Wizards of the Coast has announced that the licenses for both Dragon and Dungeon magazines will not be renewed. As of September, Paizo Publishing will end its five-year run peddling d20 content to slathering D&D geeks around the world. They are to be replaced by online content instead. Dragon issue 359 and Dungeon issue 150 will be the end of their runs for the foreseeable future.

For years, Dragon Magazine has provided a monthly glut of character and monster ideas for Dungeons & Dragons players everywhere. This is where a lot of the real potential for third edition D&D was showcased in a way that was useful to DMs and players alike. Dungeon Magazine has been Dragon’s on-again, off-again companion periodical, largely intended as a tool for DMs. The bulk of each issue of the past few years has been devoted to little pre-made adventures, sometimes growing in scope to full-blown “adventure paths” that would take a party of four characters all the way from 1st to 20th level.

As the example covers here show, they had a tendency to pile a lot of new content into an issue, sometimes featuring half a dozen new prestige classes along with new feats and magic items. This contributes to and highlights the glut of rules in what started out as a streamlined re-imagining of the old AD&D system. With dozens of supplemental source books from Wizards of the Coast and hundreds of third-party publications under the Open Game License, there’s just too much to keep track of.

I personally have been a regular buyer of Dungeon for years now, and while I have never used an adventure from it verbatim, it has been an excellent source of maps and non-player character ideas. I suspect I’ll be buying them right up to the end, and will miss them a little every time I head into my local gaming shop.