Dragon Magazine

[rusty_shackleford]

December 1982, issue #68


Was this for Oriental Adventures? If so, the criticism they've received becomes quite amusing when they seem to have tried to base it on actual historical material.

[Emphyrio]

I wonder if they ever found the Japanese history student who was willing to move to Wisconsin to write D&D modules.

[rusty_shackleford]

I wonder if they ever found the Japanese history student who was willing to move to Wisconsin to write D&D modules.

Probably not, but the criticisms are amusing because they actually tried to get someone for the book but it seems like they simply couldn't.

[Emphyrio]

Masataka Ohta, Akira Saito, Hiroyasu Kurose, Takafumi Sakurai, and Yuka Tate-ishi are credited as playtesters.

[Luckmann]

The thing is that basically no Asian or Japanese is upset by Oriental Adventures, and certainly no-one at the time. The modern outrage is entirely due to current cultural trends, fueled by a small minority of actual nutcases.

The fact of the matter is that when it comes to making "fun shit" out of "cultural heritage" and creating "caricatures" based on historical/religious/cultural origins, it is hard to rival the Japanese (and other Asians) themselves. Generally speaking, the average person just thinks it's neat that "westerners" are engaging with things based in their heritage at all, while those that are interested in the subject matter (games and such inspired by oriental culture) think that it's just fucking cool themselves.

There is literally nothing wrong with "cultural appropriation" and taking cultural influences and making them your own, or playing around with cultural concepts, even if you don't fully understand them yourself, to make interesting things or to synthesize it with other cultures, whether extant or dead or current or anachronistically. The entire core concept of D&D is based in a "wild west" conception with a faux-medieval pastiche, based partly on an actual understanding of history (many of the early people involved were quite literally historians with solid college/university educations) and partly on a massive consumption of mushrooms and fantasy/sci-fi novels.

Nobody bitches when the not!Vikings show up in horned helmets either, nor should they.

[Goth-Girl-Supremacy]

Most of the Asians that get offended over caricatures are lame ass Asian-Americans who are subhuman filth that spit some nasty mysterious bile occasionally on the sidewalk.

Real and proper Asians are probably charmed that we think of them as badass samurai ninjas that know the touch of death in 30 martial arts including Tang Soo Do.

[Atlantico]

Nobody bitches when the not!Vikings show up in horned helmets either, nor should they.

Of course people should. It's so stupid.

[Humbaba]

Of course people should. It's so stupid.

No, they should bitch because winged helmets are much cooler.




-Humbaba

[Luckmann]

Nobody bitches when the not!Vikings show up in horned helmets either, nor should they.

Of course people should. It's so stupid.

No, you're stupid.
The rest of us honor, love and cherish funny hats.

[Atlantico]

Nobody bitches when the not!Vikings show up in horned helmets either, nor should they.

Of course people should. It's so stupid.

No, you're stupid.
The rest of us honor, love and cherish funny hats.

ur mom has a stupid hat

[Nemesis]

The Internet Archive has a massive collection of old issues.

[rusty_shackleford]

The Internet Archive has a massive collection of old issues.

AFAIK those are manually scanned and lower quality than the official Dragon Magazine Archive product:
https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Magazine-Archive-Magazines-Electronic/dp/0786914483
If you extract the ISOs you can find the magazine PDFs inside

Only problem is it's missing 20-30 issues before the 3E version starts.

[Nemesis]

I'll take manual scans over a $300 book.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'll take manual scans over a $300 book.

https://archive.org/details/Nova_Dragon ... rchive_USA

[Nemesis]

I'll take manual scans over a $300 book.

https://archive.org/details/Nova_Dragon ... rchive_USA

Archive also has Dragon Age: Origins (https://archive.org/details/Dragon_Age_ ... ition__USA)

[rusty_shackleford]

I'll take manual scans over a $300 book.

https://archive.org/details/Nova_Dragon ... rchive_USA

Archive also has Dragon Age: Origins (https://archive.org/details/Dragon_Age_ ... ition__USA)

And there's not much that can be done about it, libraries are nearly exempt from IP laws. It clearly wasn't designed for this sort of abuse, but then again, our IP laws weren't originally intended for the sort of abuse they're used for now either.

[Luckmann]

https://archive.org/details/Nova_Dragon ... rchive_USA

Archive also has Dragon Age: Origins (https://archive.org/details/Dragon_Age_ ... ition__USA)

And there's not much that can be done about it, libraries are nearly exempt from IP laws. It clearly wasn't designed for this sort of abuse, but then again, our IP laws weren't originally intended for the sort of abuse they're used for now either.

Abuse?

[rusty_shackleford]

Archive also has Dragon Age: Origins (https://archive.org/details/Dragon_Age_ ... ition__USA)

And there's not much that can be done about it, libraries are nearly exempt from IP laws. It clearly wasn't designed for this sort of abuse, but then again, our IP laws weren't originally intended for the sort of abuse they're used for now either.

Abuse?

You can essentially just put whatever on archive.org and there's little in the way of copyright law that can be done to stop it right now. People who believe in IP laws(which are fake and gay) would call this 'abuse'.
Archive.org maintains a small, physical location to retain its status as a recognized library with all the privileges that provides.