D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge + Day 10

New Classes, plus advice for Players & DMs!
You could run a campaign with this book!

10. First gaming magazine (Dragon, Dungeon, White Dwarf, etc.) you ever bought?

That would be Dragon. Which issue? Not sure. So I did some research here.

My first gaming magazine was definitely the Best of Dragon Vol. IV and I also purchased Dragon #104 (Release: 1985) and most of the ones afterwards, from 1986 - 1991. Then started buying them again from Dragon #254 (Release: 1998) until Dragon #290 (Release: 2001), around the time I finished a 3rd Edition campaign*.

Were there other magazines? Yes. Dungeon, Pyramid, etc. Was there anything better than Dragon? Well, yes of course! White Dwarf. I started buying them around the same time (1985) and they were just better in every way. That's not to say Dragon was bad. White Dwarf just had more mojo.

I gave away my magazines but over the last few years began collecting early issues of Dragon and White Dwarf second hand. Some of these I had borrowed for perusal from friends in the past, others were new to my eyes. I now own the Best of Dragon I, II, II and IV, plus a large stack of (the best) White Dwarf magazines from the 1980s, back when they had content for D&D, Traveller, Dragon Quest, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, etc. (and so much more!) and weren't just a coffee table photo book for Warhammer wargames played at the Games Workshop studios. I do like a game of Rogue Trader or Mordheim (I have the Best of The Town Cryer magazine). I'd just rather play it than look at the glossies of someone else's battle report.

So, those early issues of White Dwarf are the gold for me. That being said, I also have some Lord of The Rings issues from the early 2000s. I'm a lifetime fan of Tolkien and the miniatures are superb! Also, the movies were filmed in New Zealand, so there are a lot of connections for me personally.

Thanks to the digital age, I have pdfs of the earlier (#1 onwards) issues of Dragon and White Dwarf. I rarely bother opening them, even for study. You just can't beat print. Alas, they are both gone now.

*As a DM, 3rd Edition was a lot of work but hey, we had a lot of fun with it. The best thing to do is ignore most of the rules and just play the game.