Koldoon's page

if anyone still reads this, i am thinking of buying a campaign setting, which would you recommend for a budding DM such as mydelf?

It seems from your posts that you are relatively new to the game, this makes the choice more difficult. Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are excellent settings, but so much material has been published for them that they get rapidly overwhelming. Personally, I would suggest Eberron. It's new, with only one published sourcebook beyond the original setting. That means you don't need to worry much about what you DON'T have. Also, as a new setting it is currently getting a lot of support from both Dragon and Dungeon. A new setting is new for everyone, so there isn't as much worry that you have a player who is an expert in the setting, and many of the ideas in Eberron are just plain cool for players and DMs.

The down side is that there isn't a lot of published material on it to pull from, so you will need to have a lot of your own ideas. Published adventures for other settings can be more difficult to translate into Eberron than from (for example) Greyhawk to the Forgotten Realms, which can also be a concern.

If you are willing to look outside the officially supported settings into d20 supplements, there are a number of excellent choices, but the quality of the settings varies considerably depending on the press and the author. Unless you have a good reliable friendly local gaming store, or a supportive online community who you can trust to make suggestions, you probably want to avoid that.

I was struck by a couple of things in issue #118. Erik's editorial was one... Too Young for Nostalgia - I wish I was. I can't be much older than Erik, but I certainly have enough nostalgia for things to go around. I remember the poster maps from that boxed set, and I am still hoping to see Saltmarsh properly labeled when I see the appropriate part of the new map. While I am happy to see the map a reality (and I am, as a child of cartographers I have a great love for maps), adventures are what tend to call to me in the nostalgia department. When Dungeon did its review of the top 30 adventures of all time, I was thrilled to see so many of my favorites. I was especially pleased to see that B4 made the cut. It was the first adventure that I ever owned, and I've always had a soft spot for it.

A Prison Mail writer in the same issue asked for more classic adventures to be redone or paid homage to in the pages of Dungeon magazine (for that writer's information, in case he didn't know and is reading, Keep on the Borderlands was revisited in Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, a late 90s title I regret I do not own). Since classic adventure locations and characters do occasionally appear in both Dragon and Dungeon, I was wondering what the process is. All of the material is clearly copyrighted... is it fair game for queries, or does Wizards of the Coast, or your editorial board, need to specifically solicit such adventures or backdrops? Just curious.

Koldoon - You said that he could relate to this column because, like Wil, you too are a middle-aged gamer. Frankly, I feel that has nothing to do with Wil's most recent article. Were you a former child star ostracized when your popularity soured? I seriously doubt it. Did you ever feel that you couldn't attend gaming conferences because of public dislike for your career choices? Again, I doubt it....

monkeybone - I haven't read it yet... I get my copy at my friendly local gaming store, as I noted, and that issue hasn't officially hit the shelves yet, so I haven't seen it. That being said, it is naive to assume that I will relate to everything Wil may say in every article. A large part of Wil's formative experience was his time in Star Trek. Quite frankly, if I look back at my own life, a whole lot is reduced to choices I made as a teenager too.

While there was a lot of public dislike (as well as adolescent adoration) of Wesley Crusher, most people I know (including myself) have been pleasantly surprised getting to hear Wil Wheaton speak. He does even better in his writing than he does in person. I am going to give him a chance, and let him find his voice in the article before I decide it's not worth reading. So far, he has impressed me more than not.

Any literature relates to people who are willing to relate to it. Sometimes you just can't relate to something... I get that - heck, I majored in Russian and East European Studies, and I can't stand reading Tolstoy. I can't relate to it at all. Perhaps the brooding author in Dostoevsky relates to me more than the Count. Wil Wheaton may have been a child actor, but some part of his experience was similar enough (even in some metaphoric sense) to my own for me to relate. If you cannot, too bad. I sympathize. But just as I could take a look at Dostoevsky's works instead (or better yet Gogol) you can turn to a different page and read Christopher West or Monte Cook. Wil Wheaton isn't writing the whole magazine, just one page. Let those of us who enjoy it have it.

ASEO -

You still generalize too much. I am also a longtime Dungeon reader (yes, from issue 1) and though I try to support my friendly local gaming store rather than subscribe, I still read the magazine. Your objections to Wil Save seem to center on the fact that you would prefer more adventures or more maps. That's a valid feeling. For some of us, even those who have subscribed for a long time, it's nice to have something other than adventures in the magazine. I like the gaming content, but if that was all I wanted, I'd buy a gaming supplement, not a gaming magazine. The fluff is good too. It helps me not take my gaming too seriously. That's very important, because in gaming it is really easy to take it way too seriously.

As for whether they could have chosen someone other than Wil Wheaton... sure they could have. Maybe if I'd thought of it, as a gamer who has been playing for 25 years, I might have submitted the idea to Dungeon instead of querying them on my latest adventure idea. I didn't, and they filled the niche with Wil. I'm fine with that. I don't care that he was a child actor, what I care about is that he's talking about issues that relate to being a long time gamer, entering middle age, and trying to juggle what is often considered a teenagers hobby with that life. I can relate to that, and because I can, I like to read Wil Save.

I don't object, ASEO, to your dislike of the column... there are plenty of adventures, NPCs, and other features that I don't like in Dungeon either. But magazines are written to have broad appeal to a target audience of many, not of one. The magazine has to speak to both you and me, and several thousand others to be successful. Wil Save speaks to me, and I enjoy it. People like me are why the column is there. I hope the editors hear both sides of the argument, and I hope there are enough people like me that the column remains.