Good Dragon Articles

[RedCliff]

My favorite article had to be:

The article that introduced Psi-Spell feats and the Mind Mage PrC in Dragon 313.

I'm glad you liked it. I'd been wanting to do something like that for a while when I finally pitched it to Dragon. I think that of everything I've written for the magazine, this stands as one of my favorite projects.

And just so I'm not totally off topic, I'd like to put in another vote for the campaign components. I loved the format of three or four feature articles clustered around a theme. It allowed the issue to deliver both depth and bredth. For example, the gladiator issue had a historical look at gladiators (with an article in a similar vein as the samurai vs. knight piece), an example campaign schema for taking characters from 1st to 20th level in a gladiator setting (good DM reading), and an article that featured four prestige classes ideally suited for the arena (PC crunch). If I recall correctly, there were also portions that dealt with PC concepts and other similar role-playing issues, so not all the material was crunch.

What struck me very quickly as these issues came in one after another was that campaign components need not be used in isolation either. Campaign Components: Dragonslayers melded well with Campaign Components: Incursion (red dragons and githyanki go, almost literally, hand-in-hand). And I had an idea for a game that melded the gladiator and mercenary themes as well.

I thought the format was supurb. Each article offered a completely different facet of the topic, giving you several different ways to approach it, but collectively giving you deeper treatment of the subject, and in many cases providing you a framework in which to use it as well. I got a lot of use and inspiration out of the magazines with this format.

 

[Greg K]

My favorite pre 3e articles
The Archer Ranger
The revised bard (circa issue 56)
The Deities and Demigods of Greyhawk articles by Gary Gygax
The (race) Point of View articles by Roger Moore
The gods of the demihuman articles by Roger Moore
Non Violent Magic Items by Arthur Collins
The Real Barbarians by Katherine Kerr
What Good PC's are Made Of by Katherine Kerr
Beyond the Dungeon pt1 and pt2 by Katherine Kerr
The Nine Hells articles by Ed Greenwood
You Can Jump How Far? Ok Prove It! by Stephen Innis
Tracking Down the Barbarian by David Howery (and his revised Cavalier article in the same issue).
The Dark Continent by David Howery (and other Africa articles by other authors).
David Howery's article about Native Americans
David Howery's Complete Fighter article (don't recall exact title)
Steve Winter's Complete Bard article (again don't recall exact title)
The Darksun articles
Pages from the Mages articles by Ed Greenwood
Bazaar of the Bizarre

 

[grodog]

If people are willing to further indulge an enterprising Dragon editor-in-chief, I'd be interested in hearing about favorite articles since the advent of third edition. By no means change your "historical" list, but I am very interested if anything has stood out from the magazine's modern era.

I still reference the two heraldry articles in Dragon 274 (I'm pretty sure that's the issue # Erik) regularly. They're quite good

 

[Alzrius]

I seem to be one of the very few people who enjoyed the Greyhawk 2000 material. The Incursion material was also a classic.

Beyond that, just specific things. I liked seeing the chocobo get stats. The Hand of Lolth was cool too.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Absolutely anything by Roger Moore
Yamara
Ed Greenwood's Pages from the Mages
Ecologies (I recall "of the Osquip" as being a personal fave )
Reviews
Dungeoncraft
Forum (useless now, but great fun to read back in the day)

If people are willing to further indulge an enterprising Dragon editor-in-chief, I'd be interested in hearing about favorite articles since the advent of third edition. By no means change your "historical" list, but I am very interested if anything has stood out from the magazine's modern era.

Nothing in the current era stands out to the same degree as the heady days of Roger Moore (my favorite editor of any magazine of any kind. Ever. Perhaps even EVAR.), but these stood out in my mind for fun or utility:

Psi-Spell and Mind Mage (313)
I've never used them myself, but I've had players who loved them and found the result quite enjoyable. Reading them made for good times, too.

Oriental Adventures update (316)
Pure utility. I used OA a ton in 3.0 and I've used this a ton in 3.5.

Spies feature (318)
Great campaign ideas focused on my favorite fantasy genre, and the items were flat-out spiffy.

Silicon Sorcery: Final Fantasy (323)
Utility again. The chocobo stats have seen more use than any Monster Manual entry.

Building A Better Zombie (324)
Yes, I wrote it, so of course I liked the concept. I wouldn't include it if it hadn't seen a lot of use locally.