Why _DON'T_ You Buy Dragon Magazine?

[Belen]

I'd like Dragon Magazine to challenge me. Challenge my preconceived and perhaps entrenched notions about what D&D is and how we play the game. While at the same time having the magazine support and expand the core idea of D&D and why we play, which is to envision great stories and create them as a team alongside a great rules system. Get that paradox going and I'll resubscribe next year as well.

Exactly, it should challenge and teach! Dragon should be a pioneer for the game. It should expand the nature of the game, rather than the mechanics of the game.

Dragon should constantly remind us of why we play the game and challenge us to think about the game and the stories that can be told in a new way. Mechanics do not really do anything for the game other than make combat run longer.

 

[Jer]

I feel the need to speak up here, even though I'm not quite sure that I'm in the target group that Erik was asking for. I've been a subscriber to both Dungeon and Dragon on and off since the mid-80s. I've seen the ups and the downs, and I currently subscribe to both.

However, that's mainly because I renewed my subscriptions right before the big change occurred that split the DM stuff to Dungeon and the Player stuff to Dragon. If I were renewing now, I'd definitely renew Dungeon - one of the best values per dollar in the D&D/d20 marketplace. But I'd REALLY have to think hard about re-upping my Dragon subscription.

The problems are the things that I foresaw back when the change was announced. For D&D I'm a DM (mainly). I'm a player in a few other games, but for D&D I run the show. I have so many 3e, 3.5e and d20 supplements now that "player cookies" do NOTHING for my game. I haven't seen a cookie in Dungeon in years that has been helpful for my campaign setting. New prestige classes, new feats, new spells - I can get these things from WotC's Complete XXX series, various independent d20 companies, or many other places. Heck, in my campaign only two of my players are using anything other than "core rules" from the Player's Handbook. One is using a prestige class from Masters of the Wild, and the other is using a prestige class that the two of us came up with and balanced together.

None of my players are Dragon readers, because the only D&D that they play is my campaign and my game=my rules. I have a good relationship with all of my players and if they want something for their character, we work together to get it for them (some of my best story ideas have come from player requests). If there were games other than D&D in Dragon, some of them might read it, but since that seems to be SO unpopular with the most vocal of the letter-writers in Dragon, I doubt that will happen any time soon...

For me, the most useful columns in Dragon are the ones that "cross-over" between players and DM advice, but that's because I'm a DM. If these columns were in Dungeon, Dragon would have no use for me at all (except for the comics - I do love Nodwick and Dork Tower). Recent columns that have kept me interested were the Labyrinth and Sewer ones (Knight vs. Samurai didn't do it for me). The Winning Races features have also been good (I've loved the lupins since Castle Amber, so that article warmed my heart), with both the lupins and the half-elemental articles standing out. These are less "player cookies" in my mind and more of a cross-over between DMs and Players (i.e. I'm much more likely to use the information in these articles for my NPCs than I am the ones mentioned above).

I also enjoy the one-page class articles that are in the back now - these are crunchy articles that actually get my thinking about my NPCs. I think that it helps that these deal with "core" classes rather than trying to introduce something new - they're just giving me new ways of looking at core ideas and I like that.

Oh, and to reiterate what's been said before - fiction. Its a waste of paper in the magazine for the me. If I want to read fiction, I'll grab a book or a fiction magazine.

Finally, I think its been said by others above but I think it deserves repeating, the magazine is not as much "fun" as it was in the past. I thought I was imagining it, but I broke out some of my old issues a few weeks back and realized that there was a lot more energy and a lot more general "fun" in those old issues. At one point, Dragon was THE community for D&D. I think since TSR ran the whole thing into the ground in the mid-90's, Dragon's status as the "community" for D&D has moved to the web. Dragon is much more polished now, and much more professionally written than it was, but it seems to have lost some of the raw energy that it once had. If you have the CDRom archive handy (or the actual issues), I'd point you to the issues of Dragon right around issue #100 to see what I mean. I don't think this is a case of me being "curmudgeony" (maybe it is), but these issues STILL have articles with relevance and usefulness today - something that I'm not sure that last month's issue of Dragon will be able to say when the 5th edition of D&D hits the market.

Thanks for listening Erik. One thing about this - PLEASE DON'T CHANGE DUNGEON BACK! I think the shift in Dungeon to become a "DM-magazine" rather than just an adventure magazine is one of the BEST things that's happened to it. I look forward to it now every month in the way that I used to look forward to Dragon every month - and that's after years of thinking that Dungeon was mostly worthless to my campaigns. I still miss the non-D&D Polyhedron stuff from the magazine, but I love the new Dungeon.

Keep up the good work, and thanks.

 

[kaiscomet]

Wow, there are a lot of opinions out there and common themes. I agree with much of what has been said, but wanted to add my $.02 as well.

I was never a subscriber, but I used to buy nearly every issue from my FLGS for several years. I loved the old ecology articles. Made you see common monsters in a different light, or excited you about monsters that you had never considered using before.

Some of my favorite articles ever were the "101" articles. The 101 ghost stories has seen a lot of use. Even the 101 uses for a blanket. I also really enjoyed the article about the different types of swords you could add into your game, especially those with an asian feel. Why use a great sword when you could have a 'kulang?'

Most people have posted their distate for the fiction articles. I have enjoyed them, but would like to see more that are specific to a D&D world. Especially stories about Greyhawk, Planescape, and Dark Sun. That way they could introduce recurring themes, characters, and locations.

Finally, have more inserts/goodies. The pull out maps, the music cd's, and especially cd's with old "classic" articles or old adventures on them. I have tried to buy nearly every Dragon that has come with some of these.

 

[The_Universe]

Ugh - articles about the D&D minis game! Yuck yuck yuck!

If you want to include suggestions for how to use them in interesting ways for a "real" D&D game, that's great - but the Minis game is just not the same.

(On the other hand, I love it when there are maps/skirmish tiles - easily used for a real game, as well).

 

[JoeGKushner]

Ugh - articles about the D&D minis game! Yuck yuck yuck!

If you want to include suggestions for how to use them in interesting ways for a "real" D&D game, that's great - but the Minis game is just not the same.

(On the other hand, I love it when there are maps/skirmish tiles - easily used for a real game, as well).

I do supscribe and just renewed my subscription not too long ago but that (D&D minis support) almost made me drop it. Please keep the focus on the RPG, not the tabletop. If the D&D minis can't get their own magaizne, go with Undefeated.

 

[antpasq]

I have to agree with the statements that a lot of the material is unbalanced in Dragon. For the longest time there wasn't a blurb on the cover stating "official" and you could assume that the powers that be hadn't playtested the material. However, now it says "official" on the cover and one should assume that the material has been tested and found balancing. That is however not the case as also with the now too numerous splat books coming out at a clip of 2-3 a month from WotC. I have to add that the layout changes made recently would make me less likely to but Dragon. The layout in uninspired, you went from interesting background to plain vanilla white with less art per article. The art provided a suitable inspiration to the material being presented. Now I feel like I am reading a text book. The addition of one-page class articles is so-so. One month I get new rogue special abilities (good) the next month I get what equipment a druid should carry in his backpack (are you serious? is your demographic a 10 year old with no gaming experience?). I agree with the other posters that Dragon should provide flavor. There are enough feats and prestige classes out there. Give me more Ecologys, more background on Faerun, Greyhawk and Eberron, flesh out the Planes (the article on the Shadow City rocked and left me wanting more material).

 

[Alnag]

I don't buy Dragon magazine (and Dungeon) because I can not buy it here in Czech republic. It is hard enought to get the d20 books which are not published by WotC (and since Dragon is published by Paizo) our distributor did not sold it.

 

[Wraith Form]

1.) Knight vs. Samurai style articles. That issue had me seriously pondering dropping the magazine the next time renewal was up. In fact, most of the post-"Dragon Unleashed" issues have excited me about as much as junk mail. About the only things I've really liked lately are the revised monsters from past editions in Winning Races (grippli, lupins), the occasional new monster, the comics, and Sage Advice.

2.) I'm going to second wilder_jw on fiction. I've never read a single fiction article in Dragon and never intend to (and I was a 1E subscriber for many years and purchased the archive on CD-ROM). Those pages might as well be advertisements for their usefulness to me.

3.) Maintaining that Dragon be "player-focused", at the expense of DMs. I'll be honest with you, the first thing I look for in a new issue is new monsters, followed by planar material and anything that brings back something great from past editions of the game.

4.) Increasing amounts of Eberron material. I know it has every right and reason to be in there, but I have no interest in that setting and would much rather see space devoted to any of the settings of past editions. I realize I'm probably in the minority on this one.

5.) More and more focus on educating new players on the simplest of ideas of the game. I don't need an article to tell me that I can deal more damage with a greataxe than a short sword, or that a party should have a cleric.

Thanks for listening and striving to improve the magazine!

I quoted this simply because Shade's summed it up pretty well for me.

Now first of all, please don't take it personally that we're not fond of Dragon these days, Erik. We still "LUUUUUUUUH" ya just as much as we always have.

Also, I devotedly buy/bought Dungeon (even when it was getting pretty awful, a few months ago), so I'm still supporting Paizo. Dungeon is useful to me becasue I can *YOINK* plot ideas, NPCs, maps, whatever. Dragon...well...for some reason it just doesn't do "it" for me.

I accidentally bought the most recent copy of Dragon because....well, quite frankly, because I thought it was a new copy of Dungeon--and that brings up a small issue/point, that the type used for the 2 magazines' titles are too similar. But I shrugged and leafed through it anyway.

I actually kinda liked the newest issue of Dragon (the one about dungeoneering), but (as Shade says) I felt it was geared towards 1) munchkins and/or 2) newbies. Much of the flavor text seems repetative, almost cookie-cutter nowadays. Not everybody is an Ed Greenwood or Wolfgang Bauer, but sheesh...it all seems so....so....bland, so "been there, done that".

I remember when TSR/WotC used to have 5 or 6 campaign settings going at once, and Dragon was supporting EACH of these settings with an article or two in Dragon. (And Dungeon featured 4 - 6 adventures in each issue, some of them also supporting those CSes!) There was variety. There was choice. Not everyone liked the CSes that were featured, but there seemed to be a little bit for everyone's tastes.

So, combined with what Shade indicated, those are the reasons why I've been feeling kinda tepid regarding Dragon. I still get it, but I find it's lost much of the spark that it once had.

 

[jshelky]

First, I'd like to chime in and agree with the many people mentioning the desperate need for a yearly index, be it online or in the mag. Since the advent of 3.0 there have been so many crunchy bits published that it's almost imposible to sort out. Add the fact that so many of them are feats that appear somewhere in the middle of an article makes it a huge hassle to find what you're looking for. As a consequence even though I have subscribed since 274 the only issues my group and I use are the fighter and magic themed issues that came out for 3.5. There's lots of other stuff I'd like but it's not readily available. Currently the usefullness of an index would inspire me to re-up my sub just knowing I'd get better use from the magazine.

Second, I'll also say that although I understand that people may read the fiction is has always been a waste of space in my opinion. I subscribed/purchased Dragon from issues 100 to 200 and 274 on and in all that time I've only ever read "The Test of the Twins" and ignored all the other fiction. On the reverse end of that I always loved pages from the mages, not for the new spells but rather whatever story Elminster had to go with them this time. I guess I just prefer the short stories that go with the actuall articles rather than just the stories themselves.

Last, and this is a little off topic. I realize that a number of both prestige classes and feats have made it into "official" products over the years, but I and my group as a whole would love to see some compilation books that reprinted and update to 3.5 articles from dragon. There's easily enough info out there to do a Dragon magazine Greyhawk special edition. Or a book of feats and equipment, a book of prestige classes etc. It's a product we've hoped for since the 3.0 issues began and would happily gobble up.

Thanks for your time, I hope you continue to grow the fan base and keep Dragon going strong.

 

[der_kluge]

I skimmed a lot of the responses here, since I didn't want them to alter my opinions, or give me ideas to detract me from my response.

Having said that, I would echo the general theme of too much crunch as my biggest complaint. I just don't need any more monk variants or samurais in my campaign. I'm not 12 years old anymore.

What I would don't want to see in Dragon:

No fiction
No more prestige classes, or only very, very rarely.
Less crunch. I can see that you guys are awful proud of it, because issues lately boast it on a seal on the cover: "184 prestige classes, 1,246 new feats!" Bah.

What I do want to see in Dragon:

Writers who actually recognize that there is a popular 3rd party market out there. The only reference to 3rd party products are in the advertisements that they buy. It's like buying USA Today and seeing no mention of the Middle East. I think the best "issue" you guys did was the special d20 issue where you actually reviewed AEG's modules, and talked candidly about the license and other publishers. That was great! More reviews of 3rd party products, more discussions of 3rd party products. Use 3rd party OGC - that's what it's there for.

Echoed on here a lot already - more plot hooks, campaign ideas, world-building rules, etc. DM's read Dragon more than players do, I suspect.

Lastly, - invite feedback! I let my subscription expire several months ago. Before that, the only "articles" I ever read were Gygax's column, the letters to the editor, and maybe the occasional article by Monte or Skip if I saw something that caught my eye. That was pretty much it. On feedback, I'd like to see a regular column where readers can contribute. The thing I love about ENworld is that I can ask people about their campaign settings, their interesting games, or neat ideas that they've used. I love this place for the ideas. I don't get that from Dragon. Feature a special segment where people can send in their failed Campaign setting submission. I suspect many of them are really, really cool, even though they didn't win. Eberron isn't everyone's cup of joe. Most people I know don't follow the "corporate line" when it comes to their campaign setting. Even people who run FR or Eberron are probably using at least 1 or 2 3rd party products, or homebrew modifications. The game I'm currently playing in is set in Harn, using the d20 rules, for example.


Erik, I suspect you have a balancing act to perform. On the one hand, you seek to give what the readers want - a noble goal. On the other, I imagine that you have to tow the corporate line and have to maintain a certain image and responsibility to the magazine since it *is* a vehicle for advertising for WoTC and D&D. You have to ask yourself which is more important - increasing the fan base, or pleasing your corporate masters?