First gaming magazine you ever bought?
When I was younger, I used to go downtown to the LGS on Saturdays and flip through the back issues of Dragon Magazine. I didn't always have enough money to buy a proper book, but I could usually afford to get a magazine or two.
I ended up with most issues from about 100-200 and that very heavy box of dusty, dog eared and disintegrating magazines followed me around for many years. It wasn't until I moved cross county I ended up giving away some to gamer friends, and recycled the rest (wish I hadn't). But not before I’d photocopied a few favorite articles, of course.
It was that magazine, with all its ads, reviews and articles that opened my world to the true scope of tabletop roleplaying. My love of Talislanta, Paranoia and TWERPS can be traced directly to the small ads in the back. Articles on Buck Rogers, Gamma World, Marvel, Space 1899, James Bond and Traveller showed me that you weren't limited to elves fighting dragons. And the whole package told me that there was a community of like-minded individuals out there.
In a large part, the blogging community has supplanted (even surpassed) most of those functions, but damn, I miss those ads.
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ReplyDeleteThat Anvil Enterprises ad for character art seems to have been an early work by professional comic artist Dan Panosian, who also did work for Villains & Vigilantes.
ReplyDeleteThe first gaming magazine I ever bought was Dragon #135, though in those days older issues remained at the bookstore a while, so I later went back and got the previous three issues, too. I got every issue after #135 too, and subscribed, for years afterward.