D&D General Why Were the Dragon and Dungeon Magazines Discontinued?

[Zaukrie]

There's several patreons that do exactly that - have a monthly subscription and then put the compiled output on DrivethruRPG for non-patrons to buy, and that's what bundling is for on drivethrurpg.

Which isn't multiple authors..... But yes.

 

[Zaukrie]

Monte Cook did an amazing book like this in the D20 era. It was meant to be an annual but he published the first one just as the bubble burst, alas.

I think doing something like this on DriveThruRPG would either getting all the individual publishers to work together, which seems unlikely. Your best bet is probably just a blog post pointing to the best stuff.

In the OSR space, Questing Beast's Glatisant newsletter does this, for instance.

Not making money off a blog post....

But agreed, it's whyi said it probably won't happen.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

You just answered your own question.

Someone didn’t know who Elminister is, asked in Reddit and likely had an instant answer. Never minding just googling it.

They didn't ask about Elminster on Reddit, they reported in a post about the DMG 2024 Lore Glossary that they appreciated finally having another source outside of Baldur's Gate 3 to find out who Elminster is, further stating that they had previously read other 5E books that mentioned Elminster but didn't explain his deal.

Magazine format won’t help here. You want lore? That’s what wikis are for. This is why magazines are dying.

The problems with wikis for lore purposes are that 1) someone needs to know a given subject even exists to look it up, 2) articles often do not clearly differentiate lore from different editions (which can have changed radically or be now seen as problematic), and 3) new lore that will become 5E D&D canon cannot come from fan wikis.

 

[Parmandur]

The problems with wikis for lore purposes are that 1) someone needs to know a given subject even exists to look it up, 2) articles often do not clearly differentiate lore from different editions (which can have changed radically or be now seen as problematic), and 3) new lore that will become 5E D&D canon cannot come from fan wikis.

But they choke out the financial market for professional level articles: hence the trouble encyclopedia publishers have faced in the past couple decades.

 

[Hussar]

They didn't ask about Elminster on Reddit, they reported in a post about the DMG 2024 Lore Glossary that they appreciated finally having another source outside of Baldur's Gate 3 to find out who Elminster is, further stating that they had previously read other 5E books that mentioned Elminster but didn't explain his deal.



The problems with wikis for lore purposes are that 1) someone needs to know a given subject even exists to look it up, 2) articles often do not clearly differentiate lore from different editions (which can have changed radically or be now seen as problematic), and 3) new lore that will become 5E D&D canon cannot come from fan wikis.

But, again, that's on him.

A 10 second Google search tells you everything you need to know about Elminister. If he's too lazy to do that, no amount of magazine articles are going to help him.

And, the point is, so much of the material in the magazines is just never used. It's a LOT of work for very little payoff. While I was a pretty regular subsciber (and an overseas one at that making Dragon A LOT more expensive), I do completely understand why it's not a thing anymore.

 

[dave2008]

A lot of the joy of "lore", of course doesn't exist now in 5E where settings are no longer living things but static flavours that are often mangled beyond recognition compared to their pre 5E incarnations.

I can't think of single setting that 5e has mangled beyond recognition. I know some changes have been unpopular with some fans, but the settings are still very recognizable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Rather see Dungeon in print again.

Adventures were never my favorite RPG product.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Actually DnD Beyond fills some of the gap too.

The format of DnD Beyond turned me off it even before I stepped away from WotC 5e.

 

[Chaltab]

The format of DnD Beyond turned me off it even before I stepped away from WotC 5e.

Honestly as useful as they are, online tools can be kind of a straight jacket. I'd love to play with content from 5e & its varients all at my fingertips but AFAIK there's no way to get an A5e, o5e & Tales of the Valiant content all in the same ecosystem without doing it oneself

 

[the Jester]

Honestly as useful as they are, online tools can be kind of a straight jacket. I'd love to play with content from 5e & its varients all at my fingertips but AFAIK there's no way to get an A5e, o5e & Tales of the Valiant content all in the same ecosystem without doing it oneself

Not to even mention homebrew. That's the real killer for me- any online system that won't easily support and integrate my homebrew material is a red hot failure for my game. I have too many custom races/species, subclasses, magic items, monsters, and spells to count. And my players and I use them a lot- without counting, I'd guess somewhere between 25% to 40% of the pcs in my game use a custom subclass, probably around 75% of those who cast spells have at least one custom spell, and probably 60% or more of the magic items I give out are custom.