Maintaining past forms for the sake of tradition can water down the potential of the new forms. Reunite It’s the 21st Century: Online publishing is fundamentally different from paper publishing. Keeping that information apart is easy when articles have obvious labels. Mystery: Some DMs are happy to have players reading Dragon, but they don’t want players reading Dungeon, because it will spoil some of the mystery and secrecy in the campaign. The names Dragon and Dungeon have innate value. People are comfortable with the arrangement. Maintain the Separation Tradition: That’s the way it’s been done since the beginning in 1986. If you boil them long enough, the arguments for and against the split reduce to the following two lines of thinking. So, we must ask the question: does splitting articles into two artificial bins labeled “Dragon” and “Dungeon” still make sense? If so, then where should the dividing line be drawn? A subscription includes everything that offers: Dragon, Dungeon, the D&D Character Builder, the D&D Compendium, and the Adventure Tools. With Dragon and Dungeon entirely online, the limitations of paper, distribution, and delivery no longer matter. Dragon and Dungeon weren’t just different ideas they were separate physical objects.
This divide was also rooted in printing presses and paper. That split between the magazines made a lot of sense. Dungeon had a clear mandate to provide adventures while Dragon covered everything else related to D&D. The solution was a magazine that could deliver adventures directly to the people who wanted them without being beholden to reluctant distributors and retailers. Reaching such a rarified audience through stores is difficult. Dungeon Masters are a small subset of D&D ® players, and DMs who buy adventures are a subset of that group. At that time, adventures were a hard sell. Dungeon’s purpose was to provide adventures. In 1986, TSR launched Dungeon ® magazine. Whether you were a player, a DM, or both, you’d find something in the magazine meant for you. Illustration by Slawomir Maniak From its beginning, Dragon® magazine* was aimed at the entire Dungeons & Dragons® community.