Mr. Mona,
I realize that I am a bit late on responding to the questions you asked, but I have not been reading this thread until recently. That being said, and realizing that my comments may be similar to a tale told by an idiot* I will answer your two questions.
Why don't I subscribe to Dragon? There have been a number of reasons. I subscribed twice in the past. Once, back in the 1980s, I subscribed for about six years. When 3rd Edition came out I again subscribed, but this time for just a year. I don't subscribe now partially because the format of the magazine got to be hard to read. Poor color choices of backgrounds and fonts made some text nearly impossible for me to read. If large chunks of the magazine are illegible, why would I pay for it?
I also stopped subscribing because I frankly had more than enough prestige classes, uber-feats, and over-powered spells. Since my players do not seem to care for prestige classes I stopped reading them. Besides, many of them seemed to be designed as an excuse to circumvent one rule or another. This is even more evident in the feats that appeared in the magazine. They seem to be designed to allow more and faster monster killing. Not every campaign is designed around the wholesale slaughter of creatures. Few of the feats seem to be designed for non-genocidal games. This can also be said quite easily for all the spells I have seen. I don't need more rules to circumvent the existing rules. Heck, I don't even need a bunch of the existing rules, but that is just a personal belief.
What can be done to make me buy the magazine again? Well, that's tough. More articles on playing the game instead of adding feats, spells, classes, adn the like. I would be happy to see articles on topics like: unusual weapons from history; using the real world as your fantasy base; cities from history (bring back Ken Hite!); and anything that adds depth and character to the game.
Another thing that can be done is a little harder to explain. I feel that the last year or so I subscribed the magazine seemed to think I was 12 years old with a poor education. It just felt like I was being talked down to, treated as if I couldn't grasp complex writing or speech. I play in two D&D groups, both of which have an average age well above 21. Only one player actually subscribes to Dragon anymore. The rest consider it a kids magazine now.
To help in flogging the expired equine, I rather enjoy some of the fiction in the magazine. Those times are when well established authors write stories that have nothing to do with published campaign worlds. Quite a number of fiction pieces I have seen are of marginal quality, to be generous.
I am sure I could come up with a host of semi-helpful suggestions, but the best one I can tell you is this: Treat your readers like adults with a desire to see quality material and you can't go too far wrong.
I realize that I am a bit late on responding to the questions you asked, but I have not been reading this thread until recently. That being said, and realizing that my comments may be similar to a tale told by an idiot* I will answer your two questions.
Why don't I subscribe to Dragon? There have been a number of reasons. I subscribed twice in the past. Once, back in the 1980s, I subscribed for about six years. When 3rd Edition came out I again subscribed, but this time for just a year. I don't subscribe now partially because the format of the magazine got to be hard to read. Poor color choices of backgrounds and fonts made some text nearly impossible for me to read. If large chunks of the magazine are illegible, why would I pay for it?
I also stopped subscribing because I frankly had more than enough prestige classes, uber-feats, and over-powered spells. Since my players do not seem to care for prestige classes I stopped reading them. Besides, many of them seemed to be designed as an excuse to circumvent one rule or another. This is even more evident in the feats that appeared in the magazine. They seem to be designed to allow more and faster monster killing. Not every campaign is designed around the wholesale slaughter of creatures. Few of the feats seem to be designed for non-genocidal games. This can also be said quite easily for all the spells I have seen. I don't need more rules to circumvent the existing rules. Heck, I don't even need a bunch of the existing rules, but that is just a personal belief.
What can be done to make me buy the magazine again? Well, that's tough. More articles on playing the game instead of adding feats, spells, classes, adn the like. I would be happy to see articles on topics like: unusual weapons from history; using the real world as your fantasy base; cities from history (bring back Ken Hite!); and anything that adds depth and character to the game.
Another thing that can be done is a little harder to explain. I feel that the last year or so I subscribed the magazine seemed to think I was 12 years old with a poor education. It just felt like I was being talked down to, treated as if I couldn't grasp complex writing or speech. I play in two D&D groups, both of which have an average age well above 21. Only one player actually subscribes to Dragon anymore. The rest consider it a kids magazine now.
To help in flogging the expired equine, I rather enjoy some of the fiction in the magazine. Those times are when well established authors write stories that have nothing to do with published campaign worlds. Quite a number of fiction pieces I have seen are of marginal quality, to be generous.
I am sure I could come up with a host of semi-helpful suggestions, but the best one I can tell you is this: Treat your readers like adults with a desire to see quality material and you can't go too far wrong.
