"Classic" Dragon Articles

[woodelf]

Some of my favorites:
* An article on runes, including a runic alphabet. (Dethek?) As a bonus, had some runic riddles which were campaign seeds in their own right. ("I guard beneath / Rubies three, sapphires three / And crown of gold." - Who doesn't want to find that location?)

Which reminds me of the articles on how to create riddles and work them into your adventures. I loved those.

* "Be aware, take care: principles of adventuring success" - or something like that. Advice to the players about how to keep their PCs alive. Somewhat dated now, in that D&D has evolved beyond its DM-vs-players paradigm. But a new series for the players (rather than endless templates and upgrades for monsters = the DM) would be welcome.

I think you may be misremembering the tone of the article. I never took it as being adversarial-GMing-specific, or even particularly pertinent. Most of the advice falls into the category of "how to be a better adventurer", and a lot of it was character-level, rather than player-level. Yes, some of it was strategic advice--but it no more championed adversarial play than the current PH, or the many [current] Dragon articles on optimum multiclass or feat progressions. You can be highly strategic without metagaming, and you can metagame with out being adversarial.

* An article describing the six ability scores. Was very good on differentiating Intelligence from Wisdom and Strength from Constitution. An update for the modern era would be especially helpful to new players.

I dunno. There's a fair bit more detail on this in the PH than there used to be, isn't there? Personally, i don't remember that article as being particularly revelatory--i'll have to give it another read.

* "Of rogue-stones and gem-jumping", one of Ed Greenwood's Realms articles. Some of this material made its way into the FRCS, but not the evocative backstories. (Again - campaign seeds!)

Further evidence (along with the majority of the citations in this thread), IMHO, that the fluff is what makes or breaks RPG stuff. Crunch is good, but the best crunch in the world falls flat without the fluff to bring it to life. And, IMHO, this is where a lot of the current Dragon articles fall down, and why they don't appeal to me as much as old Dragon articles do, despite using mechanics i'm not using.

 

[woodelf]

Among my favorites, in no particular order:

• Katherine Kerr's "Beyond the Dungeon" 1 and 2 from Dragons 87 and 88; Kerr's "The Real Barbarians" from Dragon 72 was good too
• Stephen Inniss' "A Cast of Strange Familiars" (Dragon 84), nice alternatives to the usual cat, toad, raven, etc.

Totally forgot about "The Real Barbarians". Too bad they decided to base the D&D3E class on Viking berserker legends rather than this article.

We used a lot of those alternate familiars, back in the day. Though the most memorable was a Shadow Drake familiar that was one of the PCs. She was a fairly typical, devious shadow drake, and the PC was a good-hearted, altruistic, naive, Good-with-a-capital-g pixie wizard. The dynamics between those two were great--Tekka (the pixie) would never have believed anything but the very best of any of her companions, especially her familiar. And Listhan (the shadow drake) made masterful use of that blindspot, without being actually disruptive to play. Basically, we'd discovered the player/shadow dynamic that Wraith: the Oblivion codified almost a decade later. Listhan helped Tekka "realize" that she was to blame when some stuff went awry for the group, and nearly got her to commit suicide (by suffering the point-blank impact of a retributive strike in order to destroy the "corrupting" magical item)--if a dashing chivalrous swashbuckling sprite (new PC) hadn't shown up at just the right moment. But that's a whole 'nother story (and, for that matter, part of a couple other very memorable stories, too).

 

[woodelf]

That was a GREAT article with GREAT art.

Princess Ark, Wyrms of the North, Wizards Three (not the articles themselves so much as the fluff + crunch aspect), and Leomund's Tiny Hut.

Also, the article on fairies, somewhere around the mid-140's.

It's interesting; there's a strong preference for series articles that combine game fiction and game mechanics.

You say that like it's surprising? It seems to me that it's the fluff that makes RPG material good and memorable. How much crunch you need with it varies from game to game, group to group, and player to player. But i'd be surprised if you didn't find that the most-used stuff for any group was that that had a healthy dose of good fluff in it. For some, like me, that'd mean good fluff with as little crunch as possible. For others, like my friend Akira, that means good fluff with a level of crunch on par with the PH. For others, it probably falls in between somewhere.

Frex, i loved the Pages from the Mages and Arcane Lore columns, without exception, but never cared for The Wizards Three. And the only real difference (they were all basically new spell columns) was that i loved the fluff in the former two, and never could stand the game fiction of The Wizards Three. (Not saying that the same judgmentes of relative merit would be applicable to everyone, just that i think most people would prefer whichever of those series they liked the fluff from the best, rather than preferring the one with the best new spells.)

 

[woodelf]

Pretty much anything that was included in the Dragon Annual #2 or #3. If I remember correctly they had Tesseracts, Liches, Politics of Hell, the different articles that Roger Moore did on the races...

Just a huge treasure trove of goodies.

That'd be Best of Dragon vol. II (race viewpoint articles) & I (all the rest you list). Dragon Annuals are all-new material and didn't start until, what, '97?

 

[woodelf]

There's so many to mention. The above mentioned Nine Hells article is one of the all time best. I was always fond of the Anti-Paladin article. Ed Greenwoods ecology articles and just about anything from Ed was always top notch.

Dragon seemed so much crunchier and more useful back in those days.

Funny. I'd have said Dragon seemed so much less crunchy and more useful back in those days.

And your examples seem to agree with that statement. The Nine Hells articles are pretty much the antithesis of crunchy--without pulling them out, if there was any crunch at all it was maybe a new devil or two. Likewise, the ecology articles were tons of fluff, and only gradually got crunchier over time [though i hear they're now pretty much all crunch]. For that matter, i'd say that most of Greenwood's Dragon articles were at least heavily fluffy (The Wizards Three, Wyrms of the North), when they weren't all-fluff (The Merry Month of ... Myrtul?). I know the reason i loved some of his magic item articles was precisely for the fluff elements. The fact that a new magic shield would give me half a page or more of backstroy to go with the sentence of game stats was what made it so good.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

It won't take more than a quick glance at the Masters and Minions tournament at Gen Con to realize that we're all huge fans of the "Ecology" series.

I'm also running "Barnacus: City in Peril" from Dragon #80 as the sequel to Zenopus' Tower from the Holmes blue box set. That's a great adventure!

If this was the First Place winner in the Module Design Contest Category A-8, how many other categories were there? How many were ever published?

 

[schnee]

I will never forget the original Anti-Paladin. Part of it was due to the artwork, part of it was due to that Charisma table (either 17+ or 4- hahahaha).

The Tesseract article rocked. Messed my head up pretty good.

 

[BOZ]

The Tesseract article rocked. Messed my head up pretty good.

as well it should.

 

[Faraer]

People are struck by and remember ideas, images, atmosphere and stories. Game mechanics per se don't exactly touch the soul, do they? Except in so far as they facilitate ideas, images, atmosphere and stories in play.

Even if a rules-heavy article has bits that are easily transferrable to home campaigns -- though I don't think borrowing a mechanic and *then* rationalizing how it fits into your campaign world is a very sane method of world-building -- the article itself won't be much credited, since you've just stripped it for parts.

woodelf, you never liked the Realms but you loved the Realms background in "Pages from the Mages" and "Arcane Lore"?

 

[grodog]

So, Erik, what can you tell us about your vague plans for all of this info? A Best of Dragon (Ever) compliation? 3.5 reprints of old classics? Tracking down the best authors of yore to get them to write for us?

More info please