Why _DON'T_ You Buy Dragon Magazine?
- Thread starter Erik Mona
- Start date
TGryph
Explorer
Why I no longer Buy Dragon
Hello Eric!
To answer your initial question, after 24 years of steady purchase ( I still have all of them, starting with #32), I stopped buying Dragon for one primary reason. The magazine has become far too "out there", much as D&D itself has. I no longer want to read about new unbalenced Prestige Classes and Feats, nor does or ever has my world been populated with the innumerable strange, half-breed combos, and bordering on Sci-fi races I have seen lately. I prefer my fantasy to be more traditional and less a "Gee Whiz Video Game" feel, and stopped buying the magazine when it no longer gave me the solid historical information and practical application it used to in the 1st edition "Glory Days". That is also the time I swtiched to HARP instead of D&D. More rules and rules options do not necessarily make a better game IMHO.
That being said I DO miss the magazine. It was a monthly staple in my house for all those years - heck, I even had four articles published in it's pages, which thrilled me to no end. But, unless there are major changes that make it once again as useful to non-D&D players as it was, I will not bother to pick it up again.
TGryph
Hello Eric!
To answer your initial question, after 24 years of steady purchase ( I still have all of them, starting with #32), I stopped buying Dragon for one primary reason. The magazine has become far too "out there", much as D&D itself has. I no longer want to read about new unbalenced Prestige Classes and Feats, nor does or ever has my world been populated with the innumerable strange, half-breed combos, and bordering on Sci-fi races I have seen lately. I prefer my fantasy to be more traditional and less a "Gee Whiz Video Game" feel, and stopped buying the magazine when it no longer gave me the solid historical information and practical application it used to in the 1st edition "Glory Days". That is also the time I swtiched to HARP instead of D&D. More rules and rules options do not necessarily make a better game IMHO.
That being said I DO miss the magazine. It was a monthly staple in my house for all those years - heck, I even had four articles published in it's pages, which thrilled me to no end. But, unless there are major changes that make it once again as useful to non-D&D players as it was, I will not bother to pick it up again.
TGryph
Howdy, Eric!
Much like TGryph, I have every issue of Dragon back to #44, and have subscribed since about #100. I have a couple of issues of Dungeon as well.
I always liked the minis stuff. I also liked the reviews of 3rd party products- given the nature of the magazine, reviews of TSR/WoTC stuff was always taken with a grain of salt.
The "ecologies" articles always added depth into how certain creatures could be used- they made you think, and often resulted in better play all around. DMs got a better understanding of how to fit a creature within a setting, while players gained insight into how to play against creatures "realistically."
I miss the high-quality serial strips like "Wormy" and "Fineous Fingers"- few since then have had the consistency that those strips did.
I also miss those mini-games you used to publish...I loved those old Tom Wham games like "Flight of the Boodles" and that "fantasy" football game.
While I don't always need them, I find the rules illustrations/clarifications are invaluable resources in the long run...they tend to be better done than the ones in the game books themselves.
I was dissapointed when (for reasons I understand) Polyhedron was dropped from Dungeon- there simply isn't enough support for Non-D&D D20 campaigning.
One thing I think many people would appreciate would be something that appears on these (and other) boards all of the time- character builds. With all of the settings, feats & prestige classes (PrCls) out there, it can be bewildering for players to construct their "perfect" swashbuckler or what have you, and misconceptions abound. I have had to allow some of my players to "edit" their PCs because they chose their initial feats poorly. In the space devoted to adding several new PrCls, a good writer could present the advantages and disadvantages of various builds for a particular archetype.
Much like TGryph, I have every issue of Dragon back to #44, and have subscribed since about #100. I have a couple of issues of Dungeon as well.
I always liked the minis stuff. I also liked the reviews of 3rd party products- given the nature of the magazine, reviews of TSR/WoTC stuff was always taken with a grain of salt.
The "ecologies" articles always added depth into how certain creatures could be used- they made you think, and often resulted in better play all around. DMs got a better understanding of how to fit a creature within a setting, while players gained insight into how to play against creatures "realistically."
I miss the high-quality serial strips like "Wormy" and "Fineous Fingers"- few since then have had the consistency that those strips did.
I also miss those mini-games you used to publish...I loved those old Tom Wham games like "Flight of the Boodles" and that "fantasy" football game.
While I don't always need them, I find the rules illustrations/clarifications are invaluable resources in the long run...they tend to be better done than the ones in the game books themselves.
I was dissapointed when (for reasons I understand) Polyhedron was dropped from Dungeon- there simply isn't enough support for Non-D&D D20 campaigning.
One thing I think many people would appreciate would be something that appears on these (and other) boards all of the time- character builds. With all of the settings, feats & prestige classes (PrCls) out there, it can be bewildering for players to construct their "perfect" swashbuckler or what have you, and misconceptions abound. I have had to allow some of my players to "edit" their PCs because they chose their initial feats poorly. In the space devoted to adding several new PrCls, a good writer could present the advantages and disadvantages of various builds for a particular archetype.
The Hollow Eyes
First Post
Not being a magazine reader in general ranks right up there for why I don't buy it. But the rare times I do buy Dragon, I am also reminded why that is. I'm also not a short story reader, and I don't read poetry for the same reason: The content is always too short for my tastes. By the time I finally find the "groove," and really get interested, I've reached the end of that article/poem/story and have to move on to something new, unconnected from the rest.Erik Mona said:
So when considering that, and that the price of a Dragon is one-third that of a full book, the magazine just doesn't interest me. I'd rather buy a book, even though I know that I'll get as much or even less use out of it than I would those issues of Dragon. I do think this position of mine is a little weird considering that, for example an article full of feats in Dragon will contain just as many as most books that contain feats.
Maybe it's just the eclectic nature of the articles in a magazine that stops me from buying . . . and so there's really nothing that I could suggest that would make me buy.
The adventure path in Dungeon works for me, though, so perhaps there's something similar you could invent for Dragon.
Erik Mona said:
No support for OOP editions, simple as that. I was a subscriber since issue 100, then gave up around 310.
Art was fine, stories were fine, but I bought the magazine for new kits, classes, and rules for 2E. Since I'm happy with 2E and not planning on siwtching to 3 or 3.5 or whatever will come next, I found the magazine's usefulness not worth the subscription price.
Aus_Snow
First Post
Too much advertising. Too little crunch I (or others I know) can use. I always *used* to buy it for the excellent rules options, variants etc.Erik Mona said:
The former is the major reason I don't buy any magazine these days. The latter is specific to Dragon magazine.
See above. Replace "more likely" with "certain", though.
Christoph the Magus
Explorer
It got to the point that I was only buying Dragon for the cartoons and the Gary Gygax column. I realized that without KODT, the toons weren't to my liking and the Gygax column wasn't worth it alone, so I stopped. Honestly, I don't think that you could lure me back, at least not without some KODT material that wasn't going to appear anywhere else. I don't know if I outgrew Dragon or what, but it just doesn't appeal to me anymore.
Silver Moon
Adventurer
I was a subscriber to Dragon from 1982 until 2004. I didn't renew after my last three-year subscription ended large due to the fact that I was angry with Paizo Publishing. This was because I had also been a long-time subscriber to Dungeon and had just sent in my three-year renewal a few weeks before you announced a special subscription discount offer. I asked you if I would be included in that since I had just renewed and hadn't even received my first issue of the renewal but was given an abrupt "No" by you Eric. It didn't seem like a very fair way to treat long-time loyal fans so I opted to not support your other publication when that renewal arrived.
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