Paizo to Discontinue Dragon and Dungeon Magazines

An anonymous reader slipped us a link to a page on the Wizards.com site marking the end of an era. As of September of this year Dungeon and Dragon Magazines will cease publication. Dragon has been in continuous circulation since 1976, while Dungeon will be marking its 150th issue at the end of its run in August. Paizo Publishing, the current printing house for the magazines, is offering several options for what to do with your ongoing subscription. From the announcement on the Wizards site: "'Today the internet is where people go to get this kind of information,' said Scott Rouse, Senior Brand Manager of Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast. 'By moving to an online model we are using a delivery system that broadens our reach to fans around the world. Paizo has been a great partner to us over the last several years. We wish them well on their future endeavors.'" I've looked forward to my issue of Dragon every month for over a decade. It will be sad to see it go.

Re:How sad

[Stachybotris]

My first issue was #180, back in April of '92 (or was it '91?). I stopped reading shortly after Paizo took over publishing and decided to move DM-specific to Dungeon and keep Dragon as a player-centric magazine. I really enjoyed it when all the game content was in one magazine and the canned adventures were in the other. Also, Paizo had far too many ads in the magazines (as opposed to when WotC or TSR were publishing) for my taste. If they'd have kept the content where it was, I'd have gladly paid an additional dollar or two per issue just to keep the ads down.

Oh well, such goes the way of the gaming industry. Maybe this on-line offering will make it worth subscribing again.

This was WotC's decision, not Paizo's

[werdnam]

I think it's important to note that publication is ceasing because WotC chose not to renew the license to Paizo. Paizo, as you may or may not recall, took over publishing rights for Dungeon and Dragon in 2002. Seems WotC has changed the mind about the value of such content.

This reminds me of the somewhat recent choice by WotC not to renew the license to CodeMonkey for the PC-Gen (character generation software) data sets. Clearly WotC is set to make a big push into online and electronic supplements to their D&D line.

Oh, and I see that Paizo will still be publishing adventures through a publication called Pathfinder. Looks interesting. At least gamers will still have some way to get their paper adventure fix.

You haven't read recently, then

[TrentC]

Seems like everyone would be better surved with forums, a web-page and the normal book releases.

Forums? Not the same at all. I don't want to have to wade through mindless rules flamewars and irrelevant conversations to find useful stuff.

Existing books? Sure, those have value, if they can get enough material on a topic to create one. But maybe I just want an article with five new, themed spells, suitable for an NPC, new religion, or a dusty tome of "forgotten" spells. Or maybe I want the excellent Dungeoncraft series to continue, or "100 things you'd find in a marketplace".

Websites? We shall see what WotC comes up with, but websites can be impermanent -- the content is only available as long as the site's owners chose to host it. What would have happened had TSR had such a site when they were looking to go out of business? My guess is, the site would be shut down and that information lost; even if not, little of the content would likely still be available on WotC's site today.

Dungeon improved greatly over the past couple of years, culminating in the Adventure Paths -- a series of linked adventures, one per month, designed to take a party from 1st- to 20th-level. The first one, the Shackled City, was so-so in my opinion. The second one, the Age of Worms, was a lot better; I think they were starting to get the feel for writing them. We are over halfway through the third one, the Savage Tide; it will conclude in the final issue of Dungeon. The Dungeoncraft articles are pretty interesting, too; Monte Cook and Wolfgang Baur have both provided wonderful articles about adventure design and campaign-building.

In my opinion Dragon is still of varying usefulness with the addition of monthly columns devoted to WotC's major campaign settings (Eberron and Forgotten Realms) and my favorite series of articles EVER, Core Faiths. Each article explored a deity in the core D&D pantheon and really fleshed it out -- outlook on life, role of the clergy, aphorisms, new spells or magic items unique to the faith, sample NPCs suitable for summoning via Summon Planar Ally, and more. (The Core Faiths for Vecna was a great Halloween treat last year.)

What eventually convinced me to subscribe was the utility of having those articles on hand whenever and wherever I game. No scouring a series of websites, or hoping that WotC's site hasn't "retired" the article. The fact that subscriptions to Dungeon and Dragon were increasing over the past couple of years tells me that I'm not alone in finding this content valuable.

Paizo will apparently be publishing a new periodical, Pathfinder [paizo.com]. It looks to be a hybrid of Dungeon (adventures, including new Adventure Paths) and Dragon (new monsters, spells, NPCs, and locales), and all of their material will be released under the OGL. You will be able to get it in either PDF or dead-tree editions, so people who want that electronic content will have it while old fogeys like me can add to the growing pile of gaming supplements. I'm strongly considering converting my remaining subscriptions and grabbing the first couple of issues.

Complete collection on DVD?

[laughing_badger]

Quite a while ago, they released issues 1-250 of Dragon in PDF format on (many) CDs. Anyone know if they are planning to do the same again now the collection is 'complete'? I'd certainly pay to have the entire collection of Dungeon and Dragon magazines available.

Pyramid's a good replacement

[jiawen]

For those who want a replacement for the great Dragon magazines of old, subscribing to Pyramid [sjgames.com] is a good idea. It fills a very similar niche to those old great Dragons: lots of very interesting articles about many games, not just ones by the magazine's publishers themselves, as well as good reviews, industry analysis, a forum, etc.

Re:Complete collection on DVD?

[ricotest]

Search The Pirate Bay for 'Dungeon Magazine' (134 issues) and 'Dragon Magazine' (335 issues, 5 best ofs, 6 annuals and 7 strategic reviews). Speed isn't too hot right now, but if you're patient you'll soon have a full set of both publications.