Why _DON'T_ You Buy Dragon Magazine?

[Ranger REG]

My understanding is that the Magic brand team doesn't want its creatures used for D&D.

I cannot believe WotC's R&D Group (aka the D&D brand team) are playing second fiddle to those guys. Stop playing nice to them folks and do it to spite them. What are they gonna do? Smite ya with cards?

Although I for one would never buy a M:tG RPG product.

 

[John Morrow]

ONLINE ARCHIVE: We're working with Wizards of the Coast to figure out a way to sell PDF back issues on our website. I know this isn't quite what a lot of people have in mind (preferring something free), but we're running very, very slim margins as it is, and cannot provide material for free when the same material could be released at a nominal cost that would cover the effort required to put the whole thing together. No one is getting rich producing Dragon and Dungeon. In fact, quite the opposite.

In my opinion, I would be happy if you simply kept the old Dragon archives available and then sold update CD-ROMs for issues after 200 in 25, 50, or 100 issue packages for something like $20 to $30. Since I'm a Mac user, I need something that works with a Mac and while I can't use the index feature in the Dragon archive CD set that is available, the PDF format works for me.

To answer the original question, I stopped buying Dragon at issue 200 (after buying almost every issue starting at 47), because I couldn't find a copy -- that special edition sold out and since I wasn't playing D&D at the time, I simply gave up buying it. What made me start buying Dragon again very recently (and also Dungeon)? I started running a D&D 3.5 game so it became interesting to me again. Having recently gone through those older issues of Dragon to mine them for material (via the CD-ROM archive), I still get the impression that there are a few places where the old (pre-120s) Dragon may have been better. If I have more time, I'll try to quantify why I feel that way and I'm aware that a certain amount of nostalgia might be in play.

 

[John Morrow]

In the earliest days of Dragon, what many readers and posters to this thread consider the magazine's "golden" era, a great deal of space in the magazine was dedicated to simply fixing or explaining a fairly complex, not altogether unified game filled with countless sub-systems and a fair amount of arbitrary architecture.

One of the other things that the old issues of Dragon had were articles that detailed specific elements of the game by adding new rules and providing lists and tables. While I don't think you should emulate the uneven and ad hoc nature of those "golden era" articles, I'm thinking about articles along the lines of either the city building web enhancement for the DMG (11 pages) or the sanity rules in Unearthed Arcana.

So, to those of you who say "Dragon has too much crunch and not enough fluff," I offer my whole-hearted agreement. Give me a couple months, and take another look.

I'm not sure that the problem is so much "crunch" vs. "fluff" but the sorts of crunch that are being offered. I think that a certain amount of applied crunch can have a place. For example (and Dragon may have already covered some of these issues during the years when I wasn't buying it so take these as examples), crunchy or semi-crunchy articles on movement and combat in zero-G, infected wounds, a more detailed treatment of poison and poisoning, a detailed treatment of tracking, rules for handling barter economies, random tables for deciding what a building is and what's in it, etc. All of those things could get fairly crunchy but also provide inspiration.

We'll probably be adding a review section to the magazine to spotlight useful sourcebooks and nonfiction volumes that can help you craft a better campaign or a better character, but I want to get the format right before I take that plunge.

Personally, I have more use for long reviews than short reviews. It's easy enough to find a short review or some opinions about a book on the web. What I want are longer and more detailed reviews.

330: Into the Far Realm, a 10,000-word overview on how to add Far Realm "bleed" into your material world, by Bruce R. Cordell, creator of the Far Realm and one hell of a creative genius. Contains new monsters, new spells, and a whole lot of disturbing imagery. Anyone wanting to add an element of cosmic horror to their games would do well to check out this primer.

This is yet another good way to write articles that add things, and it should be fairly drop-in. Great!

Later: Articles on cities of the Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood. Look for 4-6 of these annually for as long as we can get away with it. Probably about 5000 words each. Meaty. I'm basically just letting Ed go wild with these, and we'll be sure to illustrate them lavishly with "National Geographic"-style fold-out maps and maybe some posters. I'll do what I can afford to do.

Also good. Articles that detail places, including cities, villages, or even individual buildings are good, especially if they have elements that are generic enough to be adaptable to any setting. Articles detailing natural places, a desert, woods, a swamp, etc. with a broader ecosystem and things like detailed encounter tables could also be helpful. "If I wanted into the Orange Woods, what will I run into?" If you keep the regions fairly small, or at least self-contained, they could have a lot of drop-in utility for me as a GM.

Concerning maps, I purchased the 300th issue of White Dwarf pretty much simply for the map that was included. Good maps (and I don't think the Eberron map that was recently included was good--see that White Dwarf map) can sell a magazine.

But we'll also include plenty of non-setting support. Some of my favorite articles from the recent years have been "Campaign Components," like the Swashbuckler and Spies issues. Look for more of this in the coming months.

I think that's good, but as a GM or player, I'm more interested in rules for detailing those elements of the game than prestige classes or more feats (e.g., lists of DCs and details that can affect skill use that either a player or GM can use). Tell me how to detail a swashbuckling fight or espionage mission with the existing rules and classes rather than adding new prestige classes and feats. Overall, I think you are on the right track thinking about providing inspiration.

I don't have much to say about fiction that I haven't said already. I'm aware that most posters here don't like it. I have yet to make any critical decisions on what must be done. In the mean time, we're printing something like three or four stories a year, so those of you who hate the fiction won't have to suffer much.

The only pure fiction that I've ever found really enjoyable in Dragon was the story about an online role-playing game that appeared years ago that did a pretty good job of anticipating, in the early 1980s I think, the online games that would appear years later.

Articles on dealing with the social aspect of role-playing, play styles, finding time to role-play, and resolving particular sorts of in-game problems and conflicts could also be useful. Judging by the online discussions that I see, this is a major problem that saps a lot of enjoyment out of the hobby and drives people away.

A final bit of advice that I'll give is to find some copies of Different Worlds, The Space Gamer, Arcane, Interactive Fantasy, and other gaming magazines during their golden eras and see if there was anything they were doing that Dragon should have been doing and could do. You can always learn something from the competition.

 

[RFisher]

I'm not sure that the problem is so much "crunch" vs. "fluff" but the sorts of crunch that are being offered.

Ah!

When people complain about too much crunch they often specifically cite feats, prestige classes, &c.

Look at something like the 3e vehicle rules that Dragon published. A whole new subsystem like that is the kind of crunch I would prefer to more feats or prestige classes. While the current system does cover a lot of ground in a cohesive fashion, certainly there are still new arenas to be explored.

Variants on existing systems would be good too, like the stuff that ended up in Unearthed Arcana.

In fact, d20 publishers should be encouraged to submit articles about variant rules to Dragon in order to get some feedback from the readers before including it in a full product.

 

[Mouseferatu]

In fact, d20 publishers should be encouraged to submit articles about variant rules to Dragon in order to get some feedback from the readers before including it in a full product.

That's problematic, given Dragon's OGC status--specifically, it's not OGC. If a publisher prints something in Dragon without special dispensation ahead of time, they can't later use it in their own product.

 

[Ghostwind]

Well Erik, I went ahead and did it. Based upon what you have said about the changes and new directions of things to come, I've renewed my Dungeon subscription for one year and signed up for a year of Dragon. So, you have a loyal subscriber for the next year. Give me your best with every issue and I'll likely keep going beyond that one year period. But leave me dissatisfied as I have been in the past and one year is all you will get. Here's hoping that the promised improvements live up to their hype.

 

[Ranger REG]

That's problematic, given Dragon's OGC status--specifically, it's not OGC. If a publisher prints something in Dragon without special dispensation ahead of time, they can't later use it in their own product.

Perhaps it should be a case-by-case basis, between Paizo and the individual professional authors.

I just hope they factor in reprinting issue, including digital/electronic reprints ... should Paizo decided to produce and sell a second Dragon Magazine Archive software.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Perhaps it should be a case-by-case basis, between Paizo and the individual professional authors.

I just hope they factor in reprinting issue, including digital/electronic reprints ... should Paizo decided to produce and sell a second Dragon Magazine Archive software.

I'd love for that to be the case. I've both read and written material for Dragon that I dearly wished could be OGC. At least for the time being, however, I know that's not likely to happen often.

 

[RFisher]

That's problematic, given Dragon's OGC status--specifically, it's not OGC. If a publisher prints something in Dragon without special dispensation ahead of time, they can't later use it in their own product.

1. Obviously both sides would want to get the legal situation straight up front.

2. OGC isn't a requirement for republication. If the author retains the copyright, they can do whatever they want with it. If the copyright gets assigned to Paizo, they can permit the material to be reprinted completely outside the OGL.

(OK, there's a million different possibilities. While the author might retain the copyright, he might have a legal agreement with Paizo that gives them some exclusive rights. The point is that--whatever the situation--the two parties can make anything they can come to consensus on happen. The OGL is just one way--albeit a very liberal way--of doing things. Indeed, a d20 publisher doing this, however, might not want to make the content OGC until the later appearance in a stand-alone product.)

It does seem to me, however, that--at the moment--there are many obstacles to d20 publishers using Dragon to preview material the way EGG did in the old days. WotC R&D could, I suppose. & the obstacles for other d20 publishers aren't insurmountable if Paizo & a publisher cared to do so.

Edit: Still, it seemed worth throwing the idea out there. Couldn't hurt.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Oh, sure, anything's possible if the two parties come to the right agreement. And I know from personal experience Erik and the Paizo staff are friendly, reasonable people.

But the standard contract for almost all RPG companies is work for hire. That means the publisher retains all right to everything not specifically licensed elsewhere (such as in the SRD, or for licensed products like Black Company or Star Wars). And since WotC draws some of their new material from Dragon, I don't see them letting Paizo alter that arrangement except on a very occasional basis.

Don't mean to sound glum, or shoot down the idea. As I said, I'd love to see it happen. I'm just also aware of the standards in this industry, and doing such things isn't as easy--or as straightforward--as many people believe.