Joshua Randall
Legend
The majority of people's favorites mentioned in this thread fall into one of two categories:
(1) really cool fluff wrapped around a little crunch
(2) new game mechanics
I think that the days of seeing a lot of (2) in Dragon are over. Why? Because under the d20 license, publishers don't need Dragon as a vehicle for introducing cool new rules variants. Third-party publishers are the major source for new game mechanics, now.
As for (1), we could debate until the end of time over the appropriate fluff-to-crunch ratio. For my own preference, I would point to the Githyanki Incursion articles in Dragon (and Dungeon) as the 'right' ratio: a few new PrCs and weapons and magic, and a whole ton of wicked-cool background information. I'd like to see more articles like that in Dragon. But again, that's just me... your fluff-to-crunch mileage may vary.
(1) really cool fluff wrapped around a little crunch
(2) new game mechanics
I think that the days of seeing a lot of (2) in Dragon are over. Why? Because under the d20 license, publishers don't need Dragon as a vehicle for introducing cool new rules variants. Third-party publishers are the major source for new game mechanics, now.
As for (1), we could debate until the end of time over the appropriate fluff-to-crunch ratio. For my own preference, I would point to the Githyanki Incursion articles in Dragon (and Dungeon) as the 'right' ratio: a few new PrCs and weapons and magic, and a whole ton of wicked-cool background information. I'd like to see more articles like that in Dragon. But again, that's just me... your fluff-to-crunch mileage may vary.