D&D General Why Were the Dragon and Dungeon Magazines Discontinued?

[LuisCarlos17f]

Here in Spain we only could find those magazines in comic shops from capital cities, not in smaller towns.

I love the numbers I bought because now they are like pieces of collection, and a window toward the past, a mirror of a previous decade, but we know the crunch isn't so useful any more.

 

[Starmaster]

I remember getting that last magazine in the mail. Was a sad day. I miss the comics and I miss the ads for ral partha etc

I miss the comics and ads in Dragon as well. I think my favorite part was the "TSR Previews", later called "New Releases". Back in ancient times when Dragon had adventure modules in them (before Dungeon magazine), that was by far my favorite section of the magazine.

 

[wicked cool]

If they were smart they could do something on fb etc or d&d beyond

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If they were smart they could do something on fb etc or d&d beyond

They did publish something they called Dragon (although it didn't bear much resemblance to the magazine, especially by the end) and decided it wasn't worth the return on investment.

With D&D Beyond, they do have a publishing platform where they probably could publish monthly content and charge people either per issue or an annual subscription. They'd just need it to be worth it for them financially and worth it to the customers, who have far more choice than ever in picking up a short adventure here, plug-in content there, and opinions everywhere.

 

[jayoungr]

They did publish something they called Dragon (although it didn't bear much resemblance to the magazine, especially by the end) and decided it wasn't worth the return on investment.

It was Dragon+, technically. And I miss it. Always looked forward to a new issue.

 

[Starmaster]

They did publish something they called Dragon (although it didn't bear much resemblance to the magazine, especially by the end) and decided it wasn't worth the return on investment.

With D&D Beyond, they do have a publishing platform where they probably could publish monthly content and charge people either per issue or an annual subscription. They'd just need it to be worth it for them financially and worth it to the customers, who have far more choice than ever in picking up a short adventure here, plug-in content there, and opinions everywhere.

Although not nearly as good as having paper copies, I would be down for something like this as long as it was quality material that I could permanently own and download rather than something where I'd have to maintain an active subscription in order to access it.

 

[Starmaster]

It was Dragon+, technically. And I miss it. Always looked forward to a new issue.

I liked "Dragon+" as well. Although I'd rather have paper copies, I shouldn't complain about that aspect of it since it was free. It's unfortunate that the issues didn't have a regular delivery schedule and finally petered out. One thing that I did dislike about "Dragon+" was that you needed to use their app to view it, using the swipe left, swipe right, scroll up or down, click on an item protocol. (Maybe there was some way to do it without using the app, but I didn't now how.). So, when if the app is unavailable, the info is useless. I'd prefer a regular pdf magazine form. It would be more mundane, but wouldn't become obsolete.

Fortunately, someone converted the Dragon+ issues to pdf and uploaded them to the Internet Archive (although they said they may be incomplete). Despite there being only 41 issues, the archive was a whopping 2 gigabytes in size.

 

[Parmandur]

I liked "Dragon+" as well. Although I'd rather have paper copies, I shouldn't complain about that aspect of it since it was free. It's unfortunate that the issues didn't have a regular delivery schedule and finally petered out. One thing that I did dislike about "Dragon+" was that you needed to use their app to view it, using the swipe left, swipe right, scroll up or down, click on an item protocol. (Maybe there was some way to do it without using the app, but I didn't now how.). So, when if the app is unavailable, the info is useless. I'd prefer a regular pdf magazine form. It would be more mundane, but wouldn't become obsolete.

Fortunately, someone converted the Dragon+ issues to pdf and uploaded them to the Internet Archive (although they said they may be incomplete). Despite there being only 41 issues, the archive was a whopping 2 gigabytes in size.

They were chock full of full color art.

 

[jayoungr]

One thing that I did dislike about "Dragon+" was that you needed to use their app to view it, using the swipe left, swipe right, scroll up or down, click on an item protocol. (Maybe there was some way to do it without using the app, but I didn't now how.).

It didn't require the app. I just viewed it on the web. But I was always reading it on an actual computer; not sure whether that would have worked on a phone.

 

[Zaukrie]

If they were smart they could do something on fb etc or d&d beyond

There are blog posts all over DNDbeyond, many of which are similar to magazine content. Not as much new stuff, but a lot of stuff.