"Classic" Dragon Articles

[grodog]

Among my favorites, in no particular order:

• "Plan Before You Play" and "Law of the Land" by Ed Greenwood, two excellent articles on world-building from Dragons 63 and 65
• "Wormy" and "Fineous Fingers" on the comics, of course
• "Faceless Men & Clockwork Monsters" by Gygax (a story from The Dragon 17, in which D&D adventurers who get shifted over to Jim Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha game via a curse scroll)
• "Thrills & Chills" by Arthur Collins in Dragon 68 (all about arctic adventuring)
• "Abomination" by D. Aaron Achen (a very short story about a druid's salvation of an evil swamp; this is the quintessential druidical rolemodel for me; from Dragon 54)
• "The Blood of Medusa" by Michael Parkinson (Dragon 58, a monster conversion from myth to AD&D for such creatures as Echidna, Cerebus, etc.)
• Dragon 63 had Roger Moore's "The Bandit" NPC class, and Lew Pulsipher's "Timelord" in Dragon 65 were great
• The Creature Catalogs and Treasure Trove collections of monsters and magic items (various issues; alas, Creature Collection #1 is missing from Dragon 89 from the CD Rom...)
• "The Pages from the Mages" series by Greenwood, in particular the first two (Dragons 62 and 69), which contained alternate spell creation formulas, scroll ink formulas, potion ingredients, etc., in addition to new spells
• Joe Fischer's articles on dungeon/wilderness/town creationion, from SR 7 and TD 1 and 2
• 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
• "A Stone's Throw Away" from Dragon 85, the only Dragonlance fiction that I still reread from time-to-time
• Stephen Inniss' "A Cast of Strange Familiars" (Dragon 84), nice alternatives to the usual cat, toad, raven, etc.
• "Living in a Material World" from Dragon 81; Michael Dobson's excellent piece on making material spell component's meaningful in your campaign; this, coupled with Bruce Heard's excellent article on magical research from Dragon 82, "Spells Between the Covers"
• my favorite demonology articles: "Patron Demons" by Lewis Pulsipher (Dragon 40, most especially for Todd Lockwood's first image published in Dragon), "Demonology Made Easy" by Gregory Rihn (Dragon 20), which is almost as good Alexander von Thorn's "The Politics of Hell" from Dragon 28

I didn't bother listing all of the Greyhawk stuff, since I imagine you're looking for more general-interest articles, Erik

 

[Olive]

[*]my favorite demonology articles: "Patron Demons" by Lewis Pulsipher (Dragon 40, most especially for Todd Lockwood's first image published in Dragon), "Demonology Made Easy" by Gregory Rihn (Dragon 20), which is almost as good Alexander von Thorn's "The Politics of Hell" from Dragon 28

These sound AMAZINGLY COOL!!! Any more info?

 

[Phaedrus]

Healing herbs--with minor game effects (cure a couple of HP, stop bleeding, heal faster, etc). I had my ranger out in the wilds harvesting them and toting them around (any similarities with a certain Aragorn would be purely coincidental).

Elemental Gods (mentioned above).
The Cavalier and Thief-Acrobat... I immediately rolled up one of each.

Forest of Doom module. Giant tree hollowed out into a Drow fortress in the middle of a dark forest. I remember Fedifensor fondly as well.

And my favorite... a short story about a serf boy who kisses a frog to free the princess who in turn dumps him. I still remember the ending: a frog ribbits and he smashes it with a stick. I want to say Baba Yaga was in the story. If anyone remembers what issue that was, please tell me! I'd love to dig it out again.

 

[Tortoise]

The Politics of Hell

The Wandering Trees adventure (second place in the dungeon design contest).

The Ecology articles.

Pages From The Mages and anything dealing with ancient tomes of magic.

 

[Eosin the Red]

"The Politics of Hell" by Alexander Von Thorn (great name for a great article)

Best for me.


I also liked many of the articles on world building and ecology. [Specifically, Build your own Fantasy Kingdom -259, and The Ghoul Kingdom]

I also liked the various old classes.....I still use Jester Assassians based off of the Jester and those other classes (gravemaster, bounty hunter).


Ackkk....I forgot the Sheen!!! I loved those things.

 

[Plane Sailing]

For me it was the empire-of the petal throne issue (issue 4) which introduced the Mihalli and had so much that brought that setting alive.

 

[Phantom_Lord]

I particularly liked the "Ecology of..." articles. The 2nd edition ones were simply amazing. My favourite was the ecology of the rust monster.

Those kinds of articles and other 'world enrichening' articles--Ed Greenwood's many articles on FR and Elminster and Volo--established not only many lores but also character personalities as well i.e., Volo and Elminster to name a few. In fact, many authors like Sean Reynolds, Roger E. Moore, Monte Cook, wrote those types of articles [aimed at rich game quality enhancement] and they simply 'rocked'.

I guess what makes a good article--IMHO--is the amount of detail and research put into it by the author.

But I guess thats just me.

Hope this helps Eric!

 

[Wippit Guud]

Purify Food 1/2
Material Components: Ketchup, Pepper
Spell Description: Pour ketchup and pepper on food. Everything tastes better with pepper and ketchup.

Feign Death 1/2
Spell Description: To cast spell, place your hand over your heart and say outloud, very dramatically:
"Alas, a touch! I fear I breathe my last. Bury me not on the lone prarie! Give my chainmail to sis! Farewell!". Then, colllapse to the ground.

There were better than that... (going from memory)

Detect Life 1/2
Somatic Component: Place index and middle finger on target's inner wrist.

Neutralize Poison 1/2
Somatic Component: Insert index finger down target's throat.

IMC, we use Detect Life 1/2 all the time, we even call it that

 

[Qlippoth]

Over 20 years, one article that's been of consistent use to me is "A new name? It's elementary!" by Gygax. It provided a name generator using Anglo-Saxon root words. Great stuff!

 

[Nellisir]

The article I still think about most was "The Highs & Lows of Fantasy" (in the 140s I think).

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.