Dragon was the official
Dungeons And Dragons magazine from 1976 through September 2007 (issue 359). At this point Wizards of the Coast took the license back from Paizo, and restarted it as an online-only version. During its heyday, much material that was first published in it became official parts of D&D. Two other publications were merged with it at various times,
Little Wars (TSR's wargaming publication) and
Ares (for science fiction games that TSR acquired from SPI).
From 1986 to its end
Dragon was accompanied by
Dungeon magazine, which provided premade adventures (mostly for Dungeons and Dragons). Like its sister publication,
Dungeon is now online-only.
A CD collection of issues 1-250 and its predecessor
The Strategic Review was released in 1999. It is very much out of print.
Not to be confused with a Japanese magazine called
Dragon, which covers Japanese RPGs and includes manga, and was the original source of the manga for
Slayers,
Full Metal Panic,
Chrono Crusade,
Record Of Lodoss War, and other series.
If you are looking for a trope about a second-in-command, see
The Dragon. If you're looking for large reptiles of some sort, see
Our Dragons Are Different.
This magazine provides examples of:
- Caption Contest: In the later years, illustrated by Tony Moseley.
- Crossover: "The Wizards Three", a series of humorous short stories by Ed Greenwood in which Mordenkainen of Greyhawk, Elminster of the Forgotten Realms, and Dalamar of Dragonlance met for friendly dinner parties in Ed's dining room.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: #359, the extra-large final print issue, which brought back lots of contributors from years past like Ed Greenwood and Phil Foglio, gave a few retired features one last hurrah ("The Wizards Three", the Monster Hunters' Society), and was basically one huge celebration of the magazine's 30-year history.
- Demon Lords And Archdevils: Some of the most perennially popular articles were "The Nine Hells" (parts I and II) and "The Nine Hells Revisited", penned by Ed Greenwood in the early '80s and which delved into the hierarchy of D&D's version of Hell for the first time, introducing a number of recurring villains.
- Towards the end of the magazine's print run, the "Demonomicon of Iggwilv" series of articles each spotlighted an individual demon lord in great detail.
- Dungeons And Dragons
- Magazine Decay
- Running Gag: The oft-promised but never-quite-delivered "Sex and D&D" edition of comic strip What's New with Phil and Dixie. It was finally delivered in the 1994 strip collection... but was, in fact, all about monster mating habits.
- The Scrappy: A lot of fans hated the April Fool's Day issues from early in the magazine's run, which were usually full of unusable "joke" material and unfunny parodies ("Valley Elf" was particularly infamous). Thankfully, this changed in the Paizo years, when the April issues were merely eclectic ("Ninjas! Pirates! Dinosaurs!").
- Troper Works: Troper Looney Toons has two articles in Dragon (in issues 78 and 100). Forgive him their quality, he was young.
- Uncancelled: Being published by Paizo saved it from even earlier cancellation.
