"Dragon" журналының тарихы мен эволюциясы

Magazine published by TSR
the American gaming magazine

Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game and associated products, along with Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The final printed issue was #359 in September 2007. Shortly after the last print issue shipped in mid August 2007, Wizards of the Coast (part of Hasbro, Inc.), the publication's current copyright holder, relaunched Dragon as an online magazine, continuing on the numbering of the print edition. The last published issue was No. 430 in December 2013. A digital publication called Dragon+, which replaced Dragon magazine, was launched in 2015. It was created by the advertising agency Dialect in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast, and its numbering system for issues started at No. 1.

In 1975, TSR, Inc. began publishing The Strategic Review. At the time, roleplaying games were still seen as a subgenre of the wargaming industry, and the magazine was designed not only to support Dungeons & Dragons and TSR's other games, but also to cover wargaming in general. In short order, however, the popularity and growth of Dungeons & Dragons made it clear that the game had not only separated itself from its wargaming origins, but had launched an entirely new industry unto itself. TSR canceled The Strategic Review the following year after only seven issues, and replaced it with two magazines, Little Wars, which covered miniature wargaming, and The Dragon, which covered role playing games. After twelve issues, Little Wars ceased independent publication and issue 13 was published as part of Dragon issue 22. The magazine debuted as The Dragon in June 1976. TSR co founder Gary Gygax commented years later: "When I decided that The Strategic Review was not the right vehicle, hired Tim Kask as a magazine editor for Tactical Studies Rules, and named the new publication he was to produce The Dragon, I thought we would eventually have a great periodical to serve gaming enthusiasts worldwide At no time did I ever contemplate so great a success or so long a lifespan." Dragon is the launching point for a number of rules, spells, monsters, magic items, and other ideas that were incorporated into later official products of the Dungeons & Dragons game. A prime example is the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, which first became known through a series of Dragon articles in the 1980s by its creator Ed Greenwood. It subsequently went on to become one of the primary campaign "worlds" for official Dungeons and Dragons products, starting in 1987. The magazine appeared on the cover as simply Dragon from July 1980, later changing its name to Dragon Magazine starting November 1987.

Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR and its intellectual properties, including Dragon Magazine, in 1997. Production was then transferred from Wisconsin to Washington state. In 1999, Wizards of the Coast was itself purchased by Hasbro, Inc. Dragon Magazine suffered a five month gap between #236 and #237 but remained published by TSR as a subsidiary of WotC starting September 1997, and until January 2000 when WotC became the listed de facto publisher. They removed the word "magazine" from the cover title starting with the June 2000 issue, changing the publication's name back to simply Dragon. In 1999 a CD ROM compilation of the first 250 issues, called Dragon Magazine Archive, was released in PDF format with a special viewer. It includes the seven issues of The Strategic Review. The Dragon Magazine Archive is out of print because of issues raised with the 2001 ruling in Greenberg v. National Geographic regarding the reprint rights of various comic strips that had been printed in Dragon over the years and Paizo Publishing's policy that creators of comics retain their copyright. These comic strips include Wormy, What's New with Phil & Dixie, Snarf Quest, and Knights of the Dinner Table It ties Dragon more closely to Dungeon by including articles supporting and promoting its major multi issue adventures such as the Age of Worms and Savage Tide. Class Acts, a monthly publication with one or two page articles offering ideas for developing specific character classes, were also introduced by Paizo.

On April 18, 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced that it would not be renewing Paizo's licenses for Dragon and Dungeon, instead opting for online publishing. In its online form, Dragon continues to publish articles aimed at Dungeons & Dragons players, with rules data from these articles feeding the D&D Character Builder and other online tools.

In the September 2013 issue of Dragon (#427) an article by Wizards of the Coast game designer and editor Chris Perkins announced that both Dragon and its sibling publication Dungeon would be going on hiatus starting January 2014 pending the release of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. The final online version released is Issue #430 in December 2013.

A new and fully digital bi monthly publication called Dragon+, was launched on April 30, 2015, Articles included cover content such as: game strategies and insights; details of the current D&D storyline; interviews; ongoing comic series; lore; Forgotten Realms world information; community updates and fan submissions; and videos. Additional content in the magazine is also accessible through links to the magazine's content in Facebook and Twitter feeds. Dragon+ ran for 41 issues in total with the last issue published in April 2022; Wizards of the Coast published an update in July 2022 announcing the cancellation of the publication. On November 15, 2022, Wizards of the Coast announced that "Dragon+ will be removed from app stores on or around November 15th, and dragonmag. com will be redirected and its content will no longer be available".

Many of the gaming world's most famous writers, game designers and artists have published work in the magazine. Through most of its run the magazine frequently published fantasy fiction, either short stories or novel excerpts. After the 1990s, the appearance of fiction stories became relatively rare. One late example was issue #305's featured excerpt from George R. R. Martin's later Hugo nominated novel A Feast for Crows. It also featured book reviews of fantasy and science fiction novels, and occasionally of films of particular interest (such as the TV movie of Mazes and Monsters). From the magazine's beginning until issue 274, from August 2000, Dragon published articles for various versions of Dungeons & Dragons and, at various times, other gaming systems. With issue 274, Dragon published exclusively 3rd Edition D&D content, or content for other games published by Wizards Of The Coast's d20 System games. With the release of the 3.5 Edition update in July 2003, issue 309 onward published only Edition 3.5 content and carried a "100% Official Dungeons & Dragons" masthead. The magazine switched to exclusively 4th Edition D&D content from issue 364 on the release of 4th Edition in June 2008.