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

[delericho]

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.

In that regard, Dragon and Dungeon were always a little odd as magazines - most magazines seem to be a collection of news and articles to consume for a few days, and are then destined for the bin. The notion of keeping them for ongoing use seems unusual.

 

[Parmandur]

In that regard, Dragon and Dungeon were always a little odd as magazines - most magazines seem to be a collection of news and articles to consume for a few days, and are then destined for the bin. The notion of keeping them for ongoing use seems unusual.

I mean, if you look at other hobbyist magazines like model train or woodworking stuff, that is actually how they go, too.

 

[beta-ray]

I miss getting magazines a lot. The Dragon and Dungeon magazines were great, but I do see that the world has largely moved on from that model.

I still do buy magazines (Japanese hobby type) but less so from the West nowadays (I also enjoy the ocassional How It Works issue)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

With that said, why do you think the magazines were discontinued, and would you like to see them return?

The magazine business is on life support, as advertisers have fled the expensive world of print advertising for the practically free (in comparison) world of online advertising. Couple this with multiple increases in the cost of paper, a diminishing number of printing presses, etc., and niche magazines like gaming magazines need another model if they're going to survive. (Even world famous magazines with a broad audience, like Time and Newsweek, have one foot in the grave.)

Nowadays, you see people produce them on a subscription model, typically with Kickstarter backing, but even bigger outfits like MCDM find the model difficult to sustain indefinitely.

It sucks, but it's hard to see how to make it a viable business model, especially if you want to produce something resembling the big glossy monthly magazines of old.

Nowadays, most of that content is produced and sold piecemeal on places like blogs, itch.io, DriveThruRPG/DMs Guild or via zines sold through Kickstarter. There's a lot more of this content produced nowadays, much of it amazing, but gathering it together in one spot is hard to do. Knock! magazine makes a good effort, but it's incredibly pricy and they've only had four issues in four years.

 

[Zaukrie]

The magazine business is on life support, as advertisers have fled the expensive world of print advertising for the practically free (in comparison) world of online advertising. Couple this with multiple increases in the cost of paper, a diminishing number of printing presses, etc., and niche magazines like gaming magazines need another model if they're going to survive. (Even world famous magazines with a broad audience, like Time and Newsweek, have one foot in the grave.)

Nowadays, you see people produce them on a subscription model, typically with Kickstarter backing, but even bigger outfits like MCDM find the model difficult to sustain indefinitely.

It sucks, but it's hard to see how to make it a viable business model, especially if you want to produce something resembling the big glossy monthly magazines of old.

Nowadays, most of that content is produced and sold piecemeal on places like blogs, itch.io, DriveThruRPG/DMs Guild or via zines sold through Kickstarter. There's a lot more of this content produced nowadays, much of it amazing, but gathering it together in one spot is hard to do. Knock! magazine makes a good effort, but it's incredibly pricy and they've only had four issues in four years.

I wonder if someone will do a "best of DMSGUILD" or "best of drivethru" magazine where they literally just put the content of 10 or so things into one bundle every month, with maybe an additional PDF of editorial/commentary? I don't THINK that would work, but if there was someone that we trusted to curate the list, that MIGHT work (I don't think so).....

 

[Stormonu]

I wonder if someone will do a "best of DMSGUILD" or "best of drivethru" magazine where they literally just put the content of 10 or so things into one bundle every month, with maybe an additional PDF of editorial/commentary? I don't THINK that would work, but if there was someone that we trusted to curate the list, that MIGHT work (I don't think so).....

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.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I wonder if someone will do a "best of DMSGUILD" or "best of drivethru" magazine where they literally just put the content of 10 or so things into one bundle every month, with maybe an additional PDF of editorial/commentary? I don't THINK that would work, but if there was someone that we trusted to curate the list, that MIGHT work (I don't think so).....

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.

 

[Hussar]

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

In print you mean?

Online there are a bajillion fiction periodicals. Pick a genre and you’ll find tons of periodical short fiction.

Drabblecast used to be a fave of mine. Escape Pod is still doing great stuff.

 

[Parmandur]

In print you mean?

Online there are a bajillion fiction periodicals. Pick a genre and you’ll find tons of periodical short fiction.

Drabblecast used to be a fave of mine. Escape Pod is still doing great stuff.

Yeah, I mean in print.

 

[Hussar]

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.

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.

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