Yes, I purposely mispelled the title so it would catch peoples eye. I'm on a holy terror right now, so forgive me. I miss Dragon magazine art. Okay, the later years seemed far too influenced by anime...When I was a dumbass boy, I remember going to Waldenbooks and picking up Dragon Magazine. The cover was...simple and incredible. I couldn't tell you about the content, but no matter. The cover was a stone face, with a woman on top, backlit by a moon. Now in and of itself, it was no big deal. But the art gave such an overwhelming feel of what WoG was about. Who was this woman? Where was she? What ancient city did this ruined face belong to? What time of year was it? What kingdom was this in? There was so many unanswered questions.... Where is the mystery now? Where is the fantasy? Where is that magic? Ahhhhh, I do so miss Dragon Magazine and Dungeon too....
i agree...we even get dragon magazine here in brazil, translated. the work was a little poor, with some "new" (silly) material made here, but still, remembers me of the good times.
Yep, that's issue #114. That issue has "The Witch" by Bill Mulhaussen in it(among other things). TSR caught a lot of crap for that cover too. And *Waldenbooks*- they used to be all over the place in S. Califorrnia. Many a fantasy book I bought from them, most notably for me those early versions of the Elric series that had silver covers with runes all over them. Probably one of the best cover treatements for a series of fantasy books ever. Ah, the nostalgia of the early and mid 1980's.
I do miss being able to walk into a hobby shop, game store, or book store and be able to peruse an issue of Dragon magazine too.
Last edited by Cebrion on Sun Nov 16, 2008 4:10 pm; edited 1 time in total
I rememer the first Dragon I bought, and it was because of the cool cover art. It was of a ranger fighting a frost giant skeleton. Poor ranger was down to her last arrow and it wasn't looking good for the good guys.
Turns out that it was one of my favorite issues of all time. It was Issue #126, and it was full of great and useable articles. It really got me started on being a DM. In my humble opinion, the glory days of Dragon Magazine were the issues in the 120's to about the 140's. Most of my favorite articles came from this time period, the art was cool, and it also was (IMO) the high point of Greyhawk and D&D in general.
I haven't bought a Dragon Mag in years. Mostly because I never got off 2nd edition rules, but I haven't liked the newer formats.
I thought Kim Mohan's time as editor was near-universally recognized as Dragon's golden age. My first Dragon was #72. From there through #111, the magazine was almost pure gold, In My Opinion. I suppose, though, that many people are drawn to the "newness" of the magazine -- new as it appeared to them when they first discovered it -- and dislike the magazine at any other time it looked different.
Actually, out of everything that has been written for D&D, I find nothing better for reading than the 1e articles that were written in Dragon magazine.
Hopefully, the people at WotC will have the sense to reprint all of them, perhaps integrated with all of the content from the 11 First Edition books.
(This would mean a set of 22 hardback books)
Reading is a pleasure in and of itself.
I would rather read this than the Lord of the Rings (and that's saying something: I loved the Lord of the Rings ... it is the ultimate in fantasy. Hmm.)
There was a lot of interesting and inspiring material in the Dragon but there was also a lot of useless articles and a lot repetition of the popular subjects. I would love a massive best of series but this will never happen with the current management.
I'm just very grateful for the great Dragon CD archives. _________________ Never say blip-blip to a kuo-tua
There is a CD that TSR sold that had all of the dragon magazines cover to cover on it. I have it somewhere. A buddy of mine says if you can find it it goes for $80-$100. I love that magazine. I might try and find that CD and do some nostalgia reading myself.
I have that, and, for me, it has been one of the best values I have gotten from a TSR product. Hopefully, one day, I will get around to translating those articles to html, so that they can be updated, in a 1e sense.
For example, the initiative (Attack Priority) article in D70 ... that includes the monsters from the MM. It wouldn't be too hard to set up a table, and slowly fill in the details for the FF & MM2 creatures. Something that would probably be best done through a wiki site, in conjunction with dragonsfoot.org (another awesome site, that I am sure most here are aware of!)
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I'm on a holy terror right now, so forgive me. I miss Dragon magazine art. Okay, the later years seemed far too influenced by anime...When I was a dumbass boy, I remember going to Waldenbooks and picking up Dragon Magazine. The cover was...simple and incredible. I couldn't tell you about the content, but no matter. The cover was a stone face, with a woman on top, backlit by a moon. Now in and of itself, it was no big deal. But the art gave such an overwhelming feel of what WoG was about. Who was this woman? Where was she? What ancient city did this ruined face belong to? What time of year was it? What kingdom was this in? There was so many unanswered questions.... Where is the mystery now? Where is the fantasy? Where is that magic? Ahhhhh, I do so miss Dragon Magazine and Dungeon too....
And *Waldenbooks*- they used to be all over the place in S. Califorrnia. Many a fantasy book I bought from them, most notably for me those early versions of the Elric series that had silver covers with runes all over them. Probably one of the best cover treatements for a series of fantasy books ever. Ah, the nostalgia of the early and mid 1980's.
