I do. I hope while re-thinking D&D, they also re-think the magazines. I'd like to see them return to print, but that might not be feasible. But I do want Dungeons magazine to return to its roots.
In the future, we need more focus on adventures.
What do you think/hope for?
Yep. I've been pushing this on every post I make about 5e it seems, so no reason not to repeat myself one more time in agreeance with you:
Adventures that come out in print should be fairly contained "mini-campaigns" in box. They should have a slightly sandboxy area -- maybe the size of Waterdeep or Neverwinter, or going back to pre-4e books, things like Lost City of Barakus (Necromancer Games), or the like -- and they should include everything you need for that mini-campaign:
- Adventure book with background on the area, encounters, and some adventures (however linear or non-linear as needed)
- Dungeon Tiles and/or larger poster maps to get the "feel" of the area, preferably also with a Player-friendly version of the map (handouts are fun!)
- In line with that last statement, any other player handouts in a separate booklet or whatever form works best, like the art pieces you show to players from Tomb of Horrors
- Monster pogs for all the badguys statted up in the module
- Anything else the adventure calls for, whether it's a Despair Deck, a Deck of Many Things, special rune dice, or maybe an iconic D&D Mini of the main badguy in the adventure.
You could still have smaller-scale adventures that come in the "adventure folder" format of Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire and all those. These smaller ones just would have the adventure book, a couple handouts or dungeon tiles, maybe a single sheet of pogs, or whatever.
DUNGEON would contain all the even smaller, 2-5 encounter adventures that ultimately don't need any handouts. Preferably, they'd use dungeon tiles or something that's immediately handy and IN PRINT ;-)
This format could get messy on some levels, but I think it might actually force Wizards to design adventures that AREN'T in a vacuum.
They'd actually think about the pog sets: Do we really need another adventure with 10 encounters with goblins seems how we already have one with a set of pogs already on the market?
They'd promote Dungeon Tiles: We've got our sets of them, and now we have these "iconic" ones that are "rarer" and packaged in with our adventures.
They'd think harder about the player side of things: what handouts can we include? Maps? Pictures? Documents and letters from the adventure? Cards?
They'd could move away from doing the design and development (and conversion) of whole campaign settings -- some, like FR and Greyhawk that have HUGE amounts of setting baggage and history to them -- and instead work on smaller portions thereof. You might lose something in the "context" of the mini-setting compared to the larger world -- such as in a Neverwinter Adventure Box Set not being immediately packaged with the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting -- but they would be much easier to insert into a DM's home world.
And, you can "shore up the holes" in these contextually lost mini-settings by simply publishing a book like the Forgotten Realms History or the Living Greyhawk Gazeteer that's maybe a little more fluffy and/or player-oriented (new feats/backgrounds/equipment special to the world).
Basically, anything that gives DMs a ready-to-run package, but isn't just a textbook-format, is a good thing. For the people not into pre-made adventures, you can still mine the living crap out of a box that has tiles, pogs, setting material, and player handouts. Much moreso than a hardcover book with an adventure and a single foldout battlemap.
I also like what one poster in another thread said: "Package these things in those little metal lunchboxes and make the books digest size." I don't agree with the digest size, but frankly, it would fit, and those little lunchboxes have to be the cheapest packaging on the market...yet they are still more sturdy than the last few boxed sets Wizards put out (Shadowfell, I'm looking at you).
