The Last Dragon...

It sounds like an awful wishy-washy fantasy story title, but in actual fact it is a sad day for the gaming community - ironically coming as Wizards of The Coast (WoTC) announces, at Gen Con, its plans for a new - fourth - edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

The last issue of venerable Dragon magazine (#359) has been published - Wizards having withdrawn the licence for the title from publishers Paizo, so they could focus their efforts onto more online content.

I will say upfront that I have not been a regular reader of Dragon for many, many years. As White Dwarf switched from being a general roleplaying magazine to a monthly catalogue for Games Workshop, so the Dragon switched from its more general content to focus on the new d20 iteration of Dungeons & Dragons.

I still subscribe to White Dwarf for the pretty pictures, inspiration and terrain construction features, but the Dragon lost its appeal as it was too focused on a single system and genre that I had no interest in anymore. I still picked up the odd, out-of-date issue from the market to read the non-game specific material and adverts, but this is the first 'new' issue I've purchased full price for over a decade.

And, while you don't have to read too much between the lines to taste the sadness and bitterness from the Paizo staff and freelancers, they have ensured that the title has gone out on a high - giving it a dignified send-off with a mixture of articles that reminded me of the "good, old days" - particularly the Unsolved Mysteries of D&D article, which chased down legends of vapourware, prophecies from games that were never explained, the whereabouts of 'missing' writers and various other in- and out of-game urban myths that have been hanging around the D&D gaming community since I was a young 'un.

It almost makes me nostalgic for an old fashioned dungeon crawl...

There's only the odd mention of Dragon issues from the pre-Paizo days, but enough to stir fond memories of an age when gamers used paper and pens, rather than laptops and the Internet. It makes me feel very old that I still hanker for a return to those times, as much as I love the power of the Internet (it lets me write this drivel every day and share it with you folks, so it can't be all bad).

The magazine was also a hook to lure in those who knew nothing about gaming - some kid or teen with an interest in Tolkien or paintings of elves might catch a glimpse of a Dragon cover in a newsagent ... and that would be it, another gamer for life!

At its height, Dragon covered all of TSR's game systems - including its sci-fi and superhero output (its wonderful Marvel Superhero articles are preserved here) - which was also a great way to get readers to experiment with other genres. Sadly, by the nature of the Internet, this isn't so easy now ... for instance, you type D&D into a search engine, you go to a site solely dedicated to D&D, and unlikely to have any links to a superhero site!

I shall miss the 'idea' of the Dragon and all the other great role-playing magazines that have fallen by the wayside over the years. I guess it's the magazine equivalent of the corner store being forced out of business by the out-of-town supermarket.

Change isn't always a good thing.