The first issue of Dungeon magazine arrived in the mail of fantasy gamers in November 1986, bearing no title other than Dungeon Adventures and promising a new era of shared storytelling. Roger E. Moore, the newly installed editor who would shape the magazine's early identity, described the publication as a periodical where readers could submit their own adventures for the legions of other fantasy gamers to enjoy. Unlike the massive, expensive modules sold in game stores, these were short but often complicated scenarios designed to be played in a single session or spread across a few weeks. The format consisted of 64 pages of D&D and AD&D game adventures written by both amateur and professional fantasy role-playing writers, creating a unique ecosystem where a hobbyist's idea could appear alongside a professional's work. Ken Rolston, reviewing the magazine in September 1987, noted that the modules were cheap and cheerful, full of the basic fun of D&D games, and served as great training grounds for new writers to experiment with offbeat themes and tones. The magazine offered a broad spectrum of material ranging from dungeon crawls to wilderness camp-outs, and even included tournament designs and Battlesystem scenarios, all selected to provide a resource that saved Dungeon Masters time and effort in preparing game sessions for their players.
The Ownership Shuffle
The magazine's ownership history reads like a corporate thriller, beginning with its creation by TSR, Inc. and ending with its absorption into the digital age by Wizards of the Coast. In 1997, following solvency concerns that led to the sale of TSR, Dungeon came under the umbrella of Wizards of the Coast, which printed the next 30 issues before the company decided to divest business ventures not related to its core business. Paizo Publishing acquired the publishing rights to both Dungeon and Dragon magazine titles in late 2002, marking a significant shift in the magazine's direction. However, the relationship was short-lived, as Wizards of the Coast announced on the 18th of April 2007, that Paizo would cease publication of Dungeon in September of that year. Scott Rouse, senior brand manager of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, stated that the internet was where people went to get this kind of information, and moving to an online model would broaden their reach to fans around the world. This transition marked the end of the print era for Dungeon, which had been a bimonthly periodical since 1986 before going monthly in May 2003 and ceasing print publication altogether in September 2007 with Issue 150.The Digital Shift
Starting in 2008, Dungeon and its more widely read sister publication, Dragon, went to an online-only format published by Wizards of the Coast, fundamentally changing how content was delivered to fans. Coinciding with the release of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons in June 2008, Wizards of the Coast launched a website that included online versions of Dungeon and Dragon magazines for subscribers. In this new format, Dungeon retained its mandate to deliver adventures of varying lengths and levels as well as articles with information and advice for Dungeon Masters. Mainstay columns such as Dungeoncraft, written by James Wyatt, were retained, and Dungeon-focused articles that formerly appeared in Dragon magazine, like Save My Game, were incorporated into Dungeon, making it a one-stop shop for Dungeon Masters. The magazine shifted to a landscape format with the intent of making the articles and adventures more readable onscreen, and content was released daily and gathered into PDF compilations on a monthly basis. In May 2011, Wizards of the Coast stopped the monthly compilations and left content in single article format, before resuming monthly compilations in October 2012. The final online version was Issue 221 in December 2013, after which both magazines went on hiatus at the end of 2013, pending the release of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition product line.