It's a little weird...
So WotC's released half of the first adventure for the online incarnation of Dungeon, the magazine I've edited for four plus years. As it works out, since my editing run coincided pretty much exactly with the magazine's transition to a monthly periodical (from bimonthly), I ended up working on issues 103 to 150. That's nearly a third of the magazine's entire print run. I also had a pretty major role in the relaunch and redesign of the magazine, back in issue 114. The magazine won several awards during that run, and it was pretty consistently on an upward trend numbers-wise after some rocky times back in the transition between the 3.0 D&D rules and the 3.5 rules.
It's fair to say I've put a lot of sweat and blood into Dungeon, in other words. And It's fair to say that sweat and blood really made the magazine a healthier product. Of course, I was far from the only one working on the magazine at the time; Erik Mona (whose vision for the magazine's contents really made it into something incredible), Sean Glenn (who rebuilt the magazine's entire look into awesomeness and taught me countless invaluable lessons about the art of magazine building), Jeremy Walker (who in the space of a few years went from "I've played D&D a few times" to the guy with the strongest rules-knowledge in the editorial pit), James Sutter (who brought a much-needed reality check and fresh air to what often amounted to a room full of old grognards and took the time to pen some really neat adventures while he did so), Mike Schley (who art directed with the precise level of snark and style and who added some killer personal touches to the letters page every month), Drew Pocza (the NICEST art director/graphic designer I've ever worked with, despite the fact that all his tattoos make him look the meanest), and all of our awesome authors, artists, and cartographers were all part of the scene as well.
But this is my blog, so it's about me for now.
ANYway, as I said above, the first half of the first adventure of Dungeon #151 is online over at WotC's website. I just downloaded it and looked through it, and I found the experience to be quite a bit surreal and strange. For one thing, they've gone back to a layout more reminiscent of the way the magazine looked back in the late 90s/early 100s, down to using the same fonts, even. Which, unfortunately, kind of makes the whole thing look old and tired to me; they didn't go back far enough to hit the super-powerful nostalgia zone, but did go back far enough that it no longer looks like the magazine I've been so close to for the past several years. Frankly, it reminds me of a time when the magazine was in fairly dire straits. To me... the new dungeon looks sick and wounded as a result.
As for the adventure... I haven't read through it yet. Sort of. It's an adventure that was submitted to the print version a few years back, one that I almost printed but in the end rejected. I'm too close to the thing as a result to give it any sort of objective review, so I won't bother. Much. Apart from observing that for an adventure that's an update of one of the oldest adventures, the inclusion of all the new D&D stuff like taint rules, ambush drakes, templated monsters, and other elements that weren't around in the "good old days" hurts the adventure more than it helps. The value of doing a reprint/revisitation adventure is to hit the nostalgia button hard and often. Update and expand the adventure, sure! But do so using the same types of monsters and encounters that were in the original. Ambush drakes and fiendish templates and giant cockroaches and taint rules cancel out any goodwill and cool you get from the nostalgia. If you really want to use newer material... write a new adventure!
I can say that the maps look okay; they could have had more detail, though. And the art looks pretty good... what art there IS, that is. There's not a lot of it in there; it looks very sparse. The sparse art and the return to the older font and layout all combine to make the whole thing look "low-budget" to me... rushed and awkward.
Plus, it uses the delve format. Having written an adventure in the delve format, I can say that while it DOES work well for tournament style play, and it DOES work well for groups who aren't that ambitious or are content to follow the adventure's rails... it doesn't read well. There's too much page flipping. Reading adventures for pleasure is something that I do, and I know a lot of other readers do. The delve format robs a lot of the pleasure from reading an adventure just for reading's sake. AND: If your group is one who likes to do their own thing, it's really easy for them to tackle encounters in ways that the delve format's rigid structuring become a liability. Especially if they approach the encounter with any sort of stealth or from an unusual direction, since the read-aloud text skews heavily toward monster descriptions and monster actions, and not the shape and contents of the room in its neutral state. Including monster actions in read-aloud text is bad, since it presupposes too much about the setup and the method of the PCs' arrival on the scene. It takes D&D one step closer to being a computer RPG with crappier graphics, and one step further away from a game that's infinitely more adaptable and customizable than the BEST computer RPG.
Dungeon was my favorite magazine. It's depressing to see it backsliding.
It's fair to say I've put a lot of sweat and blood into Dungeon, in other words. And It's fair to say that sweat and blood really made the magazine a healthier product. Of course, I was far from the only one working on the magazine at the time; Erik Mona (whose vision for the magazine's contents really made it into something incredible), Sean Glenn (who rebuilt the magazine's entire look into awesomeness and taught me countless invaluable lessons about the art of magazine building), Jeremy Walker (who in the space of a few years went from "I've played D&D a few times" to the guy with the strongest rules-knowledge in the editorial pit), James Sutter (who brought a much-needed reality check and fresh air to what often amounted to a room full of old grognards and took the time to pen some really neat adventures while he did so), Mike Schley (who art directed with the precise level of snark and style and who added some killer personal touches to the letters page every month), Drew Pocza (the NICEST art director/graphic designer I've ever worked with, despite the fact that all his tattoos make him look the meanest), and all of our awesome authors, artists, and cartographers were all part of the scene as well.
But this is my blog, so it's about me for now.
ANYway, as I said above, the first half of the first adventure of Dungeon #151 is online over at WotC's website. I just downloaded it and looked through it, and I found the experience to be quite a bit surreal and strange. For one thing, they've gone back to a layout more reminiscent of the way the magazine looked back in the late 90s/early 100s, down to using the same fonts, even. Which, unfortunately, kind of makes the whole thing look old and tired to me; they didn't go back far enough to hit the super-powerful nostalgia zone, but did go back far enough that it no longer looks like the magazine I've been so close to for the past several years. Frankly, it reminds me of a time when the magazine was in fairly dire straits. To me... the new dungeon looks sick and wounded as a result.
As for the adventure... I haven't read through it yet. Sort of. It's an adventure that was submitted to the print version a few years back, one that I almost printed but in the end rejected. I'm too close to the thing as a result to give it any sort of objective review, so I won't bother. Much. Apart from observing that for an adventure that's an update of one of the oldest adventures, the inclusion of all the new D&D stuff like taint rules, ambush drakes, templated monsters, and other elements that weren't around in the "good old days" hurts the adventure more than it helps. The value of doing a reprint/revisitation adventure is to hit the nostalgia button hard and often. Update and expand the adventure, sure! But do so using the same types of monsters and encounters that were in the original. Ambush drakes and fiendish templates and giant cockroaches and taint rules cancel out any goodwill and cool you get from the nostalgia. If you really want to use newer material... write a new adventure!
I can say that the maps look okay; they could have had more detail, though. And the art looks pretty good... what art there IS, that is. There's not a lot of it in there; it looks very sparse. The sparse art and the return to the older font and layout all combine to make the whole thing look "low-budget" to me... rushed and awkward.
Plus, it uses the delve format. Having written an adventure in the delve format, I can say that while it DOES work well for tournament style play, and it DOES work well for groups who aren't that ambitious or are content to follow the adventure's rails... it doesn't read well. There's too much page flipping. Reading adventures for pleasure is something that I do, and I know a lot of other readers do. The delve format robs a lot of the pleasure from reading an adventure just for reading's sake. AND: If your group is one who likes to do their own thing, it's really easy for them to tackle encounters in ways that the delve format's rigid structuring become a liability. Especially if they approach the encounter with any sort of stealth or from an unusual direction, since the read-aloud text skews heavily toward monster descriptions and monster actions, and not the shape and contents of the room in its neutral state. Including monster actions in read-aloud text is bad, since it presupposes too much about the setup and the method of the PCs' arrival on the scene. It takes D&D one step closer to being a computer RPG with crappier graphics, and one step further away from a game that's infinitely more adaptable and customizable than the BEST computer RPG.
Dungeon was my favorite magazine. It's depressing to see it backsliding.