Was there a "classic run"?

[Celebrim]

Oh well. Tastes differ.

There is always this.

(70-100 are the issues I know best, but I do really like many of the earlier ones, in some cases I think for reasons you dislike them).

I flipped back through what I had (which isn't representative, because I never had a subscription, and if I bought it, its because I thought it better than average) when this thread started, and other than things like 'Good hits and Bad Misses', I couldn't find very much that influenced my game before #85 or so (which is I believe the one containing the alternate familiars for PC's of different alignments). Sure, there were things that showed up in MM2 and Unearthed Arcana, but looking back on alot of those rules that ended up in UA I really wish they hadn't influenced my game (much like 'Good Hits and Bad Misses', which in retrospect was a bad idea). But after that I found steadily increasing influence, including some articles that had a really profound positive influence on campaigns I was in and how I ran the game.

When you list things that you liked, its a list of things I didn't care about that much.

'Adventures in the same Mag' : Didn't use them.
'Minigames' : Never bothered to play them.
'Coverage of Other Games': With the exception of Gamma World, didn't play the ones that got covered or had articles (Traveller, Star Frontiers, Top Secret...).
'Stats for Characters from Fiction': Considered these a complete waste of time.
'Reviews': Never considered them that important. They never seemed to review modules or anything that I couldn't go into a store and review by flipping through it.

 

[rogueattorney]

The "Classic" run of Dragon will have a lot to do with what you're looking for out of the magazine. If you're looking for a general gaming magazine with a focus on rpgs, the early years of the magazine will more suit you. If you're looking for a magazine that focuses exclusively on AD&D, the later years of the magazine will be more your thing.

For me, I liked the general gaming magazine format. As the 80's progressed and it became more and more focused just on AD&D, it became less and less useful for me. When it became a nearly exclusively 2e magazine in the early 90's, I stopped subscribing. There had been about two years where the only thing I looked at was "Voyage of the Princess Ark."

 

[TerraDave]

Princess Ark was the exception I thought of for later issues....

Reading through the last few responses, I really think that dragon has moved in the "celebrim" direction. Which strikes me as ironic for some reason.

While I subcribe now (through DDI) after many years of not, I greatly prefer Kobold Quarterly, which is both professional but much more ecletic.

 

[Celebrim]

Reading through the last few responses, I really think that dragon has moved in the "celebrim" direction. Which strikes me as ironic for some reason.

Not quite as ironic as if it was moving in the 'diaglo' direction, but I think I get your point.

On the whole, I agree with you. 'Dragon' has been moving in a Celebrim direction, although personally, I'm one that very much misses a 'dead tree edition' as I find pdf's unpleasant at best and virtually unreadable at worst and I'm not inclined to forgive WotC for killing Dragon as a printed periodical.

What I want from Dragon is alot of D&D specific crunch which can be directly ported into a game. D&D specific because 9 times in 10, that's what I'm playing, and if I'm not playing D&D, then usually I'm playing something directly tied to a particular setting (Star Wars, CoC, etc.). And I want that crunch for D&D to be flavorful, without being directly tied to a setting, because usually when I'm playing D&D - unlike other games - the setting is 'mine'. What really triggers me a, I-Have-To-Own-This-Issue moment in me is when Dragon explores some possible area of the game world that I've never really thought about and delivers crunch which makes that area cool and worth exploring. That can happen in a lot of ways, usually by delving into some particular aspect of the real world (mining, sea going vessels, coinage, running a business, life in a noble court, whatever) or some fantasy trope (astrology, curses, etc.) that I've never touched before, or by moving into the cracks in the system and exploring space that was previously undescribed but implied. In short, what I want from an issue of Dragon is to be a mini-source book, particularly encompassing esoteric topics that you wouldn't necessarily devote a full source book too.

Of course, the problem I now have is that no matter how good the flavor or the idea behind the content, the crunch that it is going to deliver doesn't suit me. So, while on the one hand they've adopted something of the format that I've always wanted, on the other hand, the game has left me behind.

 

[tylerthehobo]

I lean towards 96-120, but that's primarily because that was the heyday of my readership - certainly stuff with Wormy and other earlier stuff like Phil and Dixie loom strong in my memory, but I found myself using the Marvel RPG, Forgotten Realms and DragonLance stuff from this era in the pages of the Dragon quite a bit!

-Tyler the Hobo
Tyler is Gaming...

 

[Ariosto]

... delving into some particular aspect of the real world (mining, sea going vessels, coinage, running a business, life in a noble court, whatever) or some fantasy trope (astrology, curses, etc.) that I've never touched before ...

In the later 1980s, especially ca. '87 on, it seemed to me that too many pages were devoted to material about on par with a schoolboy's book report. It was good practice for padding the reams of "splat books" packed with blather.

The Princess Ark series, on the other hand! If memory serves, that was appearing in the early 1990s. It was not enough, though, to get me to buy the magazine.