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

[Hexmage-EN]

Of all the content you've ever seen from Dragon Magazine or Dungeon Magazine, what really stood out to you? I'll go first:

• The various features on different famous/infamous beings of the multiverse were always a treat. I loved the Demonomicon of Iggwilv series, and during the 4E era I especially enjoyed the various additional series introduced dedicated to other kinds of beings: Deities & Demigods for the gods, Codex of Betrayal for the devils, Lords of Chaos for the primordials, and Court of Stars for the archfey. Of all the Dragon Magazine features I think I miss those the most.
• The two adventure paths that really got into extraplanar content were gems. The Savage Tide took me on a tour of the lower planes, especially the Abyss, and Scales of War had a raid on a githyanki naval base in the Astral, intrigue in the City of Brass, and a final dungen crawl through Tiamat's inner sanctum.
• One Dragon Magazine article I remember featured a selection of charms and other materials intended for commoners and fledgling adventurers to use against various supernatural threats. Another I was found of had a selection of unusual beverages, and another listed a number of demiplanes mentioned throughout D&D history.

I'm sure I'll think of others later, but that should be enough to start with.

 

[Maxperson]

Of all the content you've ever seen from Dragon Magazine or Dungeon Magazine, what really stood out to you? I'll go first:

• The various features on different famous/infamous beings of the multiverse were always a treat. I loved the Demonomicon of Iggwilv series, and during the 4E era I especially enjoyed the various additional series introduced dedicated to other kinds of beings: Deities & Demigods for the gods, Codex of Betrayal for the devils, Lords of Chaos for the primordials, and Court of Stars for the archfey. Of all the Dragon Magazine features I think I miss those the most.
• The two adventure paths that really got into extraplanar content were gems. The Savage Tide took me on a tour of the lower planes, especially the Abyss, and Scales of War had a raid on a githyanki naval base in the Astral, intrigue in the City of Brass, and a final dungen crawl through Tiamat's inner sanctum.
• One Dragon Magazine article I remember featured a selection of charms and other materials intended for commoners and fledgling adventurers to use against various supernatural threats. Another I was found of had a selection of unusual beverages, and another listed a number of demiplanes mentioned throughout D&D history.

I'm sure I'll think of others later, but that should be enough to start with.

I absolutely loved The Wizards Three. As well as any new spells, magic items, prestige classes and feats.

 

[aco175]

I remember printing off and using all the name generators for the various races. I liked how they took syllables and told you what they mean or you can roll dice to get something. There was also a tavern name generator I liked.

Dungeon had a tie-in with Dragon for a gladiator theme crossover. I never got my players to bite or play it, but wanted to.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I remember printing off and using all the name generators for the various races. I liked how they took syllables and told you what they mean or you can roll dice to get something. There was also a tavern name generator I liked.

You just reminded me of a very good article called "Inns in an Instant". It included a tavern name generator, tables of names for inn employees from a number of races, multiple menus that varied based on locale (including a menu for an inn in the Underdark), and random tables for things you might overhear other patrons saying and events that might happen.

Here's one of the nine charts of food and drink from that article:

 

[Croesus]

Finieous Fingers

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The Deck of Many Things cardstock insert.

 

[cbwjm]

There was an article that I really enjoyed which was for becmi called "the colour of magic" and it was all about changing spells to fit a theme. So for a pyromancer, darkness instead became a billowing cloud of smoke that filled the area and blocked line of sight or a cryomancer would trap people in ice instead of a web.

They also talked about what were essentially cantrips. A wizard that can cast fireball probably doesn't need flint and tinder to light his pipe, he just snaps his fingers to light it. It was a cool article, especially as I think that was the edition I was playing at the time so definitely relevant to my interests.

 

[darjr]

The ecologies

 

[cbwjm]

Just remembered another article I really liked, not sure of the name but it was something like "don't tell anyone you're an illusionist" and then went in where an illusionist was giving a lecture on how to create realistic illusions and how you should always keep spell components on you that people knew belonged to spells like fireball. And most of all, don't dress like a wizard in wizard robes, blend in by dressing in common clothes.

Best part was, after the lecture, he releases an illusion and the audience find themselves trapped in cages or something and he and his friend extort the audience for money foe their freedom.

 

[Celebrim]

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.