"Classic" Dragon Articles

[GVDammerung]

"The Ecology of ..."

"Wizards Three"

Gary's original "From the Sorcerer's Scroll", especially the one introducing the cavalier ...

Not meaning to pick on your selections but for me the first two are some of the worst articles, IMO. I have always found Wizards Three and the Ecology articles, especially the Ecology articles pre 3X, to be worthless wastes of space and paper. Too much bad, amateur fiction, IMO, that doesn't even qualify as "fluff." I like fluff but I don't find these fluff so much as phooey. Any way, just my opinion. YMMV obviously.

Talked about/used articles around my tables -

Ed Greenwood's Nine Hells Various Issues - All time best articles, IMO.
The Witch Issue 114 - Still gets pulled out and adapted.
Treasures of the Wild Issue 137 - Still gets pulled out and used
Angels Issue 35 - Companion to Greenwood's Nine Hells still used for a "classic" 7 Heavens
Not for the Living:Six Haunted templates Issue 336 - Best 3X article PERIOD! Used a lot.

Those are my top five.

Others:

Shadow's City (Balefire) Issue 322
Vault of the Drow Issue 298
Secrets of the Brotherhood of the True Flame Issue Issue 268
Linnorms (Viking Dragons) No. 1 & No. 2 - Issues 182 & 183
Archer Sub-class (and all those articles on bows & arrows) Issue - 45

That rounds out my top ten.

Honorable mention - All those articles on the various Selderine

 

[Ghendar]

The Princess Ark series

. .

Seconded
and thirded
and fourthed
and fifthed
and sixthed
and...........well, you get the idea.

I'd have to go through all my old issues to get a real good list going.
The Greenwood Nine Hells articles are classic.
I, for one, enjoyed Greenwood's ecology articles but I found those done by others to be hit and miss.

 

[Imruphel]

Fedifensor.

The early FR articles by Ed Greenwood before FR was published.

 

[diaglo]

Oh, and Wormy comes up every single time we wax nostalgic about Dragon. . .

i still miss Wormy.

 

[Exquisite Dead Guy]

i still miss Wormy.

QFT.

I also miss the "old style" Ecology articles, especially the ones by Jonathan Richards (see his .sig for some rejected articles he posted on EN World last year). The new style is too dry for my tastes, though I do like the info available with a Knowledge check sidebar.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The articles on world-building. Specifically, there were some articles that, regardless of the system you are using, remain as useful today as they were when first penned.

I don't know the issues, and I don't even know all of the names, but....

There was an article once on passageways between major cavern areas that included random generators for interesting fluff along the way.

Let There Be a Method to Your Madness, a long-ago article on dungeon design that was fantastic and had advice that would not be remiss if printed today.

There was a great article on world building that basically built up a small kingdom, and suggested PC handouts based on what the characters would be likely to know.

All of the Ed Greenwood world building articles, especially the one that described local customs.

It seems to me these days that every article I read on world-building seems to be surface, sketchy world-building. Dungeoncraft, while offering some good ideas, seems to be basically advocating not creating a world as much as possible. There are so few of those articles aimed at DMs who actually want to create a world that will both stand up to multiple campaigns and be distinct in their own right.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Reading through this thread, I'll tell you what I'd love to see in upcoming issues, based upon what I loved in past issues:

(1) A tutorial on map-making. Right now, I am of the pen & paper breed, but there are a lot of other methods out there. Designing maps is a huge part of the creative process (for me at least) and I'd love to be able to produce professional quality maps. Especially 3-d perspective & multi-level in one image maps.

(2) Designing cities. Here, again, I'm talking about a focus article that simply deals with laying out & mapping cities, based upon historical, fantasy, & D&D precedents.

(3) Running Urban Adventures: I've been doing this for a long, long time, but someone else's perspective is always useful.

None of these articles would even require a single stat block.

RC

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

1) Beyond the Dungeon - Issues 87 & 88 - An excellent article about urban and wilderness adventures. This predates my involvement in D&D by several years, but was instrumental for some of my friends.

2) Tom Moldvay's variant undead articles - there were at least three of these - one focusing on vampires, one on corporeal dead and one on ghosts. I think there may have been a lich article too. What I really liked about them was that they were rooted in mythology - the vampires included greek, transylvanian and chinese legends, for example.

Shawn

 

[00Machado]

I don't think it had more rules content than today's magazines. (I'm avoiding the terms crunchy and fluffy, I've hated them ever since 3e appeared.)

I also think that thinking they were more useful is an exercise in nostalgia. I mean, back then, we were suckier gamers! Over the years as your experience, tastes, and homebrews all grow, of course you'll find less to use in the magazine. But there are some awesome articles in the Wizards Workshop that I think define roleplaying for this generation, just as similar ones (but not in a regular section mind you!) did for us.

And Psion's reminder of the Warning! in the Dernyi article is funny in that it reminds one of similar warnings made in reference to Monte these days.

I agree with the poster that Dragon seemed more useful back in the day, though I don't think it was more crunch that did it.

I see a few factors that have made Dragon less of a must have/must use at my gaming table
*Shifted much of the GM content out of it
*Back in the day, there were fewer new products, no third party products, and that meant fewer rule widgets to evaluate and incorporate into a game. These days, there's too much for me to even consider most of it, regardless of the source.
*The above point aside, were Dragon to shift more to text that inspired the use of the material rather than just presenting the new widgets, they'd probably all end up being considered for in game use, and enjoyed on their own merit even when I don't have a game use for them. Basically, shift the presentation of the new elements to layer campaign themses and adventure hooks around them. Make the mechanical stuff come to life in the context of fictional elements for lack of a better way to describe it.

 

[00Machado]

I can't remember if I've said this before, but for me, the classic stuff was campaign-specific stuff that you couldn't get elsewhere. If you played in any of the established campaigns, things like that gave you that little bit of extra depth in the world, making it that much richer.

Quoted for Truth