Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 1891816" data-attributes="member: 5948">Not a subscriber and never have been, although I do pick up occasional issues.  Reasons I don't subscribe: - I'm running Star Wars at the moment, so it's not much use to me right now.  Having said that, I do think that non-fantasy material in Dragon should be kept to an absolute minimum. - Cost and price, especially given the lousy reputation for reliability for non-US subscriptions - A perception that it's just a shill for WotC.  I know about WotC stuff.  They've got a comprehensive website, and there's people all over boards like this that I can ask about it.  But if I'm going to shell-out my hard-earned for Dragon, I'd need it to be something more.  Something that covers non-WotC publications would be welcome, as would objective reviews of WotC books.  Many long years ago, I stopped buying White Dwarf when it became more an advertising vehicle than a useful resource.  Dragon threatens to go the same way.  If you're publishing articles (as opposed to clearly differentiated ads) talking about Complete Divine, for instance, without mentioning the lousy editing and poor level of playtesting, then I'm never going to take you seriously. - Pages spent on the D&D miniatures game, and other matters of absolute irrelevance to roleplaying.  Again, you're coming across as nothing more than an ad with this sort of thing. - Unadventurousness.  A magazine is inherently more disposable than a book, and less of an investment.  That makes it a good place to put the wild, wacked-out ideas that aren't really viable anywhere else.  That means occasionally pushing the boundaries of what constitutes 'D&D'.  So yes, include wild optional modifications to the rules, deeply unusual non-medieval settings, massively variant magic systems and so on.  It does not mean hammering Song of Ice and Fire, Dark Sun, or other established settings into the bland, pre-existing catch-all D&D mould that is completely thematically unsuited for them.  Paladins in Westeros and spellcasting bards in Athas don't add anything to either the game or the setting that it's supposedly meant to represent.  They look just as fanboyishly amateurish as the 12-year-old who wants to play a Pokemon trainer in Ravenloft. - Yes, once more, less crunch.  I deeply distrust any cruch I find in Dragon, simply because it's often unbalanced or poorly thought-out.  The edition-independent inspiration material, however, is often absolutely brilliant.  And it can be useful far into the future, once D&D3.5 is only a memory. - Not everything has to be in a monthly column.  If there's no worthwhile PrC, or Ecology, or new magic items this month - include something else rather than printing disposable junk. - Fiction is good, but remember Dragon is a magazine about roleplaying.  If you're going to include fiction, relate it directly and immediately to roleplaying.  Include a couple of pages on the setting of the story, or a monster or two, or a discussion of using similar themes in-game.  Make the fiction useful.</blockquote>

Verification