What is happening to D&D?

[longtooth878]

I have a few questions that I just can't seem to figure out and I am hoping some one can help me out. First off why are they (WOTC) is canceling the Dragon magazine? I know that they are going to an on-line version and I am sure that it will be the greatest thing since the D12 (grin) but I have talked to a lot of people and the Dragon is what brings people in to the hobby (or book) stores and they browse the books to see what's new. Also I heard that (WOTC) at first wasn't going to renew the Dragonlance license. I am not sure what WOTC is doing here, but it just doesn't seem smart to me. I was going to rant for awhile longer but I think I would just like some answers to put my mind at ease.

[Fax Celestis]

First: a format switch may be a good idea. Print isn't a viable medium anymore: it costs too much.

Second: Dragonlance's license to the company that currently has it isn't being renewed, which means that WotC will be regaining the rights to the franchise--and will probably be putting something out there themselves.

[Krellen]

First: a format switch may be a good idea. Print isn't a viable medium anymore: it costs too much.

Irrelevant. WotC wasn't facing the non-profitability of the magazine; Paizo Publishing was. In fact, WotC was making money for nothing, by selling a license to Paizo. And I didn't hear Paizo complaining about the cost of the magazine.

The only reason to do this is because WotC believes that they can make more money by putting out their own on-line version of the magazine. For me, personally, this decision has prompted me to abandon D&D; I shan't be purchasing any more WotC products.

[Fax Celestis]

...WotC is a company, and companies have to make money. I'd rather them make more money and continue making the products I enjoy rather than not making money and folding.

[Yuki Akuma]

Irrelevant. WotC wasn't facing the non-profitability of the magazine; Paizo Publishing was. In fact, WotC was making money for nothing, by selling a license to Paizo. And I didn't hear Paizo complaining about the cost of the magazine.

The only reason to do this is because WotC believes that they can make more money by putting out their own on-line version of the magazine. For me, personally, this decision has prompted me to abandon D&D; I shan't be purchasing any more WotC products.

...Overreaction, much? It's just a magazine.

And, as said before, magazines aren't a very good medium anymore. I'd estimate that most magazines will have been replaced by pay-sites in the next ten years.

[CrazedGoblin]

i like the idea of a book to read more than a website as you can go anywere (within reason) to read it but being stuck at a screen makes it less enjoyable.

But then again haveing it on screen is better as i tend to collect things and not throw anythin away hehe

[Krellen]

Dragon was the only good thing from D&D I'd seen in several years, actually. WotC doesn't make good products - they make unbalanced products - and there's no metaplot in the game to follow to convince me to buy them anyway.

It's not overreaction; I far prefer printed materials in my hand, and absolutely despise the internetification of media. I don't like going to a website to read my news. I don't want a web-version of gaming articles. I don't think they're in any way superior - in many ways they're inferior.

The web is a good place for groups of people to share their opinions. It is not a good place for reading the detailed articles, descriptions, or charts that make up a publication, especially a gaming publication.

[Fax Celestis]

i like the idea of a book to read more than a website as you can go anywere (within reason) to read it but being stuck at a screen makes it less enjoyable.

But then again haveing it on screen is better as i tend to collect things and not throw anythin away hehe

Will you still be saying that when you get your hands on a portable PDF reader?

[Morty]

Will you still be saying that when you get your hands on a portable PDF reader?

I don't know about CrazedGoblin, but I'll be reading books even when everyone else uses things like this. I'm not a technophobe normally, but when it comes to books, I am.

[Fax Celestis]

Oh, I love having books too, but there's a certain organization and utility to having everything in one place in a digital format.

[Were-Sandwich]

Goddamit, I want one of those now. I ahve loads of long book I've downloaded from wikiSource and other places, but I jsut can't read long documents comfortably off a PC screen.

[horseboy]

Will you still be saying that when you get your hands on a portable PDF reader?

Holy crap, they're still making those? I thought they died the death of the Quadraphonic 5 or 6 years ago.

Personally I'm more worried about the gaming industry as a whole. While I see the shift to electronic media as a necessary evil, I wonder if it's not prolonging the inevitable. Without hard copy there's no gaming store. Without a gaming store how do you find out about new games that don't suck. Personally I'm much more likely to trust the guy working at the store that knows me and my tastes much more than I am to trust a search engine that brings up items based on how much the items in question have paid them to be presented. Without the store how are you going to find your local fellow dorks?

Yes, the .pdf's have allowed niche games to remain in existence, but given that this is a niche hobby in and of itself, without hard copy the entire "social" portion of the gaming community is going to have to be quickly restructured before the gaming industry collapses completely.

[CrazedGoblin]

Will you still be saying that when you get your hands on a portable PDF reader?

tempting... but i don't know books have a certain charm about them

[Damionte]

If it wasnt 300 bucks I would so get one,

[Curmudgeon]

Will you still be saying that when you get your hands on a portable PDF reader?

If you're really specific to PDFs, you're making a poor argument. I saw one of these last night. They've got good contrast and battery life thanks to the charged black/white ball technology used. But they're small and can't zoom. Since PDFs are designed for printed sheets (usually 8.5" x 11"), and (unlike HTML) can't resize the text independent of the graphics, the Reader makes you squint even if you flip the page 90 degrees to read the top or bottom portion; the text is still uncomfortably small.

For non-PDF books the Reader is OK, with limitations. You can't search. My friend has the complete Honor Harrington book series on his Reader, and can't use it to search for a name when he forgets who one of the cast of thousands (OK, maybe only several hundreds) of characters is.

The Reader is just that. It's not designed for graphics, and especially not for PDFs. It sucks with manuals because you'll have to manually flip to the table of contents or index, then page to the indicated spot and search using just your eyes. For D&D content and the Reader my answer is a resounding: No!

[Yuki Akuma]

Dragon was the only good thing from D&D I'd seen in several years, actually. WotC doesn't make good products - they make unbalanced products - and there's no metaplot in the game to follow to convince me to buy them anyway.

It's not overreaction; I far prefer printed materials in my hand, and absolutely despise the internetification of media. I don't like going to a website to read my news. I don't want a web-version of gaming articles. I don't think they're in any way superior - in many ways they're inferior.

The web is a good place for groups of people to share their opinions. It is not a good place for reading the detailed articles, descriptions, or charts that make up a publication, especially a gaming publication.

Oh well. Have fun living in the twentieth century! I'll go over to the twenty-first, thanks.

[Dervag]

i like the idea of a book to read more than a website as you can go anywere (within reason) to read it but being stuck at a screen makes it less enjoyable.

From the producer's standpoint, electronic magazines are great because the marginal cost of each new magazine is practically zero. All they have to do is post the content and keep a server running (which they're probably doing anyway). Even though people might not pay as much for the electronic magazine as they would for the paper (and keep in mind that for some people it's the other way around), they still do well.

It's not wrong to use electronic magazines in my opinion. My one concern is that the back issues don't get lost in the shuffle, because they represent many years of good ideas for D&D.

I don't know about CrazedGoblin, but I'll be reading books even when everyone else uses things like this. I'm not a technophobe normally, but when it comes to books, I am.

I've got about half again as many books as I have good places to put them, and I suspect that this will remain true for the rest of my life.

But I still buy science fiction novels from Baen Books' Webscription site. It makes it easy to get my hands on old editions, it's cheaper than buying a new paperback in a lot of cases, and it doesn't take up physical space- the novels I've bought as e-books would take up something like two feet of shelf space that I don't have to begin with.

So I'm not going to get all huffy and resentful if somebody decides to publish their magazine as an electronic document. I like paper, but I don't make a fetish out of it.

Personally I'm more worried about the gaming industry as a whole. While I see the shift to electronic media as a necessary evil, I wonder if it's not prolonging the inevitable. Without hard copy there's no gaming store. Without a gaming store how do you find out about new games that don't suck.

In the online forums, like this one.

If you were to start a thread asking for games that fit some defined criteria, you'd get a volley of replies naming games. And some of them would be good games. Admittedly they wouldn't all be good from your point of view, but you don't have that guarantee even at a gaming store.

For non-PDF books the Reader is OK, with limitations. You can't search. My friend has the complete Honor Harrington book series on his Reader, and can't use it to search for a name when he forgets who one of the cast of thousands (OK, maybe only several hundreds) of characters is.

I can think of books for which the lack of search would be much more annoying than in the Honor Harrington series, too. While there may technically be hundreds of characters in the series by now, most of them are bit players who appeared in one and only one novel. Of persistent characters, you have... well, maybe a few dozen; of important persistent characters, probably a dozen or so tops. And most of them have a well-defined relationship to the lead heroine, which you can use as a memory aid.

Imagine trying to do that with the Wheel of Time series.

On second thought, don't. It's far too frightening.

[Starsinger]

It's not overreaction; I far prefer printed materials in my hand, and absolutely despise the internetification of media. I don't like going to a website to read my news. I don't want a web-version of gaming articles. I don't think they're in any way superior - in many ways they're inferior.

The majority of magazine reading goes on in waiting rooms in doctor/dentist/psychiatrist offices, and hospitals, and airport terminals. And I don't know about you, but my doctor/dentist/psychiatrist aren't cool enough to stock magazines like Dragon or EGM. However, 100% of the people on this board have internet access of some kind or another. So really, electronic was the way for WotC to go.

[bosssmiley]

Oh well. Have fun living in the twentieth century! I'll go over to the twenty-first, thanks.

*pffft* The 20th was better. We landed on the Moon, had a commercial aircraft that flew twice the speed of sound, and had Salvadore Dali and art deco back then. We also had Andy Warhol to mock, the Beatles to listen to, and vermin like the Nazis to boo and hiss. The 21st century has been less than impressive so far.

As for the thread topic, I'd say that - IMO as always - D&D3.5 has about reached saturation. I mean, how much further can they take the D&D core mechanics system as it stands without stripping it back to the basics and turning it into the more elegant and balanced d20/Iron Heroes/point-buy quasi-hybrid that D&D3.6 will probably be?

I may be the equivalent of the guy at the US Patent Office who said "everything's been invented" in 1900; but what more can you meaningfully do with 3rd Ed that isn't just shuffling the furniture?

As for Dungeon and Dragon going vapourware etherware, name me a games mag that hasn't gone belly up. It's a shame, but it's a reality we have to live with.

[Krellen]

Oh well. Have fun living in the twentieth century! I'll go over to the twenty-first, thanks.

Progress for the sake of progress is not only non-profitable, it is foolish and often destructive. Whenever I hear someone say "have fun living in <some past time period>", or something similar, I just have to shake my head; what justification - other than pure profit-based capitalism - can be given for loving something new just because it's new?

[Citizen Joe]

Points at the slew of threads dedicated to the newest published class, or the latest supplement...

[Fax Celestis]

Progress for the sake of progress is not only non-profitable, it is foolish and often destructive. Whenever I hear someone say "have fun living in <some past time period>", or something similar, I just have to shake my head; what justification - other than pure profit-based capitalism - can be given for loving something new just because it's new?

Because, without progress, you are stagnant and might as well be dead.

[Matthew]

Bah! I prefer many 'old' things to modern things, it doesn't mean they are stagnant or lacking the ability to progress.

[Krellen]

Because, without progress, you are stagnant and might as well be dead.

That's entirely beside the point. I never said progress was bad. I said progress for the sake of progress is bad. Making - and buying - something new just because it is new is bad. And, in this particular case, supporting electronic print is bad, because the benefits - lower cost, perceived higher circulation - don't outweigh the drawbacks - less portability, eye-strain, decreased quality, highly restricted distribution (meaning you're no longer able to share your magazine or book with friends). Plus you don't get that sense of intellectualism from a collection of e-books that you get from a fully-stocked library.

[Fax Celestis]

Bah! I prefer many 'old' things to modern things, it doesn't mean they are stagnant or lacking the ability to progress.

There's nothing wrong with old things, merely that without progress, we'd still be using stone tools. In some cases, the old things are better--books are one of those cases. However, in today's screen-dependent media-driven society, the printed word isn't as powerful as it once was: it is shadowed by the light-emitted word.

WotC is merely keeping with the times, nothing else.

[Yuki Akuma]

I don't need a library of books to stroke my ego, though.

Are you seriously suggesting that you're afraid people won't think you're smart if you don't own a wall covered in ink-stained dead tree?

[Matthew]

There's nothing wrong with old things, merely that without progress, we'd still be using stone tools. In some cases, the old things are better--books are one of those cases. However, in today's screen-dependent media-driven society, the printed word isn't as powerful as it once was: it is shadowed by the light-emitted word.

WotC is merely keeping with the times, nothing else.

Sure, and I agree with the general idea, but applying it to everything is an over generalisation. Of course, much of that depends on the definition of the word progress in the context of paper magazines going digital. Personally, I am not particularly opposed to it, but I don't really see it as progress as much as reorganisation for practicality and profitability.

[Krellen]

Are you seriously suggesting that you're afraid people won't think you're smart if you don't own a wall covered in ink-stained dead tree?

What do you think "intellectualism" means? It has nothing whatsoever to do with ego.

Having a 'wall covered in ink-stained dead tree' gives me a sense of focus and comfort, knowing all that knowledge is there and readily available. This cannot be achieved with electronic versions, which are subject to a wide array of electronic vagrancies, many of which I personally have no control over. I can protect my books from the wind, rain and heat; I cannot (reliably) protect my computer from internet outages, electrical outages or viral invasions. Perhaps it is because I am an IT professional and not a librarian, but for me there are simply far too many unacceptable risks entailed in keeping any store of knowledge electronically rather than physically.

[Fax Celestis]

Sure, and I agree with the general idea, but applying it to everything is an over generalisation. Of course, much of that depends on the definition of the word progress in the context of paper magazines going digital. Personally, I am not particularly opposed to it, but I don't really see it as progress as much as reorganisation for practicality and profitability.

...which is the purpose of a company. That's what they do: make money (I almost typed "make monkey" but that's an entirely different area of research). And if they don't, they die. it's a survival thing, to be constantly being "new and improved." Otherwise the competition comes in and takes over, because they are new and improved.

[AslanCross]

I really love printed media, I was raised surrounded by books. My entire family is full of avid readers. That said, if not for the online content I wouldn't even be playing D&D. If D&D is a niche hobby in the West, it is even more so here in Southeast Asia. Very few of the books are available here, and not even large bookstores carry them--only specialty hobby/gaming stores do. Furthermore, their selection is kinda dated.

I would rather read a book in bed than read a computer screen, but I would rather have my laptop with all my references than lug around a whole bunch of books. (I don't have a car and I play D&D at school, so virtual paper helps a lot).