D&D General All Time Favorite Dragon Magazine or Dungeon Magazine Content

[Reynard]

The iconic Chessboard Covers - I'm not sure if this is the first Dragon I bought or just the first I remember buying but, it was a staple in my collection for a very, very long time.

I got a copy of The Art of The Dragon long before I got an actual issue of the magazine and I just loved those chess board covers.

 

[Celebrim]

I have to confess that despite owning dozens of Dungeon magazines, that I have never ran a single adventure from one. The closest I've come is I adapted Mad God's Key to fit into my homebrew, so I guess that makes "Mad God's Key" my favorite Dungeon adventure by default.

My favorite issue of Dungeon though is issue #61, which is the one they somehow convinced Toni DiTerlizzi to do all the illustrations for. It's an artistic masterpiece, and in particular all the work he does for "Jigsaw" including the cover art is simply brilliant. If there is any Dungeon magazine adventure I regret not having a reason to run it's "Jigsaw", which if you don't know, is about a Flesh Golem that falls in love with his creator. Brilliant module that is right up my gothic horror/fairy tale/lovecraftian alley and is legitimately one of the best 'Frankenstein' fan fics ever written.

 

[darjr]

Oh! Dungeon and Dragon allowed Chris Perkins to get a start making D&D content. I love that.

 

[Weiley31]

A LOT of the 4E Dragon Magazine articles were pretty damn good.

My favorite ones of those would have to be the ones dealing with the Shadar-Kai and Gnolls.

 

[el-remmen]

I loved Dungeon and still collect the older ones when I can find print copies cheap (I have a bunch in PDF too but I am less likely to actually read/use a PDF). For my money, the Dungeon adventures for the 1E and 2E era are better than almost any other adventures, with the caveat that any of them will need work to adapt - but that is true of any pre-published adventure. Here is a list of some of my favorite adventures and their issue numbers, edition and levels.

• "The Crypts of Istaris" (Dungeon #9 - 3rd to 5th level - 1E)
• "Light of Lost Souls" (Dungeon #12 - 2nd to 4th level - 1E)
• "Going Once. . . Going Twice" (Dungeon #13 - Any Level - 1E)
• "The Moor-Tomb Map" (Dungeon #13 - 2nd to 4th level - 1E)
• "Roarwater Caves" (Dungeon #15 - 1st to 4th - 1E)
• "The Vinyard Vales" (Dungeon #23 - 2nd to 4th - BECMI)
• "The Curse & The Quest" (Dungeon #26 - 4th to 8th - 2E)
• "Juggernaut" (Dungeon #27 - 4th to 7th - 2E)
• "Through the Night" (Dungeon #29 - 1st to 2nd - 2E)
• ". . .And a Dozen Eggs" (Dungeon #30 - 1st to 3rd - 2E) <-- a great alternative to 1st level rat-catching
• "Thiondar's Legacy" (Dungeon #30 - 8th to 12th - 2E)
• "The Wayward Wood" (Dungeon #32 - 6th to 9th - 2E)
• "Is There an Elf in the House" (Dungeon #32 - 3rd to 5th - 2E) <--co-written by Professor Dungeon Master
• "The Siege of Kratys Freehold" (Dungeon #33 - 1st to 4th - 2E)
• "The Whale" (Dungeon #35 - 1st to 3rd - 2E)
• "Asflag's Unintentional Emporium" (Dungeon #36 - 3rd to 7th - 2E)
• "Troll Bridge" (Dungeon #36 - 2nd to 4th - 2E)
• "Granite Mountain Prison" (Dungeon #36 - 4th to 6th - 2E)
• "A Wizard's Fate" (Dungeon #37 - 1st to 3rd - 2E)
• "Things That Go Bump in the Night" (Dungeon #38 - 3rd to 7th - 2E)
• "Legerdemain" (Dungeon #39 - 4th to 7th - 2E)
• "Song of the Fens" (Dungeon #40 - 1st to 3rd - 2E)
• "Old Man Katan and the Mushroom Band" (Dungeon #41 - 1st to 6th - 2E)
• "The Dark Place" (Dungeon #49 - 5th to 7th - 2E)
• "The Bandits of Bunglewood" (Dungeon #51 - 1st to 3rd - 2E)
• "Unhallowed Ground" (Dungeon #54 - 2nd to 4th - 2E)
• "Janx's Jinx" (Dungeon #56 - 1st to 2nd - 2E)
• "Stepping Stones" (Dungeon #68 - 6th to 8th - 2E)
• "Depths of Rage" (Dungeon #83 - 3rd - 3E)
• "Flesh to Stone" (Dungeon #85 - 7th - 3E)
• "The Bullywug's Gambit" (Dungeon #140 - 3rd - 3.5E)

 

[Cadence]

I started Dragon at issue #64 and want to say I subscribed until around 1988. (I picked 63 up as a back-issue, and had all of the best-of issues).

King of the Tabletop game in #77
The Dancing Hut adventure in #83
The Gun that Shot Too Straight story in #94
The Quasar Dragon and Nogard adventure in #96

 

[el-remmen]

"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.

Probably the best article in Dragon history was "The Seven Sentence NPC" from Dragon #184.

"High Seas" by Margaret Foy, Dragon #116

All of the above are among my favorites too. While @Celebrim is right that the rules for that "High Seas" article were basically useless, being so complicated, the general information on over a dozen kinds of ships, navigating, weather, etc. . were invaluable as I developed Aquerra - the homebrew made of archipelagos that I ran or played games in from 1989 to 2016.

I do a feature over on Instagram (@how_i_run_it) called #DragonMagMonday, where I share pics from my collection of Dragon mags.

 

[ephemeron]

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.

#184 was the first issue of my subscription! I'd been picking up individual issues here and there starting with #138, then made the jump to subscribing and kept it up into the low 220-s.

"The Sunset World" from #150 and "The Color of Magic" from #200 have already been mentioned but they're favorites of mine also. Some other great Dragon articles that haven't come up in this thread:
"From Hatchling to Immortal Guardian", #170 -- detailing the life cycle of BECMI dragons
Tom Moldvay's series on undead -- each installment took a type of undead, looked at inspirations and themes, and statted out some new monsters based on folklore
"Turkey's Underground Cities", #201

 

[darjr]

A LOT of the 4E Dragon Magazine articles were pretty damn good.

My favorite ones of those would have to be the ones dealing with the Shadar-Kai and Gnolls.

I think all or almost all of those are available on the DMsGuild, for those that didn’t know and may want any.

Believe it or not there is at least one AD&D article in one of those. (Note given it might be VERY light in rules)

 

[Weiley31]

I think all or almost all of those are available on the DMsGuild, for those that didn’t know and may want any.

Believe it or not there is at least one AD&D article in one of those. (Note given it might be VERY light in rules)

Ya I got the Gnoll one sometime ago so that way I have lore for Gnoll pcs in my 5E games. I've saved a few on my DMsguild wishlist and plan on getting the Shadar-Kai ones next.

 

[Reynard]

I wonder if there is a massive, complete and detailed index somewhere online. I know there is a dungeon index, but if I recall it isn't complete and doesn't tell you much about the adventures -- it just lists them.

 

[Maxperson]

3) Wormy, really all the cartoons but especially Wormy (with What's Up with Phil and Dixie a close second).

Ah, good times.

Thanks for reminding me. Those were good, but Nodwick was my favorite, so I'm adding that to things I like.

 

[JEB]

I wonder if there is a massive, complete and detailed index somewhere online.

Yep! The DragonDex - A complete index to Dragon Magazine

 

[Reynard]

Yep! The DragonDex - A complete index to Dragon Magazine

Aaaaand bookmarked. Thank you!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There was a ton of great stuff for 2E in Dragon, like way more than I could keep track of, and it was pretty inspirational in the early '90s. Later it got a bit too... slick... and focused on being "official" and was a lot less fun.

Dungeon never stopped being good value as long as it was published, for my money, but one of the best things I ever saw in it was in Dungeon #200, the adventure Blood Money by Logan Bonner, which conceptually pre-figured a lot of what Blades In the Dark does.

 

[Celebrim]

All of the above are among my favorites too. While @Celebrim is right that the rules for that "High Seas" article were basically useless, being so complicated, the general information on over a dozen kinds of ships, navigating, weather, etc. . were invaluable as I developed Aquerra - the homebrew made of archipelagos that I ran or played games in from 1989 to 2016.

It certainly did inspire us and send us off in the right direction. The real innovation I think was validating great age of sail as a D&D setting concept over the more period realistic cogs, galleys, and longships that had dominated D&D thinking about the sea before then. Prior to adopting Great Age of Sail tech, boats had purely been seen in the campaigns as uninspiring slow and weak means of transportation. Foy brought to D&D what modern people think of as ships when they think of ships, and in particular this meant Heroic Ships. D&D had been taking it's land cues from Heroic Ages like the Early Bronze and Middle Ages when a single armored hero could take on a dozen or more less well equipped foes, but had been taking its Naval cues from Democratic naval periods where conscription and mass navies ruled the waters without a single heroic focus like Great Age of Sail brings you with "the Captain on the Bridge". It was almost like finding a way to bring the Star Trek Enterprise into D&D. It didn't matter if it technically didn't make sense; from a stand point of mythic resonance it was as perfect as wizard-knights swinging laser swords in a Galactic Empire.

We would have been fine with complexity. What we weren't fine with was poor process simulation. I'm trying to remember what the original rules were like before we modified a lot of things, but one thing I seem to remember was that whenever a ship lost hull points it had a chance of immediately sinking equal to the percentage of hullpoints it had lost in total compared to the maximum.

Imagine if hit points worked like that and you had 8 hit points and took 2 damage, and therefore acquired a 25% chance of dying no save. Then you took 2 more damage and had a 50% chance of dying immediately. The effect on ships was that they would start sinking almost as soon as they took any damage at all.

There were a lot of little things like that were if you read over them they don't sound so bad but in play they were just horrendous.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The covers back in the day remain breathtaking to this day. Almost every one of them was a window into some new fantastical world, whether it depicted a fighter jet locking on a fire-breathing dragon, or a mournful scene of a unicorn and a long-dead skeleton in a sun-dappled forest.

Wormy, Snarfquest, Yamara, Twilight Empire all stick in my head.

As for top content, at the time I loved the "WOW Your Players!" article in Dragon 147, with its Wand of Wonder variants. For such a chaotic magic item, it added that much more uncertainty.

I still find myself categorizing gamers using 144's "A Field Guide to Game-Convention Ornithology."

Ed Greenwood's numerous Dragon's Bestiary articles had some great monsters in them. 138's "The Ungrateful Dead" had some cracking good undead beasties.

And though I didn't really appreciate them at the time, looking back Wyrms of the North was a pretty influential series, one that 5e would refer to many times in the present day.

 

[GuyBoy]

I used the Anti-Paladin as a BBEG in a long-running campaign, so that sticks in my mind. I also still wake up shaking at what the Witch NPC did to my character and his friends in a Wilderlands campaign that I was playing in; not quite a TOK but close.
Loved Wormy of course.
The main thing for me, growing up in the UK, was a holistic magic that Dragon magazine bought by opening up the wider culture of the game, particularly the US side of things. The glamour might not have been as real as teenage-me actually felt, but every issue brought its own buzz.

Oh, and the sentient warhammer, Casrac, in a wonderful (for the time) mountain pass adventure in an early issue. That thing became a legend in our group’s long campaign in the early 80s.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I wasn't much into Dragon Magazine before 4e (it had a very bad reputation during 3rd edition), but some stuff from the 4e era was really, really good. My favorite Theme in the entirety of 4e came from the very last issue of Dragon: Ghost from the Past. It fair oozes with thematic and storyline hooks and it heavily supports using the History skill, one of my favorite skills.

 

[Stormonu]

Always loved the Ecology Of… articles, especially when it featured the monster hunter group.

I really enjoyed the fiction as well, especially the “Fool Wolf” series of stories.

The article I find myself going back to is the one that has the formula for creating a Lich, very informative article.

Wormy, Snarfquest, Downer and Nodwick were among my favorites of the dragon mirth sections.

Still have my Dragon CD archive, which I think goes up to #250. My physical copies long ago migrated to storage - just take up too much shelf space (Best of 1-5, #96 - when the physical mag was discontinued).