True, I haven’t read either one in over 15 years, but I still find this sort of depressing. Got a lot of mileage out of those old Dragon magazines when I was a kid.
Still, it’s that kind of market for the magazine industry. You just can’t compete with “free” and “constant updates”.
I’d say this was the geekiest post I’ve ever made, but sadly, it’s not even on the top 5 this week. Somebody shoot me before I start wearing horn-rims.
Sad. I’ve got the first 60 or so Dragon magazines in a box in my trunk right now, awaiting a trip back to the mini-storage locker. (Except #4. My mom wouldn’t drive me to the game store that month. :mad: )
Man, I used to spend hours poring over those … .
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Did they ever publish a second volume of The Fineous Treasury ? I always wanted to read the rest of the “Fineous Fingers” stories.
That’s a shame. I still read Dragon intermittently up to about a year ago or so.
It’s the state of the publishing industry these days. Hobbyist magazines are particularly hard hit since its so much easier to do things over the web.
I guess this means they’ll never finish Wormy.
The Wikipedia article on Dave Trampier details some of the efforts to track him down over the years. He pretty much dropped off the face of the earth in 1988.
Besides Wormy and Fineous here are some other things I remember from the early, early Dragons:
Fun with Phil & Dixie
What to Do When the Dog Eats your Dice
Snit Smashing
Monty Haul and His Friends at Play
I want to add to the “this sucks” crowd. I still read these monthly, and, i look forward to flipping through these for little tidbits and ideas.
The Phil & Dixie strips are gathered in 3 volumes, available on Amazon. Search for the author, Phil Foglio.
Naill of the Far Travels.
Food Fight: The Game
Pinsom, another comic in Dragon that started and vanished when it got interesting.
Gary Gygax’s meltdowns
Heck, the really old issues were odd because there was actually very little about TSR games at teh time. That would change.
I used to like Dragon Magazine back in the 80s. I remember the article that introduced the half-ogre as a PC option and a cool article called, “What Do You Mean ‘Bob’ the Samurai,” that provided a lot of Japanese/Asian names for use with Oriental Adventures.
I bought a few issues when D&D 3.0 was released. I haven’t read the magazine in a couple of years but I’m still sad to see it go.
Marc
The old issues were still house organs but they were willing to make room for the token article or two for each issue on another company’s product. Sometime in the mid to late 80’s that changed and it pretty much became strictly “Rah! Rah! TSR!” (later WotC) where the only time they’d mention other games would be if they didn’t have a directly competing product. I can’t say I’m really sad to see it go but there’s a lot of gaming history in that magazine…
And speaking of Gygax meltdowns, remember that editorial that stated that people who wanted to role-play were playing D&D wrong?
I think part of the problem was Dungeons and Dragons itself. They exploded with lots of sales, then it slowly burned itself out. The magazines are casualties of this. Plus, there are simply so many sources of PrC’s, new base classes, feats, and other junk that there;s really no need to go to the magazine anymore.
I’m not surprised. I never had much use for Dungeon, and my subscription to Dragon very nearly did not get renewed for the last three years running. I barely make the effort to read them. They’ve become less and less relevant to the game, really. If Wizards wants to go with the online route… eh. I don’t care anymore.
I am glad I stuck it out, though, because, counting the Dragon MAgazine Archive CDs, I will have access to the complete run of the Magazine.
I should pick up Dragon #359. I bought a copy of the last print edition of BYTE.
Brian
Huh. To be honest I did read a few Dungeons in recent years, when they were bundling Polyhedron in–there were some truly badass d20 minigames in some issues. Omega World, in particular, rocked my world.
Nothing touches what Dragon was like to me as a kid in the 80’s, though. Each issue was like a postcard from another world, a world composed of pure awesome. I’d pour over each one for weeks. No matter how pointless the articles seemed in retrospect, I loved every word. Druid orisons, sumo wrestlers, the monster writeups, hell even the articles for product lines I didn’t have access to, like the Marvel Universe items were riveting. Saddens me a little to find that a) the line is ending and b) the magazine took a dive in quality in recent years.
I remember the one where he stated that D&D, as sold, was absolutely, perfectly balanced, and that any alterations or “house” rules would utterly ruin the game.
Good times.
This isn’t too surprising, really. WotC got out of magazine publishing because it didn’t fit their business model for D&D. Seems like Paizo has relied on WotC material or WotC writers for much of their content, so why not put that into WotC books?
Also, as WotC has gotten back into adventures, they’re actually competing against the Dungeon adventures like Age of Worms. And Dragon is always such a grab-bag of articles that most readers probably only use one or two ideas an issue. Even worse, if people get the bit they need from Dragon, they might not buy the much more expensive hardback sourcebook from WotC on the same topic.
The bit cited in the OP reads almost as though this decision was taken by WotC; It’d be interesting to know this is also what Paizo wanted or not.
Has nothing to do with that. WotC didn’t renew the license because they want to do their own digital initiative, yes, but it had nothing to do with the magazines not being healthy. Paizo’s going to go forward with a new magazine. Dragon and Dungeon were healthy and growing. This is all quite depressing to me.
Pretty much what **Lightray ** said. This is a case of Paizo being too successful, it seems. Remember - the two magazines allowed Paizo to grow considerably. Hopefully, they can keep that momentum going. I love their GameMastery line.
The conspiracy theorists are already thinking this has something to do with a looming 4th edition…