What was the "golden age" of Dragon
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
Wik
First Post
Really, I'd go with around 150-250, but leaning more towards the earlier ones, so I really just clicked "141-200". Not that I dislike present-day Dragon - in fact, I love 'em - but because the pre 3e Dragons had a lot of neat stuff that we just don't see today:
1) Fiction (that often influenced how I saw the game)
2) Rules Alterations - in modern Dragon, it's usually a new feat or PrC. In many old Dragons, there were rules for representing Chases, Variable Alignments, Swashbuckling, etc... And I really liked that.
3) Campaign Advice - old dragons had a lot more campaign advice. And articles on how to make magic "magical", how to make a historical game, etc. Really, old dragons had a lot of "hit or miss" articles on how to make your campaign unique, whereas modern Dragons are aimed towards being useful for most campaigns. If that makes any sense.
4) RPG/Book Reviews - 3e Dragons started emphasizing on D&D, which is cool by me. But I do sort of miss the reviews on RPGs out there. This isn't something Dragon could have avoided - there wasn't really an internet culture in the "golden age" (though I have a Dragon from '89 that is already talking about the messages being left on their online messageboard!), and so Dragon was the best spot for reviews.
5) Other games support. Again, not something Modern Dragons could do. But I loved seeing an article for a game I had never played, and trying to "reverse engineer" the rules to be used in D&D. Plus, it quite often got me playing a new game! A good example of this was a giant Worm that was detailed for Call of Cthulu. I reworked it's stats for D&D, not knowing at the time that CoC was a horror game! My worm was almost comical. Ah, memories.... *sniff*
6) Covers. Old Dragon cover paintings are, in my humble opinion, so much better than the current WAR paintings and whatnot. But I've touched on this gripe so many times before that I probably sound like a broken record.
1) Fiction (that often influenced how I saw the game)
2) Rules Alterations - in modern Dragon, it's usually a new feat or PrC. In many old Dragons, there were rules for representing Chases, Variable Alignments, Swashbuckling, etc... And I really liked that.
3) Campaign Advice - old dragons had a lot more campaign advice. And articles on how to make magic "magical", how to make a historical game, etc. Really, old dragons had a lot of "hit or miss" articles on how to make your campaign unique, whereas modern Dragons are aimed towards being useful for most campaigns. If that makes any sense.
4) RPG/Book Reviews - 3e Dragons started emphasizing on D&D, which is cool by me. But I do sort of miss the reviews on RPGs out there. This isn't something Dragon could have avoided - there wasn't really an internet culture in the "golden age" (though I have a Dragon from '89 that is already talking about the messages being left on their online messageboard!), and so Dragon was the best spot for reviews.
5) Other games support. Again, not something Modern Dragons could do. But I loved seeing an article for a game I had never played, and trying to "reverse engineer" the rules to be used in D&D. Plus, it quite often got me playing a new game! A good example of this was a giant Worm that was detailed for Call of Cthulu. I reworked it's stats for D&D, not knowing at the time that CoC was a horror game! My worm was almost comical. Ah, memories.... *sniff*
6) Covers. Old Dragon cover paintings are, in my humble opinion, so much better than the current WAR paintings and whatnot. But I've touched on this gripe so many times before that I probably sound like a broken record.
Wik
First Post
Oh, yeah. I really like modern-day Dragons, as in, the past two or three years. I use them a lot, particularly the monsters. After Erik took over, the magazines got even cooler. No doubt about it. (Just like DUNGEON became *SO* much cooler when James Jacobs took the helm!) I just didn't put my vote on for those because a lot of the 200+ issues (such as early 3E issues, or later 2E issues) just don't strike me as the "golden age".
What a crummy choice of categories.
A much better poll would break it down by editor or era, like so:
• Pre-Mohan
• Mohan
• Moore
• Post-Moore, Pre-Gross
• Gross
• Early WotC
• Paizo
Obviously, you could split it up more precisely than that, but I think those divisions at least show differences in edition, editorial focus, and thrust of the magazine, whereas the ones you picked seem almost completely arbitrary.
200+, for example, is almost half of the life of the entire magazine.
--Erik
A much better poll would break it down by editor or era, like so:
• Pre-Mohan
• Mohan
• Moore
• Post-Moore, Pre-Gross
• Gross
• Early WotC
• Paizo
Obviously, you could split it up more precisely than that, but I think those divisions at least show differences in edition, editorial focus, and thrust of the magazine, whereas the ones you picked seem almost completely arbitrary.
200+, for example, is almost half of the life of the entire magazine.
--Erik
Gentlegamer
Adventurer
Seconded, though I also loved the Roger E. Moore era from about '87-'92.T. Foster said:
Gentlegamer
Adventurer
Split ticket for me, Mohan/Moore.T. Foster said:Given Erik's categories, I vote Mohan
