🎲🐉 The Magazine That Shaped D&D

Comments · 139

• WI

  @williampalmer8052 · 2 years ago

  Those fortunate to have been born in the internet age are probably not aware how important these magazines were at the time. Gaming before then was a very "local" experience, extending only as far as your neighborhood friends and fellow classmates. Even hobby shops as we know them were few and far between. Dragon was our connection to the greater world of gaming, and we studied every page for new rules and information, and ideas for our own campaigns. Even the ads were sources of inspiration - I.C.E. and Ral Partha, MERPS, Judges Guild... For a kid at the time, it all hinted at a limitless world of imagination.

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• KR

  @Kreln1221 · 2 years ago

  <b>Brother..., you had a super cool Grandma..., hookin&apos; you up with multiple years of </b><i><b>Dragon</b></i><b></b><b> subscriptions...</b><br>🤘🏻😎👍

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• TI

  @tinywarfare9109 · 2 years ago

  I love my big stack of print copies of Dragon, but that CD compilation was one the favourite RPG things I ever bought.

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• BE

  @Bear-co2hb · 2 years ago

  As someone who just started during 5th edition, i really wish these were still in print. I&apos;d love to get supplemental material in my mailbox every month.

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• MO

  @MonkeyDespot · 9 months ago

  I grew up in a small town in Texas and my first exposure to Dragon Magazine was in the very early 80s. My grandparents were friends with Bert Dunken, who was the sole distributor of Prince August miniature molds in the US at the time. In addition to &apos;The Dunken Company&apos; he also ran an antique shop and I spent a lot of time hanging out and molding minis in that shop during the summer when I was a kid and young teen.<br> Bert took out ads for his mold company in Dragon and they&apos;d send him free copies so he could check the ads and make sure they were alright. He had no real interest in gaming though so he&apos;d just cut his ad out of each issue and, before I came along, throw them away. After we met, he started saving them for me. So I have a decent sized collection of Dragon issues that I got for free, but that are each missing a small section of one page.

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• XA

  @xaxzander4633 · 2 years ago (edited)

  Dragon is amazing. &nbsp;So much inspiration for Dm&apos;s and players. &nbsp;Very cool i have not seen much coverage for these on the tube, &nbsp;good work.

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• GO

  @goblinrat6119 · 2 years ago

  I think it will be useful and more feasible to cover the Dragon magazines in batches, whatever number seems doable and sensible. Dedicating a whole video to each issue will of course give more details, but doing them in groups will probably give more insight into the topic as a whole, what went on over time and how things changed, like you mentioned in the beginning.<br><br>Great video, by the way. It&apos;s always a pleasure to see an upload from you, since they&apos;re always informative and thoughtful.

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• SY

  @SylvarOgre · 2 years ago

  I remember my first Dragon magazine. It was #86 and had a very cool chess inspired cover.

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• GO

  @goblinrat6119 · 2 years ago

  Something I&apos;ve tried to look into, but surprisingly little information exists on, was how exactly those play-by-mail games worked. I&apos;ve often pondered the sheer logistics of it, since you are essentially trying to coordinate a whole group of people, and also keep them informed of each other&apos;s actions. I&apos;ve seen some reports or publications that collate results of various actions, but it has been very hard to find descriptions of how people did it. Maybe because there wasn&apos;t really any single convention for it anyhow?<br><br>Just thinking about it, I suppose the easiest form would have been kind of like &quot;general&apos;s orders&quot; style wargames, where a player would just give very general and overall input on how to proceed, and the referee then executes these as he sees being viable, and adjudicates the results, before informing the players of what the situation is now. This is a way I&apos;ve played some wargames, for example, and I think it would basically be workable. Large chunks of the dungeon at once, just getting results and deciding how and where to proceed. It certainly seems to me that a move-by-move, really closely zoomed game with snail mail would be totally untenable. I&apos;ve played forum games that tried to do that, and those could take weeks or months to solve one situation. It would take probably more than a year to sort out a single dungeon room by written letters!<br><br>If someone has more knowledge on how exactly it worked, I would be very interested to hear. It is a fascinating topic, a kind of by-necessity play culture that existed and formed for a very short time, and likely lost almost all sway immediately when the game gained enough of a foothold that face-to-face games were generally a realistic expectation.

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• LO

  @LordEriolTolkien · 2 years ago

  I still have 1 or 2 &apos;Dragon&apos; magazines tucked away somewhere from that time

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• ME

  @metamorph278 · 3 months ago

  This was a delight to watch! I like the longer format, but only because of the carefully designated chapters, so I could watch it on portions. I&apos;m going through the playlist in order and I must say I love it. A true D&amp;D history masterclass!

• DA

  @davidkobold5311 · 2 years ago

  My first issue of Dragon was #63. Certainly the sentimental value helps elevate its status for me, but its so much more than that! I didn&apos;t ven know the magazine existed until I stumbled onto it at the Gamekeeper in the mall. The cover advertised an AD&amp;D module - and a bunch of other stuff - for $3! I bought it immediately.<br><br>What I found inside was way more than a module (&quot;Chagmat&quot; levels 1-4, decent enough). It also included: <br><br> &nbsp; a. A full presentation of a Bandit NPC class (which of course meant that my brother insisted on making a Bandit PC 😬).<br><br> &nbsp; b. A terrific article about planning a campaign and developing maps for it that inspired my DM craftsmanship for years (it was years later that I realized the article was written by Ed Greenwood).<br><br> &nbsp; c. A cool article about Charisma from Len Lakofka.<br><br> &nbsp; d. Oh, and did I forget...the introduction of the Barbarian class!<br><br>How cool was this issue? The coolest! I was hooked from my first issue. As always, thanks for the memory trip Martin.

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