GYGAX magazine

[elf23]

I have no Interest in Savage Worlds or any of the other games they have articles in there for this time, which is fine, they can't appeal to everyone in every issue, I understand that. Just seems to me a magazine that tries so hard to look and feel like Dragon should have more D&D content, or at least more content geared for old-schoolers. Since the content is so all over the place I'm not sure it will appeal to Savage Worlds fans, etc. either, so I'm sort of left wondering who the audience is. I mean, let's say you are a fan of Savage Worlds or The One Ring, will you buy an issue if it has one article for that game in it? I dunno.

This was exactly the reservation I had about the magazine when I first heard about it. What was great about Dragon was that it was almost entirely D&D! (Or am I misremembering? I don't recall ever seeing anything else in there, in the early 90s at least.) I doubt there really are that many RPGers out there who play more than a couple of systems with any regularity. All the gamers I know tend to stick to one or two favoured systems.

[greyarea]

Don't know about the early 90s but a decade earlier it was slightly more diverse. Still mainly TSR products (Marvel Super Heroes, Gamma World, etc in addition to D&D) but I do recall a Traveller article and perhaps a Champions or V&V article or two in there.

[Dyson Logos]

This was exactly the reservation I had about the magazine when I first heard about it. What was great about Dragon was that it was almost entirely D&D! (Or am I misremembering? I don't recall ever seeing anything else in there, in the early 90s at least.)

The awesomeness of the classic era of Dragon magazine was that it covered a tonne of different RPGs - not even all of them were TSR releases.

As previously mentioned, I kept my issues around because of the Traveller articles, but I also had a dozen Gamma World articles put aside, some great stuff for Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Marvel Superheroes, Boot Hill, EPT, Wizard, and many others.

Not to mention original mini boardgames and articles for similar games like Dungeon!, Imperium, Divine Right, and Barbarian Prince.

I'd say it was about 60-70% D&D at the time, but what I remember best is the non-D&D content.

[Blood axe]

I really liked the old Dragon magazine, even if every part was not useful to me. It was also bigger and $3.00 or $3.50.
I have them all on disc now, along with Dungeon. I really gotta find someone to put them on a memory stick.

[elf23]

The awesomeness of the classic era of Dragon magazine was that it covered a tonne of different RPGs - not even all of them were TSR releases.

Interesting. I must have just ignored the non-D&D stuff!

[jasonzavoda]

For some reason I just couldn't bring myself to buy the first issue. It will probably be a high dollar collectible but as a magazine I was immensely disappointed by what they were saying was going to be in it. I wanted D&D/AD&D (and not 3.x stuff). I'm a bit more interested when I hear about the nostalgia articles, but in a magazine that looked like a relatively old issue of Dragon with a name like Gygax on the cover I wanted material I could use for my 1eAD&D campaign. I also wanted 'crunch' and a module in the middle of the magazine. I thought the price was high but I would have paid the cost for the kind of magazine I was hoping for.

The second issue looks like more of the same.

[3llense'g]

Instead of reading random nostalgic musings about Gary you know what I could do? Read what Gary personally posted on forums years ago. At a slight, 100% difference in price. Actually, I think I'll go do that right now.

[jasonzavoda]

Instead of reading random nostalgic musings about Gary you know what I could do? Read what Gary personally posted on forums years ago. At a slight, 100% difference in price. Actually, I think I'll go do that right now.

I've read everything Gary has said online that I could find and everything in print. I like to read different viewpoints and personal accounts of those years as well.

[greyarea]

Because I already play "OSR" games, the last thing I want to read about is how I "should" play OSR games.

I think this is what bugs me the most. I don't want to be told how I "should" play D&D or LL or anything else. I just want to play it. New adventures, expanded rules, new classes, new monsters, NPCs, campaign worlds, random tables, maps, new magic items, examples of play, new fiction, etc all add to the playing of the game in question. Being told how I "should" play the game is just annoying.

On Twitter, John Kovalic was thrilled that people were playing his new game ROFL the way he intended them to. As a game designer, he fully realized that people might play the game in a way that he hadn't intended and he was okay with that, but that he designed it so that the way he intended was the most fun, the most obvious way to play? That's a win for the developer. I highly doubt that if things had gone differently, Kovalic would be writing articles in ROFL Monthly (or whatever magazine or blog) about how people out to play the game. I'm pretty sure he'd be thrilled that it was being enjoyed regardless of style of play.

Reading about the history of the game is interesting, and I wouldn't mind an article every issue about that, but substituting crunch for nostalgia and finger-wagging ("You know, you aren't doing that right.") is a disservice to the readership.

It's to bad too. Gygax could have been a great magazine (and still could), but I'm going to be reading old copies of Dragon, Different Worlds, Space Gamer and White Dwarf and looking forward to new issues of Dyson's Dodecahedron, Brave the Labyrinth, Wisdom from the Wastelands and others.

[Goblinoid Games]

So for those of you who have seen issue 2, thoughts?