Dragon Magazine

I almost didn’t write this up. I’ve written about Dragon Magazine here before. About specific issues. About how I discovered it. The influence the idea of it has had over me. I seriously considered just linking to one of those articles or posting here what I wrote for my own version of Dragon, Yggdrasil MGZ.

I almost ran out of things to say… Which is exactly the moment when you find one more thing…

A decade ago, there was this thing called Google Plus. For a brief, bright moment, it became the hub of table top gaming discourse on the internet. Forums had begun to collapse from the weight of change on the internet and blogs were too bidirectional for esoteric discussions on what exactly did Saint Arneson mean by that phrase. Google’s afterthought became the answer.

It could have been a right time, right place sort of situation for Google. More robust than Twitter, no family members like Facebook, less incomprehensible UI like Tumblr? These things might be true, but I think there was something powerful in the way you organized people you engaged with that is something like what we have with subscribers of newsletters, but more free form.

But that is just context, not the juice.

At some point during this brief, bright romantic moment, I began writing about Dragon Magazine. Not quite reviews, not quite nostalgia. The write ups were short, targeted, and probably the most popular thing I had done on the internet up to that point, including publishing games.

Thinking about that moment in time and the fun I had talking with people about those early issues got me thinking about why this magazine has had an enduring impact on my brain.

It’s time.