Wow, talk about an end to an era - Paizo, the publisher of Dragon and Dungeon magazine, has announced that they will cease publication shortly after at least a 30 year run. While I haven’t opened a Dragon magazine in at least 10 years, there was a period between jr and sr high when I anxiously awaited the latest issue’s arrival at my library, and I periodically campaigned with my mom to get me a subscription. She wasn’t having it since Dragon was always ridiculously expensive. Despite this I ended up with quite a collection of issues that I picked up over the years, and they’re still sitting in a crate amongst my game collection.
The Dungeons and Dragons brand is still going strong (they’re at version 3.0 and rumors of the announcement of version 4.0 abound), so it’s not clear why the magazines are being killed off. There are rumors that Wizards of the Coast is planning to build a paid online service, so maybe this is related to that. Or maybe in the age of the internet it’s about younger gamers not reading magazines about their hobby. Whatever the cause, it’s a bit of a shame to see it fade into the sunset.
A word to the wise - at one point TSR released a CD ROM collection of the first several hundred issues of Dragon. After publication of the collection they discovered they had violated innumerable copyrights and had to pull the collection. It’s now a collector’s item, and should you ever happen to see it at yard sale, grab it. It’s easily worth $300. I mentally kick myself every time I reflect on this because I passed on picking it up for $30 on clearance at a Gamestop back when it was first published. Who knew!
Anyway, to Dragon and Dungeon I bid a fond adieu.
Wow. Zolar shall pause for a moment to reflect on this. Then resume his persecution of the zfarts!