It's a little weird...

[bigfootcountry]

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

Comments

[mouseferatu]

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 disagree--well, obviously, since I wrote the first "chapter" of the series--but I thought I'd chime and explain why

[hubcap_reloaded]

To me, the feel of an adventure doesn't come from the precise mechanics included therein. It comes from how the adventure is put together, how the events/story flow, what sort of play-style it's best suited for. There's nothing "un-old-edition" about (for instance) a community of gnomes driven mad by an artifact of Tharizdun. So if 3E happens to have a tool for showcasing that madness--like, say, James Wyatt's tainted raver template--I see nothing improper about using it, even in an update of a module from before the days of templates.I can appreciate this point. Just because the rules are different doesn't mean you can't do things in the vein of the old system: on the contrary, any system switch requires some adaptions. (I mean, if a Giant appears in an 1E adventure for 6th level characters, it doesn't mean the 3E update will be for 6th level characters vs the same giant!) I also think that some variance is a good way to keep old players on their toes: I just today read a guy online who ran Tomb of Horrors in 3E but changes some

[mouseferatu]

That's fair enough, though I'd point out that most subsystems like taint are easily ignored. There's nothing in the adventure in question, for example, that suddenly fails to work if one decides not to use the taint rules. :-)

[hubcap_reloaded]

I appreciate that you can work to extract them, and it's often relatively trivial stuff: mad Duergar is not something my players would call me on, even if I used the taint rules for them and nothing else!

But the moment I see stat blocks with these other rule systems, it does get me wary. Like the appearance of a campaign setting in an adventure, it might not actually be much work to extracty, but it's the presence of more work for me as the GM to find out what I need to do and then do it: work I won't jump at doing if I can avoid it by using another, more portable adventure.

It's a fine balancing act: people who use these subsystems must do this work all the time, and you need to offer them some support or those books aren't as much use. A new Weapon of Legacy or Warlock invocation is a great asset to those people using those systems, and potentially advertises the system to new audiences.

George Q

[mouseferatu]

I will agree with you, though, about the inclusion of the delve format. I don't hate it, and I've found that it helps me remember to include environmental factors and terrain in my encounters. But that said, it really does make modules a bitch and a half to read, and while it may make things easier at the table, a DM who gives up on trying to read a module is certainly never going to get around to running it.

[maliszew]

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.

I've been thinking about this very question a lot lately and, while I agree with you in principle (and may even on this very fact -- I haven't read the adventure yet so I can't comment), I think it's important to remember there are multiple approaches to hitting the nostalgia button. One is as you describe and it's my preferred approach. The other is to use the original material primarily as a storehouse of names and vague ideas to which you can refer, on the assumption that most people, even the self-proclaimed fans of the original, don't actually remember the original very well or indeed want to revisit it. The nostalgia button is pushed by reminding readers of the original rather than in expanding on or developing further what was in that original material

[irishninja]

There's a reason I haven't gone to the new Dragon or Dungeon pages, and what you said here just backs up what I assumed. I look forward to the day when Chris has the time and resources to do awesome stuff, but for now I fear he's just entirely too overwhelmed. :\

Heh. But even when he does get everything finely tuned, I'm still not gonna read them. ;D

[hubcap_reloaded]

I've only glanced at the new adventure on Dungeon, so I can't say much for it. I will say that, while I really enjoyed the print magazine and thought it was very strong in recent years, I'm also fond of a lot of what Ari's made, so I have some hopes that this adventure may hold some promise for me. :-)

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.On the one hand, this is probably jsut a logistics thing: everything they've printed for 3E has, with very few exceptions, been in this style of text. Why mess about

[mouseferatu]

Dungeon and Dragon have been at their best since the Paizo relaunch a few years ago, IMHO: and, frankly, in more than a few other people's opinions.

Absolutely true.

I don't know if the text and layout really send much of a message to most readers--I tend not to pay much attention to such things, for instance--but it's definitely a valid point. The magazines were stronger immediately pre-cancellation than they'd ever been, and it might indeed have been a better idea for WotC to carry over the formatting wholesale.