Like you I have a great deal of personal nostalgia ( and BTW: I was watching some D&D spoof on YouTube that in some ways was painfully accurate, and started to get a bit of an “itch”. Amazing what hearing game speak can do. )

But I also miss the idea of Dragon, at least in it’s earlier incarnations, which was to help people imagine their own creations. Sure, there was always lots of stuff to steal, but usually there wasn’t anything that could be used without a lot of work. The magazine was written with the understanding that it’s readers were not mere consumers, but imaginative and creative individuals in their own right.

As a marketing tool, Dragon was probably a failure. It didn’t just support certain products and encourage, nay force them to by more. But it did encourage people to use their own imaginations, and that’s something I don’t seem to see enough of these days.