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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 1887325" data-attributes="member: 1465">I have never bought a single copy of Dragon or Dungeon, but I have more than once taken a look at the first from the gaming friends (at least 4-6 issues, all of which from 3ed years). I have never seen Dungeon instead. I hope I still qualify for the questions  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> First of all, for there's a lot of difference between what I expect from a MAGAZINE and what I expect from a BOOK. In my own view, a book is here to stay with me forever, and as such it'd better be designed as good as possible (e.g. I get sometimes too easily irritated by errata); I prefer to spend my money on useful books for gaming, but I appreciate other books with little use but great to read. A magazine ends up for me to be something to browse, not necessarily read it all, pick what meets my eye favorably, use it in the game once, and then dispose the magazine.Because of this, I would gladly buy a magazine which had lots of stuff for the DM (I both play and DM). Because the stuff I need as a DM is never enough, it costs a lot of time and fantasy to come up with new ideas, and everything lasts usually one evening only, mostly ending up blown up by the player characters...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Now that I read these posts, I realized that I should have read Dungeon instead! Adventures, maps, encounters ideas, even some ready-made character are things which as a DM I always need, and they are disposable things which suit a magazine better than a book IMHO.OTOH what I found in Dragon was too much player-oriented or otherwise it was long-term material, which suits much better a book than a magazine. Player stuff needs much more careful design, because once it's in your game it's going to stay there for a very long time! Furthermore, only a small fraction of player material can really be used, unless you're playing a game when the PC die every other evening...Also, for some reason it's kind of assumed by everyone I played with that player stuff is to be trusted in this sort of descending rank: (1) stuff from core books [largely popular and playtested], (2) stuff in campaign-specific books [still reliable and consistent], (3) stuff in WotC generic supplements [which usually tend to focus on pleasing players more than being consistent], (4) non-WotC books, (5) RPG magazines of any sort, (6) web sites. As such, I've never played in a game where the DM allowed a player to use magazine material. On a completely different matter, I enjoy reading "flavor" material from magazines, and actually that fits a lot IMO with the magazine format. It has the potential to make something normally overlooked by me (as DM) to turn into an exciting option for the next adventure. I'm definitely thinking about articles on monsters ecology for example, ideas how to place a creature race in your world.</blockquote>

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