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<blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 240880" data-attributes="member: 172">I'll second that. Content-wise, I see any changes in the current format too risky. The have a good thing going.But the &quot;core book&quot; page patterns... I remember reading the justification for that and thinking &quot;yeah... okay... that's important... not.&quot;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:<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">If an issue has a theme, ensure that there are as many non-theme, non-regular articles as there are theme articles.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fiction. Get rid of it. Period.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.)</li>
</ul>In the &quot;keep it up&quot; department:<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">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 &quot;happy place.&quot; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li>
</ul>* - 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.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Psion, post: 240880, member: 172"] 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." [b]Dragon[/b] on the other hand, I would institute several changes in. The primary problem? [i]Themes[/i]. 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: [list] [*]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 ([i]*coff*strongholdbuilders*coff*[/i]), 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.) [/list] In the "keep it up" department: [list] [*]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. [/list] * - 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.) [/QUOTE]

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