Lacking a title at that point, it was described as "a new magazine filled entirely with modules" made available "by subscription only" that would debut "in the late summer or early fall" of 1986 and "come out once every two months".

We're going to offer as broad a spectrum of material as possible: dungeon crawls, wilderness camp-outs, Oriental Adventures modules, solo quests, tournament designs, Battlesystem scenarios, and more.

[9] The magazine's format consisted of 64 pages of short D&D and AD&D game adventures of various lengths, themes, and tones, written by both amateur and professional fantasy role-playing writers.

Rolston concluded that "sophisticated gamers will find a lot to snicker at here, but there are some cute ideas", and added that the "writing ranges from young and enthusiastic to polished, and when compared with some of TSR's current modules...the quality of the layout and graphics is quite decent.

[5][6] Scott Rouse, senior brand manager of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, stated, "Today the internet is where people go to get this kind of information.

Mainstay columns such as "Dungeoncraft" (written by James Wyatt) were retained, and DM-focused articles that formerly appeared in Dragon magazine (like "Save My Game") were incorporated into Dungeon, making it a "one-stop shop" for DMs.

Dungeon aimed to save DMs time and effort in preparing game sessions for their players by providing a full complement of ideas, hooks, plots, adversaries, creatures, illustrations, maps, hand-outs, and character dialogue.

Editor Erik Mona changed the format in September 2004, starting with Issue 114, discontinuing the Polyhedron component and focusing solely on Dungeons & Dragons.

A few issues each year also contained another substantial article which provided further details on the setting of one of the adventures (Previously, Dungeon almost never had features other than modules).

Similarly, several shorter campaign arcs (typically consisting of three parts) and various sporadic, open-ended series and side treks were featured in these later issues.