What do you think? I heard the Ecology of the Duergar was pretty stellar. 0:-)
-Amber
The Duergar creation myth was awesome. The rest of the article was so-so. Mostly regurgitated info (ruling priest class, grim undergound cities, etc).
The Dune article was fun, but why so short? There's a ton of material there! I would have gladly eaten-up three or four more pages of Dune conversion stuff.
I absolutely hated all the D&D miniature content. Dear Lord, I am not buying into that and never will. Please keep the focus on real D&D and not this watered-down Mage Knight nonsense. Next thing you know they'll be giving away Elminster Magic: the Gathering cards with each issue.
Worst of all those was that the cover promised "Mordenkainen's Art of War", which sounded REALLY AWESOME. What was actually delivered? A mediocre article abount munchkining various area-effect spells. Mostly in really predictable ways that nobody needed an article for ("Fireball is bad in narrow dungeon corridors? The hell you say!"). No mention of Mordy himself, needless to say. Weak.
Do they really intend on publishing twelve pages of Class Acts each month? Man, is that going to get old fast...
The real highlight? The revistation of lupins. That just makes the Mystara fan in me happy as can be.
Still, Dragon needs a lot of work. Lots of pages wasted on dross (miniatures, Class Acts) and far too few devoted to promising concepts (like the Dune stuff). Additionally, the cover blurbs are promising things that just plain aren't there ("Mordenkainen's Art of War"), and that's dishonest and trashy.
The Duergar creation myth was awesome.
Thanks! I did think it was rather cool. I'll endeavor to make future ecologies more awesome and less so-so. :-)
-Amber
Just got #325 yesterday...my friend in Chicago got his the day before.
The duergar ecology article was excellent, and did a great job of drawing together many ideas and concepts into a cohesive whole.
I haven't received my copy of 325 yet, but I heard from somebody that the Duergar article was awesome. I forget who it was who told me that, though. ;)
How was the Arcane Ancestry article?
Thank you, Mark. Adri, I couldn't find the AA article. What page was it on?
Anyway, I finally got to look at the article, and it was great. I don't say that to brag; what I mean is I wrote the article before the new Dragon format, and the editors had to patchwork it a bit. They did a fantastic job of keeping most of my material while making it fit the new format. Some stuff got cut, unfortunately, but they left the creation myth in its entirety which was my favourite bit. Yay for the editors!
Just wanted to add that I love seeing the miniature stuff. I would also like to see more Eberron specific information. There is no information about Duergar in Eberron, and from reading info from Keith Baker and other previews it looks like there won't be for quite some time. This would have been an excellent opportunity to include a small blurb to satisfy Eberron gamers without devoting an entire article to the setting. The same thing can be said for the lupin article.
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What do you think? I heard the Ecology of the Duergar was pretty stellar. 0:-)
Yeah, we liked it. :)
The Dune article was fun, but why so short? There's a ton of material there! I would have gladly eaten-up three or four more pages of Dune conversion stuff.
I agree! ;) Oh boy, was it ever hard to just narrow down the coverage to two pages. We're toying with increasing the length of the Novel Approach column because the potential there is so high. :)
Do they really intend on publishing twelve pages of Class Acts each month?
Nope, only eleven. ;)
This would have been an excellent opportunity to include a small blurb to satisfy Eberron gamers without devoting an entire article to the setting.
That's a good idea. Thanks. :)
Yay for the editors!
You like us, you really like us. ;D
Anyway, I finally got to look at the article, and it was great. I don't say that to brag; what I mean is I wrote the article before the new Dragon format, and the editors had to patchwork it a bit. They did a fantastic job of keeping most of my material while making it fit the new format. Some stuff got cut, unfortunately, but they left the creation myth in its entirety which was my favourite bit. Yay for the editors!
As a friend of Amber's who did some proofreading for her prior to its submission, I'll have to agree with her when she says the editors did a good job reworking the article to fit the new format. When I first read her article after she sent it to me, I absolutely loved the creation myth; it was interesting, and added depth to a race I generally ignore in my games. They're no longer "dwarves that are more grumpy than usual." I was glad to see it made the "final cut" in its entirety.
I just picked up #325 today. I'm ambivalent. On the whole, I liked it... as reading material. I didn't find much of it that would be very useful in a game, and there were a couple of real disappointments.
Hometown Heroes: I could see this being a very useful article for new players. Offered me nothing, though. Which is okay, but a sidebar or a couple of paragraphs sketching out some unusual ideas for using characters' home towns in a campaign would have been a nice addition to the standard stuff (training, downtime, family/mentor figures) the article covered. Possibly it would've been considered outside of Dragon's new player-centered focus, though. Anyway, on the whole, I'd call it a solid feature.
Arcane Ancestry: A bunch of feats, about half of which seem to exist primarily to allow a domain-like list of bonus spells known to sorcerers, at the expense of being allowed to choose certain other spells. Not really my thing, and I suspect that a bard who took a level of wizard (thereby meeting the spontaneous casting and familiar-summoning ability prerequisites) and then selected one might prove unbalanced. Also, I'm not clear on how a serpent bloodline allows one to neutralize poison (with a second feat). Minor quibbles, I guess.
War Magic: Serious disappointment here. "What if Mordenkainen wrote the Art of War"? Well, I'd hope he'd have something more to discuss than areas of effect. Now, the article itself is decent, and it includes some useful advice, even though it doesn't cover the subject in depth (hard to do in roughly 2 pages of text, to be fair). But it was oversold. If it'd been mentioned as an article dealing with areas of effect, I wouldn't feel disappointed. But Mordenkainen's Art of War? Uh uh. The actual article is a long way from earning a tag like that. Mordenkainen's Introduction to Area-Effect Spells, maybe.
A Surge of Theurgy: I'd have to reread this one to review it honestly; I was pretty burnt out on feats after the Arcane Ancestry article, so I skimmed it. My impression was that there are some good ideas here, but that they'll need to be carefully managed for balance reasons.
So much for the features. I'm not sure it was a good idea to have two features that were mainly lists of feats, but I suppose as long as people like them...
The recurring columns were somewhat better.
Ecology: Very strong opening. I suspect the later parts of the article were hampered somewhat by the humorless, pragmatic, work-driven nature of the duergar themselves; there's not a lot of elaboration possible for a race so strongly devoted to sticking with the essential and avoiding anything else. The "Vs." section was good advice, but "Lairs" was rather terse. I would've liked to see something more about the duergar cities. I imagine them being laid out in close to identical fashion, varying only as necessary for the terrain, with streets set up along a rigid grid, important buildings in the same place, and so forth.
Spellcraft: A bunch of skill bonuses, mainly. Still, the idea of the Myths of the Shadow book itself is interesting enough that I'll work something like it into my game.
Magic Shop: I'd like to say that I, too, miss the name "Bazaar of the Bizarre." The article itself is pretty decent. I like the canopic jars, and the scarab charm is a nice flavor item.
Heroic Feats: Even more feats. Some of these seem rather better than others; Ability Enhancer, Enhanced Shadow Reality, and Charmer are pretty strong, whereas Girded Soul and Hidden Thoughts are very narrow. Conjurers really seem to get the shaft, with Heavy Teleport's tiny benefit, though I suppose they already had Augment Summoning. I doubt I'd ever use any of these, so I suppose it's academic.
Gaining Prestige: The bowman charger seems a bit unfocused. Oh, the concept is very specific, but the implementation seems odd. Mainly, Riding Dervish seems out of place for a class intended to focus on mounted archery. Also, the goblin wolflords don't seem to fit the class at all. Archers who dismount and fire from behind their mounts are not what I'd think of as "mounted archers," and dismounting costs them the use of half the class's abilities anyway. They sound more like goblin rangers with wolf companions and the archery combat style, to me. Decent flavor text, though. I might allow the class, with minor modifications.
Winning Races: The Lupins. Not a race I'm terribly familiar with, but I do recall them from the old days. The article itself was very well written. They interest me enough that I'd allow a player to have one, and I'd consider playing one if allowed to do so. Definitely a bright spot in the issue.
Class Acts: The usual hodgepodge. This month, I consider the Fighter, Wizard, Sorcerer, and Monk articles worthwhile in general, and the Ranger one interesting to me as a DM. I suppose the Rogue article would be handy for inexperienced players considering a multiclass. Clerics, barbarians, druids, and bards leave me cold this month. Paladins seemed like a complete waste of space.
Player Tips: Eh. Seems like a lot of text to say "Well, if your DM's okay with it, you can use player knowledge because your characters have high mental stats. Otherwise, use Knowledge skills." I would've advocated going with the Knowledge skills approach first, and the "metagaming is okay" approach second, since the second one seems more optional and I feel the Knowledge checks should be the baseline. But okay.
Adventurer Tricks: For a one-page article, there's some good stuff in here. Nothing new, necessarily, but it takes a simple idea and explores it surprisingly well in a limited space. Well enough that I'd like to see an expanded version as a feature. In fact, this may be the most "Art of War"-type thing in the entire issue.
Sage Advice: Please, please, switch to darker ink for the answers. Please.
Silicon Sorcery: Intriguing idea. (Apparently I'm partial to magical books.) Too bad they're minor artifacts; that makes them harder to use than regular magic items. Still, I think they could be toned down sufficiently, and if not, it at least added to another idea I'e been using in my game, so it's all good.
Novel Approach: This deserved way more space. I'm not a big fan of Dune, but the adaptation is fun to read, and I could see it being useful. Another short article I would've liked to see expanded to feature length.
On the whole, I see a lot more good than bad, even if I personally won't be using a lot of it. It seems like there's a lot more artwork scattered around this one than in, for instance, #323 -- that's another plus. Also, terrific cover art.
I appreciate the kind words. :)
Hey, you earned it. ^_^
To expand, it was a good choice of theme, you made some good use of both historical and 'iconic' mythological Egypt as influences, and a couple of these (the jars, scarab, desert cloak, and eye of horus in particular) have some very interesting 'special effects' (to borrow HERO system's terminology).
A couple of the items (the cartouche and scorpion bracers) aren't terribly exciting, but most of them are solid, and they all seem useful. And not many of them were very high-powered/expensive, which is a plus.
You know, it strikes me that this sort of setting is ripe for a couple of articles, at least. I can't think of much in the way of official sources on adventuring in an area patterned off Egypt, aside from maybe the old Desert of Desolation series.
from what I have read the duergar article sounds really good. problem is, it is the 26th of October and I have not recieved my copy of 325 in the mail yet. I did see it on the newsstands this morning as i picked up my cup of coffee. I am dissappointed as a subscriber in good standing not to enjoy the same articles as many of you are. I can only hope this is a fluke. I await my copy.
What do you think? I heard the Ecology of the Duergar was pretty stellar.
I have an old 2e Drow adventure that I liked back then, but do not want to throw at my players. I just don't like drow -- WotC overdid them to death. So with this article in hand (and the Slayer's Guide to Duergar by Mongoose) I am going to re-organize it with duergar instead. Thanks! Amber, you've done a good deal of work with Mongoose, right? Did you have any input on their Slayer's Guide?
On a side note, the Mongoose supplement repeatedly acknowledges the lack of body hair, yet only one illustration in the entire book shows a hairless duergar. It was as out of place as T'Pol showing emotion in every single episode of Enterprise.
Actually, I haven't done any work for Mongoose. My professional credits, as they were, include Dragon and Giant in the Playground games. I recently had an article on the World of Farland webpage as well. But, y'know, if any Mongoose people out there are reading this and want to give me a job, I have no objections. ^.^
Glad you liked the article, Seeker!
I didn't like this issue really at all.
Besides the march of lackluster articles i've seen since the relaunch (Do you people know how many Chocobos have been made by the fans over the years?), the content has been iffy at best.
Such as Winning Races. The first was boring. The second, with the Grippli, was far more interesting, but Grippli are only so useful.
But Lupins? They were campy enough without bringing up that their first appearance in Castle Amber and later in Mystara had them mimicing French society. God, that's just... Dorky. I can't think of anyone who could ever use them- in either format- with a straight face. (I know they can and have been used seriously. I just know I couldn't, and in my circle, I am not alone in this.)
Is all we are going to see in Winning Races things Wizards hasn't bothered to reprint in third edition format, most with good reason? Or are we going to see new races?
Because, for the most part, the "Xenophilia" article in #317 has been far more useful than anything in Winning Races. That article contained at least two races i WANTED to use (Mainly, the Gruwaar- Its all about player charachter Fae), and I could see using all four in almost any campaign, which is more than I can say of three Winning Races articles thus far.
In short, and without too much more negativity: New races. Fewer Monstrous Humanoids. Thank you.
And an aside on Class Acts- Twelve pages, eleven pages, it does not really matter. Right now, two pages is too much for this section. I'd be lying if I said that the information is wholly useless (some of the Paladin and Barbarian info has been rather interesting), but I don't see how you're going to make this a regular feature. There's only so much you can do with this concept before you're crossing over old ground.
In short... No, I don't like the relaunch, and I hope you take each and every comment and suggestion to heart, because i'm not sure this is a good direction for the magazine.
Hometown Heroes: I could see this being a very useful article for new players. Offered me nothing, though. Which is okay, but a sidebar or a couple of paragraphs sketching out some unusual ideas for using characters' home towns in a campaign would have been a nice addition to the standard stuff (training, downtime, family/mentor figures) the article covered.
Glad you liked the article. The feature originally weighed in much heavier (around twice the size). The segments that were cut dealt with the GM's side of the picture and included some story seeds. I think this type of content is being moved into Dungeon, however.
Glad you liked the article. The feature originally weighed in much heavier (around twice the size). The segments that were cut dealt with the GM's side of the picture and included some story seeds. I think this type of content is being moved into Dungeon, however.
Hometown Heroes: I could see this being a very useful article for new players. Offered me nothing, though. Which is okay, but a sidebar or a couple of paragraphs sketching out some unusual ideas for using characters' home towns in a campaign would have been a nice addition to the standard stuff (training, downtime, family/mentor figures) the article covered.
Ah, now that's a shame. It sounds as if the other half of your original article would have had the kind of thing I'd wanted to see.
This seems like taking player-centered focus to an extreme. Personally, I don't have a lot of interest in Dungeon (don't run many canned modules, although I may start GMing some at RPGA events soon), so I can't justify buying it just for the handful of GM-centered articles. At the same time, it seems they're cutting most of the GM-oriented material (which is generally what I find most useful in feature articles) out of Dragon. Hrm.
Like every single of Dragon ever written, there was some good stuff, some not-nearly-as-good stuff, some stuff I could perhaps use, and some stuff I wouldn't use on a bet. But I'll bet you want some specifics...
The Ecology of Duergar: I'm thrilled to see the Ecology articles returning... they were always my favorite in the past and I've always been immediately somewhat disappointed with any issue that didn't contain one. The thing I really miss, though, is the story-like intro that usually seems to lead into these articles... a couple from the early days of the 3rd Ed of D&D were the Darkmantle and the Sheet Phantom (not that Sheet Phantoms aren't laughable in concept, or that any DM could throw them at his players with a straight face, but the article was good). Still, even without the lead-in, the article was very... informative. And... educational. Just not very... entertaining.
The new format of the articles towards the back of the magazine seems very flat and lifeless... very little art, less that is eyecatching, very black n' white. It almost looks like someone typed it up and slipped it in as an afterthought. I DO want to say that the CONTENT is fairly good, in general, but it's not very appealing visually. I hope you're saving a bundle in printing costs, 'cuz you may be losing your audience a bit.
War Magic: Talk about disappointing. This looks like something that could have come out of Class Acts. It certainly doesn't look like something that Mordenkainen himself would have talked about at a seminar, not even if they paid him in platinum. I just expected something far more grandiose when the front cover screams "Mordenkainen's Art of War." Not to nit-pick, but when you put that on the cover, you lied. Please don't lie to the audience... we don't like it.
Winning Races: Lupins... the French dogs of war are back. I'll never use them myself, but it seemed as well written as any new PC race ever is. I DID like the new way their lesser scent abilities were represented... I can see a wealth of possibilities from that alone.
Arcane Ancestry has some potential. A Surge of Theurgy looks like it might please others who need contract law on how magic works. "It just does" always seems to work for me. Hometown Heroes has a few neat ideas, though with my present campaign it'll be a while before I can use them.
A final note: In general, I like the IDEA of the Familiars articles. I seriously hope that we will NOT see each of these every single bl**dy issue. When it comes to Spellcraft and Heroic Feats, I'm of the mindset that you can only use so many, and believe me, we have plenty. When you get something brilliant, by all means, lay it on me... but don't make me sift through the sand to find the gems, okay? Don't settle for mediocre. That also goes for the Class Acts articles. Don't try to find something to say about each class JUST so you can say something about EACH CLASS. If you've got something brilliant, use it. If not, leave it alone. Like someone before me said, I can see how this will get real old, real fast, especially with the lackluster format.
I almost always enjoy any article on player tips or the dungeoncraft stuff on how to be a better DM. Such articles are always a welcome sight, even when they don't necessarily cater to my immediate needs. Overall, an average job... but better than some in the past. Keep 'em coming.