April Fools' Dragon Articles: Which were your favorites?

Glyfair

Explorer
The April Fools Dragon issues have been controversial from the beginning. In fact, this year we are back to no real April Fools content at all (unless you count the cover).

What April Fools' articles stand out in your mind?

One that stands out was a special "Giants in the Earth" article with stats for various cartoon characters. We got stats for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Rocky & Bullwinkle (with his magic hat that works like a "bag of tricks"), Marvin the Martian (whose stats I used in an actual game, with a very different character) and others.
 

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A long time favorite of mine was the Nogard solo adventure. Basically, the final adventure for any monty haul character, with options at each step depending on the class of your character. At one step, you could try to kill yourself, but failed. The reason the fighter couldn't was his AC was so low even he couldn't hit it. For the thief- it's pretty hard to backstab yourself, and who ever died from picking their own pockets?
 

Back when I use to subscribe, the only one that I ever liked was the one with stats for Bugs Bunny et.all. Otherwise, I really disliked the April Fools Issues and considered the joke material to be wasted space.
 

Nimrod of Nump of the Misbegotten Realms

I don't remember the exact issues... late 80s or early 90s anyway. The spells of Nimrod of Nump. Spells like:

Detect Normal Fires (Range: Touch),
Transmute Rock to Stone (any amount of nonmagical rock into stone,
Drawmij's Instant Death (Drawmij, wherever he is and whoever he is dies immediately, with no saving throw).

I remember another issue with magic items such as the Robe of Useless Items, Graffiti Bottle (spews crude writing all over the walls), Brassiere of Controlling Fire Elementals, and the like.

Well, I thought it was all pretty funny at the time.
 

I liked the ecology of the kobold last year... and that class acts:adventurer, with art by that Zogonia guy, had me laughing so hard I could barely breathe.
 

The only April Fool's material I've liked has been the kobold and Adventurer articles. Very good stuff.
 

Comedy is hard. More stuff on comedy you can add to your games would be good, but I'm not so keen on jokes that are really just for the reader of the magazine.
 

There was one in the late 80's that I always liked. It was the Coercive Beginning and GM's Fiat module, that was three pages of opening boxed text in which the pc's were mangled, blown up, resurrected, sold into slavery, sent back in time and who-knows-what-else until the universe was destroyed. It was a funny read, but I think its stuck with me after all these years because whenever I'm putting together an adventure for my group, I'm not making any of the mistakes satirized in that article.
 

Very, very steeped in the 80s, but quite funny. From Dragon #72:

Valley Elf,
He's a Valley Elf,
Valley Elf,
He's a Valley Elf . . .

So cool, so fair,
With chartreuse hair,
So young, secure ——

"Fer sure, fer sure,
like, oh, man, I was really down today,
like, sooo down,
I almost flunked archery today,
I was blitzed totally, it was
wrong. Like, I wore my elven cloak
into the dungeon, y'know, and it got all
grody with, wow, like
spider webs and green slime all over it,
like yucko, like
when I saw it when we got out I thought, oh,
gag me with a wand,
and it was grody to the max, just psionic, like,
and I had to clean it, oh,
gross me out, man.
Totally awesome. I hate to go in dungeons,
they are so rank, and some of the monsters just like
freak me out, man, like wow,
I even saw a fer real monster, like real close up
once, and it was really, like, totally
disgusting, barf city man, it was so gross
that I thought, like, Hey, keep away from me, man!
Like no way I'm gonna ever even use my sword
on you, I just waxed it, y'know, like
gag me with a mace."

Valley Elf,
He's a Valley Elf,
Valley Elf,
He's a Valley Elf . . .

North of Geoff, South of Ket,
By the River Javan wet,
Living with the stubby gnomes,
The Valley Elves do make their homes.

"Sure, totally, y'know, I had a dog man,
a cooshee, like he was special,
a Gucci cooshee poochie,
he had designer genes, like, really rare,
he was just awesome, but not too housebroken.
I had to clean up after him, and that was like grody,
just gross to the max, but, wow,
like, no biggie, cuz he was my
dog, y'know, but he's gone now, totally, see,
I met the mage the other day, and, wow, man,
the mage has got like no,
totally no sense of humor. Like, I made a joke,
y'know, I thought it was super,
like, I saw the mage and said like, hey,
we're in the Valley of the Jolly,
like, Ho Ho Ho, Green Valley Mage,
just like the freakin' commercials,
but he just looked at me, like wow,
he must have really been out of it, man,
like he was so out of it he threw
one of those, like, meteor swarms at me, it was just
awesome, I mean it was just, oh wow man, it was
astral, and it missed me and hit my dog,
my designer dog, like,
crispy critter city,
I was really bummed out, really bad like."

Valley Elf,
He's a Valley Elf,
Valley Elf,
He's a Valley Elf . . .

He's a super Valley Elf,
So chaotic, sure of self,
Tall and thin and fair of face,
His brain is lost in outer space.

"Oh, super, like I live in the
good part of the Valley,
y'know, where we're all into, like,
real ethereal things, like
I got a set of designer ring mail
for my birthday, I was totally
freaked out, like, my old set was getting
full of wrinkles and it had
blood on it from where I cut myself
with my short sword, yeah, really, like
agony, man, I was in total agony
for an hour. Really,
but now I'm together, like,
fer sure, no problem.
That was close, man,
like I was so sure I was gonna
pass out fer sure,
I lucked out totally.
Good thing."

(Totally written by some gamers in, like, Kentucky, man, who don't want their names used. Fer sure.)
 

rycanada said:
Comedy is hard. More stuff on comedy you can add to your games would be good, but I'm not so keen on jokes that are really just for the reader of the magazine.
Who says we didn't add them to the game? My favorite was the Pooka article, which we did incorporate for one of the playing characters (it made for a great plot device too, as the player missed around 50% of the games due to college, so the Pooka was able to pop him in and out as needed).
 

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