diaglo said:
my elderly parents recycled my collection of Poly, White Dwarf, Imagine, and The Strategic Review/The Dragon/Dragon
hundreds of magazines in their attic... gone. probably thousands of Dollars worth.
to them they weren't being used and just taking up space.
to me.. i'd forgotten to tell them to send them to me...
when i did remember it was too late.
Now that HURTS. My parents had some of my stuff for a while, but my mother always calls me and asks if she can throw something away or not. Of course, now it is all in my own house, so my gaming stuff is safe.
jmucchiello said:
Late Wormy rarely made any sense. What's New? with Phil and Dixie was always better, when it was in Dragon. The fact that it's gone through several magazines now reduces its cache' a bit.
I started with 63 and lucky bought it late as 64 was out the next week. Picked up back issues sporatically back to 50. Stopped somewhere in the 220s. I only own the recent ones that had the Forgotten Realms map.
"This is one of the simpler minigames. It's called Escape from Chthulhu. All you do is read the incantation inside.... and escape!"
"Booga!"
I started with 63 as well - and will never forget the cover - which goes with the new NPC class - the Bandit - as a dark-clad looking figure walks through the misty woods.
I was in California, LA, visiting family (having driven all the way from Michigan with my parents) and I saw the Dragon on a shelf at a bookstore. I was quite young, and had only recently started getting into D&D. I had no idea there was a magazine dedicated to it. I was so excited, I thought it was so cool. After I found it, I started looking for it in other bookstores while in California - I dragged my parents to a few other ones (well, as best I could at that young age)...
Stik said:
I started with issue 62, and have not missed an issue since. I can still picture the cover- an armored man on horseback fighting two or three orcs with a forest and a mountain peak behind.
... and thus managed to find in the next book store a copy of issue 62, and I also remember that cover vividly. Unfortunately, the only copy I could find had a loose, almost off, cover. Thankfully, I was able to find a better copy MUCH later.
When I got home, the first thing I did was subscribe, and my subscription started with issue 64, and lasted til 89, then I subscribed again years later, when I hit college and actually could really play regularly. Then I stopped playing a long time, and my subscription just continued, sending issues to my parents house - it finally ran out, just when I was getting interested in D&D again (3E came out) and I resubscribed and have had it ever since. In my college years, I decided to complete my collection, having found a large cache of old Dragons. (I went to a used bookstore, found a Strategic Review (the last issue) and asked about it and the owner showed me a full box with dozens of Dragons going back to the teens. I bought them all on the spot and the owner threw in the TSR for free.
I spent years getting the rest, finally getting issue 1 at Gen Con (the only one I went to, back in '94, I think it was). I also have all of the TSR issues. And when Dungeon first came out, I got it, starting with issue 7, and only a gap later on in the 60s-70s. I now have all of them as well.
So as it stands, I have every issue of the Strategic Review, every issue of Dragon, every issue of Dungeon, and I also have the Dragon CD-ROM archive. And it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside to have them all. Perhaps it is just nostalgia, but nothing makes me happier than having all those old Dragons, in terms of my gaming collection. And the Dungeons are great for adventure ideas, even where the edition is woefully incompatible.
