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Dungeon Magazine
- tiahura 6y agoAwesome, but I wish people would scan black-and-white documents in black-and-white, not color.
- arbitrage 6y agoI'm going to try and not got excited here, in spite of myself. Archive.org has an honestly fascinating recent history with this type of collection. They create a repository of something obviously copyright(ed)(able), make a really big release, I enjoy it for a week, then it gets cleaned out once the first C&D hits. If this is still up and complete at the end of the month, I'll be surprised.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoThe Internet Archive is treated as a library by many jurisdictions, and that comes with some latitude with regards to copyright. Any legitimate DMCA takedown requests would be honored with the content being made unavailable, but still stored on disk, for a later date (copyright runs out eventually for all works).
- zozbot234 6y agoI assume that this stuff is being uploaded by random users, not Archive.org themselves. The difference compared to any other online host that gets DMCA takedown requests is that they're allowed to store the content for preservation purposes (being a library) and will make it generally available when the rights on it expire.
- aksss 6y agoYeah I saw the headline and (cuz I’m an adult nerd now?) the copyright issue was first thing to come to my mind. I also grew up playing AD&D 2nd Ed., loved it, glad others are keeping the fun alive. But I’m aware of a few niche hobbyist publications that are relatively rare and will be lost to time unless someone steps forward to sacrifice their own and digitize them. The copyright is not expired but the holders are not easily identifiable after bankruptcies, deaths, etc. This might be a good avenue, but I’m skeptical that they’re as resilient to claims if a quilt work of state-level status recognitions are the only defense.
- nevster 6y agoThat was my first thought as well. However the About page shows this was created in 2016!
- Paul_S 6y agoThe history of Dungeon and AD&D is an interesting lesson in licensing and IP ownership. Also a lesson in power of brands and marketing. Pathfinder is the real successor to AD&D and Paizo had the subscribers communication channels to fans and yet people remained with WotC and moved on to the new WotC system whose only connection with AD&D was the name. Back when I was a more active DM this puzzled me to no end.
- sillyquiet 6y agoThis was briefly not true during the 4th edition years. A LOT of people moved to Pathfinder as a kind of 3.75th edition, rather than picking up 4th edition. It was only when 5th edition came out and it became popularized in the mainstream that WotC regained its seeming ascendency. And I get it, 5th edition is much more streamlined and accessible than its predecessors (not that they were Fate-level challenging or anything). Tangentially, I think 4th edition and now 5th edition lost a lot of the creative soul of earlier editions - the lore is much more heavily integrated with the rule set and feels a lot more prescriptive. but that could just be nostalgic bias as I grew up with 2ed.
- VonGuard 6y agoI hear you, I grew up playing 2nd edition, and somehow the 5th stuff started off feeling empty for me, though I have to admit the rules are so much better and rolling is so much easier. Pathfinder is like doing math homework, every roll... 5th is finally starting to get some better flavor, however, now taht 3rd parties, and WotC seem to be filling in the gaps. Goodman Games has a line of reissued classic adventures, like Castle Amder and Barrier Peaks, and these books are fabulous. They're updated for 5e, so they offer that old school charm in 5e rules. Additionally, 5e has so little in the way of specializations and customizations for characters, but that's being cleared up in the newest official D&D book, Tasha's Caldron of Everything. It's got a bunch of specialized subclasses, like the Bladesinger, and a lot of more flavorful text and items to go with your campaigns. I feel like 5e started off kinda bland, but has been becoming significantly more fleshed out and living over time. And that makes sense: it takes time to add to these worlds. Oh, also, Kobold Press' Tome of Beasts 1 & 2 are also fantastic 5e books. Great monsters.
- fuball63 6y agoTwo thoughts: First, these magazines are surprisingly content dense. From the few I flipped through there weren't many ads. Other beloved vintage magazines, like Skateboarder Magazine, are very ad heavy to support their industry. Second, I feel like a magazine like this, that has good content, might actually be popular with a niche audience as a bonus with a "premium subscription" of another product. Personally I prefer physical medium still, and I'm sure diehard fans of any niche would be interested in something to hold and collect.
- sigmaprimus 6y agoI was a person who bought skateboarding magazines in my youth and unlike Playboy's which everyone knows were bought for the articles, I bought skate mags for the pictures. I had my walls covered with cut outs from magazines and a few large print posters, infact at the time I was buying these most came with a centerfold poster.
- fuball63 6y agoI'm too young for the glory days of the mags, but from what I understand the ads themselves were even fun to look at, because at least they were extremely relevant... skateboarders like skate products.
- doyouevensunbro 6y agoAgreed, I would have a subscription in a heartbeat.
- lakkal 6y agoThere was some advertising, especially toward the back of the magazine, but since Dragon was published by TSR, they probably weren't relying on the ads for financial support.
- fuball63 6y agoI mentioned this in another comment, but another difference is the ads are super relevant because the target audience is so niche. Like, people that are interested in RPGS that buy the mag are going to be interested in product specifically related to that interest. Ads become interesting when there's actually value behind them.
- Kototama 6y agoHow much work is it to port an AD&D adventure to DnD 4th or 5th edition?
- kop316 6y agoAs just a straight 1:1 translation to 5e, it isn't really hard. The monsters are roughly the same, so it isn't hard to run an AD&D adventure on 5e. I would argue a "novice" DM could read through an AD&D adventure and do the translation on the fly. (EDIT: When I wrote this I meant look at the monster in the adventure, and find the analogous one in the 5e monster manual, and use that. Don't use the original stats!) HOWEVER, I would offer that from the TSR AD&D adventures I have run, AD&D is a) much more "hack and slash"/murder hobo like, and b) much more deadly/much more "random", as compared to a WotC 5e campaign. Not to say that is bad, but I find that if you want to do it, you will want to tell your players this so they have the right expectations going into an AD&D style campaign. I personally (as a DM) prefer having (some amount of) plot line in my adventures, so I find myself filling in a lot of gaps myself if there needs to be a plot line (which I personally enjoy). I also prefer not to kill my players characters (granted, I also level set that doing things you expect to get you killed will in fact get you killed), so I tend to tune back a lot more of the "deadly" traps (i.e. in some of the really deadly dungeons, just a bad roll of dice on a failed trap will kill you. I am not a fan of that, so I tune it back that it will eventually kill you, but you have a chance of reacting and your teammates can save you). But I will also offer, I have had players who want to run it "old school", so I don't do any of that and run it as a 1:1 translation, and we have had a lot of fun with it too!
- retro64 6y agoAs just a straight 1:1 translation to 5e, it isn't really hard. The monsters are roughly the same, so it isn't hard to run an AD&D adventure on 5e. I would argue a "novice" DM could read through an AD&D adventure and do the translation on the fly. I would agree you should be able to run the module as-is and insert a monster of the same type from the 5e monster manual, but certainly not use the 1e stats straight up. 1e monsters wouldn't stand a chance against a 5e party otherwise.
- sillyquiet 6y agoDungeon magazine (and Dragon Magazine) were nerd nirvana in the age of the satanic panic. Geek stuff was NOT mainstream, it wasn't cool, and it wasn't a big component of everyday life. Lord of the Rings, Star Trek (and Star Wars, but less so), D&D... these were practically underground interests, especially in more conservative areas of America. So the first time I went to a Waldenbooks in the shopping mall and saw a magazine with a freaking' dragon on the cover, well, it blew my mind. I had stacks and stacks of them. Still have many. The short stories, the comic strips, the short adventures, even the advertisement for miniatures and dice - it was amazing to me SO MANY people shared my interest.
- ilamont 6y agoThe short stories were fantastic. And they really were underground: mainstream youth culture had no idea and no interest and in some cases were even hostile toward the small group of believers. Like you I still have a stack of these magazines somewhere in my basement. My kids are not into RPG’s, so I may have to get rid of them or connect with a buyer if people really like to collect these things.
- sillyquiet 6y agoYep, playing D&D was not something to admit to in a general audience. to this day I have difficulty talking about D&D with people in public.
- Jtsummers 6y agoWoW and D&D 4e pretty much changed public perception, at least for people under a certain age (now 40ish), with regard to RPGs in general. That was when the frat guys at universities started playing D&D. That would be the equivalent of the high school jocks slinging dice between drills. Paired with the explosion in tabletop board gaming in the US (thanks Settlers of Catan) that's happened this century, it's become cool/normal to be into these kinds of things.
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- Hortinstein 6y agoman, i would love this if they had it for Magic the Gathering Duelist Magazine. I would pay money for a PDF copy of all of those
- james-skemp 6y agoThat and the old InQuest Magazine. I've still got a couple physical copies, but I really wish I hadn't recycled all the old issues I used to have.
- lameiam 6y agothis is so cool; i see that there's a way to dl individual issues, but I was wondering if there was a way to bulk dl them? thanks in advance.
- lameiam 6y agoanswering my question this works: wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_006/Dungeon_Magazine_006.mobi https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_006/Dungeon_Ma... I just wrote a quick scrip to increment the issues mobi = "wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_{count}/Dungeon_Magazine_{count}.mobi https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_{count}/Dungeo..." pdf = "wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_{count}/Dungeon_Magazine_{count}.pdf https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_{count}/Dungeo..." with open("grab_dragon.sh", "w") as file1: for index in range(200): str_index = str(index) if len(str_index) != 3: str_index = str_index.zfill(3) pdf_format = pdf.format(count=str_index) mobi_format = mobi.format(count=str_index) file1.write(pdf_format + "\n") file1.write(mobi_format + "\n")
- Jtsummers 6y agoThrow in two spaces before each code line and that will be formatted much better: with open("grab_dragon.sh", "w") as file1: for index in range(200): ...
- dspearson 6y agoOr similarly: for i in `seq -w 001 221`; do wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_$i/Dungeon_Magazine_$i.pdf; https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_$i/Dungeon_Mag... done; wget https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_Annual_2010/Dungeon_Magazine_Annual_2010.pdf https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_Annual_2010/Du...
- einpoklum 6y agoThe script's redering by HN is off. Maybe you should change the indentation somehow?
- 6y ago
- lameiam 6y agoFWIW, I just donated $5 monthly to archive.org because of this....whoever did it, thank you!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- spiralx 6y agoLooks like most of Dragon Magazine is there as well, although I couldn't find any way to get a listing of them all other than via the individual magazines: https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/DragonMagazine150/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/DragonM...
- msie 6y agoThe covers are so amazing. I can imagine a story with each one. I’d love to see an anthology series on Netflix based on the covers alone.
- njharman 6y agoDragon magazine covers https://friendorfoe.com/g/Dragon%20Covers/ https://friendorfoe.com/g/Dragon%20Covers/ disclosure, that is my website.
- ndiscussion 6y agothanks for sharing, these are awesome, and glad to see people running websites like this
- briangray 6y agoHey, I recognize your site! Both 'Troll and Flame' and 'Friend or Foe' were top results for Dragon Magazine galleries when I was searching for a specific issue several years ago. Ended up finding it (#142) from the cover art. I bought it as a gift for the person who taught me to play tabletop games. They used that issue which included some details for 2nd Edition and the Warhammer RPG. Thanks for preserving this content! Especially in the simple format you've presented it in.
- thedailymail 6y agoThanks for this - Dragon #49 gives me such strong nostalgia
- thaumasiotes 6y ago#138 is the box art for Eye of the Beholder https://www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_one https://www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_colle...
- rosmax_1337 6y agoThis is amazing work, I'm very happy that this was uploaded!
- rosmax_1337 6y agoWhat you might be looking for in this thread. Just also download the 2010 annual manually to get everything. https://ia800204.us.archive.org/29/items/Dungeon_Magazine_Annual_2010/Dungeon_Magazine_Annual_2010.pdf https://ia800204.us.archive.org/29/items/Dungeon_Magazine_An... #!/bin/bash i=1 until [ $i -gt 221 ] do printf -v j "%03d" $i wget "https://archive.org/download/Dungeon_Magazine_$j/Dungeon_Magazine_$j.pdf" ((i=i+1)) done
- msla 6y agoThere's a Python library: https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/ https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/ And script: https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/cli.html https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/cli.ht... Which really helps you automate stuff. https://pypi.org/project/internetarchive/ https://pypi.org/project/internetarchive/ It turns your script into: for i in $(seq 1 221) do ia download Dungeon_Magazine_$(printf "%03d" $i) --glob='*.pdf' done Try 'ia help download' for more information.
- m463 6y agoprintf -v j <-- what is this magic that sets the variable $j ?
- Red_Tarsius 6y ago[deleted]
- Jtsummers 6y ago> Edit: Not sure why users downvoted my cheeky comment since that's the main drill costantly repeated by the big players in the industry like Paizo and WotC. Probably because it's: 1. A tired complaint/comment/"joke" 2. Adds nothing to the discussion 3. Seems like an attempt at flamebait 4. Seems like it was made in anticipation of being downvoted so you could complain about being downvoted Also, see the guidelines [0]: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoReading the first letter from the Editor led me to strain my memory for my introduction to AD&D. Would have been in 1980. I was playing Centipede at the student lounge at the local community college and when I lost, an unexpected voice behind me said, "You failed your saving throw".
- novok 6y agoIt's really interesting how you see a tone shift around issue #70 in 1998 where they add text and a lot more scantily clad women (and some very buff shirtless demihumans) on the covers. Before that the covers mostly stood on their own as art pieces without any extra text and scantily clad women weren't really there.
- peter_d_sherman 6y agoDungeon Magazine -- was the BEST. MAGAZINE. EVER!!! (Well, other than computer magazines... <g>)
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y agoBYTE ftw! Typing in Apple //e ASM code for hours and hours... ... and hours ... and then later, 2600 magazine.
- spullara 6y agoThey basically still publish this and it is as good as it ever has been: https://dnd.dragonmag.com/ https://dnd.dragonmag.com/
- codecamper 6y agoSooooooo cooooool! I'm 47 now but all this stuff seems like yesterday. I was just 10 then. Wow.
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y agoI'm glad to have this to read. It brings back memories of hanging out at the local RC shop that sold D&D stuff, back in the 80's. What I've always wanted to read area transcripts of the early players (like Gygax), perhaps at GenCon, working out very difficult encounters. For example: how did the early DMs approach role-playing a supergenius demigod with high-level cleric/MU spells? That's got to be very hard character to inhabit. I mean the Lolth module, Q1? come on, there are so many high level intelligent creatures in that endgame...