Quote from: thedungeondelver;1048434Not to be confused with the mid 00s, which were a sham.  Wasn't a magazine then.

I got a year of it in the early 00's - and I enjoyed it. (I got into 40k well before D&D). But then, I didn't really pay much for it. I remember they used to give you a box of minis with a year's subscription, and then they had a Christmas special for 1/2 off. So basically I got the minis I would have already purchased for full price (maybe $2-3 more than my FLGS) and the magazine subscription for free.

Really - their pricing is ridiculous. They shouldn't try to actually make $ with the thing. They should sell it at cost and consider it marketing. I know that every time I got an issue it got me reinvigorated to do some painting and to go out and buy more minis (though I probably wouldn't be as easily influenced now - I was a teen at the time).  They'd probably be better off printing a thinner and/or lower quality mag for significantly cheaper too.

The quality of Dragon magazine certainly declined heavily over time, and I'd say it flipped past being worth buying after Princess Ark ended.

But at least it did, pretty much all the way through, have at least some amount of stuff useful to actual D&D gamers.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1049110The quality of Dragon magazine certainly declined heavily over time, and I'd say it flipped past being worth buying after Princess Ark ended.

But at least it did, pretty much all the way through, have at least some amount of stuff useful to actual D&D gamers.

And a ton of articles that are very useful even now. Despite what a certain village idiot over on BGG likes to declare otherwise.

Theres even some good stiff in the WOTC era.

Same with Dungeon and then Dungeon/Polyhedron, then back to Dungeon. For about 10 issues D/P put out a bunch of really interesting settings to use with d20m and other systems. And it still had some useful other articles in it. Though I lost track after about issue 112 when they ended Polyhedron.

I think the utility of Gaming Magazines kind of went bust in the Internet age.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1049450I think the utility of Gaming Magazines kind of went bust in the Internet age.

I think that you could removing "Gaming" from that statement and have it be just as true.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1049450I think the utility of Gaming Magazines kind of went bust in the Internet age.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;1049454I think that you could removing "Gaming" from that statement and have it be just as true.

I don't entirely buy that premise. From what I have seen by mining older magazines for gaming articles, it feels like there was more thought put into them in the past (there was definitely more editing). With the internet, most articles as blog posts are welcome in their brevity, but read like the author just dumped anything out on the screen no matter how bad it is. The exceptions to that are few and well worth reading, but have to be found amid mountains of crap.

Quote from: jeff37923;1049487I don't entirely buy that premise. From what I have seen by mining older magazines for gaming articles, it feels like there was more thought put into them in the past (there was definitely more editing). With the internet, most articles as blog posts are welcome in their brevity, but read like the author just dumped anything out on the screen no matter how bad it is. The exceptions to that are few and well worth reading, but have to be found amid mountains of crap.

This seems to be part of the problem. Over time the quality of the articles seemed to actually lessen as a magazine drifts more and more to just in company stuff. I do not think the internet killed magazines. But it did remove the editing filter that kept out the loony bin. (mostly) The internet is surprisingly and appallingly all too often NOT as useful as those old magazine articles are.

Of course.  The old magazine articles had lots of people paying hard money to the publisher before they read them.  

But people voted with their wallets - they would rather dig through shit for pearls than pay a jeweler.

I for one like paper magazines, but hey I also prefer face-to-face gaming (shut up, EOTB) and miniatures and old D&D so whaddyagonnado

I sure lean towards the internet killing mags, since it isn't just gaming magazines that have pretty much vanished. Inquest used to run a monthly price guide for Magic cards...but what possible use is such a thing the prices are a month out of date, and the internet can get you instant prices? Toss in much cheaper distribution and a website seems a better option.

Even if something useful WAS in a magazine, there's nothing to stop someone from taking a picture and posting it to the net in a few seconds.

That said, Dragon did taper off in usefulness towards the end. My old Dragons are still pretty readable, but the once you're in the multi-hundreds, there's much more 'meh."

Quote from: Doom;1049625I sure lean towards the internet killing mags, since it isn't just gaming magazines that have pretty much vanished. Inquest used to run a monthly price guide for Magic cards...but what possible use is such a thing the prices are a month out of date, and the internet can get you instant prices? Toss in much cheaper distribution and a website seems a better option.

Even if something useful WAS in a magazine, there's nothing to stop someone from taking a picture and posting it to the net in a few seconds.

That said, Dragon did taper off in usefulness towards the end. My old Dragons are still pretty readable, but the once you're in the multi-hundreds, there's much more 'meh."

Past the 80s (the issues #'d 80-90, I mean) Dragon Magazine quickly becomes "meh" in the overall.  Between Gary writing short stories and contributing directly, Gardner Fox's serial, Wormy (which I know continued on quite a bit past that) and guests like Fritz Leiber popping in, the early run of The Dragon was amazing.  Just fantastic.  Once it got "slick" (after Gary was sent into exile in CA) quality dropped way, way off.

Just prior to the death of 3e when they had Gary and Rob Kuntz contributing (which was when it was run by Paizo, I think) was, ironically, a real spring thaw despite it being a one-note IP only magazine.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1049627Past the 80s (the issues #'d 80-90, I mean) Dragon Magazine quickly becomes "meh" in the overall.  Between Gary writing short stories and contributing directly, Gardner Fox's serial, Wormy (which I know continued on quite a bit past that) and guests like Fritz Leiber popping in, the early run of The Dragon was amazing.  Just fantastic.  Once it got "slick" (after Gary was sent into exile in CA) quality dropped way, way off.

Just prior to the death of 3e when they had Gary and Rob Kuntz contributing (which was when it was run by Paizo, I think) was, ironically, a real spring thaw despite it being a one-note IP only magazine.

Id say it was not untill about the early 90s that Dragon started to lose quality. Least in looks. There was a span of issues that looked really lackluster inside in places. But still had some ok articles.  Then it picked back up again and kinda maintained a general level of "ok" at least till the end f the TSR era far as I can tell. My collection putters out around issue 250 or so and after that I picked them up only occasionally.

The primary driver I see as driving the decline in dragon was the increasing concentration/coordination with the RPGA.  In its earlier days the authors in each issue were full of new names without many repeats; it was more of a hobby-wide participation.  But by '84 or so you can see much more regularity in the authors of the articles chosen to publish - and they often were RPGA members.  Dungeon was the same way.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;1049454I think that you could removing "Gaming" from that statement and have it be just as true.

True enough. Just like newspapers. They're all dead, some of them just don't know it yet.

Quote from: EOTB;1049669The primary driver I see as driving the decline in dragon was the increasing concentration/coordination with the RPGA.  In its earlier days the authors in each issue were full of new names without many repeats; it was more of a hobby-wide participation.  But by '84 or so you can see much more regularity in the authors of the articles chosen to publish - and they often were RPGA members.  Dungeon was the same way.

er? When? As noted. I have Dragon and some Dungeon and Polyhedron into the 90s and its still a fair amount of user submission material. Its just that after a point a few specifics became fairly regular like Bruce Heard doing a series on the Known World setting and the Princess Ark articles. Or Schends Marvel Phile series.

But a quick glance at the 90s era Dragon and you do see alot of recurring names like Carl Sargent, Spike Y. Jones, Gregory Detwiler, Kim Eastland, and Jean Rabe just at a quick glance through issues 160-200 which spans 1990-93. Not including regular articles. Keep in mind that TSR occasionally hired article submitters and some of them were real workhorses pumping out alot of good articles.

I think that you saw more was an increase in the regular articles and a decrease in the submissions of variants and such. Not sure about Dungeon. But far as I saw there maintained a fair spread of submitted modules. Polyhedron though I suspect you are right. Or at the very least the non-staff submissions were alot fewer.