D&D General How Much D&D Stuff Is There Anyway? Part 3: Magazines

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This is the third in a series of articles attempting to answer the question: How much D&D stuff is there anyway? In the first two articles, we looked at the number of RPG products and pages for each edition and the number of products and pages for each major setting. A hypothetical collector, buying everything we’ve covered so far, would have spent close to $25k, and we haven’t strayed beyond table-top RPG material yet.

This time, we are looking at various D&D magazines and periodicals. That means we’re still sticking mostly with TTRPG material, but there are also a lot of pages covering games other than D&D, as well as plenty of adverts, so the count of magazine pages doesn’t equate directly with “pages of D&D”. Fortunately we can still make some pretty graphs of the numbers. Since later issues of Dragon and Dungeon (and Dragon+) exist only in digital form, we’re also going to stray into digital-only content for the first time in this article.

Part 3: Magazines and Periodicals
TSR experimented with a number of different newsletters during its time as the custodian of D&D. Most of these were little more than product catalogs and marketing for upcoming releases. For the fanatic collector, the Acaeum has an excellent overview of the various newsletters. For this article, we’re considering magazines, periodicals and newsletters that contain some D&D content beyond product marketing.

The Strategic Review
The Strategic Review ran for seven issues from February 1975 to April 1976, and while it is often (correctly) considered to be the precursor to The Dragon, it had a character of its own, as it attempted to appeal to both wargamers and D&D players. The importance of TSR’s periodicals to the early development of D&D is emphasized by that February date for the first issue, which means it was published three months before Supplement I: Greyhawk. This makes The Strategic Review #1 effectively the second “product” TSR put out with any D&D content.

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A second measure of the importance of early TSR periodicals is the list of D&D monsters appearing for the first time in just the seven-issue run of The Strategic Review: catoblepas, clay golem, ghost, leprechaun, lurker above, mind flayer, naga, piercer, rakshasa, roper, shambling mound, shrieker, slithering tracker, trapper, wind walker, and yeti. Perhaps the wind walker has a less than impressive footprint on D&D lore, but many of the others are foundational monsters.

When The Strategic Review was cancelled, it was replaced by two different magazines; The Dragon focused on the rapidly growing base of D&D players while Little Wars covered wargaming. Heralding the shift of the gaming community from wargaming to role-playing, Little Wars lasted for only thirteen issues before being folded back into The Dragon #22.

For the purpose of this article, we’re counting all of the pages in each magazine, and using the cover price to calculate the cost. (Our hypothetical collector wasn’t savvy enough to get the 25% subscriber discount and bought each issue from their local game store as it came out.) Here are the totals for The Strategic Review:​
  • Issues: 7 (Feb 1975 - Apr 1976)​
  • Shelf space: 7mm (¼ inch)​
  • Pages: 90​
  • Cost: $4.75​
Dragon
The Dragon, later Dragon and then Dragon Magazine and then Dragon again, was in print from June 1976 to September 2007, a run of more than thirty years. In the decade from 1976 to 1985, TSR released about five and a half thousand pages of D&D books. In that same decade, more than seven thousand pages of Dragon magazine content was published. Not all of it was D&D material, but magazine pages exceeded book pages for almost a decade. Only in 1985 did RPG book output (in pages) rise above magazine output for the first time since The Dragon #1.

From 1996 to 2001, TSR (later WotC) put out a thirteenth issue of Dragon each year. The first five bonus magazines were styled as Annuals 1-5, while the last one focused on d20 content and was titled d20 Special (but subtitled Annual 6 inside). The annuals were abandoned once Paizo took over publication which they did in August 2002 with Dragon #298. Paizo held the licence from WotC to publish Dragon until September 2007, when the final print issue—Dragon #359—was released. Including the six annuals, there were 365 issues of Dragon printed.

Adding all those Dragons up gives the following numbers:​
  • Issues: 365 (Jun 1976 - Sep 2007)​
  • Shelf space: 1,960mm (77 inches)​
  • Pages: 36,809​
  • Cost: $1,532.81​
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Before moving on from Dragon, we need to deal with a surprising number of collections and spin-off releases. The first of these is Dragontales, published in 1980. This is a fiction collection, but it doesn’t have any specific D&D content, so our hypothetical collector skips it.

From 1980 to 1986, TSR released five Best of Dragon collections, which are reprints of articles from earlier issues. (There are revised versions of the first two Best ofs, but our hypothetical collector settles for one copy of each.) Our collector skips The Best of Dragon Magazine Games boxed set—an enchanting collection of early Dragon mini-games—because it doesn’t include any D&D content.

Dragon had several foreign language editions: an 8-issue run (plus one “best of”) in German (as Drache from 1984-1985) followed by an erratic second 17-issue run in German (as Dragon from 1994-2003), 46 issues in French (from 1991-1998), 9 issues in Hungarian, 4 issues in Japanese (from 1986-1987, before being renamed as Fantasy Gamer’s Journal), 14 issues in Portuguese (the Brazilian version ran from 1995-1996), and two different runs of 27 and 13 issues in Spanish (as Dragón from 1993-1997 and Dragon from 2003-2006). In addition, from January 1998 to August 1997 (issues #129 to #234, plus Annual #1), there were separate UK versions of Dragon with a different cover layout, but largely the same content as the corresponding US version. Our hypothetical D&D collector decides to ignore all of these alternative versions of Dragon, settling for a full-run of the US version.

Our collector does, however, pick up a copy of the Dragon Magazine Archive, which contains electronic versions of the first 250 issues of Dragon (as well as the full run of The Strategic Review). Unfortunately the Archive was withdrawn from sale following a lawsuit from Kenzer & Co, whose Knights of the Dinner Table cartoon WotC did not have the right to include in the archive, but if you can find a copy on eBay (and you have somewhere to put a CD-ROM), the Archive is great way to get access to a large chunk of D&D history. Also added to the hypothetical collection are the two compilations published by Paizo: Dragon Compendium, Volume 1 and Dragon: Monster Ecologies.

The art of Dragon has been collected twice, one in a TSR-era (1988) softcover collection, and again in Paizo’s 2006 hardcover. So too have the cartoons from the magazine been collected in books of their own, including: The Fineous Treasury, SnarfQuest: The Book, Zogonia Volume I: Slice of Death, and Downer Volume I: Wandering Monsters. The Order of the Stick material was included in Snips, Snails and Dragontales and the aforementioned Knights of the Dinner Table, of course, have their own monthly magazine and various collections. Our hypothetical collector can’t resist the two Dragon art books, but skips the various cartoon collections.

Having completed that assessment of the Dragon spin-offs, we’ve added ten items to the hypothetical D&D collection at a cost of $170.79. All of these products contain recycled material so they don’t add anything to our overall page count.

Polyhedron
RPGA News (or TSR RPGA), later The Polyhedron and then Polyhedron Newszine, was the official newsletter of the RPGA from 1981 to 2001. As a stand-alone publication, it had 148 regular issues, plus a special introductory issue (first released in 1989) and a 1999 Gencon special. Polyhedron was initially sent only to members of the RPGA, but back issues could be ordered via the TSR Mail Order Hobby Shop. The newszine did not enjoy a consistent quality or release schedule throughout its history; early issues were often released behind schedule and the content varied significantly in tone and balance.

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Polyhedron doesn’t have quite the same profile as either Dragon or Dungeon magazines in the history of D&D, but there is plenty of D&D material inside that cannot be found anywhere else, making Polyhedron of interest to any collector. When Paizo took over the publication of Dragon and Dungeon in 2002, they also gained the rights to publish Polyhedron. Instead of continuing it as a separate title, it was merged into Dungeon. Issues #149 to #171 of Polyhedron thus only exist as parts of the corresponding Dungeon magazines. Polyhedron was discontinued after issue #171, in August 2004.

Since individual issues of Polyhedron did not have cover prices, calculating the cost to collect the newszine is slightly challenging. We’re going to use the RPGA membership rates as a guide. The first issue of Polyhedron notes the 1-year membership rate as $10. The annual price of membership jumped to $12 in 1985, $15 in 1989, and $20 in 1992 where it remained until Polyhedron ceased publication in 2001. So, after twenty years of collecting, our hypothetical collector has spent $333 in RPGA membership fees and is left with a full set of Polyhedrons and a sense of regret for not having taken advantage of the $200 Lifetime RPGA membership offer in the first issue.

Here are the totals for Polyhedron:​
  • Issues: 150 (May 1981 - Oct 2001)​
  • Shelf space: 260mm (10 inches)​
  • Pages: 4,914​
  • Cost: $333.00​
Imagine
Imagine: Adventure Game Magazine was an attempt by TSR UK to enter the UK gaming magazine market. It ran for thirty issues (plus one special) from 1983 to 1985, but couldn’t compete with the more established White Dwarf. Imagine #30 was the last issue, published in October 1985.

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If you are looking for new material for Greyhawk (or perhaps Dragonlance, the other setting Imagine overlapped) you are out of luck. Instead of supporting existing D&D worlds, the magazine developed its own setting of Pelinore in various articles. Unusually for a D&D setting, Pelinore is located on a flat world, without known edges. After Imagine folded, some of the staff launched a successor GameMaster Publications. This lasted for only five issues, and continued to develop the world of Pelinore, despite not technically having the rights to do so. Since there is a decent amount of unique D&D material in Imagine, our hypothetical D&D collector adds the run of Imagine to their collection.

Here are the totals for Imagine. For costing purposes, an exchange rate of £1=$1.50 (accurate for the time) was used:​
  • Issues: 31 (Apr 1983 - Oct 1985)​
  • Shelf space: 73mm (3 inches)​
  • Pages: 1,616​
  • Cost: $47.93​
Dungeon
Dungeon: Adventures for TSR Role-Playing Games (later Dungeon: Adventures and eventually just Dungeon) launched in November 1986. By the time the first issue of Dungeon came out, there had already been dozens of adventures published in Dragon. These were a popular feature, but demanded a significant number of pages. The solution was to spin off the adventures into their own title and Dungeon was launched. It remained in print until September 2007, with a total of 150 issues published.

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The Complete Dungeon Index in the final print issue provides an interesting breakdown of adventures per edition and per setting. The edition numbers are unsurprising, but the setting numbers paint a more interesting picture. The Forgotten Realms has, as expected, the most adventures, but Greyhawk comes in a very strong second place, thanks to being the default setting for a lot of the adventures published under Paizo’s custodianship. Almost all the Greyhawk adventures are 3e, while the Forgotten Realms has mostly 2e material. Also surprising is Oriental Adventures tying Ravenloft for third place, and Eberron beating out all of the other 1e/2e settings (including Dragonlance) for fifth place.

Dungeon adventures.jpg


Here are the totals for Dungeon:​
  • Issues: 150 (Nov 1986 - Sep 2007)​
  • Shelf space: 750mm (30 inches)​
  • Pages: 14,224​
  • Cost: $827.55​
Before moving on from Dungeon, we are going to take note of the Shackled City Adventure Path hardcover published by Paizo in 2005. This collects the eleven Shackled City adventures published from Dungeon #97 to Dungeon #116, adds additional material cut from the magazine versions and an extra adventure. Given the new material, our hypothetical collector is going to include this compilation in their collection and we’re going to note the cost and page count ($59.99 and 416 pages).

Legends of the Lance
Legends of the Lance was a free newsletter that had five print issues in 1998 and 1999. It was a passion project led by Sue Weinlein Cook, who was managing the Dragonlance team at the time. The material was a mixture of interviews, previews and game material for the SAGA version of the setting, and likely to only be of interest to Dragonlance fans.

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Print copies of these newsletters are quite rare, and thus a challenge to collect, but all five issues were also made available online as PDFs, if you don’t mind electronic versions. The magazine had additional issues #6 through #9, but these were never combined into a PDF or printed, so existed only as a collection of web articles.

Here are the totals for the printed issues of Legends of the Lance:​
  • Issues: 5 (Jan 1998 - Jan 1999)​
  • Shelf space: 7mm (¼ inch)​
  • Pages: 80​
  • Cost: $0.00​
Polyhedron UK
Dragon wasn’t the only TSR publication to have foreign editions. Polyhedron UK launched in July 1998 and ran for eight issues, with issue #8 published in June 2000. Exactly what region this magazine covered varied between one country and three continents, depending on the issue. Here are the full titles (and subtitles) from the covers:

#1. Polyhedron UK: The official RPGA Europe magazine
#2. Polyhedron UK: The official RPGA UK magazine
#3-5. Polyhedron: Official RPGA magazine for the UK, Ireland and South Africa
#6-7. Polyhedron: Official RPGA magazine for Europe, Australia and Africa
#8. Polyhedron: Official RPGA magazine for Europe, Asia Pacific and Africa

Polyhedron UK.jpg


Confusing things further is the fact that there was also a four-issue run of Polyhedron published (erratically) by the German RPGA between July 1999 and October 2000. One assumes that “Official RPGA magazine for Europe (except Germany), Asia Pacific and Africa” was too much even for the enthusiastic Polyhedron subtitler.

For the purposes of counting, we’re going to assume that our hypothetical D&D collector skips the German issues, but collects the eight English-language issues. The last three issues have a cover price (£3), so we’ll use that to estimate the cost. Here are the totals for Polyhedron UK (and other places):​
  • Issues: 8 (Jul 1998 - Jun 2000)​
  • Shelf space: 26mm (1 inch)​
  • Pages: 488​
  • Cost: $38.40​
Living Greyhawk Journal
The Living Greyhawk Journal had six stand-alone issues. Issue #0 was given away free with Dragon #274 in August 2000, while issues #1-5 were mailed to RPGA members. From issue #6 onwards, the Journal was folded into Dragon (and later moved to Dungeon). Production problems meant that issue #5 was delayed by eight months, and issues #6-9 had already appeared in Dragon by the time issue #5 was finally distributed in March 2002.

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We’re going to assume that as an RPGA member (to get Polyhedron) our hypothetical collector also received copies of the stand-alone Living Greyhawk Journal issues. Collectors who missed out and don’t mind electronic copies of the Journal can pick up the whole set for $21.94 on DMsGuild. Issues #6 onwards were already counted as part of Dragon and Dungeon, so we need only track the page count for the separate issues. Here are the totals for Living Greyhawk Journal #0-5:​
  • Issues: 6 (Aug 2000 - Jul 2001)​
  • Shelf space: 14mm (½ inch)​
  • Pages: 174​
  • Cost: $0.00​
Dungeons & Dragons Insider
The story of WotC’s various efforts to build virtual tabletops and other online tools is a fascinating one, but not one to get distracted with now. Our focus is limited to Dungeons & Dragons Insider as the platform for delivering electronic issues of Dragon and Dungeon.

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As part of the news that 4e was on the way, it was also announced that Paizo’s licence to print Dragon and Dungeon had been terminated. In October 2007, WotC relaunched both titles on their website. The early issues were released in the window before 4e launched, so they contained 3e content. Each article was a web page, and each issue had a contents page that consisted of links to those articles. The articles making up Dragon #360 were compiled and released as a single PDF, but the same was not done for the other 3e issues; they consisted of nothing more than a collection of web pages.

In June 2008, with the launch of 4e, the format changed. Articles became landscape-formatted PDFs with monthly compilations released for most (but not all) issues. D&D Insider launched as a paid service in October 2008, so from that point onwards, the relevant content was only accessible after logging in as a subscriber. The last issues of the digital magazines (Dragon #430 and Dungeon #221) came out in December 2013. WotC stopped accepting new Insider subscriptions in 2014 and it shut down entirely in January 2020. Fortunately, most of the 4e issues of Dragon and Dungeon are available to purchase via the DMsGuild so those remain accessible to collectors.

D&D Insider was a subscription service, so to estimate the cost of collecting the digital magazines, we will assume that our hypothetical collector had a monthly subscription, which was $4.95 on launch but increased to $5.95 in July 2009. Issues before October 2008 were available for free on the WotC website, so we don’t need to cost those. An Insider subscription also provided access to other online tools, but for the purpose of this article, we’re going to treat the full subscription price as the cost of collecting the magazines. Here are the totals for the electronic issues of Dragon and Dungeon:​
  • Issues: 2 x 71 (Oct 2007 - Dec 2013)​
  • Pages: 4,835 (Dragon) and 6,316 (Dungeon)​
  • Cost: $365.85​
Two hardcover collections of D&D Insider content were released, a Dragon Magazine Annual in 2009 and a Dungeon Magazine Annual in 2010. These were released as part of the main 4e product line, and since we’ve already counted those, we don’t need to do so again here.

Dragon+
In April 2015, nine months into the release of 5e, WotC launched the free Dragon+ magazine app. The magazine was released regularly every second month (except for the last few months). The final issue, Dragon+ 41, was released in March 2022. The magazine consisted of an often eclectic mixture of product previews, comics, reviews, game material, interviews, free stuff plucked from the DMsGuild, and recycled articles from older print (and online) magazines. There was significantly less gaming content than there had been in Dragon but that is to be expected from a free release. As well as reading Dragon+ on the app, it was also possible to read the magazine on the dragonmag.com website, but this now redirects to D&D Beyond.

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The ephemeral nature of an app-based magazine makes it challenging to collect. It was free to access, so the cost is nil. It is hard to put a page count on Dragon+ issues, since each article was a web page that could be multiple pages when printed. There were also a number of PDFs given away free via links in Dragon+, but it doesn’t seem right to count those. We’re going to go with a conservative page count equal to the number of web pages each issue had.

Here are the totals for Dragon+:​
  • Issues: 41 (Apr 2015 - Mar 2022)​
  • Pages: 968​
  • Cost: $0.00​
Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer
The final periodical we’re considering for the purposes of a hypothetical D&D collection is the relatively recent UK publication from Hachette Partworks titled Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer. It first launched a limited 4-issue test run in late 2022, and relaunched a tweaked line a year later in September 2022. D&D Adventurer is an 80-issue “partwork”, which means a subscriber gradually builds up a complete work by assembling all of the issues.

In this case, if you collect all 80-issues, you end up with four binders full of heavily reorganised content from the core rulebooks, supporting characters up to level 5, and a set of seven adventures unique to this series. Although it launched before the 2024 revised rules, the magazine does have a few 2024 tweaks (such as species and bastions).

Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer.jpg


Collecting this series is expensive, because the hook is that each issue comes with an accessory as well as a couple of dozen magazine pages. The pages are glued together and designed to be split up and filed in the appropriate parts of the binders, depending on the topic. The accessories include dice, a binder, a screen, dice, maps, dice, battlemats, dice, notebooks, dice, plastic figurines, dice, tokens and even more dice. So many dice. Fifty three of the eighty issues come with a set of dice!

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A D&D Adventurer subscription is £8.99 per issue (with discounts on the first two issues to lure you in). Unless you opt-out, you will also be sent (and charged for) three additional binders. There are two additional (optional) add-ons: a premium subscription (£100 extra!) gets you a set of five D&D coins and a display case, and a large metal d100 and wooden case can be yours (and will be if you forget to opt-out) for £24.99. We’re going to assume that our hypothetical collector subscribes to all 80 issues but takes only the three binders as extras.

Here are the totals for Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer:​
  • Issues: 80 (Sep 2023 - Apr 2025)​
  • Shelf space: 235mm (9¼ inches) plus a box full of dice and other goodies​
  • Pages: 1924​
  • Cost: $963.52​
Oddities
None of the publications in this section tempt our hypothetical collector, but they are still worth at least a mention:​
  • White Dwarf carried D&D articles in most of its first 93 issues (1977-1987). Several well-known D&D monsters, including hook horrors and githyanki, were published in White Dwarf before going on to feature in the original Fiend Folio, so issues might be of interest to a fanatic collector.​
  • Secret of the Sages was a single issue Forgotten Realms newsletter, sent to purchasers of the 1987 Forgotten Realms Campaign Set who joined the “Order of Heroes” using the customer response card. It was later released as an 8-page PDF on the WotC website.​
  • The Trumpeter was an electronic newsletter for the Living City campaign from March 1997 to early 1999. Each issue contained information about the campaign, and “in game” news articles about Ravens Bluff. There were 24 issues including three special releases.​
A plethora of periodicals
What is the overall impact of this plethora of periodicals on our hypothetical D&D collection? Our collector has added a total of 985 issues (802 printed) and 72,438 pages, at a cost of $4,113.76. They have spent an additional $230.78 on five Best of Dragons, two Art of Dragons, the Dragon Magazine Archive, Dragon Compendium, Volume 1, Dragon: Monster Ecologies, and the Shackled City Adventure Path.

Here’s a comparison of the issues, pages and costs for each publication:
Magazines - Issues.jpg

Magazines - pages.jpg

Magazines - Costs.jpg


It isn’t surprising that Dragon dominates with 37% of the total issues but an impressive 51% of the total page count (58% if you add the electronic issues). Dungeon accounts for another 20% (or 28% with D&D Insider). Although it contributes only 3% of the pages, D&D Adventurer accounts for a whopping 23% of the total collecting cost, but at least our collector has enough dice to use a different set every week of the year.

How does the magazine D&D output impact our hypothetical collection overall?​
  • It adds 802 print (and 183 digital) issues to the 1,253 products collected, an 80% boost.​
  • It adds 72,438 pages to the 124,057 we already had, a 60% boost (but remember that a magazine page isn’t always a D&D page).​
  • It adds $4,113.76 to the $22,918.47 total cost, a mere 18%, making it an economic addition and highlighting how much advertising helped keep the costs of early periodicals down.​
How important have periodicals been as a component of the D&D ecosystem? A graph of the number of pages of material per year indicates that it was significant until 2014, which was the first year with no magazines since 1974. This trend is a reflection of the extinction of print magazines generally, rather than a D&D-specific phenomenon, but the sheer cliff on this chart is startling:

Pages of periodicals per year.jpg


A look at the price of Dragon while it was in print further illustrates the economic challenges of magazines. While the cover price of Dragon has only climbed steadily over time (and most sharply in the 2000s), so has the page count. This means that the cost per page to the consumer actually dropped from 5c in the 1970s to between 3c and 4c during the 1980s and 1990s. Only in 2001 did the price per page climb to its 1970s levels (and then swiftly past).

Dragon - price per.jpg

It isn’t surprising that the only significant paid-for periodical in the last decade doesn’t rely on advertising, and uses a completely different business model (essentially a dice subscription service disguised as a magazine). It seems unlikely at this point that D&D will ever have a print magazine of the likes of Dragon again, but predicting the future is hard. There might one day be a print resurgence, in the same way that vinyl has made a comeback in the last couple of decades, and our hypothetical collector will need to find more shelf space.

If you’ve made it all the way to the end, thanks for reading part 3 of this series. The next installment will take a look at D&D fiction, and the hundreds of novels that have been released over the years.​
 
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I only really have collections of the Strategic Review/Dragon and Dungeon (including the Dungeon/Polygon issues).

Never really got into the others I suppose.

Novels are what I'm really interested in. Those are books that I really got into. One item I'd really be interested in if it is possible is a breakdown of how many of what was published while TSR was publishing and how much was published under WotC.

Or, it could be done via edition (1st won't have as much compared to the others I expect, 2e will have a ton, 3.X will have a ton...quite a bit less but still substantial under 4e, and then 5e has some but then dies out).
 

For my tastes and experience Dragon and Dungeon mags were /are the best value for D&D material. I am still collecting Dungeon mag (using the material therein to this day) when I can find cheap copies of my missing issues (tho i am mostly interested in the adventures from the 1e and 2E eras, despite running 5e - same was true for 3e).

Dragon has been less useful currently but back in the 80s and early 90s I preferred it to any other non-core material and made use of a lot for worldbuilding/homebrewing.
 


Awesome article (series). Thanks for the recap!

I had a subscription to Dragon from late in the TSR era to early in the WotC era, and at some point Dungeon as well. I loved reading though it and dreamt of being published in it, but never submitted anything. Also, to my recollection, I don't think I ever used anything from either except the first couple Shackled City adventures, but I could be wrong - that was a long time ago.

I miss physical magazines the same way I love printed products, but the truth is I rarely read anything anymore unless it's for work or pertinent to something I'm writing.
 

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