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

[Parmandur]

My favorite thing out of Dragon was actually the Fool Wolf stories. I miss the short fiction from Dragon a lot.

The complete death of fiction periodicals is another sad part of this story.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I kind of wish I had specified in my OP that I was wondering why the magazines as a collection of articles was discontinued, not specifically as a print medium.

I still think that even if a monthly pair of magazines is no longer tenable that some kind of periodic online release along the lines of what Dragon+ was trying to be would be nice, if only to provide DMs more resources and references to aspects of the D&D Multiverse.

The print 5E books love to drop references to Mordenkainen and Elminster and Tasha/Iggwilv and plenty of other characters, but aside from the DMG 2024 Lore Glossary there's very little to indicate to the many new players brought into 5E who these characters even are (for example, I just saw someone's post on Reddit concerning the DMG 2024 Lore Glossary that he appreciated it actually told him who Elminster was, saying that previously the only context he had was the wizard's cameo in BG3). Maybe a series of sporadic articles hosted online based on these characters could serve the dual purposes of introducing both new content to the game and new players and DMs to aspects of the D&D Multiverse.

For example, a new Demonomicon of Iggwilv series could serve the purpose of letting people get an idea of who Iggwilv even is in addition to providing lore on the Abyss and new options. Heck, maybe even get her alter-egos Tasha and Zybilna in on it; Zybilna could talk about the Feywild while Tasha might could be part of a rotating cast of spellcasters who introduce a new spell or magic item every couple of months or something.

 

[Parmandur]

I kind of wish I had specified in my OP that I was wondering why the magazines as a collection of articles was discontinued, nit specifically as a print medium.

I still think that even if a monthly pair of magazines is no longer tenable that some kind of periodic online release along the lines of what Dragon+ was trying to be would be nice, if only to provide DMs more resources and references to aspects of the D&D Multiverse.

The print 5E books love to drop references to Mordenkainen and Elminster and Tasha/Iggwilv, but aside from the DMG 2024 Lore Glossary there's very little to indicate to the many new players brought into 5E who these characters even are (for example, I just saw someone's post on Reddit concerning the DMG 2024 Lore Glossary that he appreciated it actually told him who Elminster was, saying that previously the only context he had was the wizard's cameo in BG3). Maybe a series of sporadic articles hosted online based on these characters could serve the dual purposes of introducing both new content to the game and new players and DMs to aspects of the D&D Multiverse.

For example, a new Demonomicon of Iggwilv series could serve the purpose of letting people get an idea of who Iggwilv even is in addition to providing lore on the Abyss and new options. Heck, maybe even get her alter-egos Tasha and Zybilna in on it; Zybilna could talk about the Feywild while Tasha might could be part of a rotating cast of spellcasters who introduce a new spell or magic item every couple of months or something.

Ah, I gotcha.

I think there, the issue is that WotC is putting out material as fast as people want already, and for those who want more...third party stuff is filling thst gap well.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Even if I get that it wasn't profitable to keep publishing magazine, I still miss Dragon.

Fortunately, there are still tons of back issues for me to collect!

Greenwood has written FR books on DMsGuild too. I can't imagine how lore could get more "official" than these two. It's not ALL "someone's obscure homebrew".

Would highly recommend his Thay, Land Of The Red Wizards. Full of interesting and actionable lore. Good illustrations. And it's even got recipes!

 

[Parmandur]

I was extremely excited when I found this in the grocery store, still have it, seems it was a one off they did not follow up on. Cost $13, which seems fair for the content but also shows why maybe it would be hard to do ad a regular thing in this day and age:

D&D 5E - I Found an RPG Book at the Grocery Store

So, this morning I went to Safeway (one of the big regional grocery stores in Northern California) for some milk and chicken. When I got in the checkout line, I saw something on the magazine rack that I had to get: A 96 page magazine style sourcebook written by Jeff Ashworth and illustrated...

www.enworld.org

 

[payn]

Is Kobald Quarterly still a thing?

 

[Echohawk]

Is Kobald Quarterly still a thing?

Not since 2012.

 

[Parmandur]

Is Kobald Quarterly still a thing?

Not for over a decade, they had a 5E Patreon magazine called Warlock, seems that is done too?

 

[Zaukrie]

I think mearls made it clear that people didn't actually use all the stuff that used to come out, learned they didn't, and stopped reading the magazines. I know that's the case for me and Arcadia. I bought it to support mcdm, but haven't used one bit.

I wonder how many people downloaded the new adventure on dndbeyond, and how many will actually use it? I'm guessing that last number is shockingly low.

 

[Chaltab]

I mean the fact of the matter is you can only play so many D&D games. I haven't even played every core class in 5E, much less every subclass. I'd wager a majority of the content published in TTRPG magazines over the decades has barely been touched.