What do YOU Want to See in Dragon/Dungeon

[Riley]

What do I want in my magazines?

Dragon:

• a lot of articles of varying size and type
• an emphasis on creative/unique ideas that will inspire the creation new adventures, characters, and worlds
• No 3e rules/mechanical articles
• Articles that stand on their own, and are NOT 'enhancements' advertising other products
• (After 4e's release) Articles on making the best use of the new 4e rules. Many WOTCites have been playing the game for a while, and they should spread their insights around.

Dungeon:

• A wide range of size, type, and style of adventures
• Mostly submissions from OUTSIDE and new authors. New people with original ideas should be the big part of Dungeon.
• The adventures should be a lot MORE flexible than the recent WOTC published adventures.
• Their ideas should NOT be pounded to death to fit a predetermined mold. They should not all be forced into WOTC's Delve Format, which seems to turn every adventure into a series of focused miniatures skirmishes. And monsters should be chosen because they fit, not because there's a miniature out there.

Oh, and I want a quality printed version at the end of the month. Please make the end-of-the month PDF a well-laid-out product that is ACTUALLY suitable for printing. That is, make the font a size reasonable for printing, not that large print used for reading off a screen

A BIG AND EASY/REASONABLE REQUEST: Please make a formal arrangement with a Print-On-Demand publisher to print off copies of Dragon/Dungeon Magazine, linked to from the WOTC web pages. You will be able to say you've accomodated paper-loving Luddites like myself at a minimum cost to yourselves. You'll have made it easy to get a quality paper copy, and you might even be able to arrange a slightly better price per issue than we'd get if we took the PDF to them ourselves.

 

[The Little Raven]

A BIG AND EASY/REASONABLE REQUEST: Please make a formal arrangement with a Print-On-Demand publisher to print off copies of Dragon/Dungeon Magazine, linked to from the WOTC web pages. You will be able to say you've accomodated paper-loving Luddites like myself at a minimum cost to yourselves. You'll have made it easy to get a quality paper copy, and you might even be able to arrange a slightly better price per issue than we'd get if we took the PDF to them ourselves.

It's going to be costly for a PoD book. Saddle-stitched books cap out at 88 pages, so if any single issue was bigger, it would have to be perfect-bound. You'd want full color because of the graphic design and artwork, which increases the price $.13 per page.

So, let's take a look at the manufacturing cost for a single copy.

88 pages, 8.5"x11", saddle-stitched, full color: $17.73

Yeah, I don't think it's very cost-efficient at all. I doubt anybody would want to pay $20+ for a single copy of Dragon or Dungeon. They could do yearly compilations in that format (possibly), but if you're looking at 88 pages per issue, you're talking 1056 pages for a one-year compilation (and perfect-bound books at lulu.com stop at 740 pages), so let's break that down to 6-month compilations (528 pages).

Dragon '08 (January-June), 528 pages, 8.5"x11", perfect-bound, full color: $83.73.

So, I don't think that having a print-on-demand option would really do a whole lot to inspire people to purchase them in a hard-copy format, considering the massive price attached to color printing.

 

[Riley]

88 pages, 8.5"x11", saddle-stitched, full color: $17.73

So, I don't think that having a print-on-demand option would really do a whole lot to inspire people to purchase them in a hard-copy format, considering the massive price attached to color printing.

Well, that's disappointing. In that case, I vote for ink on paper, delivered to my door.

 

[Monkey King]

I'd want to see some of the following:

New Monsters, not retreads. The Creature Catalogs by Paizo were especially good.
Playable Maps scaled for printing at 1" per square.
More Variety: A range of subgenres, not just FR and Eberron. Season it with Dragonlance fiction, Al-Qadim variant rules, and Planescape encounters.
Emphasis on major NPCs with a history in the game (Tales of Mordenkainen, or whatever replaces the Demonomicon). Some tie-in for long-term players.
A series on the Far Realms by Bruce Cordell

Things I'd like to see DDI avoid:

Product-of-the-Month: The shameless marketing stuff gets old fast.
Rules Wankery: Some web articles seem to be just about abusing the rules (that 30-headed Tarrasque article, for instance). If it's useless and unplayable crunch, don't bother.

I have high hopes that the DDI will put some Hasbro muscle into the online offerings. They've had a long time to prep for the freebie launch, and months more before the pay-for-access launch. I'm looking forward to increasing quality over the coming months.