Dungeon & Dragon magazine PDFs?

Quartz

Hero
Way back when, TSR published issues 1-250 of Dragon Magazine as PDFs on CD. This remains fantastically useful and was one of my better purchases. I'm wondering if there's any move to similarly publish subsequent issues of Dragon, as well as Dungeon? Add in Imagine and Polyhedron too, and I'd be willing to spend quite a large amount.
 

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From what I heard about the Dragon Magazine CD's, I'm not 100% sure that TSR had the rights to sell digital copies of the issues. That's why we haven't seen a second release for issues 251-359, or a release of Dungeon issues 1-150.
 


I'm wondering if there's any move to similarly publish subsequent issues of Dragon, as well as Dungeon?

I wouldn't hold your breath. Because...

From what I heard about the Dragon Magazine CD's, I'm not 100% sure that TSR had the rights to sell digital copies of the issues.

There was a case brought by Kenzer (and possibly others), which WotC eventually settled - that's why Kenzer's Kalamar stuff was allowed to use the official D&D logo (and some Hackmaster stuff is so close to the old-school adventures). So the got burned, quite badly, and are unlikely to go down that route again.

That said...

As I understand it, there was another case brought against TIME (IIRC) which did go to judgement, and where I think the ruling was that the "digital reprint" approach was legit. But I might be wrong about that.

In addition, it's worth noting that the reason for the "digital reprint" approach was that TSR had thrown away and/or lost a lot of the contracts with regard to the early issues, so often them simply didn't know what rights they had. With newer material they should still have those contracts and so could check exactly what the status is. (Further, for a long, long time their practice was to buy all rights, with some specific exceptions - Knights of the Dinner Table, Gygax's Soapbox articles, and maybe a few others.)

So the impediments to a Dragon Archive 2 and at least a partial Dungeon Archive might not be insurmoutable.

Still, don't hold your breath. :)
 


Since the pdfs are already for sale, woudln't it just come down to whether Paizo felt they could make a buck doing it?
 

Since the pdfs are already for sale, woudln't it just come down to whether Paizo felt they could make a buck doing it?

As you noted, though, Paizo only have some of the magazines for sale, specifically the 3e era ones. AFAIK, issues 251 - 273 of Dragon and issue 1 - 81 and 140+ of Dungeon aren't legally available in PDF anywhere.
 

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