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Common questions
When did Dragon magazine first publish and who was its first editor?
The Dragon magazine first published in June 1976 with Tim Kask serving as the first editor. Gary Gygax canceled The Strategic Review to create this new publication which was designed as a house organ for TSR.
What year did Dragon magazine end its print run and when did Dragon+ cease publication?
The final printed issue was number 359 in September 2007 and Dragon+ ceased publication in April 2022. Wizards of the Coast announced on the 15th of November 2022 that Dragon+ would be removed from app stores and its content would no longer be available.
Who created the Forgotten Realms campaign setting featured in Dragon magazine?
Ed Greenwood created the Forgotten Realms world through a series of articles in the 1980s that appeared in Dragon magazine. This setting became one of the primary campaign worlds for official Dungeons & Dragons products starting in 1987.
Which awards did Dragon magazine win between 1984 and 2006?
Dragon magazine won the Origins Award for Best Professional Roleplaying Magazine in 1984, 1985, and 1989 and received the Special Award for Outstanding Achievement in 1987. It also won the Origins Award for Best Game Related Periodical in 2003 and the ENnie Award Gold Winner for Best Supplement Dragon Compendium Vol. 1 in 2006.
When did Paizo Publishing acquire the rights to publish Dragon magazine and when did they stop?
Paizo Publishing acquired the rights to publish Dragon magazine in 2002 and published the last print editions for September 2007. Wizards of the Coast announced on the 18th of April 2007 that it would not be renewing Paizo's licenses for Dragon and Dungeon.
Dragon (magazine)
In June 1976, a small magazine titled The Dragon debuted with a humble mission to support a niche wargaming hobby, yet it would unknowingly become the primary engine for a global fantasy empire. Gary Gygax, the co-founder of TSR, had just canceled The Strategic Review after only seven issues, realizing that role-playing games had outgrown their wargaming origins to become an industry of their own. He hired Tim Kask as the first editor and named the new publication The Dragon, a decision Gygax later admitted he never imagined would last nearly four decades. The magazine was designed to be a house organ for TSR, but it quickly evolved into the most influential periodical in the history of tabletop gaming, serving as the launching point for rules, spells, monsters, and entire campaign settings that would define a generation of play. What began as a monthly newsletter for a small group of enthusiasts would eventually spawn the Forgotten Realms, a world created by Ed Greenwood through a series of articles in the 1980s that became one of the primary campaign worlds for official Dungeons & Dragons products starting in 1987. The magazine's influence was so profound that it effectively wrote the rulebook for the modern fantasy genre, turning a simple hobby into a cultural phenomenon that continues to thrive today.
From Print To Digital Evolution
The transition from physical pages to digital screens marked a turbulent era for the publication, beginning with the acquisition of TSR by Wizards of the Coast in 1997. Production moved from Wisconsin to Washington state, and the magazine suffered a five-month gap between issue 236 and 237, though it remained published by TSR as a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast starting in September 1997. In 1999, Wizards of the Coast was itself purchased by Hasbro, Inc., and the magazine removed the word magazine from its cover title starting with the June 2000 issue, changing the publication's name back to simply Dragon. The final printed issue was number 359 in September 2007, and shortly after the last print issue shipped in mid-August 2007, Wizards of the Coast relaunched Dragon as an online magazine, continuing on the numbering of the print edition. The last published issue was number 430 in December 2013, marking the end of an era that had spanned nearly four decades of continuous publication. A digital publication called Dragon+, which replaced Dragon magazine, was launched in 2015, created by the advertising agency Dialect in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast, and its numbering system for issues started at number 1. Dragon+ ran for 41 issues in total with the last issue published in April 2022, and Wizards of the Coast published an update in July 2022 announcing the cancellation of the publication. On the 15th of November 2022, Wizards of the Coast announced that Dragon+ will be removed from app stores on or around November 15th, and dragonmag.com will be redirected and its content will no longer be available.
Many of the gaming world's most famous writers, game designers, and artists have published work in the magazine, creating a legacy that extends far beyond the pages of the periodical itself. From the magazine's beginning until issue 274, from August 2000, Dragon published articles for various versions of Dungeons & Dragons and, at various times, other gaming systems. With issue 274, Dragon published exclusively third edition D&D content, or content for other games published by Wizards Of the Coast's d20 System games. With the release of the 3.5 Edition update in July 2003, issue 309 onward published only Edition 3.5 content and carried a 100% Official Dungeons & Dragons masthead. The magazine switched to exclusively fourth edition D&D content from issue 364 on the release of fourth edition in June 2008. A long-running column Sage Advice offered official answers to Dungeons & Dragons questions submitted by players, while other articles provided tips and suggestions for players and Dungeon Masters. It sometimes discussed meta-gaming issues, such as getting along with fellow players. In the early 1980s, almost every issue contains a role playing adventure, a simple board game, or some kind of special game supplement, such as a cardboard cut-out castle. For instance, Tom Wham's Snit's Revenge, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, and File 13 all started as supplements within The Dragon. These bonus features are infrequent after the 1986 launch of Dungeon magazine, which published several new Dungeons & Dragons adventures in each issue.
Comics And The Art Of Storytelling
The magazine was not merely a rulebook but a canvas for visual storytelling, featuring four comics at the end of its print run: Nodwick, Dork Tower, Zogonia, and a specialized version of the webcomic The Order of the Stick. Previous gamer-oriented comic strips included Knights of the Dinner Table, Finieous Fingers, What's New with Phil & Dixie, Wormy, Yamara, and SnarfQuest. The Dragon submissions guidelines explicitly state that Ecology articles should have a hunter's guidebook approach, although it should not be written in voice, and further specify the exact format of Ecology articles, leaving less room for artistic license by the author. Dragons Ecology of articles were initially written in the voice of the fictional sage Elminster, who reviewed a D&D monster in-depth. Under Paizo's tenure such ecology articles became heavier in game mechanics than narrative and description. The magazine also featured book reviews of fantasy and science fiction novels, and occasionally of films of particular interest, such as the TV movie of Mazes and Monsters. One late example was issue 305's featured excerpt from George R.R. Martin's later Hugo-nominated novel A Feast for Crows. The magazine's comic strips, particularly Knights of the Dinner Table, became so popular that they were covered in TSR's own statement in the first issue that All material published herein becomes the exclusive property of the publisher unless special arrangements to the contrary are made. Sean Glenn, Art Director of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, noted that the cartoonist contracts in Dragon and Dungeon allow for the artists to retain all their rights, and gives them the ability to publish compilations of their work.
The Editors Who Shaped The Game
A succession of editors steered the magazine through its many transformations, each leaving a distinct mark on its content and direction. Timothy J. Kask edited issues 1 through 34, followed by Jake Jaquet for issues 35 through 48. Kim Mohan served as Editor-in-Chief for issues 49 through 114 and 199 through 217, while Roger E. Moore edited issues 115 through 198. Wolfgang Baur edited issues 218 through 221, and Pierce B. Watters served as Editor-in-Chief for issues 222 through 238. Anthony J. Bryant edited issues 222 through 229, and Dave Gross edited and served as Editor-in-Chief for issues 230 through 273 and 274 through 287. Jesse Decker edited issues 288 through 311, Chris Thomasson edited issues 312 through 315, and Matthew Sernett edited issues 316 through 326. Erik Mona edited issues 327 through 359, the final print run. Chris Youngs edited digital issues 360 through 387, and Steve Winter edited digital issues 388 through 430. For Dragon+, Matt Chapman edited issues 1 through 7 and 14 through the end, while John Houlihan edited issues 8 through 13. The magazine also published five Best of issues, reprinting highly regarded articles from The Strategic Review and The Dragon, and from 1996 to 2001, Dragon Magazine published the Dragon Annual, a thirteenth issue of all new content.
Awards And Critical Reception
The magazine received numerous accolades throughout its history, including the Origins Award for Best Professional Roleplaying Magazine of 1984, 1985, and 1989, as well as the Special Award for Outstanding Achievement of 1987. It won the Origins Award for Best Professional Adventure Gaming Magazine of 1989, Best Professional Gaming Magazine of 1993, and Best Professional Gaming Magazine of 1994, and was inducted into the Origins Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame in 1995. The magazine also won the Origins Award for Best Game Related Periodical 2003, the ENnie Award Gold Winner for Best Supplement Dragon Compendium Vol. 1 in 2006, and the Origins Award for Best Non-Fiction Publication of the Year 2006. In Issue 15 of Abyss, Dave Nalle reviewed the magazine in 1980 and commented that The Dragon has always suffered from the stigma of its days as a blatant house organ for TSR, but it has gotten better, though it has relapses. Nalle concluded that in spite of these problems, The Dragon is a good magazine, because it maintains a standard of quality and presents that quality in high quantity as well. The magazine also published a collection called the Dragon Magazine Archive in 1999, released as a CD-ROM with a Windows application and PDF files. The Dragon Magazine Archive was directed by Rob Voce, and published by TSR/Wizards of the Coast. Pyramid reviewed it, saying that the archive was worth the price, but that its application's Windows-only format limits other platforms from being able to read the PDFs manually. It was reviewed in issue 19.
The Paizo Era And The License
In 2002, Paizo Publishing acquired the rights to publish both Dragon and Dungeon under license from Wizards of the Coast, and Dragon was published by Paizo starting in September 2002. It tied Dragon more closely to Dungeon by including articles supporting and promoting its major multi-issue adventures such as the Age of Worms and Savage Tide. Class Acts, a monthly publication with one- or two-page articles offering ideas for developing specific character classes, were also introduced by Paizo. On the 18th of April 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced that it would not be renewing Paizo's licenses for Dragon and Dungeon, instead opting for online publishing. Paizo published the last print editions of Dragon and Dungeon magazines for September 2007. In August 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced the fourth edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game and that D&D Insider subscriber content would include the new, online versions of both Dungeon and Dragon magazines along with tools for building campaigns, managing character sheets, and other features. The intention is to provide subscriber services, and the online form of Dragon continues to publish articles aimed at Dungeons & Dragons players, with rules data from these articles feeding the D&D Character Builder and other online tools. In the September 2013 issue of Dragon, number 427, an article by Wizards of the Coast game designer and editor Chris Perkins announced that both Dragon and its sibling publication Dungeon would be going on hiatus starting January 2014 pending the release of Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition.