jonathan metz's page

I for one hope Dragon gets out of its current slump soon. I subscribed 2 years ago because I had been buying nearly every issue of Dragon anyway. For the entire time since D&D 3e came out, I've found the content of the magazine to be excellent; since "Unleashed," it's been mediocre at best. I liked strong themed issues, especially the Campaign Components issues. I loved always having both useful player content and useful DM content in the mag -- I DM more than I play. Anyway I subscribed to Dragon for stuff to use in my game; since September I've stopped bringing the new issue to my game.

Not to say that I think all is lost. You can easily recover, as I say it just seems to me like a slump as you settle into the new format. And some of the new features are great. I love Coup de Grace. What I would like to see with some of the stuff that's always in the mag is for more of the "familiars" to be tied into the theme of the feature articles. Doing a feature on cat people? Make them the "winning race" for the issue, and use "Heroic Feats" or "The Magic Shop" to add some crunch to their culture. It just takes some planning -- a strongly themed issue is much more interesting and useful than a collection of scattered articles. Thanks for listening.

This to Eric Mona personally: best of luck as the new Editor-in-Chief! :)

I was thinking that it would be cool for one of the future issues to have a fighter vs. wizard theme. One of the feature articles could be a similer to the Samurai vs. Knight article, execpt it could be much more grounded by the rules, and would give sample characters and a sample arena.

Gaining prestige should be a prestige class that would exspand on the great sword fighter archtype (my brothers favorite), and the heroic feats section could be some aditional fighter bonus feats.
On the wizards side there could be additonal combat oriented spells in the spellcraft section and some cool wizard gear to sum it up.
In general I would like to see more themic dragon issues in the new format, the lack of central theme caused by all the familiars has made the magizine spines way too cluttered.

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Consider this my signiture:
You may not realize it, but that kobold has a +20 to strength, he is wielding a vorpal dancing sword, and he also has lazer eyes. :)
Bow down before...

Mr. Bob, you bring up a good point in that Dragon should publish more themed issues. As a subscriber, the issues that are most valuable to me are the ones that present a strong central theme. Though a lot of DM content has been moved to Dungeon, I still hope that the brilliant and much-lauded "Campaign Components" issues are not a thing of the past -- they were perhaps the best issues Dragon has published in the years since Third Edition came out. I have a large collection of Dragon issues; it's easiest to find the article on naming martial arts techniques when I know it's in the Oriental Adventures issue. Dragon: please keep doing strong themes like this!

A simple idea, a issue dedicated to all those other races sort of left behind that arent core class but still great to play, such as lizardfolk, kobolds (my favorite, perhaps maybe a new type of kobold would be nice that is maybe a little bit less sucky than the current one with all their negatives), the newly revised kenku would be worth seeing some content added for them, gnolls, bugbears, minotaurs, goblins, all would be great to see have some stuff set aside just for them.

i realize there has been stuff for monstrous races in the past such as for when the monster races books came out but i felt they didnt quite grasp at the concept fully enough.

Just a thought, anyone else?

I think this is a great idea. I love using goblinoids, and was very pleased with Dragon's "Ecology of the Hobgoblin" several issues back. Also, gnolls often seem to get short shrift in official material -- though if you were into the original Fiend Folio, the Flind is reprinted in Monster Manual III. Lizardfolk also get a pretty good treatment in the book with 2 new lizardfolk races added. Such an issue could include plenty of good humanoid content -- an ecology article, an equipment article (primitive or ingenious gear used by gnolls or lizardfolk?), goblinoid spells, kenku feats, even an article on roleplaying a monstrous PC -- how to roleplay your kobold character's reaction to the social stigma against its race, how to make friends with races that are your traditional enemies, etc.