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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8089789" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 1: Sep/Oct 1986part 1/568 pages. So, here we are at the start of the other half of this story. It'll be quite a while before they join into one, but running them simultaneously means I'll get a lot more variety of material in the meantime, which will hopefully keep me from getting bored of either so quickly. After Dragon started off scrappy and low budget, & years of Polyhedron sticking to 'zine quality production values, it's nice to see Dungeon start with a gorgeous high detail cover that would make a great poster for your bedroom wall. Say hello to Flame the red dragon, who we'll be seeing again several times over the course of this journey. Good luck carrying all that treasure home after killing him if your DM is tracking encumbrance strictly. Let's see if they managed to assemble enough good submissions to make this debut issue good, or if it'll take them a while to find their feet like a lot of magazines' early instalments.  Editorial: Although I'm reviewing this after Polyhedron 32, it's likely this was actually released slightly before, as Roger is still fairly relaxed about getting his own magazine to edit, before Kim & Penny's abrupt quitting forces him to take on lead roles for Dragon & Dungeon at the same time. So we get a small bit on how he started roleplaying in the first place, and a reminder that they can't make this work without, you, dear reader, sending in adventures and letters saying what you like and dislike, so they can provide the sort of thing people will actually enjoy reading and use in their own games. Fairly standard introduction then. It'll take a while for this magazine to develop it's own distinct flavour and readership compared to TSR's other products, especially with such heavy crossover in the production staff. Letters: The letters printed here were technically aimed at Dragon Magazine, while they were still working out the details of it's counterpart. But they're going to print them in here anyway, because otherwise they'd have nothing to put in this space and have to make it all up on their own. Our first two letters, unsurprisingly, are about the name of the magazine. People have a lot of suggestions, but one that came up over and over was Dungeon, simply because it's in the name of the game, and they already have a magazine called Dragon. They agonised long and hard, but eventually decided to go with the most obvious option. And so it shall remain for the rest of it's life, no messing around with adding and removing definite articles like their other two periodicals. It pays to not tie yourself in knots trying to be too clever. The third one is from someone grumbling about them removing adventures from Dragon. Another thing to buy?! I don't know if I have the budget for that! I hardly think $3.75 every two months is going to make much of a difference, even accounting for inflation. Unless the writer is still a kid and only gets a dollar a week pocket money or something, which isn't beyond the bounds of possibility given D&D's player demographics. This is also why they're intentionally only doing it bimonthly, as they know there's only so many adventures any one group can run and don't want to oversaturate the market, and a magazine aimed at DM's will sell less than one aimed at all gamers. The fourth one asks them to make sure they clearly label bits that are meant to be read to the players and bits the DM is meant to keep to themselves. They'll do their best.And finally, they get a suggestion that maybe as well as new adventures, they could include actual plays of previous adventures in here. They decide not. It would spoil the adventures for people who haven't played them yet. You'll have to wait until the rise of streaming for the technology to catch up with the demand on that front.</blockquote>

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