Nostalgia for Our Magazines

[DreadPirateMurphy]

The purpose of this thread isn't to discuss the decision to stop publishing Dungeon and Dragon. It is to talk about some of the things we loved about it over the years, and to say thank you to all the folks that made it possible.

I'm pretty Zen about the whole thing. After the whole thing with Virginia Tech down the road, and the fact that one of my co-workers just died...well, I can't work up any angst over a magazine subscription.

I have enjoyed them both greatly, however, and think it would be fun to hear what things other folks remembered or enjoyed the most.

One of my first "This is cool!" moments with Dragon for me was issue #100 (IIRC), with the adventure that threw the characters into modern-day London in search of the Mace of St. Cuthbert. I remember reading that and thinking about how great it was that you could do anything you wanted to with this game. I also thought the die-cut-style cover of that issue was cool.

What have the rest of you appreciated?

 

[smootrk]

Traipsing through the Astral plane battling Githyanki to acquire Fedifensor was a great highlight for me.

One of my favorite cantrips came from an April issue long ago. Bigby's Insulting Finger, used for starting combat off right. I still use the cantrip, all these years later.

 

[EricNoah]

Lots of good Dragon memories ... like huge heaping helpings of new illusionist spells; monsters like the phycomid; and the covers ... I know some will call me a heretic but I used to tear the covers off of the magazines and hang them on my wall in my bedroom.

 

[The Shaman]

Tom Wham games - The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, Emperor's Treasure (the precursor to GW's Talisman?).

Wormy.

Articles for games other than Dungeons and Dragons - I have a short stack of back issues that I use with Traveller, one of which includes new units for Metagaming's Chitin pocket game (!), background for Divine Right's Schardenzar the Sorcerer, and some variant rules for RuneQuest.

The Rasmussen Files. The Marvel-phile.

 

[SavageRobby]

Valley elf, he's a valley elf ....
Gag me with a mace!


Ah, good times, good times.

 

[rkwoodard]

Best of

After playing just a couple of times I saw and bought my first Dragon...Best of Vol. II (I think). It had articals such as "How tall is my giant", Notes from a Semi-Sucessful Player, and many articals by Gary himself, including one that said, in essence, if you base your game too much on Lord of the Rings it is not really D&D.

Great Stuff.

I have drank a toast to Moldvay, Dungeon, and Dragon. <Makers Mark Whiskey to be precise
.

Cheers,

Wolfram Stout

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Traipsing through the Astral plane battling Githyanki to acquire Fedifensor was a great highlight for me.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Traveler?

That's right kids. Back in those days all game genres were covered. The specialization we have in today's market was crazy talk then. There wasn't stuff you could easily drop in your game? Too bad.

The down side was that you basically had less stuff you could easily convert. The positive side is that you had a huge range of authors with influences and styles you never would have thought of. Sure that Top Secret spy mission in the antarctic wasn't for D&D, but you could get lots of great ideas from it.

 

[BluSponge]

Dragon #62. The first issue I ever bought.

Wormy.
What's New.
GenCon event list.
The Faerie Dragon.
The Bandit Kingdoms.

My brain went kablooie!

And it's still my favorite Elmore picture ever. Too bad I can't find a full size print of it.

Tom

 

[BluSponge]

And who can forget...

Issues 75 and 76.

Ed Greenwood's Nine Hells articles.

Kablooie!

Tom