Dungeon (magazine)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Front cover to issue 5... which contains a Troper Work.

The other official Dungeons and Dragons magazine, Dungeon provides short, ready-to-run adventure modules in an anthology format for the DungeonMaster on the go, with DM advice articles added for good measure. Less celebrated than its player-centric sister magazine, Dragon, Dungeon has nonetheless proved a useful game aid for over twenty years.

First published by TSR in 1986 as a bimonthly spinoff of Dragon as a platform for fan-made adventures, Dungeon went monthly in 2003 after Paizo Publishing was contracted to run the magazine by Wizards of the Coast. Paizo introduced the "adventure path" concept—series of adventures linked between issues to provide a complete campaign—while retaining the anthology format. Dungeon's adventure paths included Shackled City, Age Of Worms, and Savage Tide. During this era, Dungeon was merged with both Polyhedron (a gaming magazine originally for organized play, later shifted to general coverage of the d20 System) and Living Greyhawk Journal (a magazine specifically devoted to WotC's organized Living Greyhawk campaign); Poly was eventually discontinued while LGJ was shifted over to Dragon.

In September 2007, Wizards took their license back from Paizo and the magazine's print run ended with issue #150. Today, Wizards continues to publish Dungeon in online format.

Tropes used in Dungeon (magazine) include:
  • Crossover: The "incursion" event, which crossed over between Dungeon, Dragon, and Polyhedron (then merged with Dungeon) in which the evil githyanki invade from the Astral Plane. Dungeon provided a set of adventures spanning the course of the invasion, Dragon gave players specially-designed character options for fight the githyanki, and Polyhedron provided a special "mini-game" sidestory in which players take on the role of the invaders.
  • Mascot: Unofficially, the evil dragon mastermind, Flame, who appeared on the cover of the first issue and made several subsequent reappearances.
  • Troper Works: Troper robkelk has two published adventures in Dungeon, in issues 5 and 10. He thinks their quality was low (he was young when he wrote them), but the one in issue 5 was updated to 2e and republished in the official collection Road to Danger.