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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8716768" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Probably the best article in Dragon history was "The Seven Sentence NPC" from Dragon #184. It stands out because of the timelessness of its advice and even though I rarely follow its formal method, it's had a huge influence on how I characterize NPCs. Required reading for all GMs and I strongly advise all GMs of moderate or less experience, or any GM that feels that their NPCs are bland to read the article and force themselves to use the methodology for a while.</p><p></p><p>Other articles were hugely influential on my game because of the ideas they introduced, but are less worth reading because their rules are out of date:</p><p></p><p>"For Sail: One New NPC", by Scott Bennie, Dragon #106 - The one NPC class that has really stuck around in my game and really filled a niche that needed to be filled. By 3e era this became my Explorer class because when I tried to transform my 1e/2e game ideas over to 3e, I had to bring the Mariner with me. </p><p>"Better Living through Alchemy" by Tom Armstrong, Dragon #130 - This is probably the second most influential NPC class and its existence forced me to modify a skill in 3e to reflect the fact that Brew Potion was not how potions were normally brewed in my game.</p><p>"Courts & Courtiers" by Larry Granato, Dragon #184 - Dragon issue #184 is probably the best issue Dragon ever released and is part of what I consider Dragon's golden age in the early 1990's where it felt like every issue was gold and the cover art all felt like it deserved a gallery. This article was a big part of a push that turned a campaign into a high political game of court intrigue and grand battles.</p><p></p><p>Special call out to what is probably the most influential article I ever read in Dragon:</p><p>"High Seas" by Margaret Foy, Dragon #116 - This article ended up being absolutely game changing. Unfortunately, while we loved the concepts and used some of them, the rules themselves are an absolute unplayable mess that was clearly never play tested. But if any article ever changed my life, it was this one. This article resulted in me reading upwards of 10,000 pages on the Great Age of Sail, transformed a campaign, spawned my semester project in Technical Writing to create a playable great age of sail naval wargame, and helped fuel my love of history to new heights. But yeah, the first time we tried to run a ship combat using these rules we realized we had to throw a lot of them out, which led to me writing like 30 pages of new rules on everything ship related based on the aforementioned research.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8716768, member: 4937"] Probably the best article in Dragon history was "The Seven Sentence NPC" from Dragon #184. It stands out because of the timelessness of its advice and even though I rarely follow its formal method, it's had a huge influence on how I characterize NPCs. Required reading for all GMs and I strongly advise all GMs of moderate or less experience, or any GM that feels that their NPCs are bland to read the article and force themselves to use the methodology for a while. Other articles were hugely influential on my game because of the ideas they introduced, but are less worth reading because their rules are out of date: "For Sail: One New NPC", by Scott Bennie, Dragon #106 - The one NPC class that has really stuck around in my game and really filled a niche that needed to be filled. By 3e era this became my Explorer class because when I tried to transform my 1e/2e game ideas over to 3e, I had to bring the Mariner with me. "Better Living through Alchemy" by Tom Armstrong, Dragon #130 - This is probably the second most influential NPC class and its existence forced me to modify a skill in 3e to reflect the fact that Brew Potion was not how potions were normally brewed in my game. "Courts & Courtiers" by Larry Granato, Dragon #184 - Dragon issue #184 is probably the best issue Dragon ever released and is part of what I consider Dragon's golden age in the early 1990's where it felt like every issue was gold and the cover art all felt like it deserved a gallery. This article was a big part of a push that turned a campaign into a high political game of court intrigue and grand battles. Special call out to what is probably the most influential article I ever read in Dragon: "High Seas" by Margaret Foy, Dragon #116 - This article ended up being absolutely game changing. Unfortunately, while we loved the concepts and used some of them, the rules themselves are an absolute unplayable mess that was clearly never play tested. But if any article ever changed my life, it was this one. This article resulted in me reading upwards of 10,000 pages on the Great Age of Sail, transformed a campaign, spawned my semester project in Technical Writing to create a playable great age of sail naval wargame, and helped fuel my love of history to new heights. But yeah, the first time we tried to run a ship combat using these rules we realized we had to throw a lot of them out, which led to me writing like 30 pages of new rules on everything ship related based on the aforementioned research. [/QUOTE]
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