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While Dragon has done away with theme issues for the most part, I thought one nice way to tie the various articles of each issue together was to provide a one-page article called, "PCs in a Pinch," or something like that. The article could provide either a low-level character fit for PC or NPC, or even higher level characters, that would be drafted using heavily materials from that respective issue. Paizo could use the race, Class Acts materials, special equipment, PrC, etc., to the degree that they fit together and build an issue-specific character.
That said, I miss the theme issues of yesteryear, including the Githyanki episode, Dark Sun, and even Red Sails. I get so much more out of your magazine when it involves a central theme to build from. But I understand that I may be a minority here.
Wow!!! Excellent ideas. I sure hope they sre used, with proper credit given, of coarse. I too will miss the themed issues. They made it easier to find things in past issues.
I love this idea..one other way it could be done is reader submissions. Run it like they did the cartoon caption contest...every couple of months have an issue where they challenge the readers to come up with a PC/NPC concept based on that issue's content. Just a thought about how we can play with various options they're putting out there
Saurstalk, I love this idea as a reader contribution.
Midnight has a great suggestion about making it a monthly contest. The fully statted character would be low level (1-4?) and include about a paragraph of background material.
This could also solve the problem of whether there is too much/not enough Greyhawk-Realms_Eberron in a particular issue. The background for each character would rotate once per month.
So, let's say, the contest for July would be:
Create a 2nd level PC/NPC with a Realms background.
Then the August contest would be:
Create a 1st level PC/NPC with a Greyhawk background.
Then the Sept contest would be:
Create a 3rd level PC/NPC with an Eberron background.
Aside from the distinction of having their name and character see print, I'd be sure nice if Paizo threw in a goodie from their new online store for the winner.
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I think it would be an interesting feature, but one that I don't think should be run as a contest. Essentially, you'd be asking people to use information that has not been fully provided to them yet.
Unless the contest were to use the previous issue to build an interesting character....
Still, that new submission would not fit with the theme of the issue in which it would be published.
I've also been heavily involved in the Master DM Competitions running in the What's A DM to Do? board of the wizards.com website. I can tell you that fairly judging even 25 submissions is not an easy task (some are easier than others).... The amount of extra work involved for a contest would be less than if the staff did it on their own. Which brings me to the final point, there are other projects that they have admitted they would like to accomplish that I would LOVE to see them do. For example, e-mail notification of new posts on these boards (though I'm sure the entire staff wouldn't have to be involved in that).
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The editor has a prologue to each issue, why not an epilogue? The editor gets to see everything that's put into each issue and will know what fits and what doesn't and probably has the best bird's eye view to create an idyllic PC/NPC drawn from that issue.
I agree that a contest/competition is impractical. This is especially so since my idea was based on having a character constructed from materials in THAT particular issue.
In the end, I'm envisioning only one page. It takes me thirty minutes on average to draw up a completely new character using whatever materials I intend to use. As such, I can't imagine that someone who is familiar with the materials in an issue would take an exponentially longer amount of time to draft a character for a one page epilogue.