User Reviews (1 - 11 of 12)

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Good to have

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 36 / 41
Date: August 22, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is a very good archive of Dragon Magazines first 250 issues. The software it comes with does have problems, but the magazines are in PDF format, which means you can read through them without using the software that it comes with.

Basically, the reason to get this is for all those great old articles about Dungeons and Dragons and other Role Playing Games from the past. Several well known authors got their start in Dragon Magazine. Folks like Ed Greenwood, Katharine Kerr, E. Gary Gygax, Roger Moore, etc. And seeing old articles by folks like Arthur Collins, Kim Mohan, and others is really great.

Of course the major high lights of being able to see the old articles are the old "From the Sorceror's Scroll" articles by E. Gary Gygax and seeing how the AD&D game evolved over the years. And then there are old favorite articles like the orginal Anti-Paladin by George Laking and Tim Mesford, "The Politics of Hell" by Alexander van Thorn, and of course the articles about the Astral plane by Roger Moore and the Nine Hells by Ed Greenwood.

Along the way, there is great old cartoons, like the orginal "What's New" by Phil Foglio, "Wormy" by the now disappeared Dave Trampier and "Snarfquest" by Larry Elmore.

Really, worth while to have for those who followed Dragon Magazine through the years. The first issue I bought was issue #49. And it is still going after all these years. In my opinion, Kim Mohan was the best editor the magazine ever had.

Worthwhile.

Solid content with poor delivery

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 26 / 28
Date: November 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

It would be asking a lot to have 250+ issues of a magazine delivered in the most high tech framework, one that would meet future standards seamlessly. (Crying about the program not working on niche platforms like UNIX is a little odd, given that this is a consumer product.) But TSR's choice to go with a proprietary interface that doesn't work as well as the shareware Acrobat Reader is just odd. As a result, less tech-savvy users will find this product frustrating, trying to navigate using TSR's "kewl" interface, when instead they should just download the free Acrobat Reader from Adobe.com. Having said that, once users have made the leap to using Acrobat, this product is a treasure. With a good printer -- or simply a monitor that's comfortable enough to read on -- this would be a bargain at twice the price. I've already spent many, many hours reading reprints of articles I never saw before, and haven't even gone digging for fondly remembered stories and comic strips. This is a must for any D&D fan, from any era. (And now that D&D and "Dragon" magazine are owned by Wizards of the Coast, hopefully they'll learn from the mistakes made here and do better with their electronic products.)

An excellent resource

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 22 / 23
Date: January 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The Dragon Archives CD is an excellent value and a godsend for Dungeon Masters. Not only do you get 250+ magazines, you can easily search them and book mark them. It comes in *very* handy when folks start arguing about spell interpretations, and its great for research.

Some folks have reported problems with the interface; I haven't had any. My only gripes are the CD holder (which doesn't work very well) and the fact that there are five CDs -- this is one archive that should have been available on a DVD-ROM. Doing a search, and having to swap CDs in and out, is a pain.

All in all though, its one of WotC/TSR's best online products. I would prefer to see the books on Core Rules 2.0 and 2.0 Expantion released in this sort of a format as well; being able to see the illustrations is a real plus.

I hope WotC does more products like this -- my wish list would be:

1. Dungeon Magazine 2. Complete Greyhawk collection 3. Complete Forgotten Realms collection.

Content: Yes! Program: Bad!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 15 / 16
Date: May 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

While definately worth the money for the archives of Dragon-lore, the program it comes with really is poor - the only use is for searching through all the articles.

The issues themselvers are in PDF format, so I recommend just using Adobe Acrobat to read them, and don't bother with the built in one.

Another drawback is some of the coolest "inserts" from Dragons past are missing (Like the Deck of Many Things!), but you can download them from the WoTC web site (at 5-10 meg per file).

Overall, I'd say the product is worth it, but don't expect to be wowed by the accompanying program.

An absolute must for fantasy gamers of every stripe!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: May 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

No matter what version of Dungeons and Dragons you play or what campaign world your game is set in, this collection of magazines-as-PDFs is a must have. While the interface is admittedly clumsy on Win98 and ME, I found it to be fairly well-behaved under XP and 2000; even if you don't use the interface for reading, it's search-engine is invaluable for digging through thousands of pages of articles, looking for that one house rule you just KNOW you saw fifteen years ago...

Furthermore, the seven issues of "The Strategic Review" give gamers today a perspective on the state of the hobby as it was before many of them even thought of Dungeons and Dragons or indeed RPGs in general.

Containing short "adventure modules", quick one-off stand alone games, fiction, art ranging from David Trampier's "Wormy" to Phil Foglio's "What's New With Phil N' Dixie", the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM archive is a must-have for anyone who's serious about (Advanced)Dungeons and Dragons.

An invaluable resource, but very badly finished.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 18 / 25
Date: October 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I love the old Dragon magazines, and as an ongoing RPGer and game writer, I find the material in these first 250 copies of Dragon absolutely invaluable. The purchase of this archive was worth it to me for the content alone.

However, I was sadly disappointed with the clumsy GUI provided with it and worse yet, the way much of the archive has been scanned. The content is what matters in something like this: Unfortunately, many of the pages have been -badly- scanned, and rasterization abounds with scan lines interrupting sentences, paragraphs, or otherwise attractive and useful images. I was also unhappily surprised to discover that several of the pages were scanned UPSIDE DOWN--I'm not joking. More than once I've come across articles with upside-down pages--not at all fun to try to read on a monitor, and the kind of thing you wouldn't expect in any quality product.

Since the GUI has proved so slow and inelegant, I normally use Acrobat Reader to view the articles--just be warned that, in my personal experience, despite having no other problems with Acrobat or PDF files anywhere, certain badly rasterized pages from these archives have caused Acrobat to freeze up every time I come upon them.

Generally, it confirms my growing belief that, over the last several years, and especially under WoTC's influence, TSR's products have become increasingly about getting your money, rather than turning out a quality item that will remain useful to you in the long run.

Takes Up Less Shelf-Space than 250 Magazines

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: April 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

What else can you say about a new product which is just a compilation of old, out-of-print issues of a magazine? Of course, unless you have a laptop, you can't take out an old issue and flop onto the couch to skim through any given issue, which makes it slightly less convenient than having the physical magazines. But the searchability makes up for that shortcoming.

It's a good thing to have. In this archive is every page of every issue from 1 to 250, even the ads, on 5 CDs. These are bundled together in a gimmicky user interface that leaves a little to be desired, but is not that bad. The search feature is not as good as it could be. I tested it with some search targets which I knew the location of, and some of my tests produced false or no results. The interface allows a bookmark feature to mark particular sections in the archive, but I haven't really had much use for this. Some people may find it invaluable.

The interface also ran very slowly on my old machine, which exceeded the minimum system requirements in all regards. The documentation that came with the product suggests copying the individual issues onto your hard drive to improve speed. So it's best to use this interface if you have a very fast system or a very large hard drive. Fortunately, if you have no time or patience for the user interface, the individual magazines are readable as .pdf files in Acrobat Reader. Problem solved.

Personally, I like having 250 issues of Dragon to read through. And at 16 cents an issue, the price is right.

Takes up less shelf space than the magazines

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: December 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have/had a large collection of Dragon Magazines from my junior high school and high school days. On the one hand, I never wanted to get rid of this little bit of my history, with its invaluable cache of articles, ideas, and comics. They are a veritable time capsule of RPG gaming during the golden age of the hobby. Fun memories of my nerdy youth.

On the other hand, I never wanted to keep the magazines so badly that I felt like "going to bat" with my wife over keeping them in the limited shelf space in our small urban condo. So the magazines continued to sit alone, in cardboard boxes in the basement of my parents' house. Enter the Dragon Magazine archive.

How often do I use this software? Frankly, not often. But that isn't the point. To me, the Archive is a safety blanket. If and when I want to look at an old article, magic spell list, "Giants In The Earth" column, old ads, or old editions of "Wormy" or "What's New," then I can do so at any time. The issues are well-scanned, the detail is great, and the ease of use is high. A fine product considering the volume of content and low price.

Most importantly (I will re-emphasize), it takes up a heck of a lot less shelf space than the magazines. Which means that the WAF (wife acceptance factor) goes way up, which is worth the negligible cost of this software.

Good product, bad conduct

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 39
Date: July 27, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Overall this is an above average product, but some of the quality of the images leaves a lot to be desired. They didn't always translate well to the PDF format.

Too bad that the artists who contributed much of the internal content for these issues over the years weren't properly re-approached, contractually engaged for permission and royalties for reprint rights, etc. The content of this item was largely reproduced in violation of TSR's own contracts (TSR is now owned by WOTC), which had clauses providing for re-publication rights, payment arrangements, time-limits, and permissions. Not only were the proper contractual permissions for re-publication (in ANY medium or form) not obtained in many or most cases, but arrangements for payment of usage fees or royalties, as also specified as necessary in the original contributors' contracts, were not made, either.

To buy this product (yes, I have a copy of it) is to support this ultimate disrespect to the many creative people, writers and artists alike, who have contributed to the magazine over the years. Looks like a corporate giant is a corporate giant, regardless of the type of business involved, and the bottom line is the bottom line. I for one will no longer purchase any of the products of these two affiliated companies.

Great idea that is long overdue!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: January 26, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is a must have for DM's and Players alike! I've been role-playing for 15 years, and this is a very helpful item for anyone to have. The only thing that I have a problem with is this;The interface is a bit slow, even on my new machine. Other than that, I had no problem accessing any of the contents. I got tired of looking through my old issues of Dragon. The search is great, and helpful. Again....Buy this product. Good job WTC!

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