turn that frown upside-down...!

Oook, ook. Eeek! (Translation: hyperlink is below!)


http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56414

 

[d12]

You are right.

Its still cheaper than buying a good quality module by itself though.

 

[Erik Mona]

I went on about this at some length in another post, but here's the short answer: Message received.

We had a lot of "long" adventures developed and on hand when we switched to a monthly frequency. The Mini-Games were also very long, mostly because they could be when the magazine itself was more than 150 pages long. Cutting down to 100 pages meant that we were stuck for a few issues with longer content.

We're now past most of the long content, and to make matters even more interesting, I'm now in charge of the entire magazine (Chris is now editing Dungeon). Clearly, there have been some missteps over the last year, and I'm committed to fixing them as best as I'm able.

For starters, I want to run at least three Dungeon adventures per issue (this will probably fall to 2 when we run the adventure path). No more 36-page FR adventures. I'm currently thinking that the Adventure Path is the _only_ type of adventure (excluding some we've already bought) that will go over 30 pages. We just don't have the room for those kinds of monsters, and besides I think most Dungeon DMs probably prefer the shorter (15-20 page) adventures, anyway.

It'll take me a couple more issues to get things back to 3 per issue, but it's a definite goal, and I'm working very hard to make sure we hit that goal within the next couple issues.

If you have other suggestions, I'm all ears.

--Erik Mona

 

[The_Gneech]

I went on about this at some length in another post, but here's the short answer: Message received.

*snip*

If you have other suggestions, I'm all ears.

--Erik Mona

Very cool! I've kinda been keeping quiet on the issue, but as I was just about to mail a "letter to the editor," I'll just post a response here instead.

What I'd love to see in Dungeon:

* More, shorter adventures, side treks, and the like. To use a computer game analogy, I'd like to have several small mini-quests of the type that are lurking around "the town" that aren't related to the major plotline.

* More _flavorful_ adventures. As I gushed in the other thread, "Rana Mor" is my all-time favorite Dungeon entry, because it feels just like something written by Robert E. Howard, instead of feeling like "yet another generic D&D scenario." I'd like more adventures that were distinctive in such a way ... something with an Egyptian feel in one issue, something out of _Jason and the Argonauts_ in the next. (The gladiatorial content was very good in this regard.)

* Swashbuckling piratey action! Arrr!

What I'd love to see in Polyhedron:

* Follow-up! You've published a dozen mini-rulesets ... but precious few scenarios! I could really use some good d20 Modern sidetreks, maybe a full-blown adventure for the "race across America" minigame.

* Third-party support. How about some material for Deadlands d20? Sovereign Stone (perhaps with D&D conversion notes)? Traveller d20 And did I mention Swashbuckling Adventures? Arr!

Oh, and BTW, I'm subscribing now. 'cause the magazine is still a good value.

-The Gneech

 

[billd91]

<snip>
What I'd love to see in Polyhedron:

* Follow-up! You've published a dozen mini-rulesets ... but precious few scenarios! I could really use some good d20 Modern sidetreks, maybe a full-blown adventure for the "race across America" minigame.

* Third-party support. How about some material for Deadlands d20? Sovereign Stone (perhaps with D&D conversion notes)? Traveller d20 And did I mention Swashbuckling Adventures? Arr!

<snip>
-The Gneech

Hear! Hear!
I'm a subscriber for the adventures, myself. But I was also very happy to see the announcement that the Polyhedron part would be supporting Living Greyhawk and Star Wars d20. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a heck of a lot of either of those due to the mini-games and issue 100 special.
But this announcement by Erik has bouyed my spirits somewhat. I'm not quite as interested in 3rd party support in general as the Gneech, but I can't see why you wouldn't want the Polyhedron half to support games for which RPGA sponsors tournaments and living campaigns. Dare I hope for Call of Cthulhu from time to time?
I haven't been interested in many of the mini-games but there have been a couple I have been impressed with. As a result, I don't know that I'd want to see them completely cut out. Maybe cut down to 3-4 per year instead of 6. One every 4 months would probably be plenty and provide authors with time to come up with a couple supporting articles or adventures for follow-up issues.
I understand how it's taking a while to get to the right mix. And I'd like to add one more major recommendation:
Do NOT include subscriber only sections of the magazine!Subscribers already get the advantage of a better price. Don't screw over the news stand or specialty shop buyer. People buying from the store vs people subscribing should get the SAME product. Of all of the things Paizo's done so far to Dungeon, the subscriber only adventure was the balls-out biggest mistake to make.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Finally, a thoughtful "we screwed up" response from Paizo, but methinks it comes as too little, too late. The damage is done, and there is no way to make either the pro or anti-Poly crowd happy so long as they are in the same magazine. I dislike Poly intensely and feel that its inclusion in Dungeon has compromised not only the integrity of the magazine, but hamstrung the very reason I buy Dungeon beyond repair: the D&D adventures.

Going monthly was supposed to be a good thing, but it has ruined the magazine. Subscriber only content makes me angry; if the magazine was consistently good, I would subscribe. It's not (surprise: it never was), but at least there was plenty of content. When it was published bimonthly, I bought maybe half the issues each year (3 copies). Since it's gone monthly, I've bought only 1: #100, which turned out to be not such a good value to my game, as everything was either too high level, too epic in scope, or too bland, such as "Woe To Mistledale," the sole reason I bought the issue. Issues #99 and #101 made me sick at what the changes going monthly had wrought.

Poly is consistently awful. Aside from a few interesting bits, such as Pulp Heroes (which I liked but will most likely never play), Poly gives me absolutely zero useful content most issues, and none of it (even the useful bits) is OGC. Poly is killing Dungeon faster than a marilith wielding six vorpal blades, IMO. Axe it. Axe it now, and let it die. If that kills Dungeon, too, so be it. The magazine is not worth saving at this point. However well-intentioned, Paizo has done more to kill the magazine than WoTC ever did... WoTC would have simply killed it, but Paizo is dragging it out, letting it die a messy death and generating mountains of bad memories instead. Better Dungeon had gone gracefully than this...