Why _DON'T_ You Buy Dragon Magazine?
- Thread starter Erik Mona
- Start date
Muad'dib Pendragon
The Spice must flow... From the Holy Grail
Erik Mona said:
*bump*
Hjorimir
Adventurer
What keeps me coming back...
Well, I was nearing the end of my current subscription and considered just letting it run out as the magazine was getting more and more useless to me. Then I saw a post here at ENWorld about how both Dragon and Dungeon were getting few formats.
Reading about those formats made one thing clear to me: I must have Dungeon (which I now have a subscription to that magazine). Dragon, on the other hand, still seemed to be dying. I did renew my subscription, because one of the last issues I received fell apart on me and after I sent an e-mail to customer service I had a new issue in my mailbox within the week. That tells me you guys care. Because you care, I'm holding on hoping the magazine will improve. This thread confirms your efforts in this.
What I personally want out of your magazines (both Dungeon and Dragon), are things that save me time. I'm a working professional and have a limited amount of time I can (or am willing) put towards this hobby that I love so very much. I will list some points I hope you consider.
1) I have a three-foot stack of hardback rule books for the game. I need more crunch like a need a hole in my head. What I DO need is for somebody to take that pile of crunch and produce some things for me to save me some preparation time. How about NPCs that make up adventure groups? They would be very useful to just drop into a campaign for the PCs to meet. It is a major hassle to write up a bunch of detailed NPCs, but there are other adventurers out there. As an added bonus, players could use these characters if needed. Or a DM could prepare an adventure around the group in the article and run a one-shot.
2) Please bring back Knights of the Dinner Table! That is the only cartoon I ever laughed at on a constant manner. I can recall friends coming over to my house and asking me if the new magazine was there just so they could read that one comic strip. It is that good.
3) Miniature articles need to go away. I don't think I've read through an entire one yet (and I've tried).
4) Open up the guidelines to the writers so they can wrap a little fiction and fluff into their submissions. I'm not interested in a text book. I look to these magazines for flavor (Dungeon, by the way, is quite favorable).
5) I'd like to see articles that are more easily dropped into an existing campaign setting. Things that come to mind are guilds, monsters (and I don't just want a stat block), mysterious locations (i.e. The Wailing Caves of Ip-Tho), treasure hoards (by EL and with a few items that are a bit different), and magic items (you have this some already, but I'd like to encourage more of it).
6) Resist the temptation of new feats. They just increase the problem of power creep in the game and are rarely balanced. I have books and books with feats in them.
7) Look at areas of the game that are not covered well. Some rules that could use some love (off the top of my head): Fleeing (chase scenes), Ship-to-Ship encounters on the open waters, and Underwater encounters and adventuring.
8) There are rules that could really benefit from having some life breathed into them such as summoning/binding outsiders and planar travel.
9) Dungeons and Dragons has evolved a great deal and players are craving more and more high-level content. It is very easy for a DM to whip up a group of humanoids for the lower levels. How about some articles on planar NPCs or locations? For example, maybe one article that looked a floating crystal castle on the Plane of Air and a follow-up with some NPCs that dwell there. Djinns, mephits, elementals, dragons! All great stuff we see too little of.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I'm really looking forward to what you come up with.
Well, I was nearing the end of my current subscription and considered just letting it run out as the magazine was getting more and more useless to me. Then I saw a post here at ENWorld about how both Dragon and Dungeon were getting few formats.
Reading about those formats made one thing clear to me: I must have Dungeon (which I now have a subscription to that magazine). Dragon, on the other hand, still seemed to be dying. I did renew my subscription, because one of the last issues I received fell apart on me and after I sent an e-mail to customer service I had a new issue in my mailbox within the week. That tells me you guys care. Because you care, I'm holding on hoping the magazine will improve. This thread confirms your efforts in this.
What I personally want out of your magazines (both Dungeon and Dragon), are things that save me time. I'm a working professional and have a limited amount of time I can (or am willing) put towards this hobby that I love so very much. I will list some points I hope you consider.
1) I have a three-foot stack of hardback rule books for the game. I need more crunch like a need a hole in my head. What I DO need is for somebody to take that pile of crunch and produce some things for me to save me some preparation time. How about NPCs that make up adventure groups? They would be very useful to just drop into a campaign for the PCs to meet. It is a major hassle to write up a bunch of detailed NPCs, but there are other adventurers out there. As an added bonus, players could use these characters if needed. Or a DM could prepare an adventure around the group in the article and run a one-shot.
2) Please bring back Knights of the Dinner Table! That is the only cartoon I ever laughed at on a constant manner. I can recall friends coming over to my house and asking me if the new magazine was there just so they could read that one comic strip. It is that good.
3) Miniature articles need to go away. I don't think I've read through an entire one yet (and I've tried).
4) Open up the guidelines to the writers so they can wrap a little fiction and fluff into their submissions. I'm not interested in a text book. I look to these magazines for flavor (Dungeon, by the way, is quite favorable).
5) I'd like to see articles that are more easily dropped into an existing campaign setting. Things that come to mind are guilds, monsters (and I don't just want a stat block), mysterious locations (i.e. The Wailing Caves of Ip-Tho), treasure hoards (by EL and with a few items that are a bit different), and magic items (you have this some already, but I'd like to encourage more of it).
6) Resist the temptation of new feats. They just increase the problem of power creep in the game and are rarely balanced. I have books and books with feats in them.
7) Look at areas of the game that are not covered well. Some rules that could use some love (off the top of my head): Fleeing (chase scenes), Ship-to-Ship encounters on the open waters, and Underwater encounters and adventuring.
8) There are rules that could really benefit from having some life breathed into them such as summoning/binding outsiders and planar travel.
9) Dungeons and Dragons has evolved a great deal and players are craving more and more high-level content. It is very easy for a DM to whip up a group of humanoids for the lower levels. How about some articles on planar NPCs or locations? For example, maybe one article that looked a floating crystal castle on the Plane of Air and a follow-up with some NPCs that dwell there. Djinns, mephits, elementals, dragons! All great stuff we see too little of.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I'm really looking forward to what you come up with.
The_Universe
First Post
I'd still really like to see this.Erik Mona said:
The_Universe
First Post
Thanks for the time. Looking forward to seeing it.Erik Mona said:
Breakdaddy
First Post
Erik Mona said:
How about a brief synopsis?
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