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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5829129" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine annual 1999 part 1/7148 pages. Looks like we're going to go from one millennium to the next in style, with the magazine's second biggest issue ever. Their sales may not have recovered, but they can still push the boat out for the big occasions. If they've added to the budget of the individual articles as well, this could be reasonably awesome. So let's grasp this zeitgeist, for it slips away as we speak. The party certainly won't last forever. Scan Quality: Good, no index. In this issue:That wizard's beard is so blatantly fake. And is that Bill Bailey playing the DM? Iiiiinteresting. :steeples fingers: The wyrms turn: Well, here's a special announcement to go with the special issue. WotC has just been bought by Hasbro. This means Peter Adkison is no longer the big boss, and they have to answer to corporate suits who have the bottom line as priority. On the plus side, it means more money for marketing and distribution. In the short run, that's a damn good thing. Long term, well that's very open to speculation indeed. Who can say how history would have been different if WotC had remained independent. There would likely have been just as many flamewars, albeit about slightly different topics. And 4e might well have kept the OGL. I think detailed speculation on this, like what would have happened if Gary were never forced out in the first place, is a topic for a thread of it's own. 50 years of D&D gaming: What was, what is, and what could be. Gary returns for an amusing look at the history of D&D, and makes some interesting, but completely inaccurate predictions about where the future could take it. Castle Greyhawk never did get published in it's entirety, and D&D's resurgent popularity wasn't an ongoing thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> And all the D&D movies so far have been both critical and commercial failures. You know, perhaps we do need another big negative publicity thing to boost sales. But anyway, the history part is more revealing, especially when it comes to the part before the game was even published. It's a good reminder that for the first few years, TSR was very much an amateur small press organisation, with Gary and his close friends doing all the work from writing to assembling and mailing out the final product, storing the boxes in their garage in the meantime. Even complete no-budget n00bs can outsource that to Print on Demand outfits these days. The period between his being forced out and WotC's takeover is completely glossed over though. Overall, this is very much an entertainment piece, rather than a serious historical study of the ups and downs of D&D, and where it might logically go next. You wouldn't expect an unbiased account when they're trying to have a celebration when there's so many awkward moments in their history. Nods of the shop table: Welcome to another ultimate crossover of ultimate destiny. People are already joking about e-bay. Welcome to the new millennium. This one doesn't make much sense, as they try and cram too many jokes in, getting things muddled. Such is the nature of sweeps week.</blockquote>

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