Pyramid #4, thoughts?

[Taneli]

So, how have you all liked the newest iteration of Pyramid? Any thoughts or highlights of particular issues?

I've barely skimmed trough them all, but am really liking the short form stuff that has been missing since the Pyramid #3-122.

[ericthered]

I think my favorite article is supernatural energy, from pyramid 4/1. It has a lot of potential.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I think my favorite article is supernatural energy, from pyramid 4/1. It has a lot of potential.

YAY! Thank you for the compliment. I tried to address what I felt were specific needs with both articles and in the case of Supernatural Energy to help bring Powers based magic more inline with the other forms. But I also included stuff for other forms to cover as much as possible. The environmental source stuff was also something I have wanted to cover for awhile.

[Michael Thayne]

Let's see... Fantasy/Magic I had "The Demonic Temple of Felltower", which left me wanting to see the entire thing, and "Pandemonium", which is just a great premise, reminded me of the theory that in the Buffyverse the hell dimensions are just places the monsters won. Modern/Action had some cool location maps ("The Checkpoint" and "El Rancho Fin Del Camino"). And "Mind Over Time" was great as an example of how to do comic-book speedsters in a setting where powers are primarily psionic.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Let's see... Fantasy/Magic I had "The Demonic Temple of Felltower", which left me wanting to see the entire thing, and "Pandemonium", which is just a great premise, reminded me of the theory that in the Buffyverse the hell dimensions are just places the monsters won.

Which is weird, because I think those were in the bottom half of the fantasy issue for me. I'm glad to see someone liked them.



The vehicles article was really good. Perhaps it was low hanging fruit, but I'm glad to see it.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Perhaps it was low hanging fruit, but I'm glad to see it.

Writers try for the "low-hanging fruit" because most of what practically writes itself is stuff that many gamers – the writer included – want and constantly talk about, but that not everybody has the time to push across the line between talk and action. Taking a few hours out to give it the needed shove is relatively easy and guaranteed good reviews. It's a win for everybody: writer, readers, and publisher.

By contrast, things that are a puzzle to write are usually that way because they're hard to frame. With only a vague idea of what people actually want, it's possible for the demand you think you're meeting not to exist. You stand a real chance of doing a lot of work for nothing, of creating a solution in search of a problem. I admit to taking far too many risks here . . . I still have no idea if anybody really wants "Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes," "Putting Science in Your Fiction," or "Tactical Looting."

There are surprisingly few things that everybody wants but that are difficult to deliver. Usually, the difficulty is in winning the publisher's support for the necessary page count or format to deliver something that's ultimately pretty straightforward to write, and such things aren't suited to magazine articles. It's more about convincing the publisher to pay you for and then try to sell 200+ pages of stuff. Writing that many words is work, but not truly "difficult."