What would you like to see for Dragon and Dungeon magazine?

[Painfully]

I'd love it if they would offer a Dungeon Magazine archive of the first 100 issues!! I'd gladly pay $60-80 for it!

I wouldn't pay too much more than that though since so many of the issues are pre-3E and will need to be converted. But it would be a great way to grab revenue off of the old issues.

I'd especially like a separate archive of "just maps," another one of "just names" and another of "just unique monsters and boss NPCs" Those lists alone will be priceless for DMs everywhere!

Hey, new owner, give us a Dungeon archive and take our money! Do I have to start a petiition?!

 

[thalmin]

Would be nice. Sorta like the Dragon CD-ROM they did?

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

I think the format they have now is the best they ever had. Hope they'll keep it virtually unchanged for as long as possible.

-Zarrock

 

[Talaysen]

That Dragon CD-ROM actually landed them in a bit of trouble - a lot of freelancers still had the rights to their articles, and WotC couldn't, strictly speaking, reproduce their pieces without their permission. (Which is precisely what they did.) I know that at least some of the adventures in Dungeon are likewise owned by their authors, so if WotC or the new owner wished to produce a Dungeon Archive CD-ROM, they would need to obtain permission from said authors and/or buy back the pieces in question.

Not likely to happen, IMHO, though I would like to see such a project myself. I missed by one issue the Dungeon that corresponded with Dragon's "Future Fantasy" issue. (Which also had one of the last - if not the last - Dark*Matter adventures, as I recall.)

 

[Tux the Nomad]

I would like to see Dragon return to the way it was in its heyday, circa issue 60. Primarily focuses on D&D, but with the occasional well-written article for other systems...sometimes even cover articles (the Exonidas Highport material in one of those launched a Traveller campaign that lasted eight years).

As for the D&D-specific coverage, I'd like to see it become D20 coverage. I'd also like to see fewer prestige classes and more general material: new races, new items, generic locations for campaigns. The Dragon of the last year or so was becoming overly-dependent on the Big Product Release of the Month, and not really useable without said Big Product.

Dungeon I dont particularly care about one way or the other; I did like how Polyhedron was becoming a D20 magazine within a magazine, but I think Dragon is the more appropriate place for that now.

 

[BButler]

My main hope is that my Dragon magazine will keep arriving in my mailbox on time and that the price won't increase dramatically.

I'm really pretty happy with the way Dragon is right now. Sure, some issues have more stuff that I find interesting, some have less. Aside from having the editors call me up every month and ask me what information I'd find useful, I don't know how they'd make the magazine consistently more useful to me.

While there are other D20 games that I like a lot (like Spycraft,) I'd prefer if Dragon remained a D&D magazine. Too much other stuff would water down the focus and IMHO make the magazine less useful.

 

[zilch]

I like the d20 mini games in Polyhedron. I really hope they stay a part of Dungeon.

 

[Storm Raven]

Dragon could become what Polyhedron was. A place to showcase various D20 items and have mini-games. Dungeon could now have adventures for a variety of D20 games. So those are my thoughts.

Considering that while using that format, it appears that Polyhedron was not strong enough to remain in business as a stand alone magazine, I'm thinking that would be a bad business decision.

 

[KnowTheToe]

They should stay D&D but with a less WoTC centric view. I would love an expansive view of the industry, products, and direction of the game. Keep Polyhedron as the generic D20 mag and keep it out of the other two mags.

I'm KnowTheToe and that is my opinion!

 

[Psion]

Dungeon I would leave as is except that I would drop the "core book" borders on the pages.

I'll second that. Content-wise, I see any changes in the current format too risky. The have a good thing going.

But the "core book" page patterns... I remember reading the justification for that and thinking "yeah... okay... that's important... not."

Dragon on the other hand, I would institute several changes in. The primary problem? Themes. You knew this one was coming, and everyone has been saying it, and it is true. Themes are killing Dragon.

My prescription list for Dragon:

• If an issue has a theme, ensure that there are as many non-theme, non-regular articles as there are theme articles.
• Divorce themes from promotions. If a book doesn't deserve a whole magazine's worth of promotional material (*coff*strongholdbuilders*coff*), then just give it one or two articles.
• Fiction. Get rid of it. Period.
• Cull some of the regular articles. Some are useless, some are questionable. First ones to get the axe, IMO: Silicon sorcery (never saw anything in there I would really use in a game) and the FR places (interesting to look at, but rarely really useful.)

In the "keep it up" department:

• Artwork - Good covers, and the artwork has been pretty tasteful for the last little bit. Let's not repeat the brain-bashing halfling debacle*. Dragon is a "happy place."
• Setting stuff - Make it relevant to people who don't play the setting if at all possible. The living greyhawk stuff by and large has been.

* - It's funny, but except for that dump-on-a-page, that issue was exemplary in many ways. The theme, halflings, was given appropriate attention, which is to say not too much, and not too little. There were a fair amount of non-theme articles. There was a promotion for the RttToEE evil, but it wasn't a theme, and only had two articles (which were very useful ones at that.)