Dragon and Dungeon Magazines - Do You Miss Them?

[Lwaxy]

Same here, that sort of subscription model just makes me buy other things or nothing at all.

From a logical POV, I wouldn't ever need to buy any more RPG material at all, I have enough for several decades.

 

[Zaukrie]

Yeah, I still miss them. I miss getting my subscription copies in the mail, and I miss writing for them.

Johnathan

And I miss reading monster hunter articles.

 

[delericho]

Same here, that sort of subscription model just makes me buy other things or nothing at all.

From a logical POV, I wouldn't ever need to buy any more RPG material at all, I have enough for several decades.

There is that. To an extent, that sort of model is more likely to apply to things like movies, music, video games, and the like, rather than tabletop RPGs specifically. I did note that my comment was off-topic.

That said, we've already seen it applied somewhat - it wasn't unusual to hear people saying that they'd subscribed to the DDI in lieu of buying the physical books. (And if WotC make the library of old materials available electronically in a format tied to having an active DDI subscription, I suspect that will be popular, or at least succesful, also.)

 

[Scribble]

I dunno man... If say Drivethru were able to offer digital access to a huge library of almost every game book I could think of at a low monthly fee? I would probably sign up.

 

[havard]

Yes I miss them. I really miss having a magazine printed on real paper, but I miss it more from the time before they turned to the idea that two paragraphs, one feat and a Prestige Class constituted an article.



-Havard

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yes, very much so.

Dungeon more than Dragon, if I'm honest -- 3.5E Dragon never did recapture the far-reaching zaniness of its youth -- but if they were again available in dead tree format from Paizo, I'd subscribe in a heartbeat.

If they were only available in .pdf format from Paizo, I'd still subscribe, so it's less about the format than the quality.

A couple of blog columns with the names "Dungeon" and "Dragon" are not worthy to bear those names.

 

[wingsandsword]

Yeah, I miss them. A paid-subscription website is NOT a substitute for a magazine. Sorry, just isn't. I can't go to my FLGS and browse, and lay down a few bucks cash for it. It doesn't neatly fit on my bookcase with the rest of Dragon Magazine.

If they were still around, they'd probably be in hard times because magazines in general are having trouble. . . but it didn't fail for lack of good business at the time.

It felt like WotC yanked the rug out to spite Paizo. Combine that with the GSL nonsense and it was clear they were trying to poison the well.

Combined with discontinuing 3.5e and moving to the radically incompatible 4e, ending Dragon Magazine was basically WotC saying they didn't want me as a customer anymore. I was 29 (at the time) and already an old fogie that was too behind the times as far as they were concerned.

 

[JeffB]

I do not miss the 3.x era magazines at all, Paizo or WOTC proper before them. The 4e mags started off OK, but went downhill right quick.

Put Roger Moore or Kim Mohan back in charge, and I would sub up tomorrow, print or digital

 

[Agamon]

I miss my tablet. I had to send it in because the JB update bricked it for some reason. Anyway, I had my Dragon archive on it and was reading through the old issues, I hadn't actually gotten around to doing that yet. I was on issue 38, still a long way until it catches up to my physical collection.

So that's what I miss. I've moved on along with the mags. Blogs, articles and zines do the trick these days. And I can filter to my style easier that way, I doubt there'd be many OSR articles in a current Dragon mag, so I wouldn't be picking it up, and would miss out on any articles that would interest me. But if WotC posts an article online, I can check it out if I want. So I personally prefer it this way.

 

[Tallifer]

I am forty six years old. I grew up in the days when we wrote essays by hand, scoured libraries for books and articles for information, bought crappy novels in blind hope, struggled with typewriters and wistfully checked the mailbox every day in hope that our magazines had arrived.

Times change and while I am still well behind the technological curve, I do prefer to subscribe to digital magazines whose articles I can conveniently sift through and read on my computer.

I have stacks of old unused gaming books in my parents' attic and shelves full of old paperbacks. The fact is I will never go back and read my old books, and I can only play one or two games at a time. I am very happy that I can now hold my entire roleplaying collection on my computer and a few flashdrives.